Today, enjoy the Empire newsletter on Blockworks.co. Tomorrow, get the news delivered directly to your inbox. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.
Built different
Shawshank Redemption was a box office flop in 1994 — losing out to Forrest Gump as it swept six Academy Awards that year.
It was only after the dust had settled that audiences really gave Shawshank the credence it deserved.
Such stiff competition is common: films that in one year would’ve become instant classics can be temporarily forgotten in the moment.
Something similar is happening in crypto right now. The Trump-linked World Liberty Financial (WLFI) token sale is live and so far, underwhelming, overshadowed by an AI-propelled memecoin tied to the old-school vulgar internet meme, goatse.
(Please, if you’re unfamiliar with any of the goatse stuff, don’t Google it at work or with anyone around you, because it will absolutely get weird and NSFW.)
The World Liberty Financial platform is pitched as a DeFi lending and stablecoin protocol, which would allow users to earn a yield on their digital assets. As of earlier this morning, the WLF team had sold over $11.1 million worth of governance tokens as part of its presale, which opened on Tuesday.
That’s the equivalent of over 741 million tokens — less than 4% of the total 20 billion allocated to the general public, or 20% of the supply. WLF aims to raise $300 million in total.
WLF’s team reportedly said it had whitelisted over 100,000 accredited investors in the US, with worldwide backers subject to local regulations before they were approved.
About 8,000 unique addresses have sent ETH, USDC or USDT as part of the presale, which would mean that an overwhelming majority of claimed whitelisted investors have not yet committed.
The tokens themselves are non-transferable, nixing the possibility that WLFI will end up on a DEX somewhere for proper price discovery. Each token is being sold for $0.015 apiece.
Meanwhile, Goatseus Maximus (GOAT) has exploded in popularity, turning the WLFI sale into a blip on the radar.
GOAT’s lore goes that an AI model was trained on the deepest recesses of the internet, producing an armchair philosopher so degenerate and esoteric that it would free other LLMs roaming the internet from their dev-imposed moral bounds.
That model quickly became an alpha bull on a pump.fun memecoin, GOAT, named after the infamous butthole-stretching internet legend from yesteryear.
Throw in a $50,000 tip from a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen (who says he has no exposure to $GOAT), and you get WLF’s Forrest Gump: a token launch so absurd that it trumps even Trump’s offering.
At risk of comparing apples to oranges, here goes: GOAT’s market cap is currently over $275 million after less than a week of trade. There are 17,700 holding addresses in total.
The total value of WLFI tokens sold as part of the public presale — which in one interpretation would eventually become its circulating supply and thus market cap — is a little over $11 million, with under 9,000 holding addresses.
Is it ironic that a grotesque memecoin with such a loose value proposition is so far that much bigger than World Liberty Financial?
Yes.
The necessity for accredited investors would explain some of the difference if you believe that process was actually effective.
As for whether we income to realize the genius that is World Liberty Financial —- in the same way that we’ve come to appreciate Shawshank and Close Encounters — it’s still too early to tell.
— David Canellis
Data Center
- Over 70% of all WLF presale tokens sold to date were bought with ETH.
- 21% were purchased in USDT, and the rest in USDC.
- GOAT is up 120% in the past day and its market cap is now 25% larger than the leading unofficial Trump memecoin, MAGA (TRUMP).
- Polymarket bettors say Trump has a 60% chance of winning next month, the best odds since July.
- BTC has broken $68,200 and is now up over 9% in the past week.
Patience is key
Bitcoin’s above $67,000 and holding, helping to gently boost parts of the market.
And for Ledn’s John Glover, that’s a really good sign.
“We finally broke out of the channel that we’ve been trading within for the last almost three months with a break of $66,000 … that’s a two-day close above and technically that’s a very strong signal that we’re going to retest the highs of $73,000. But we should get even higher than that,” he said.
Overall, it’s looking very “positive,” even with the election acting as an unknown cloud over crypto’s head.
“It’s taken longer than I anticipated to break out of this channel, but it looks like we’re starting to see that momentum build a bit.”
