The Breakdown First Five - Tuesday, April 2, 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.

5. Bitcoin Flash Crash

Bitcoin plunged by 5% in the early hours of the morning, falling below $67,000. ETF outflows likely contributed, with Grayscale shedding $302M to turn flows negative for the first time in a week. The sell off was compounded by $165M in liquidations across all crypto pairs. Alongside $50M in Bitcoin longs getting wiped out, leverage is building in altcoins. $6M in long Dogecoin positions and $4M in long Sol positions were liquidated. 

4. Upbit Volume Craters

After pushing the kimchi premium to 10% at the beginning of March, Korean retail traders have disappeared. Upbit daily average volume is down more than 80% since it spiked at the beginning of last month, falling to just $2.6B on Sunday. Korean exchanges are viewed as a proxy for altcoin enthusiasm, as less than 10% of volume is associated with Bitcoin and Ethereum. 

3. April Fools

Crypto Twitter continues to fool around, with a string of gags to celebrate the day. Solana founder Anatoly Yakavenko suggested we should look to radio based blockchains in preparation for life in a bunker. Vitalik wrote a blog post on “Degen communism”, the memes must be redistributed. Bankless cofounder David Hoffman quit the show to join the Solana Foundation. Perhaps best of all, Tom Emmer praised Gary Gensler for his stellar work as SEC Chairman. 

2. Tether Adds 8888 Bitcoin

Tether’s latest quarterly buy has shown up on-chain, with 8,888 Bitcoin added to the stack. The stablecoin issuer began buying Bitcoin last year, using a portion of profits to bolster excess reserves. Tether now holds 75,354 Bitcoin worth around $5B. That about a third the size of Microstrategy's holdings, good enough to make Tether a top 10 Bitcoin holder. 

1. Binance Establishes Board

Binance have appointed their first ever board of directors. The board will consist of CEO Richard Teng, three Binance executives and three outside directors. The most noteworthy is Gabriel Abed, who left his role as the Barbados ambassador to the UAE earlier this year. Establishing a board was part of Binance’s settlement with US authorities late last year. CZ’s sentencing is scheduled towards the end of this month.