At the moment of collapse there simply was not enough buy orders in the books for liquidation engine to sustain offloading.

Here is another, more in-depth rumour thread on how BitMex could have influenced the BTC rektage 👉 https://twitter.com/lowstrife/status/1238818943147507713

The original post was by Alameda (FTX): https://twitter.com/SBF_Alameda/status/1238306306043162625

In a nutsheel, the argument is: risk was calculated poorly and allowed to hudreds of millions to be liquidated at once while the book had 0 depth. So when you said before no one could have sold that much BTC, why - this is actually true. It was degen leveraged positions causing harm to everybody because profits & insurance fund are also in BTC.

​​Perlin didn't cure cancer 😷

PERL didn't cure corona either. Here is a mind-blowing update from the infamous moneygrab. I am bored, so FUD included.

First, in short ❌ PERL IS REKT AF

1] Tech team could not complete mainnet on time
2] Mainnet will probably never be completed
3] Thus, PERL will remain as an ERC20 shitcoin
4] Kenta leaves the CTO position, goodbye
5] Perlin will be doing enterprise stuff (LOOOL)

https://medium.com/perlin-network/updates-on-wavelet-fae5ae5675e6

The story 🤐

2018: Started as a hackathon idea, it's believed that Perlin got funding committments months before there was any team. Dorjee (CEO) grabbed Kenta Iwasaki (CTO) - a brilliant developer - from one of the ETH events somewhere around spring time 2018. That being said, FBG somehow invested in December the year before that, in 2017. Anyway, settled on changing the world with the highest TPS blockchain, it was the time when fundraising was still booming. It was the CryptoBriefing magnificent code review that fostered insane hype around the SAFTs, and trapped many plebs during the summer of 2018. Pool of a pool, friend of a friend, and dozens of millions of USD are in the pocket. Going on to raise multiple valuations screwing over everybody they could, left investors breathing in relief when PERL finally got liquidity... stretched over 2 centuries, but liquidity nonentheless.

Counless battles on twitter with Emin over Avalanche and Snowflake, multiple fundraising rounds, disappearing team, hired family members, and more... That's what it ended up as. Perlin has left a footprint in the history of projects. There have been multiple rumours which are okay to talk about now as it seems, here are some of them:

- 2c seed round for FBG & Co, which was promised by Dorjee to not be the case; -> true
- His family member hired for a high position and getting huge paychecks; -> unclear
- Team leaving due to corruptness and inability to function as a company; -> true
🙄 smh what else do you need

I think this is one of the rare occasions when sending a crypto dude to jail is actually okay 😂 Fraud all across the board, to be honest. It's okay to not always accomplish big dreams, it's okay to lay off and pivot. But it's not okay when there are only lies. There was no tech delivered, no transaprency, no adoption. And no coin going up kek.

PS: Stay safu and please do social distancing. Get yourself Oculus Quest so we can play paintball and jerk each other off in VR.

BRRRRRR https://brrr.money *sound on*

Take time to read - https://medium.com/@allenfarrington/this-is-not-capitalism-5ed0a9d5dfa9

​​Calling the top & reviving Lobsters 🦞 HI THERE 🖖

Today is a boring post, but we need to catch up and put things in order.

Up until recently, people were still feeling rekt and thus there was little noise: just friendly discussions on fundamentals and products. As time passed by and BTC / markets kept going up - people started feeling safe again. Stimulus, priced in, whales - nobody knows. But why is that important? Even if the recovery idea is flawed, people seem to be ready to gamble again 🤷

While I still believe the economic effects are not nearly priced in and we will see more rektness in 2020... It's all a gamble! Nobody knows.

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1️⃣ BTC & S&P Decoupling Meme

People are/were fleeing to liquidity cash from assets, causing sell-offs all across the board. Including gold and digital gold BTC LoL. Now, they try to either clame correlation or say BTC has decoupled - but remember, they use statistics simply to fit their bias. Don't pay attention to that, it all depends on timeframes. Gold dipped but then revived. Same as BTC. Correlation? Meme. There is so much complexity in this question that I wouldn't even try to get into it. Muh familia is an x10 degenerate, not a debt expert. Check some screens below.

However, if major hedge funds and rich plebs start believing in decoupling, it's definitely a benefit. So yes, vote for decoupling sir.

2️⃣ Currencies = stableshits

Holding cash is perceived to be safe by 99% of the world population, especially doing 3% yearly rates in a bank, wow! Well, don't forget to check for inflation and the relation with USD. If you help rubbles, you are so rekt now. Even your higher 7% interest rates in riskier countries would land you destroyed. This is a topic for the next post which should include more juicy info. But the message for now is: cash is not the same everywhere, and it's not nearly as stable purchasing power. Everyone here knows it, but the charts are still fascinating.

