Stacked Insights Newsletter, 08.16.21 Solana giga pumps in | Stacked
Stacked Insights Newsletter, 08.16.21
Solana giga pumps into top 10 tokens
When Polkadot parachains?
$50K BTC is the target, but greed levels high
Solana is giga pumping — but why?
Solana ($SOL), AKA Sam Bankman-Fried's favorite blockchain platform, is up nearly 100% in the past 14 days and is now a top 10 token by market cap.
As one of Ethereum's top competitors, it's no wonder people are into SOL, but the current run is incredible by any standard. What's fueling the rise?
If you're like the rest of us, you start looking for news when a token pumps this hard. After all, some event, like a network upgrade, has to be behind the move, right?
In Solana's case, there isn't one update or announcement moving SOL. Rather, it's general enthusiasm for the project coupled with big moves in the DeFi sector.
Mango Markets, a Solana-based decentralized exchange touting lightning fast on-chain trading, raised $70 million in exchange for MNGO, its governance token. The Mango Markets effect on Solana's DeFi total value locked has been substantial — Solana now boasts nearly $2B TVL.
$2B is a long way from Ethereum's $80B+, but it's a strong start showing plenty of user demand for Solana. It also happens to be the most DeFi use anywhere outside of Ethereum.
So, suppose you consider that Cardano ($ADA) is currently sitting in the #3 market cap position without even having smart contracts enabled. In that case, the ongoing SOL value re-rating looks less bubbly.
Is Polkadot parachain release incoming?
Polkadot parachain slot auctions were touted as coming AFTER Kusama held its own auctions and implemented them successfully.
Well, Statemine, Karura, Moonriver, Shiden, Khala, and Bifrost are running live on Kusama after easily completed parachain auctions, meaning Polkadot should be all clear. But Gavin Wood, amongst other Polkadot devs, have been quiet about when Polkadot parachains are coming.
Polkadot envisions itself hosting billions, even trillions, in on-chain value. Given such lofty ambitions, you can't blame the team for working to guarantee network stability before going live with parachains.
This tweet by Polkadot plainly states that pending an external audit and the first successful Kusama auction + parachain launch, Polkadot is ready. Both conditions have now been exceeded, but there are still crickets from Polkadot
However, according to this blog post, one the above conditions are met, it's essentially fair game for DOT governance members to enact an on-chain vote that enables parachain auctions.
In other words, Polkadot parachains might launch any day now. We think they'll probably coincide with a rebrand currently underway by Koto. Once parachain auctions are announced, we expect $DOT tokens will experience a re-rating similar to the current $SOL run.
$50K BTC is the target, but greed levels are high
Leveraging market sentiment to inform your crypto trading decisions is a time-tested strategy employed by even the most sophisticated traders.
Sentiment has, time and time again, proven itself a worthy indicator of potential market moves to both the upside and downside.
Currently, the BTC Fear & Greed Index is registering a 72. That's score sits firmly in greed territory and has two noteworthy aspects:
It's acted as a stubborn line of resistance in the past
Greed is approaching ATH levels, usually a bearish signal
A potential conclusion to draw from current market greed paired with BTC's inability to conclusively break $48K resistance is the market might cool off soon. Periods of intense greed upward BTC volatility tend to break downwards but this time might be different.
