8/21/24: Punks To The Moon 🚀☀🏛

Author

Valko
August 21, 2024

Top News

  1. CryptoPunks see $3.5M in daily volume as floor returns to 30 ETH

  2. SunPump, Tron’s memecoin platform, breaks $1M in revenue

  3. Binance hit with class action lawsuit for alleged money laundering

Specs’ Insights

1. CryptoPunks see $3.5M in daily volume as floor returns to 30 ETH

⌐◪-◪ → If you’re wondering why there are so many CryptoPunks on your timeline, it’s because Punks went on an absolute tear yesterday with nearly 50 traded for over $3.2M in volume.

For context, that’s roughly as much as all Solana + Bitcoin NFTs combined. One buyer, Izzi, swept up over 8 CryptoPunks. Fucking legend.

The Punk buying spree brought attention back to other NFT collections, with most major projects up 3-7% on the news. A rising tide really does lift all ships.

Floor price is cool, but you know what’s better? New community members. There are now 3,697 wallets holding Punks.

2. Tron’s memecoin deployer SunPump breaks $1M in revenue

Tron memecoin deployer ‘SunPump’ tops $1M in revenue 11 days after launch

Justin Sun’s memecoin platform SunPump has hit $1.1 million in revenue after 11 days amid debate around the value of memecoin trading to the crypto space.

⌐◪-◪ → Tron’s memecoin platform SunPump just crossed $1M in revenue after helping users launch over 18,000 tokens in 11 days (which included some downtime).

Note: The platform has a $10M incentive program for launching tokens, so the hype is clearly, at least to some degree, engineered.

For those wondering, the platform makes money in two ways:

  • A fixed 20 TRX ($3) creation fee

  • A 1% trading fee on all tokens

The top memecoins on the platform are SUNDOG, SUNCAT, FOFAR, and SunWikong, with SUNDOG hitting an impressive $240M market cap in just 5 days — another win for the dog coins.

Zooming out, there’s a lot of Tron hype in the air right now, but I can’t help but wonder “why now?” and “will this last?”

3. Binance hit with class action lawsuit for alleged money laundering

⌐◪-◪ → Binance and CZ were just hit with a new class action lawsuit over alleged crypto money laundering.

The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court in Seattle by three investors who claim Binance enabled money laundering that prevented them from recovering stolen crypto assets.

For context: CZ pleaded guilty to separate money laundering violations last year and began serving a four-month prison sentence in June. Also, for what it’s worth, Binance is already paying $4.3B in fines.

My favorite part in the lawsuit is when they describe Binance as a “crypto-wash empire” — almost as good as Elizabeth Warren’s infamous “shadowy super coders” quote haha.

It’s too early to have a strong opinion, but this is definitely a case worth watching. Legal experts say this case could put the “efficacy of blockchain analytics itself” on trial.

Everything Else

⛓️ Crypto & DeFi

  • Solana’s Polymarket 'BET on Drift' rival draws $3M liquidity on day 1

  • Jaredfromsubway.eth is back with a new and improved MEV bot

  • Mt. Gox moves 13,265 BTC worth $700M to a new address

  • Babylon to launch self-custodial BTC staking mainnet in 2 days

  • Crypto whale loses $55M in DAI stablecoin phishing attack

  • YieldNest builds novel liquid restaking token on EigenLayer

  • Nillion’s 'blind computing' platform integrates with Arbitrum

  • Private transactions via 'dark pools' increase on Ethereum

  • Curve founder sees pushback on $6M/year DAO funding proposal

🏦 Wallstreet

  • Bitwise CIO says “the institutions are coming” for Bitcoin ETFs

  • State Street and Taurus team up for digital asset custody services

  • Grayscale share of BTC ETF market falls below 25%

  • Riot Platforms gets closer to taking over Bitfarms by force

  • Bitfarms to buy rival Stronghold Digital for $175M in stock and debt

  • Sygnum Bank gives crypto lender Ledn a $50M BTC-backed loan

🚀 Venture Capital

  • Story protocol raises $80M Series B for IP-focused layer 1 blockchain

  • zkME raises $4M seed round for decentralized identity startup

  • Sorella Labs raises $7.5M seed round to solve ETH’s MEV problem

  • YeagerAI raises $7.5M seed round to build new smart contracts

🏛️ Legal & Regulatory

🌎 Rest of the World

🖼️ NFTs & Metaverse

  • Chromie Squiggles final mint will happen today at 2:30 ET

  • CyberKongs partners with Adidas on limited-edition collectibles

  • Blast TVL down 62% from all-time high, active users at 6-month low

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