Internet capital markets

Become a Smarter DeFi investor in just 7 minutes per week

The DeFi Edge shares the best DeFi strategies, insights, & analysis so you can be early to the next opportunities.

By Edgy - May 16, 2025

Belive.app: Capital Markets for Ideas

Internet Capital Markets.

Sounds grand, doesn’t it? Like the final form of DeFi. A place where ideas get funded instantly, like magic.

Right now, one app is leading that charge: Believe.app. It’s the poster child for this whole “easily fund an idea” narrative.

But as with most shiny things in crypto, not everything is as perfect as it seems.

What’s Believe? It’s a launchpad for launching tokens on Solana. Here’s how it works:

Anyone can tweet their product idea.
If they tag @launchcoin and include a ticker & name, a token will be created.
People can buy tokens early to express support for the idea/founder/token. Pricing is on a bonding curve.
Believe.app highlights select tokens they think are legit, driving more attention (and liquidity) toward them.
Once a token hits $100K market cap, it “graduates” and a liquidity pool will be deployed on Meteora DEX.
Creator gets 50% of the 2% trading fee from token volume. This is supposed to incentivize the builder to execute the idea. The rest goes to Believe team.

Alright. Another launchpad. Why should you care about the hundredth launchpad of the week?

Because the numbers are wild:

It did ~$2.3B in trading volume.
~5k tokens were created on May 13th alone.
>17k tokens were launched on the platform.
Current market cap of all believe coins is >$300M.
In the last 3 days alone, Believe made $12.36M in fees.

Its native token, LAUNCHCOIN, had been a gigantic success as well. Between 11th May and yesterday, it pumped ~5000%. Price pumped from ~$0.007 to ~$0.36.

That’s insane. Why is it mooning?

#1. Internet Capital Markets Narrative.

With Believe tokens, degens are buying tokens that represent an idea + founder.

So, buying Believe tokens is framed as funding an early-stage firm (idea+founder), rather than just another memecoin.

#2. Vibe coding trend.

AI has made it easy to code and create apps. Now, even people without extensive coding knowledge can create apps. And expert devs can 10x their productivity.

This app leverages that trend. Making apps has become an effortless hobby for many people. These tokens are framed as something to incentivize that relatively low-effort hobby.

#3. Success stories.

By the time people heard about Believe, they already had many examples of devs creating relatively low-effort products that were big successes.

$DUPE helps people find the best price on furniture. It has 100k+ monthly active users.
$BUDDY is an AI-driven content assistant. Apparently, it generates $300k in yearly recurring revenue.
$FITCOIN offers an AI-enhanced virtual wardrobe. It had serious real-world traction (300K app downloads).

These successes have led to a growth flywheel. Success stories → More web2 devs jump in → Traders follow → More money for devs → More devs jump in → Repeat.

More web2 devs are coming to Believe to fund their hobbies. And this is attracting more traders to Believe, which gives more money to devs. And so on.

#4. Promotion from KOLs.

Big names with serious clout promoted this project.

Nikita Bier, a well-known web2 builder (ex-Facebook, Gas App), launched his project called Dupe.com ($DUPE).
Imran Khan from the Alliance DAO, an influential crypto fund, also promoted the project.
The Solana ecosystem, including Solana Foundation & Multicoin Capital was also boosting the narrative.

With that amount of promotion and attention, the pump was guarenteed.

#5. Basics like speed, UX, etc.

With Boop.fun, another trending launchpad, many people had complained about the UX. It might’ve played a role in them getting less traction than what many people expected.

With Believe, users can buy/sell these tokens even without crypto wallets. It directly connects with your X.

The team executed the idea pretty well. This was a pivot from their previous version, which was called clout.me.

Now, does this mean Believe is perfect? No. It has many risks.

#1. Legal risks.

No matter how you spin it, raising funds to build a venture comes under securities law, at least in the US.

So these devs are potentially violating consumer protection laws, this can be a huge headache for them later.

#2. Narrative vs Reality

Believe tokens are marked as “venture funding”. So many degens are expecting the value to flow back to tokens in the form of dividends.

But that’s explicitly prohibited by the Believe in the Legal section.

Maybe some apps will find some in-app utility for their tokens. But those will be very rare.

At the end of the day, from a buyer’s perspective, these are memecoins with extra steps.

#3. Creator Accountability Gap

Anyone can launch a token. So, there’ll be a lot of tokens from fake profiles with fake history and fake credentials. Scammers will hack X accounts of legit devs and launch tokens.

Even legit builders can ignore their tokenholders. There’s nothing forcing them to continue building the product and community.

Believe is said to be working on creating incentive systems to ensure long-term alignment.

This narrative is very similar to previous narratives like friend.tech, social tokens, memecoins, etc., all of them ended sooner or later. So, this will probably end too.

