Morning Minute | Robinhood and The Banks Are Coming
TylerD's Market Summary
Plus catch up on the Blast launch, and Bitcoin NFTs stealing the spotlight from ETH.
🤯 Robinhood and Arbitrum Announce Partnership
There have been signs that retail is close to coming for crypto, or already here (see Coinbase crashing on Wednesday).
Now the signs are becoming even more clear.
And Robinhood will be playing their part.
What Happened?
Yesterday Arbitrum announced a new partnership with Robinhood and Robinhood Wallet.
The collab will give Robinhood users access to cross-chain swaps and other DeFi products.
With Layer 2 speed and transaction costs (fast, low).
For those unfamiliar with Robinhood Wallet, it's a self-custody wallet with crypto support for ETH, BTC, Doge, Arbitrum, Polygon, Optimism and Base. User have private keys and thus full ownership.
Now those users will be able to swap crypto tokens across those chains.
Enter Johann Kerbrat, GM of Robinhood Crypto:
“Ethereum gas fees are an essential part of securing the network, but these same fees can hinder adoption. Layer 2s like Arbitrum, which is currently the leading chain by total-locked value, help solve this problem for our users. Accessing and transacting on L2s has historically been difficult to non-crypto natives, but Robinhood Wallet now helps strip away the complexities to help onboard those new to web3.”
But there is a second part of this major headline - perhaps more interesting to some.
Robinhood Wif Hat
News circulated late yesterday afternoon that Robinhood EU was busy listing new tokens that would be tradeable in its app.
These ranged from majors (BTC, ETH) to Alt-L1s (Avax, TIA) to apps (Uniswap) to old memecoins (DOGE, Shiba).
And to new memecoins - PEPE and WIF.
WIF soared on the news now at a $1BM market cap, now up over 200% on the week. It's the first major listing for the hot new memecoin of this cycle, not yet featured on majors like Gemini, Binance or Coinbase.
Those now seem like just a matter of time.
Until then, we will settle for the Robinhood degen cohort having access to all these tokens with low fees, thanks to Arbitrum.
📈 The Banks Are Coming for Bitcoin
The Bitcoin ETFs have gotten plenty of coverage and are clearly the primary driver of this early 2024 bull market.
Notably, most banks and investment institutions were sidelined, with many choosing not to embrace crypto or provide access to clients.
That looks to be changing now.
What Happened?
Bank of Ameria and Wells Fargo are going to offer spot Bitcoin ETF access to their clients according to a Bloomberg report.
And Morgan Stanley is likely next.
This comes on the heels of the record-setting $7.5B volume day in the BTC ETF market this past Wednesday.
The sidelined banks see those fees, and they want in.
One major player has been lagging the trend here, but that also may be about to change.
Vanguard's CEO Tim Buckley will retire at the end of 2024.
Vanguard has notoriously said no to crypto, not allowing retirement plan participants or other investors access to crypto or even the ETFs.
If that changes with the new CEO, effectively all the major players will be in.
Why It Matters
We have already seen the impact of the BTC ETFs on price action.
Soon all the major banks will be in the game.
And there will be an ongoing bid for crypto every month for millions of people through their retirement plans (with players like Fidelity already recommending 1-3% portfolio allocation).
You aren't bullish enough.
Time to raise the targets.
🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?
Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:
- Bitcoin led NFT trading volume with $27.6M on the day; ETH was next with $23M and then Solana with $9.2M
- Castaways Genesis was the top mover on ETH, jumping 175% to 0.4 ETH
- ETH NFTs were mostly red with focus squarely on Blast, leaders down 2-6%
- Blast officially went live around 4 pm ET, with most protocols announcing their own launches to follow; early stakers were given 10x point incentives to continue staking their ETH on mainnet
- Blur teased "something new" coming in April, with speculation it's tied to launching the existing NFT mp on Blast
- Alien CryptoPunk #3100 received a whipping 4,250 ETH bid ($14.78M) on Thursday (not yet accepted)
- Two Pandora whales have accumulated over $6.4M of Pandora accounting for 338 NFTs worth of tokens, driving the floor up to 9.6 ETH
- The Ceden Network Keystone NFT Nodes (Beavers) minted out after several days with a $500 mint, spiking to 0.2 ETH ($660) on secondary
- NodeMonkes led action on BTC tallying 166 BTC and jumping 30%+ to 0.59 BTC; Puppets tallied 60 BTC volume, +20% to 0.233
- New mint Puppet Maxi Biz (an OMB and Bitcoin Puppets deriv) minted for $26 and soared to a 0.027 BTC floor in early trading ($1,670)
- Solana NFTs were rekt on the day; Open Solmap -37% to 0.11 SOL, Trans Foxes -24% to 4 SOL, Frogana -42% to 2.2 SOL and Mutantmom -33% to 1.57; Mad Lads held at 190 SOL, Tensorians -5% to 63
💰 Token, Airdrop & Points Tracker
Catch up on major token and airdrop news from the day:
- $PORTAL fell 10% on its first day of trading to $2.28
- $PRIME rallied 13% to $16.24 after Parallel's Open Beta officially launched on Thursday
- $DEGEN spiked 50% to a $46M market cap in a bullish unlock, as the Farcaster native token has been freely airdropped to users for tipping
- Multiple memecoins launched on Blast on day 1, with the current leader being PUMP at $24M and MIA at $19M
🌎 Around Crypto and Web3
A few other Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:
- Crypto majors are mixed this morning; BTC -1.5% at $61,900; ETH -2.8% at $3,410; SOL +5% at $135
- TAO jumped 13% to $710 as the crypto AI sector heats up again
- WLD fell 4% to $7.50 after Elon announced he's suing OpenAI
- WIF led the day's memecoin rally, jumping 27% to a $1BM mc after Robinhood EU announced they would list
- GBTC dumped $600M of Bitcoin on Thursday in the 2nd largest outflow day since Jan 11
- Ondo introduced its new Global Markets platform aiming to "bring all publicly traded securities onchain" allowing crypto users to trade stocks like TSLA
🚀 NFT Total Volume (ETH)
- Milady (500 ETH, 3.55 ETH Floor)
- MAYC (464 ETH, 3.88 ETH)
- Creepz (456 ETH, 4.95 ETH)
- Azuki (455 ETH, 5.72 ETH)
- BAYC (361 ETH, 22.2 ETH)
📈 NFT Floor Price Increase (ETH)
- Castaways Genesis (175%, 0.4 ETH Floor)
- The Buns - Hefty Hares (113%, 0.29 ETH)
- Lasogette NFT (63%, 0.09 ETH)
- Fluf (35%, 1.12 ETH)
- Pandora (28%, 9.6 ETH)
🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals
Today is a slower day of planned drops, but expect more focus on the Blast ecosystem and any NFTs or tokens that launch across this weekend.
Expect mayhem.
Otherwise, focus will continue on BTC NFTs as the winners continue to soar, with more rotations likely to occur.
See the full list and dive in for more details with Swizzy's daily mint monitor.
- Wormhole Pre-market on Bybit (5:30 a.m. ET)
- Memes by 6529 (11:00 a.m. ET)
- Blastopians (12:00 p.m. ET)
Enjoy this write-up and/or want to sponsor the Morning Minute? Follow along with me on Twitter @tyler_did_it or reach out via email tyler.warner@luckytrader.com.