3️⃣ Onlyfans for ETHereans

No, it's not about onlyfans. It's about selling your brain's future cashflows. This is not a new thing as human IPOs have been performed many times. Let's not get into the legalities of this bullshit. Anyway, it's not a good sign as you sell off the most important asset to you - yourself. A toxic ETH dude Alex got 20K like this, and more people attempt to use Gitcoin grants to sell their time... it's a freaking terrible idea and the fanatics should have a limit to this stuff. Check: https://bit.ly/3cR4pPs

4️⃣ Alts ripping - your wallet dipping

Alts seem to be popping all across the board. People buy and fomo again, but the volumes are still small. What is clear is that traders are okay to engage again. SOL, HIVE, CARTESI - have popped a few X from their adjusted market caps: https://news.1rj.ru/str/Generation_Crypto/1161. Does it mean the projects are good? Absolutely the opposite, but the valuations have been adjusted to the market. In 2017 it used to be 100M, in 2018 50M, in 2019 25M, now it's 15M and below. Less liquidity, less buyers, what else do you expect. But it doesn't mean big seasonal moons can't happen.

With xDai STAKE BitMax, and JUST Poloniex going next - we might see good performance if BtC stays fine? That's the assumption, who knows.

---------------------

Sorry for the boring one, most of the info here is known to you. It's a summary of the past month as not much has happened. DeFi security is a special topic so we will look into that and more stuff later. Good luck out there gambling, don't forget to bring in interesting whitepapers to @lobsters_chat and hope you are safe.

Interesting links

- Global market trends - tech is going nice: https://meetglimpse.com/covid19/
- Covid-19 trends from China old: https://twitter.com/Nik_Quinn/status/1241436772808056834
- Permabear material, don't agree per se: https://www.crescat.net/crescat-capital-quarterly-investor-letter-q1-2020/
- Nothing about Oil being negative. No, gtfo. It was only a short period for WTI. Still rekt, yes.

Is BTC halvening priced in? 🤔

Think Amazon will beat the next earnings? That's already been priced in.

You work at the drive thru for Mickey D's and found out that the burgers are made of human meat? Priced in. You think insiders don't already know that? The market is an all powerful, all encompassing being that knows the very inner workings of your subconscious before you were even born. Your very existence was priced in decades ago when the market was valuing Standard Oil's expected future earnings based on population growth that would lead to your birth, what age you would get a car, how many times you would drive your car every week, how many times you take the bus/train, etc. Anything you can think of has already been priced in, even the things you aren't thinking of.

You have no original thoughts. Your consciousness is just an illusion, a product of the omniscent market. Free will is a myth. The market sees all, knows all and will be there from the beginning of time until the end of the universe (the market has already priced in the heat death of the universe). (c) reddit

--------------

So: no one knows! However, really high volatility - orange coin go up and down - is expected. Be careful riding, and don't get shaken off. Otherwise, you will become "Le Pleb".

Did it again fam, one more for the team 🚀 Imagine holding 3 years to sell "the bottom"...

UNO, Duo, Tre... I mean UMA 🦄 A $0 CMC project?!

Hey seafood, we got something new today. A gambling opportunity one could say, but it's not as trivial as it looks. Let's go!

The gambling pot of today is UMA.xyz 🌈 A protocol that enables users to create synthetic tokens (ST) through overcollateralization. A synthetic token tracks the price of some predefined reference asset or index, like gold or the S&P 500. Here is a great TL;DR I stole content from: https://twitter.com/tokenterminal/status/1255237984783384581.

It's actually a pretty cool thing if you look deeper into it. Synthetic assets, fully running on ETH and not its own chain. It got a lot of ETH enthusiasts' attention in the past few months. The team presumably audited contracts with OpenZeppelin. Interesting use cases and integrations can be done with this, including the creation of new weird stablecoins. Look into it if you like DeFi!

Mr. Lobster, I just want to lose money!
- Glad to hear this, my fellow degenerate. So let's talk about this UMA token thing.

UMA tokenholders = the oracle. They charge fees for voting how much any given ST was worth upon its expiry or liquidation (if the liquidation was disputed). They also charge a periodic % fee of all the value locked in the system (= mgmt fee). The usual staking value accrual model. It works if there is usage, sure thing. So the narrative works. But for speculation purposes, it's fine as it is now.

UMA will have initial Uniswap Listing today, at 15:00 UTC.

At that time, the Risk Labs Foundation will deposit 2mm UMA tokens and ~$535k of ETH into a newly created liquidity pool. This represents an initial listing price of ~$0.26/UMA, which implies a fully diluted market capitalization of ~$26.67mm. This is the same valuation used in our initial seed investment. https://medium.com/uma-project/umas-initial-uniswap-listing-afa7b6f6a330.

Now to the fun part which is confusing and is a bit rekt if you look closer...

