Weekly Editors Picks (1012-1018)

Weekly Editors Picks is a functional column of Odaily Planet Daily. In addition to covering a large amount of real-time information every week, Planet Daily also publishes a lot of high-quality in-depth analysis content, but they may be hidden in the information flow and hot news, and pass you by.

Therefore, every Saturday, our editorial department will select some high-quality articles that are worth spending time reading and collecting from the content published in the past 7 days, and bring new inspiration to you in the crypto world from the perspectives of data analysis, industry judgment, and opinion output.

Now, come and read with us:

Investment and Entrepreneurship

Wall Streets new giant: Riding the ETF wave, Jane Street is becoming the most profitable trader

Jane Street was founded in 2000 by a couple of traders from Susquehanna and a former IBM developer. It started out trading American depositary receipts—shares of foreign companies traded in the U.S.—in a small windowless office at the now-defunct American Stock Exchange. But it soon expanded into options and ETFs, the latter of which Amex had pushed for years before. ETFs were still a niche market, with only about $70 billion in assets when Jane Street began trading.

However, ETFs quickly became its main business, and over time it became a significant “authorized participant,” a market maker that can create and redeem ETF shares in addition to trading. Last year, Jane Street accounted for 14% of ETF trading in the United States and 20% in Europe, according to documents the company shared with lenders. In the bond ETF sector, Jane Street estimates that it accounts for 41% of all creation and redemption transactions. “Technology-based companies that can price in real time and react quickly will make more profits.”

Jane Street has no CEO, and in loan documents shared with investors, the company describes itself as “a functional organizational structure comprised of various management and risk committees.” Each trading desk and business unit is headed by one of 40 equity holders who collectively own $24 billion of Jane Street stock. Granieri is seen more as a low-key, long-haired Silicon Valley actor than a billionaire trading tycoon, but Jane Street employees say big decisions are made by a broader collective leadership group, a structure that fosters collaboration and reduces layers.

This is reflected in its remuneration structure - Jane Street does not tie compensation to individual trading profits, or even to the earnings of the desk the employee works for. The firm has also long avoided using formal titles, even though this may cause some confusion outside the firm.

MicroStrategy outperformed Bitcoin four times in one year. Is leverage really risk-free?

MSTR uses issuing debt to buy Bitcoin as its main investment strategy, which has a financial leverage effect: because the cost of debt is fixed, while the value growth of assets (Bitcoin) is higher, net profit growth directly increases stock value. This is why MSTRs stock price has risen more than Bitcoin itself during this period, and MSTR is called a leveraged Bitcoin ETF.

The negative aspects of this decision are: over-reliance on Bitcoin, single business, and net losses.

Because MSTR purchased Bitcoin through debt financing, it increased financial leverage, which could lead to financial pressure when Bitcoin prices fall, and thus have to sell coins to repay debts. If MSTR starts selling, it may be interpreted by the market as a loss of confidence in the future value of Bitcoin, causing other investors to start selling as well, forming negative market sentiment. This negative market sentiment may trigger other holders to stop loss selling or force those loans with Bitcoin as collateral to enter a margin call state, further increasing selling pressure, forming a downward spiral, and even eventually leading to a systemic stampede and collapse.

The points system is declining, where will the next token issuance hotspot be?

One notable change is that the market is returning to the state before the points mechanism emerged: protocols like Eigenlayer are turning to “programmatic incentives,” indicating the return of liquidity mining.

We are also seeing the rise of so-called private-public sales. Another trend that may be on the rise is “Patron Sales” launched by @infinex_app. Infinex combines a points system with a merit-based ICO, where you need to earn points to participate in the ICO.

Notably, for the first time in recent years, it is becoming increasingly difficult to participate in token sales, marking a change from liquidity mining, fair launches, and points mechanisms.

It seems like we’ve finally realized that simply handing out free tokens doesn’t really build a community.

Runes on Bitcoin can be issued simply by paying transaction fees, keeping things transparent even with an (optional) pre-mine. In addition, we are experimenting with other minting models: Tap-to-earn, community/social tokens, active validation services.

