RIP Terra
WHAT'S MOVING CRYPTO
Happy Friday Everyone! đ
Terraâs unraveling has beat down the crypto markets, but everything else throughout the industry is business as usual. Mark Zuckerberg (whoâs definitely not a robot) announced Facebookâs Metaâs Instagram began testing NFTs integrations this week. Crypto analytics firm Chainalysis more than doubled its valuation to $8.6B after a $170M funding round. And Grayscale met privately with the SEC last week in an effort to persuade them to allow it to convert its flagship fund into an ETF. The deadline for the SECâs decision is July 6âfingers crossed!
Having said thatâŠletâs get to it!
RIP Terra
Coinbase reports its first loss as a public company
Sam Bankman-Fried takes stake in Robinhood
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1. RIP Terra
TerraUST (UST) is was a supposed stablecoin which, unlike most other stablecoins, was backed by an algorithm.
So instead of being supported by real-world liquid cash equivalents or dollars, UST was backed by a complex system of minting and burning tokens meant to adjust supply and stabilize prices.
Or, sorcery.
Over the weekend investors seemed to realize that you canât pull money out of thin air and UST lost its pegging to the dollar, which resulted in a massive sell-off.
This coincided with the start of an eventual 99% drop in Terraâs native token Luna, which is part of the pegging mechanism for UST.
To make matters worse, CoinDesk reported that Terra founder Do Kwon was one of the pseudonymous co-founders behind another failed stablecoin called Basis Cash which was modeled after an earlier project named Basis that shut its doors in 2018 over SEC-related risks.
2. Coinbase reports its first loss as a public company
While the wheels were coming off Terra, Coinbase reported earnings on Tuesday and posted its first loss since going public back in April 2021.
The net loss of $430M resulted in a loss per share of $1.98 which jussssst missed estimates of $0.08.
Revenue fell 27% YoY to $1.17B and missed calls for $1.48B.
To add fuel to the fire the companyâs usage declined quarter-to-quarter. Total trading volume fell over 40% to $309B and retail monthly transaction users (MTUs) dropped nearly 20% to 9.2M.
Despite the drop in revenue and usage, over the past 6 months, Coinbaseâs operating expenses have jumped almost 70% reaching $1.72B this quarter.
This is to say theyâve decided to focus on growth and product line diversification over profits.
The biggest driver in spending has been investment in personnelâthe company hired 1,200 employees to bolster and scale customer support, legal, compliance, and business functions.
While investors donât seem happy about the companyâs direction (shares are down over 75% YTD), the moves are aligned with its long-term strategy of continuing to build regardless of the state of the crypto markets, which they acknowledge are highly volatile in nature.
In any case, itâs hard to ignore anytime shares of a company like Coinbase are trading at a P/E under 5, as COIN currently is.
3. Sam Bankman-Fried takes stake in Robinhood
Speaking of companies like Coinbase, the CEO of one of its rivals, FTX, has taken a 7.6% stake in Robinhood.
An SEC filing yesterday revealed Sam Bankman-Fried purchased 56.3M shares for a total of $648M through Emergency Fidelity Technologies, a company heâs the sole director and majority owner of.
The document says that Bankman-Fried doesnât intend to take âany action toward changing or influencing the controlâ of Robinhood. Sound familiar (Elon/Twitter)?
It does, however, say that he might look at ways of âenhancing stockholder value through, among other things, various strategic alternatives or operational or management initiativesâ.
Something tells me Bankman-Fried is not going to be âhands-offâ here.
FTX is already massive and it rivals the aforementioned Coinbase and Binance, butâand this is a big butâit doesnât offer services in the US.
The company has been making moves towards that end though: on Wednesday it applied for a trust charter with the New York Department of Financial Services which would allow it to offer crypto trading services to users in the state.
Bankman-Fried hasnât informed Robinhood, which has 21x the users FTX has, of any plans to merge the platforms, but you canât help but wonderâŠ
The crypto markets are correcting which means opportunities are out there and gains are on the horizon. Subscribe to our paid newsletter to join us as we hunt for bargains in the altcoin market and find out which coins weâre buying this month!
SOURCES*
Coindesk
Decrypt
CNBC
1. Bloomberg, Coindesk
2. CNBC, Decrypt
3. CNBC, SeekingAlpha, SEC
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