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GM, frens! ☕️ 

As we know, the grass seems to be always greener on the other side. The coin you didn’t buy, the narrative you ignored. Whatever you’re holding tends to look less exciting than whatever just went up 40%.

The funny thing is that if you spend enough time chasing greener grass, you eventually realize everyone’s looking over the same fence.

Here’s what we’re looking at this week:

• 🔥 Kohaku: Ethereum privacy coming closer to wallets

• 🛰️The SpaceX IPO shows why crypto is not there yet

• 🫣 Rugpulls are still crypto’s favorite scam

• 🔨Europe’s MiCA deadline starts squeezing crypto firms

Below is how $WALLET is trading right now 👇️ 

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Kohaku: Ethereum privacy coming closer to wallets

Privacy on Ethereum is slowly moving from theory into wallet level features 🤩 

On a recent Rollup stream, Binji and Nico from the Ethereum Foundation, Kassa from Kohaku, Alan from Railgun and Ivo from Ambire discussed where Kohaku is heading and what it means for onchain privacy 🤔 

• Kohaku is a privacy toolbox for EVM wallets. It is being built as an SDK that wallet teams can use to add stronger privacy features directly into the user experience. The right way to go because privacy will not reach normal users if it stays locked behind separate tools, complicated flows or niche apps that only power users understand.

• The comparison made on the stream was SSL. In the early internet, encrypted browsing was not everywhere. Over time, it became something users simply expected. Not a special feature but a part of how the internet worked 💻️ 

The same direction makes sense for crypto.

• Wallets that want mass adoption will eventually need better privacy by default. Users should not have to expose every transfer, every wallet link and every onchain pattern just because they want to use Ethereum. The current system is powerful, but it also leaks too much by design.

That is where Kohaku comes in.

Because Kohaku is closely related to Ambire (with Kohaku itself being a fork of Ambire) Ambire is in a strong position to support these features as they emerge. The first step will be private transfers, giving users a more private way to move assets without needing to leave the wallet experience 👏 

This is not about hiding everything or making Ethereum unreadable. It is about giving users better control over what they reveal and making privacy feel like a normal wallet feature instead of a separate technical ritual.

For Ethereum, that is an important direction. Scaling made the network cheaper and more usable. The next part is making it safer and more private for regular people.

And btw the full stream is worth watching, especially from around 1:19:20, where the Kohaku discussion begins 👇️ 

The SpaceX IPO shows why crypto is not there yet

A giant IPO found an interesting way to remind everyone where their place is 🤦‍♂️ 

SpaceX went public, raised $85 billion and immediately became the kind of market event everyone had to pay attention to. Not just stock traders. Crypto traders too 🪙 

• The IPO priced at $135 a share, then jumped on its first day of trading. That was the first real signal. Investors were not just interested in the biggest IPO story in years. They were willing to chase it after the opening bell too 💵 

• This was not happening in a vacuum. Crypto was already dealing with weaker attention, and money drifting toward AI, tech and other risk assets. Then SpaceX arrived with one of the cleanest hype packages possible: Elon Musk, rockets, Starlink, AI stuff somewhere in there too, a massive valuation and a public listing that normal investors could finally touch 💰️ 

That is hard to compete with.

• Before the stock even opened, SpaceX pre-IPO perps on crypto platform had already pulled in serious trading activity.

• Open interest reportedly passed $240 million, with 24-hour volume around $220 million. That alone shows the connection between traditional market hype and crypto market behavior. Traders did not wait for Nasdaq access. They found the crypto version first 👇️ 

But the bigger point is what the IPO did to attention 🙄 

When something this large hits public markets, it pulls capital toward it. Some investors sell other risk assets to make room. Some retail traders stop caring about crypto for a few days because the bigger story is happening in stocks. Some funds wait to see whether the new giant listing holds its valuation before moving back into more speculative corners.

That is the bearish aspect for crypto in this case. SpaceX became another liquidity drain at a time when crypto did not exactly have extra liquidity lying around. The market was already fighting outflows, macro shenanigans and the AI trade. A record IPO only added another place for risk capital to go 🤦‍♂️ 

A strong IPO creating a wealth effect?

• Some people in the space argue that if people made money on SpaceX early, some of that profit can eventually rotate back into crypto 🤨 

• Basically, retail traders who like high growth tech often like crypto too, and in that case they would be emboldened by insane profits or something of the sort. Apparently, they see both as part of the same risk on bucket. If SpaceX keeps trading well, it can make investors feel more confident taking risk again. That’s slightly a stretch though.

What this IPO also shows is that at the moment, stocks are still the proven gold standard for mass capital formation. A company can enter public markets, raise tens of billions, get covered by every major outlet, become part of index conversations and pull in both retail and institutional money at the same time 🤔 

Crypto has never really had that version of legitimacy.

The closest comparison was the ICO era, but that was much messier. Projects raised money directly from the market, sometimes extremely fast, often with very little more than a whitepaper.. Some of that produced real infrastructure. A lot of it produced garbage, or even blatant rugpulls 🤷‍♂️ 

SpaceX is a different animal. It had years of business, revenue, government contracts, satellites, rockets and a brand that people already understood. The hype was huge, but it was attached to something with a clear public story 😐️ 

That raises the interesting question: what happens if crypto ever reaches that status?

Not yet another random token launch for insert-the-name-project or some memecoin casino. A real crypto native capital event big enough that institutions, retail traders, funds and exchanges all treat it like a historic market moment 🫠 

Regulated, watched closely and traded everywhere. The kind of launch that does not need to beg for attention because the market already sees it as important.

Unfortunately, we are not there yet 😶 

Traditional equities still have the trust layer.

