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Michael Saylor’s Strategy added more bitcoin to its coffers this morning. The firm bought over 6,900 bitcoin for a rough total of $584 million.

The real milestone here: Strategy now owns over 500,000 BTC.

Can’t stop, won’t stop has truly become Strategy’s go-to motto. 

Meanwhile:

• Bitcoin’s climbing higher once again, hovering above $87K early this morning, a 3.5% increase over the past day. ETH’s over $2K, a 4% increase.

• Total RWA onchain sits at $19.26B, a 17% increase over the past 30 days. Stablecoins sit at $226B, only a 2% increase in the same time period.

• DeFi TVL’s topped $95.8B, a nearly 5% increase over the past day, per Blockworks Research.

🔎 Fundamental focuses

The AI/crypto narrative seems to have died down, despite some mentions of it during DAS (AI itself was a hot topic). 

But while the narrative may not be top of mind, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist anymore.

Pantera’s Cosmo Jiang believes that both AI and crypto — together and separately — are two of the biggest disruptors today. Jiang’s background is in tech investing, which makes the way he views opportunities unique in comparison to some players in the space. 

For example, Jiang said that the wildly volatile nature of crypto can simply be boiled down to the fact that it’s a space dominated by startups, which sometimes justifies the craziness. Eventually, though, Jiang believes that we’ll see a more fundamental focus enter the market via institutional capital. 

Jiang specifically is looking for a return on time as well as the “biggest growth areas” that’ll be rife with disruption — particularly areas where there’s an abundance of debate and disagreement.

It’s obvious to Jiang that “AI is uniquely enabled by crypto, and that blockchain … can be helped by AI in a few ways.” The talent pool also possesses a heavy amount of crossover already. 

“AI naturally creates abundance and blockchain naturally creates scarcity,” he noted. 

It wouldn’t surprise Jiang if we see a world — 10 or 15 years down the line — where AI is as frequently used as the internet is today. And that’s where he has some alpha for all of you. 

Jiang is closely watching projects like Grass, which he praised as doing an “incredible job getting multimodal data in a very unique way that could not have been done without a decentralized network. Lo and behold, they’re now selling their data to the largest AI companies that you and I all probably use in our everyday life.”

Then there’s Bittensor, which is dominating in token incentives. Pantera previously showed support for Bittensor, and a 2023 update from Bittensor said the venture capital firm bought TAO as well as expressing interest in “supporting the ecosystem.”

“Historically, open source developers or researchers have never been able to be compensated for their open source work,” Jiang said. But the idea is that you could compensate them with token incentives that could be monetized. 

That then becomes a “very sustainable system.”

Bittensor “is such an interesting instantiation of the first time on a very global basis and a bit scaled basis, open-source research can be profitable for those who don't want to go to big tech companies and become close source.”

And there you have it folks — some early morning alpha to go with your coffee.

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• There’s a new $250M liquid fund in town from DWF Labs. 

• Fund season seems to be underway after Fortune reported that Haun Ventures is raising $1B across two funds. Yeah, you read that right. 

• Tether’s biggest priority right now is an audit from one of the Big Four after bringing on a new CFO.

🚧 Removing the roadblocks

On the other hand, stablecoins are still a very hot topic right now. Especially for institutions, now that there seems to be a clear pathway for them to gain exposure to the space. 

If Empire host Jason Yanowitz is correct, then we could have a decent chance of getting US stablecoin legislation passed in the next month and a half (his exact range is 30 to 45 days). 

Keep in mind: “The big unlock is the distribution of stablecoin technology,” as Zero Hash CEO Edward Woodford told the crowd at DAS last week. 

But Foresight Ventures poses a big question here: How deeply will stablecoins assimilate into the financial system?

Right now, the most popular approach to stablecoins — something we’ve heard from both Robinhood and PayPal, among others — is the “stablecoin sandwich” where “stablecoins act solely as a bridge between fiat currencies in the middle of a transaction’s lifecycle.”

The potential unlock for stablecoins would be if folks decide to hold their stablecoins instead of swapping back into fiat. This seems like a more likely scenario in Central and South America as well as parts of Asia, but it could still hit some roadblocks in terms of US adoption.

Foresight says there are three concerns (but really just two if we take Yanowitz’s comments into account): regulatory uncertainty, user experience and compliance concerns. 

“Mass adoption of stablecoins will not solely come from emerging startups but from the collaboration of established distribution channels,” Foresight said. 

“We’re seeing a trend where Web3 payment startups are taking advantage of mature distribution channels by integrating their technology into existing companies with SDKs, offering users the option to pay with both fiat and crypto in any situation. This approach helps address the cold-start problem and builds trust with enterprises and users from the beginning.”

The door’s starting to open — now we just need to get the crowd inside.

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: Fidelity

Over the weekend, Fidelity filed for its own onchain US Treasury fund. 

My first thought was: finally. 

It’s no surprise that Fidelity is interested in crypto. Heck, it even custodies its own bitcoin for the firm’s ETF.

The product is expected to launch in late May, per a filing with the SEC. Similar to what we’ve seen previously, Fidelity will begin with Ethereum and then potentially expand to other blockchains down the line. 

I’m personally all for another firm jumping into the tokenization game. We’re at the point where the more the merrier, similar to stablecoins. More entrants breed heavier competition and then that hopefully gives us better products. 

It’s a bullish cycle to be in.