1. Are they really locked? They have some cool backers who are supposed to be locked until 2021 [muh VC sir] like Placeholder: https://umaproject.org/about.html. Yes: team, foundation, all backers - as the text states: Approximately 48.5mm UMA tokens are held by Risk Labs’s founders, early contributors, and investors. These tokens are transfer-restricted until 2021, and all individual token grants are subject to a 4-year vesting schedule. ⭕️ However, it's not in the smart contract and it's also said a bit vaguely.

2. Future token sales...how soon? 35mm UMA tokens will be distributed to developers and users of the UMA network. The mechanics for this distribution have not been finalized and will be put forward to the community for discussion and approval. An additional 14.5mm UMA tokens will be reserved for future token sales. Here is the thing, they are talking about it pretty vaguely again. The next token sale might even happen next week, who says it's not possible? ⭕️ Next to that, they already did a few small rewards, so that might be a burden for the price too.

1/2 UMA -> t.me/blockchain_lobsters/823

​​2/2 UMA -> https://news.1rj.ru/str/blockchain_lobsters/822.

NO CIRCULATION?! 🤯 This relates to how Uniswap works. There is no orderbook, there are no hidden orders. It's a curve. You can't be fucked over unless you can count. So here is the thing: if the only tokens in the market are 2M offered on Uniswap - while those are backed with 1:1 ETH, then it mathematically cannot go below $0.26. ⭕️ Liquidity provision... what if that changes? They can just withdraw all/part of the ETH side of the pool. Or somehow add more tokens to the UMA side of the pool - but that would be directly scammy, don't expect that.

- Valuation at full dilution 💯 approx 26M USD
- Market cap 💰 530K USD but actually... 0 USD + some hackathon rewards + maybe inflationary rewards + black swan unlocks

This 0 USD thing is what makes the idea super interesting - but only if the lockup and liquidity statements holds true. Then you legit cannot buy below $0.26 for the coming weeks. The only dilution would be staking rewards then, which might be allowed for by private sale whales Inflationary rewards can be claimed by the voter within two weeks of being earned, and are not subject to any transfer restrictions.💡 I will check this later. But the protocol has the chance to pick up later and create demand, because they do cute things.

Also, just a couple of days ago a contract admin was allowed to allow more UMA minting over the cap LOL because they "decided" to make it earn inflationary rewards for fulfilling price requests and participating in governance: https://twitter.com/allilulllc/status/1254944093354016768

Anyway, the listing is in 2 hours or so, I might try with a couple of ETH! I don't know any backers or the team, so for me it's a pure gamble. But it is innovative as the token model, innovative as the project, and overall feeling cute about it. Let's go lose some money fam! https://uniswap.exchange/swap/0x04fa0d235c4abf4bcf4787af4cf447de572ef828

​​Update on the above. Instant x6-7 due to 1.5M USD getting in 7K ETH 🤯

Gas usage reminds of ICO times of 2018, pretty cool! I sadly didn't get in... Also expected only 500K interest so had a lower price range.

Now prepare for some shills people will use to offload, enabled private sale staking, and further dilution to take advantage of this. Not FUD, just an imho 🙂

https://etherscan.io/address/0x6264c8d158f32bd8c01b8a0102b57dfcfcfb8561

The next round must be priced higher! "Evolution" of token raises. NuCypher's WorkLock & UMA.
👉 https://lobsters.substack.com/p/the-next-round-must-be-priced-higher

Hi everyone, trying out a new format with substack... to make things look a bit more professional [lol].

You don't ever need to pay or insert your email, just ignore if it asks you. Oh and also I won't be making a personal token 💩

Today diving into:
💵 How raising the next round has been getting harder
🙏 The evolution of ICO/IEO and how it now requires more downside protection
😮 NuCypher's numbers on valuation boost. Spoiler: need 200,000 ETH
⭕️ UMA's model leaving people stuck at break-even

Let's discuss it over a bear in the chat!

​​Primary market coming back? 🤔

This screenshot sums up the past few feeks. While the alt season meme has been dead for over half a year, recently we have seen resurgence of lowcaps on non-centrlalized exchanges. Socks and tapes on uniswap, very little-known coins on IDEX, and so on. Some random stuff people are trying to gamble on, which shows more retail engagement all across the board. 4chan pumping and shilling an expired Opyn insurance, that was just next level lol.

But the question is: will it scale in volumes enough to accommodate more traders? X10 is cute, but on a $100 daily volume it meands nothing. Etheredelta could handle thousands of ETH.

As the primary market is driven by retail fomo, this continuous trend could bring in some of the primary market investors back, making the margin pyramid of seed-private-crowd work again. However, higher volumes are needed for it. Will this trend continue and bring in the primary money market back, or will it pop like most of the attempts of the last 2 years?

