The biggest crypto news and ideas of the day |
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The fall of 2020 was an exciting time for crypto, with bitcoin — after beginning the year around $7,000 and plunging to below $4,000 during the March Covid panic — in the middle of a rollicking bull market and appearing set to push through the $20,000 milestone.
Mr. Market had a different idea though and as families began to get together for the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, a wave of selling took place. Between East Coast Wednesday morning hours and the first football game early afternoon Thursday afternoon, bitcoin plunged from roughly $19,500 to $16,200, a decline of nearly 17%. The action was quickly dubbed the Thanksgiving Day Massacre. Exactly four years to the day later, bitcoin is seeing another swift decline after failing to surpass another milestone. There are, of course, key differences. First, this year's big number is $100,000, or five times that of four years ago. Second, the decline this time around has been more drawn out and is far less severe (so far) on percentage terms, a drop of just about 8% to $91,500 after nearly taking out $100,000 a few days ago.
The aftermath of 2020 will be encouraging to the bulls. Just four days after the plunge, bitcoin had returned to just shy of $20,000 and by mid-December had soared to a new record high above $24,000. By year-end, the price was above $30,000 on its way to the bull market peak of $65,000 in April 2021. |
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Pantera Capital Management’s Bitcoin Fund just hit a milestone: a 1,000-fold gain in the value of its crypto holdings since launch. Started in 2013 as one of the first investment products exposing customers to crypto, the fund has returned 131,165% after expenses and fees. As noted by founder Dan Morehead on X, the fund saw a huge surge following Donald Trump's election as U.S. president this month. To get started in bitcoin investing, the Bitcoin Fund bought 2% of the world’s bitcoin (BTC) supply when the cryptocurrency's price was around $74. BTC has skyrocketed over 120% in this past year alone, pushing it to a new all-time high just below $100,000.
“I think we should buy aggressively now,” Morehead wrote in a letter dated July 5, 2013, that he shared publicly Tuesday. “The price is going WAY UP. It's going to squeeze up like a watermelon seed.”
Years later, bitcoin is “still squeezing up like a watermelon seed,” Morehead wrote in a memo on Tuesday.
He predicts that the cryptocurrency could reach $740,000 by April 2028, which would translate into a $15 trillion market capitalization, due to the fact that 95% of financial wealth has not yet addressed blockchain, he said.
Morehead gave credit to institutional managers like BlackRock and Fidelty, both which launched spot bitcoin and ether (ETH) exchange-traded funds earlier this year, for easing access to the industry and allowing exposure to their tens of millions of clients.
He also said that blockchain’s 15-year regulatory headwinds will now finally turn into tailwinds with the first pro-blockchain U.S. president taking office in January. |
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Bitcoin’s Pumping. Memes Are Minting Millionaires. The bear market’s snoozing, and the bull run is here.
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Starknet has become the first major layer-2 blockchain running on top of Ethereum to let users earn money by staking their tokens and validating transactions. The feature is intended to help decentralize the auxiliary network and has been in the works for a while. Starknet’s main developer firm, StarkWare, formally proposed the change to the community in July. Now, anyone who has at least 20,000 STRK tokens (roughly $12,000 at recent prices) can pledge the asset as collateral and earn rewards for validating transactions. Users with less than 20,000 STRK can delegate their tokens to validators to stake on their behalf. (Validators that behave maliciously or neglect their duties stand to forfeit staked tokens.) Validators and delegators that want to withdraw staked tokens must wait 21 days to receive them as well as any rewards earned from staking. Starknet is following in the footsteps of the main Ethereum chain, which completed a long transition to the proof-of-stake consensus mechanism in 2022. “It took Ethereum three years to get this right. It’s also going to take us time, but Starknet will be the first major L2 to take these steps toward decentralization,” said Eli Ben-Sasson, the CEO and co-founder of StarkWare, in a press release shared with CoinDesk. In April 2024, Metis, a much smaller layer-2 network, added staking to its ecosystem. However, the contract where Metis tokens are locked sits on the main Ethereum chain, though users can stake them on the L2 through a liquid staking protocol — which bridges back to the mainnet. Metis is a "validium," a different type of layer-2 blockchain than rollups like Starknet. Implementing staking on Starknet is part of a multiphase plan. During this first phase, the StarkWare team will study staking habits on the network, and from there will assess whether and how its validators can be given the additional responsibilities of creating and "attesting," or confirming, blocks in the protocol. “We are paving the way for enabling members of the Starknet community to sequence and validate Starknet blocks, which is where the true magic of decentralization takes effect,” Ben-Sasson said. Anticipating the launch of staking on Starknet, Bitwise Asset Management said Monday it would run a public validator to which any STRK holders can delegate tokens and separate validators for large institutional clients. |
