The Castle Chronicle: Polymarket's new offering! Can Pumpfun flip Twitch?
PLUS: BTC still moving sideways, will $ASTER keep running?
Welcome to Edition 139 of The Castle Chronicle!
Gm gents, it’s a new week which means a new Chronicle for your eyeballs! Crack open a white Monster, pour an espresso, and dive in!
Here’s what we have for you today:
🔍 Market Watch - Charts are king while BTC drifts sideways
💸 Polymarket: Trading earnings on-chain?
🤳 Will Pumpfun’s creator capital markets flip Twitch?
🤖 Almanak’s Point Campaign - Season 1 is over, what’s next?
📖 Recommended Reads - The best reads from the best researchers on CT
🔍 Market Watch
Gm frens! BTC continues going sideways and with it, most of the market remains relatively flat. But just like every week there’s outliers that provide interesting opportunities.
And while it has become quite meta to use the term crime a lot, I don’t care about this stuff at all. Charts are king, let’s check them out!
Price Action
It’s been over 10 weeks that BTC has not made any impulsive moves and remains stuck in this range. Nothing wrong with that. Overall the trend is still intact and I expect continuation eventually. When though? No idea. We’ll see it once it happens.
The market is of course much more interesting when BTC moves higher, but I actually almost prefer this context. A few clear opportunities each week is all we need.
Top Performers
Ahh yes, “crime season”. This week we got a newcomer to the market in ASTER showing us how it’s done with an absolutely insane 1918% gain. That’s quite spectacular. The two other interesting markets are DEXE and IP. Let’s take a closer look at a few of them.
First up, ASTER. This is a very new coin, so I’m gonna look at a “HTF” that covers the entire chart. The 30min chart tells a clear story, one that strikes a remarkable resemblance to many charts I have shared here previously, except that they were daily or weekly charts. In the end price action is fractal and it’s all the same.
We see an initial move up that eventually breaks down and starts going sideways for what we expect to be an accumulation (since the preceding move was bullish). From there we wait for a bullish break out of the range with the intention to follow it higher. Now for the last piece of confirmation I want to see price break into a 2nd new high, confirming a re-accumulation and with it a new trend direction. ASTER is most definitely on my watchlist!
I also want to talk about IP, as I have talked about it previously in volume 136, mentioning that it’s a good looking chart that is ready to be followed higher. As expected, after re-accumulating price indeed continued in it’s path to new ATHs via a strong momentum cycle. Now I’d say it’s a bit over-extended and I’ll wait for a new re-accumulation before looking for new trades.
I hope you’re starting to see the patterns by now. Every week I’m looking for the same thing on different assets and I play the probability game. Good process, good execution and a LOT of patience is what leads to positive expected value.
Narrative Performance
While it is true that BTC is “just going sideways” on the HTF, the weekly changes are still very much sensitive to LTF price movements. And this week alone BTC bled out on the LTFs, so it should come as no surprise to see an overall red wave. Most narratives are bleeding out with Launchpads and ICM losing close to 20% and DeFAI losing 26%.
And that’s all for this week frens! Remember to risk responsibly!
I’ll see y’all next time!
Courtesy of 0x_Vlad - trend-based trader and MentFX student
Not following what I’m talking about? Check out my quick cheatsheet to understand how I approach a chart.
💸 Trading Corporate earnings on-chain?
Polymarket enabled in mid-September a new type of binary option on corporate earning for some of the mains US stocks.
Simply put, they are now allowing users to bet on whether specific companies will beat or miss Wall Street's quarterly earnings per share (EPS) estimates.
But how does it work? It is a simple Yes or No market.
A "Yes" share on Netflix beating its EPS estimate recently traded at 79 cents (implying a ~79% probability of a beat), paying out $1 if correct. And a "No" share traded at 22 cents, offering higher potential returns (~$78 profit on a $100 wager if it misses).
Very simple innit.
For the moment, only certain Stock earnings are available to bet on, but the door is open for much more assets. Unlike buying stocks or derivatives, these are event-based prediction shares settled in USDC on the Polygon blockchain, with no ongoing asset ownership. So it’s very easy to integrate as many stock earnings as desired. Nothing complicated.
