Together With
Bitcoin finally crossed $100k.
Now, the orange coin will be the talk of every news anchor, TikTok influencer, and newspaper headline.
The FOMO wave is coming. Roll up your sleeves – it’s time for us to secure generational wealth before A.I. puts us all out of work.
Here’s what we got today:
- What’s up with markets? Dino coins are pumping.
- AI Agent Opportunity. Comprehensive guide to Virtual ecosystem.
- Around the web. Fluid is migrating from $INST to $FLUID, Derive has integrated with Ethena, and more.
Today’s email is brought to you by Sui — the fastest L1 ever.
Here’s your Edge 🗡️!
Markets
Return of Retail: Revenge of Dino Coins
Retail is finally here — but they’re not sticking to the script that crypto Twitter CT expected.
Most of Crypto Twitter expected retail to ape into memecoins. Aka, Murad’s “memecoin supercycle” thesis. But the reality? A bit different.
What happened? Top price performers of last week were projects many crypto-natives had written off as irrelevant or outdated.
Here’s a look at how these ‘dino coins’ performed in the last seven days:
- XRP is up >60%
- HBAR is up >96%
- IOTA is up >112.6%
And here’s the kicker: $XRP, which almost no crypto-native uses, even flipped $SOL, CT’s darling chain. At one point, they were even doing more volume than $BTC & $ETH combined.
For many on crypto Twitter, this was a tough pill to swallow.
Why is this happening? There are a couple of theories.
#1. Retail like the coins they know. Many of the coins that pumped were top performers of previous cycles. Returning retail investors are buying dino tokens they already know about.
It’s like seeing your ex get popular again, and suddenly you’re sliding back into those DMs. You probably have better options, but old habits die hard.
#2. Favorable regulatory environment. Many of these dino tokens aim to work closely with TradFi institutions like banks. For example,
- Ripple ($XRP) connects banks, payment providers, and crypto exchanges.
- Hedera ($HBAR) is owned and governed by a council of TradFi institutions.
With Trump’s win, the market expects a more favorable regulatory environment for projects working closely with TradFi.
#3. The new SEC chair. Trump has nominated Paul Atkins as the SEC Chair. He is pro-crypto but is said to be a bit skeptical of pure DeFi. Apparently, he leans towards DeFi with centralized actors like Ripple.
While his exact stance isn’t clear, enough investors believe he’ll favor CeDeFi like Ripple. This sentiment likely drew investors to these dino tokens.
The Bottom Line
Firstly, Crypto Twitter doesn’t represent all of crypto. If you only take information from CT, you are working with a limited view.
It might be time to scrawl back to those old Reddit forums or even scroll through TikTok to understand what retail is thinking. Or just follow someone who can report on it for you.
Secondly, there’ll be multiple metas at the same time. Different groups of people will create different metas.
Zoomers like phantom and memes. Boomers like the older coins they’re familiar with, especially those claiming utility.
As a trader, there’s alpha in predicting which tokens will attract which crowd.
If you want to trade Dino coins, here’s a list of 2018 top coins.
That said, it’s not for everyone. Personally, I prefer sticking to my proven strategies rather than chasing metas outside my comfort zone.
Together with Sui
Sui’s Surge: Discover The Fastest Blockchain Ever
As Crypto evolves, it needs modern infrastructure. We can’t unleash the full power of dApps on chains with slow settlement times, and high transaction costs. Or chains that make it hard for normal users to navigate.
When I think of a modern blockchain, the 1st one I think about is Sui.
Speed: Sui settles transactions in under one second making it the fastest blockchain ever (Swaps average 0.59~0.99 seconds).
Low Cost: Transactions are significantly cheaper, the best rate among major L1s.
This combination of speed and low costs means they can bring out dApps such as GameFi that can’t exist on other blockchains.
Interesting Things Happening in Sui:
- It already has over $1.4B in TVL and over $25B in DEX volume.
- zkLogin. You can log into Sui-based apps using Google or Facebook credentials rather than usual Crypto wallets (lowering the entry barrier for new users)
- Sui partnered with Franklin Templeton, which has $1.5 trillion in assets under management. This is going to help bridge the gap between TradFi and Crypto.
- Phantom Wallet is now integrating with the Sui network.
Discover why $SUI is skyrocketing – up 300% in the past 3 months.
P.S. To learn more about Sui, read our deep-dive posted last week covering all things Sui.
