TGIF, everyone! 😄 

We’re happy to have you this evening after a, frankly, long week.

Following the market’s retracement, we’re here to give an insight into what’s coming next!

👇️ In Partnership with 1440 Media 👇️ 

Seeking impartial news? Meet 1440.

Every day, 3.5 million readers turn to 1440 for their factual news. We sift through 100+ sources to bring you a complete summary of politics, global events, business, and culture, all in a brief 5-minute email. Enjoy an impartial news experience.

Join for free today!

This Week’s Juice 🧃

• 📞 TON network experiences outages 👀 
• 🇷🇺 Russia to start using Crypto for Cross-Border payments 💰️ 
• 🇨🇳 China’s largest bank sends a “love letter” for BTC & ETH 👀 
• 🏦 Economy: GDP Growth Rate QoQ @ 3.0% (expected 2.8%) 🔥 
• 🏦 Economy: Core PCE Price Index MoM @ 0.2% (expected 0.2%) 🚀 

What’s on today?

🔷 Market Analysis ✨

🔷 Our portfolio allocation strategy 📈

🔷 Yield Farming Opportunities 🚜🥛

🔷 VC Investments & Token Unlocks 🪙

Got any suggestions? Send us a message!

Getting up to speed! ⭐

This week’s Economic Reports 📊 

These are the key economic reports for the week as the market prepares for September’s Interest Rate decision. 👀 

Report

Result

What does this mean for crypto/economy?

GDP Growth Rate QoQ (2nd Estimate)

Over expected by 0.2% 🔥 @ 3.0%

The economy is growing more than expected — confidence in the state of the markets and national industry

Core PCE Price Index MoM

As expected @ 0.2% 🚀 

Inflation related to personal expenditure is on track as expected as has not increased.

This suggests that GDP Growth has not led to further Inflation, allowing for more conviction in harder rate cuts towards the end of the year.

Result: Bullish for crypto as the money printer will be unleashed + fueled by economic growth.

TON network experiences outages 👀 

Following the CEO of Telegram, Pavel Durov’s arrest in France, there have been multiple outages in the TON network where no transactions were processed for hours!

Despite this, the TON token has remained fairly stable.

These outages have supposedly been due to excessive minting of a DOGS memecoin which overloaded the network and is irrelevant to Pavel Durov’s arrests.

It seems that the TON network has not been fully optimised to support such a large volume of transactions, similar to what we saw with Solana a few years ago.

We do believe TON will make the necessary adjustments to fit new demand, however, further outages would raise concern about the blockchain’s integrity and may cause instability in the TON token.

Keep a lookout.

China’s largest bank sends a “love letter” for BTC & ETH 🇨🇳 

China’s largest bank, ICBC, published a report praising the potential of cryptocurrencies, especially BTC and ETH.

This is a massive shift in sentiment given China’s mixed views on crypto in the past few years. 👀 

• Bitcoin was compared to Gold due to its scarcity of supply. 🔥 
• Ethereum was referred to as “Digital Oil” as it powers the largest networks and EVMs.

ICBC is one of the largest banks in the world too, so this report only improves the legitimacy of blue-chip cryptocurrencies and is extremely bullish.

This also suggests potential large institutional investment in crypto by the Chinese!

Russia to start using crypto for cross-border payments 🇷🇺 

Starting from 1 September 2024, Russia is starting to test crypto transactions for cross-border payments.

This is an attempt to circumvent sanctions imposed by the West for international transactions, and a key move to remove reliance on the US Dollar for international transfers.

Following this, we would likely see the Moscow and St. Petersburg Exchange establish regulated crypto platforms as soon as next year! 🚀 

This is a key move for crypto as we see governmental adoption which may lead to further waves of institutional investment.

Not only this but a U-turn from Russia’s crypto ban in 2022! (Very much like China’s move)

It’s clear that governments won’t be staying away from crypto. It’s not a matter of if, but when the first (Top 10 GDP) country adopts it as a strategic reserve.