Now, I don’t want to fully write out the idea. There’s a future version of this where devs get backend legal protection, accountability structures are built, and tokens gain real utility.

But I don’t realistically see that happening.

And there are already complaints. Some creators say they haven’t even received the 50% fee share they were promised.

But that doesn’t mean you should ignore the narrative.

It’ll be a hot narrative in the short term. That means money on the table.

You can find new launches on Believescreener or on X directly. Below is an early list of features of a potential Believe runner.

Verified, experienced devs.
Realistic & achievable product goals.
Regular communication & transparent roadmap.
An excited & active community.

What do I think? A ton of people will lose money. Think everyone’s thirsty for a new narrative / primitive and we forced this once the timing was right.

If you want exposure, the best way is to buy LAUNCHCOIN.

If you want to bet on tokens, make sure you treat them like high risk high reward plays. Small % of your portfolio (like 1-3%)

Sponsored Deep Dive By HeyAnon

HUD: AI-Powered Crypto Intel, In-Context

AI is everywhere. People are using it for everything — from therapy to building billion-dollar business plans. So, why not DeFi?

Enter HeyAnon. It’s an AI-powered project designed to simplify crypto interactions.

At its core, it’s a chat interface that acts as your personal DeFi assistant. You talk to it like you’d talk to your techie cousin. Just type something like, “Bridge 1000 USDC from Base to Solana with @debridge” and it’ll handle everything behind the scenes.

Sounds like a dream, right? Well, HeyAnon already does that for you.

Now, they’ve announced a new game-changing feature: HeyAnon HUD

What is it? It’s a Chrome extension that overlays the information you want on the Solana platforms that you already use. It’ll make crypto research 10x efficient.

No more jumping between 10 apps for 10 different metrics. The Hey Anon HUD will bring the data to you.

It’s like wearing smart glasses for DeFi. You’ll see key information directly over your trading interface. Clean, real-time insights. No friction.

Alright, Edgy, what sorts of information will it give me?

Short answer: everything you need to make an informed decision on a token. It’ll give you onchain metrics, off-chain social analytics, technical analysis, and more.

The long answer is below. I’ll list various categories of information that’ll be visible frictionlessly.

#1. Onchain overlay.

What’s a big advantage that DeFi provides to retail investors over TradFi? Transparency. It allows you to snoop on the activities of big players.

Every single transaction you make on chains like Solana and Ethereum is public. You should be taking advantage of this. Ideally, you should track the big whales, early buyers, smart money, etc., that have bought your portfolio coin. Monitoring their activities will give you invaluable insights.

But most people don’t do it. Reading onchain data requires some skill. Additionally, it’s very, very time-consuming. So they ignore valuable data.

What if you could get that data easily, without having to go through multiple apps and trace addresses back to their origin?

Enter HeyAnon HUD.

They’ve built their own real-time Solana data infrastructure to collect and organize onchain data. And with HUD, they’ll overlay all the relevant data on your Solana trading platform (Axiom, Photon, GMGN, etc.)

Some of the onchain metrics that’ll be available in the first version:.

First 100 buyers
Bubblemaps clusters
Current & historical Top 10
Smart money, Insiders, KOLs
Bundlers

Most importantly, all of the above metrics are sortable and visual on your charts. So, you’ll have more control over your setup.

Dynamic overlays will show who’s buying, holding, selling, and where. You’ll know if a KOL just bought, if early whales are accumulating, or if insiders are dumping.

It’s really useful to know the entry price for KOLs and other whales. It’ll help you determine whether they’re going to dump soon or not. This can check if they have “skin in the game”, so to speak. With HUD, you’ll get an instant visual readout of average entries for:

Top 10 holders
KOLs that fully sold
KOLs that partially sold
KOLs still holding

With HUD, you’ll know the profit of your KOLs. You can speculate whether they’ll buy or sell based on that. And you can adjust your strategy accordingly.

Friction is the ultimate enemy of productivity. Because of friction, many investors don’t check above onchain metrics of the tokens they trade.

With HUD from HeyAnon, you’ll easily get all the relevant metrics directly on your trading platform.

#2. Technical Analysis overlay

Personally, I’m not a big believer in technical analysis. Many of the TA guys are just astrologers for men.

But it does have some truth. Key support and resistance levels are important psychological factors that can influence the market. Moving averages are useful in understanding trends. And so on.

So you do need insights from TA, but most of the time, spending hours on drawing imaginary lines on charts won’t be worth it.

What if AI can do Technical Analysis?

Well, you guessed it, HeyAnon will do it for you.

With a single click, HUD will give you:

Technical Analysis
Entry strategy for the token
Potential exit strategy for the project

This analysis won’t be some BS boilerplate content forwarded to everyone.

They’ll be dynamic, contextual, and built to match what you see on screen.

And additionally, it’ll be powered by AI & onchain data as well.

