链捕手

Author: Grapefruit, ChainCatcher

In the early morning of April 4, 2023, the official homepage key for Twitter web users no longer featured the traditional blue bird Twitter logo, but instead was replaced with a cartoon avatar of a Shiba Inu. Musk posted on Twitter an image containing a Dogecoin emoji along with the Twitter blue bird logo. The price of DOGE surged from $0.077 to $0.102, with a 24-hour increase reaching 30%, marking a new high since December of last year.

Prior to this, Twitter had not officially announced the above changes. As of April 4, the official account still had not responded or explained this change.

However, after Twitter changed the web icon to the Dogecoin logo, leading to a rise in DOGE's price, Lookonchain monitored that the address ranked 5th in DOGE holdings transferred out 650 million DOGE at 3:48:22 on April 4, valued at approximately $61.3 million.

In response, many users speculated that, given Elon Musk's tendencies, this change to the Twitter user page featuring the Dogecoin Shiba Inu image was likely just for promotional hype, probably to drive up the price for selling. This page adjustment may be temporary, and Twitter might revert to the original little blue bird image in the future.

The basis for this view is that during the Bitcoin bull market on January 19, 2021, Musk changed his Twitter user signature to Bitcoin (BTC), causing the price to soar from $31,000 to $38,000, with a daily increase of 16%. However, shortly after, Musk deleted that signature.

Musk publicly endorses Dogecoin, questioned for profiting from DOGE price fluctuations

Musk's public endorsement of Dogecoin is no longer news in the crypto market. Since 2021, Musk has expressed his optimism about Dogecoin multiple times, calling it "the people's cryptocurrency" and his favorite "currency," and has frequently posted Dogecoin emojis. He occasionally shares content related to Dogecoin on Twitter, leading to significant fluctuations in its price.

Musk's past endorsements of Dogecoin:

(Data source: Tradingview)

April 3, 2023: The Twitter web blue bird logo was changed to the DOGE dog emoji; Musk posted on Twitter an image containing DOGE emojis and the Twitter blue bird logo.

DOGE rose from $0.076 to $0.105, with a daily increase of over 30%.

October 28, 2022: Musk announced the completion of his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter.

Within 7 days, DOGE surged from $0.06 to a high of $0.158, with a weekly increase of 163%, before falling back to $0.07.

June 21, 2022: Musk announced that SpaceX would also accept DOGE payments.

DOGE rose from $0.058 to a high of $0.069, with a daily increase of 11.7%, then dropped to $0.063.

April 10, 2022: Musk suggested that Twitter Blue subion fees could potentially be paid with DOGE.

DOGE rose from $0.014 to $0.015, with a daily increase of 10%, before quickly falling back to $0.1.

January 14, 2022: Announced support for purchasing Tesla merchandise with DOGE.

DOGE rose from $0.16 to $0.2148, with a daily increase of 32%, then dropped to $0.11.

May 10, 2021: Musk appeared on the American variety show "Saturday Night Live," where he admitted that the cryptocurrency Dogecoin (DOGE) is a scam. DOGE fell from $0.7 to $0.45, dropping over 34% at one point.

April 15, 2021: Musk posted an image of a dog howling at the moon.

DOGE skyrocketed from $0.15 to $0.45, with a daily increase of 238%. It continued to rise, reaching a peak of $0.73 on May 3, 2021.

February 24, 2021: Musk posted an image of Dogecoin landing on an alien planet.

DOGE surged from $0.043 to $0.06, with a daily increase of 37%.

February 4, 2021: Musk tweeted, "You don’t need to be a millionaire to own it, Dogecoin is the people’s cryptocurrency."

DOGE rose from $0.031 to $0.058, with a daily increase of 90%.

January 28, 2021: As WSB concepts (retail investors battling Wall Street short sellers) were heating up, Musk posted a fictional magazine cover titled "Dogue."

DOGE surged from $0.014 to $0.08, with a daily increase of 404%.

Because Musk's every mention of Dogecoin leads to significant price fluctuations, with sharp increases followed by returns to original levels, many users suspect that Musk is profiting from DOGE's price volatility, claiming "DOGE is Musk's ATM; whenever he needs money or Tesla is losing, he shouts DOGE."