Market Analysis ✨

Things are getting shaky as we don’t get what we love all at once. And what we love is a never-ending pump! 🔥 

Tago Ratio Update: Our ratio shows a downward momentum which usually signals a short-term down trend. As this begins to reverse, we will see another retracement to the upside with retests of key resistance above. A take profit level would have been a day after the gradient has begun to decrease which would have marked the top of our current range 👀 .

BTC Analysis

• Following a retracement from key resistance back into the previous range, we are looking at further uncertainty in the market as we failed to find support at the top of the range (Failed Auction)
• While Cumulative Volume Delta has formed a lower low, the price has not, this could again position us towards a short squeeze, similar to the one we had the other week. 🔥 
• However, due to market instability coming up next month due to Interest Rate cuts, we may continue to range for a longer period before breaking out to the upside, e.g: October/November may be the time for crypto 👀 

Looking at the upside 📈 🚀 

• Liquidation Magnet Levels 🧲 @ 61.5k, 63k, 65.5k
• Primary Targets 👆️ @ 60.3k, 61.4k, 64.2k
• We’re looking for a retest of ~ 60.3k in the next few days which is our monthly VWAP — if we fail to take this we will be looking at a bias towards the downside
• If we manage to close above this on two consecutive 30m candles, we’ll be targeting 61.9k minimum.

Looking at the downside 📉 👀 

• Liquidation Magnet Levels 🧲 @ 57.5k → 55.8k
• If we fail to hold our local low, we may see a flash crash below 56k, with a likely next target of 53/54k
• Following 53k, any further drops would lead to an SFP of the low @ 49k 👀
• These are all buy opportunities, however, any longs should have clear stop losses below the current local low e.g: ~57.5k ⭐️ 

Ethereum Analysis

• Not much has changed for ETH given its underperformance, apart from it forming a lower range compared to the previous one.
• However, with the current lows, ETH looks much more attractive for Spot Longs given a ~5% discount from the previous range.
• Key Levels to the Upside 👆️ @ 2600 (weekly retracement), 2700, 2775, 2900
• Key Levels to the Downside 👇️ @ 2450, 2340, 2120

Altcoin Analysis

• As we target BTC Dominance @ ~60%, we are looking to see further altcoin underperformance, including blue chips such as Ethereum
• Despite allocating more funds to altcoins via our Strategy Allocations, we are sticking to short-term positions with tight stop losses!
• When we say tight stop losses, we mean tight! 🤣 

Investment Strategy 📈

Last week, we increased our short-term strategy allocation by 5% from our long-term funds. This is in preparation for an altcoin bull run coming up in the coming months, however, we remain sceptical as the market continues to consolidate.

No changes to our strategy allocations this week.

Type

% Allocation

Yield Farming

20%

Focus on projects with low token unlocks

Short-Term Strategy

20%

e.g trades (or else in USDC lending)

Risk-Off/Stable Lending

28%

e.g USDC lending

Long-Term Strategy

30%

e.g Bluechips & Long term plays

Hedging

2%

e.g Protective Puts

DeFi & Yield Farming 🚜🥛

Chain Performance

Looking to get into yield farming?

The key is to follow the trends in TVL.

Here is there’s this week’s Chain Performance:

• Top Gainers: Aptos, Sui and Tron remain the most resilient chains to be on in the past week and month.
• Key Insight: A week of uncertainty for the market as TVL staggers on-chain.`
• Warnings 🔴: A new chain such as Blast seeing a 30% outflow within a month is not a good sign. Similarly, due to scandals regarding Telegram, Ton has seen over 40% outflows within the month as the blockchain has seen outages. Be wary of engaging with these chains as volatility may be high.

Choosing a Chain and Pool to Farm 🧑‍🌾 

When you yield farm, you aren’t just looking at potential returns, but also risks associated with an investment.

This is why we only show the top 15 chains on our performance report.

The lower you go down the TVL rankings, the riskier the investments are.

Why is this?

Small chains tend to have a large amount of TVL moving in and out rapidly.

This can not only lead to inconsistent yield but also means there is inconsistent demand.

We recommend entering high-performing chains (increasing TVL + over $100M TVL) and pools with over $500k in TVL for you to invest in.

