Alpha Recap 38: Clarity Act Fails, Rates Rise and KIP-5
Kinetiq (KNTQ), Bitcoin (BTC)
Alpha Recap 40: Metric points campaign, limUSD now available on Morpho, and Anthropic IPO
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In this new edition of the Alpha Recap, we cover the week's key highlights from the crypto market: major news, yield or airdrop strategies, essential updates, and quick takes, to help you cut through the noise.
The Alpha Recap brings you the most important crypto market Alphas of the week. Every Friday, we deliver a digest of the most valuable information from our Alpha Feed.
Reserved for OAK Premium members, the Alpha Feed brings together insights, yield and airdrop strategies, and key market information. In other words, the DNA of OAK Research: filtered content that goes beyond the noise of the market.
Metric Confirms the Hidden Points Campaign We Anticipated
Two weeks ago, we introduced our subscribers to Metric, a DEX that opened to the public on October 15 on Ethereum, BNB Chain and Robinhood Chain. At the time, no points program had been announced, but we had a hunch that a hidden points campaign was underway. The protocol confirmed it yesterday, announcing the distribution of one million points every week, retroactive to October 15.
On the technical side, Metric stands out for its pool model, which departs from how traditional AMMs work. On a classic AMM, the pool itself acts as the oracle, and its price is only corrected when an arbitrageur steps in, which usually comes at the expense of liquidity providers (LPs). Metric takes the opposite approach, with a model designed to keep liquidity centered around the real market price.
To do this, an oracle or a market maker continuously provides a reference price, around which liquidity is spread across different bands expressed as percentages. When the market moves, these bands automatically follow the price, without LPs having to reposition their ranges. This approach is particularly well suited to assets whose price is formed off-chain, starting with tokenized stocks.
Subscribers who positioned themselves following our Alpha have therefore been accumulating points for several weeks, while the protocol's TVL remains relatively modest, at around $23 million.
→ In our Alphas, we detailed how Metric works, the different types of pools and their color system, which you need to master before depositing, the most profitable pools once price movements are taken into account, and the different ways to gain exposure to the protocol and take part in the campaign.
Liminal: limUSD Can Now Be Used as Collateral on Morpho
Liminal, a protocol we have followed for a long time, has just opened up a new use for its limUSD. Specifically, the token can now be deposited as collateral on Morpho to borrow USDC, which makes it possible to set up looping strategies to amplify exposure to limUSD's intrinsic yield.
As a reminder, limUSD is Liminal's yield token. It earns its revenue from the protocol's different building blocks, namely xHYPE, xBTC and xLEND. Its price, initially set at $1, gradually rises as yields accumulate. As we write these lines, its yield stands at 11.4%.
→ In a dedicated Alpha, we modeled the net yield of this strategy depending on the leverage used, calculated how far limUSD can fall in each configuration before liquidation, and detailed the risks and exit costs to take into account.
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Anthropic: Heading Toward a Historic IPO?
Anthropic kicked off the roadshow for its IPO on Tuesday, with a price range of $70 to $78 per share. The company is targeting a Nasdaq listing under the ticker ANT-3.05%, with pricing scheduled for November 18 and first trades the following day.
On that basis, its valuation would reach between $916 billion and $1,021 billion, calculated on the number of outstanding shares. A substantial figure, but nearly half the $2 trillion mentioned just a few weeks ago.
The updated prospectus also reveals a $26 billion private placement, in which Google, Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom, Micron, Microsoft and TSMC will take part. These companies, which will be able to buy shares at the same price as the one set for the IPO, are also among Anthropic's compute providers, which underscores the close ties between the company's growth and the players supplying its infrastructure.
Taking the midpoint of the range, the whole operation could raise around $87 billion, a record that would surpass the SpaceX IPO.
→ In our Alpha on Anthropic's IPO, we examine this valuation against Anthropic's compute commitments, the share unlock schedule, and the listed companies that already offer indirect exposure to the company. We also look at the gap between the price of the ANT perp and the announced IPO range, and what to expect from it.
