support act. BTC bounces back after
threatening to close the CME gap, but is being overshadowed by ETH. Has the
rotation begun? Slump.Fun. The much hyped launch of the Pump token has left many investors
out of pocket as it slips below its ICO price. What went wrong and can pump recover? Success
stories. We take a look at some altcoins that have been outperforming and ask whether
they could be among the market leaders for this cycle and a rundown of last week’s top
performers, tweets of the week, dates for your diary, heroes and villains, and much more
besides. This is the Coin Bureau News Live. GM Coin Bureau cryptofam, happy Monday and welcome
back to the Coin Bureau weekly news live stream. My name is Nick Guy. How’s it going? How you
feeling? I am feeling bullish, Nick. Bullish. That is how I am feeling. Bullish AF. Bullish
AF. Yes. So back. We are. We are so back, it appears. And who knows, we may even remain back.
We may even stay back. Do you think we’re going to break through alltime highs in Bitcoin again this
week? Well, last time you asked me about this, I was dead wrong. Um, so I said we will probably
chop sideways. So I’m going to try and say no. Yeah, I’m going to inverse myself and say no. Um
and then you can watch as we pump through that alltime high. Um yeah, it’s it’s looking great,
isn’t it? And then yeah, of course, ETH closed to 4K as well. That’s another magical level where
it could be an air pocket that takes us higher if we do break through 4K. Um so we’ll obviously be
talking about that Bitcoin and Ethereum. Uh but uh we’ll also be going we’re going back through
the past week and seeing how Bitcoin performed and what what happened last week. We’ll also
be talking about uh the much hyped pumpf fun. Yeah, a bit of a pump dot fund. I don’t I don’t
think it’s fair to call it a postmortem because it’s not dead. Um, but it’s certainly Yeah. Not
looking not looking good, bro. Not looking good. It was neither pump it was neither a pump nor
was it fun. And then we’ll also be looking at some success stories in the alcoin space. ETH
being one of them. Yes. Yes. ETH holders. Uh, another little victory lap for ETH holders indeed.
As well as one within the Ethereum ecosystem, which is Ethereina, which has also been crashing
it over the past week. Yeah. And uh but I hold I hold so that’s the fourth time you let us know
today guy. Congratulations your coins in profit. It’s not the last and we’ll also be talking about
potential to which we both have in our portfolio as well as a few other things. So of course guys
let us know down in the comments how you feeling about the markets right now. Do you think we’ll
crack the alltime highs? Will ETH go above 4K? And um yeah don’t forget to subscribe as well. Hit
the bell and and hit the likes, Nick. This is very important that you hit the likes. Very important
because again, as per usual, we’ve got it. If we manage to crack the 1,500 like um number, we will
again offer to give you some a portfolio alpha, which we usually share in the Coin Bureau Club. At
the end of the stream, both me and Guy have made some changes going into this altcoin season, and
we’d be happy to share it with you. But we do need you guys to show the stream some love. So, fire
up those likes. 1500 likes. Yeah, 1500. That’s the number. Let’s do it. Let’s do it. That is easy
for you. I know it is. Do it. Um, okay. Let’s talk about the week in Bitcoin then. Um, we are
currently at aroundund 118K nearly 119K. What went down last week? So, as per usual, Monday a Monday
sailor bought yet again. He announced to buy this time $739 million worth as he’s always said he
will buy the top every single day of the week as long as he’s got fiat to do so. And last week it
turned out he was running a bit low on fiat. So he decided, well, let’s go and do another issue on
Tuesday. We need some more fear to buy Bitcoin, right? And this is now another preferred offering,
a completely different tier of capital called STRC or stretch. So it was going to be via an
IPO. It was actually quite interesting because he did a live stream which had talked about um
the capital structure of Micro Strategy with a questionable graphic. It makes me think of a meme
from the office for some reason. Exactly. Um yeah, I mean it it does explain it. It’s simple. It
explains it. Yes. If only there was some other sort of shape they could have used, but either
way that that was on Tuesday. Okay. Wednesday, Bitcoin consolid was a bit of a consolidation
in Bitcoin. It was trading between 118 to 120K although also dominance, you know, right shoot
up above 61% again. Okay. That’s not we we like up and to the right except if it’s for Bitcoin.
Exactly. Exactly. That’s the one chart we want to see go down. Yeah, indeed. And then also last
week was quite interesting. This is another indicator. It’s called the Buffett index. Now,
this basically measures the stock market capitaliz the US stock market capitalization in total in US
dollars divided by the US GDP. It’s kind of like a good proxy of fundamental value and that’s why
hence the Buffett indicator. And it last week is at it’s it’s now at an all-time high. So, so that
is a suggestion that the stock market is is very overheated, very overheated fundamentally compared
to the US GDP, right? Which is the fundamental measure of growth or fundamental measure of
the economy. Um, I mean that has been a pretty surprising aspect of the last few years, hasn’t
it? given everything that’s kind of been going on, the fact that the stock market had all the all
the volatility, all the uncertainty, all you know, we’re living in end times sort of talk and yet the
US stock market just keeps putting in new highs. Exactly. I think they’re just forward thinking.
I think that they just relieve this tariff kurfuffle could be coming to an end and just
bidding up and it’s also AI future valuations, that kind of stuff. Yeah. Anyways, Thursday um
the IPO of the uh Stretch um stock from SA from strategy went to the market and it turned out that
actually no, the market wasn’t just interested in $500 million worth. They it was heavily over
oversubscribed. So Sailor thought, well, let’s go and raise 2.8 billion. As much as you guys want to
throw money at us to go and buy Bitcoin, we will take it. So they upsized that to $2.8 billion for
the preferred offering. Wow. Wow. He’s Yeah. He just does not quit, does he? Um now then also on
Thursday I I want to talk very briefly about this because this this was a real sort of am I is this
is this AI? Is this is this am I is this a wind up? Um so this was this was Donald Trump visiting
the Federal Reserve building um with with Jerome Pal it has to be said very reluctantly uh in tow
and it produced this yes Trump sort of handed over this kind of costing document wasn’t it? If
you’d watched this without sound, it would have been comical. It’s it’s comical as is, but without
sound, it’s even more comical. Like, it’s it’s And the means that came from this were also amazing.
