TON: Pantera's Biggest Investment Ever

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Good Morning.

The market is a bit messy as Chop City continues. New token launches are not being absorbed by the primary markets, Solana is outperforming ETH, and the timeline is still people PVPing one another.

In Today's Email:

• What Matters: CME spot BTC market 📈

• Founders Highlight: Shayne of Polymarket 🎲

• Deal Flows: Pantera’s biggest investment 💰

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WHAT MATTERS

Millennium, BlackRock, and CME on BTC Spot Market

State of play: CME Group plans to launch spot BTC trading. The firm is famously known for entering the BTC futures market in December 2017.

• The news has sent Coinbase’s shares down by ~9%.

• This move will make it easier for institutional traders to do the famous basis trades on BTC, as they can do strategy simply on one venue.

• Recently, hedge fund juggernaut Millennium Management reported nearly $2 billion in spot BTC holdings in its filings. Many speculated this was the Millennium conducting the basis trade.

Why it Matters: More avenues for institutional traders to enter the spot market is always net good for the space.

• Eric Balchunas from Bloomberg has reported the success of the spot Bitcoin ETFs, despite the current price action.

For builders and investors: We still need more pathways from this institutional capital to flow onchain.

• Discrepancies in BTC and altcoin liquidities is caused by the fact that the wealth in spot BTC ETFs is not flowing into long-tail crypto assets via onchain rail. Everything is siloed inside the ETF ecosystem.

BUILDER-INVESTOR HIGHLIGHT

Shayne Coplan of Polymarket

Intro: Shayne Coplan is the Founder of Polymarket, a crypto-based prediction market platform.

Previous background: Before Polymarket, Shayne was an intern at Chronicled, a healthcare ecosystem company that was tinkering with the Ethereum blockchain.

• Shane is an NYU Computer Science graduate.

• Shayne has been working on Polymarket since March 2020.

• Polymarket has received funding from notable investors such as General Catalyst and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund.

The big idea: Through Polymarket, Shayne aims to create the most successful prediction markets.

• Thus far, “Polymarket is the most successful attempt to build prediction markets on crypto infrastructure. In prediction markets, traders bet money on verifiable outcomes of real-world events in a specified time frame. These events range from sporting matches to celebrity engagements to nuclear armaments.”

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INSIGHTS

US Senate Passes SAB 121

State of play: Lawmakers passed a CRA overturning SAB 121. A significant percentage of Democrats broke from ranks and voted yes for the overturn.

• This moment marks the first time Congress has passed a standalone crypto legislation.

• The overturned guidance asks custodians of crypto to account for them as a liability on the balance sheets.

• SAB 121 has united crypto firms and banks against the SEC.

• Critics said SAB 121 would deter banks from expanding their crypto business.

• The issue is more relevant than ever for banks since the approval of 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs.

Now, the resolution will move to the Senate, with strong support from the Republicans.

Biden said that he'll veto this if it gets to his desk.

Seems like it will be up to Biden to veto the resolution and solidify his pro-SEC, anti-crypto stance; we're already seeing crypto PACs voicing their willingness to fund oppositions in swing states if necessary.

DEAL FLOWS

Pantera’s Biggest Investment Ever

Deal flows slowed down a bit this week, we saw $125M+ in deals 💼 

TON, the L1 network originally designed by Telegram, has received an investment from Pantera Capital.

• Pantera released a blog post stating that TON is the firm’s largest investment ever.

• The exact amount is not disclosed, but Pantera’s website stated that it’s currently managing $4.7B.

• Pantera argues that while TON network is still in its early stages, it has massive potential thanks to Telegram’s 1 billion+ users — imagine all that being integrated with native stablecoin payments, crypto mini apps, and all the other unlocks for crypto users inside the Telegram app.

Deal flows in the past week:

• Marginal, Undisclosed $ Pre-Seed Round

• Raven, $2.7M Seed Round

• Zest Protocol, $3.5M Seed Round

• Shogun, $6.9M Seed Round

• UXLINK, $5M Seed+ Round

• ChainML, $6.2M Seed+ Round

• Humanity Protocol, $30M Seed Round

• Polymarket, $45M Series B

• Hylé, $5M SAFT

• Chainstack, $6M Strategic Round

• Cross the Ages, $3.5M Private Round

• Param Labs, $7M Private Round

• Zeta Markets, $5M Strategic Round

• Gamic, $1.8M Undisclosed Round

QUICK BITES

• US Treasury wants better AML regulations around crypto.

• Notcoin goes live on TON and airdrops 80 billion+ tokens.

• PancakeSwap offers to pay off UI fees for Uniswap users.

• Sam Trabucco calls for fair consequences for Ryan Salame.

• French Securities Regulator warns investors against Bybit.

• JPMorgan revises BTC production cost estimate to $45,000.

• PumpFun identifies the $1.9M exploiter as a former employee.

• Rune says fully decentralized ‘PureDai’ will launch in a few years.

• DTCC & Chainlink complete pilot to accelerate fund tokenization.

• QCP expects the current momentum to push BTC price back to ATH.

• Coinbase shares sink 9% on CME report to consider spot BTC listing.

NOTEWORTHY READS

• GagraVC’s read on crypto + AI thesis.

• Decentralised’s read on entering the sanctum.

• Rune’s read on PureDAI: returning to the ideological roots of Dai.

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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.