Apart from basic indicators like supports, resistances, fib levels, or confluence heat-maps, it can also overlay AI powered insights, such as the average price of KOLs, accumulation zone for whales, and levels where the team is selling.

We are entering a new age of AI-powered alpha. If you don’t use them, you’ll be left behind.

#3. Built-in research assistant

Gemma is HeyAnon’s AI-powered research assistant.

With HUD, she’ll always be available on your screen as well. Are you reading the latest Vitalik post about some niche protocol mechanism? If you don’t have time, you can just ask Gemma to summarize.

What if you are driving? Well, Gemma can read it for you.

Gemma can make your research process much more efficient.

The research assistant draws from a wide variety of data sources. HUD even scrapes and indexes external data sources such as Telegram, Messari, Cookiedotfun, and Bubblemaps. It monitors crypto-relevant Twitter accounts, hashtags, and trending topics.

This allows the HUD to surface alpha signals not available in other AI platforms. A trending token mentioned in a Telegram group or a whale movement tracked on Bubblemaps can be used to surface alpha by HUD.

This means Hey Anon can not only teach you how to fish, but also cook and serve it to you.

Data-driven insights with a tangible plan for entry and a precise exit. HeyAnon will basically be your personal quantitative trader. What else could you ask for?

HeyAnon is one of those rare projects where they ship so fast that I can’t keep up with all the updates.

Recently, they released many updates like Gemma Pulse, which will give you a real-time daily summary of trends, events, and discussions across the crypto communities. Plan Flow module and will make transactions crystal clear by giving real-time updates as they’re taking place. And more.

They’ve also announced a Mobile Application. It’ll have the full suite of DeFAI tools that make your crypto investing career easier. The goal is to become a mobile superapp. It will be launching in June!

The HUD extension that overlays the information on your screen isn’t live yet. It’ll be released next week. If you want to know more about HeyAnon’s immediate roadmap, click here.

But, I’d suggest you try out the HeyAnon web application to get an idea of the future of crypto investing.

Try HeyAnon →

🚀 DeFi Catalysts

Ethereum introduced its Trillion Dollar Security Initiative. The goal is to audit, upgrade, and market the security of Ethereum to make institutions comfortable with holding trillions on Ethereum.

Fluid has reported losses to the liquidity providers of the ETH-USDC DEX pool due to extreme volatility. This has created controversy surrounding the sustainability of Fluid’s model for volatile assets.

Virtuals Protocol released $VIRTUAL staking. 20% of all Virgen Points will be distributed to the veVIRTUAL holders

Sui Network is now available via Phantom, the most popular wallet in the Solana ecosystem. Users can activate the network in the settings.

EtherFi announced a token buyback program where 103 ETH of revenue from the prior week will be used to buy back the tokens.

Uniswap introduced one-click swaps. With the Pectra upgrade, Ethereum wallets have become smart accounts, this feature makes use of that.

Derive is discussing selling its treasury, technology, and product suite to Synthetix for SNX. It has created huge controversy.

Wonder, an Ethereum L2 by Canada’s largest regulated crypto platform, went live. They have removed the gas fee on the chain.

Euler Finance has expanded to Unichain. A $100k incentive pool is allocated for users supplying USDC, WETH, & USDT0.

Phantom launched its own Liquid Staking Token: Phantom Staked SOL (PSOL). Users will be able to directly stake SOL from their wallets.

Nous Research launched The Psyche Network testnet, a decentralized training network that aims to bring the world’s compute together to train powerful AI.

Ethos Network has sent 256 Validator NFTs to their top contributors. They’ll start Season 1 with a fixed amount of Contributor XP.

📰 Industry News

Coinbase joined the S&P 500. It’s the first crypto company to join the index.

Coinbase lost personal data of <1% of Coinbase MTUs. Criminals bribed overseas support agents to pull the data.

Ukraine is preparing to create a National Bitcoin Reserve. Its MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak says work on draft legislation is underway.

American Bitcoin, a firm backed by the Trump family, will go public by merging with Gryphon Digital. The new entity will trade as “ABTC”.

BTCS Inc. has announced it’ll buy up to $57.8M Ether ($ETH). It’ll be used to expand it’s validator operations and use ETH as a strategic reserve like BTC.

🐦‍⬛ X Hits

FRAX as a non-consensus stablecoin bet.
The impact of Kaito on the crypto ecosystem.
Insights from the Virtuals dashboard on Dexu.ai.
Arthur Hayes’s macro article projects $1M BTC by 2028.
Signal-Boost to synchronous composability among rollups.

😂 Meme

BACK TO NEWSLETTERS

Other Newsletters You Might Like:

Learn How to Analyze Crypto Projects Independently

If you don’t learn to analyze projects independently, You’re other people’s exit liquidity.

Analysis Apprentice is a free, 7-day course designed to help you evaluate any project.