Crypto has speed, access and 24/7 markets, but stocks still have the deeper institutional structure. When SpaceX listed, the entire financial machine knew what to do with it. Crypto mostly reacted from the side, trading the perps and wondering whether liquidity would come back later 🪙 

If crypto ever earns that kind of trust, the result could be enormous. Though that is still more hope than reality today.

But hope is not nothing 🫡 

Rugpulls are still crypto’s favorite scam

Rugpulls are still the main problem.

According to new data from Web3 Antivirus, rug pulls now make up over 54% of newly detected crypto scams. That puts them ahead of honeypots, fake tokens and scam airdrops, which is not…. exactly comforting 🥸 

• The mechanics are usually simple. A bad actor launches a token that looks normal enough from the outside. There may be marketing, volume, early price movement and social activity around it. Sometimes the token is pushed in forums, chats or social feeds to make it feel like demand is building 🕵️ 

But the danger is inside the contract.

• The creator may have hidden permissions that let them block selling, remove liquidity or lock user funds. In the early phase, everything can look fine. People buy, the chart climbs and more users get pulled in. The problem only becomes obvious when the owner uses those controls and everyone realizes the exit door was never really open 🪣 

A token can look alive while the community looks ok, but one owner’s action can change everything in seconds.

• In Web3 Antivirus’ latest Scam Pulse data, honeypots made up around 22% of newly detected scams. Fake tokens accounted for roughly 12%, with scam airdrops also around 12%. The same report showed more than 425,000 rug pulls, 172,000 honeypots and over 94,000 scam airdrops detected 🪂 

• The scale gets even worse when looking at contract data. Web3 Antivirus says it has analyzed more than 100 million contracts and flagged almost 4 million as scams, with at least 3.1 million of those appearing within the last 30 days alone.

That is industrial scale garbage production.

There was also a jump in token impersonation. Ethereum led the weekly list with 291 fake token detections. That part makes sense. Scammers copy recognizable names because users are more likely to trust something that looks familiar.

The report says emails are still the most common channel, making up 53% of scam delivery. SMS follows at 10%, social media at 9% and online ads at 8%.

So the scam does not always start inside a wallet. It can start with a mail link, a fake support message, a social post or a sponsored link that looks just real enough to catch someone tired or distracted 🤦‍♂️ 

None of this is new in spirit, but the volume and polish are still there and are even getting worse somehow.

And the current setup rewards scammers because the tools are becoming even more easy with AI, token launches are easy and cheap and the average user is left trying to defend themselves against an endless stream of traps.

Europe’s MiCA deadline starts squeezing crypto firms

Europe’s crypto laws are about to stop being theoretical.

• The transition period for MiCA, the EU’s Markets in Crypto Assets regulation, ends on July 1. After that, crypto firms serving EU users are expected to hold a proper MiCA license instead of relying on older national regimes.

• On paper, this is the better version of crypto regulation. One license can act as a passport across all 27 EU member states, giving firms a single framework instead of a country-by-country mess. For exchanges, brokers and other centralized crypto companies, that should make Europe easier to navigate once everything settles 🤓 

But only around 200 firms currently hold full CASP authorization, based on ESMA’s public register. That is a small slice of the pre-MiCA market. The application process is heavy too, with firms having to deal with governance requirements, AML controls, capital adequacy, operational resilience and multiple rounds of regulator questions 🤨 

So while MiCA is supposed to create clarity, it is also forcing a lot of firms into a hard choice: get licensed, consolidate, leave certain markets or stop serving EU users.

Binance is now the biggest name caught in that squeeze 👇️ 

Reuters reported that Greece’s markets regulator is expected to deny Binance’s MiCA application before the June 30 deadline. Binance had set up a holding company in Greece in December and formally applied for the license in January through the HCMC. If approved, the license would have allowed Binance to passport its services across the EU, including markets like France, Spain and Germany 🫣 

Binance says it believes it is compliant with applicable EU laws and has been working with regulators for the past 18 months. The exchange also said its understanding is that Greece completed its review and considered the application compliant with MiCA requirements.

Still, if the license is not approved, Binance may need to stop operating across the European Union. That would be a major moment, not just because Binance is the world’s biggest exchange by daily volume, but because it shows how serious MiCA’s enforcement phase may become 🔨 

Some countries moved faster than others. Some firms are licensed, many are not, and not every member state had even issued first licenses by mid-2026. France had already raised concerns earlier this year about firms operating without full MiCA compliance and even threatened to block “passporting” from countries it felt were not applying the rules strictly enough 📜 

So Europe wants a single crypto market, but the route there is still uneven.

Consolidation is already being discussed as one of the likely outcomes. Bigger firms with legal teams and compliance budgets have a better chance. Smaller firms either find partners, get acquired or leave. That is not shocking, but it does mean MiCA may clean up the market by making it harder to enter in the first place 🙃 

The DeFi question is still coming too.

Malta’s regulator has started exploring how decentralized finance might fit under MiCA, noting that many projects calling themselves decentralized still have central points of control: admin keys, governance structures, upgrade rights or other human managed systems 🔒️ 

Regulators may not treat decentralization as a simple yes or no. They may look at it as a spectrum. A protocol that still has clear control points could end up closer to regulated finance than many DeFi teams would like to admit, but it’s still too early to tell.

So MiCA’s transition ending is not just an arbitrary deadline for exchanges. It is the start of a big sorting process that might decide if some of them keep going.

Other worthy reads

“A Framework For Crypto Neobanks” by Delphi Digital:

“The Real "Next Memecoin Trade:" Trading Cards Supercycle” by AJC:

“Crypto 2029” by Lukas:

MEMES

That's all for now, frens.

We'll meet in a week! And remember, the market conditions are temporary, but our commitment to building a better Web3 is here to stay. Thanks for joining us, and we look forward to seeing you back next week. Cheers!

Yours, The 🔥 Team

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