This blog post recaps Runa’s TL;DRs in October and is meant to cover the most interesting token performers, crypto data, and news from the month.
FYI: Runa’s weekly TL;DRs are posted to our LinkedIn account at the end of every week. Follow us on LinkedIn here to get our weekly TL;DRs on your newsfeed.
Crypto Market Performance
Digital asset sectors were all positive in October and three of five were up more than 20%.
“Uptober” lived up to the name once again and delivered one of the best months markets have seen thus far this year. At the start of the month we wrote the bull market was already here, it may not have felt like it, but that is typical in the ‘skepticism’ phase of markets. In October Bitcoin broke through the $30k level on 10/22, it quickly zipped to new YTD highs at $34k and is now up more than 100% on the year. That fact alone seemed to wake up the doubters to the reality that we are climbing the wall of worry and moving out of a prolonged bear market.
Observing price action of Bitcoin in October reveals two likely catalysts for the move higher. 1) On October 13th the SEC decided not to appeal a recent court ruling that found it was wrong to reject an application from Grayscale to convert its GBTC fund into a spot ETF. The decision to not appeal the ruling reinforces the likelihood of an approval is “when” not “if”. Bitcoin moved ~8% higher over the next two days. 2) On October 16th a misreported rumor of an approval from the SEC sent BTC from $27k to $30k before reverting back to the $27k level once the rumor was disproven. However, this seemed to tip off the market to how out of position it may have been ahead of a true approval. In the week that followed open interest on the CME, a preferred exchange for institutional traders, increased by more than 50% to over $3B. The violent rush to reposition by traders sent BTC to fresh YTD highs of $34k. While the approval is yet to come, the market is now more certain than ever that it will happen. Grayscale’s GBTC fund now trades at just a 13% discount, signaling an almost 90% chance an approval will happen.
Notable Token Performers
- Injective (85%): Injective led all tokens this month as it continues building a DeFi focused L1 in the Cosmos ecosystem. Injective likely benefited from the announcement of the Celestia airdrop. Helix, an exchange built using Injective, was one of the first to launch perpetual markets on Celesita’s TIA token.
- Solana (80%): SOL was another outperformer in October as excitement builds on their technical progress. At their annual developer conference it was announced that the ‘Firedancer’ software client will go live on testnet. This is expected to help scale the Solana network and prevent network outages that previously plagued the network.
- Chainlink (+39%): Chainlink moved higher after a report from K33 that it may be the “safest bet” to play the tokenization narrative. Chainlink also recently released their cross-chain solution, CCIP. This new product could prove to play an important role in interoperability between public and private blockchains.
- Centrifuge (+40%): One of the key players in the success of Maker’s $3B RWA solution is infrastructure provider Centrifuge. They have established themselves as a leader in the RWA space and recently held the inaugural Real-World Asset Summit. Check out a primer we wrote on RWA here.
Notable News and Themes
- dYdX: Leading perpetuals exchange, dYdX, announced the launch of their v4 upgrade and the new standalone dYdX Chain. dYdX will be one of the first DeFi app-chains and plans to distribute all trading fees to validators and stakers.
- Uniswap: Uniswap Labs announced they will implement an “interface fee” on swaps executed through their front-end platforms in select token pairs including ETH, USDC, and wBTC. The 0.15% fee was highly controversial since the Uniswap protocol does not currently capture any of the fees generated from swaps. The newly implemented fee will not go to tokenholders, instead going directly to the Uniswap Labs team. This raises questions about the conflict between equity holders and token holders of applications.
- Ethereum Futures ETFs: On October 2nd, the SEC greenlit six funds to launch futures-based Ethereum funds. They attracted just $2M in volumes on their first trading day. The inferior design of futures-based products compared to spot, as well as Bitcoin being more understood by TradFi likely contributed to less than expected interest on launch day. However, the approval of a second exchange traded digital asset product furthers our belief that regulatory risk is declining for the asset class.
Runa Updates
- Waiting for the Bull Market? It’s Already Here. Runa’s Jennifer Murphy wrote an op-ed in Coindesk explaining that while skepticism may best describe the state of the market, it can still mean we are in a bull market. Check it out here.
- Clockwork CIO podcast. Jennifer Murphy appeared on the Clockwork CIO podcast. Listen in here.
- Runa Q3 Webinar. The Runa team held our quarterly webinar on October 17th. We discussed altcoin performance, where we are in the cycle, and the growth of tokenization. We couldn’t help but give our opinion on the SBF trial as well. Send us an email if interested in viewing the replay.
- Coinbase Institutional Markets Call. Jennifer Murphy appeared on the Coinbase Institutional podcast to discuss frameworks for valuing digital assets, trends in the market, and network theory. Highly recommend this one. Watch or listen here.
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