Farcaster Explodes: 1000% Growth

700M In Crypto Inflows

Author

Nathaniel Whittemore
February 06, 2024

The Breakdown First Five - Tuesday, February 6, 2024

Welcome back to The Breakdown First Five — the 5 most interesting and/or important stories in bitcoin, crypto, and markets to start your day.

Farcaster Explodes: 1000% Growth

5. Terraform Exec Faces Life In Prison

Not that one. Former Terraform Labs CFO Han Chang-joon has been extradited to South Korea to face criminal charges. Han got jammed up in Montenegro alongside Do Kwon when they were caught traveling on phony passports last March. Montenegran authorities said that Han is facing a life sentence, which is the first we’ve heard of this penalty being on the table. No news on Kwon’s appeal to avoid US extradition. 

4. ENS x GoDaddy 

ENS have partnered with GoDaddy to give ordinary domain names a touch of Web 3. GoDaddy customers will now be able to use their DNS as a wallet address pointer in the same way as ENS names. That means payment requests to your .com or .io domain are now possible. The feature is free, using an off-chain oracle to avoid gas fees. The new service also came with a banging tune from Songadaymann. 

3. Wood: Bitcoin Substituting Gold

ARK CEO Cathie Wood thinks the Bitcoin ETFs will lead to Bitcoin substituting for gold as the risk-off asset of choice. Wood said “ There’s now a substitution into Bitcoin and we think that is going to continue now that there is a less friction-filled way to access Bitcoin.” Wood also thinks that the Bank failures of last much cemented Bitcoin as a safe haven asset, and notes that regional banks are looking shaky again.

2. Inflows Back in the Green

Coinshares latest fund flows report showed a massive $700M in global inflows. The GBTC selling was completely overpowered by fresh flows last week. This was the second largest flow of funds since 2021, falling short of ETF launch week. Fund volumes remain gigantic, representing 29% of trading across all trusted platforms. The question is whether this high level is sustainable, and where the equilibrium point will be as inflow momentum slows. 

1. Far Out Farcaster

Farcaster has become the latest breakout crypto social media platform, achieving 1000% growth in daily active users over the past two weeks. The launch of frames, interactive panels embedded in feeds, has pulled users to the new hot platform in droves. Alongside games and rudimentary e-commerce, frames allow for more secure NFT mints. Early users also received a massive airdrop recently, which doesn’t hurt. The next big crypto platform or a flash in the pan?

Thanks for reading -NLW