GM ☕️ 
Momentum’s a strange thing - hard to catch, easy to lose, and usually only obvious in hindsight 👀 

You don’t always see the shift when it starts. It’s in the way things begin to connect, how ideas pick up speed, how noise turns into direction.

Feels like we’re in the quiet part.

Building, thinking, positioning - without saying too much out loud 🧠 

Here’s what we’re watching this week:

• 🍗 Trump memecoin holders fed a taste of the future

• 🐂 Markets are heating up. So are the UX red flags

• 💰️ $425M says ETH isn’t just for degens

• 🤯 The $4B RWA engine loses its founder

The W3oF Degen Portfolio is moving in the right direction.

Gains aren’t dramatic, but they’re there. For something stitched together by degens it’s holding up surprisingly well.

The Discord is open if you want to try helping with the streak.

Trump memecoin holders fed a taste of the future

The “most exclusive event in crypto” 🤡 - a black tie dinner at Trump National Golf Club last week was pitched as a reward for the top 220 holders of Trump’s memecoin.

What they got instead… was mashed potatoes, vegetables boiled into oblivion, and protein described by multiple attendees as “Walmart steak” and “Costco freezer aisle halibut” 💀 

A trader texted reporters that most of them didn’t even get a handshake. It was a $148 million experience, served lukewarm on a branded plate 🤦‍♂️ 

This wasn’t just a few disgruntled influencers. These were the whales. The top-tier token holders. The inner circle. And they walked out with the same thought: this whole thing was a photo op, minus the photo.

There’s a strange poetry to it. Spend six figures on a memecoin, get fed a school lunch. The branding’s always louder than the delivery. The steak gets the MAGA seal. The taste gets a collective side-eye. But to be honest, in Web3 that’s more or less a common thing.

Outside, protesters chanted “shame” while inside, Trump stood behind a lectern and declared the dinner “very, very good.”

You can’t even call this a rug. Rugs imply movement. This was a static JPEG. Just the hard cap of grift colliding with the soft texture of overcooked halibut 😐️ 

But maybe that’s the product. Hype as the utility. Clout as the service.

And if you look at it that way, the dinner was perfect and it delivered exactly what was promised. A branded experience 🙃 

Markets are heating up. So are the UX red flags

Ethereum’s up over 80% since April. Institutions are pouring in 🌊 

Spot ETH ETFs are pulling in nine figure flows weekly. Even the charts are screaming upside, with clean breakouts and fresh support floors now locking in above $2,500 💵 

You’ve got traders pricing in the high two thousands as the new base. The market’s looking at $2,800 like it’s a formality. Volumes are spiking, resistance zones are folding. And ETH keeps climbing without even flinching.

And now it gets louder

• According to analysts, ETH just reclaimed an important midline on the two week chart, a level that has apparently front run every major altseason since 2020. Same playbook, same timing and same signs 🤔 

• In both 2021 and 2023, this signal preceded full blown rallies when ETH dragged the entire altcoin market into orbit. Traders are now eyeing the upper band around $4,100. Some even want it by July 🤯 

  

• Altcoin market cap has already started front running the breakout. Back in 2020, it ran 1,400% off this signal. The same pattern repeated in 2023.

Block trades and ETF inflows also keep stacking

Retail is still catching up. But the suits are already positioned 👇️ 

• BlackRock’s ETHA alone pulled in $136.4M this week. Total ETH ETF inflows now sit at $248M. Not exactly retail pump juice - that’s clearly an institutional intent.

But the margin for error is still razor-thin. Roughly $123B in ETH supply sits between $2,300 and $2,500, most of it held by wallets now in profit. Drop back into that zone and you risk tripping panic selling. In other words, it’s a tightrope above a pit of paper hands 🫲 

So yes, it’s still uncertain what happens next. But at least this time, the receipts look different.

In the meantime

While price targets spiral and traders start manifesting $6K ETH like it’s a full-time job, Vitalik's sounding the alarm over something else entirely - wallets getting a little too smooth 😳 

It starts with good intentions. Fewer clicks and extensions. Wallets melting into websites like they’ve always belonged there.

