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?

Alt-coins continued to crush over the last 48 hours, as both Tron and BNB reached new all-time-highs while old DeFi tokens like Curve sit up 400% in the last 30 days. XRP has held onto its new number 3 spot after flipping Solana earlier this week, which is seriously impressive - I can say with confidence that not a single native crypto trader I know was holding anything significant in XRP, indicating the people who won here are likely normies. In fact, most of these “dino coins” that have been pumping like XLM, XRP, ADA never had much crypto-native involvement which is definitely interesting to see — once again it seems the market has pumped the things that nobody is paying attention to, as it loves to do.

Token launch season is also full steam ahead after the incredibly successful HyperLiquid airdrop last week, which saw a number of traders rake in as much as 8 figures just for trading as they normally would. While this style of airdrop, which saw a third of the supply allocated to users with no lockups or insiders, is clearly something to learn lessons from, most chains and products do have investors and so it would be impossible to replicate. My hope is it inspires teams to try to bootstrap their own growth without outside funds, as it’s clear that if you have a product people like they will buy your token.

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

• Ethereum and Dogecoin prices rise as Bitcoin has another close call with $100k

• Bitcoin resumes rise after digital proponent selected for SEC

Alt Coins and Stocks

• Did South Korea’s martial law stop XRP rally? Here’s what’s driving the price

• Monero surges to two-year high of $211 as privacy coins heat up

Regulatory

• Trump picks crypto advocate Paul Atkins for SEC Chairman

New Launches

• DeFi.app raises $2 million seed round at $100 million token valuation

Miscellaneous

• Why this Aussie manager is tokenizing its $97M fixed income fund

Beluga Trading Wallet

Today marked another ATH for the Beluga Trading Wallet as $CRV continued to surge hitting a peak of over $1.22, bringing our profits to 300% since we DCA’d in over the summer. At this point it would be silly not to take our initials out, so I execute our first transaction in a while to do exactly this. We now hold 40,000 $CRV amounting to about $45,000 for free, and additionally have some more liquid capital to rotate elsewhere. For the last few months we’ve been pretty illiquid with all our funds fully deployed, however with the price action of the last couple weeks that is changing.

Despite our $FTM bag being up around 150%, I haven’t shaved any of that off for a very specific reason: the bridge for the brand new Sonic chain is expected to launch in the coming days, which is the big catalyst we were looking for. Often these events are “buy the rumor sell the news,” however with the way things are developing I expect a couple Sonic-ecosystem assets to drive a lot of attention to the native token. Things like $BRUSH, $BEETS, and even memecoins like $GOGLZ and $THC could all potentially be attractive buys if Sonic goes the way we think it will. As always, you’ll be able to see any trades we make live on the Beluga website along with the reason we’ve allocated to each token!

Tweet of the Day

Hawk Tuah finally launched her coins and to nobody’s surprise, it was sniped to oblivion — a nice classic pump and dump scheme from a D list celebrity!

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