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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.

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What happened today?

At this point, if a random friend or family member hasn’t texted you about the XRP pump I’d be surprised — currently sitting at $2.72 XRP has rallied over 400% in the last 30 days. Sure this is a bull market where everything is moving, however XRP has sat at basically the same price for the last 3 years. I think based on the reaction I had and what I’m seeing among traders, basically nobody was prepared for a move like this… and even if they were, I’m sure there aren’t many people who had XRP flipping SOL and USDT on their bingo cards for this cycle.

Interestingly, as people have aped into coins on the XRP ledger over the last couple days, we’re starting to see Solana lose some strength. The price drop to $220 is no big deal, but definitely interesting to see onchain metrics such as memecoin launchpad pump.fun’s revenue dropping. Rotations to other chains for memecoins have been pretty short lived in general this year, so we’ll see how long this lasts.

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

• Bitcoin miner Marathon buys $618 million worth of BTC

Alt Coins and Stocks

• Coinbase adds memecoin Moo Deng to listing roadmap

• XRP flips Tether becoming world’s third largest crypto as prices soar

Regulatory

• Would Donald Trump pardon former Binance CEO CZ?

New Launches

• Worth the HYPE: Hyperliquid gives out $1.6 billion in one of the largest airdrops ever

Miscellaneous

• Crypto entrpreneur Justin Sun eats banana art he bought for $6.2 million

Beluga Trading Wallet

At time of writing our two largest positions in the Beluga Trading Wallet, $CRV and $FTM, also happen to be the two positions that are up the most overall (not counting $BLAST which was received for free as an airdrop), which has pushed our balance to $160,000. Curve sat dormant for quite a while after our first purchase, however with the market’s renewed focus on stablecoins and DeFi, it has surged +160%. Despite the price increase I still see very little chatter around the protocol, which means it’s likely not time to sell yet. In a market like this one, no matter the narrative or product you want to trade based on the attention the token is getting and the attention you think it will get.

Fantom $FTM also had huge news today as it was announced the new Sonic chain has officially validated its genesis block, meaning it’s ready for use. The face of the operation Andre Cronje took to Twitter to say we should expect not only a bridge to the chain coming soon, but most importantly several novel DeFi protocols to be launched by Andre himself. Last time FTM took over DeFi, reaching almost $8 billion in TVL at its peak — could we see something similar happen again? It would definitely take more market interest in DeFi than we’ve seen so far this cycle, but at the same time it is also clear based on price action that traders are moving more towards “legitimate” tokens rather than memecoins.

Tweet of the Day

Ok retail might be here already

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