Airdrop Opportunities and Interaction Guide

The Sandbox Alpha Season 4 is now live with a total prize pool of over $2.5 million (with detailed tutorial)

Must-attend this week: Yala testnet interaction, Sonic Labs earning airdrop points, MapleStory Universe new galactic missions

Meme

Dialogue with trader ZEPUMP: 200 times in 100 days, he summarized two important principles of trading Meme

The most important thing about a meme is that it is unique. A meme is like a short video, easy to understand and eye-catching.

When choosing a target, you should feel the community vibe and think about its communication power. Community communication power (continuously creating trouble) is also very important.

Check Twitter often and keep updating your follow list.

Meme Training Manual: Rebirth: I Want to Be a Diamond Hand (Part 1) | Produced by Nanzhi

Be sure to set a minimum copy trading amount; trust smart money in chasing highs; and do not proactively take profits.

The new generation of Meme Godfather Murad selected the top ten Meme coins

SPX 6900/$SPX (Ethereum), GigaChad/$GIGA (Solana), Mog Coin/$MOG (Ethereum), Apu Apustaja/$APU (Ethereum), Popcat/$POPCAT (Solana), HarryPotterObamaSonic10lnu/$BITCOIN (Ethereum), Retardio/$RETARDIO (Solana), Lock in/$LOCKIN ( Solana), Mini/$MINI (Solana), American Coin/$USA (Solana).

Finding the Next 100x Gem: How to Make Money on Pump.fun with ChatGPT

Create a Sniper Bot; Instantly check tokens for “Rug Pull” scams; Automate social media checks using @getmoni_io API; Set conditions for buying tokens; Decide which tokens the bot will buy; Modify the buying and selling process; Launch the Sniper Bot.

Meme Coin Utility Tool Collection: How to Discover Hundred-fold Opportunities?

The article compiles some practical tools for playing Meme, covering on-chain monitoring and transactions, involving: discovering Meme coins, tracking smart money, data dashboards, trading tools, and security tools.

Bitcoin Ecosystem

The rune craze is back, is the Bitcoin ecosystem on the eve of a full-scale explosion?

Important assets in the Bitcoin ecosystem have all seen an increase. Several leading assets in the Rune market have also seen a sharp increase. If OP_CAT can be successfully revived in this bull market, then the technical narrative in the Bitcoin ecosystem will almost 100% be led by OP_CAT. Currently, the targets that are trying to go long on OP_CATs resurrection are Quantum Cats and the CAT 20 protocol on Fractal. If not, Rune should continue to maintain its position as the most influential FT protocol in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Some directions that have not yet become market hotspots and are not mentioned in this article, such as Lightning Network (Taro, RGB, CKB), BitVM, etc., may gain more attention if OP_CAT fails to be resurrected.

Ethereum and Scaling

Ark Invest Research Report: Staking Ethereum = U.S. Treasury Bonds in the Crypto Economy

ETHs staking yield has influenced other smart contract ledgers, making it different from other digital assets besides Bitcoin. Similarly, U.S. Treasury bills play a key role in the traditional economy, with multiple functions: setting benchmark interest rates, acting as a high-quality store of value in uncertain times, and influencing market expectations of future economic conditions. As an asset, ETH is beginning to develop similar properties to U.S. Treasury bills in the digital asset space.

ETH’s potential to generate yield — and its widespread use as collateral in digital asset trading — are emerging as two of its most unique and important qualities.

Uniswap Launches Unichain: What Does It Mean for Ethereum?

Unichain is trying to improve its competitiveness in three key areas: cost, speed, and interoperability. Since Uniswap generates the highest revenue for Ethereum and is one of the largest user groups on Ethereums L1 chain, some crypto community commentators believe that Uniswaps launch of a native L2 chain could affect the Ethereum mainnet. Once Uniswap moves to its own chain, it will be able to capture transaction fees and MEV fees. Although the exact share of business that will be transferred from Ethereum to the new blockchain remains to be seen, both sources of revenue are certainly substantial.

However, this could lead to a decline in the relevant network activity of Ethereum L1, which in turn affects the speed of ETH destruction. More and more protocols moving away from Ethereums L1 may continue to weaken the narrative of ETH as a super-sound money (an asset that is deflationary by default after EIP-1559 is activated).

