Is Trump’s Latest Crypto Claim for Real?
Gm friends,
As we approach the second half of the year (time flies in crypto), it’s uncertain whether it will be a chill summer for BTC.
Q3 has added explosive potential with the US elections incoming, and yet again this week, we can see politics exerting an influence over crypto sentiment.
That in mind, let’s begin with a look at the latest crypto-related political maneuvers, and how the crypto and tech industries are reacting to the presidential contenders.
Here’s what’s in today’s issue:
- Sam shares his thoughts on Trump claiming to be the Crypto President, the Arbitrum DAO approving a $215M gaming fund, FriendTech leaving Base, Sky Mavis recovering Ronin Bridge hacked funds & Phantom teaming up with Jito for liquid staking.
- Week 17 update on the 10x portfolio.
- This week on chain.
- This week’s trending coins by Rebecca.
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Trump Claims to Be ‘Crypto President’
The current crypto cycle’s political plotlines continue to unfold, so look away now if American elections are not your thing.
Once again, it’s former president Donald Trump who–perhaps not surprisingly–has been making bold statements as he continues to push his newfound pro-crypto credentials.
The venue for his latest remarks was a campaign fundraising event in San Francisco, which took place last week and was attended by a number of tech titans including, from the crypto industry, executives from Coinbase, and Gemini founders the Winklevoss twins.
The event was held at the home of high profile Silicon Valley VC David Sacks, who was a host in partnership with entrepreneur Chamath Palihapitiya, and it’s been reported that–according to former US ambassador Trevor Traina–Trump stated that he “would be the crypto president”, while the Trump campaign raised $12 million from the event.
Chart showing the TRUMP memecoin price
In recent weeks, Trump has made a series of pro-crypto statements indicating that he believes it’s important to ensure the industry can operate freely in the US, while becoming the first ever presidential candidate to accept campaign donations over the Bitcoin Lightning Network.
From there, it now appears that the crypto industry–and perhaps small pockets of the tech industry more widely–are taking a single issue approach to the election and either placing their trust in Trump, or seizing the opportunity to steer his crypto-related policy decisions, depending on how you look at it.
Arbitrum DAO Approves $215 Million Gaming Fund
Web3 gaming may not have been center stage recently, especially with memecoins emerging as the narrative of the moment, but there’s no shortage of development taking place across many different blockchains, and now gaming on Arbitrum has just been given a major boost.
This is thanks to the Arbitrum DAO voting for approval of an Arbitrum Foundation plan to allocate funds to a gaming push called the Gaming Catalyst Program (GCP).
76% of votes cast were in favor of the proposal, which will see 225 million ARB–currently worth over $215 million–designated to the GCP over the next three years.
The purpose of the program is to foster and expand Web3 gaming development on Arbitrum, which is home to gaming ecosystem Treasure DAO, and which enables the development of customizable Layer-3 blockchains called Orbit chains, giving gaming projects the capacity to operate on their own bespoke Layer-3s.
When it comes to Web3 gaming, there’s a huge amount of blockchain competition, with networks such as Avalanche, Ronin, Beam, and Oasys (among others) also emerging as potential gaming hubs, although at the same time, there is still considerable skepticism among a lot of traditional gamers towards the idea of using crypto in games.
FriendTech Leaving Base to Develop Custom Chain
Base is experiencing a lot of growth lately, and has possible tailwinds from both the new Coinbase Smart Wallet and the Base Onchain Summer event.
However, FriendTech is one protocol that has made the unexpected decision to migrate away from Base, as it plans to develop its own custom chain.
FriendTech is a Web3 social platform that launched in August 2023, and has now announced that it will be working with infrastructure specialist Conduit to create a chain called Friendchain, with plans for the new chain to utilize the platform’s token, FRIEND, as the means of paying gas fees.
The announcement from FriendTech was straight-to-the-point, with no further details given, and no explanation of exactly why the move will be beneficial.