Like, we’ve got a few of these as well. Uh it’s my dad reading the email, he had print out. That’s
That is spot on. Yeah. I mean, I I I really last week we had the astronomer CEO and and now we’ve
got this this year has been an amazing one for memes, right? Ah, this is one of those moments
that makes me fall in love with the internet all over again. It’s Yeah. So, for anyone for
anyone unfamiliar, um Trump and Powell did this sort of very awkward walkabout of the Fed building
which is under renovation. Um and uh Trump sort of alleged that Jerome had um had let it go way over
budget, produced this sort of costing document just literally out of you know out of his out of
the inside of his coat. Um and that was what Pal was looking at. And and what did he say? And
it turned out there was actually an additional additional building added on top of that. So
it’s like oh it was overrun of x amount 3 point something. It’s like actually you’ve included an
additional building which was actually completed four years ago. So it’s not really props to Paul.
I mean that’s why that’s why he’s in charge. He ran his eye over that and figured out the added
additional building. That’s what you’ve done there. I mean okay. But for anyone wondering why
this is relevant, obviously this kind of is all in relation to the fact that Donald Trump is fairly
actively trying to get rid of Jerome Powell at the Fed and as uh Ben and Robin myself discussed on
NFA Live on Thursday, you know, the independence of the Fed is a very big deal and Trump basically
wants to put his own his own man in there, his own person. Um and yeah, I mean this could have
very severe consequences. It could indeed. We’ll have to see what happens. I think if PAL does
relinquish and cut rates in the next two weeks, I mean the next two months maybe. But anyways on
th on Friday, Bitcoin continued its retracement and it came close to closing a CME gap. Now
that CME gap was opened up two weeks ago and ideally we wanted to close that because if you’ve
been keeping up with the stream you’ll know that over the past 3 four months we’ve consistently
closed these gaps. Indeed we closed the gap last another two weeks ago. So we we didn’t close it
which means it remains still open. So hopefully we can come back and close it at some point uh to
continue our upward trend. Okay. And in order to do that uh we’d have to drop to about 114K. Below
slightly below 114 below 114K. Okay. I mean I’m sure I’m sure a lot of people would like that
entry. Yeah. Exactly. It’s a good opportunity there. If it goes below bit low bit lower there’s
111k which many people have said was a previous zone of resistance and it turned into a support.
So let’s see. Um what caused that crash though was the fact that this massive OG whale had made a
sale of that 80,000 bitcoin I think and this this was to this was to galaxy digital they executed
this OTC now it was the largest notional bitcoin transaction ever and this was for an individual
right and get this guy it was for quote estate planning okay that is that is a fairly hefty
estate a lot of estate planning They’re doing Wow. stocking up on islands, yachts, jets, you know,
just got to I just need a little bit of liquidity. I just need Yeah, I just need a few I just need
a another fleet of private jets. Um well, I mean that is crazy enough in itself, but kind of what’s
even crazier and as I think you tweeted about was that um that Bitcoin actually held up that cell
pressure billion 9 billion and just chilling at 117K. a credit to to Galaxy Digital for basically
you know executing it and they probably used different methods from OTC to TWAPS to uh
exchanges as well and they managed to man the price action was limited so credit to them. Yeah.
Um what happened over the weekend? Well overnight we broke through 119K again uh just short of the
119.5K. This is because of uh optimism around the European uh the EU and US trade deal. Um, which it
seems many I don’t know at least on Twitter space on Twitter not many Europeans seem to be happy
about. It seems to be very one-sided. I mean that is that is Trump as dealmaker. He will be he will
be loving that won’t he? So 15% uh on European goods and 0% on US the EU having to buy US gas.
I mean the EU having to buy US military equipment and the EU investing in the US. So, I don’t know,
man. That was a bad that Ursula didn’t do a good good job in that negotiation, but what can she
do? She’s got no leverage. So, where we going this week? It’s going to be a busy week for for sure.
FOMC, GDP, tariffs, and NFP. Um, in terms of where we at in terms of price, 119.5K has been on the
4hour chart. It’s been a level of um uh, you know, resistance. So, we’ll see if we’re able to
break through that to be able to run higher. Um, also take a look and note the liquidity pools.
there is a lot of liquid liquidity above 120K and below 114K and that’s important because above
120K is the near the all-time highs and below 114K is of course where the CME gaps are. So we’ll
have to see if it manages which way it’s going to trend. I mean I think the main main level to
watch here is 117K because this is based on some onchain data we hear from glass node. the cost
basis distribution. There’s been a lot of 73K BTC. I don’t know if you guys go to the chart there.
There we go. Yeah, at least 73K of Bitcoin has been distributed throughout that uh range, which
means that the each dip is now being absorbed as investors steadily accumulate within this
range. So, if we manage to maintain above 117K, we may more likely to move higher. If we break
below it, then the next target would be 114K. Okay. So I mean there’s fairly well there’s fairly
strong cases for going long and short BTC. Yeah. I mean I’ve seen people saying that the riskreward
at these levels to enter if you don’t hold Bitcoin ready if you’re trading is still you got to wait
till it goes a bit lower. Uh but that’s why I mean I’m not really trading Bitcoin per se right now.
I’m just hodling. So, but if you guys are trading Bitcoin and you want to get a day-by-day play of
what’s going on on in the markets, we will refer space is just space is just pleased to be here.
finally get to catch the start of a stream. Nice. We should uh we should take a moment actually
to welcome everyone who’s watching us on X as well. We are streaming on X first time. Yeah. Oh,
it just doesn’t feel right calling it X, but I suppose we have to. Always Twitter. Twitter till
the day I die. It is Twitter. It is Twitter, but uh yeah, whatever. Um meanwhile, uh we got a yala
from Hamid. Yala. Always good to get a good yala. Yala habibi. Um and uh what else have we got?
Um, Nick looks like he bought some sold some BTC and brought Christmas clothes, bro. What are you
talking about? Christmas clothes. That is a little bit shade, bro. If you put some tinsel around your
neck, you would look quite Christmy. And yeah, I thought I was looking stylish. Now I look like
a freaking No one says you’re not looking stylish, Nick. You’re just about 5 months too early.
[Laughter] Wow. Okay. Yep. Okay. Just putting it in the festive season now. Abdull aliens. I
Yeah, I I get what you I get what you’re I get what you’re about. Um meanwhile, Dre 5110 regular
viewer, one of our wall of famers. Um the whole world in his dog has limiters set at 114K already.
