The ETH Trade

Week in Review:

After last week’s bounce, prices chopped as the summer months continue to weigh on degens. To add insult to injury, the US government is dumping 10K BTC ($591M) on our heads right before the election.

Alt winners were TON (+6.6%) & TRON (+3.4%).

Losers were SOL (-11.8%) & XRP (-7.8%).

Crypto has not been able to sustain momentum. BTC & ETH have struggled to maintain the $61K & $2.7K levels. SOL has not broken range but is starting to show weakness.

Pump.Fun:

• Pump.Fun is taking the “Casino always wins” adage to the extreme. In the past 30 days, they’ve made $30M+ in revenue. While the team is printing, the trenches are a blood bath. Of the 10K+ tokens that launch daily, less than 0.1% make it to Raydium, and an even smaller amount sustain a $70K+ MC. Pump.fun highlights what has been one of the most challenging markets for degens. We’ve seen many narratives become victims of their success through excessive supply, pushing returns to zero. While pump.fun will continue to make money, I’m putting my midcurvestradamus hat on and calling a local top for memes.

Trump vs Kamala:

• Kamala opened to a ten point lead over Trump and the timeline has been coping ever since. Gun to my head I still think Trump wins, but a Kamala victory does not kill our dreams. The 2025 bull market is guaranteed either way. The days of Elizabeth Warren going full blown Karen on the crypto markets are over. Worse case Democrats will be forced to make concessions given the political strength crypto has shown. Best case, Trump wins. Either way, politics is largely noise fueled by the X algorithm. After the election the markets and public can breathe a sigh of relief.

• CPI came in at 2.9%, below 3% expectations, seemingly good news. How did the market react? Dumping, of course! We continue to ease macro scares from the Yen carry trade, but markets continue to chop. My base case is no fireworks until late Sept/early October, and the latest price action confirms that.

The ETH hate is at ATHs, but I’m betting it’s finally ETH’s time to shine. Hear me out. Below is the chart of BTC when the ETF was approved on January 10th. We had an initial price spike to $49K before 13 days of down only, where BTC corrected ~20%. GBTC selling overwhelmed the market, but once the worst was over, we pumped to $73K, a new ATH.

The chart for ETH looks eerily similar, except we’ve had accelerated ETHE selling alongside Jump exiting their position. The worst seems to be behind us, and if the lows hold, we would’ve bottomed on the same day BTC did in January (13 days after the ETF). ETH/BTC is at support, and SOL/ETH wicked through 0.06 before correcting, providing further bullish confluence for ETH. I believe we are in the “climb the wall or worry” phase of the market, which is setting up for a strong Q4. Combined with the hate ETH is getting only, I think it’s finally time for this asset to shine.

🤑 Notable Raises

• Reddio - Undisclosed Seed. Sector: zk Infrastructure. Lead investors were Paradigm & Arena.

• Ion Protocol - $4.8M Private. Sector: DeFi. Lead investor is Gumi Crypto. Notable investors include Bankless & Robot Ventures.

• Sahara Labs - $43M Series A. Sector: AI. Lead investors include Polychain, Binance Labs, & Pantera

• Curio - $5.7M Seed. Sector: Gaming. Notable investors include Bain & OKX

• Essential - $11M Series A. Sector: Infra. Lead Investor was Archetype. Ventures. Notable investors include Spartan & Big Brain Holdings.

👊 Quick Hits

• Renzo: launches $ezSOL, the first Restaking token for Solana.

• Symbiotic: Announces ERC-20 implementation for BTC

• Solayer: Introduced the Solana Restaking standard

• Pyth: Partners with TON to provide oracle data

• Grass: DePin project announces the snapshot for their airdrop is complete

• Injective: announces an integration with TON blockchain

• Pump.Fun: Blocks India from using their platform

• Goldman: holds over $400 in spot BTC ETF’s

• Arthur Hayes: latest essay “Water, Water, Every Where” details the macro backdrop facilitating a $1M BTC price prediction

🫡 Meme of the Week

Stocks dump, BTC dumps

Stocks pump, BTC dumps

The pain is real

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.