30 – $mother May I?

el Prof

November 16, 2024

GM HEARTLAND
The rotten sore on the face of $mother earth gets bigger.

—El Prof, Muhammed & Chad

MONEY MONEY MONEY

TOKEN

PRICE CHANGE

PRICE

Solana ($SOL)

+8.65%

$218.02

Helium ($HNT)

-10.41%

$6.12

Pyth ($PYTH)

+1.96%

$0.43

Save ($SLND)

+18.24%

$1.19

(Price changes reflect past 7 days as of 11.16.24)

  • Someone send Helium to the moon already. A DePIN solution worthy of attention. We just switched from Verizon, and apparently joined a wave of users doing so. Check out their mobile plans for yourself. Not a sponsored post, btw. I do have substantial $HNT holdings — and I am diamond-handing them.

BUZZWORD OF THE WEEK

cook-ie:

  • A piece of data stored in your browsing history that helps websites function.

  • Sticky IDs that track users between websites.

  • The Apple Air Tags of digital advertising platforms.

  • A token in waiting that is designed for feeding the Cookie Monster (AI).

This Token’s Got Back

We try to make learning about the emerging frontiers of the internet fun, which means our focus on utility is always at risk of veering into cultural hype. But every once in a while, the two coalesce, and we are happy.

At the intersection of the culture and utility today is $mother. We’ve long-teased my bullishness on this particular meme coin, but it’s high time I gave it a proper deep dive. After all, $DOGE is getting a federal department named after it, so it may not be long before there’s no distinction between culture and utility whatsoever.

$mother is Australian rapper Iggy Azalea’s cult favorite token. (A cult of adonitology, to be specific.) It launched at the end of May and ran to a quarter billion dollar market cap, then ran to more than $140M again at the end of September, when she announced plans for three projects that would utilize the token for their payment mechanism.

The first of these is set to launch before the end of the month. The token’s market cap has been oscillating between $45M and $75M for weeks now, with more holders and marketplace partnerships coming online every day. Now, I’m a data science nerd, not a finance bro, so I don’t really do TA. (And I certainly, explicitly, Do Not Give Investment Advice™.) But as a casual cultural critic and market observer, it does seem to me like $mother is poised for a run.

Post-election, the broader crypto space has gone full-on raging bull, which I think could persist for the next year or so at least. Granted, that rising tide will definitely not lift all ships. Much like NFTs, most memecoin projects are rug pulls, or pump and dumps in TradFi terms. But there are such things as blue-chip memecoins. Just look at $DOGE. Launched in 2018 and a staple since 2021, Dogecoin’s legion of rabid fans has helped the movement maintain its momentum. It was just listed in Coinbase’s Crypto Index product, which gives a cursory glance at the state of the crypto economy. The Trump administration’s memetic nod to $DOGE may be absurd on the surface, but if they were going to throw a bone to crypto bros, Dogecoin has earned its spot as a logical choice.

When it comes to memecoins, the “utility” really comes down to the community around the token. How well can it hold your attention, and for how long? I have faith in Azalea’s bonafides as a performer and public figure to carry her far on that front, and her persistence is already proving effective at earning the token more unique holders, plenty of active traders, and perhaps most importantly, promoters shilling the token across the web.

Maybe some actual utility will surface when those projects go live. Maybe not. But while I’d prefer to talk exclusively about utility, it’s impossible to deny, the price action today is with the memes. And that’s because the current longtail of crypto participants (or at least the ones we engage with on Twitter) appear more concerned with chasing wealth than leveraging revolutionary technology to change the state of our society. But hey. At least it gives me plenty of content to vent about from this soapbox.

—El Prof

MicroStrategy’s Bold Bitcoin Bet

Bitcoin has had a massive few days in the wake of the US election. But its biggest bull isn’t pulling profits yet. In fact, he’s doubling down.

Michael Saylor’s firm MicroStrategy has once again doubled down on its Bitcoin investment strategy. In its latest report, MicroStrategy disclosed it had purchased more than $2 billion in the OG crypto token at an average price of $74,463 per coin, raising the company’s total holdings to nearly 280,000 Bitcoin.

This latest purchase marks the largest single acquisition since December 2020. The company’s commitment to accumulating Bitcoin has been unwavering since CEO Phong Le took the helm from co-founder Saylor in 2022, and this most recent purchase underscores that the company’s bold bet on cryptocurrency is far from over.

MicroStrategy’s stock has been closely tied to the price movements of Bitcoin, and this latest round of purchasing has only amplified the correlation. Since the acquisition, the company’s shares have soared, setting an all-time high above $340. Before the firm’s pivot into Bitcoin in 2020, shares were valued below $20.

The long-term implications of MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin strategy are still unfolding, but the company’s audacious bets on the cryptocurrency have already proven to be incredibly profitable, with the firm sitting on substantial unrealized gains. If Bitcoin’s bullish momentum continues, MicroStrategy could see its holdings grow even further in value, making its investment one of the most successful and influential corporate plays in the crypto space.

MicroStrategy isn’t the only institutional crypto player having a strong week. Coinbase’s stock has surged nearly 60% since the election. Perhaps to celebrate, the company just launched a new COIN50 Index to track the top 50 digital assets, covering 80% of the crypto market (excluding stablecoins). Developed in collaboration with Coinbase Asset Management and Market Vector Indexes, the COIN50 Index aims to provide a more comprehensive measure of the market’s performance, ensuring traders have the right tools to manage volatility in the fast-moving world of crypto.

Additionally, Coinbase is introducing the COIN50 Perpetual Futures Contract (COIN50-PERP) on its International Exchange, available to institutional traders and select retail users. This move further solidifies Coinbase’s role as a leader in the crypto space, offering innovative products to help investors navigate market fluctuations.

By rebalancing the index quarterly, Coinbase aims to provide an accurate representation of the market’s evolving dynamics, ensuring that its index stays relevant amidst the crypto market’s rapid changes. As crypto becomes more mainstream, tools like the COIN50 Index and COIN50-PERP futures contracts will become increasingly vital for investors looking to manage risk and capitalize on market trends.

—Muhammed

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