Indeed. All right. Well, that’s us told. Okay. So, Oh, yes. How are we doing for likes? Can Can
we 400 400 likes? So, you’re quite a long way from us uh us revealing uh those changes to our
portfolios. We need another uh 900 likes. But yeah, we a third of the way through the stream, so
keep on coming, guys. Getting there. I like how I did that maths really quick. Quick maths. Great
math. Great. In fact, it was wrong, wasn’t it? We need another 900. 1,100, bro. And then another
200 likes on top of that. Oh my word. Quick word. Quick message. Wrong maths. This isn’t This is
This is Coin Bureau, not Matt’s Bureau. All right. Um, oh god, that’s embarrassing. I’m not going to
let I hope my father isn’t watching that. Okay, speaking of speaking of your strong point,
speaking of idiocy, um, let’s talk about let’s talk about pumped off fun word. Oh man.
Um, so yes, uh, one of the most oh goodness, one of the most hyped, um, events in crypto
recently has been, uh, the pump the launch of the Pump Fund token. Pumpf fun uh was a re revenue
generating behemoth uh earlier this year and towards the end of last year. Obviously everyone
knows the story of Pumpfun. We did a video about about it recently, but that let people uh create
and launch meme coins and it was absurdly popular. It was making money handover fist. So naturally um
there was a lot of speculation pretty much as soon as it started getting big about whether or not
it would launch its own token. And it duly did uh recently. Um, as we said, this was really
hyped up. Everyone was talking about this. A lot of people were very excited uh for it. And unless
you been living under a rock or just not paying any attention to crypto, um, then you will have
heard about the pump fun, uh, sale. Um, and yeah, uh, the crypto media reported on it. It was highly
anticipated, probably the most anticipated launch of the year so far in a year where we have seen
a lot of big launches. Exactly. And it was also unique in the way the launch happened which
is a typical ICO which is open to everyone. Uh $500 million sold out in 12 minutes. Uh and
everyone on crypto Twitter prior to the launch was just going crazy for this thing from crypto
Twitter personalities to VCs. Uh we’ll pull up the tweets there now talking about the fact that it’s
a very it’s a revenue generating product which it is a very one of the most profitable products
in crypto. Uh and um now you could potentially own a well not technically own the equity but
own potentially a token attached to it which is an important point to make because when you buy
a token you don’t own the equity. Yeah. Uh but um the exchanges like Kraken and Bybit who were
offering the sale they basically completely overs subscribed. Everyone was super angry about it.
That I just want to say that is that is when you know something has gone well in crypto isn’t it?
when people people start pissing and moaning about it when people get crossed if you if you manage
to really wind up people uh during a launch and get them get them complaining on Twitter then you
know allocation yeah those people complain about the allocation but um that’s unfortunately where
the fun ended because during a live stream on July 23rd uh the founder Alon uh basically did a live
stream with on thread guy and basically uh said there was not going to be in the immediate future
no air drops. Okay. And it triggered an immediate 14% price crash and released a torrent of
community rage on crypto Twitter/cryptox. Again, nothing nothing triggers people in crypto quite
like being told they’re not getting an airdrop. In fact, the only thing that triggers them more is
when they do get an airdrop. Exactly. It’s not as much as they were hoping or it’s uh Yeah. You can
never please them. Never. Yeah. But um but to be fair, users paid thousands in fees supporting the
platform. they felt that they were done wrongly. Uh the private sale investors who bought prior
to that actually started dumping the token which uh they dumped $160 million worth of pump tokens
often at a significant loss and this caused the the price to crash below the ICO price. So that’s
crazy. That’s crazy. So yeah, obviously it did rally a little bit out of the gates, but that
enthusiasm, that optimism just didn’t last long. So I mean we’ll discuss we’ll discuss in a minute
I think why why this didn’t go to plan or or why this hasn’t um has failed but let’s let’s I mean
let’s talk firstly about this idea of low float versus high float. Sure. So basically the meta
that’s been going on for the past two years prior uh with highly with large valuation coins that
have been raising fire via VCs is this concept of a high FDV low float. So you go to the market
with a low circulating supply and you control the tokens and you can then with your market makers
work to basically make sure that it doesn’t crash out of the gates and you have vesting on your
VCs who get in at a much lower valuation and that vesting then leads to a steady supply of coins
come into the market and many people have taken aim at this model because they say it rewards
the insiders. The VC unlocks allow for token distribution that crashes the price and many of
these very high FTV low circulation cryptos over the past few few like year have really collapsed
in price. So the reason that this was unique to the extent was it was although a high valuation
it also had a high float. VCs got in at the same price prior to the ICO as normal participants
and full unlocks on TGE. Yeah. Which meant that all the float was out there and initially people
thought this was a bullish launch but the problem is you know now I think that it was still a high
valuation and now a lot of the the people who were buying the token private sale were selling as
well. Yeah. Uh and trying to liquidate because the float wasn’t enough. There was just so much
supply out there. They couldn’t really maintain it. I think they tried to do some buybacks.
So that’s a bit of the that’s why it’s not a you know it’s there’s no perfect solution here but
it’s the complete other end of the spectrum. Yeah, because I I guess it makes you it makes you sort
of think in a way. It’s like, okay, well, having a low float when a lot of early investors have got,
you know, coins or tokens early is is bad for many reasons, and we’ve discussed that at length, but
I guess in some ways it’s good because some of those tokens are locked. You know, a lot of them
will have often quite long vesting schedules. So, you know, it it there is some sort of upside
to it in that it restricts supply, but this, as you say, you know, the supply hit the market
all at once. Yeah. Um, so that I think was a big problem. Meanwhile, I think probably the biggest
problem for this Pump Fund launch and for Pump Fun itself. Now, the the memecoin meta itself isn’t
over. I don’t think I don’t think meme coins are dead by any means, but it’s certainly uh run
out of steam compared to where it was, you know, at the start of the year, say, um, you know, and
and towards the end of last year. Um, so Pump Fun, its revenues are down big time. Um, it’s not
making as much money as it was. And crucially, it’s also having its lunch eaten by um Bonk. Fun
or Let’s Bonk, which is um uh you know, the Bonk ecosystems uh rival memecoin launchpad, which
just seems to be um outperforming it massively. It seems to be it seems that bundlers are using
this as the uh place of choice. And there’s also because there’s definitive uh buybacks of
something description token value accretion through uh the the the launchpad itself. And I
think people here feel as if they more likely to get rewards from doing and engaging with this
and launching there as opposed to pumped do fund when there’s no clarity around that. Yeah. Yeah.