Fastex’s ftNFT YoCerebrum Awards: The ‘Oscars of Web3’ Comes to Malta Black-tie tuxedos. Elegant gowns. Spicy dance performances. A glittering awards show that celebrates creative triumphs, attracting the who’s-who of the industry. You’d be forgiven for thinking this was the Oscars or the Grammys. But the event was something else entirely: The ftNFT YoCerebrum Awards, now in its third year, and for the first time taking place in Malta. The Academy Awards honors the best in film, the Emmys honors the best in television and now the ftNFT YoCerebrum honors the best in Web3 creativity. Continue reading here. |
What does the ragtag group including a fitness equipment maker, biopharmaceutical company and producer of battery materials have in common? Bitcoin, of course. As the cryptocurrency skyrockets to unheard-of levels this month, at least 12 publicly traded companies that previously had nothing to do with crypto announced they plan to buy bitcoin (BTC), choosing it as a modern — and, lately, quite profitable — place to park spare cash. It's a path illuminated by Michael Saylor's laser eyes since 2020, when he began converting his sleepy software maker MicroStrategy into a corporate vault for bitcoin. That's turned MicroStrategy into a massive stock market success — up roughly 30 times in value since Saylor began buying bitcoin for the company, amassing a massive stockpile now worth about $38 billion. Just this month, its shares have nearly doubled in price since Donald Trump was elected U.S. president after pledging to embrace crypto. (Other crypto stocks have jumped, too. Coinbase, the exchange operator, is up nearly 70% since the day before the election.) Others are trying to duplicate that success. On Friday, a biotech company, Anixa Biosciences (ANIX), said its board of directors approved buying an undisclosed amount of bitcoin to diversify the company's treasury reserves. The stock rallied as much as 19% but settled for a 5% advance by the end of the day. Meanwhile, on Thursday, fitness equipment company Interactive Strength (TRNR) said it plans to buy up to $5 million of bitcoin after its board approved the cryptocurrency as a treasury reserve asset. Following the announcement, its stock soared more than 80% at one point before settling for "only" a full-day gain of 11%. Earlier last week, biopharma company Hoth Therapeutics (HOTH) announced a $1 million bitcoin buying plan, triggering an up to 25% surge in its stock — though nearly the entire rally fizzled by the end of the day. Similarly, companies including LQR House (LQR), Cosmos Health (COSM), Nano Labs (NA), Gaxos (GXAI), Solidion Technology (STI) and Genius Group (GNS) saw momentary spikes in their stock prices after revealing bitcoin treasury plans in November. Only one company fell after its announcement: Acurx Pharma (ACXP). "The recent bitcoin boom, coupled with MicroStrategy's 500+% stock surge in 2024, has inspired a wave of companies — particularly microcaps — to announce bitcoin buying strategies," said Youwei Yang, chief economist at BIT Mining (BTCM). Whether these newcomers to the Saylor playbook will ever see Saylor-like benefits remains a very open question. "This behavior could end the same way [as previous bull markets]: unsustainable hype followed by sharp corrections as the market realizes many of these announcements lack substance," Yang said. And whether the recent entrants ever follow through is also technically unknown. So far, only artificial intelligence firm Genius Group is known to have actually bought any bitcoin. But who can blame them for trying? Investors who invested early in MicroStrategy are getting ridiculously rich, and even recent investors are making easy money. Saylor largely funds MicroStrategy's bitcoin purchases with money raised from stock and debt sales. The copycats might gain access to capital markets that they wouldn't otherwise have had. Traders are following the old adage, "Never fight the tape" — meaning follow the market's direction no matter the fundamentals, while companies are providing what the market wants. Nobody wants to be "that" person or company telling their bosses, shareholders or anybody else that they underperformed the market because they didn't follow MicroStrategy's footsteps. "Only a few years ago, it was almost too risky to buy bitcoin. Now, however, the risk increasingly seems to be the opposite — not buying is actually the risk," said Brian D. Evans, the CEO and founder of BDE Ventures, adding that "there’s real pain in not having exposure."
To the hopefuls, this sudden corporate scramble might be a sign that mainstream bitcoin adoption is finally arriving, especially in an environment where President-elect Trump has said he wants the U.S. government to stockpile bitcoin, too.