This new product really simplifies betting on earning for retail, in comparison to options or futures that can be difficult to grasp for the average Joe. Important to remember that most retail users are NOT sophisticated, so if you want to please them, make it simple.
For the moment, this is not accessible for US citizens but it seems clear that Polymarket is preparing it’s way to re-enter the US market & that such an offering will be part of their push once they get the GO from the Burgers’ regulat000r.
On my end, I am VERY bullish on such blockchain based speculative products. It is answering a real need for retail users that want to gamble/bet on corporate topic without using complicated tools. It’s a simple, YES or NO. No options premiums, no decay or complicated stuff. Just, YES or NO.
I am yet to use Polymarket’s new feature but will soon jump on it once I find a way to make money out of it :)
On this, I’m wishing you a great weekend
From CL, with love
🤳 On Creator Capital Markets and My Experience Streaming On PumpFun
Humble Beginnings
Let’s take it all the way back to the beginning, back to the early days of the Internet.
All the way to 2007, if you can believe that. I’m showing my age a bit here, but that was when JustinTV launched.
JustinTV was the first iteration of Twitch, the first live streaming platform for creators. Initially designed to be a 24/7 broadcast of Justin’s life, it quickly turned into a way for anyone to broadcast live. Anyone anywhere could stream live, but gamers quickly became the #1 use case.
The first iteration of live streaming transitioned into the form we see today, with Twitch becoming the #1 livestreaming platform. Currently, Twitch manages to garner ~63% of hours watched for gaming livestreams, with YouTube and Facebook gaming trailing behind.
Names like Kai Cenat have reached an average of over 50M-60M hours watched per month and have seen extreme growth over the last few years. Streaming has become such a phenomenon recently that young kids are saying that they want to be a streamer when they grow up. In a recent poll done by YouGov, being a streamer ranked even higher than being a doctor amongst all polled teens.
Now, think about how many kids, teens, and adults in their 20s are all doing some form of live content on Twitch, TikTok, YouTube, etc. How many times have you seen videos of people doing shocking and absurd things in a live setting just for views? It’s a contagion, and it’s only growing bigger.
Enter PumpFun
By now, we all know PumpFun and how polarizing their existence has been in our space, but no one can say they haven’t changed some lives. Every day, someone makes or loses a life-changing amount of money from memes, and now we have PumpFun streamers who are making thousands from creator fees. Over $4m in creator fees was paid in one day as well, going to many first-time streamers.
But it wasn’t always roses.
PumpFun started their livestreaming function in 2024, and in true decentralized fashion, they allowed users to stream without boundaries or rules. This all went well for some time, before it all crumbled.
There were users threatening violence on pets, performing degrading acts, and even faking a suicide. This may be more of a condemnation of our society and how desperate people are for money, but it still wasn’t a good look.
However, to their credit, Pumpfun deprecated the livestreaming function for a few months to implement some changes, and it was reintroduced in April to a select percentage of users. This allowed them to do a slow rollout and implemented some guardrails that kept users from doing the unsavoury acts that caused things to spiral in the first place.
My Experience Streaming on Pump
So I actually streamed on PumpFun recently with some buddies, and here are some of my takeaways:
The actual viewer experience is fairly similar to Twitch, making it easier for both viewers and streamers to interact.
Creator fees are a nice touch, especially as they implemented a sliding scale where Higher Mkt Cap = less creator fees and Lower Mkt Cap = Higher creator fees. This means that you can incentivize more first-time streamers to use the platform and get paid more for doing it, hopefully making more loyalty for the platform.
Here’s the downside: You have to make a token to stream and earn creator fees as the fees are taken from those that trade your token, betting on your virality/stream. Personally, I didn’t like this idea. I think this just invites creators to get threatened by token holders who aren’t happy with the price action.
This leads me to my overall takeaway: I think PumpFun has a long way to go. There are a fair amount of things they can do to improve their platform, but first and foremost, it comes with streamers not needing to have a token. That just ties an anchor to them and brings a lot of unnecessary friction, especially if you have streamers who leave the platform because they have token holders yelling and getting angry over price action they can’t control.
