⛽ Let it PUMP

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Jack Ma’s Ant International is in the process of adopting Circle’s USDC on its blockchain platform, Bloomberg reported. 

It’s also seeking some international stablecoin licenses as it looks to build out said platform. 

Ant also processed a whopping $1 trillion of global transactions just last year. The Bloomberg piece added another layer to that, noting that the blockchain handled roughly one-third of the transactions. 

So it’s a huge win for Circle if this integration happens, and it’s yet again showing how far we’ve come.

Speaking of scoops, though…

💪 Just keep pumping

Yesterday, pump.fun finally announced its token and its ICO, which is set for this weekend.

There’s a lot to dive into here, but I wanted to start with a piece of information that I reported on Wednesday evening, which is that pump.fun’s team told insiders that PUMP could get 25% of Pump’s revenue. Massive, right?

Admittedly, we’ve heard rumblings of this leading up to the announcement yesterday. Take, for example, what Mike Dudas of 6th Man Ventures (an investor in pump.fun) told my colleague Jack Kubinec on the Lightspeed podcast last month.

“I would imagine there’s going to be some element of putting revenue to work on behalf of token holders. I won’t get too specific about that, and that there’s also going to be some component of a token that rewards folks who use the platform,” Dudas said.

And this might explain why US and UK investors aren’t able to participate in the ICO. 

Pump.fun didn’t immediately return a request for comment on the revenue share for token holders. 

According to the tokenomics shared by the team, 33% of PUMP will be sold in the ICO, while 13% was allocated to existing investors. In total, the fully diluted value is around $4 billion (lining up with what we previously reported).

Of that 33%, an initial 18% goes to institutional purchasers, with 15% going to a public sale. 

“Both private sale and public sale purchasers are on the exact same terms,” the team said. 

Doing some napkin math, that works out to be $720 million from private investors at the $4 billion FDV.

“While the token will be fully functional at launch, we’re giving thorough consideration to utility mechanisms like fee rebates, token buybacks, or other incentives and promotions,” the pump.fun team said in the announcement on X. 

I’ve seen the mixed feelings about the ICO on my X timeline, and I’m still working to get clarity on some things — for example, the revenue share for token holders. What does that look like? How does it work in reality?

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• Justin Sun bought $100 million of TRUMP tokens. 

• YZi Labs, the family office of former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, is backing 10X Capital’s plan to launch a publicly-traded company that holds BNB. 

• Truth Social teased a utility token that would be tied to a loyalty program.