🤡 Are we having fun yet?

Ethena and Anchorage sitting in a tree…

Just kidding, although the two did announce a pretty interesting partnership yesterday. The DeFi firm and the cryptobank will issue USDtb in the US under the new stablecoin laws. It is, if you will, one of the first stablecoins to be issued under the compliance standards of the GENIUS Act.

“Under the partnership, the USDtb stablecoin — which is currently issued offshore — will be issued in the U.S. by Anchorage Digital Bank,” the announcement said. 

I wouldn’t be surprised to see more moves like this. We already know Tether’s interested in finding a way to access the US market, too.

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“Animal spirits are definitely back in the market,” Empire co-host Jason Yanowitz told Dragonfly’s Rob Hadick on this week’s Round Up.

If you’re not super familiar with the term, it’s basically saying that human emotions and behaviors are driving the market action rather than fundamentals or technicals. 

Hadick noted that the rise of animal spirits is interesting given that retail “hasn’t been back in a long time.” And folks are eager to invest. 

But it looks like, to Hadick’s eye, that the frothiness is coming down, and he wouldn’t necessarily be surprised to see either a bottom or less volatility happen in the next few weeks. He also noted that, seasonally, August is not great for markets, which could have an impact on crypto. 

Now let’s take a look at pump.fun after, well, not such a fun week for the token. 

Hadick noted that there was concern about liquid fund demand even before this week, because he’d heard that the team “had told people they were going to raise $250 million from the liquid funds and then the rest was going to be to retail. And then when they released the tokens, it looked like it was more like $770 million to liquid funds.”

“That alone had raised people's concern that there just wasn't liquid fund demand anymore. Everybody had gotten filled on the demand they had. And so when it launched, there was an expectation that frankly [with] everybody there, there was no buyer left who had real size. And I think we've seen that play out pretty significantly,” he said.

And then there’s the fact that pump.fun founder Alon Cohen said that the airdrop wasn’t coming anytime soon in an interview with Thread Guy earlier this week. 

And, as folks recalibrate their expectations, Hadick noted that there seems to be more interest in pump.fun competitors like Bonk than in the OG launchpad. It doesn’t help that there could be a Bonk airdrop, Hadick believes.

“ Bonk is sharing more revenue with the creators. And so there is more demand…or there's more incentive from the creators themselves,” Hadick noted. 

And now you know.

Last week, I asked: Are we heading towards a rip-your-face-off bull market? 

Y’all seem torn on this one. 

Half of you were not so thrilled about the possibility of me jinxing it (oops, I’m sorry) and the other half said you think we’re already there. 

This week, I’m wondering: