Investors Track Pepecoin Whales to Cash In on Meme Coin Mania as Wider Market Stagnates_coin bottle dog training

The floor price of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collection has slumped to a five-month low of 55.59 ether (ETH), according to Cryptowatch data. The slide in non-fungible token (NFT) prices occurred after pseudonymous holder 'franklinisbored' said on Twitter that he sold the majority of his collection. On-chain data shows that the user sold at least 27 BAYC NFTs over a 12-hour period, securing 1439.5828 ETH ($2.8 million) in the process. Franklinisbored explained his decision was due to 'unfortunate' real-life issues that prompted him to liquidate his NFTs. He fell victim to a rug pull on a nearly 2,000 ETH investment, which appeared 'credible' due to who else had invested in it. ApeCoin (APE), the native governance token for the Bored Ape Yacht Club ecosystem, remains flat over the past 24 hours in terms of its dollar valuation despite falling against ether trading pairs.Users who held assets on bankrupt crypto exchange FTX and lender Celsius Network can now trade their claims on the Open Exchange (OPNX). According to a press release, claims can be converted into the platform's reborn OX (reOX) or oUSD tokens. This offers immediate liquidity, control over funds, and the chance to participate in market opportunities. The tokens can be used as collateral to trade on OPNX. The platform was co-founded by CoinFlex's Mark and Leslie Lamb alongside Three Arrows Capital's Kyle Davies and Su Zhu. Three Arrows Capital was one of the first dominos to fall in last year's cryptocurrency bear market. Edited by Sheldon Reback.Jade Protocol, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that sources early-stage crypto deals, is facing calls to liquidate its $31 million treasury and issue redemptions to token-holders. The proposal was made by a longtime member of the community, who cited darkening regulatory skies and a brutal crypto winter as reasons for the dissolution. The DAO's native token, JADE, has surged in response to the proposal. Some investors have been joining Jade, according to a statement in the Discord server from Jade's press liaison Jon Ray. However, the dissolution proposal does not appear to be the doing of these activist investors. Instead, it is being driven by a longtime member who is concerned about the investment risk posed by the DAO. The community will now decide the future of Jade Protocol. If the dissolution is approved, a $2 million legal defense fund will be established to help core contributors wind down the DAO.

Coco, a new crypto casino inspired by the Milady NFT project, has made a cracking debut on the Ethereum blockchain. According to etherscan data, the platform's native token (COCO) has surged to 8 cents, giving it a market capitalization of $8.8 million. The casino has already hit $36 million in transaction volume in the first 12 hours after its release. nnThe platform features a slot machine focused on popular memecoins pepe (PEPE) and dogecoin (DOGE), as well as three traditional casino table games in blackjack, baccarat, and casino hold'em. Coco brands itself as 'provably fair,' using the SHA256 algorithm to ensure that each game is tamper-proof. nnThe success of Coco has also had an impact on other crypto casinos, with Rollbit's native token (RLB) rising to 7 cents from 2 cents. The stable market this month has led to increased traction for crypto casinos like Rollbit and Coco. nnHowever, VanEck CEO Gabor Gurbacs does not think that Bitcoin ETFs will be approved by the SEC in May. He believes that the 'dominant narrative' driving Bitcoin's 2024 rally is not the ETFs, but rather the increasing adoption of cryptocurrencies and the growth of decentralized finance. nnMeanwhile, the supply of inactive Bitcoin for a year has dropped to an 18-month low, according to Glassnode. This could be a sign that the current Bitcoin rally may continue after the halving. nnIn other news, Eisenberg's $110 million fraud trial has opened, and the Foundation for the Study of Innovative Technologies (FSI) has called for consistency in stablecoin regulation. nnAs the wider crypto market continues to stagnate with a lack of volatility, crypto traders are frequently turning their attention to on-chain betting platforms like last week's phenomenon; hamster racing. The success of Coco and Rollbit suggests that crypto casinos may be the next big thing in the cryptocurrency space.The often-controversial tether (USDT) stablecoin emerged as the best bet for traders looking for a stable haven earlier this month following a series of banking troubles in the U.S. Stablecoin USD coin (USDC) fell under 90 cents on March 11 after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) revealed some of the industry’s major players had exposure to the bank. These players included U.S.