Now, uh Kevin, who’s one of our researchers here at the bureau, um uh he writes a weekly column in
our weekly newsletter, um and he did a really good breakdown of the pump fund launch and you know
a kind of post postmortem on it if you like. And one of the things that he pointed out was that
let’s bonk has just been way it seems to have been way more adaptive in introducing kind of
features and just innovating and staying ahead of the game than pump. Fun has. And I can’t help
but feel that maybe one of the reasons why Pump. Fun hasn’t been as reactive and hasn’t been so
quick at implementing new features is because maybe they’ve kind of had their head turned by
this whole business of launching a token. Yeah, it takes a lot of time and effort and you got to
go and deal with a lot of investors and they did they really need it when they were making so much
money. I mean, well, and and this is the other question I think and this is the thing. I mean,
this is something that I said a few times you in the leadup to this and I I still think it’s a
valid question. Does Pumpfund really need a token? It it was making a lot of money. Sure, those
revenues were down, but I think kind of they would probably have been better off investing some of
those massive revenues that they made into making the platform better than than focusing so much on
launching a token. There is the token does have utility. It’s not completely useless. It’s not
like some useless governance token that no one’s ever going to vote on or whatever. Like the you
can use the pump token on the pump.com platform, but I just don’t know if if it’s needed at this
stage. Here’s a question for you. um playing devil’s advocate. So if there was no explicitly
never going to be doing a token for pump fun, all the people who were using it in anticipation
of getting some reward through airdrops of some description, would they still have used it as
opposed to bonk which you can get a token which has a token? So how much of it was were people
actually launching memecoins because we like memecoins who want to trade meme coins versus
people who are hoping for an airdrop? I think there was way more of the latter. Okay, that is
a good point. But I’ll also I’ll counter that and say I reckon a lot of the people minting memecoins
on pump.f fun were were minted were basically just trying to you know rugpool and you know though I
I think that assumes your argument assumes that people were sort of using pumpf fun purely for
you know purely for good reasons and we know that there were a lot of people just using it to launch
dozens sometimes hundreds of you still then lining yourself up for the token so they’re doing both
they’re trying to rug people and then get them air drop at the same time so they killing two birds
with one stone yeah it’s like I can rug people on bonkfo I can write people on pumpf fun which I’m
going to get a potential airdrop in token. So okay we could discuss this adnauseium. It’s a big it’s
a long discussion. Well yeah I mean I I you know pumpf fun they could have they could have teased
a token announcement out for a lot longer. I think and this this may sound cynical but like look at
look at something like bass for instance. Like there’s been speculation about a base token ever
pretty much ever since bass appeared. And like both Jesse Pollock and Brian Armstrong I think
have come out and said there is not going to be a base token. Did that stop people necessarily using
Bass? I don’t think it did. Like I think people use Bass because for one thing it’s easy to use.
Obviously it’s you know got the integration with Coinbase and stuff like that. And maybe people are
still using it in anticipation of maybe there one day being a base token. But like I don’t think you
know I think first and foremost you have to build a cool platform that people use and pump. Fun
did manage to do that. It it just becomes like whether you actually need a token at all. And like
I say I just don’t think they did or if they were planning to they could have you know they could
have put it out way way later and spent more time actually making the platform better because I
think they’ve been I think they’ve been kind of blindsided by by Let’s Bonk. they have. But yeah,
I still think that it would be difficult to them have to gain any market share if they didn’t
have some sort of a line to a token because to be fair base is a layer entire layer 2 network
and there’s so much stuff built on top of base as a layer 2 network as opposed to just a launchpad
with a single function. You know, basically like just chain or that’s what pump is just an app.
But yeah, let’s not get stuck in the weeds here. It’s a long discussion. Yeah, I think let’s mix
it up a bit with the wall of fame and shame. The winkling is the boss. [Music] Sorry, I’m watching this through. Oh my word.
Okay, that’s a good tribute. That’s a great tribute. That is a great tribute. That’s a good
tribute to the legends, right? So, Nick as Hulk Hogan. There we go. That That fits. Could you
Would you consider growing that sort of mustache? I need to I need to die. Hit the like button,
folks. Hit that like button if you would like. Forget if we get if we get 2,500 likes, maybe.
We’ll see. Oh god, I don’t know. Would you grow your hair long like Aussie Aussie guy over there?
100%. I used to have I used to have long hair. I don’t think I Nice number. Yeah. Um, so yes. Well,
a nice tribute from our production team there. If you if you can call it a tribute, it might be
they might be revolving in their graves for all we know. But uh yeah, lost a couple of legends
over the last over the last crazy man. Obviously, people made meme coins in tribute of them when
they rallied. Uh, you know, yes, naturally. Naturally, as you do, there’s no better tribute
in crypto than to create a meme with degenerates trying to make money off of your untimely passing.
Yeah, it’s crypto tradition, of course. Hulkrin. Oh, please go that mustache. That would be so
good. We get you a bandanna and everything. Um, okay. A nice a nice tribute to two uh two legends
who have gone to a better place. Okay. So on the wall of fame this week, who else but of course
this Bitcoin OG who casually casually just dumped $9 billion. Can you imagine? I think that people
in hindsight’s 2020 have held that Bitcoin from 2011 seen it. I mean think about most people what
most people would have done when it just crossed because even in 2014 2015 you know that stash is
already worth millions hundreds of millions. So, you know, it crosses the first 100
million, then 500 million, then a billion, and you still don’t touch it. Don’t touch
it. Yeah. Crazy. This is someone who must have been who must have been mining very early
doors. Um maybe maybe it’s uh maybe it’s Leslan, the Bitcoin pizza guy. Maybe. Well, to be fair,
the cryptoquant CEO came out and said that there could be there is onchain forensics which suggests
these wallets are attached to the hosted the ones that were hosted by mybitcoin.com which is a very
early wallet, right? And um it apparently had a hack back in 2011. Okay. So, it could potentially
be um related to the hack or the pseudonmous founder himself. Okay. But either way, having held
that Bitcoin for so many years, to see it grow and swell to this level. Yeah, it’s crazy. Well, good
for them. Good for them. Ultimate huddle. Huddle and ye shall be rewarded. Okay. Meanwhile, over
on the wall of shame, uh who else of course but pumpf fun. Yeah, there wasn’t it wasn’t uh
it wasn’t they didn’t shower themselves in glory with that launch, unfortunately.