The real catalysts for Ethereum’s growth: innovation, users, big tech, dApps.

Cross-chain

In-depth study of cross-chain bridges: From a “router” for on-chain capital to a new economic engine for value capture

The killer app for cryptocurrency has already arrived in the form of stablecoins.

As long as transaction fees remain prohibitively high, we may not see users moving to L1s like Ethereum or Bitcoin. Users may be introduced directly to L2s (like Base), and developers may choose to absorb the gas costs. Alternatively, there may be a situation where users simply switch between lower-cost networks.

There are several key profit points for cross-chain bridges: TVL, forwarder fees, liquidity provider fees, and minting costs. Fund routers such as cross-chain bridges may be one of the few product categories in cryptocurrency that can generate significant economic value.

Fee data for transferring $10,000 in the cross-chain bridge (value created in the entire value chain, such as liquidity providers, forwarders, etc.)

Another way to compare the economic value of cross-chain bridges is to contrast them with decentralized exchanges. The two are very similar in function, both of which enable the conversion of tokens. Exchanges allow conversion between assets, while cross-chain bridges convert tokens between blockchains.

The phenomenon we are seeing with cross-chain bridges is similar to the development of the physical infrastructure for routing internet data.

DeFi

Viewpoint: Ethena may regain $1, why is it worth paying attention to?

Ethena is the fastest growing DeFi product in history. In just a few months, the scale of its yield-based stablecoin has reached 3 billion US dollars. sUSDe, as a stablecoin issued by Ethena, has achieved rapid growth by attracting a large number of users by offering high yields.

It’s clear that sUSDe is the undisputed high-yield king in the cryptocurrency space. With the support of Bybit, USDe has become the second largest stablecoin available to users on a centralized exchange, with automatic yield generation built into the platform. This allows users to access a higher-quality stablecoin collateral without adding additional friction.

Safety

Safe investment starts here: A guide to identifying fake address scams in on-chain transactions

Don’t match wallet addresses from memory; use the whitelist feature; buy ENS addresses.

Hot Topics of the Week

In the past week, Trump announced the launch of World Liberty Financial ; BTC broke through 68,000 USDT in the short term;

In addition, in terms of policy and macro markets, Harris proposed a loan plan and supported a crypto regulatory framework to win votes from black men; Elon Musk donated $75 million to a U.S. political action committee supporting Trump;

In terms of opinions and voices, Michael Saylor: MicroStrategys ultimate goal is to become a Bitcoin bank ; Andre Cronje: Layer 2 is useless , its just a waste of money doing repetitive things; Arthur Hayes: Meme tokens have been significantly reduced after the escalation of the situation in the Middle East, and the only Meme token currently held is SCF; Vitalik published an article discussing the future development of the Ethereum protocol, The Surge , and key goals include achieving maximum interoperability of L2; Sui Foundation refuted the rumor that insiders sold $400 million SUI : the wallet owner may be an infrastructure partner;

In terms of institutions, large companies and leading projects, the Ethena community initiated a proposal to include SOL in the collateral assets of USDe ; Sonic released Litepaper : S with a circulating supply of approximately 2.88 billion pieces, and airdrops accounted for 6% of the initial supply; Gotbit officially confirmed that its CEO had been arrested in Portugal and said it would fully cooperate with the investigation to resolve misunderstandings;

In terms of data, on October 13, Solana TVL rose to 40.9 million SOL, a two-year high, an increase of 26% in the past two months; on October 14, the total market value of Rune exceeded US$1.5 billion, and the 24-hour trading volume was US$5.04 million; GOAT increased a thousand times in a week; Wintermute: Solanas weekly on-chain transaction volume exceeded Ethereum , and 40% of its on-chain transaction volume came from Memecoins; deBridges governance token DBR is now online and airdropped to 491,000 wallets; PUFFER is open for application; Worldcoin was rebranded as World Network, and announced that World Chain has been launched on the mainnet ... Well, its another week of ups and downs.

Attached is a portal to the “Weekly Editor’s Picks” series.

See you next time~