Presented by

OVERVIEW

The Spot Market Sees Your Leverage And Raises You A Punch To The Throat 🥊 

Source: Tenor

Before we dive in, here’s today’s crypto market heatmap:

Source: Santiment

And here’s a look at crypto’s total and altcoin market cap YTD:

Source: Tradingview

New In Three Sentences
Crypto News 📰

🌪️ Kare Wallet’s Instant Aid Revolution

Kare Wallet decided disaster aid doesn’t need a two-month waiting period, cutting it down to minutes using Algorand’s blockchain. In a world where bureaucracy usually moves slower than a three-legged tortoise swimming in molasses, this is borderline sorcery. But by all means, defend old-school processes if you thrive on unnecessary suffering. Algorand blog.

🧬 Blockchain Tackles Cancer (And Pays You?)

Jasmy’s out here handling genomic data and offering get-well crypto payments for cancer research participants. It’s either heartwarming or borderline sci-fi dystopia—take your pick. Either way, they’re claiming to secure your DNA secrets while tossing you some digital coins for cooperating, so consider it a weird but intriguing perk. Jasmy blog.

🌞 Trump’s Crypto Czar Hearts Solana

David Sacks, Trump’s newly minted “Crypto Czar,” can’t quit Solana. He’s been holding his SOL through market chaos and proudly boasting monster returns, dreaming of the day SOL dethrones Ethereum. Altcoinbuzz.

💀 Financial Times’ Alphaville’s “Non-Apology” for Bitcoin Is Salty As Hell

FT Alphaville doesn’t like Bitcoin, never has, never will—and they’re not sorry. Sure, BTC cracked $100k, but the FT team won’t pretend they were wrong, because “woohoo number go up” doesn’t magically solve fundamental critiques. If you were looking for a heartfelt apology, tough luck: they still think the whole system’s a glorified hype machine. Financial Times.

📈 eToro Mulls U.S. IPO With Goldman’s Help

eToro might just IPO in the U.S. with Goldman Sachs riding shotgun, aiming for a valuation that’s as big as the crypto hype itself. After tussling with regulators and scaling back some offerings, they’re ready to capitalize on the next wave of crypto enthusiasm (thanks, Trump’s “Crypto Czar”?). CoinPedia.

ETHEREUM
Boom – Back To $4,000 (And A New 2024 High?) 🤑 

And there it is, Ethereum back to $4k.

ETHUSD Daily Chart – Click to enlarge.

And it’s entirely possible/probable that a new 2024 high for Ethereum will happen by the time this newsletter hits your mailbox. 📫️ 

SPONSORED
Do you know about the Bitcoin Mini?

Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust ETF (“BTC”), an exchange traded product, is not registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940 (or the ’40 Act) and therefore is not subject to the same regulations and protections as 1940 Act registered ETFs and mutual funds. Investing involves significant risk, including possible loss of principal. An investment in BTC is subject to a high degree of risk and heighted volatility. Digital assets are not suitable for an investor that cannot afford the loss of the entire investment. An investment in BTC is not an investment in Bitcoin.

Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust ETF aka the Bitcoin Mini (fund ticker: BTC) is the most cost-effective way to gain exposure to Bitcoin directly through your existing brokerage or retirement account (it has the lowest fee* of all spot Bitcoin funds in the market). Invest the same way you would invest in any other stock or ETF (though, brokerage fees may still apply). That’s right —you don’t need a separate crypto wallet or account on a crypto exchange!

Simply search ‘BTC’ on your preferred trading platform, or click here to learn more.

Grayscale is a crypto-focused asset manager and has been offering exposure to crypto through investment products for over a decade.

^3rd Party Ad. Not an offer or recommendation by Stocktwits. See disclosure here.  *Low fee based on gross expense ratio at .15%.

TECHNICAL ANALYSIS
A Divergence In Derivatives VS. Spot 🤹 

You’ll see in today’s Burnt Bag Briefing below, the difference between long positions vs. short is pretty damn wide. Something clicked in my brain, and I thought: ‘This seems to happen a lot, right?’

