December 4, 2023: Bitcoin @ $40K 🍀🎰

The $ETH native's guide to embracing $BTC mania

Sort of hard to believe $BTC is back above $40K. In its wake, $ETH is holding above $2200, alts are up anywhere from a bit to a buttload. Welcome back, bulls!

Let’s face reality as it is. What does our $BTC dominant world look like?

It means Michael Saylor ascends to main character status?

Despite the tut-tutting of the World Bank, it seems Bukele is back in the black

We don’t particularly doubt that this runup must be fueled by the ETF mania. In hindsight, it makes perfect sense that Bitcoin would hold the strongest narrative going into the this cycle, given it’s the cryptocurrency with the greatest penetration into the traditional financial system.

If you have been, or plan to, embrace Bitcoin mania while remaining a native creature of the Ethereum DeFi world, at least you have some outstanding protocols emerging just in time.

Notably, Threshold BTC has emerged as a strongly decentralized means of moving your BTC cross-chain.

The team recently declared a fee holiday in time for the holiday consumerism.

If you already cashed out your BTC into ETH, you might keep an eye on Badger DAO’s eBTC, currently on testnet.

The concept of borrowing other assets using Ethereum LSDs is a competitive space, but Badger DAO gets credit for starting to build this before it was cool. Traders should note that this provides a handy service to speculate on the ETH/BTC ratio onchain.

Also note, the ascendant f(x) Protocol has also long been rumored to be launching a BTC product.

Naturally, if you are playing with BTC derivatives on Ethereum, you may not even know it, but Curve wins in the end. The problem with Bitcoin is that once users actually buy Bitcoin, they realize there’s not a whole heckuva lot they can do with it. Inevitably, sat-holders find themselves entranced by the glimmering lights of the DeFi casino over the horizon.

Even in this period of consistently elevated borrow rates, Curve is seeing continued demand to borrow $crvUSD. The soft liquidation mechanism is just that good at protecting users from losing too many sats if degens happen to bet too recklessly.

And surprisingly, even at 15% interest rates for Bitcoin, it can still be profitable thanks to the craziness that is our DeFi casino.

Don’t worry, devs are aware… check the start of this ongoing thread in the Curve Telegram this AM

For more on Bitcoin in DeFi, note we’ve been hammering on this concept since the summertime. Flashback…