Data & Insights: Friends Till The End

The latest crypto craze was centered around Friend.tech, a new social media platform linked to X (formerly Twitter ) that allows users to buy keys (previously known as shares) of other users and message whoever they've invested in. The platform attracted prominent figures on crypto twitter and outside the crypto industry.

• Friend.tech launched on August 10th, just over two weeks ago, and has already posted $4 million in profits and over 2.35 million transactions.
• The social platform built on Coinbase 's Layer 2 network Base saw its popularity skyrocket last week, with daily transactions above 500,000 and fees topping $840,000 at its peak.
• It's possible to link the wallets on Friend.tech to real life users because users' accounts are connected to Twitter, leading many privacy focused individuals to criticize this model.

Circle of Life

USDC's dominance on Ethereum fell from 45% earlier this year to under 33%.

• The stablecoin has been struggling since it de-pegged back in March, around the time Silicon Valley Bank collapsed. USDC's supply has dropped from over 41 billion before the de-peg to just 24 billion this month as burns continue to outpace mints.
• Coinbase recently took an equity stake in Circle, USDC's issuer, and the two firms are now looking to expand the stablecoin to six new blockchains, strike up more institutional deals, and open up USDC to more jurisdictions as a means to boost sentiment and supply.

Critical Mentions

Open interest across ETH futures hit $4.43 billion on August 27th, the lowest its been since December 2022. The price drop and subsequent liquidations of August 17th closed out positions and pushed open interest down. It is one of the sharpest drops we've seen this year, with 2023 showing mostly an upward trend.

The percentage of both BTC and ETH supply in profit fell after the selloff we saw earlier in August. For ETH, the percentage in profit fell to 44% for the first time since November 2022. Over 61% of BTC is still in profit, which is still relatively high compared to the end of 2022.

Data & Insights is a weekly newsletter and article series by The Block Research Analyst Rebecca Stevens that highlights recent trends and top charts from The Block’s Data Dashboard. Sign-up to receive Data & Insights in your inbox every Monday for free. Previous articles in the series are available with a subscription to The Block Pro.