-based stablecoin issuer Circle, which held a part of its USDC stablecoin’s cash reserves at Silicon Valley Bank as of Jan. 17, according to the firm's latest attestation. Decentralized stablecoins took a hit too, with frax and dai – both backed by a basket of tokens – falling by cents on their intended dollar pegs. Who is the boss? USDT held its fort, however, even trading at a premium in the following days. This came despite a long-held notion among some market participants about the token’s opaque asset backing and concerns about parent company Tether Global. Data further shows at least $5 billion of inflows into USDT in the past weeks, bringing its market capitalization to over $77 billion as of Wednesday. Part of that could likely be due to its supposedly low exposure to the U.S. banking system, some say. 'Tether has no exposure to SVB as its popularity lies more in the Asian region, meaning USDT doesn't rely on dollars being held in American banks, making it one of the safest stablecoins to pivot to currently,' said François Cluzeau, head of trading at Flowdesk, in a message to CoinDesk. 'We have seen a lot of USDC and DAI being traded for USDT, which has kept USDT liquid.' The systematic risks of USDC affected dai stablecoins, which further strengthens Tether’s thesis of holding a variety of assets to back its stablecoins, said Mitya Argunov, chief product officer at P2P.org. 'Tether’s performance during the crisis is largely due to its lack of direct exposure to SVB – it just didn’t have deposits there. Other major stablecoins like DAI were also indirectly exposed and depegged because they are actually largely collateralized by USDC,' Argunov said. 'However, the flight to [USDT] as a safe haven should also be seen as confidence in Tether’s portfolio risk management strategy – which minimizes duration risk, i.e., how SVB should have operated.' Still a need for caution Meanwhile, some developers continue to remain cautious for the long term. 'Looking at Tether's history, it has experienced FUD and redemption issues in the past and has been stable amidst current market turmoil,' said Danny Chong, co-founder of Tranchess, in a note to CoinDesk. '[USDT's] ability to maintain stability amid recent challenges suggests that it may have a chance at long-term success,' Chong said, adding that further stress tests would show if it remained 'resilient in the long run.' USDC also demonstrated the effectiveness and resilience of its hedging strategy through collaboration with its banking partners as it recovered its peg swiftly the following week, Chong said. Demand for stablecoins is undented, however. 'The swiftness of Circle’s USDC recovering its peg after their announcement of a recovery plan is further confirmation of how the market values the potential for stablecoin businesses,' Chong noted.South Korean traders are flocking to two lesser-known cryptocurrencies, Solar (SXP) and icon (ICX), driving up trading volumes and prices on local exchanges. According to CoinGecko data, the ICX-Korean won token pair saw over $420 million in trading volume on Upbit, a prominent South Korean exchange, while the SXP-won trading pair saw over $490 million in volume, more than either bitcoin (BTC) or ether (ETH) trading pairs. The surge in interest comes as Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange by trading volume, announced it will support a token migration of SXP in the coming days. ICX is popular in South Korea for its local roots and ability to be used for staking, network governance, and collateralization on decentralized-finance platforms. However, some of the volume may be attributable to wash trading, a manipulative technique in which traders continually buy and sell the same asset to drive up volume. South Korean crypto traders have a history of pushing euphoric rallies on tokens, known as the Kimchi Premium, which can result in prices trading as much as 30% above international prices. Last week saw a similar rally in XRP, with Upbit leading global XRP trading volumes with over $790 million worth of tokens traded over a 24-hour period. Despite the surge in interest, it's important to approach these figures with caution and do your own research before investing.

Multichain, one of the largest bridging protocols in the crypto ecosystem, has suspended cross-chain routes due to the unavailability of its CEO Zhaojun. The team has been unable to contact Zhaojun, who has not responded to CoinDesk via Telegram since last week, despite their best efforts to maintain the protocol. The suspension affects cross-chain bridges for Kekchain, PublicMint, Dyno Chain, Red Light Chain, Dexit, Ekta, HPB, ONUS, Omax, Findora and Planq. The team has revealed that without server access, they are unable to keep the bridges online. The development has confirmed rumors of at least one key team member going AWOL. Multichain's native token MULTI has lost nearly half its value in the past seven days, trading at around $4.11 at press time.The much-awaited Aptos rival, Sui, launched its mainnet on Wednesday with hundreds of millions