What Did Bitcoin Magazine Tell Trump?

GM friends,

It’s almost never a good idea to start talking about politics.

But then again, it’s an election year, crypto in the US is hitting regulatory obstacles that look politically-motivated, and among the presidential candidates there are now clear differences in their attitudes towards crypto.

So, let’s start with a look at the latest developments where crypto and would-be presidents overlap.

Here’s what’s in today’s issue:

• Sam shares his thoughts on the Bitcoin Magazine CEO advising Trump, JP Morgan holding Bitcoin ETFs, Ark dropping ETH ETF staking plans, Binance being placed under 3-year surveillance & Ondo’s RWA payment network.
• Week 13 update on the 10x portfolio.
• This week on chain.
• This week’s trending coins by Rebecca.

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Bitcoin Magazine CEO Advising Trump Campaign

As pointed out here last week, Donald Trump recently came out with an unambiguous pro-crypto message, stating “I’m good with crypto. If you’re for crypto you better vote for Trump.”

Admittedly, he knew he was speaking to people who definitely are for crypto.

But if you were wondering how sincere Trump really is on this issue, then it’s notable that the CEO of Bitcoin Magazine, David Bailey, posted a tweet on Saturday explaining that his organization has been working with the Trump campaign for the last month “to develop their bitcoin and crypto policy agenda”.

He also mentioned a proposed Executive Order to be signed on day one of a new presidency, while stating plans to raise a $100 million campaign war chest with the intention of getting a pro-Bitcoin president elected.

And while we’re on the subject of American politics, crypto advocacy group Stand With Crypto, which was set up by Coinbase last year, has launched a Political Advocacy Group (PAC) to channel funds to pro-crypto congressional candidates, using finances raised through donations from members.

Relatedly, Mark Cuban also recently posted comments about crypto and politics, with his main perspectives being that a Joe Biden election loss would be partly the fault of Gary Gensler and the SEC, that crypto is a significant issue for younger voters and independents, and that all of crypto should be regulated by the CFTC.

All in all then, it looks like crypto is going to be a recurring talking point in this presidential race, which in itself indicates how far the industry has come. And as meme coins are the flavor of the cycle, it’s also a reminder to keep track of the prices on $BODEN and $TRUMP as election season heats up.

JPMorgan Holding Bitcoin ETFs

In other crypto-gone-mainstream news, more 13-F filings have been rolling in to the SEC (these are forms in which large investment managers declare their equity holdings, and the current deadline for submission is May 15th), and chief among the big names connected with BTC is JPMorgan, whose filings showed that the firm is holding shares in the BlackRock, Bitwise and Fidelity ETFs.

Let’s note that these are–by JPMorgan standards–in small amounts, that JP Morgan is an AP for some of the ETFs, and that it acts as a prime brokerage providing custody services for clients.

But still, it’s a reminder that the needs of TradFi clients can diverge completely from the beliefs that TradFi spokespeople are expressing in public, with JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon having previously referred to Bitcoin as a “hyped-up fraud” and a “pet rock”, with use cases primarily of interest to criminals.

And JP Morgan isn’t the only famous name now being drawn into Bitcoin’s orbit, as it’s also become known, through 13-F filings–that Wells Fargo is holding shares on behalf of clients, PNC Bank are holders, the Rothschild estate is showing up, and we already knew BNP Paribas and BNY Mellon had acquired shares.

Ark/21 Shares Drop ETH ETF Staking Plans

The common expectation right now is that with the May 23rd VanEck decision deadline drawing closer, spot ETH ETFs won’t gain immediate SEC approval.

However, there was an interesting development regarding Ark and 21 Shares’ proposed fund, when the applicants at the end of last week amended their ETF plans to remove the capacity for the fund’s ETH holdings to be staked.

Could this be a move to improve approval odds, making the ETF more standard in its workings and palatable to a crypto-hostile SEC? Was it a direct response to SEC feedback?

These are possibilities, but removing staking also, arguably, would make the ETF a less attractive proposition to investors, as compared to self-custody and staking.

As for what likelihood the crowd is currently placing on ETH ETF approval, over on decentralized prediction market Polymarket, the odds of approval last week doubled, which sounds intriguing but… that increase only meant bets on approval rising from a very low 7% to a fairly low 14%.