Users have previously sued Musk for manipulating Dogecoin

Although users have long been accustomed to Musk's public endorsements of Dogecoin, some have expressed dissatisfaction, believing that Musk is using his position to manipulate the Dogecoin scam for profit.

In June of last year, a "Dogecoin" investor, Keith Johnson, filed a lawsuit against Musk and his companies Tesla and SpaceX, accusing Musk of knowing that Dogecoin had no value since 2019 but still falsely and deceptively claimed on Twitter that Dogecoin was a legitimate investment, promoting it and deliberately inflating its price for profit, which led to significant losses for investors as Dogecoin's price rapidly declined. He argued that Musk was operating and manipulating a pyramid scheme with Dogecoin to gain profits, increase exposure, and entertain himself.

Keith Johnson is seeking $86 billion in damages, claiming this is the amount lost since Musk began buying and promoting Dogecoin in 2019, plus triple damages, totaling $258 billion. He also requested that his lawsuit filed in a New York court be classified as a class action to represent those who have suffered losses from investing in Dogecoin since 2019.

On March 31, Musk requested a U.S. judge to dismiss the $258 billion lawsuit.

Musk's lawyer stated in a complaint filed in Manhattan federal court that Keith Johnson's accusations against Musk's harmless and often silly tweets are works of fantasy. He also noted that the investor never articulated how Musk intended to deceive others or how he concealed risks, only using vague tweets like "Dogecoin" and "No highs, no lows, only Doge" to accuse him of fraud.

The lawyer argued that posting supportive statements or amusing images about a legitimate cryptocurrency with a market value of nearly $10 billion on Twitter is not illegal.

Additionally, Musk stated in media interviews that he never told people to invest in cryptocurrencies, and the reason he is willing to support Dogecoin is due to the influence of many people who are not that wealthy, who encouraged him to buy and support Dogecoin, which he chose to do.

*Source:

Author: Alex

Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow

Today's digital asset market has evolved into a massive global industry, attracting an increasing number of investors and institutions. However, as the market expands and the number of participants grows, the stability and fairness of the market have become increasingly important issues.

Therefore, the author introduces the specific mechanisms of token market makers (MM) and the potential for violations based on recent Arbitrum events, while also offering personal views on the need for more disclosure in projects within this field.

Why do current crypto projects have market makers (MM) trading?

In the past, projects typically promoted liquidity by providing tokens to on-chain pools as incentives. Now, they incentivize complex market makers to provide liquidity on centralized exchanges (CEX).

This shift aims to improve the efficiency of price discovery and reduce costs for all participants.

On CEX, due to greater liquidity, price discovery is more effective. Additionally, market makers can offer better buy and sell prices for buyers and sellers, making the market more attractive.

How do crypto projects incentivize market makers?

Typically, projects provide market makers with a one-year token loan, during which they grant zero-cost subion options for the tokens. Specifically, projects lend tokens to market makers (usually 3-5) and require them to guarantee market size and spreads during the loan period.

Why do projects lend tokens to market makers?

Market makers need token loans to ensure they have enough inventory to meet potential excessive buying demand.

At the same time, market makers need to conduct effective borrowing operations to offset excessive buyer demand when necessary.

Token loans typically have zero or very low interest rates. While market makers need tokens to provide liquidity, they do not want to bear significant borrowing costs.

Thus, token loans are a common incentive mechanism that provides market makers with the necessary tokens to support market liquidity while also reducing the burden of costs on market makers.

Why provide market makers with call options?

Market makers need to pay a price to provide liquidity services. Project teams typically choose to use tokens instead of cash to pay this price because tokens are more liquid and operable.

However, to prevent market makers from immediately selling tokens and affecting market prices and investors' interests, project teams usually grant market makers subion options to achieve incentive alignment. If the token price rises, market makers can earn more profits, while project teams can also benefit from the appreciation of the tokens.

How to determine the exercise price of call options if the token has not yet started trading?

In this case, project teams choose to set the exercise price of the call options at a premium of 50% - 100% of the index price. Since the index price can usually be determined on-chain or in other markets, the exercise price does not need to be known at the time the transaction is made.

This method of setting the exercise price for call options provides a certain degree of flexibility for both market makers and project teams and can help reduce trading risks. If the token price is above the exercise price, market makers can earn profit from the price difference; if the token price is below the exercise price, market makers can choose not to exercise the call option and forgo the profit.

