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

Weekly Beluga Insights

After we ended the year on a bit of a low note, Bitcoin is once again racing back to $100k and there are signs of life across the alt market. In fact, XRP has now officially flipped the market cap of Tether (USDT) to become the 3rd largest token by market cap — for many traders that have been around like myself, it’s an insane statement to read given how many jokes were thrown at the token over the last 2 years. However if there is one lesson I have learned, it’s to respect the pump. Seeing coins like XRP run this hard likely indicates more normie involvement in the market, which is something we desperately need.

The hope is that normie success in coins like XRP trickles down to more interest in smaller alt coins and even onchain trading. Companies like Privy enable anyone to make a wallet with nothing but an email, Coinbase now allows its users to spend their exchange balance onchain, and apps like Moonshot make the onboarding process to memecoins as easy as buying a stock on Robinhood. In comparison to the experience for normies last cycle, it really seems like night and day, and puts us in a position where we can actually capitalize on mainstream attention.

Major Movers of the Week

Public Trading Wallet Update

It’s been a long time since we started the Beluga Trading Wallet, so for any new readers that may not have the backstory, here’s the quick run down: We originally launched the Trading Wallet with $100k in USDC in April 2024, marking basically the exact local top of the market. Using our own research and insights, we’ve since generated over $70,000 in profits through fairly low risk holdings (for crypto), all done in public with our trades live for anybody to see. If you’d like to follow along for yourself you can always see our live portfolio on our website!

The Beluga wallet sits up about $20k since our update last Friday, mostly driven by positive price action on Bitcoin and Ethereum. As we have taken a good chunk of profits from CRV and FTM back into ETH, it is now by far our largest position. Timing-wise, this feels great as we have seen a significant break in the trend for Ethereum ETF inflows (inflows have been very positive recently), and the Base L2 network is the home of many of the largest AI agent tokens on the market.

The combination of building momentum within the EVM ecosystem and the negative sentiment around it for the last year could result in a pretty powerful move to the upside. I suspect most of the usual suspects on Crypto Twitter are underallocated (if allocated at all) to ETH, which will cause a reflexive rise in attention due to cope when the price does pump.

To wrap things up I also wanted to highlight that while the Sonic chain was off to a slow start in terms of TVL, things are certainly picking up. For now I have kept our $BEETS position pretty small as its low market cap makes it inherently more risky than our other holdings, however if I see Sonic pick up more steam I’m happy to add higher.

Catch Up on What You Missed

• Polymarket’s huge year: $9 billion in volume and 314,000 active traders redefine prediction markets

• Dogecoin keeps surging as Fartcoin rides AI hype to all-time-high price

• Bitcoin buyers saw 40% gain on average last year, realized price shows

• BlackRock’s spot bitcoin ETF posts largest daily net outflows since launch

• ETF companies are racing to launch the next ‘hot’ crypto fund

Tweet of the Week

AIXBT trades at over a $500M valuation… I’m not sure if I’ve decided that is bullish for the bad AI coins I hold or bearish for our industry as a whole.

Check out Beluga’s Top 10 Predictions for 2025!

2024 was a wild year for our industry, but will 2025 be even crazier? Find out below!

Disclaimer

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