Binance Placed Under 3-Year Surveillance

With CZ sentenced to four months in prison after pleading guilty to money laundering violations, Binance has now been placed by the Department of Justice into a three-year surveillance plan.

This means the exchange will be meticulously monitored by the Forensic Risk Alliance, which is an international consultancy firm that will report to the DoJ and ensure that Binance is in full compliance with the authorities.

Acceptance of this kind of close monitoring was part of Binance’s plea deal, and can perhaps be regarded positively as it offers reassurance to the markets that the exchange must be fully above board in its US operations.

Ondo RWA Payment Network

Finally, there was a bullish announcement from Ondo Finance over the weekend. Ondo specializes in tokenized financial products, and posted news of an incoming partnership with Zebec Network, which is focused on building a DePin and RWA payments network.

This collaboration will see Ondo stable coin USDY integrated with the Zebec Instant Card (a Visa and Mastercard-supported prepaid card that facilitates crypto payments), and also with the Zebec Payroll System (which is built around crypto), and plans include the capacity to earn yield on USDY.

During a cycle that’s up to now been heavily focused on meme coins, it’s refreshing to see a development centered on utility, but what do you think, are we going to see crypto become an everyday payment option, and will developments like the Ondo/Zebec partnership help when it comes to crypto adoption?

Reply to this email and let us know what you think about using crypto for payments and real world assets.

Week 13 Crypto Portfolio Updates

The portfolio is 21% down. Holding through the volatility in the market. Not much to report there. Not much to be doing right now either. Just holding my positions and adding to farming activity. 

I claimed my MODE airdrop tokens. Not currently worth very much. So will hold them to see if I can get more for them later. Same story for my ZERO tokens. 

I was trying to withdraw my ETH from Zerolend, but there is some wallet issue currently. Will try again later and redeploy that capital. 

Keeping up to date with doing the tasks for Natix and Saltwater Games. Saltwater ENTER CODE 6844845fa5

Starting with a look at the holdings of spot Bitcoin ETFs around the world, ETFs globally are approaching the 1 million mark, as they now hold, collectively, just under 950,000 BTC.

In the US last week, although GBTC outflows reached $103 million on Friday, making $171 million of outflows over the week, Grayscale’s longer outflow trend since January shows a flattening off, with over 325,000 BTC offloaded.

Last week was overall positive for ETFs in the US, with net inflows of 1,318 BTC, while in Asia, the Hong Kong funds have remained largely flat since they launched at the end of April, and are currently holding, cumulatively, 4,257 BTC, up just very slightly from 4,218 BTC at the end of the previous week.

Over on Ethereum, the on-chain landscape has significantly shifted compared with just a few years ago, as the majority of ETH transactions are now taking place away from the mainnet on Layer-2s, with that Layer-2 share (taking into account the three largest Layer-2s) reaching 82% last month.

And among Layer-2s, new network Blast–which was launched fully in March this year–is seeing increased activity lately, with transfer volume on its native stablecoin, USDB, reaching daily all-time highs of around $3.3 billion, which represents a weekly increase of over 700% after an initially flat period.

The other new Layer-2 of note right now is Base, from Coinbase, which has seen growing attention on its meme coins and NFTs, and was the subject of a report by Franklin Templeton which highlighted the chain’s SocialFi credentials (due primarily to Friend.tech being built on Base.)

And if we look at Base data, we can see that over the course of last week, the chain saw more inflows from Ethereum than any other Layer-2, with 26% of flows (which represented a total of $162 million) heading towards Base.

As for what users are doing on Base, the most used application is Uniswap, so for the most part they appear to be flipping tokens.

However, the leading Base DEX is Aerodrome, and we also can see that its native token, AERO, has from late March until now been registering the highest transaction volumes among all DEX tokens, including Uniswap’s token, UNI.

There’s been plenty of talk on Crypto Twitter about a meme coin supercycle–which can you take as skeptically or enthusiastically as you prefer–and one new platform that’s fully focused on memes is Pump.fun.

It’s about as degen and casino-like as you’d expect, but that approach is finding a niche user base, as last week the platform registered its highest revenue since launch, hitting over $750K last Tuesday as it continues to grow.

