- Empire
- Posts
- ✨ Main character energy
✨ Main character energy
The era of consumer crypto is upon us

Brought to you by:
Movin’ on up.
Now that the stablecoin bill had a successful cloture vote (after a separate unsuccessful one), it’s heading on over for a full floor vote.
Don’t get ahead of your skis here — it’s not a done deal, as my colleague Casey Wagner reported. But it’s getting closer!
And there have been some spicy moments, like last night when we went from 60 votes (which means it passes) to 59 after a few folks changed their minds…and their votes.
Wagner reported that some Dems are not too thrilled about the language in the bill, which might mean there’s more work to be done before we can finally say we have stablecoin legislation.
Elsewhere:
Bitcoin’s back above $105,000, a 2.2% increase over the past day.
According to Blockworks Research, over 31,000 new tokens were launched on Pump. fun yesterday.
The global crypto market cap is down slightly to $3.34 trillion.
👶 New kids on the block
As crypto continues to shift to a more fundamental focus, it makes sense that new metrics will be introduced — such as net new assets (NNAs).
Blockworks Research defines them as “assets that didn’t previously exist and/or couldn’t exist without crypto rails.” And, to be fair, it’s not a new metric to track, according to my colleague Ryan Connor.
Connor penned a report on NNAs and how they play into the rise of consumer crypto, something I’m keenly interested in.
Basically, Connor makes the case that crypto is becoming more mainstream and rolling out the red carpet for the consumer apps. These now have the opportunity to build up their user bases and, hopefully, become profitable. UXs have improved, the SEC’s no longer out to get US-based crypto projects, and memecoins have found a niche.
There are three examples for Connor: Pump. fun, Time. fun and Believe. Pump. fun is perhaps the most obvious, being the go-to memecoin hub for everyone. For reference, the chart below shows the tokens launched.
“Importantly, Pump. fun didn’t invent anything new. It simply addressed latent demand. For years, crypto natives have bent over backwards to issue arbitrary assets with funny names, trade them, and find the next 1000x,” Connor wrote. Pump. fun just simply took advantage of the narrative.
I mean, just take a look at Pump. fun’s total volume.
The dark purple is the volume of Pump. fun’s AMM, Pumpswap, which launched back in March.
But the effects go further than just the platform, Connor told me. It’s also sparked a rise in overall memecoins.
“A handful of crypto native funds are telling us they believe Pump. fun style memecoin trading has staying power. We think the market is starting to wake up to this reality, as builders are leaning harder into the category,” he wrote.
Stemming from similar roots, Blockworks Research thinks that social tokens, too, have their own staying power…but they’ll need to somehow sustain value. Time. fun’s sought to solve that issue by allowing creators to both earn trading fees when minutes are sold or bought, and allowing them to earn fees on volume and the redemption of minutes by fans.
For a non-crypto comparison, think Cameo’s playbook.
But Time and Believe each have a ways to go to prove that they can maintain Pump. fun level traction.
Candidly, I’ve had multiple discussions with Connor on Believe and, initially, I was lukewarm to it. But he has a compelling case. And the chart does speak for itself.
Look at that volume go.
Believe is different from either Pump. fun or Time. fun in that it seeks to give traders and developers access to a market where the two can directly interact. The goal is to remove venture capital from the picture and let traders invest in smaller projects aiming to build apps.
“The potential equity valuation of a few million dollars of free cash flow would be low, but let’s say, best case, may be valued at 20M USD via its forward [free cash flow], plus some premium for growth via a large installed base of a few [hundred] thousand or million downloads,” Connor explained.
“While this is a fantastic outcome for the founder, this outcome is too small for a VC portfolio. By targeting this underserved cohort on the supply side, Believe brings venture-like upside to a growing cohort of retail crypto capital,” he said.
If successful, a market for crypto opens up, similar to one giving TradFi traders access to private companies like SpaceX. Undoubtedly, there’s demand, but for how long?
Even with Pump. fun’s record, you can see in the charts that there have been times when activity has dipped due to decreased appetite.
It’s hard to deny the data, though, and for now it looks like these three act as a way to not only get retail investors in the door but keep them active in the space.
Brought to you by:
Citrea is the first zero-knowledge rollup to enable Bitcoin applications (₿apps) without changing Bitcoin's consensus rules. Its BitVM-based bridge is secured by Bitcoin, extending BTC’s utility in a native, trust-minimized way.
Citrea offers the most Bitcoin-secured path to bring DeFi and other onchain use cases to BTC, marking the beginning of an onchain Bitcoin economy. Citrea is currently on test and approaching mainnet.
Visit Citrea ecosystem page to explore testnet.

While Circle’s still pursuing an IPO, Fortune’s reporting that a sale could be on the table…with Coinbase and Ripple as potential buyers.
Bithumb is interested in going public, after expanding its share of the South Korean crypto market.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon says customers can now buy bitcoin, but they’re out of luck if they want the firm to custody it.
The Most Talent-Dense 72 Hours in Crypto
DeFi’s evolving. Real-world assets, capital formation, talent reshoring — it’s all in play.
Consumer apps are hitting mainnet — mobile-native, sticky and finally usable.
AI is going onchain: agents, GPUs, verifiable training…
And the people building all of it? They’ll be in Brooklyn for 3 days.
Sreeram Kannan from Eigenlayer
Ali Yahya from a16z
Aasey Caruso from Topology
Danny Ryan from ETH core
Founders and leaders from MegaETH, Helus, Jito, Supra, Anza, and more
📆 June 24-26 | Brooklyn

Genesis v. DCG.
The bankrupt lender's Litigation Oversight Committee filed two new lawsuits against DCG and executives, including CEO Barry Silbert. The suits allege fraud and seek to claw back billions of dollars.
“Due to Defendants’ extraordinary pattern of self-dealing, fraud, and mismanagement of Genesis for Defendants’ own gain while Genesis was insolvent, Genesis and hundreds of thousands of its individual creditors and institutional clients were deprived of billions of dollars of value in crypto and fiat currencies. Silbert continues to lie to this day, claiming he and DCG knew little of Genesis’s finances,” one suit claims.
A separate suit filed in a different court seeks to recoup over a billion dollars allegedly made in transfers by DCG and Silbert.
The Genesis estate and DCG have been locked in multiple legal battles for years now. Gemini has also both entered into and exited the picture a couple of times. All three faced a lawsuit from the New York Attorney General in the fall of 2023. Since then, the NYAG settled with Genesis. DCG called the settlement “subversive.”
All of this is to say: There are a lot of claims flying between the two.
But that doesn’t make either of these cases less interesting. With the bankruptcies from the last cycle wrapping up, Genesis will be one to keep an eye on.