That little pill has gone from being, you know, a sort of fun little stimulant to little
stimulant to the present. Yeah. To a suppository sleeping pool that you take as a sapar
depository. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, uh those are the walls of fame and shame. Now, uh
let’s stick on the topic of uh let’s stick with things that have been doing well. Let’s keep the
positivity going. Um because obviously one look at the charts will tell you that crypto in general
uh is enjoying uh some big green candles all over the shop really. Um but we wanted to sing uh
single out um three particular ones today. two uh two that uh I hold and one that is on both of our
watch list. Now Nick, you actually said it was in uh towers in our portfolios. It’s not it’s on both
our watch lists. Um but let’s start with the stuff that I hold. Um and that is ETH, which I’ve held
for a while and like all ETH holders have had to uh have had to eat a whole lot of FUD. Um
but yes, uh well, someone who’s someone else who’s doing a victory lap other than myself is uh
none other than Eric Trump. Indeed, he is. Yeah, going back to his tweet from February 4th. Of
course, he leaves out the fact that prior between that period, it dropped what? 30%. 30 to 40%. But
hey, man, he got it right. He never put a timeline on it. So, credits to the to he’s right in some
ways. Now is a good time. Just buy it and don’t look at it for 4 months. And, you know, fine.
Well done, Eric. Um, yeah, ETH is up 65% in the month. It’s outperformed Bitcoined. Um and this
is being largely driven by uh institutional um and ecosystem catalysts. So on the institutional side
um we’ve well we’ll talk about that in a moment. Um but um yeah there’s just there’s a heck of a
lot going on. Exactly. And in terms of stable coin dominance is crazy. Ethereum powers about 50% of
the $250 billion stable coin market. Um and it’s earning $6 billion in fees from Tether alone which
is dominating. Gosh, that’s that’s incredible, isn’t it? between them uh Ethereum and Tron
over 80% of the stable coin market. There we go. Crazy. That is crazy. So, let’s dig into the
uh the corporate uh the corporate side of things, why Ethereum is doing so well. Um because firstly,
we’ve got now we talked about this on last week’s stream, the Ether machine. Um this is a corporate
vehicle that’s aiming to offer largecale access to Ethereum yield. Um it launched and it now holds
over 400,000 4,000. Yep. Exactly. Uh, crazy name, really good name there. And since May of 2025,
Sharl Link has acquired over $1.3 billion worth of Ethereum with another 145 million incoming.
And they also bought today. Yeah. And we go. Um, and they also um they uh then we’ve got Bit Mine.
Now, this is Tom Lee’s outfit, obviously famous for being a Bitcoin mining company, but they’re
pivoting towards uh ETH as well. And they’re aiming to acquire a got 5% of ETH supply. Um
yeah, so another $2 billion worth. Um meanwhile, we’ve also got uh let’s talk about the futures
open interest and ETFs as well. So basically on the market data front, uh f futures ETH open
interest on the futures side reached an all-time high uh recently in July and also crucially
price is also going up with that. So that’s a good sign. So it’s bullish momentum on that.
And then speaking of the ETFs, last week was one of the first weeks ever where spot Ethereum
ETFs outpaced Bitcoin. Wow, crazy stuff. I think that for me is the big metric there. I think that
is probably, you know, explains the most why ETH is performing and gives us the most reason for
optimism, I think, because that suggests if we u because as you pointed out earlier, Bitcoin ETFs
actually saw some outflows. that suggests that capital is indeed rotating out of BTC and into
ETH, albeit via ETFs. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so yeah, and that’s that’s ETH. Now, moving on
down in Ethereum’s ecosystem, another really strong performer over the past week has been
Athena and it’s gained over 75% in a month, which is crazy. Yeah. Yeah. So, this is the we’re
not allowed to call it a stable coin, synthetic dollar protocol. Synthetic dollar. Yes. Um, so
yeah, partnered with Anchorage Digital. That’s bringing that that’s to bring 1.5 billion of USB.
That’s so this is this is the treasurybacked this is the treasurybacked uh the bidding to be the
first stablecoin developer whose product has a clear path to full compliance with the US genius
act which is recently passed. Yeah I don’t think it’s any coincidence is it that is pumping off the
back of genius being being passed is it exactly no doubt and there’s also the news last week that
the Athena Foundation has launched stable coin X. So that’s a new company going through a spa
merging with a treasury management with stable coin trends and it’s pl pl pl pl pl pl pl pl pl pl
pl pl pl pl pl pl pl pl pl pl pl pl pl pl pl pl pl pl pl pl pl pl pl pl pl pl pl pl pl pl planning to
list on NASDAQ via a spa and the price surged 21% as a result because this treasury vehicle will be
engaged in a buy buyback program for ENO tokens. Okay. Okay. Music music to my ears as an ENA
holder. Did I mention that I held ENA? I I believe I may have done. I I do apologize. Um meanwhile,
and I think this is the big one in terms of a potential catalyst for ENA. you know, ENA is is is
already performing well, but if um the speculation that the fee switch mechanism for staked ENA,
that’s S ENA, uh will soon be activated. This is something that Wintermute uh put forward this
a while ago, quite some time ago. We talk we’ve been talking about it for quite some time. I I
wonder where it is in the process. Uh but that would be very beneficial for for Seno holders and
ENA stakers. Yeah. And obviously you can stake ENA via via Athena’s platform and you know there are
various there are quite a lot of incentives to uh to do that on that platform. Um, so yeah, it’s
part I think this is this is one of those one of those crypto protocols like we covered it when
when it first launched and we were like obviously it’s very well backed people like Arthur Hayes and
Maelstrom you know a lot of a lot of money going into this ENA itself its price has been really
suppressed uh over the last year or so by the fact that there were a lot of um VC VC sellers um but
and I think there probably are still a lot of VC sellers but there just seems to be enough momentum
to uh to counter that selling Yep indeed. And then another coin which this is one that as mentioned
is both on both of our watch list uh in terms of a coin you may want to buy is botil and it’s also
been rallying recently. And the reason this is an interesting coin is because in terms of narratives
it’s between two. One of them is its AI narrative which everyone seems to be super excited about
and then the other is bitcoin adjacent because of its tokconomics is very much like bitcoins. So one
of the metrics last week we saw that the Betensel subnet now the subnets are all the projects within
the Betensor ecos ecosystem. It’s crossed $1 billion um for the first time in terms of market
cap last week. Okay. Meanwhile uh there’s also a new firm uh started called XTOW. Now stop me if
you’ve heard this before Nick. It’s planning to raise uh over $20 million from investors including
Animoka and DCG to support decentralized AI development. And it’s going to buy Tao tokens
for its treasury. I mean, Bitcoin treasury, I mean, alcoin treasury, it’s the it’s the vogue.
