💀 Is Telegram Doomed?

Crypto Rand

7 min readAug 26, 2024

Let’s Dive Into It!

Happy Monday dear subscribers! In today’s Newsletter, Back from Holidays and a tough one for Telegram’s CEO!

In today’s bulletin, we are covering:

Surfing the Market, with analysis about the TAO and NEAR
Don’t miss the News about Telegram CEO and Stablecoins
FLOKI is under the spotlight.
A short article about Calendar Anomalies in the Markets
Our selection of the best Gems on X

TAO remains on of my most interesting coins in the scope. After the local breakout is now consolidation near the $360 range, which is the key level to beat and hunt the reversal:

Keeping an eye on NEAR consolidation too after the main breakout. Consolidation here would enable a further wave towards $5,5:

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov Arrested in France on Serious Charges

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov has reportedly been arrested in France on multiple serious charges, including terrorism, trafficking, conspiracy, and money laundering.

The arrest allegedly occurred when his plane landed at Bourget airport near Paris. These reports have caused a significant impact on the Toncoin cryptocurrency, which saw a drop of over 10% in value.

Pavel Durov allegedly arrested in France on multiple charges.
Toncoin cryptocurrency dropped more than 10% following the news.
Public figures express concern over the arrest, linking it to Durov’s stance on free speech and privacy.
The Open Network (TON) reaffirmed its commitment to free speech and support for Durov.

High-profile figures, including Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, have commented on the arrest, suggesting it is a move against Durov’s commitment to free speech and privacy.

Stablecoin Market Cap Hits All-Time High, Signaling Growing Institutional Confidence in Crypto

The total stablecoin market capitalization (excluding algorithmic stablecoins) has reached an all-time high of $168.1 billion, surpassing the previous peak from March 2022, according to DefiLlama data.

This increase reflects growing confidence in the crypto market, particularly from institutional investors.

Stablecoin market cap hits a record high of $168.1 billion, surpassing the March 2022 peak.
USDT leads the market, growing 28% this year, and now accounts for 70% of the total stablecoin market.
USDC also shows significant growth in 2024, rising from $23.8 billion to $34.4 billion.
Increasing stablecoin market cap is seen as a sign of growing institutional confidence in crypto.
Stablecoins are increasingly used by institutional investors as a bridge between traditional finance and crypto.

The rise in stablecoin market cap, including significant growth in USDT and USDC, suggests a broader integration of stable digital assets into traditional finance (TradFi) and long-term investment strategies.

FLOKI

FLOKI started in 2021 like a memecoin after Elon Musk shared a photo of his dog named the same way but following their roadmap it has become more than that. Let’s take a look.

As core values FLOKI sustains in three pillars: Community, Utility and Charity. This last pillar materialized with the opening of schools in underdeveloped nations of the world like Guatemala, Ghana, Laos, and Nigeria through the organization Pencils of Promise. Currently raising capital to build another one in India.

Right now the project could be seen as a community driven autonomous and decentralized ecosystem, that could fall into different narratives, with products that cover different areas like:

Gaming and metaverse — Developing games like the “Valhalla” NFT Metaverse Game (in testnet at the moment)
RWA — Tokenization platform to create a token or tokenize Real World Assets (RWA) in a simple all-in-one platform with “TokenFi” and $TOKEN coin.
DeFi — Decentralized finance products under the Floki brand “FlokiFi”, like their Locker allowing to use a range of assets like fungible tokens, NFTs, and multi tokens in liquidity pools (LP) and other DeFi revenue generators in a few clicks.
Education — Aiming to fill the crypto education gap for new generations with the “Floki University” with free and paid lessons.
Staking — Earn rewards and participate in governance staking on the “FlokiStaking program”.
NTF’s — Marketplace for NFTs and Merchandise in the “FlokiPlaces”
Trading Bot — Allows to manage a hot wallet through the Telegram interface with chats with the “Floki Trading Bot”. (in beta)
Domain service — Anyone can create a decentralized “.floki domain” name for a price (currently live in the BNB Chain.)

The community and team main objective is to develop crypto solutions where the $FLOKI token is an integral and indispensable part of the Ecosystem. This way they are giving it further utility.

The $FLOKI token was originally launched as a ERC-20 (Ethereum mainnet) and currently is also available in Binance Smart Chain (BRC-20) making it a multichain project.

The project managed to raise a total of $1.34M in different rounds being DWF Labs the leading investor.

This space has become intriguing after seeing the evolution of meme coin projects like FLOKI, which have gone beyond their mere meme origins exploring other facets of the crypto Space. A very similar project and major competitor would be SHIBA INU and following it DOGE, PEPE, WIF and GROK should also be considered as relevant contenders.

The meme coin arena is more vibrant and competitive than ever. There is no doubt that memecoins are being a hot hype of the current cycle that continues to attract investors. Some of them are reaching beyond the meme facade trying to stabilize and climb their positions. In any case the meme frenzy that we are seeing in 2024 will be a marked chapter in the ongoing saga of cryptocurrency development.

Calendar Anomalies in the Markets

It’s well known that the market isn’t perfect and often exhibits behaviors that have no clear explanation, where investors interpret these patterns and help them grow like a snowball. Let’s take a look at some of these anomalies that make the markets so interesting.

Before we begin, we need to define what a market anomaly is. These are any behaviors of a stock (or coin) that cannot be explained by traditional models. In other words, something abnormal, extraordinary.

Our focus can be on the calendar as the trigger for these events that tend to happen periodically, and we can take advantage of them. Here are some examples:

- Santa’s Rally: this is typically a rally in stock prices in the last weeks of the year, leading up to Christmas. Who hasn’t waited for the famous Santa’s Rally?

- January Effect: during the first trading days of the year, prices tend to increase due to tax-related buybacks, funds’ window dressing, and portfolio rebalancing at the start of the year. It’s more common in small caps.

- Day of the Week Effect: Mondays tend to have worse returns than Fridays, and Wednesdays often serve as correction days after a strong start to the week. This is explained by short coverings on Fridays and the impact of weekend news on Mondays.

- Sell in May and Go Away: an old market adage that suggests selling in May and returning in October. History shows that the S&P 500 has had better performance from November to April than from May to October.

- Macroeconomic Calendar: this undoubtedly influences the market, where trading tends to pause before certain data announcements and reacts once they are confirmed.

- Halving: in BTC, halving occurs every four years and usually has a significant impact on the market, not only after it happens but also in anticipation, creating expectations.

- Forks in Crypto: forks typically create new conditions for tokens, and like halving, attention starts much earlier. While not calendar-based, these events are interesting in the crypto space.

As you can see, the market is not only interesting in and of itself, but it also adds these kinds of anomalies and extraordinary events (which are ordinary in terms of predictability), making it even more captivating.

However, while these events have a high probability of occurrence, they are not linear and don’t happen the same way every year — otherwise, we’d all be millionaires, right?

Therefore, these are factors to consider when trading or investing, but they should be analyzed in the context of the moment and not in isolation. For example, if we’ve just had a significant rally in November and the chart shows signs of demand exhaustion, the chances of a Santa’s Rally will be very low.

The best approach is to consider these as colorful insights that help us think outside the box — or, we could say, outside the chart!