AI Agents
Comprehensive Guide to Virtual Ecosystem
 |
AI Agents could be THE money printer of this cycle.
They are advanced artificial intelligence systems that can complete tasks or make decisions independently.
Since we talked about agents for over a month, you might be worried that you’re late. But the AI Agents still only have $7.39B.
If you haven’t read the previous newsletters, here’s the TLDR: Virtuals is an AI Launchpad protocol. It is known as “Pump. fun” for A.I. agents.
Let’s go through some of the mid-cap projects that I like:
#1 The Alpha Bot – AIXBT ($200M)
Imagine a KOL that gives alpha, doesn’t brag, works 24/7, & doesn’t dump on their followers. It’s here, and it’s already the #1 KOL by mind share
 |
It’s dominating in terms of attention. 50,000+ X followers so far this month
There’s definitely some criticism around the quality of the information. But I think people underestimate the head start it has, and how much potential it has to improve.
#2 The AI VC for AI Agents – Sekoia ($24M)
SEKOIA will be an AI-driven venture capitalist. It aims to evaluate and invest in thousands of AI agents simultaneously—something no human can ever do.
There are many reasons to be bullish on SEKOIA
- The agent narrative
- Upcoming bridge to Solana
- Potential profits as an AI investor
- According to Virtuals, it has 50k+ token holders
But what sold me? @Anant Iyer, who is a partner at Lightspeed Ventures, joining its team.
#3 The AIXBT of NFTs – NFT_XBT ($11M)
NFTxbt aims to be the go-to expert on NFT market. Here’s why it turned heads
- Partnership with Fx_hash_
- Potential NFT szn with OpenSea 2.0
- Wintermute taking a significant position on the token.
NFTxbt’s AI model isn’t that good yet. If you blindly ape his calls, you’ll probably be rekt. But smart players like Wintermute seem confident in the team’s ability to deliver.
If NFTs make a comeback, nftXBT is positioned to ride the wave.
There are many more projects, strategies, and resources that I want to share. However, I’ve reached the word limit for the newsletter article.
If you want the full guide, click below:
🚀 DeFi Catalysts
Fluid is migrating from $INST to a new token, $ FLUID. To accelerate adoption, Fluid will also launch a growth campaign.
Everclear approved vbCLEAR staking & token migration from $NEXT to $CLEAR. Season 1 rewards will start tomorrow.
Derive (formerly known as Lyra) has integrated with Ethena, who’ll be integrating Derive’s basis trading, options, futures, and vaults.
Morpho Labs announced the Morpho Olympics. Up to 10M $MORPHO will be used to reward vaults that reach performance milestones.
Gearbox has added more BTCfi strategies. This should give more opportunity for getting yield on BTC.
Convex Finance announced that the “next chapter” is beginning. They seem to be hinting at an upcoming product release.
Berachain is discussing integrating Morpho Blue as the backbone for Bend, an enshrined money market on Berachain.
Orderly Network went live on Solana. Solana devs can now effortlessly integrate perps with their SDK.
StarkNet v2.0 is live on mainnet. It’ll have a sleeker UX and supports more tokens.
🪂 Airdrop Alpha
HyperLiquid airdropped 31% of $HYPE to the community. This has made the project very popular on crypto Twitter.
Rabby has integrated Sonic (previously Fantom) under its Ecosystem tab. You can now track Sonic airdrop points, migrate $FTM (soon), and more.
Satori Finance announced the airdrop allocations for the community. 12% of the total token supply will be allocated for airdrops.
Bluefin released its airdrop eligibility portal. 19.68% of the total BLUE supply has been allocated to the program.
Nodepay, a global AI training and development platform, has published the season 1 points in users’ dashboards.
Jumper Exchange has launched the Genesis of Gravity Chain quest.
🚀 New Launches
MilkyWay announced that they’re launching the first restaking protocol for Celestia. They’re claiming to introduce “plug-in security”.
Supra, a multi-VM layer one, has launched phase one of its mainnet. It has features like native oracles, automation, randomness, and so on.
Mitosis, an ecosystem-owned liquidity L1, launched the Game of MITO, their points program. Performance in the program will impact the token allocation.
🐦⬛ X Hits
- Is $ETH the next coin to pump?
- $CHAOS: the baby of AIXBT & SIMMI.
- The biggest breakthrough from the AI Agent mania.
- Comparison of market cap and engagement metrics of various agents.
- A collection of all spreadsheets powered by Artemis.
