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

As the Beluga Brief grows we’ll try out new content sections and schedules to find what is best for our readers — since Memecoins are all the rage these days, we’ve added a section to cover all the craziness in the market from Marc Andreessen-funded AI memecoins to the most profitable traders turning $100 into millions. If you have other suggestions for things you’d like us to cover, feel free to leave a reply on our Twitter!

Fundstrat Solana Report

Our partners at Fundstrat, a leading market strategy and sector research fund, have just released their report on the cutting edge technology being developed on the Solana blockchain. They have also been kind enough to make it available to Beluga Brief subscribers for free!

If you’re interested in a deep dive into topics like the slide above, you can download the full report from the link below. You can expect more reports like this from our partners in the future, so be sure to stay tuned if you’re interested in getting ahead of the market!

What happened today?

Another crazy day of volatility in the market as Bitcoin took a breather, sitting at $88,000 at time of writing. It’s crazy to think the election was only a week and a half ago with how much has happened since then — for reference, BTC itself is up over 30% since that night and the rest of the market has added almost $300B in market cap. While it’s crazy to think how far the space has come this year in terms of price, I don’t think we’re nearly done with the bull market. The reality is most institutions and even sovereign nations were offsides on the Bitcoin trade, and are just now adapting to accommodate this industry.

The question now is, where do things rotate after Bitcoin is done pumping? We’re already seeing some movement among alt-coins, but while the pumps have been nice the majority of that category still sits very far down on the year. Memecoins remain all the rage especially with the insane run Dogecoin has put on, and with Elon Musk now in a position of power saying memes saved the country, I don’t think we’ll see them going away any time soon. I do however think at some point, likely when Bitcoin stalls out, we’ll see a liquidity rotation back towards DeFi and utility tokens — don’t get me wrong I love memecoins, but if all we produce out of crypto this cycle are valueless tokens for people to gamble on the future may not look so bright.

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

• U.S. ETF Inflows hit $4.7B over 6 days as Bitcoin becomes 7th-largest asset in the world

• Franklin Templeton expands tokenized money market fund to Ethereum

Alt Coins and Stocks

• Trump-Supported World Liberty Financial taps Chainlink data services as DeFi platform takes shape

Regulatory

• Eighteen Republican attorneys general and the DeFi Education Fund sue the US SEC over its treatment of crypto

• The US government might be cracking down on Polymarket

New Launches

• Portal Ventures raises $75 million fund to invest in pre-seed crypto startups amid bump in venture financing

• Tether launches RWA platform to ‘allow the tokenization of anything’

Miscellaneous

• Pnut memecoin trader turns $17 into $3 million. Here’s how they did it

Memecoin Corner

As I said above, memecoins continue to be absolutely insane. It feels like every day there is a brand new coin that goes from $0 to $100M in a matter of hours (like this trader who made $3M off $17 in $PNUT), and while this sounds crazy as long as it keeps happening there will continue to be a flow of liquidity into the ecosystem; it’s very difficult to see other people generating life changing gains and not want to be a part of that yourself. With Elon’s appointment to the DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) things have gotten significantly sillier.

Basically anything that Elon mentions gets turned into a big memecoin, most recently the Banana from the Starship launch as well as his pet hedgehog "'Shrub” which is up over 3000% since the start of November. Further showcasing how insane this meme cycle has been, even the historically-conservative Coinbase has decided to list Pepe as well as Wif as of an announcement earlier this week. Even Litecoin, one of the longest standing blockchains in the industry, took to X last night to jokingly announce they would be transitioning to a memecoin due to all the hype.

LTC is now up over 15% today, so maybe they were onto something?

Tweet of the Day

Pretty surreal seeing a memecoin trading app surpass one of the largest online brokerages in the world in the app store.

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