While everyone was addicted to watching Sora videos this week, $5.95 billion quietly slid into crypto ETFs. It's one of the biggest weekly inflows ever, landing just as Bitcoin strutted past $126K. That's not retail users btw, it's the suits. Pension funds and wealth managers who used to call crypto "too risky" are now treating it like a serious portfolio piece.
The best part? The money came after Bitcoin's breakout. This isn't FOMO; it's conviction. ETF issuers will have to scoop up more BTC to meet demand, and that creates a classic feedback loop. When Wall Street starts front-running the degens, you know the cycle's heating up.
Here's what we got today:
Aster volume drama. What we know about the issue.
State of crypto markets. Will the party keep going?
Around the web. Infinex launched perps powered by HyperLiquid, Plume has registered a transfer agent with the SEC, and more.
Today's email is brought to you by Solstice — Solana's high-yield stablecoin.
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Drama
Aster's $123B Mystery: Too Good to Be True?
CT's darling perp DEX is in trouble.
Aster is the perp DEX that recently took over the crypto community. It was promoted by CZ, the founder of the #1 crypto exchange, Binance.
After Aster airdropped $ASTER to users and started an incentive program, it has been the leading perp DEX in volume and revenue. From September 17 to today, Aster did $123B in volume. In contrast, the runner-up HyperLiquid only did $9.5B. That's ~13x difference.
Everyone was calling it a revolution. Aster had done the impossible.
But then came the plot twist.
What happened? 0xngmi questioned the validity of Aster's volume data.
(For the noobs, 0xngmi is the founder of DefiLlama, one of the most credible data platforms in the industry. He's known for being objective, independent, and fair. He doesn't have $HYPE or $ASTER bags.)
The high priest of crypto data was questioning Aster's data. He said Aster's volume was mirroring the volume on Binance too much. The other perp dexes don't have this correlation.
He basically implied that the volume on Aster could be fake.
The tweet went viral. It got >1.5M views.
Combined with CZ's history with the law (he was convicted of violating U.S. anti-money laundering laws), people were quick to judge. Many people thought Aster was faking volume.
To be precise, 0xngmi hasn't explicitly said the data is 100% fake. He is just removing the data from his platform DefiLlama since he can't trust the data. He's asking for more lower-level data that DefiLlama can cross-check to verify Aster's claims.
This is a huge problem. A problem that we wrote about when we introduced Aster.
Aster isn't a true perp dex. It runs offchain. And people cannot trust offchain perps. There's no verifiability. They can fake volume. They can even manipulate trade to benefit themselves.
They've said they'll release a zk-powered L1 chain, but until then, it's difficult to trust their data. You have to "trust" them.
$ASTER dumped 10% after the drama. But it immediately recovered. Binance had announced they'll be listing $ASTER on their CEX, which is a huge positive catalyst.
But that solves Aster's credibility issue. The Aster team did give some answers to 0xngmi tho. They basically said the issue is limited to a few pairs and for a limited period, and that it can happen sometimes.
0xngmi was asking for more data to prove the volume. It seems like they haven't given that yet.
But at the end of the data, you cannot easily trust offchain data. You cannot truly know if the Aster volume is true or not.
This is why we built crypto. We can trust onchain data and computation. Let's hope Aster ships its chain soon.
But it has one major gap: no Solana-native stablecoin.
Enter Solstice Finance.
USX is their 100% collateralized USD stablecoin.
eUSX is the yield-bearing version of USX. You get it by depositing USX into YieldVault.
SLX is their upcoming protocol token. (You shouldjoin their points program to qualify for a juicy airdrop.)
The best stablecoin yield on Solana is the eUSX yield. Currently it's ~10%.
Unlike others, Solstice doesn't show fake yield with governance tokens at inflated valuations.
They're earning yield using a delta-neutral strategy that they've been privately executing for the past ~3 years. Trailing 12-month yield has been 15.4%.
Everyone is racing to get a piece of this institutional-grade yield. In just one week since launch, TVL has already surpassed $190M.
Their Flares points program also has huge potential. Join fast to maximize your SLX airdrop.
BTC reached a new ATH. Everything is pumping across the board.
While everyone is celebrating, some people have already started calling the top.
I think we still have much room to run. Let's review some of the reasons.
#1. Seasonality
Crypto prices have often rhymed with seasonal patterns.
September is usually rektember. Bullish Q4 starts with an uptober. And so on.
Let's look at historical BTC monthly returns to validate this theory.
