⭐Weekly Recap: Celebrity Memecoin Season In Full Swing

Happy weekend Defiers!

Celebrity memecoin season continues to wear on, with Iggy Azalea’s MOTHER token rallying past a $200 million market cap.

The news bullish momentum comes as Sahil Arora, an alleged orchestrator of memecoin pump and dumps associated with MOTHER and other recently launched celebrity tokens, is facing backlash from his business partners. Sahil was reportedly blocked from the X social media platform this week.

A wallet dubiously labeled as belonging to Donald Trump is also garnering millions in memecoin airdrops.

Ethereum’s expected spot ETFs remain at the forefront of the crypto news cycle. While Gary Gensler, the chair of the SEC, said his agency will “take some time” before giving the green light to Ether ETF applicants, he also made no indication that the funds won’t eventually enter the market.

VanEck, an investment firm with roughly $100 billion under management, has adjusted its long-term price outlook for Ether amid the ETF hype. VanEck said its “base” scenario places ETH changing hands for $22,000 in the year 2030.

In other ETF news, The State of Wisconsin Investment Board invested roughly $160 million or 0.1% of its assets into spot Bitcoin ETFs from BlackRock and Grayscale. The first U.S. 2x long and short leveraged Ethereum ETFs also debuted this past week.

Crypto endures as a prominent political issue in the U.S. President Biden’s decision to veto a bipartisan resolution dismantling the SEC's despised crypto accounting rule attracted condemnation from many web3 community members.

However, members of Congress are increasingly recognizing the efficiency benefits offered by tokenization. The House Financial Services Committee held a hearing on real-world asset tokenization featuring testimony favorable to blockchain technology.

Robinhood announced plans to expand its crypto operations with the acquisition of Bitstamp, a major centralized exchange founded in 2011. The deal is planned to finalize during the second half of 2025 and is worth only $200 million.

Galaxy Digital issued a multi-million dollar loan backed by an NFT representing a rare Stradivarius violin. The violin was purchased by Animoca Brands CEO, Yat Sui, for $9 million.

Plus, Base activity surges to an all-time high, StarkWare plans to scale Bitcoin, BNB posts a new price record, and Ethena’s USDe stablecoin integrates on Aave.

And don’t miss our latest podcast with David Schwartz, the CTO of Ripple.

Enjoy!

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ALPHA INTEL

Using the Initia Testnet for a Potential Airdrop

Our resident DeFi degens walk you through how to earn points exploring the testnet deployment of Initia, an upcoming modular blockchain platform that enables developers to easily deploy and customize highly scalable application-specific blockchains using Layer 2 solutions.

Initia’s recently launched testnet hosts a gamified campaign allowing users to earn XP, which could qualify holders for a potential airdrop in the future.

Plus, they share their in-depth technical analysis covering the latest price action.

PODCAST & INTERVIEWS

Revisiting Ripple: New Stablecoin, Airdrops, Network Attacks, and The SEC Case

In this week’s podcast, Cami Russo was joined by David Schwartz, the CTO of Ripple.

Ripple was established back in 2012 and is the platform behind XRP, which remains ranked among the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization at $30 billion. While Ripple has recently become known for its numerous legal battles with the SEC, in recent weeks, the project announced plans to enter the stablecoin market.

In this podcast, we will explore the latest developments and more, starting with Ripple's founding story.

Behind the Crypto Curtains: Market Insights from CoinGecko Co-Founder Bobby Ong

Bobby Ong is the Co-Founder of CoinGecko, a cryptocurrency analysis platform that tracks price, volume, market capitalization, community growth, open-source code development, major events, and on-chain metrics.

The Guru Network L3 As Multi Chain AI Compute Layer

Evgeny Vakhteev is the co-founder and CTO of Guru Network, a multi-chain AI platform that combines artificial intelligence with blockchain to streamline and automate business processes both on-chain and off-chain using AI agents and decentralized applications.

An early DeFi analytics platform, DexGuru has recently expanded its services to include AI-driven tools for various applications. In this interview, we will discuss all the latest developments with Evgeny.

U.S. Elections, Crypto Markets, AI, and New Media with Mario Nawfal

Mario Nawfal is a serial entrepreneur and a prominent figure in the crypto industry.

The Defiant spoke to Nawfal during Consensus2024 in Austin to discuss a range of topics, from industry ethos to Mario’s insights on why the industry is attractive to many. Mario shares his perspective on the declining trust in mainstream media and the role of independent publications and citizen journalism. We also discuss the politicization of crypto in the U.S., Nawfal’s outlook for the web3 industry, and his advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Saturday

Crypto Community Torn Over ‘Bonk Guy’ Who Wants To Emulate Roaring Kitty A new character has emerged onto the crypto scene, trying to emulate the success of famed financial analyst turned meme stock investor Keith Gill, also known as Roaring Kitty.

