It’s a Memecoin World and We’re Just Living in It — Week in Review

Stocks are up, lipid is up, golden is up, and Bitcoin is up, presently astatine $80,000, up 30% successful the past month. Whether oregon not it’s logical, the debasement/store-of-value commercialized appears strong, according to Bloomberg’s ETF expert Eric Balchunas.

The crypto carnivore marketplace appears to beryllium good and genuinely down us. For each the speech successful this newsletter and elsewhere astir the institutions being here, astir haven’t truly begun to determination into crypto with size. Bullish. Crypto ETFs pulled successful much than $2 cardinal for a 2nd consecutive week. Solana spot ETFs conscionable had their strongest agelong connected record.

While the wide inclination successful crypto is bullish, this week macroeconomics and geopolitics introduced volatility to some the up and downside. Bad quality first. Tensions successful the Middle East escalated successful what’s go predictably bizarre fashion. President Trump posted an AI video of Iran’s Kharg Island being “blown to smithereens” and mused astir changing the sanction of the Strait of Hormuz to the Trump Strait. That contributed to the aforementioned emergence successful the terms of oil, but it wasn’t the lone factor.

Treasury Secretary Bessent blamed Ukraine too: “Ukraine has decided that they privation to stroke up Russian vigor assets and refined products, truthful that is creating upward terms unit connected a planetary basis.”

Now connected to the bully (for crypto). Ursula von der Leyen spoke astir mobilizing European savings to money European companies, which is tantamount to superior controls, a classical instrumentality of fiscal repression. Anyone who has paid attraction to Russell Napier these past fewer years is unsurprised that this is arriving successful the EU, UK and Japan, though the gait mightiness beryllium surprising. Since Bitcoin tin perchance skirt superior controls, immoderate bought BTC successful absorption to the news.

The probability of a Fed complaint hike got arsenic precocious arsenic 68% this week. Folks similar Lyn Alden don’t expect it to happen, which could beryllium bullish if it catches galore by surprise.

In crypto news, Robinhood Chain was the absorption of this week. Earlier successful the week, it flipped Ethereum and Hyperliquid successful 24-hour app revenue, and connected Thursday, it flipped Solana. By state fees, Robinhood Chain became the largest Ethereum L2 successful the world, collecting $546,000 successful a azygous day, up 936% from 30 days prior. On Thursday, Robinhood Chain generated implicit $4 cardinal successful 24-hour revenue, astir $1.4 cardinal annualized against Robinhood’s $4.4 cardinal successful yearly revenue. Santiago Santos pointed retired that concatenation gross runs astatine astir 90% margin, which works retired to thing similar a 50% summation successful profits.

Memecoin trading is fueling each the enactment connected Robinhood Chain, but with a caller twist. A tokenized banal is paired to a worthless memecoin (with immoderate tenuous relation to the stock) successful a liquidity pool. For example, the BONER memecoin was paired with tokenized HIMS shares. Last weekend, BONER reportedly cornered 81% of the on-chain proviso of tokenized HIMS shares, causing the terms of tokenized HIMS to diverge by 37%.

Tokenized AMC became the people of on-chain traders, resulting successful respective aggravated posts from AMC CEO Adam Aron directed astatine Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev, who, for his part, seemed calm. This RWA twist is being pushed arsenic thing wildly caller oregon exciting, which is partially true, but don’t beryllium fooled. It’s extractive, the fiscal equivalent of Jackass. Dormant KOL CryptoMessiah warned that Robinhood Chain is rife with scams. He knows what he’s talking about.

The Robinhood Chain communicative is incomplete without bringing up Fomo, the app liable for thing similar 90,000 of the 115,000 wallets connected the chain. Se Yong Park, co-founder of Fomo, claims the app is onboarding astir 40,000 radical a time from the app stores. Asked whether these Fomo users are new, helium said, “I don’t truly deliberation determination are 40,000 existing radical each time that are discovering Fomo from the crypto space.” If Mr. Park’s numbers are adjacent remotely accurate, it’s apt Fomo is onboarding caller users for the archetypal clip since the January 2025 TRUMP memecoin launch.

Mike Zajko’s look astatine Fomo’s maturation suggests a blase paid-acquisition campaign. Mr. Park claimed July’s full maturation walk was astir $150,000.

Fomo’s gross crossed $1 cardinal successful regular fees for the archetypal time. KOLs are posting FOMO-inducing (fear of missing out) gains, similar crossing $1 cardinal from a $10,000 commencement a period ago. These PnLs are verifiable, which makes them acold much persuasive than the screenshot system of cycles past. It’s inactive mostly mendacious advertizing due to the fact that the gains are unrealized PnL connected illiquid memecoins. Oh yeah, and users are already gaming the screenshots and leaderboard mechanics. Of 429,000 traders connected Fomo, astir 5% are successful profit. Only 0.25% person made much than $500.

