Weekly Beluga Insights

The markets are buzzing this week with a sea of green across the major coins. To make things even better, Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty on all 7 charges on Thursday, which carries a maximum sentence of 115 years in prison. Without further ado, let’s hop into what we’ve had our eye lately.

Solana has outperformed every other major Layer 1 chain so far this year, and as of this week it hasn’t stopped at over 400% gains year to date. Open Interest (a measurement of the total amount of open positions) on Solana surged this week up to $600M with a strong short side bias, before dropping back down due to some liquidations.

With Solana having come down from its local high of $46, we are watching for shorts to continue to build up at this level. Despite a correction likely being due simply based on the “face melting” pump over the last few weeks, traders may attempt to push the coin higher to try to liquidate those short positions and gain a better entry for themselves. We are watching for an upwards liquidation cascade to enter into a short ourselves.

Quick Quips: Catch Up On What You Missed

-SBF found guilty on all 7 charges on 11/2, faces up to 115 years in prison. Read more about it here.
-The 15th anniversary of Satoshi Nakamoto’s release of the Bitcoin Whitepaper was on October 31st.
-Solana’s Breakpoint Conference in Amsterdam wrapped up this week, stay tuned for a first-person recap from a Beluga team member!
-Coinbase’s earnings call this week revealed another strong quarter for the exchange, boasting $674M in revenue on $76B trading volume, down from $92B the previous quarter. They also covered their new initiatives such as Layer 2 network Base as well as keeping custody for upcoming ETFs.
-Safemoon founders arrested by US DOJ for fraud, representing a step forward for the space in cleaning out bad actors.

Did you know?

An exposé published by CoinDesk on November 2, 2022, began the collapse of FTX? An anonymous source leaked the Alameda Trading balance sheet to CoinDesk, revealing a shocking multi-billion dollar hole in their funds. This led investors to become nervous about the standing of FTX due to how closely linked the two were, and over $6B in withdrawals were processed from the FTX exchange in the following 72 hours. Read more about the collapse here!

Chart of the Week

Weekly crypto fund inflows reach their highest point in over 1.5 years according to data from CoinShares. Are we back?