Wormhole Wednesday

3-April-2024

11:30AM UTC

@JSeyff
 
UPDATE:@BitwiseInvest
 just filed an s-1 for their #Ethereum ETF. They have not yet filed a 19b-4.
 

Bankman-Fried contributed more than $70 million to election campaigns in less than 18 months, placing him among the nation’s top political donors. He personally gave at least $40 million to politicians and political action committees ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, mostly to Democrats and liberal-leaning groups, making him the second overall top donor to Democrats, only behind George Soros, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Bankman-Fried also donated a significant amount to fundraising committees and super PACs affiliated with both parties. The biggest single recipient was Protect Our Future, a Democratic-aligned super PAC that claims it was “designed to help elect candidates who will be champions for pandemic prevention.” The group received $27 million from Bankman-Fried, and supports effective altruism, a philanthropic movement premised on the use of reason and data to allocate money, which Bankman-Fried also supports. Beneficiaries of Protect Our Future include Carrick Flynn, who lost a Democratic primary in Oregon’s 6th District, George Rep. Lucy McBath and Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett.

Bankman-Fried also gave a combined $7 million to the two main super PACs supporting Democratic candidates for Congress in the 2022 elections.

In addition, he personally contributed the individual maximum of $5,800 to more than a dozen members of Congress including Senators Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, and Sen. John Boozman, an Arkansas Republican, who lead the Senate Agriculture Committee, which has a role in regulating cryptocurrency. Stabenow and Boozman introduced a bill together this year that was intended to give FTX a path toward regulatory compliance in the U.S.

I found the undervalued Lido of Bitcoin …
 
Mega Thread  
 
While the markets have been evolving and rotating at an extremely rapid pace, some projects stayed consistent over the years and market phases.
 
This requires strong business development, innovation, and revenue streams.  
With the recent Bitcoin ETF introduction and the major inflows made, the Bitcoin ecosystem is clearly becoming one of the hottest narrative in the market.
 
Institutions bought more than 2% of the BTC supply leading to a lot of rotation and holding transfers.
 
The BTC ecosystem being in constant expansion, actors are looking for ways to generate additional yield on top of their holdings.
 
This is what @babylon_chain is doing by becoming the EigenLayer of Bitcoin.  
$BTC is staked and validates Proof of Stake chains to earn additional yield.
 
Here are some of the chains already secured by Babylon, providing a way for idle $BTC to receive yield on top of their holdings.
 
But...
 
Similarly to EigenLayer, once you stake your $BTC (or restake your $ETH for EL), your capital gets locked and unusable.
 
That's where @ankr enters the game and becomes the main BTC Liquid staking project, providing liquid capital to holders while still receiving staking yield  
You probably already know Lido right, but did you know that @ankr was the first protocol to launch Liquid Staked ETH in December 2020? (currently $100M TVL)
 
That they provide the most reliable RPCs, and with more than 6 years in the industry, they’re leading the RaaS narrative?  
Well, that’s simply the beginning as while their FDV is just 1/10th of Alt Layer, Ankr is going for much bigger than “just” the RaaS narrative.
 
In one of their latest threads, Ankr announced an exclusive collaboration with @babylon_chain...
 
Ankr will provide $BTC LSTs for the chains secured by Babylon which will then be issued on the chains.
 
This will provide additional liquidity to the chains and security.  
And this, anon, it's huge (aside of being the first mover in the market)
 
To really grasp how big this can be, let's take some assumptions.
 
Babylon is the EigenLayer of Bitcoin with currently $6.4B of TVL.
 
This is an insignificant part of the BTC market cap, meaning that much more idle capital will take the opportunity to stake and generate yield on Babylon.
 
As mentioned, @ankr is the first $BTC LST on the market, similarly to what @KelpDAO, @ether_fi, @puffer_finance are for $ETH
 
You might have seen that @ether_fi recently launched their token and are currently trading at $3.3B FDV.
 
Lido is $2.4B
 
Guess which FDV @ankr is currently trading?
 
$419M.
 
Yes, the Lido of Bitcoin is trading at 1/5th of Lido and 1/10th of Etherfi.
Image
Imagine if on top of this they would also be leading the RaaS narrative, trading at 1/10th of @alt_layer and @dymension ...  
... and tapping into the DePIN narrative as they provide decentralized computation power and data availability through their network?
 
This, by the way, further increases $ANKR token use cases and distribution.  
 
If we pay a bit more attention to details, Ankr is present at the Nvidia conference and made a lot of communication around AI lately.
 
Why would a Rollup As A Service project focus that much on AI?
 
Image
I will let your imagination do the job but you currently have one of the most asymmetric bet on the market:
 

• 6 years of experience
• First ETH LST
• Lido of BTC
• RaaS leader
• dePIN actor
• AI?  

I can't recommend anything but paying some attention to @ankr as even tho they got doubled by Lido for the Staked ETH, they will not miss their chance on a $1T + market.