And speaking of meme coins, they continue to be a leading token sector, as last week the two top coins when considering the ratio of Open Interest to Market Cap (an indicator of leverage being used by traders) were meme favorites WIF and PEPE, and what’s more, this was by a wide margin (around double the ratio) as compared to third-placed token Filecoin.

And finally, zooming out a little, if you were wondering about the degree to which crypto is gaining traction in the mainstream investment world, then take a look at figures from RobinHood which show that crypto revenue on the platform close to tripled from the previous quarter in Q1 of this year, to reach $126 million.

This coincides with a particularly bullish period for BTC, and indicates strong interest when a narrative (such as ETF approval) is in play.

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Here are my key takeaways from the trends this week and whilst Bitcoin continues to trade sideways there’s been a ton of altcoin action.

1. Toncoin is a Web3 ecosystem within Telegram messenger that’s due to launch its token airdrop for the viral Telegram-based game Notcoin on May 16. TON jumped 13% in 24-hours on the news.
2. Solcasino is a crypto casino on Solana that’s been hosting giveaways on X to win cash prizes.
3. OctaSpace is a DePIN and AI cloud platform that’s up 47% in the past month and 25% in the past 48 hours as the community is calling it better than Render. An art installation in Paris has also been rendered by OctaSpace.
4. MANEKI is a newly launched memecoin on Solana that’s increased by over 30,000% since April 22. Now, Maneki has unveiled its roadmap.
5. Pixels is a Web3 farming and adventure game that’s hosted an AMA deep dive into its upcoming Chapter 2 upgrade. Gameplay demos and screenshots have also been shared.
6. Bittensor is a decentralized machine-learning protocol that’s dropped 35% in the past month and 24% in the past 7 days which has the community doubting the project’s moat. Its Subset incentive mechanism is now struggling.
7. Bitcoin has been declared a reserve asset by Japanese company Metaplanet. JPMorgan Chase has disclosed holdings in several Bitcoin ETFs. A 2013 Bitcoin whale has also resurfaced after moving 1,000 BTC.
8. Mode is a Layer 2 DeFi solution on Optimism that’s seen its token skyrocket 5,000% as its $550M airdrop has begun. Mode is teasing staking v2 which is launching next week. Velodrome has also integrated with Mode.
9. Solana is a Layer 1 blockchain that’s been the top blockchain for NFT trading volumes in the past month. Solana also looks set to surpass Ethereum in terms of fees soon too.
10. Render is an image and video rendering protocol that’s had its Octane X software featured in Apple’s May 7 iPad presentation. The RNDR token is up 7% in the past week.
11. Ondo is a Real-World Assets (RWA) platform that’s partnered with Zebec to launch an RWA payments network. The collaboration will use Zebec’s payment technology and Ondo’s USDY stablecoin system. 
12. Ethena is a DeFi platform that’s jumped 8% after ByBit has endorsed the USDe token as collateral for its derivatives trading.
13. Wormhole is a cross-chain communication bridge that’s received a grant from Optimism’s season 5 grants program and will be used to enhance the migration of wstETH to Optimism. Wormhole has also integrated with Scroll.
14. Pyth Network is an oracle network that’s partnered with Horizen Labs to provide Oracle services for smart contracts platform EON.
15. Jupiter is a Solana DEX aggregator that’s seen Clone integrate into Jupiter Routing to allow users to trade assets that aren’t native on Solana without needing to bridge.

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.

If you are reading this it means you are on the free version of the Wealth Mastery Investor Report, which is great for news and tips on the crypto markets.

If you really want to take advantage of fastest growing asset class EVER, I highly recommend that you check out my Altcoin course: Mastering Altcoin Investing

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See you next time!

Lark and the Wealth Mastery Team

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Wealth Mastery (Lark Davis, and the Wealth Mastery writing team) are not providing you individually tailored investment advice. Nor is Wealth Mastery registered to provide investment advice, is not a financial adviser, and is not a broker-dealer. The material provided is for educational purposes only. Wealth Mastery is not responsible for any gains or losses that result from your cryptocurrency investments. Investing in cryptocurrency involves a high degree of risk and should be considered only by persons who can afford to sustain a loss of their entire investment. Investors should consult their financial adviser before investing in cryptocurrency.

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