"For BTC proponents, the expectation is that a combination of macro factors such as inflation and new-found regulatory friendliness will spur further examples of the asset being placed on corporate balance sheets," Toronto-based crypto platform FRNT Financial said in a report. Also, a bitcoin buying strategy could open up capital markets for companies, like it did for MicroStrategy and miner MARA Digital (MARA). Both were able to raise money recently through convertible debt that pays no interest to investors, meaning those investors are willing to forego current income in exchange for the ability to eventually convert the debt to equity, thus gaining bitcoin exposure. Saying they plan to buy bitcoin "is a useful way for companies to raise capital, not unlike the way MicroStrategy has done over the last few years," said BDE's Evans. However, to cynical ears, it all sounds a bit like the passing fad in the late 2010s that involved companies that previously had nothing to do with crypto adding the word "Blockchain" to their corporate name. The most famous example of this was little-known beverage maker Long Island Iced Tea renaming itself Long Blockchain, with an explosive result, at least initially: Its share price nearly tripled in a single day after the crypto-rechristening. The gains didn't stick and the stock was later delisted by Nasdaq. (And three people were accused of insider trading by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.) |
The Takeaway: Why Memes Matter |
By Ivo Entchev, partner at Youbi Capital Memecoins are the most divisive topic in crypto. By memecoins, I mean tokens that represent an idea and fluctuate in price based on the attention that idea receives. The best meme investors tend to be young people who are very online and attuned to internet culture. Memecoins are commonly juxtaposed with tokens that possess actual utility within protocols, or so-called utility tokens. Even with market caps surging and retail interest growing, most people tend to describe them as “stupid,” “degenerate,” or a “casino.” This includes the vast majority of crypto VCs, perhaps because their investment mandates tend to exclude memecoins (which can be lucrative) from their list of eligible investments. And just this week, many were calling for the complete government ban of the most popular memecoin launchpad, pump.fun, due to lax content moderation. I have always had an interest in memecoins — primarily because I was fascinated by their ability to act as a weathervane for internet sentiment and as a discovery mechanism for online communities. Today, I am convinced that memecoins are going to be revolutionary (not just popular). They are going to transform everything from civic engagement with government and the formation of mass movements to venture investing and the development of AGI. This vision for memecoins probably sounds fantastically deluded to you. To me, it is simply the unfolding if not yet evenly distributed present. Here is why. Memecoins are revolutionizing civic engagement Memecoins are creating policy markets for civic engagement. At the start of this crypto cycle, PolitiFi, a category of cartoonish memes depicting politicians, enabled buyers to speculate on politicians’ prospects, much like a prediction market. The two most popular tokens, called Jeo Boden (Boden) and Doland Tremp (Tremp) respectively, represented the two leading candidates for president at that time and had a combined market cap of over $700 million at their peak. This is a massive amount of tokenized attention. With a market cap of over $600 million, the Boden coin, which featured a distorted and senile Joe Biden, seemed to meme itself into reality when Joe Biden abandoned the presidential race due to concerns about his age and cogency. PolitiFi was just the start. What is emerging next could well revolutionize civic engagement with government. I am calling this new category PolicyFi. PoliciFi refers to the financialization of government policy in memetic policy markets. Rather than betting on the fortunes of politicians, buyers of PolicyFi memecoins will be betting on the policies that are most likely to attract attention and be implemented. While PolicyFi coins will certainly respond in price and market cap to the deliberative and implementing actions of government, we can expect the dynamic to become a two-way street, with memecoins themselves manifesting their memes through policymaking (as with Boden). In other words, these memecoins will help create a dialogue between the electorate and government, with large-cap memecoins signaling popular policy positions (and vice versa) while incipient or existing policies also possess market caps measuring the extent of their popular support and engagement. Skeptics may reject PolicyFi as yet more gambling or nothing more than a political poll. Again, they are wrong. Like prediction markets, the decentralized speculative behavior in PolicyFi will create positive externalities — namely, that people will be incentivized to engage with and understand government policies so they can profit from them in PolicyFi markets. Overall, I expect that this will lead to far more engagement with government policies than even a lifetime of civics lessons. (Of course, hostile actors might try to manipulate PolicyFi markets and safeguards may be necessary.) PolicyFi has begun its rollout, aided by the incoming administration, which is well-educated in memetics. The Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.) is both a memetic policy and a memetic department inspired by an existing memecoin, (Dogecoin), and is the inspiration behind a new one (D.O.G.E.). Since the D.O.G.E. announcement, both memecoins have surged. At the time of this writing, they possess a staggering combined market cap of nearly $59 billion. PolicyFi is not limited to D.O.G.E. There is a token, SBR (market cap: $24 million) that embodies the Bitcoin reserve policy currently under consideration and an e/acc token (market cap: $9 million) that stands for effective accelerationism, a set of pro-innovation values that are likely to impact environmental, industrial and AI policy, among others. There is also Don’t Die (market cap: $4 million), which is bringing the longevity cult on-chain and aligns with RFK’s health policy, which will prioritize prevention and a healthy lifestyle over treating sickness. Other tokens like MGR (market cap: $260 thousand), Major Government Reform, are trying to occupy the entire field of disruptive reform but are likely to be too general. PolicyFi is already here and it’s growing.
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