🐳 Daily Edition: Bitcoin Races to New ATH

In case you missed it, Bitcoin is currently on a mission for new all-time-highs, once again surpassing the $110k mark earlier today. Between the constant bid from the Bitcoin ETFs (which are now up 7x since BlackRock launched IBIT), the normalization of buying BTC for company balance sheets, and growing uncertainty in the longevity of fiat currency, it’s no surprise the largest crypto asset by market cap continues to rise. Interestingly though, this hasn’t yet resulted in the rest of the crypto market rising as the market cap of alt coins remains at about $870B, the same levels that we saw in 2021 despite tens of thousands (if not more) of new alt coins hitting the market.

One class of coins that does seem to be getting some love finally is the DeFi sector, something we’ve talked about quite a bit over the last few months. While the market was busy playing with memecoins, DeFi found one of the best product-market fits in the industry: stablecoins. With Circle IPO’ing last week and Tether beating out decades-old institutions in yearly revenue, it’s no secret everyone is looking at this sector right now. Plasma, an upcoming chain focused on enabling stablecoin payments, raised $500M in a community sale in less than 2 minutes today — if that doesn’t show the appetite for this sector, I’m not sure what will.

Balchunas with the mic drop

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 soars above $110k, nearing record as Ethereum and Dogecoin rise

• BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF becomes fastest-ever ETF to accumulate $70 billion

Alt Coins and Stocks

• Inside Solana’s expanding client stack

Regulatory

• SEC Char Paul Atkins says the right to self-custody is a ‘foundational American value’

• New York resident allegedly launders $530 million from Russia into U.S. using crypto firm a ‘covert pipeline’

Random

• Coinbase alum-founded Turnkey raises $30M Series B to grow engineering team: report

Beluga is excited to offer two Starter Packs from our partners at Hemi, a leading Bitcoin L2, and BONK, the largest memecoin community on Solana. Head to the Beluga Starter Pack page to claim points and more!