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What happened today?

Another brutal red day for the crypto markets as over $750M was liquidated from traders leading to Bitcoin falling as low as $82,000 earlier in the day. The further decline is likely due to news of more impending tariffs, which has bred major uncertainty among investors in every market. However, with crypto so far down the risk curve, the selloff has been much stronger relative to the stock market. On the far end of even crypto is memecoins, which have seen a tremendous falloff in terms of overall valuation as well as attention.

The graphic above which has been circulating X today shows the rate of migrated tokens on pump.fun over time (in short, a token ‘migrates’ off of pump.fun once it reaches a certain market cap), which after peaking at a shocking 1100 per day has now dropped to under 100. For the last year, pump.fun has been the source of nearly every single popular memecoin launch — almost all of them are now worthless. This is not to say memecoins are over as I think they represent a unique way for people to gamble, however it’s important to highlight that valueless tokens do eventually become valueless.

Trading Talk

There isn’t much cutting through the noise of this selloff, however two things I keep hearing are 1) DeFi is more interesting again, and 2) the fastest growing ecosystem for this is on Sonic. This is a chain we’ve talked a lot about for many months now, and it seems like it’s finally gaining the traction we were looking for, due in large part to the $200M airdrop coming later this year. The TVL has now risen to over $600M, a 300% increase in the last month despite market conditions not being favorable to new chains (to say the least).

The Beluga wallet already holds some $BEETS from the BeethovenX protocol, which is the largest Liquid Staking provider on Sonic, however there are tons of new protocols deploying every day that don’t yet have tokens. Some of these may end up being very lucrative airdrops on their own, and with the added $200M Sonic airdrop I think it’s definitely worth paying attention. We’ll be looking around the ecosystem to find our favorite dApps, but it’s important to remember the risks involved with trying new protocols - by definition they are new and untested, and may be at higher risk of compromise than something more established.

Tweet of the Day

To say Zach is a legend is an understatement, very cool to see one of our industry’s largest VC funds rewarding his hard work — we need it now more than ever.

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 makes slight recovery, but institutional downside hedging has surged, analysts say

Alt Coins and Stocks

• Bank of America CEO says bank will likely launch its own stablecoin

• Core Scientific stock surges after $1.2B expansion of data center with CoreWeave

Regulatory

• The DOJ has reportedly opened an investigation into President Javier Milei’s promotion of $LIBRA

• SEC closes investigation into crypto exchange Gemini, Cameron Winklevoss says

Miscellaneous

• Haun Ventures leads $63 million funding round for payment firm Raise to grow out blockchain-based gift cards

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Recent Beluga Content

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