But strip out the friction and you also strip out the checkpoints. Suddenly, you’re not verifying a transaction - you’re just watching things happen 🤔 

Vitalik’s take:

• The easier it feels, the harder it becomes to know who’s really in control. He’s not bashing onboarding tools, just flagging the obvious risk. Convenience can blur the line between user and product. Especially when the wallet starts behaving like a UI layer instead of a gatekeeper.

That’s where wallets like Ambire come in - built to be useful without vanishing. You can make it work with or without an extension, and you’re not giving up awareness either. While it also treats you like you might actually care what you’re signing 🧠 

So while the rest of the market obsesses over UX that’s too invisible and spooky pre click approvals, Ambire’s sitting in the middle. Functional. Transparent. Unbothered.

Feels weirdly future proof 👀 

$425M says ETH isn’t just for degens

And that wasn’t all for ETH 🤫 

SharpLink Gaming - a sports betting adtech shop - just raised $425 million in private equity and decided to throw it straight into Ethereum. Not as a hedge, but as its official corporate treasury.

It’s the kind of move that would’ve sounded like a shitpost in 2021. Today, it comes with a Nasdaq ticker and a 420% daily stock pump. Because as it turns out, betting on crypto is not reckless anymore - it’s mega bullish.

• Galaxy Digital, ParaFi, Pantera, Ondo, and Consensys all showed up to invest in the raise. Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum and CEO of Consensys, is joining SharpLink’s board. The message is thus: it’s an alignment - with capital, narrative, and strategy.

And yes, the comparisons to Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin playbook are already flying.

There is no second - second best? 🤔 

This time, though, it’s ETH taking the seat at the corporate table. SharpLink made it very clear that Ethereum is the asset it wants backing its balance sheet, not dollars, not bonds, and not Bitcoin either. ETH in front and center 🫡 

• The market noticed. Shares of $SBET pumped from $6 to around $35 in less than a day. The company’s valuation effectively got a multiplier overnight. And all they really did was say the quiet part out loud: that Ether has become credible collateral for public companies looking to futureproof their treasury.

• They’re not alone either. The strategy echoes a broader shift happening in silence. Japanese investment firms, US marketing shops, even medtechs are starting to stack crypto with institutional intent.

What used to be a degen tax write-off is turning into a capital rotation plan - with Ethereum as the preferred asset 🐂 

It’s a slow but unmistakable realignment. Less meme, more mandate.

The $4B RWA engine loses its founder

The tokenized assets space just lost one of its most active builders.

Plume’s co-founder Eugene Shen, credited with helping bring $4 billion worth of real-world assets onchain, has died unexpectedly, sending shock through the RWA ecosystem 🤯 

• The project’s team described him as the “heart and soul” of the protocol - an engineer turned visionary who helped take tokenization from a PDF buzzword to actual deployed contracts.

• Founded just last year, Plume had already carved out a serious footprint. It had partnered with U.S. county governments on housing deeds, pushed renewable energy tokens to the chain, and claimed one of the highest cumulative on-chain RWA tallies in the game 🤏 

• The company had only recently begun branching out with Avalanche and Balcony on a $240 million pilot for tokenized real estate.

The timing couldn’t be more jarring. The RWA narrative is heating up across crypto and TradFi alike, with institutional capital sniffing around tokenized bonds, equity, and hard assets 🪙 

Plume had been positioning itself as a key player in that arms race. Shen’s death won’t just stall a roadmap - it reshapes the competitive field entirely.

The protocol's remaining leadership says they’re taking time to regroup. But whether Plume continues as originally envisioned or becomes a case study in founder led fragility is yet to be seen.

Other worthy reads

The 401k rules have changed and that seems to be a very important news for the crypto market:

Farcaster community mini-app ideas, complied by Linda Xie:

“Coinbase Will Have to Acquire Circle – The Only Question Is Price” by Ryan Y Yi

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

Brought to you by Ambire: The Only Web3 Wallet That You’ll Need!