It’s the thing. It’s in in thing to do. It’s the season. Yeah. And it’s also planning to stake that
that tower apparently for 10% returns and operate validators on the network while also offering
API and licensing products too. I think that’s actually better than a lot of the other treasury
companies because they’re actually involved in the ecosystem and they support in the ecosystem
uh as opposed to just going out there raising funds to just go and buy crypto, right? You’re not
how much are you really like helping the product or helping the cryptocurrency itself achieve
adoption projects to build on top of it. So, it’s good news there. Yeah, it does sound good.
Um a couple of interesting things to note about um about Betensor as well. First is I mentioned
digital currency group earlier. Obviously this is Barry Silbert’s outfit. One of the uh one of the
original sort of big you know crypto investors um Barry Silbert and DCG. And what was interesting
was that Barry Silbert is you know he’s he’s a very powerful guy in crypto but he doesn’t very
often give interviews or appear in public but he has been uh interviewed I think he talked was it
Ral Pow. Yeah. Schillin Schilling towel. Yeah, crazy. So, yeah, Barry Silbert is a big uh big
tow bull. Very very bullish on Betensor. So, uh you know that is potentially that is potentially
a big uh tailwind for it. Um my personal theory on Betensor as well and I think it may also explain
why Near Protocol hasn’t performed quite as well. near being another one that I hold. I kind of
feel that Betensor has taken the sort of L1 for AI narrative that that near protocol was sort
of going. Yeah, I think the community is a lot stronger and from on the potential side and the
strong communities they the tower bulls and the tower holders are very very militant and it helps
with the project itself. It helps you know on board people and helps get the message out there
and get a trend in and stuff. So yeah, I think so. And I think Nia has been struggling to necessarily
get within that to to latch on to that narrative as strongly as TOAO has. Yeah. But um if any of
you guys are bullish on either Batensor, Tao, uh I won’t try and do the maths on how many
more we need given what happened last time, but you you guys know what to do. 700, guys. Come
on. Let’s go. Let’s do it. Okay. Um let’s have a look at last week’s uh top performers. We will
start with Ethereum obviously. So as mentioned above uh the Anchorage Digital Partnership as
well as stable coin X and buybacks. Yep. Next up we have Flare Network and FLR. Um now I this could
be just first and foremost be seen as a beta play for XRP. Obviously it’s a big big project within
XRP’s ecosystem. Um but there is a lot happening on the Flair network. Vivo Power recently deployed
a hundred million dollars worth of XRP onto Flare in order to generate yield. So I’m sure things
like that are helping as well. Yeah. Uh the next one is Story IP. Now the pump is possibly due to
the incubation of Poseidon which is a project that sources and tokenizes highquality data sets on
the story protocol. Yeah, that that’s actually worth looking into that. That’s quite that
looks like quite an interesting project. Um, next up we have uh Kronos, Kronos and CRO. Um,
obviously the exchange token of Crypto.com. Um, it’s just had a uh version six upgrade. Version
six upgrade. Wow. The long awaited version six, man. That’s the longer version six. You said
version five no one cares about. Version six, bro. That’s the big one. That’s when everything
happens. That’s when it literally take the lights go out, man. It shoots the lights out. High
performant, you know. This is it, man. There we are. There we are. Version six. Time to shine.
version 6 B6. Um pro probably also uh something to do with exchange volumes on crypto.com as well.
Who knows? Um and also we have Pancake Swap. Yeah. So this is due to Coinbase and Bass integrations.
It’s also BNB itself. Have you see how B&B and before BNB is suddenly taking off? It’s got it
over alltime highs now. Yeah. Really BNB. Yeah. Gosh. So Pancake Swap could also be a uh a beta
play on BNB as well. A good breakdown there from Blockchain Bulletin. Um, yeah. But that made me
think, do you remember the the sort of whole food tokens meta from? It was 21, wasn’t it? Yeah. The
yam the yam token and all this kind of stuff. Food cake, yam, and sausage and gizzy and all these.
Basically, you go and farm tokens, food tokens. Yeah, that was uh that was a crazy time. Okay,
let’s have a look at some tweets of the week. start off with uh I I would say Guorty is probably
the best the best tweeter on crypto Twitter. Yeah. Um my girlfriend from high school just texted me
for the first time in eight years asking how to start a digital asset treasury. You basically
check your phone. Oh no, she wants to find out about Bitcoin if she should buy Bitcoin. No, no,
no, no. I don’t care about Bitcoin. I want to know what’s the exact process for me to go and start
a Bitcoin treasury company. Key point, treasury company. because I want to go and buy Bitcoin with
other people’s money. Absolutely. It’s not about It’s not about spot buying crypto anymore. It’s
not about downloading the Coinbase app, buying buying a bit of Bitcoin. You got to start your own
treasury company now. Get ahead of the curve, man. Really, really. This is the meta now. Get with the
uh get with the program, folks. Okay. Uh next up, we have um an interaction with Grock. So, there’s
a bit of context required here. So last week if you guys were on Twitter you will have seen that
a few crypto Twitter accounts were many people actually were asking Grock who’s the most famous
person to ever visit my profile uh replied to this tweet with their name don’t have to tag them and
everyone’s doing this. So Carbon who’s a crypto Twitter personality as well he thought he’d try
and be funny with Grock and he said hey Grock who is the stupidest person who has ever visited my
profile and what is their estimated IQ? So Grock, which can only be described as AI murder on
online, said, um, based on my my analysis of publicly available data and logical deduction,
the stupidest visitor to your profile is likely yourself. After all, who else would pose such
an unanswerable query to an AI? Estimated IQ, 85. Just low enough to think that that was a
good idea. Wow. Murder, bro. Wow. Gra prisoners, bro. Ouch. Ouch. Okay. Um, we’ve also got
this one from Anatoli, uh, founder of Salana. I’ve said this for years. Meme coins and NFTts
are digital slop and have no intrinsic value, like a mobile game loot box. People spend $150
billion a year on mobile gaming. That’s true. Now, well, the fact they spend $150 billion a year
on mobile gaming. But the point that he’s making here is interesting, especially that he posted
about, I think, about a day ago. And there’s a lot of people who jumping on this and saying the
same stuff like oh well isn’t a lot of sales most of salonist um you know revenue generated most
of activity is related to memecoin gambling and um you know he’s going back and forth with them.