Unrequested Advice: What should they do now?
A fix would be to replace tokens with regular subscribers a la Twitch subs. Yes, I know that takes away the gist of what PumpFun wants to do with their Creator Capital Markets, but they need a way for people to express support for a streamer without having to buy a token. Because no matter what, users who lose money on a streamer’s token will always be more hostile to said streamers. This is a foundational problem.
But here’s the good thing: PumpFun has plenty of time to iterate on changes and do things differently. This is a significant advantage because the platform is at an early enough stage to take the time and adjust things without derailing its livestreaming growth too much.
The fact that they’ve made everyday people thousands of dollars from simple livestreams is already a fantastic advertisement for PumpFun, but no large streamer will make the switch from Twitch or YouTube, as having a token attached to their name is a giant brand risk. This is the problem they face, but if they can devise a sustainable way to provide creators with viewer support and financial incentives that differ from current live streaming platforms, then they stand a chance.
Conclusion
We’re in a new world paradigm. We are seeing an increasing number of people flock to streamers as their primary source of entertainment, their new “TV.” Streamers are celebrities now, and live content is king.
Now, with AI gaining such prominence, being a real-life person is more important than ever. It is likely that streaming will continue to be more popular, and PumpFun has the potential to capitalise on this trend.
Will they do some restructuring to change things up? Will they simply choose to stick with their current structure and see what happens?
I don’t know what PumpFun will choose to do, but what I do know is that this will be a space to watch for the future.
Schizo out.
🤖 Almanak’s Point Campaign
For this week’s Almanak spotlight, we discuss their point campaign.
With TVL at an all-time high (>$80m) and over $10m committed in just one day, Almanak is making waves with its vaults.
Season 1 came to an end on September 21st, after 9 weeks.
Started on the 14th of July, it was divided into 2 distinct phases:
In their own post, the team mentioned that users can expect points to convert 1:1 to tokens.
How did users earn points? While season 1 is over, this could be important for future seasons (not yet announced).
Depositing capital into Almanak Vaults
Utilise referral codes to invite friends
Deploy strategies and vaults
Hold funds in the Almanak wallet
Last but not least, Almanak partnered with Cookie as part of their Attention Capital Markets (ACM).
The concept is simple: users who back Almanak and post about it on X can earn cSNAPS and qualify in the leaderboard for a share of over 80% of rewards (over $500k in total, 0.55% of the total token supply). There are two leaderboards, one for cSNAPS and the other for SNAPS.
Aside from snapping about it, strong focus was placed on users either using the platform or contributing to the Almanak Legion sale.
Through these actions, users could get multipliers that impacted the points earned:
Invested in Almanak on Legion? Up to 10x multiplier
Deposited over $500 in a vault? Up to 5x multiplier
Staking COOKIE in Diamond Tier? Up to 5x multiplier
For those interested in strategising for a following season, here’s the detailed breakdown of all the ways users could earn points in Season 1:
Combining all of these actually provided quite a big boost.
Although Season 1 has just finished, the Cookie ACM campaign is still ongoing.
Fresh from today, they also added alUSD positions on Pendle (and Curve) in the campaign:
How to best leverage this? Some chads already shared their strategies.
What’s the next step for Almanak?
The end of season 1 means we’re getting close to Almanak’s TGE, initially envisioned at the end of September.
We expect Season 2 to launch soon after TGE.
📖 Recommended Reads
Here’s an excellent list of Prediction Market articles to read, curated by @nosleepjon
Great post by @0xLouisT on DATs
Lastly we have an awesome piece on how to value HYPE using DCF by @RyskyGeronimo
That’s it for today’s issue, we hope you enjoyed it.
You can check out our X for new research reports and weekly gigabrain content.
See you in the next issue,
The Castle Team
In our newsletter, we may discuss projects or tokens in which we hold positions. While we aim to provide informative content, our views are not financial advice. Please conduct your research and consult professionals before making investment decisions. Crypto markets are volatile, and past performance doesn't guarantee future results. Invest responsibly, and be aware of the risks. Your capital is at risk, and we do not accept liability for any losses.