in VC funding. The blockchain, founded by ex-Meta Platforms employees, boasts fast transaction speeds and a growing ecosystem of projects. However, the network faces challenges in decentralization and token distribution. The token trades at $1.33, with a market capitalization of $687 million, according to CoinGecko. The network has over 200 projects in its directory and is expected to increase as it gains traction. Sui developers promised fast transaction speeds, which gradually increased as the network gained its footing on launchday. Speeds averaged around four transactions per second minutes after the launch, but increased to 18tps six hours later. Aptos, by comparison, is pushing out at speeds of 9tps. However, the network faces challenges in decentralization, with most nodes concentrated in Germany and the US. The distribution of token holders remains unclear. Sui's success in securing VC funding pre-launch has invited comparisons to Aptos, another relatively young blockchain with a large VC backing. Both blockchains were designed by teams from Diem, Meta's failed stablecoin project, and are undergirded by Move, a Rust-based programming language developed at Meta. Tokenomics tussle Critics have blasted Sui for its tokenomics in recent weeks. In April, Sui disappointed some community members by announcing it would forgo an airdrop. Instead, SUI, the platform's native token for governance and gas, became available for 3 cents per token in an early sale on three exchanges. There was a later token sale for 10 cents per token capped at 10,000 tokens per person. Binance added support for SUI to BNB and TUSD holders through its bootstrapping portal, Launchpad, earlier this week. Users in the US were not eligible for the early sale program. UPDATE: Provides information about transactions per second on Sui six hours after the mainnet's launch.Crypto traders have found a novel way to generate returns as bitcoin (BTC) remains flat and the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector fails to fully shake off the bear market lull. Actual hamsters – the living, breathing, and oft-cute rodents – have been put to the races on the blockchain-based platform Hamsters.gg. 'The hamsters are real and the bets are real. The hamsters are running on a track and the first hamster to cross the finish line wins,' the site explains. Star hamster racers like 'Rocky' and 'Buster' are already drawing bets of up to $500 per race. Others like 'CK' aren't so lucky – losing 326 races; winning just 8. These races seem to occur every few hours, during which a chatbox lights up, drawing at least 1,000 viewers and complete with virtual beer and hotdog emojis. 'Sipping wine, betting on hamster racing...does it get any better than this?,' a recent message on the Hamsters chatbox reads. Some others are trying to mathematically win: 'Who's got some stats on these hamsters? do we have weight classes?' Crypto traders have a knack for jumping on gambling platforms and memecoins, mainly after the rise of tokens such as dogecoin (DOGE) and shiba inu (SHIB) – which jumped to tens of billions in market capitalization in the previous bull market. Anyone can call a smart contract and issue tokens on Ethereum (or other blockchains) for a few cents, and the presence of decentralized exchanges means tokens can instantly be issued, supplied with liquidity and traded soon after. Most of these do not last beyond a few weeks. Last year saw hopefuls bet on articles from the English language to McDonald’s branded Grimacecoins, both of which fell to nearly zero after a few weeks of trading. But some, like Pepecoin (PEPE), jump to billions in market capitalization and seem to become big-name projects. Data shows HamstersGG went live earlier in July and live-streamed a series of races through Twitch on Thursday. Bets could be placed via U.S. dollar-pegged binance USD (BUSD) by depositing tokens from either Ethereum or BNB Chain. Racer 'Teddy' won a race in Asian morning hours - raking in thousands of dollars for those who bet on its victory. (Hamsters.gg) And – to little surprise – there’s a HAMS token as well. A whitepaper on the Hamsters.gg site explains the platform takes a 5% cut of all bets, of which 4% is distributed to HAMS token holders. The Ethereum-based HAMS has zooted to over $6 million capitalization nearly overnight. On-chain data shows each HAMS exchanged hands for 60 cents at the time of writing time, a nearly 1,000% increase compared to Thursday. A Uniswap pool holds $450,000 in liquidity and has garnered $9 million in trading volumes over the past 24 hours. Meanwhile, Hamsters.gg developers say this is just the start of the novel hamster betting platform. 'Our vision is for long-term development and scalability. We've been working on this project for over three months, and we're committed to building a sustainable and thriving ecosystem,' they said in a tweet last week. Ridiculous or not. It's fun. Just as the wild west of crypto should be.