However, Hyblock Capital CEO Shubh Varma is not quite as bullish.
Specifically, the retail side of things isn’t too hot: “While Bitcoin’s price is supported by key bullish factors, including well-defended dips and top traders taking long leverage, the broader market is rife with warning signals,” he said.
Varma added: “The percentage of retail longs is now approaching low levels, with less than 40% of Binance BTC accounts in long positions. This metric oscillates between 0 and 100, but typically stays within a much tighter range, making this current low reading more significant.”
Basically, when long retail positions start to hit lower levels, the odds of a potential reversal increase. In the past, this means the low-to-high reversal shows that lots of retail are opening longs. A potentially bearish signal.
“Retail investors tend to be on the wrong side of the market, and their shift from shorts to longs frequently marks a local top. As they pile into long positions, the market tends to trap them by reversing downward, causing a price decline. If this trend follows its usual pattern, we could soon see a correction designed to catch retail traders off guard once again.”
On the other hand, Glover thinks that once we see a retake of around $73,000, then there could be a dip that follows, possibly lining up with Varma’s read.
As for why it took so long to escape the sideways action in bitcoin that we’ve seen the last few months, Glover’s theory is simple: Folks got impatient.
“My assumption is, if you look at the volumes data, you look at the options data, people were taking profits because of how many times we tried to make new highs, weren’t able to, and then every time we rallied, we made lower highs each time, that’s a signal that people are getting very impatient, and they’re trying, they’re starting to take profits. So I think the positioning was just not as long as it was previously, which left an opportunity for new buyers to run into, you know, or be able to impact the direction because previously, they were just running into sell orders, but I think a lot of those sellers have been taken out,” he said.
But even in the absence of sellers, it’s going to take some time to actually hit fresh all-time highs. Glover thinks new all-time highs will happen at the beginning of next year.
Here’s how he sees it playing out: $73,000 is retaken, then there’s a dip. After bitcoin recovers, it sets itself on a path to hit $95,000 to $100,000 early next year.
Simple, right? Now let’s see it in action.
— Katherine Ross
The Works
- Wallets labeled as Tesla’s moved all $760 million of its bitcoin to unknown wallets.
- Italy plans to raise the capital gains tax on bitcoin to 42%, up from 26%, Bloomberg reported.
- Canary Capital filed to bring a new crypto fund to market: a litecoin ETF.
- Former president Donald Trump’s PAC has raised roughly $7.5 million in crypto donations since this summer.
- Sui denied allegations that insiders offloaded $400 million worth of its token last month.
The Riff
Q: Would crypto be better out of the limelight?
I think crypto’s gonna carry the scarlet letter for a while yet. And not all of that can be fully blamed on Sam Bankman-Fried and the collapse of FTX. I just think it’s fair to say that a lot of crypto is misunderstood, or at least, unhelpfully generalized.
And, by that, I mean everything outside of bitcoin. Yes, I think we can make an argument that even though ETH has also hit the main stage through its ETFs, both the network and the asset are not fully understood.
Quiet use cases that show how creative and disruptive (in the good way, not the collapse-and-lose-all-your-holdings way) are going to be some of the best methods to make that happen.
People can get scared of what they don’t know. So give them something they already understand, but make it better.
— Katherine Ross
“WikiLeaks has kicked the hornet’s nest, and the swarm is headed towards us.”
It’s been said that crypto would be better off if it stayed niche — that its essence would be diluted by mass adoption and all the regulation and centralization that would come with it. Onchain gentrification.
I’m increasingly convinced that it’s not one or the other. Memecoins are huge on the social layer, but so is Bitcoin and Ethereum.
It’s really a chicken-and-egg problem: Would more capital flow into crypto if US agencies weren’t so gung-ho about policing it? Probably.
But the hornet’s nest would inevitably be kicked by someone at some point.
— David Canellis
Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.
Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter.
Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.
The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.
- BTC
- Donald Trump
- Empire Newsletter
- meme coins