The mechanisms related to token market makers are not inherently malicious. The problem lies in the fact that these mechanisms are often not disclosed to retail investors.

This makes open market participants feel unfair. They may not be aware of important information regarding token prices and liquidity, leading to losses in trading. If project teams or market makers clearly communicate this information to investors, the entire market can become more transparent and fair, thereby reducing investor losses and increasing the confidence of market participants.

Let's take a look at the recent Arbitrum events.

• The document did not mention the trading terms and conditions of token market makers, making it difficult for investors to understand the actions of market makers and their potential impacts.
• More importantly, the document also did not clarify whether Wintermute (the market maker) is an investor in Arbitrum, which could lead to conflicts of interest and moral hazards.

Retail investors made investment decisions based on the assumption that the only supply of 1.275 billion tokens mentioned in the document was in the secondary market. However, this was not the case, leading to some unexpected situations.

1. The number of call options is unknown

These call options essentially increase the circulating supply of tokens, thereby affecting token prices and liquidity.

Market makers need to sell tokens to hedge the Delta of the call options to maintain market neutrality. In this process, market makers sold a large number of tokens, effectively increasing the supply of tokens, but this data was not disclosed to investors in a timely manner.

It is reported that Wintermute's (the market maker) hedging trades added at least 16 million tokens to the secondary market, which is one of the reasons for the instability of token supply and price fluctuations.

2. OTC trading terms are unknown

Another concerning issue is that the foundation sold $10 million worth of tokens through an over-the-counter transaction with Wintermute (the market maker).

However, these operations were not disclosed to retail investors before the transaction occurred. In fact, investors only learned about this information after the transaction was completed.

At the same time, the original document did not mention whether the foundation had the right to sell tokens in such a short time frame.

3. The positioning of investors and market makers is unclear

In the Arbitrum event, it is unclear whether Wintermute (the market maker) is an investor in the project.

Especially for retail investors, understanding the relationship between investors and market makers is very important. They should clearly understand the role and profit sources of market makers in the market to accurately assess market risks and opportunities.

Here is a famous strategy from Alameda:

Retail investors suffered a double blow in this event, first being forced to accept additional tokens being passed onto them without notification.

Then, Arbitrum also attempted to secretly implement a false decentralization plan, which was ultimately exposed, leading to a drop in token prices.

There is a reason why IPOs in Tradfi require prospectuses to clearly outline the following:

• The number of shares issued;
• The initial public offering price;
• The underwriters participating in the transaction;
• The profits and dividends received by the underwriters.

This information is very important for investors as it provides comprehensive and transparent information about the company and the stock, helping investors make informed investment decisions.

Of course, another reason is the existence of insider trading laws. Participants holding a large number of tokens or possessing insider information are required to publicly disclose their operations in the secondary market. This helps protect the fairness and transparency of the market.

However, in the cryptocurrency market, there are sometimes non-compliant operations, such as flooding the market with a large number of tokens. These operations can have adverse effects on the market and harm investors, which is intolerable.

For the development of the token market, transparency and fairness are very important. Last week's events caused significant damage to the industry, indicating that existing rules and mechanisms have some shortcomings and loopholes.

In the current token market, many investors and traders face issues of information asymmetry and market uncertainty. This situation not only affects investors' confidence and interests but may also hinder the overall development and innovation of the market.

Therefore, we need stricter regulations and more transparent market rules to promote market stability and reliability. Only by enhancing the transparency and fairness of the market can we attract more investors and participants to join this industry.

I believe we can collectively establish a social contract that requires future projects to provide more transparent and public information and rules.

As investors and participants, we can take measures to achieve this goal. For example, not purchasing governance tokens that do not provide sufficient information and disclosures; or safeguarding the fairness and transparency of the market through more research, investigation, and oversight.

At the same time, token issuers and market makers also need to take responsibility by providing more information and disclosures to meet the needs of investors and the market. Only through cooperation and joint efforts can we make the token market safer, fairer, and more reliable, thereby creating more opportunities and benefits for all market participants.

Author: Joey Wu, Wu Says

This article will analyze and compare the profitability, hash rate, power, and number of mining machines of Bitdeer, Marathon Digital Holdings, and Riot Blockchain to present their competitive positions in the market.