Liquidation Data – Click to enlarge.

And then I thought, ‘wait, if longs are getting flushed more than shorts, crypto should be dipping, not ripping, right?’ Again, I thought, ‘longs losing out more than shorts seems to happen a lot’, so I had to check. ✔️ 

Well, it turns out it does happen. A lot. Like, a stupid amount of the time. I went through all of the past Litepapers from November 1 to December 5, and here are the results:

• 22 Burnt Bag Briefings.

• Longs took a bigger hit in liquidations 17 times.

• Shorts took a bigger hit 5 times.

That’s a 3:1 ratio. But what’s weird about it is you’d think price action would show crypto moving down, not up, right? That’s generally what happens, right? When you look at the numbers, it’s not that bad:

• Longs coughed up around $5.89 billion total.

• Shorts parted with about $4.26 billion total.

• Average loss per instance: Longs around $267.5 million, Shorts around $193.8 million.

When you actually add up the dollars, it’s more of a modest gap. A 1.38:1 ratio in raw amounts is nowhere near the 3:1 frequency ratio. In other words, longs got dinged more often, but not astronomically more in total value. They just had more bad days, not earth-shatteringly bigger losses every time. 😱 

Derivatives Are Not The Same As Spot

It might be worth pointing out that leveraged long positions in derivatives are just paper promises backed by thin air and a handshake. These trades aren’t tied to any “physical” BTC stashed in a vault somewhere.

They’re more like placing bets at a casino that lets you use borrowed chips. It’s easier to get liquidated when you’re gambling with IOUs instead of the real thing. If nothing else, it’s another reminder that what we call “exposure” can be about as tangible as a ghost’s whisper in a wind tunnel. 👻 

News In Three Sentences
Metaverse, NFT, & Gaming News 🎮️

⚔️ Ronin Says Hi to Transak

Ronin’s trying hard to not be that chain that forces you to memorize fifteen steps just to buy a token. With Transak’s fiat onramp and Mavis Market’s NFT checkout, you can finally use your card like a human being and not an overcaffeinated blockchain degenerate. It’s still crypto, just less painful. Ronin blog.

🔥 Polygon Puts Charizard On-Chain with Courtyard.io Auction

The ultimate collectible—PSA 10 1st Edition Holographic Charizard—is being tokenized and auctioned on Polygon, marking a huge leap for on-chain asset ownership. Courtyard.io’s tokenization process ensures that while the card stays in a Brink’s vault, collectors can own, trade, and even fractionalize their piece of Pokémon history. Web3 and pop culture collide in a way that’s impossible to ignore. Polygon blog.

🎮 November Highlights: The Fastest Growing Web3 Gaming Ecosystem

Immutable just conquered November, bagging the “fastest-growing blockchain gaming ecosystem” title from Game7 and rolling out RavenQuest’s Phase 3 with 250k active players, sold-out land, global connectivity, 11 million $QUEST tokens, and big-name partnerships that say “we mean business.” Between unstoppable growth, exclusive rewards, and frictionless gameplay, old-school platforms look about as advanced as a floppy disk. Immutable blog.

EMAIL ME
Tell Me What You Want What You Really Really Want 🔊 

Quick note here: Let me know what you’d like to see more of in the Litepaper.

More charts? Less Charts? More on-chain analytics? Less analytics? More data? Less data? Let me know! 🎇 

E-mail me here: jmorgan@stocktwits.com

News In Three Sentences
DeFi, DEX, and Lending Protocol News 🏦

🚀 Lido’s wstETH Lands on Starknet

Because what Starknet really needed was another token acronym, wstETH has arrived to spice things up. Now you can drag your staked ETH onto Starknet and pretend this solves all your liquidity problems. Starknet blog.

🥢 Rootstock x Sushi: A $15K Trading Feast

Rootstock and Sushi want you to trade like a caffeinated hamster on a wheel for a cut of $15,000 in RIF. That’s right, swap till you drop and maybe you’ll pocket some tokens, assuming you’re not outgunned by flashbots and whales. Tuck in, and hope the buffet hasn’t run out when you get there. Sushiswap blog.