There ain't no such thing as free APR ©

This is not about yield farming sirs, this is about the myths of staking. A big part of the piece is dedicated to reverse-engineering professional validators [P2P, Figments, other cool teams] and show that a coin outside of TOP100 has close to zero chance of getting such guys. But is the brrr even relevant there...

As always, the article comes with dozens of typos, subjective opinions, and advice on how to get rekt.

Cheers 🖖 https://lobsters.substack.com/p/there-aint-no-such-thing-as-free

PS: you don't have to subscribe, just skip the notification if it pops up.

​​Liquid Staking by STAFI - Rich Code or Rekt 🐳 @stafi_protocol

With the market hitting ATHs, we see the resurgence of the primary market. In fact, VCs are hammering into anything "DeFi" without a second thought. Does this mean market topped? Well, I thought it did so in April, so I missed out all the profits sitting in USDT... muh familia, not even funny. Legit missed out all the profits: DeFi, BTC, everything. But now I am here to buy the top and get rekt!

DeFi is a more sustainable pyramid 🗻 if a pyramid at all.

It's good to note that DeFi has organic demand and a user base which actually pays fees, so despite being bloated - it has a bottom floor and legitimacy. Some OG chats called DeFi the top a long time ago, but remember that YouTube is just coming around to it, while normies are still buying ADA in Chinese onion villages - so, who knows. Just make sure not to go all-in, degenerates.

Staking is growing 📈 What's next for staking?

The staking industry is not stopping at all. Here is a more elaborate report and analysis on pros and cons of staking as an economic mechanism: https://lobsters.substack.com/p/there-aint-no-such-thing-as-free. So what do you do when some industry is booming? You make new services and solutions for it, capturing all its users. That's what Stafi is doing for staking.

The new asset class in DeFi 💧 liquid staking derivatives.

Stafi is the first DeFi protocol unlocking liquidity of staked assets. Users can stake PoS tokens through Stafi and receive rTokens in return, which are available for trading while still earning staking rewards. FIS is the native token on Stafi Chain. FIS is required to provide security to the network by staking, pay for transaction fees on the Stafi chain, mint & redeem rTokens.

Kind of like if you lock your Dai over the bridge to issue xDai. In the future, the market will do its thing, with extra products, derivatives, and other products in the ecosystem.

Ivan, fuck your fundamentals 🚀 what are the pumpamentals?

First of all, it's actually a cool product. It's not too easy to make, and the staking-lending derivatives are a very security-sensitive thing. The galaxy brain Tarun Chitra (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.11156.pdf), reports by Chorus One (https://mirror.chorus.one/liquid-staking-report.pdf), and many more. The liquid staking debate has been going for quite a while actually, there is a lot of noise and research in that area. If you see some cool links - shoot them in the chat.

🎯 Polkadot: Stafi is actually building on Substrate, as a parachain to Polkadot. Stafi received the grant and the support of Web3, helping Polkadot tap into DeFi. It doesn't mean that Stafi is restricted to the Polkadot ecosystem, it just rolls on the narrative and hype, while building its core blockchain on it. It will tap into Cosmos, Tezos, etc. later on. In fact, its non-incentivized testnet is in top-5 of active ones already after only a couple of days: https://telemetry.polkadot.io/#list/Stafi%20Testnet%20Seiya
🦄 DeFi supported by CEX: Stafi will be supported by BitMax liquidity and user base, giving a huge head start with its AUM once the contracts go live. That's an insane boost to any new project - an existing audience. More: https://medium.com/stafi/an-ama-on-staking-derivatives-by-bitmax-stafi-12412c0ca8
📈 Burning FIS token: a burning mechanism for fees paid with Stafi protocol usage. This P/E, burning cashflow idea sticks well with communities.
🐦 Unique staking audience acquisition. There will be dedicated lockdrop-style campaigns for different blockchains, that's a super strong user acquisition model. Stay tuned!

PS: I got a bag a couple weeks back, so obviously I want to see it moon. The final valuation is far below the DeFi crazy hype approx 10M, and the initial market cap will be way below 1M USD. I prefer projects with a very low start to have a better chance at showing returns for the early participants instead of starting at 50M. DYOR and check more in @stafi_protocol.

Lobster DAO 🦞 Not everything needs to be a DAO

Update on WHY NOT: https://twitter.com/IvanGBi/status/1289160756416720898

Some thoughts and updates on DAOs: what can DAOs do and what could Lobster DAO potentially do. Note: no sale, no raise, no anything. If there will be a token, it would likely be not listed - just for the sake of membership signing some governance decisions. There is no goal to make money here, and it will be literally valued at $0. Not even valued at all.

TLDR - I basically don't see a strong need for a DAO here. It's all open, community is there, why complicate? Strong opinion shift towards "fuck DAO, we are good as we are".

Maybe I am missing something, discuss 👉 https://news.1rj.ru/str/lobsters_chat/63770