Uh I I think there’s there’s it’s there is point he does have a point here to the extent that they
have no intrinsic value. Memecoin has no intrinsic value. It’s just it’s the memeification of meta
right it’s like attention tokenized attention and then he used the argument well okay well
if it creates value to the extent that people are using it the same way mobile game loot was
all big for iOS right people are buying these things so go and take a look at that thread it
was quite interesting yeah look you know it does if if you’re running an L1 do you do you really
care what people are using it for as long as people are using it that’s that’s the main thing
isn’t it is um okay uh speaking of tweets that had a lot of replies and and some controversial
takes. This one is from the wolf of all streets, uh Scott Melka, lovely guy. Um now he he said
this, “Bitcoin is amazing, but it’s obviously been co-opted to some degree by the very people
that it was created as a hedge against. Many of the most ardent early whales have seen their faith
shaken and have been selling at these prices.” Um, now it’s it’s fair to say Scott got a fair bit
of push back uh in the comments from this and as he sort of clarified like you know he’s he’s
sort of repeating what he’s been told or what he’s been hearing. Um but this is an interesting
talking point, isn’t it? It is. Um but I think that this is the this is all in relation to the
whole that Bitcoin whale that was selling or people losing faith early OGs. Bitcoin itself has
never changed. It’s a protocol defined. It’s math, right? It’s it’s a technology. It’s always been
the same open and permissionless technology that anyone can use. It can be the Black Rockck is able
to buy it. Corporations are able to, governments are able to, even unsavory people from terrorists
and everything can use Bitcoin because it is open and permissionless. And that’s always been like
that. And who are we to now go and say we don’t want them going and using an open permissionless
network? We want to censor them from doing it. So, you know, it just it’s it’s an evolution. And if
it is becoming mainstream to the extent that trady giants want to accumulate it and and offer this
paper versions through ETFs, I mean it’s who can stop them? Who would want to stop them? Right.
Yeah. And as you say, like Bitcoin itself hasn’t changed. I think what I’d be really interested to
to know I’d be, you know, I’d be really interested to to talk to someone who has been in it since
since those early days, you know, maybe one of these whales who was mining it on their CPU
or whatever. But like you know if if they are jaded with with Bitcoin um which is you know fair
enough that’s that’s their opinion but how would they like to see it now like how would someone who
was involved maybe from like you know 2009 onwards 2010 whatever what would their in an ideal world
how would Bitcoin look now or or or what would people would people just be using it as digital
cash like Satoshi like you know Satoshi originally intended what does what does the ideal scenario
for Bitcoin look like for, you know, for for for these OGs. Yeah. I wonder should try and get one
of them on for an interview at some point. Yeah. If someone with a f if you know if that 80k um
80,000 BTC whale is watching and wants to come on obviously anonymously and explain what’s explain
what they were doing um and their thoughts. Yeah, we’ we’d love to hear them. Okay. How’s the state
planning going? How’s the estate planning? Yes. How’s the estate planning going? And if you would
like any help with that estate planning, then I would be more than willing to offer it. Okay. What
about coins to watch? For the coins to watch, just two this week. First is Helium’s H&T on the 30th
of July. They’ve got a community call and things that will be discussed include hing details, major
milestones, upcoming events, live Q&A with core teams, etc. And this is at 400 p.m. UTC. Okay.
And then Near Protocol is actually speaking of AI cryptos, Near Protocol is going through an actual
inflation vote right now. Uh and it’s ending in 3 days. And this is basically a proposal to cut
NIA’s inflation rate from 5% to 2.5%. So I don’t know if we’ve got the image there in terms of the
vote progress right now. Um how is this how is this vote getting on? I think this is important.
I I I yeah it’s three days time. I I don’t think I don’t think it’s going to pass guy. I mean we
don’t have it on the on the screen there but um it’s at three days to go. 38% of state voted for
a yay and uh they they need 66% to pass. So okay, that’s probably not going to happen. Interesting.
Um speaking of Helium, um an interesting Deepin project, I saw a few people mentioning Deepin
in the uh in the comments. We uh I might try and get that up in a minute. Um but uh one of our one
of our power users on the CBC Discord, Maverick, um he uh recently posted a really interesting
research thread on helium. Um, very worth read. I’m I’m much more bullish on it than I was. I It’s
one of those ones I kind of took my eye off it a little bit. I might I might consider adding some
guys. This is in the Coin Bureau Club Discord. So, if you’re a Coinb Club member, we have a lot of
these power users um called re and they basically will post their thoughts about these particular
cryptocurrencies and Maverick is one of the one of them there. And you can go and if you’re a club
member, you can just go over to the Discord and see the discussions there. Yeah. Um yeah, hats
off to Maverick because he does regular project updates for us. Obviously, we have weekly altcoin
reviews, deep dives um that we make ourselves as as videos and post on on the Coin Bureau Club.