This ensures there is a minimum of:

• Demand on the chain and pool
• (enough) Platform Safety for the TVL to exist
• (less) Volatility in yield

1. High Risk/High Yield

• Pool: ARB/USDC on Camelot by Merkl (Arbitrum)
• Current Yield: 423% APR 🚀
• ➡️ Stake here
• Arbitrum is one of the leading EVM chains out there.
• There are some crazy liquidity campaigns right now giving amazing yields for ARB providers. This opportunity is a must!

2. Medium Risk (Liquid Restaking)

• Pool: APT Restaking on Amnis Finance (Aptos)
• Current Yield: 10.37% APR 🔥
• ➡️ Stake here
• With Aptos being one of the leading chains at the moment, we couldn’t miss finding you an opportunity!
• It does seem like Aptos’s DEXs have not developed enough to make Liquidity Farming worthwhile, however, Liquid Restaking seems to be on the rise, and worth a shot if you’re keen on Aptos or the Sui meta.

3. Stable/Low Risk

• Pool: USDC Staking on NAVI Protocol (Sui)
• Current Yield: 10.52% APR + 4.62% (BONUS) 👀 
• ➡️ Stake here
• We always love a good stablecoin yield strategy. You must keep your cash reserves working for you at all times!
• What’s great about this pool is that you get paid in vSUI tokens which you can use to gain exposure to the Sui chain + stake for extra yield!

Altcoin Zone 🪙

Upcoming Token Unlocks

• $OP - 31 August 2024 - 2.69% of M.Cap ($45.16m) 🟡🟡 
• $SUI - 3 September 2024 - 3.2% of M.Cap ($65.68m) 🟡🟡
• $IMX - 6 September 2024 - 2.06% of M.Cap ($44.12m) 🟡 

VC Investment Highlights

Time.fun

We’ve got an interesting project this week, time.fun, a time tokenisation platform for creators.

Website: time.fun

Time.fun intends to create a platform where users can “trade time” of creators or users in the DeFi space.

This is especially useful for creators/business owners who are in high demand in terms of meetings.

This way, it allows easier access to creators but also adds value to their time.

Why is this something I should be concerned about?

• You might be a creator or business owner yourself
• You may want to get in touch with a specific creator
• You may want to speculate on the value of time on a profile (TRADING TIME??)
• Or… you want to have some fun and add some prestige to your meetings

Whatever it might be, the main benefit is that you can trade time on user profiles, and creators earn fees when people trade their tokenized time!

While the MVP of this platform is already out, time.fun just secured $3m in seed funding which may mean this may be further developed.

What could this involve for the future?

• Some sort of standardised token for time which could be transferrable across profiles. 👀 (this is where the potential investment comes in)
• Further incentives to trade time and earn from price appreciation
• A weird one: Staking of tokenized time 🤩 

We’re working on creating a structured system for our DeFi & Altcoin sections, so we want your feedback on which altcoins or sectors you’re most interested in. This allows us to prioritise your interests and find the best opportunities for you to dive right into!

How much of your portfolio do you allocate to altcoins?

Tell us a bit about your allocations and then submit your favourite alts/sectors!

I'm a BTC Maxi, sorry! 0-20% 20-50% 50-90% What's Bitcoin? My middle name is ALTS!

Thanks for reading today’s publication! We crave your feedback — got any suggestions for a specific analysis or questions for us?

Get in touch with at contact@tagoresearch.com or pop us a message on X at @tagoresearch.

How'd you like this one?

Your opinion matters — it’s how we get better! Send over some of your deeper opinions too!

🥚 🐣🐣 🐤🐤🐤 🐔🐔🐔🐔 🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓

We’ll be adding some SWEET bonuses soon if you share Pulse with a friend!

Why don’t you get a head start? 😉 

Share PokPok PULSE

Or copy and paste this link to others: #

Disclaimer: The PokPok Pulse newsletter and any curated information provided by Tago Research are not intended as Financial Advice but as educational content for insights into the crypto market. Only invest what you can afford to lose. We are not liable for any losses incurred.