Profitability

Bitdeer achieved a net profit of $113.8 million for the six months ended June 30, 2021, and a net profit of $82.6 million for the year ended December 31, 2021. However, for the six months ended June 30, 2022, the company reported a net loss of $25.2 million, with a full-year loss of $60.4 million (mainly due to pre-IPO option expenses, etc.). As of December 31, 2022, the revenue breakdown was as follows: self-mining accounted for 18.7%, cloud computing power accounted for 36.4%, cloud hosting accounted for 3.8%, general hosting accounted for 29.8%, membership hosting accounted for 7.8%, and mining machine sales accounted for 0.2%.

In contrast, Marathon reported a net loss of $37.1 million in 2021 and a net loss of $686.7 million in 2022. Among these, impairments related to mining equipment and supplier prepayments amounted to $332.9 million, and the book value of digital assets decreased by $317.6 million.

Riot, on the other hand, reported a net loss of $509.6 million for the same year, a significant increase from the net loss of $15.4 million in 2021. Bitcoin mining revenue was $156.9 million, down from $184.4 million in 2021; data center hosting revenue was $36.9 million, up from $24.5 million in 2021. The losses were mainly due to impairments, including a goodwill impairment of $335.6 million and a mining machine impairment of $55.5 million, which had a significant impact on the reported net loss.

Hash Rate

Riot has the highest self-mining hash rate capacity among the three companies, with a hash rate capacity growth of 213% in 2022, reaching 9.7 EH/s, a significant increase from 3.1 EH/s in 2021, accounting for approximately 4.2% of the total Bitcoin network hash rate. Additionally, due to severe winter storms in Texas causing delays, Riot expects to reach a self-mining hash rate capacity target of 12.5 EH/s in the second half of 2023.

As for Bitdeer, as of June 30, 2022, its self-mining hash rate capacity was 4.2 EH/s, plus 6.3 EH/s of hosted hash rate generated by mining machines in its data centers, totaling 10.5 EH/s of managed hash rate. By December 31, 2022, the company's total hash rate increased to 14 EH/s, accounting for approximately 6.1% of the total Bitcoin network hash rate.

On the other hand, Marathon had a self-mining hash rate of 7.0 EH/s and a total hosted hash rate of 9.1 EH/s in 2022.

Power

In terms of total power, Bitdeer leads. As of June 30, 2022, the company's power capacity was 522 MW, increasing to 775 MW by the end of 2022. Bitdeer successfully reduced the average power cost of its mining data centers to $40 per MWh in 2021, below the estimated global average of $49 per MWh. Currently, Bitdeer owns five self-operated mining data centers and plans to expand to six globally.

Riot excels in production efficiency, as the company received $27.3 million in power subsidies in 2022, equivalent to about 1,815 Bitcoins. The cost of mining Bitcoin for Riot was $11,225 per Bitcoin, down 6% from $11,939 in 2021. Riot terminated its hosting agreement at Coinmint LLC's Massena NY facility and migrated all mining machines to its Rockdale facility, reducing power costs and eliminating third-party hosting fees. Based on known data, Riot has the lowest power cost ratio, maximizing production efficiency.

Marathon's power usage lacks comprehensive information.

Bitcoin Production

In terms of Bitcoin production, Riot showed the most significant growth among the three companies, producing 5,554 Bitcoins in 2022, a 46% increase from 3,812 Bitcoins in 2021.

Marathon produced 4,144 Bitcoins in the 2022 fiscal year, a 30% increase from the previous year. In the fourth quarter of 2022, it produced 1,562 Bitcoins, averaging 17 Bitcoins per day, a 42% increase compared to the fourth quarter of 2021.

Bitdeer did not disclose its annual Bitcoin production, but its financial report indicated that Bitcoin mining revenue for the entire year of 2021 was $185 million, and $39 million for the first half of 2022.

Conclusion

In summary, the three companies rank by total hash rate as follows: Riot, Bitdeer, and Marathon. However, in terms of self-mining hash rate, Riot and Marathon are significantly higher than Bitdeer. The higher the proportion of self-mining hash rate, the greater the impact of Bitcoin prices on net profits, which is why these two companies suffered significant losses in 2022.

Bitdeer, with a higher proportion of hosting business, thus faces lower risks, and its net profit is less affected by price fluctuations. Additionally, Bitdeer has advantages in controlling power costs, resulting in a financial situation that is clearly better than the other two. As of 2022, the company had $321.8 million in working capital, of which $231.4 million was cash and cash equivalents.