Friday

Ethena Expands USDe Into Aave As ‘Asset Matures’ Ethena Labs’ USDe stablecoin has integrated with the industry’s largest lending platform, Aave.
Iggy Azalea’s MOTHER Memecoin Hits $200 Million Market Cap The price of MOTHER has more than doubled since catching flak from Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.
Crypto Markets Dip Following Strong May Jobs Report Crypto markets traded lower on Friday morning after prospects of an imminent rate cut from the Federal Reserve dampened.
Telegram's The Open Network is 2024's Fastest Growing Chain Despite gathering little attention throughout the bear market, The Open Network (TON), is the fastest growing major Layer 1 chain in 2024.
Wormhole Launches Staking and Governance For W Token Holders Wormhole’s governance mechanism is the first live example of its multi-chain governance protocol, MultiGov.
DYdX To Complete v5 Upgrade Next Week DYdX v5 will introduce Isolated Markets, allowing users to partition their collateral across multiple positions.

Thursday

Congress Considers Benefits of Tokenizing Real-World Assets “Tokenization can leverage the efficiency and transparency of blockchains to help modernize U.S. markets,” said Congressman French Hill.
How Many Users Does Farcaster Actually Have? A Dune dashboard says Farcaster boasts 55,000 daily active users, but the project’s API says it may be a tenth of that.
Ethereum Hype Spurs Crypto Rally as VanEck Projects $22,000 ETH Price Target Crypto markets climbed on Thursday morning amid bullish sentiment around Ethereum and anticipation of a key U.S. jobs report.
Robinhood To Acquire Veteran Crypto Exchange Bitstamp Robinhood announced it will acquire Bitstamp, the veteran cryptocurrency exchange, for $200 million in cash next year.
Gary Gensler Says Spot Ether ETF Launch Will Take Time Gary Gensler, the chair of the SEC, said it will “take some time” for the agency to greenlight spot Ether ETF applicants’ S-1 registration statements.

Wednesday

'Trump' Wallet's Memecoin Bags Reach $30 Million As Celebrity Drama Wears On A wallet dubiously linked to the former president was airdropped more than $16 million worth of a new memecoin dubbed TROG.
Biden’s Surprise Veto Signals Democrats’ Crypto-Friendly Era May Have Been Wishful Thinking President Biden vetoed legislation designed to dismantle the SEC's despised crypto accounting rule, despite the resolution garnering bipartisan support.
Bitcoin Miners Struggle Post-Halving as Reserves Plunge Bitcoin miner revenue, transaction fees, hash rate, and on-chain volume have all slumped post-halving.
ZK-Rollup Taiko Airdrops Token And Reaches $2 Billion Fully-Diluted Valuation Taiko distributing its token to early adopters at a fully diluted valuation of $2.1 billion and a market cap of $110 million.
BNB Hits All-time High as Crypto Market Rebounds Bitcoin ETFs had their second-best day ever, with $887 million in inflows on June 4.
Misyon Bank Launches Tokenization Solution On Avalanche Misyon Bank's Tokenization Platform facilitates the tokenization of shares, real estate, and government and corporate bonds.
Leveraged Ether ETFs Enter The Market The first 2x long Ether ETF launched on June 4, while the first 2x short Ether ETF will debut on June 7.

Tuesday

Hyperliquid TVL Hits All-time High, Surpassing dYdX The Arbitrum-based DEX also announced a new points program that kicked off on May 28.
Galaxy Digital Issues Multimillion-dollar Loan Against Tokenized Stradivarius Violin Both the physical violin and an NFT representing the instrument were posted as collateral for the loan.
StarkWare Reveals Ambitious Plan To Scale Bitcoin Through Controversial Upgrade StarkWare unveiled an ambitious plan to now scale Bitcoin. “We want to seize the moment,” StarkWare’s Co-founder and CEO, Eli Ben-Sasson, told The Defiant.
Base Ecosystem TVL Hits All-time High Activity on Ethereum Layer 2 network Base is surging ahead of Coinbase’s smart wallet release.

Monday

Linea Halts Network after Velocore Exploit Linea said it stopped block production to minimize losses resulting from a security breach on Velocore, a decentralized exchange on the network.
Wisconsin’s Pension Fund Buys $160M Worth of Bitcoin in Trailblazing Move Pensioners in Wisconsin are now exposed to Bitcoin after the state’s pension fund allocated roughly 0.1% of its $156 billion portfolio to spot Bitcoin ETFs.
June Kicks Off with a Bitcoin Boom Crypto markets rallied on Monday morning ahead of a week packed with macroeconomic updates.
Matter Labs Abandons “ZK” Trademark Attempt Following Public Outcry Matter Labs’ move to trademark the commonly-used acronym was met with condemnation from the web3 community last week.
Polymarket Records Strongest Ever Month As Election Season Heats Up Election markets have already driven more than $235 million worth of wagers on the platform.