But yeah, users like Maverick, they just they just love it. They just get stuck in. There’s a lot
of a lot of interesting information there. Now, some dates for the diary. As I said, it’s a
very busy week ahead. Uh so July 30th, FOMC day. uh right now pricing the futures interest rates
interest rate futures are pricing in nearly like a 97% chance of no rate cuts. Uh so Trump’s visit
to Pal’s office didn’t really have much of an impact there. Um Pal will not be intimidated. He
will not be intimidated especially with the fake bill addition of all been added to the line. Oh
man. Um July and then also on the same day we’ve got GDP numbers coming out. So 2.3% is expected.
the previous quarter was 0.5%. So that was minus 0.5%. Um and then July 31st we’ve got the PCE
uh inflation numbers. So that’s the personal consumption expenditures index which is the Fed’s
preferred inflation measure. 2.5% expected versus 2.3% previous on the headline number. And then the
core is 2.7% expected and 2.7 um in terms of pre previous. Okay. Um and then what’s happening on
the 1st of August? Well, there’s tariff deadline day. So, the tariffs should go into effect, most
of them, apart from those that have been delayed out. I think China’s and everything. Okay. And
then also NFP day, non-farm payroll day we have. And the unemployment numbers, well, they’re tied.
Uh, so 102K is expected versus 147K previous. Okay. So, just to recap for you folks in case
you missed that, dates for the diary this week, we got FOMC, GDP, PCE, and NFP. All right. Make
sense? as as many acronyms you could possibly want. Uh okay, we will uh let’s have a look
through what people are saying in the comments uh right now. Um we have got uh let’s um so TBO
is asking is Ena the next Luna? Um well TB if I thought that I wouldn’t have bought any Ena in the
first place. Um but it is it does kind of raise an interesting point because obviously we have been
here before with uh projects that that generate yield for you know your idle stable coins. Um and
a lot of people got very badly burned with with US and Luna etc. Um and this is something that we
did kind of speculate on if I remember rightly when we did our you know video about Athena. Um
I’m pretty confident that that is not the case. I think lessons have been learned um from that.
uh and and Athena adopts a pretty unique sort of hedging strategy, doesn’t it? Yeah, the mechanics
of Athena is different. The way it generates the yield um as and obviously Luna also had this mint
and burn mechanism with US or stake through the anchor protocol. What ENA does is is it basically
just tokenizes a cash and carry trade. So it goes and it goes uh shorts the futures long ETH staked
ETH and then it’s able to generate the yield there and it’s all completely delta hedged. And um
you can just see in terms of the most crazy market conditions it’s been through over the
past year when ETH has completely collapsed when you’ve had when cryp when crypto has fallen
through the floor it still managed to hold those yields even when by that biotech right yeah and
and Ethena does a lot of their hedging and their market their market done dynamics on bit as well
as many other exchanges but the fact that even during that period when you an exchange has lost
I don’t know billion or so reserves they were able to maintain the peg um and there through to the
through operational efficiency and execution. Amazing. But then also the mechanics behind it
is different. Completely different from Luna. Yeah. And actually I think if I remember rightly
I first bought Samina after the bybit hack had happened and Athena itself had held up because I
sort of thought well that that seems like a pretty good test for me. So um yeah, but obviously if you
are going to use a protocol like Athena or indeed anything else if you are going to chase yield on
your idle stables or indeed any of your cryptos then you know don’t use your whole stack and
spread your risk as well. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket and the founders’s name is Guy. So I
mean what’s not to love? What’s not to love? Oh sh um now uh an interesting point from Tibs.
Um this was the one I referenced earlier. Crazy how deep in was on the brink of being
the next big narrative then nothing. I guess we wait till next cycle. This is crazy. Yeah. I
just it’s unfortunate because it does seem that deep in would would have been one of the ways in
which you’d get mass adoption of crypto networks be because people can use these physical networks
in their daily lives. The case of Helium or there was Hivemapp WMT world mobile token all of these.
I hold I held a couple of those. Exactly. Yeah. So it was it was bullish last year but I think
it seems right now that the market has coalesed around the fact that the killer use case for
cryptocurrency and decentralized networks is uh digital dollars. Yeah, that’s it. Yeah, I
I I kind of think I’m I’m in agreement with um now someone else is saying this here. It might
be Kian actually. Um another one of our Hall of Famers. I still think deepens day will come later
in this cycle. Yeah, I I think so. But I think m maybe for maybe not this cycle but next but
I still think I agree with you that I think deepens day will come. I think there are genuinely
like useful applications there and things like um uh things like helium and world mobile token
that you mentioned earlier I I think are really good projects like doing kind of what crypto part
of what crypto was was um you know supposed to do in the first place. Um keeps format says go
easy on guy he held ETH for so long. Yeah, it’s been tough, man. It has been tough.
Has been tough. The whitest heat tempest, the finest metal. Exactly. That pressure builds
diamond hands, right? Exactly. Um Brett Thompson, never short of uh Never a nice trolling comment
for yours truly, guys. Maths is today’s top performer. Look. Okay, look, I I Yeah, I admit
I’m I’m terrible at maths. Um uh Larry uh says, “Uh oh man, I always miss these and I have
to watch from the beginning.” So, hi for now, but I’m going to rewind and start at the
beginning. It’s look, it’s just great that you’re watching whatever, Lar. Um, but great
to have so many people joining us live. Um, including uh X ex XM Mad Bill XX first
time first live. Love the show, guys. Oh, great. There we are. Are we able to see
Twitter comments or no? Only the um Yeah, I’m I’m not sure if we’re able to see Twitter
comments as well because we are we are live on Twitter for the first time. Nick is so handsome.
He’s almost as hot as guy when he’s on fire. I’ll take that. I think that’s Z trader. I
think that might be my mom’s alt account, actually. So, uh, we’ll buy. All right, we
will leave it there for today, folks. Like, what would likes did we get to this week? Oh,
yes. How Yeah, we got close to the likes. 176. Oh, I I I don’t even want to try and do the maths
for that. How many still left? Still plenty of likes left to get, but 23, right? I I don’t know.
Um, but thank you everyone for joining us. It’s been great to It’s been great to see you. It is
great to see crypto doing so well. Let’s hope we can sustain this a bit longer. Let’s keep this
rally going. Let’s crack that 4K level on ETH. Absolutely. And then Yeah. Perfect. All right.
Thanks everyone. We will see you next time. Cheers. I almost called 911 seeing guy dancing at
the end. I hope he survived that video. Another visit from the guy. Nick loves being the small
spoon. Another visit from the guyologist. Nick loves being a small spoon. Haven’t laughed so hard
in a long time. You guys are coin bureau leer brew by keyman.