It is worth mentioning that all three companies had self-mining revenue of around $200 million in 2021, but entering 2022, Riot and Marathon's self-mining ratios remained roughly unchanged, while Bitdeer's plummeted to $60 million. This indicates that Bitdeer significantly reduced its self-mining operations before the bear market began, demonstrating the rich experience of the veteran miner team from the original Bitmain in navigating the cycles of the crypto market. However, on the other hand, Bitdeer's current market value is only about one-third of the aforementioned two North American listed giants, which raises questions and shows that the U.S. capital market seems temporarily unresponsive to Bitdeer for various reasons.

Original Title: Web3-Native SQL

Author: Kyle Samani, Co-founder of Multicoin Capital

Translation: xiaozou, Jinse Finance

In the first wave of crypto innovation following Bitcoin, many developers forked the Bitcoin codebase, attempting to build other decentralized infrastructures and applications beyond digital gold. Among the earliest forks were attempts to create decentralized databases suitable for general application development. After the launch of Ethereum, teams began building BFT database engines in the wave of crypto innovation.

For various reasons, these earlier attempts struggled to gain attention. They started too early: there was insufficient decentralized financial infrastructure and not enough developers who understood the unique properties of decentralized s. However, in the past few years, financial infrastructure has significantly improved, and web3 developers have begun to expand their vision from finance to general consumer applications.

Today, I am excited to announce that Multicoin has participated in an $8 million funding round for Tableland, which is a permissionless network of nodes providing a relational database (also known as web3-native SQL). This round was led by Coinfund, with participation from companies like Blueyard and Protocol Labs.

Web3 Native SQL

SQL is the most popular database language to date, and Tableland is focused on this aspect. The development of Tableland is based on the open-source SQLite engine.

Today, Tableland integrates with Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism, and Polygon, and will soon add support for Filecoin FVM. This means developers can link any financial assets (both fungible and non-fungible tokens) stored on these asset ledgers to Tableland. A common use case is managing the metadata of NFTs or other mutable data.

Tableland makes SQL the preferred choice for web3 developers—high-performance and easy to use. Here are a few examples:

• DR/VRS is building a mutable NFT that leverages Tableland's customizable database to obtain control rules. This feature allows NFT owners to combine unique and immutable attributes with customizable attributes and add them to the traits.
• Hideout Labs is developing an NFT publishing platform. Unlike other platforms, they are creating a marketplace for attribute swapping, where users can write and exchange NFT attributes. By transferring these mutable attributes from the asset ledger to Tableland, they open up many new design spaces and greatly increase interactions between attributes.

Tableland Studio and Composability

We announced our investment in Ceramic a year ago. At that time, we saw explosive growth in developers building consumer experiences. For example:

Social— Over 100 teams are developing various decentralized social products. All these products can benefit from the ability to store certain elements (such as user-generated content) in a decentralized database.

Gaming— Hundreds of crypto games will be released this year, gradually decentralizing their content elements.

NFT— Dozens of major brands have announced NFT plans and are exploring how to build variable NFTs.

Ceramic offers noSQL and Graph databases, while Tableland focuses on SQL and relational databases. Each company is taking a customized approach to monopolize the market and has made the right trade-offs for composable database architectures. We ultimately hope both can thrive, as they serve developers who truly understand the importance of cross-application data composability.

In addition to the core database engine, the team will launch Tableland Studio later this year. Tableland Studio is a developer platform designed to simplify the rapid prototyping of feature-rich, data-driven web3 applications. The Studio will help developers create and manage new projects running on the Tableland network by connecting data with smart contracts, building alongside collaborators, and integrating other protocols like IPFS, Filecoin, and ENS into their applications.

As more applications provide more data to permissionless networks, developers will be able to discover, adjust, and reuse entire application architectures in minutes. The Studio will help developers act faster by opening a continuously expanding library of application architectures that developers can fork, modify, and reuse. These constitute "blueprints"—including database designs, smart contract code, queries, and even application code—to build everything from NFT games to AI model training markets.

The Studio will greatly accelerate the creative reassembly based on data composability.

We are thrilled to support Andrew and Sander in their pursuit of Tableland. We firmly believe in the importance of decentralized database infrastructure, and we are proud to support the entire Tableland team in building the future of web3-native SQL.