Layer-2 blockchain Optimism is set to unlock $36 million worth of tokens on Sunday, with the anticipated increase in supply spurring a 3.5% slump in the price of the blockchain's native OP token on Tuesday. The previous token unlock on June 30 resulted in a 10.7% sell-off across all OP trading pairs, although the token rebounded by more than 15% over the following 24 hours. The unlock equates to 3.56% of optimism's circulating supply, with $19 million being allocated to core contributors and $17 million to investors. The token has marked a 67% gain since the turn of the year following a series of integrations with the likes of Worldcoin and Coinbase's Base protocol. Optimism is currently trading at $1.50 with a market cap of over $1 billion. Circulating supply remains at just 16% as token unlocks are scheduled incrementally until August, 2027.After a week of bickering, cooler heads began to prevail in the Aragon Association's governance crisis. The market responded with gusto, with the ANT token rallying to its highest levels for May. Luis Cuende, co-founder of Aragon, proposed $30 million in ANT buybacks using a smart contract to buy all tokens trading higher than the 30-day moving average. He also called for Aragon's $200 million treasury to gradually transfer to the Aragon DAO over a period of five years. The proposal extended a banner rally for the ANT token, which climbed from its Wednesday low of $2.75 to $2.98 immediately prior to his post and shot up to $3.25 and higher afterwards. The proposal seemed to cool a volatile situation that exploded with the Aragon Association's decision to throw its DAO into lockdown to protect against a “51% attack.” The barbarians at its gates were the so-called RFV Raiders, a loose collective of activist crypto traders including the crypto hedge fund Arca who had called for buybacks of the ANT token to bring its value in line with the treasury. The Aragon Association reversed a community-approved plan to move its $200 million treasury to ANT holders’ control, out of fear that the RFV Raiders would plunder it. One member of the activist collective told CoinDesk that between all of them they have enough voting power to win any vote over the team’s objections, including the ability to block grant allocations. There was no guarantee that Cuende’s proposal would be implemented, and the Aragon Association did not immediately respond to CoinDesk. However, there were signs Wednesday that after days of bickering, banning, conspiratorial allegations, open letters, and accusations of “decentralization theater,” cooler heads were prevailing. Three activist investors that CoinDesk spoke to said the proposal was a good start.Conic Finance, a new tool for capturing yields from the prominent stablecoin swapping service Curve, has attracted over $60 million in deposits just over a week after launch. The platform offers unlocked yield rewards to users by diversifying exposure across the Curve ecosystem while increasing rewards. Each omnipool allocates liquidity of a single asset into different Curve pools, boosting CRV rewards earnings and providing up to 21% annualized yields on USDC, DAI, and FRAX. Holders can lock their CNC tokens for vlCNC to participate in Conic governance and directly control how liquidity is allocated across Curve pools. The high yields offered by Conic could generate value for its own CNC token, making it an attractive option for traders looking to earn yields without locking up their tokens for long time periods. Curve uses smart contracts to offer an efficient way to exchange stablecoins while maintaining low fees and low slippage, and depositors on Curve earn annual yields of up to 4% from one of the many pools on the platform. veCRV allows users to participate in platform governance, earn higher rewards and fees, and receive airdrops, but it effectively locks up liquidity, creating opportunity costs for users. Protocols like Conic offer a solution to this issue, allowing users to gain exposure to the Curve ecosystem without locking up their tokens for long time periods.

Bitcoin prices briefly spiked to $138,000 on crypto exchange Binance.US earlier today before immediately reverting to normal levels. The sudden price wick was likely due to low liquidity for bitcoin against tether on the exchange, according to market depth data. The move was unlikely to have been caused by a trader wanting to pay a nearly 450% premium for bitcoin, which currently exchanges hands for just over $29,000 in European morning hours on Wednesday. Market depth data shows a $400,000 bitcoin buy on this trading pair can increase prices by 2%, compared to a minimum of $842,000 for the same impact on a bitcoin/USD trade pair. Binance.US's market depth has dropped 76% compared to May, suggesting market makers and traders have fled from the exchange. The bizarre wick is a reminder of the volatility and unpredictability of cryptocurrency markets.Liquidity across bitcoin trading pairs has slumped and failed to recover since the collapse of FTX in November. The apparent exit or reduction in trading by Jane Street and Jump Crypto, two influential cryptocurrency market makers, has the potential to disrupt the fragile flow of liquidity across the industry. Jane Street and Jump are paring back crypto trading in the U.S., amid the regulatory clampdown that spawned out of FTX's collapse. Jump's crypto division will continue to expand globally while Jane Street will scale back on its growth plans. The news is not necessarily surprising given recent developments, but what's concerning is that liquidity has still not recovered from Alameda's collapse, and a slowdown with two of the biggest surviving market makers could weigh on liquidity even further. Market depth, a metric used to measure liquidity on exchanges, slumped by more than 50% following the collapse of FTX and has failed to recover despite a rise in crypto prices. Crypto-native market makers, unlike traditional firms such as Jane Street and Jump, aren't put off by the duo's exodus as the issue is constrained to the U.S. market. An absence of liquidity causes an increase in volatility, which has the potential to create a credit risk that could spread to all sectors of finance.Base, the layer 2 blockchain developed by Nasdaq-listed crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN), has completed a series of security audits as it prepares to launch its mainnet with the aim of attracting as many as 1 million new crypto users in coming years. The audits were conducted by Coinbase's protocol security team and over 100 external security researchers to test the blockchain's security and identify potential vulnerabilities. The team used a technique called fuzzing to find implementation bugs and audited all of Optimism's pre-deployments and smart contracts on both layer 1 and layer 2. Cross-chain bridges, which are commonly used attack vectors for hackers and exploiters, were also audited. Base has not provided a date for when the mainnet will go live, but it has said it will not feature a native token unlike other layer 2 blockchains Polygon, Optimism, and Arbitrum. Edited by Sheldon Reback.