May 20, 2021: Counting the Dead ☠️🪦
Tallying the winners and losers from yesterday's bloodbath
With casualty reports rolling in, we have a better sense of the losers and winners from yesterday’s bloodbath.
Those We Lost
Most leveraged traders did not survive the carnage. By one tally, $8.6 billion in value was erased in the brutal traceback. At this point, if you’re trading on leverage you should be aware that crashes like this are the rule in crypto, not the exception.
As people rebuilt, some bandits found a great pillaging opportunity in Binance Smart Chain’s BUNNY Finance.
More broadly, BSC is still struggling, though it survived the affair.
A Mixed Bag
Some people survived, but are hanging on by a thread. Michael Saylor bought the dip, but it doesn’t take a body language expert to note he looks awfully rattled by the events.
Additionally, the crash may offer some comfort to BlockFi. In a promotional mixup before the crash, they inadvertently gave away hundreds of BTC in referral fees instead of dollars. Thanks to the price drop, they can take comfort that this mix-up was only half as boneheaded as before.
The Winners
Too soon? A lot of winners in this crash.
McDonalds ($MCD) isn’t typically thought of as a stonk with a lot of crypto exposure. The good news is their hiring struggles may be ancient history.
More directly related to crypto, the larger crypto infrastructure proved quite resilient. Generally in crashes like these we see a number of protocols and projects go belly up. Yesterday, everything survived.
Don’t worry @gakonst, we’re getting to it!
DeFi in many cases came out ahead. The surge pricing made it impractical to use for anybody who didn’t want to pay a full ETH in gas fees, but yesterday it looked like an ETH was worth $0 anyway. It may have cost a lot of gwei, but unlike centralized exchanges, at least DeFi remained functional.
Alchemix proved a safe place for moneylenders to shelter the storm.
Stablecoins fluctuated some near the bottom, but mostly because nobody could afford the gas to repeg them at the moment. They all recovered quickly, and DAI looked like a champ.
At the risk of dancing on the graves of the recently departed, Curve did phenomenal business in the aftermath. $1.4 billion in daily volume is probably a platform record.
“FUD-to-cash converter” belongs in the International Phrase Hall of Fame, whenever such a thing gets around to existing.
Many within the Curve citadel enjoyed watch the carnage unfold from a safe environment.
Most important, if you’re reading this, there’s a very good chance you survived the first impact. Whatever may happen to prices, the crypto infrastructure isn’t going away. We’re glad you’re still with us to enjoy the ride.
For more info, check our live market data at https://curvemarketcap.com/ or our subscribe to our daily newsletter at https://curve.substack.com/. Nothing in our newsletter can be construed as financial advice. Author is a $CRV maximalist.