Source: Laevitas
Average historical (2014–2024) returns for Uptober is 20.45%, November is 8.75%, and December is 8.31%. So, Q4 2025 total returns is expected to be [(1+0.2045)*(1+0.0875)*(1+0.0831)−1]*100= 41.88%.
So seasonal patterns support a massively bullish Q4.
#2. Macro
One reason for the recent choppy markets was the rebuilding of the Treasury General Account (TGA).
TGA is basically the US Govt's checking account. Since mid-June, the government has been sucking up all the liquidity to refill the TGA. This liquidity drain was bearish for our bags.
The good news is that they've almost reached their $850B target. So this bearish factor is now gone.
There are more bullish factors as well.
The Federal Reserve cut rates on September 17th. Interest rate traders are expecting two more Fed rate cuts this year.
This allows other central banks to cut rates as well. Currently, 80% of central banks worldwide are in easing mode.
So global liquidity is rising. Simpler measures like Global M2 money supply or the more comprehensive ones like CrossBorder Capital Global Liquidity chart all say the same story: liquidity is increasing.
I've already explained why liquidity increasing = crypto pumping in previous newsletters. So I won't repeat that here.
#3. Institutions, ETFs, & DATs.
Crypto isn't just a retail phenomenon anymore. So we need to consider institutional flows as well.
If we look at ETFs, there hasn't been a single negative net flow day in October for either BTC or ETH. In the first 4 business days of October, BTC ETFs bought in a total of $3.4B. ETH ETFs bought in >798M in the same time period.
Additionally, Greyscale has enabled staking rewards for both of its ETH ETFs. This should further increase ETH ETF inflows.
So the ETF data is very bullish.
While DAT sentiment has fallen significantly on Crypto Twitter, the numbers don't tell the same story. While trading volume isn't at August peaks, they're posting pretty good numbers in October.
DAT trading volume by asset
One caveat here is that the majority of the DAT volume is now driven by just two companies: Strategy & Bitmine. You can go into more DAT details here.
Overall, crypto looks good from the TradFi side as well.
Still, many people are bearish on the market. On Twitter, people are calling for the top with every new pump.
Options data also indicates that. OI-normalized CVD is declining. Aka, many traders are leaning bearish. (We covered options data in more detail within TDE Pro. Check it out here.)
But we don't have to be too concerned right now imo. The more fundamental indicators, like liquidity and ETF inflows, are very bullish.
Don't let PTSD from past cycles push you to the sidelines.
🚀 DeFi Catalysts
Infinex launched Infinex Perps on its platform. It's powered by HyperLiquid on the backend.
Plume Network has registered a transfer agent with the SEC. Transfer agents shareholder records, trades, and dividends.
Meteora introduced PMX prediction markets. It's a decentralized prediction market built on Solana using Meteora's Liquidity to seed markets.
Pendle went live on Plasma. Now users can access Pendle's products directly through Plasma's digital bank.
MetaMask announced that a reward program is on the way. In season 1 alone, we'll be distributing over $30M in LINEA token rewards.
Chainlink introduced DataLink. It's a turnkey service that enables institutions to publish data to blockchains seamlessly.
Aave has added limit orders to its swap feature. They're powered by CoW Protocol and live on Ethereum and Arbitrum.
Farcaster has rolled out referral rewards. You'll get 20% of the fee from the trades of people you referred.
Ondo Finance purchased Oasis Pro. It'll give Ondo a comprehensive set of SEC registrations for digital asset services in the United States.
Jupiter introduced a wallet for desktop computers. You can import or export wallets between Desktop and Mobile by simply scanning a QR code.
f(x) Protocol has expanded fxSAVE to Plasma. It'll give USDT0 holders access to f(x) Protocol's organic and sustainable yields.
HypurrFi introduced its own perp DEX. This is a perp market on top of HyperLiquid, a chain known for its perp product.
📰 Industry News
US SEC is developing a plan to allow tokenized versions of stocks to trade on crypto exchanges like Coinbase and Kraken.
CME Group said it will move its cryptocurrency futures and options to continuous 24/7 trading in early 2026.
Coinbase has partnered with Samsung to bring crypto to the Samsung Wallet app in the U.S.
Uniswap Labs has acquired Guidestar, a team that's been building new AMM and routing technology in stealth for the past two years.
Avalanche Treasury Co. strikes $675 million merger deal to form AVAX DAT. The company is expected to trade on Nasdaq in early 2026.
DISCLAIMER: I'm NOT a financial advisor. This content is for education and information purposes only. Crypto and DeFi are risky and speculative. Please do your research before investing.
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