💸 Aptos PancakeSwap Competition: Trade for APT

If swapping tokens for hours sounds like your idea of a holiday celebration, PancakeSwap has 8,000 APT dangling like mistletoe. Trade APT pairs daily and maybe you’ll score a few APT—just don’t blow your retirement fund trying to top the leaderboard. Happy grinding, you maniacs. Pancakeswap blog.

📈 Acala and Fufuture Team Up for Perpetual Options Trading

Acala’s partnership with Fufuture brings perpetual options trading to its network, adding a high-utility use case for the ACA token. Traders can now use ACA for settling derivatives tied to BTC and ETH, with campaigns like ACA rewards for early participants driving adoption. This move solidifies Acala’s role as a hub for DeFi innovation. Acala blog.

ON-CHAIN ANALYSIS
Burnt Bag Briefing 🔥 

Want to know whether the bulls or bears are feeling the most pain today? Well, this is the place to look. 👀

24-Hour Liquidation Heat Map – Source: Coinglass – Click to enlarge.

In the past 24 hours, 166,622 traders were liquidated, with total liquidations reaching $890.61 million.

The largest single liquidation occurred on OKX, a BTCUSDT pair valued at $18.94 million.

Longs lost $715.67 million, while shorts were hit for $174.87 million. 🤕 

LINKS
Links That Don’t Suck 🔗

👍️ Czech Republic exempts long-term Bitcoin holdings from capital gains tax

🤯 Coinbase exec publishes FDIC letters urging banks to halt or avoid crypto services

🦹 Gainzy can’t shake UnitedHealthcare hitman accusations

🤖 OpenAI’s o1 model sure tries to deceive humans a lot

🎮️ Over 1,800 CEOs have resigned in 2024, making this the year of the mic drop exit for head honchos

Get In Touch 📬

Follow our social channels for great, real-time content on Stocktwits and Twitter. And check out our YouTube channel for in-depth video content! 📲

Email me (Jonathan Morgan) your feedback; I’d love to hear from you. 📧

Want to sponsor this newsletter and reach hundreds of thousands of crypto enthusiasts? Reach us here. 👍

Terms & Conditions 📝

Securities Disclaimer: STOCKTWITS IS NOT A TAX ADVISOR, BROKER, FINANCIAL ADVISOR OR INVESTMENT ADVISOR. THE SERVICE IS NOT INTENDED TO PROVIDE TAX, LEGAL, FINANCIAL OR INVESTMENT ADVICE, AND NOTHING ON THE SERVICE SHOULD BE CONSTRUED AS AN OFFER TO SELL, A SOLICITATION OF AN OFFER TO BUY, OR A RECOMMENDATION FOR ANY SECURITY. Trading in such securities can result in immediate and substantial losses of the capital invested. You should only invest risk capital, and not capital required for other purposes. You alone are solely responsible for determining whether any investment, security or strategy, or any other product or service, is appropriate or suitable for you based on your investment objectives and personal and financial situation. You should also consult an attorney or tax professional regarding your specific legal or tax situation. The Content is to be used for informational and entertainment purposes only and the Service does not provide investment advice for any individual. Stocktwits, its affiliates and partners specifically disclaim any and all liability or loss arising out of any action taken in reliance on Content, including but not limited to market value or other loss on the sale or purchase of any company, property, product, service, security, instrument, or any other matter. You understand that an investment in any security is subject to a number of risks, and that discussions of any security published on the Service will not contain a list or description of relevant risk factors. In addition, please note that some of the stocks about which Content is published on the Service have a low market capitalization and/or insufficient public float. Such stocks are subject to more risk than stocks of larger companies, including greater volatility, lower liquidity and less publicly available information. Read the full terms & conditions here. 🔍

Author Disclosure: The author of this newsletter holds positions in ADA, WMT, COPI, MIN, AGIX, ALGO, DOGE, ZEC, AVAX, XLM, XTZ, and NEAR. 📋