Memecoin Mania, Equities Boom, and Cashback Galore

Happy Easter! March Madness is in full swing, and madness is right. Just this week, SBF was sentenced to 25 years in prison, Shohei Ohtani is caught up in a gambling scandal, and the Baltimore Bridge collapsed.

Basketball not quite your thing but feeling left out? Try your hand at our altcoin bracket - keep an eye out on our Twitter for the official contest and the chance to win $1000 in Bitcoin.

This Week in Crypto

We recovered this week with a string of positive net inflows, helped in part by the reduced GBTC selling, which some rumors attributed to Genesis in the wake of their court case with Gemini. The inflows look set to come alongside the highest weekly close ever if Bitcoin holds above 70k come Sunday.

Elsewhere in the market, action has, like last week, been firmly confined to meme coins, predominately on Base chain (Coinbase’s L2 built on top of Optimism) and Solana.

Like you, we’ve been thinking about how long this meme-coin rally can realistically sustain, but $DOGE is trading at its highest level in over 800 days and looks poised to perform well into “4/20”.

• Meanwhile, $WIF becomes the third largest meme coin by market cap, flipping $PEPE to just sit behind $DOGE and $SHIB.

All this comes at a time when ETHBTC is weak, seemingly breaking down from over 1000 days in consolidation. This is driven by dwindling faith in a May ETF approval and users opting for cheaper alternative chains such as Solana. We’ll be monitoring the pair for any sentiment change or capitulation event.

• In other words, there are no real signs of wider market exuberance, an argument that may suggest that the meme coin rally still has legs.

To finish up, here are some of the key events from this week’s news cycle:

SBF was handed a sentence of 25 years and ordered to forfeit $11B for multi-billion dollar fraud. Co-conspirators Caroline Ellison, Nishad Singh and Gary Wang now await their fate. The defense had some, erm, interesting nomenclature to describe Mr.Bankman Fried.

The DOJ have indicted Kucoin and two of it’s founders with charges relating to violating AML laws in the United States.

• Gan and Tang, both Chinese citizens, are charged with one count of conspiracy to violate the US Bank Secrecy Act and one count of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business. They face up to 10 years in jail each if found guilty.

• Needless to say, if you have large amounts of money on Kucoin, best to withdraw it.

A South American company, Nilam Resources, announced intentions to purchase $1.7B worth of Bitcoin (24,800 BTC). The share price promptly rocketed 1,500%. It was quickly established this was a marketing stunt from the penny-stock and the CEO resigned the following day, calling it a “classic pump and dump”.

An NFT platform on L2 Blast called Munchables was hacked this week, allegedly by North Korean hackers. 17,400 ETH was drained ($63M), but the funds have since been returned. The saga sparked a debate over decentralization as it was expected that the Blast team would rollback the chain if the funds were not returned.

And lastly, a firm called Kerrisdale Capital published a piece on the enigmatic MSTR and Bitcoin premium debate. They are short MSTR/ long BTC currently. You can read their full thesis here and see a summary thread here. In our case, we’ve disabled the red button on any asset that is not the dollar until further notice. (That’s not financial advice).

This Week in TradFi

Equities have rallied through the opening quarter and established record-highs across the U.S., UK, Europe, and Japan. That's courtesy of resilient corporate profits, hopes around AI, and the prospect of rate cuts. In the U.S., inflation continues to be a question, though economic activity trends upward.

• The S&P is up over 10% for the opening quarter.

• The Dow Jones didn't quite make 40,000, but still returned 5.6% in Q1 2024.

• Thursday's GDP release surprised as QoQ growth for Q4 was revised higher to 3.4% (from 3.2%).

• Core PCE (consensus 0.3%, prev 0.4% month-on-month), PCE (0.4%, 0.3% prev), and personal spending (0.5% consensus) to name a few are set to print today.

• However, U.S. consumer confidence fell to its lowest level since November, with a 104.7 reading vs expectations of 106.9. Expectations for the following months also declined to their lowest level since October.

Elsewhere, the Eurozone and the UK continue to be a mixed bag.

• German economic activity is expected to remain depressed this year. This comes after a joint statement by five leading domestic economic think-tanks slashed the country's GDP growth rate to just 0.1% for 2024, from 1.3% previously. The economy had shrunk by 0.3% in Q4 and the whole of 2023. 

• In the UK, things might be looking a little brighter just now, but that's after official statistics confirmed that the economy had slipped into recession in the second half of 2023 with a QoQ growth of -0.3% in Q4, after a 0.1% decline in Q3.

This Week in Tech

The SPAC Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC) officially completed its merger with Trump Media & Technology Corp on Monday, closing DWAC’s stock at almost $50 a share. 

• Tuesday it began trading under the ticker symbol “DJT”, which clearly traders loved, as the stock soared to $66 by Wednesday. 

• This comes as phenomenal news for Trump, who was recently ordered to pay $175M in legal settlements but luckily owns 58% of DWAC (the buzzer beater to end all buzzer beaters?). 

• The stock fell slightly Thursday, closing at $61.96, but still well above where it began the week.

Online investing platform Robinhood recently announced their new Robinhood Gold Card, a no-annual-fee rewards credit card with 3% cashback on every purchase and 5% cashback on purchases through the Robinhood travel portal. 

• Users must be members of Robinhood Gold, currently only $5/month. 

• 3% cashback is far and away the best cashback deal around right now. The only downside we can see is that cashback points are deposited directly into your Robinhood account, slightly more inflexible than the myriad of cashback options other credit cards offer. 

• If you’re like us, you’ll be dumping those cashback points straight into Bitcoin (but that is not investment advice). 

Wondering how this could possibly make Robinhood money? Our best guess - 

If nothing else, at least this will go down as one of the year’s best PR moves. 

As usual, below are some fundraising announcements, M&A, and tech personnel changes that caught our eye:

• Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun will step down at the end of the year, following a string of mishaps from the company. Guess the golden parachute is a little more reliable than the airplanes. 

• Amazon invested an additional $2.75B in AI company Anthropic.

• Cybersecurity platform Coro raised a $100M Series D, led by One Peak Partners.

Arch News

Thank you to everyone who came along to our events in London at the Digital Asset Summit or in New York at Bitcoin Investor Day - great to see so many faces and keep an eye on this section as it’s where you’ll be able to snag an invite to our future events around the world!

Have a great Easter break everybody!

Arch is building a next-gen wealth management platform for individuals holding alternative assets. Our flagship product is the crypto-backed loan, which allows you to securely and affordably borrow against your crypto. We also offer access to bank-grade custody, trading and staking services, powered by BitGo.

Disclaimer: None of the above is financial advice, seriously.