Hello friends 👋🏻, really big news for the Crypto space this week! Let’s dive in! 🚀
Crypto Stuff 🚀
📈 The Markets
$BTC - $45,892.30 is UP 6.3% in the last 7 days
$ETH - $2,579.57 is UP 15.2% in the last 7 days
Wow! What a week for the markets. Let's start by stating the obvious: The Bitcoin spot ETF was approved!! 🚀 Whoo-hoo!! 👏🏻 After a dramatic false start on Jan. 9, the SEC, on the following day (Jan. 10), approved the 19b-4 applications from ARK 21Shares, Invesco Galaxy, VanEck, WisdomTree, Fidelity, Valkyrie, BlackRock, Grayscale, Bitwise, Hashdex, and Franklin Templeton.
The markets reacted somewhat modestly to the BTC price, neither going up nor down significantly. Surprisingly, the big winner of the day was Ethereum, with Ethereum-based tokens seeing double-digit increases.
🏁 The BTC ETF saga is finally over. If you want a nice recap, check out this very nice summary.
🗞️ The News
The week started with a general consensus that the Bitcoin (BTC) spot ETF would be approved, as many funds had submitted their amended forms for final review.
🔥 Besides the ETF approval, the news of the week involved the SEC's Twitter account being hacked, leading to the premature announcement of the approval. 🤦🏻♂️. Even Edward Snowden called out Gary Gensler for this.
🔥 There's a fee war brewing among some funds, each striving to lower their fees to attract more investors. 👀
🤓 What am I learning?
This week I’ve been deep diving into LSD. Whaaaat? 😲 No, not that LSD! 💊. What I meant is LSD = Liquid Staking Derivatives. I know, confusing right?
LSD are composed basically from 2 types of tokens:
💧 LST: Liquid Staking Tokens: They represent the underlying staked tokens (ETH) plus the correspondent staking rewards.
💦 LRT: Liquid ReStaking Tokens: They represent the underlying LST tokens that are in staking in Ethereum plus other projects that need the staking security that ETH provides. This LRT accrue ETH rewards + other rewards from different projects on wich LRT are restaked.
Don’t worry to much, a new post is coming in the following weeks explaining all about restaking, EigenLayer and LRT-Fi! 🤓
🚨 Security Stuff
🆒 Cool Stuff from the Week
🎧 Podcast episode I’m listening to:
If you love crypto reports like I do, but don’t have time to read through massive PDFs full of information, Messari has their 'Crypto Theses for 2024 Report' available in audio format on the Spotify Podcast. Fantastic! 👌🏻
📱 Cool app I’m using
I recently discovered a new app while doomscrolling through YouTube. Funnily enough, this app was advertised in the YouTube shorts as the solution 'to stop doomscrolling and use the time to learn something new.' I thought that was a great idea! So, I downloaded Headway, an app that lets you listen to and read 15-minute summaries of multiple books. I’m finding it quite useful, especially during my quick 15-minute walk breaks from work, as I can listen to the main points of a book. Today, I listened to the summary of 'Hold on to Your Kids.' So far, it’s been good, although I’m not sure if I’ll continue after the free trial since I already have a lot on my plate regarding books!
🤔 Quote I’m pondering:
📚 What am I reading:
Last weekend, while waiting for someone at the mall, I casually entered a bookstore and found Ryan Holiday's book, 'Courage is Calling,' and I couldn’t resist. So that’s the one I started! By the way, Ryan is one of my favorite authors and this book is the first in a series he’s writing about the Stoic virtues. The second is Discipline is Destiny. The next book titled Right thing, Right Now: Justice in an unfair world is set to be released on June 11th, 2024!
🫵🏻 One question for you:
Thanks for reading 🙏🏻. Don’t forget to leave any feedback if you have on the comment section!
See you next week!