We're so back?

📊 Market Overview:

While CT had its 10th mental breakdown that it was all over, prices experienced moderate bounces, highlighted by a Friday pump. BTC is currently above $67K. SOL led the charge at ~$170, up 15.5% on the week despite a hack to popular meme casino pump.fun. ETH, which continues to be the whipping boy of social media, is sitting at $3100, while the ETH/BTC ratio touched new lows before bouncing to 0.046. 

Notable altcoins:

• PEPE - $0.00001022 (new ATH), +23.3%

• LINK - $16.09, +16.9%

• FTM - $0.8, +12.7%

• AR - $47.61, +12.2%

🤔 Three Opinions:

1. Investors are pessimistic that an ETH ETF can be approved this month as decisions loom for the VanEck and ARK's ether ETF applications on May 23 and 24. Polymarket gives the odds of an ETF being approved by May 31st only 13%.

• James Seyffart suggests that the SEC attempting to classify Ethereum as a security could be a justification for the delay in approval. ETHE, an indicator of institutional interest, trades at a 23.7% discount, further reflecting this market pessimism. 

2. DonAlt was main character of the week after his tweet hypothesizing we potentially already topped for the cycle. Couple thoughts:

• Cycles rhyme, but this time is different. Previous top signals (cringe BTC songs, Uber driver discussing BTC, media coverage) aren’t as useful. BTC is no longer a counterculture and is well understood by the mainstream. The crypto audience has expanded, leading to different cycle dynamics we haven’t seen before - BTC ATH breakout before halving and memes as the dominant narrative.

• The responses to this tweet encapsulate how much CT has changed since 2016. CT culture has become dumber and greedier. No one is trying to change the world, which people genuinely thought they were doing in 2017. It’s all about getting rich before dumping on your neighbor, i.e., financial nihilism. Anything that threatens that (even a tweet) is met with unprecedented hate. While I disagree with DonAlt, I am willing to entertain the opinion. The majority are not. 

3. Paul Ryan unprovoked mentioned stablecoins and trillions as a solution to the USD debt problem.

• A question in crypto is always, “Where will the next pile of money come to buy my bags.” Paul Ryan may have answered that. Here is a history of where money has come from to buy crypto:

• 2013 - Hobbyists

• 2017 - Retail driven by ICOs

• 2021 - Some institutions + Stimulus injected retail

• 2024 - ETF + Trillions?

  Part of being in crypto is having faith that a bigger pile of money will keep the ponzi alive. One of the reasons OGs capitulate is they want to protect what they have and don’t have the energy to hope blindly. I can definitely relate. But the signs of the next bull market pile of money have been here. ETF flows are 100B. Now Paul Ryan is talking trillions unprovoked. People always get bearish near the bottoms.

🤑 Notable Raises

• Shogun - $6.9M Seed. Sector: DeFi. Lead investors include Polychain & Dao5. Notable investors include Maelstrom & Cobie.

• Param Labs - $7M Strategic. Sector: GameFi. Lead investor was Animoca. Notable investors include Mechanism and Delphi.

• Polymarket - $45M Series B. Sector: Prediction Markets. Lead Investor was Founder’s Fund. Notable investors include Vitalik Buterin and 1Confirmation.

• Zeta - $5M Strategic. Sector: DeFi. Lead Investor was Electric. Notable investors include Anatoly Yakovenko and Selini.

• Arbelos Markets - $28M Seed. Sector: DeFi. Lead investor was Dragonfly. Notable investors was Selini.

👊 Quick Hits

• Pump.fun: Former employee exploits memecoin casino for $1.9M

• $degen: DEGEN chain stops producing blocks for two days due to a configuration error.

• Blast: Delays airdrop until June 26th but increases airdrop allocation.

• Solana: surpasses ETH in revenue for the first time.

• Eigenlayer: Airdrop claims go live.

• Hong Kong BTC ETF: Experienced $39M in outflows, reversing two weeks of inflows.

• Senate: Votes to repeal the SEC's SAB 121 which prevents regulated financial institutions from custodying bitcoin.

• Binance: Binance CEO claim officials sought a $150M to release to employees being held for tax invasion.

🫡 Meme the Week

The Raoul Pal meme “Banana Zone” hit escape velocity this week.

See you next week,

Mid-Curve Team

The Mid-Curve newsletter is intended purely for educational and informational purposes and should not be construed as financial advice. We encourage all our readers to conduct their own research or seek advice from a certified financial advisor before making any investment decisions. Please note that members of the Mid-Curve team may hold positions in some of the investments discussed in our newsletter.