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  • 7/31/24: Pump To The Moon 💊🚗❄️

7/31/24: Pump To The Moon 💊🚗❄️

Top News

  1. Pump.Fun hits new daily revenue all-time-high of $2.36M

  2. California DMV digitizes 42M car titles on the Avalanche Network

  3. Icebreaker raises $5M for decentralized professional network

Specs’ Breakdown

1. Pump.Fun hits new daily revenue all-time-high of $2.36M

⌐◪-◪ → Pump.Fun just hit a new daily revenue all-time-high of $2.36M, making it the #1 protocol by 24-hour revenue.

Yes, that’s right, it outpaced every protocol, including Ethereum, Lido, and Maker.

For context: that’s 3x their average daily revenue over the past week, and 18% higher than their previous record of $2M on July 1st.

Impressive numbers for a company only 6 months old.

Meanwhile, Dumpy.Fun launched a platform for shorting memecoins on Solana, you can join for early access here.

Pump.Fun’s success reminds me of the early days of NFT infra, when companies like OpenSea were making money hand over fist helping new artists launch and distribute their NFTs.

Do you think Pump.Fun’s dominance will last, or will it fizzle out? Let me know in Specs.Chat!

2. California DMV digitizes 42M car titles on the Avalanche Network

⌐◪-◪ → The California DMV just launched its own chain using Avalanche to modernize vehicle title transfers.

They’ve already put 42M car titles on-chain for California’s 39M residents.

This is a significant step in modernizing public records and blockchain adoption. I hope it’s a successful case study for other states considering blockchain tech.

You can see how this could apply to other public records like land ownership, zoning, crime, voting, and more.

I wonder how reversible these transactions are. For example, what happens if someone accidentally transfers their title to the wrong address or loses access to their account? The DMV likely retains “total system control” here, eliminating blockchain’s “trustlessness”, but hopefully that’s offset with aggressive transparency, making all changes easily trackable.

Can you think of any other states with public records on-chain? Let me know in Specs.Chat!

3. Icebreaker raises $5M for decentralized professional network

⌐◪-◪ → Congratulations to Icebreaker for raising a $5M seed round, led by CoinFund. Icebreaker is an open and decentralized professional network founded by my friend and fellow CryptoPunk, Jack Dille.

Now that they’ve achieved product-market fit, they’re focused on growing to 1M users by the end of the year. For context: LinkedIn has 1B users worldwide, so while Icebreaker has a long way to go, the total addressable market is huge.

If you haven’t checked out Icebreaker:

I really believe in their team and their alignment with the web3 ethos, they are building things the “right” way.

Bonus: Jack reads Specs daily and says it’s his “favorite news source” — so please join me in congratulating Jack below!

Everything Else

⛓️ Crypto & DeFi

🏦 Wallstreet & VC

  • Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust starts trading today

  • Nvidia becomes more volatile than Bitcoin and Ether

  • Circle’s stock valued over $5B on secondary market ahead of IPO

  • Goldman Sachs CEO says Bitcoin could be a 'store of value

  • Bernstein says mining hardware is a $20B opportunity

  • QCP Capital forecasts greater volatility for Ethereum vs. Bitcoin

  • Hyperbolic raises $7M for AI cloud startup powered by blockchain

  • Mintify raises $3.4M in additional funding for NFT infrastructure

🏛️ Legal & Regulatory

  • Trump campaign raises $21M at Bitcoin Conference in Nashville

  • Paul Krugman calls Bitcoin ‘economically useless’

  • SEC posts information page for investors harmed by Terraform fraud

  • Dem Congressman says Harris is better for crypto than Biden

  • BitClout founder charged with wire fraud and civil securities charge

🌎 Rest of the World

  • Coinbase concerned over ongoing regulation by enforcement

  • Worldcoin launches World ID verification in Australia

  • Dunkin’ Donuts is giving out free BTC with donuts in South Korea

  • Russia passes bill to legalize crypto in attempt to dodge sanctions

🖼️ NFTs & Metaverse

  • Doodles launches its own streaming platform with exclusive content

  • 'Hamster Kombat' hits 300M players, reveals token allocation plans

  • TON Game ‘BANANA’ hits 1M users in less than 72-hour

  • DumpyDotFun lanches memecoin shorting platform on Solana

  • Draft Kings kills NFT business citing 'legal developments’