As such, it’s not clear when the migration will take place, although the post explained that FriendTech would release further updates “over the coming months”, which gives an idea of the timeframe required.
FriendTech fees and Daily Active Users
What’s more, daily active user numbers on the platform, which had fallen to around just two hundred, leaped up by around 2,400% after the migration announcement was made.
Sky Mavis Recovers Ronin Bridge Hacked Funds
We hear a lot about hacks and exploits in crypto, but over the weekend there was some good news on this topic, as Web3 gaming company Sky Mavis (the creator of Axie Infinity) announced that it had recovered stolen assets worth $5.7 million.
The loss dates back to 2022, when there was a huge exploit on the Ronin bridge–used to transfer assets from Ethereum to gaming blockchain (and home of Axie Infinity) Ronin–which resulted in the theft of ETH and USDC worth, at the time, around $610 million.
The recovery of funds happened, according to Sky Mavis, thanks to “close coordination and dedicated effort amongst law enforcement agencies, lawyers, accountants, and blockchain forensic teams such as Chainalysis”, with the Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime leading the pursuit.
Additionally, around $40 million of stolen assets have been frozen by the authorities, but it will take more time from here before they can be fully recovered.
Of the funds reclaimed so far, 85% will go back to the Axie Infinity treasury, while the rest will be used to cover the costs of the recovery effort. All in all though, this news shows that stolen crypto doesn’t always disappear forever, as while it might take time and hard work, recovery is sometimes possible.
Phantom Teams Up With Jito for Liquid Staking
Top Solana wallet Phantom has collaborated with Solana staking protocol Jito to provide a liquid staking service that operates directly within the wallet.
This means that from within Phantom, users can stake their SOL with Jito, and receive JitoSOL LSTs (liquid staking tokens) in return.
In this way, stakers retain liquidity and the JitoSOL tokens can be put to work earning additional yield on Solana DeFi platforms such as Kamino Finance, MarginFi, and Drift Protocol.
This looks like a profitable development for users, but what do you think about its potential, are you staking SOL right now, and will you make use of JitoSOL to take advantage of liquid staking?
Reply to this email to let us know what you think about Phantom, staking on Solana, or anything else happening right now in crypto.
Week 17 Crypto Portfolio Updates
Up slightly this week as memecoins have been grinding higher. Benji really took off.
Most of the portfolio is still sitting in big losses.
Airdrop coins should have been sold on day one as those are generally down now too.
Holding and waiting.
The spot bitcoin ETFs continue to look strong, as last week–which was week 22 of trading–saw inflows totalling a huge 25,729 BTC, meaning you have to go all the way back to week 10 to find the last week with a bigger performance.
And as for how that buying compares to the amount of BTC being mined into existence, there were 3,150 BTC mined last week, meaning the ETFs bought two month’s worth of new BTC supply in just one week.
And equally impressive to that is the fact that last Friday’s positive ETF flows (totalling $130.99 million) created an extended run of nineteen consecutive days of net positive inflows across all the funds collectively, which is the ETFs’ longest positive streak since trading started in January.
Spot BTC ETF Total Flows
Sticking with bitcoin, but as it relates to tech, this month has seen BTC’s correlation with tech stocks rise to its highest level since 2023.
There’s a long-held sense among bitcoiners that BTC is a unique asset and will in the long-run decouple from risk-on assets, but right now, the correlation is apparent in the markets and worth being aware of.
And one more bitcoin characteristic to keep in mind as we head towards Q3 is its historical quarterly performance.
Here we can find, if we look at cumulative trade volume since 2012, that Q3 is, on the whole, bitcoin’s quietest period of the year, while Q1 is when the most trade is done.
However, there is always the possibility of outlier exceptions, and with the ETFs up and running, 2024 is set up differently to past years.
