☀️ Walkin' on sunshine

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The Trump family really is all in on crypto.

This morning, Hut 8 and the Trumps announced “American Bitcoin Corp,” a majority-owned subsidiary that’ll focus on bitcoin mining and development of the previously announced strategic reserve. 

This all came about after Hut 8 acquired American Data Centers, which included investors Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump. American Data Centers was then rebranded. 

Eric Trump is set to serve as the chief strategy officer of the new entity, which received a decent chunk of Hut 8’s ASIC mining equipment, with an 80% stake in return. 

Interesting times, eh?

Meanwhile:

• Bitcoin’s back down to $82,000 to start Monday, a nearly 6% drop over the past week. ETH’s below $2K, marking a 12% drop over the past week.

• Total liquidations in the past 24 hours comes out to $264 million, per CoinGlass data.

• DEX Bluefin controls roughly 36% of spot volumes on Sui, per a Blockworks Research report.

🦵 Kicking it off

We’re heading into the second quarter of the year, and — as I wrote last week — this last quarter was a doozy.

But some folks are feeling kind of good about this next quarter… so far.

Unfortunately, with fresh tariffs on the US horizon, this morning is not off to a great start for crypto or equities.

Federico Brokate, head of US business at 21Shares, saw a silver lining to last quarter, which is that they saw “fantastic flows” for the ETFs. For Brokate, that gives an idea of how much client demand exists.

The continued volatility, especially out of Trump’s White House, may continue to spook some of the more risk-on investors. But Brokate remains pretty positive. 

“I think we're seeing all the right tailwinds. And so, yes, the volatility at a macro level is impacting performance here in this asset class — like every other asset class — but investors are taking this opportunity to come into the market even at a lower cost basis, which I think is the absolute right move,” he said. 

None of this, unfortunately, is going to be enough to move us out of the wait-and-see moment we seem stuck in. The big tailwinds are still up in the air: actual regulation, word from the SEC on the slew of crypto ETF filings, and further clarity from the SEC (hopefully from the roundtables they’re hosting). 

I know it’s not a surprise to any of you, but it’s where we remain. However, this quarter could get us out of this rut if folks like Empire co-host and Blockworks co-founder Jason Yanowitz are right and we have stablecoin legislation in the next few months.

Funny enough though, Brokate thinks we’re actually going to become more narrative driven as institutions continue to pile in. That’s not to say fundamentals won’t play a huge part, but he thinks that investing itself is narrative driven, and the more crypto aligns with macro, the more important headlines and news events will be. 

“I think the constant capital trickling into the industry is certainly changing the way that prices react to different news. But at the end of the day, all investing, especially when it's so regulatory and geopolitical — [given that] crypto is a global asset — so all these things are very narrative driven,” he said.

Guess we’ll always have a narrative to fall back on.

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• Shh, don’t scare the altcoins, they’re skittish: CoinShares saw inflows to altcoins for the first time in five weeks, a potential positive. 

• Hate to disappoint, but Elon Musk shut down any possibility of D.O.G.E adding DOGE. 

• M&A Monday: Archax bought Globacap Private Markets with plans to offer RWAs.

🐟 Bigger fish to fry

Remember Mesh’s Bam Azizi from our chat earlier this month after his firm raised a whopping $82M?

Azizi and Paradigm’s Charlie Noyes joined Yanowitz on this week’s episode of Empire to chat about the raise and crypto’s killer app — stablecoins (sorry if you’re tired of hearing that).

But the thing is, as Noyes put it, “stablecoins deserve all of the attention and excitement they’re garnering.” Especially when we’re in such an awkward spot market-wise. 

Noyes thinks that not only are stablecoins offering up a viable and understandable use case on crypto rails (something the industry sometimes struggles with) but there’s also an additional add-on. 

The talent pool is much bigger. Because a lot of these projects have FinTech qualities, they can seek out talent that’s not just crypto native. 

And, as the competition grows fiercer and fragmentation starts to occur, Mesh stands to potentially add more value, Azizi added. 

While the dream would be for folks to use stablecoins for everyday payments, Azizi thinks that we’re more likely to see stablecoins leveraged for cross-border payments right now. Though hyperinflation areas like Turkey or Colombia could see more retail stablecoin use cases given that they don’t have the same access to bank accounts and credit cards as the US does. 

Next stop for stablecoins? Getting the Netflixs and Amazons of the world to accept USDC, USDT, etc. That’s when real adoption happens.

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

Permissionless IV is for the ones deep in the code — building infra, launching new systems, and reshaping how this space runs.

🎤 Speaker apps are open — got something that matters? Say it on stage.

💻 Hackathon is live — $100K+ in bounties. Builders get in free.

June 22–26 | Brooklyn

On my mind: Pardons

Katherine:

Last Friday, President Donald Trump pardoned Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo, Samuel Reed and Gregory Dwyer of BitMEX. 

The pardons come after Trump pardoned Ross Ulbricht and former Nikola CEO Trevor Milton. 

It certainly seems to send a potential signal that more crypto pardons could be on the way. So far, we’ve heard reports that Sam Bankman-Fried is interested and Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao could potentially be on the table too, though he’s denied asking for a pardon.

If this is just the start of Trump’s term, it’s certainly going to be interesting to see how he continues to interact with crypto. It’s been one hell of a ride so far.