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?

After launching less than a week ago, the GRASS token from the Grass Protocol has surged from $800M FDV at launch to $1.5B FDV at time of writing. The purpose of Grass is to allow users connected to the network to essentially sell their extra bandwidth to other users and companies that require it, generating $GRASS rewards over time. This is one of the only high profile launches in recent history to perform well after launch especially considering how much of the supply went to airdrop farmers. Typically what we would see is a strong dip after launch before a recovery as airdrop sellers rotate out, however this time it’s basically only gone up.

In my opinion this is likely due to a combination of factors, namely that the average airdrop was quite small as it was spread out across over 1.5M addresses, as well as the fact that most of the liquidity is on centralized exchanges rather than DEX. This makes it more difficult for US-based investors to sell their position as the CEX that offer Grass trading are not usable by US citizens which of course reduces the possible sell pressure. With the launch of their token they have also begun a new season of rewards farming, so if you’re interested in getting in on the price action yourself you can follow Grass on Twitter.

While Grass has been crushing it, the majority of the market sits down over the last few days presumably over uncertainty in the outcome of the US election tomorrow. It’s worth noting however, throughout the history of Bitcoin elections have set bottoms each time that have never been revisited. Is this time different, or will we see Bitcoin race to $100k by the end of the year?

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

• First UK pension fund invests in Bitcoin

• Bitcoin hits record high against BlackRock’s U.S. Treasury ETF as investors search for returns: Van Straten

Alt Coins and Stocks

• ‘Growing investor appetite’ in tokenized fund space: UBS

Regulatory

• Upcoming US elections poised to influence crypto legislation in 2025: Here’s what could happen next

New Launches

• G8keep platform goes live on Base

Miscellaneous

• Here’s how much the Polymarket election whale stands to win — or lose — betting on Trump

Memecoin Corner

While AI memes took a breather, the focus of memecoins this past weekend was Peanut the squirrel, a rescue squirrel being kept as a pet by a social media creator. After news that the NYPD had euthanized Peanut came out, it caused the $PNUT coin to go from 0 to almost $10M in a matter of minutes. The story didn’t end here for $PNUT however, as a series of tweets from Elon Musk caused the coin to run over $100M market cap in one of the wildest pumps we’ve seen in some time.

Elon still has a Peanut tweet pinned to his profile, which has garnered over 25M views in only 13 hours. This makes $PNUT representative of one of the most viral memes on the internet right now, similar to the virality of Moo Deng the baby hippo which saw an ATH of over $300M. Since the massive pump yesterday $PNUT has retraced 70% down to $35M, which while brutal is actually pretty common in memecoins. If Peanut continues to gain attention from mainstream audiences, I’d expect to see $PNUT come back up over time.

Tweet of the Day

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