🔥 Token like it's hot

Brought to you by:

I guess there really is an appetite for more companies to adopt crypto strategies for their corporate treasuries. 

Upexi, which received funding to start a Solana corporate treasury, closed up 330% yesterday to $9.89 a share. Before you get too excited, though, it’s fallen 20% in after-hours trading to $7.

Its average volume over the past 65 days was 1.68 million, per MarketWatch data, though its volume as of yesterday was 100 million. Impressive, I guess, but that’s where I raise my eyebrows.

Maybe I’m just being unnecessarily negative and this strategy will pay off for them in the long run. On the flip side, perhaps I’m taking a long-term bullish outlook in that I think the more adoption that takes place, the more normalized this strategy becomes and then we don’t see such ridiculous price action. 

It’s all about mindset, right?

Meanwhile:

• Bitcoin’s up to $88k, a 1.5% increase over the past day. ETH continues to hold on to $1,600. 

• Solana’s REV is up to $21 million, a week-over-week increase of 15%, according to Blockworks Research’s Dan Smith. 

• The global crypto market cap is up nearly 3% to $2.74 trillion, per Blockworks Research.

🌡️ Adjusting expectations

Let’s talk about tokens. 

It’s been a fairly big debate on CT (sorry, Elon, CX just doesn’t have the same ring to it). But let me back up for those of you who have managed to spare yourselves from the takes across social media: Basically, in light of ZORA, folks are debating the overall appetite for tokens. 

“$ZORA is for fun only and does not entitle its holders to any governance rights or a claim on any equity ownership in Zora or its products,” Zora said on its website. 

We’ve talked a few times now about the rise of fundamentals in crypto, and tokens like ZORA kind of go directly against that thesis because there are no fundamentals. And that’s the debate that I’ve been stuck on.

Ryan Connor of Blockworks Research thinks that crypto should focus on tokens that are backed by fundamentals. Connor has long been a believer in the rise of fundamentals.

On the other hand, folks say that tokens like ZORA are bullish because they introduce a new type to experiment with. 

However, is ZORA really any different than a memecoin? While Zora promotes itself as being for “fun only,” it’s not as fun as a memecoin per se, given that those who buy the token are funding the treasury without getting anything in return. 

In fact, one of the best critiques of ZORA I’ve seen came from Triton’s Kevin Mills, who noted that the issue isn’t that the token is for fun, but rather the fact that the money goes to serve the project and investors.  

“Tokens are controversial,” Connor noted. “Especially in the context of memecoins, which I think have been objectively the most successful product in the history of crypto.”

He added that crypto projects have to ask themselves: where does a token make sense?

“You have a lot of data collected in crypto where you should mostly know where tokens make sense. In the context of scarcity and assets that have value, tokens make a lot of sense. In the context of governance, tokens make a lot of sense in the context of the memecoin game,” he added.

But the difference between a memecoin for fun and a token like ZORA is that folks understand the game of “chicken” that they’re playing when jumping into a memecoin that could quickly wipe out in a matter of minutes. 

“However, in the context of project tokens, it was a very early 2024 thing where a project could launch a memecoin, and people would jump in,” Connor said. “The market is increasingly punishing projects that have done that, and in light of the market exhaustion over a low float, high FDV … my bet is ZORA, if it is just a memecoin, I don't expect it to do too well.”

Brought to you by:

Arkham is a crypto exchange and a blockchain analytics platform that lets you look inside the wallets of the best crypto traders — and then act on that information.

Arkham’s Intel Platform has a suite of features including real-time alerts, customizable dashboards, a transaction visualization tool, and advanced transaction filtering — all of which is accessible on all major blockchain networks, and completely free.

Arkham’s main product is the exchange, where users can express their trade ideas against the market.

• Oh, yikes: Galaxy Digital swapped ETH for SOL per onchain data. 

• Bitthumb is preparing an IPO in South Korea and is taking a hard look at its business.

• Crypto firms donated roughly $18 million to President Donald Trump’s inauguration fund.

✔️ Checking in

In Monday’s episode of Empire, Zero Hash’s Edward Woodford said that the bull case for Circle depends on how well they ride the banking train. It seems like they’re trying to execute. 

I say this because of two newsy tidbits around Circle that dropped yesterday: One being that the stablecoin issuer (who’s also trying to debut on the public markets at some point) is launching Circle Payments Network. 

“CPN provides financial institutions with a modern way to move money globally with the speed, transparency, and programmability of the internet,” a press release touted.

Nic Carter of Castle Island Ventures noted that CPN looks like the stablecoin answer to the SWIFT network. (SWIFT is essentially the open standard utilized by banks to communicate with each other.)

And the second news item: The Wall Street Journal reported that Circle — alongside other crypto firms like BitGo — is looking to apply for bank charters.

Both of those play into the distribution and technological factors that Circle brings to the table, which make up part of Woodford’s bull case. 

“I’m incredibly bullish on stablecoins, and by nature, you have to be bullish on other components,” he told Empire co-host Jason Yanowitz.

It’s a builders market. It will always be a builders market. 

36 hours of pure output. The Permissionless Hackathon, powered by Cracked Labs, is where devs go heads down to ship.

Deployments. Not ideas — code in prod.

💻$100K+ in bounties

June 22–23 | Brooklyn

On my mind: Paul Atkins

Katherine:

Paul Atkins has officially been sworn in as the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

Not much changes immediately, but that’s okay! The regulator’s been chugging along since the start of the year, especially on the crypto front. If I’m being honest, it’s nice that we’ll now have a bit of a break. 

However, once Atkins settles in, it’ll be interesting to gauge how he thinks about crypto. Speaking for myself, I’ll be scanning every transcript of his speeches for crypto mentions. 

When paying attention to the regulatory front, I’m personally more interested in stablecoin legislation at this point.