The well-known dismal triumph complaint hasn’t deterred KOLs from gushing astir societal trading and memecoins. Fomo has enabled 1 KOL to find Robinhood Chain runners simply by pocket-watching: “social trading is simply a contagion and you tin rapidly decipher who’s conscionable farming followers aft watching them for agelong enough”. Perhaps “contagion” was a Freudian slip.

Leading KOL Ansem predicts aggregate memecoins astatine multibillion-dollar valuations successful Q4. He is besides performing method investigation connected his namesake memecoin, ANSEM, implicit with a higher-lows-and-higher-highs chart.

Ryan Watkins, notably not an influencer KOL, predicts societal trading volition turn successful popularity, starring to trading celebrities. Jeff Dorman disagreed, penning that societal trading isn’t new, that it has failed repeatedly for decades, and that it fails for the aforesaid crushed each time. Namely, anyone genuinely worthy pursuing yet stops posting publicly. This brings to caput Cobie’s arc.

Whatever happens, memecoins are commanding attraction now. Plenty are frustrated. The communal ailment is however memecoins are a zero sum crippled successful which parasites leech disconnected immoderate returning optimism. Rampant memecoining is simply a bull-cycle killer. Let’s anticipation it’s a sideshow, for the involvement of the processing bull market.

Flood thinks crypto is entering “peak fiscal nihilism” and becoming a onshore of wolves. This seems successful enactment with predictions of a broader casino civilization turning each portion of beingness into a lottery. There is humanities precedent for this successful post-revolutionary France, wherever rampant speculation yet damaged productivity.

Let’s crook to different news. The SEC projected updating the rules and forms governing registered transportation agents. The applicable result is that tokenization becomes overmuch easier to physique around. A grounds 1.9 cardinal on-chain tokenized equity holders, up 134% period implicit month, shows there’s demand.

Bitwise launched PAPY, an RWA vault connected Morpho that lends AUSD deposits programmatically against a diversified handbasket of overcollateralized tokenized real-world assets.

Elsewhere, CBB published a postmortem connected an equity perps arbitrage bot that made $10 million, which should beryllium peculiarly utile for anyone funny successful trying retired the arbitrage game. Mippo shared a illustration of the L2 wars showing dominance changing hands repeatedly successful cleanable epochs. Things determination accelerated successful crypto. Yesterday’s victor is today’s loser. Metamask erstwhile wholly dominated marketplace stock earlier losing it all. Phantom, the wallet darling of past cycle, is the caller Metamask.

Metaplanet, sitting connected 43,000 bitcoins, moved different 2,400 BTC worthy astir $186 cardinal into Coinbase Prime wrong 3 hours connected Monday. There besides seems to beryllium immoderate contention astir Metaplanet CEO Simon Gerovich’s options contract, which gives him a fixed percent of Metaplanet shares alternatively than a fixed amount.

On the ineligible front, Judge McMahon ruled connected the motions to disregard successful the Pump.fun people enactment successful the Southern District of New York. The RICO claims and the unlicensed money-transmitting concern allegations against Pump.fun and its founders survive. In prediction markets, Kalshi issued its first-ever beingness trading prohibition to erstwhile U.S. Representative George Santos, on with a good of much than $70,000, for marketplace manipulation.

Solana began the week with bully news. The Solana disinflation connection passed by a hairsbreadth aft Kraken flipped from nary to yes astatine the past minute. Mert Mumtaz reported making 500 calls successful a fewer hours to resistance the votes crossed the line. The frenzy connected Robinhood Chain led Solana partisans to knock Robinhood’s 30-cent state fees, which prompted the reflection that Solana’s are 10 cents and that astir each structural occupation applies to both.

Finally, security. Solana’s governance triumph was undercut by a atrocious fewer days for its neobanks. More than $600,000 was drained from idiosyncratic accounts astatine avici, and balances were reportedly emptied crossed aggregate apps. Rain Cards, the infrastructure powering the bulk of these neobanks, was rumored to beryllium the basal cause, with users of Tria and Solayer Pay affected.

Cronos, meanwhile, halted artifact production implicit the play to incorporate a $75 cardinal exploit connected Tectonic, a lending protocol that unsocial accounted for 46% of the chain’s DeFi TVL. Tectonic priced its ain governance token disconnected bladed on-chain liquidity. It keeps happening due to the fact that the aforesaid mistake keeps getting made.

Just earlier publication, Trezor released a heartbreaking update astir the shipping hack from AUG 13, revealing an further 67,000 affected customers successful the U.S.

Stay harmless retired there.

-David Sencil