🧗 Risk takers

If you’re feeling the tension in the air, you’re not alone. However, crypto isn’t bothered by what’s happening internationally.

Instead, there were $1.9 billion of inflows into crypto ETF issuers over the past week.

“Despite geopolitical concerns weighing on risk assets last week, digital assets remained resilient, attracting inflows alongside gold. Digital asset investment products recorded US$1.9bn in inflows, marking the 9th consecutive week of inflows,” Coinshares’ James Butterfill said. 

So far, so good. Bitcoin’s still over $100k. Phew.

🎣 Gotta catch ‘em all

Could we get an alt season after all?

Monarq Asset Management’s Shiliang Tang told Empire co-host Jason Yanowitz that there’s a possibility that the popularity of crypto treasury companies sparks an alt season that we haven’t seen before. This one would be focused on tokens deemed “ fundamentally valuable enough for traditional public money and capital” to get involved with.

It’s an interesting take, and one that I haven’t heard before. Especially because there’s a lot of criticism around these vehicles, some of which is warranted due to the entities’ structure. 

Meanwhile, FalconX’s Josh Lim said that the rise of these treasury companies puts crypto — if we’re recycling what we talked about on Friday — in the “early to mid” innings of crypto’s adoption. 

 ”There's a pretty healthy pipeline of large deals. Like, we think there's only going to be a handful of really credible teams like operators and the bankers [and investors]” that participate in these deals, he said. 

He noted that there’s generally a “chosen one” in each category, and those are the winners. Take, for example, Strategy or perhaps SharpLink Gaming. Strategy’s pretty much set itself as the gold standard, and SharpLink could apply the Strategy playbook to ETH.

Lim noted that he thinks there’ll be four or five “big ones” and then “lots of small ones.” His exact estimate was 50 or so. 

But while there’s an appetite now, Lim noted that there are still risks. 

 ”The downside risks are basically there could be sort of…fatigue for these like public equity deals and crypto — let's say flat lines — and all these things trade at a small discount to NAV,” he noted. 

If the risks play out, then Lim says that the market needs to stabilize and wait for “more capital to come in.” He added that there’s precedent for it. 

But Yanowitz thinks there’s a different risk on the horizon. He believes that these companies need a good financial engineer and a marketer. And for him, a lot of the smaller ones making the pivot don’t have either.

Look, it’s clear that the treasury companies are here to stay. But the battles for the best is still underway.

From RWAs to modular infra, AI agents to mobile-first consumer apps, the builders making it real are heading to Brooklyn.

Permissionless IV is the definitive gathering for crypto's technical founders and builders.

📅 June 24–26 | Brooklyn

• President Donald Trump disclosed that he made over $57 million from crypto ventures. 

• As Blockworks’ Jack Kubinec and I first reported, the Solana ETF issuers filed amended S-1s.

• Circle’s interested in upping its partnerships, per CEO Jeremy Allaire.