Crypto Current #88
This week's passage of the GENIUS Act and Clarity bills through the House marks a watershed moment for crypto's institutional future. As regulatory clarity emerges, we explore how sustainable DeFi applications like Maple Finance are scaling and beating traditional competitors. Following last week's discussion and Pump's successful $500 token sale, we examine how established dominance can shift within weeks, as an alliance between DACM portfolio companies Graphite Protocol, Raydium, and BONK, challenge pump.fun's historical supremacy in a battle that blends genuine platform value with extraction concerns.
What's happening in crypto?
Bitcoin becomes world's fifth-largest asset by market cap, surpassing Amazon as price hits $122,000
BlackRock's bitcoin ETF becomes fastest ever to hit $80 billion as BTC tops $118,000
pump.fun raises $500 million in 12 minutes as PUMP tokens fully sell out
SharpLink becomes largest corporate ether holder with 280,706 ETH surpassing Ethereum Foundation
GENIUS, Clarity bill sails through the house – major win for crypto
Standard Chartered launches spot Bitcoin and Ethereum trading service for institutional clients
Crypto markets continued their rally with Bitcoin climbing to new all-time highs above $122,000. Ethereum continued its run as the standout performer of large-cap tokens, with a 20% weekly gain, driven largely by SharpLink Gaming's aggressive ETH accumulation and sustained BlackRock ETF inflows - reflecting broadening institutional appetite across a range of digital assets. A top performer this week was $BONK, surging 46% as the recent LetsBONK platform success translated directly into token appreciation. The total crypto market cap reached $3.85 trillion, with Bitcoin dominance falling to 61.9%.
The memecoin platform wars: When profit machines meet extraction fears
Last week, we examined how LetsBONK briefly dethroned pump.fun’s market share ahead of pump's token sale. This week, that $500 million sale sold out in 12 minutes, crystallizing a fascinating tension: are these platforms sustainable profit machines or elaborate extraction schemes?
The revenue numbers are staggering. Nearly $1 billion in annualized revenue flows across memecoin launchpad platforms, transforming what looked like speculative gambling into a serious crypto application business. pump.fun alone has generated over $650 million in lifetime fees from $100 billion in trading volume—numbers that dwarf many established DeFi protocols.
Yet market share tells a different story. The BONK/Raydium/Graphite Protocol alliance has captured the majority share in recent weeks, breaking pump.fun's historical 90% dominance. This coordinated response leverages established Solana relationships and reveals something important about crypto application competition.
We believe the market is mispricing some winners here. Raydium captures value from transactions across all these competing platforms—classic infrastructure positioning that gets overlooked during platform wars. Despite being critical to LetsBONK's success and benefiting from all platform activity regardless of who wins the memecoin wars, $RAY underperformed relative to $BONK and $GP - underscoring how near-term hype can often overshadow core 'picks and shovels' applications, creating opportunity for fundamentals-driven allocators.
The extraction vs. expansion debate around pump.fun's $500 million raise captures the broader question facing all these platforms.
Bonk positions itself as "community-aligned" by burning $BONK tokens with fees, while pump.fun's token sale was widely viewed as potentially the "final extraction" by the projects team.
The irony is that pump.fun announced a $30 million in buybacks immediately after launch, finally steering some of the platform's value back to token holders. Whether this represents genuine value creation or sophisticated marketing remains to be seen.
What's clear to us is that these platforms have created sustainable revenue at unprecedented speed. pump.fun went from zero to being Solana's closest thing to an "app-chain success story" by vertically integrating the entire memecoin lifecycle. Whether you view memecoins as a legitimate product-market fit or speculative excess, the underlying application economics are real.
The lesson for institutional allocators: In crypto, network effects can be built and destroyed much faster than traditional tech. When billion-dollar revenue pools shift hands in weeks, understanding platform dynamics becomes critical for positioning in application winners.
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