Moving on to Solana, there’s plenty of positive data to look at, starting with DEX volumes, which over the weekend hit close to $3 billion, and put Solana in the top spot across chains as the network took over 50% of total volume, with Ethereum in second place, and BSC and Base also in double digit percentages.
Looking at new wallet numbers, we can see that Solana has been growing a lot this year, and across last month experienced an enormous surge in the number of new wallets being created, which reflects positive sentiment around Solana and its ease of use.
Curiously though, even as the BTC price ranges close to all-time highs, the number of new bitcoin wallets being created has been moving downwards, which seems a little puzzling.
One possible explanation is that buyers might be opting to purchase the ETFs–which don’t require self-custody–rather than directly buying BTC.
That’s just one possibility, but it could represent an interesting change in approach between buyers before and after the ETFs went live.
And to get an idea of much DeFi activity different chains are getting, if we look at the data for Daily Active Users on Uniswap, divided by chain use, we can find that Base is out at the top with 36.3% of users, while Ethereum is next on 23.74%, and after that it’s Arbitrum on 12.98%.
Finally, bitcoin and crypto thrive on liquidity, and so from that perspective there’s good news if we look at the bigger picture, with global M2 (which measures money supply) now hitting a new all-time high of around $94 trillion.
Notably, the last M2 lows–represented by a deep trough in the chart back in 2022–coincide with the bottom of the last bear market, which gives a clear indication of the correlation between price and liquidity.
Here are my key takeaways from the trends this week and memecoin mania continues.
- Gala is a play-to-earn (P2E) gaming and music ecosystem that’s launched a new feature in GalaSwap allowing users to create their own tokens.
- Planet IX is a Web3 play-to-earn (P2E) platform that’s launched ep. 58 of its “New Era of Gaming” on Twitter Spaces.
- JetTon Games is a gaming platform on the TON blockchain that’s announced a partnership with crypto payments gateway, NOWpayments.
- MAGA Hat is a Donald Trump-inspired memecoin that’s been revealed as one of Donald Trump’s holdings in his $32M crypto portfolio.
- MUMU THE BULL is a memecoin on Solana that’s teasing something new is coming soon on its social media accounts.
- MAGA is a Donald Trump-inspired memecoin that’s been revealed as one of Donald Trump’s holdings in his $32M crypto portfolio.
- TARS Protocol is an AI infrastructure protocol on Solana that’s rallied 20% in 24 hours and over 55% in 7 days after launching its rebrand to Tars AI. The TAI token has now been listed on Bitpanda.
- Brett is a memecoin on Base that’s rallied over 50% in the past week as Coinbase launched its smart wallet on the Base network. The BRETT token has also been listed on KuCoin.
- Ethereum could reach $22,000-$154,000 per ETH by 2030 according to VanEck’s base case. K33 Research also believes an Ethereum supply shock is coming fuelled by $4 billion in ETF inflows within the first 5 months post-launch.
- Pepe is a memecoin that’s seen its recent rally end but whales have been buying the dip. One whale bought $5.85 million worth of PEPE according to Lookonchain’s data.
- GME is a Gamestop-inspired memecoin on Solana that’s jumped over 150% after Roaring Kitty returned to YouTube on June 7 with a live stream.
- Wormhole is a token bridge that’s launched a multi-chain staking and governance mechanism for its W token. The token jumped over 10% on the news.
- Notcoin is a Telegram-based game that’s hit a new all-time high and has been featured on Telegram Wallet’s X account. Notcoin has also reached 40M users.
- Solana is a Layer-1 blockchain that’s going to $900 according to Crypto Banter’s “The Sniper Trading Show.” Solana’s active wallets in 24 hours jumped to over a million this past week. 15.
- Polygon is an Ethereum side chain that’s bought blockchain research and engineering firm Toposware. This marks Polygon’s third ZK-knowledge investment in the past three years.
Thank you so much for your support, and I truly hope that today’s issue will give you insights needed to help you master your wealth.
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