Welcome to the Beluga Brief, where we deliver data-driven insights to your inbox every day of the week, spending our time in the crypto trenches and combing through thousands of crypto news feeds so you don’t have to.

Moonshot, the “Robinhood of Memecoins,” has been taking the crypto market by storm allowing even complete newcomers to the space to play around in the memecoin trenches. If you’ve been interested in checking out memecoins for yourself but making a wallet is too daunting, Moonshot might be the app for you.

Sign up for Moonshot with our referral link for a chance to win up to $100 in free memecoins when you make your account!

What happened today?

A massive headline rocked the space this afternoon with news that the US Department of Justice had charged 14 individuals and 4 crypto companies of market manipulation and fraud. Among the companies named in the lawsuit is market making firm Gotbit, which has long been known among industry participants to be a shady organization and aided in too many scams to count. This marks an important moment for the industry for a lot of reasons, but namely it shows the FBI and DOJ are actively going after the real scammers of the space, rather than lawsuits against the “good guys” like Coinbase that we’ve seen from the SEC. If you want to read more about this investigation which included the FBI launching and rugging their own memecoin, you can find the entire complaint here.

On the trading side, markets took a hit today with Bitcoin once again falling back to the infamous $60,000 line despite the S&P500 making new highs. This kind of price action in light of traditional markets doing well is definitely worrying, but the backdrop for a pump through the end of the year is still looking good. Interestingly, a Web3 game entered the normie spotlight for the first time in a long time yesterday, with massive streamers like Ninja playing Off the Grid for their audience, a game built on Avalanche. In the past gamers’ collective hatred of crypto and NFTs have often stopped these games from ever picking up steam, however so far Off the Grid has been very well received. We look forward to seeing what else this team has to offer!

Biggest Headlines

The Beluga intern has been hard at work gathering all the most important crypto news stories so you have them in one place!

The Majors

• The $4bn cloud hanging over Bitcoin

• Bitcoin will rocket to $200,000 in 2025 no matter who wins the US election, Standard Chartered says

Alt Coins

• Trump-connected World Liberty Financial formally proposes launching on Aave’s Ethereum mainnet instance

Regulatory

• FBI created fake crypto token called ‘NextFundAI’ to take down market manipulators

• Gary Gensler grilled by law students and former SEC commissioner over his stance on regulating crypto

New Launches

• VanEck starts crypto, AI venture fund with former Circle staff

Miscellaneous

• Ark Invest buys $2.2 million of Coinbase shares as it offloads $36 million in Robinhood stock

Tweet of the Day

The FBI has some… interesting trading habits.

Fun Fact of the Day

The term "rug pull" refers to a type of scam where developers abandon a project and take investors' funds.

The content on this site is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice. While Beluga strives to ensure the accuracy and timeliness of information, there may be discrepancies when comparing our data to that of financial institutions, service providers, or specific product websites. Always consult with a professional before making any financial decisions.

Will McKinnon is the Head of Content for Beluga and has spent every day for many years trading coins. For that reason there are too many to name, however his largest holdings by a significant margin are Ethereum and Bitcoin. NFA DYOR