Memecoins Are Worth $55B: Are They Bad?

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Good Morning.

The crypto markets is becoming more and more PVP-esque after two months of BTC price action ranging in the $60-70k range. Fidelity also just had its first spot Bitcoin ETF outflow. Stay cautious!

In Today's Email:

• What Matters: $55B worth of memecoins 👊 

• Founders Highlight: Samourai’s co-founders ⚔️ 

• Deal Flows: Movement’s $38M Series A 💰️ 

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WHAT MATTERS

Memecoins Are Worth $55B: Are They Bad?

State of play: A16z Crypto’s CTO Eddy Lazzarin said on X that memecoins change perceptions of crypto, resembling either a risky casino or a facade of false promise - it also impacts adoption, regulation, and builder behavior.

• Lazzarin also said, “Besides undermining the long-term vision of crypto that has kept so many of us in the space, memecoins aren't very technically interesting”.

• Lazzarin's comments were in response to Michael Dempsey's post, indicating that memecoins have caused frustration among crypto builders.

• In a debate with Lazzarin, 6th Man Ventures co-founder Mike Dudas disagrees that memecoins are harmful and useless and refers to ‘the numbers’ (memecoins collective market cap).

Why it Matters: According to CoinGecko, Meme coins market cap is currently at ~$55B, bigger than LSTs market cap (~$43B), DePIN tokens (~$26B), AI and ZK tokens ($21B each).

For builders and investors: This will continue to be the case so long as infra projects over-raise and fail to justify their valuations to retail and active traders.

BUILDER-INVESTOR HIGHLIGHT

Keonne and William of Samourai

Today’s founders’ highlight is a different as we want to bring awareness to the Samourai Wallet situation. Privacy is a right. We hope this case doesn’t evolve into the likes of Tornado Cash’s founders.

Intro: Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill are the co-founders of Samourai Wallet, a Bitcoin wallet that promises to keep users’ transactions private and identity masked.

• Rodriguez and Hill were arrested for allegedly executing $2B+ in unlawful transactions and laundering over $100B in criminal proceeds.

• The Samourai Wallet website has been seized, and a warrant has been issued for its mobile app on the Google Play Store.

• Rodriguez (35), the CEO of Samourai, is also the director of Katana Cryptographic and the CEO of Consigno Holdings.

• Hill (65) is the CTO of Samourai.

Previous background: Keonne Rodriguez is an Oxford graduate. He started as a web designer/developer. He worked as a product lead at Blockchain.com from 2014 to 2016.

• There is no information available regarding William Hill.

The big idea: Rodriguez and Hill built Samourai as a privacy-focused wallet that enables users to make collaborative and private transactions to enhance the privacy of their Bitcoin operations.

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INSIGHTS

Stripe Supports USDC Stablecoin Payments

The world’s largest payment company is reintroducing its crypto payments support for later in 2024.

• Stripe will facilitate payments using Circle’s USDC on Solana, Ethereum, and Polygon blockchains.

• Stripe stopped supporting Bitcoin payments in 2018.

• In December 2022, Stripe debuted a project to facilitate fiat-to-crypto payments.

DEAL FLOWS

Movement Labs’s $38M Series A

Deal flows slowed down a bit this week, we saw $110M in deals 💼 

Movement Labs, a blockchain firm aiming to integrate Facebook's Move Virtual Machine with Ethereum, raised $38M in a Series A funding round led by Polychain Capital.

• Movement's funding round involved VC firms including Hack VC, Placeholder, Archetype, Maven 11, Robot Ventures, Bankless Ventures, OKX Ventures, dao5, and Aptos Labs.

• Movement Labs’s founders aim to make blockchain security sexy with Movement L2, an L2 based on the Move programming paradigm.

• The Movement team aims to achieve greater security and transaction speeds than L2 incumbents.

• The company is also launching Move Stack, a blockchain execution environment compatible with popular frameworks like the OP Stack and Arbitrum Orbit.

• Movement is also developing a shared sequencer for decentralized communication between L1 and L2 chains.

Deal flows in the past week:

• Lambda Finance, $1.8M Angel Round

• Shiba Inu, $12M Pre-Seed & Seed Round

• Uncharted, $1.7M Seed Round

• Othentic, $4M Seed Round

• Prime Intellect, $5.5M Seed Round

• Tevaera, $5M Seed & Private Round

• Turnkey, $15M Series A Round

• Aligned Layer, $20M Series A

• Movement Labs, $38M Series A

• Only1, $1.3M Strategic Round

• Natix, $4.6M Strategic Round

QUICK BITES

• Stripe to enable USDC payments.

• Pantera Capital seeks $1B for new crypto fund V.

• DCG appoints Aimie Killeen as Chief Legal Officer.

• Pantera acquires additional discounted SOL tokens.

• FBI warns against using unregistered crypto services.

• Worldcoin wants to partner with PayPal and OpenAI.

• US spot Bitcoin ETFs see a daily net outflow of $120M.

• Immutable plans a $50M crypto gaming rewards program.

• Consensys sues SEC, challenging its approach to Ethereum.

• Fidelity’s spot bitcoin ETF records outflow for the first time.

• Morgan Stanley may allow brokers to recommend Bitcoin ETFs.

• SEC delays decision on listing and trading spot bitcoin ETF options.

• Franklin Templeton enables p2p transfer for its onchain USG fund.

• Celsius Loan creditors plan appeal of Celsius' reorganization plan.

NOTEWORTHY READS

• Udi’s read on BIP-420.

• Officer CIA’s read on the only safe way to store crypto.

• Regan Bozman’s read on apps that vertically integrate.

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Disclaimer: All the information presented in this publication and its affiliates is strictly for educational purposes only. It should not be construed or taken as financial, legal, investment, or any other form of advice.