Crypto Steadies as Strategy Buys the Dip, and Dave Portnoy Pumps a Memecoin

Another Monday, another attempt from Bitcoin to break past $100,000.

After a volatile few weeks, the market appears to be finding its footing. While price action remains choppy, inflows tell a different story — crypto investment products have now seen five consecutive weeks of positive flows, with $1.3 billion pouring in this past week alone. As always, we recap a busy weekend of headlines in our Monday show (above.)

MicroStrategy (or Just ‘Strategy’ Now) Buys the Dip

Both Bitcoin and Ethereum saw big investors buying the dip last week. For Ethereum, more than $700 million flowed into their investment products — the largest winner by coin as tracked by CoinShares — even despite last week’s 25% spanking was triggered by Trump’s tariff announcement. Institutions seem to be buying the dip, setting up for what could be a pivotal moment for ETH.

As the SEC undergoes a leadership shift, ETH staking ETFs may be approved sooner than most expect. If that happens, it could be the kind of catalyst that catches traders off guard.

Meanwhile, Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy, which re-branded to Strategy last week, got back to buying Bitcoin. After breaking a 12-week buying streak, the tech company scooped up another $742 million in Bitcoin.

Ethereum vs. Solana: The Battle Heats Up

Ethereum continues to face scrutiny, particularly around Base, Coinbase’s Ethereum Layer-2. Critics argue that its centralized sequencer model contradicts the principles of decentralization. And this weekend, the project faced accusations that Base routed all the fees it had accumulated back to Coinbase’s coffers rather than keeping that money in its own ecosystem.

When we interviewed Coinbase’s Jesse Pollak about it a couple months ago, he told us that Base is committed to decentralization, citing goals to eventually decentralize the sequencer as well — which would let others profit off of ordering transactions on Base. But with Solana gaining traction—and Trump choosing Solana for his meme coins — Ethereum’s lead is being tested.

With Ethereum’s big ETHDenver conference just around the corner, all eyes are on Ethereum’s next move. As we’ve discussed with others in the Ethereum ecosystem — time may be dwindling on Ethereum to right the ship to maintain its lead.

Dave Portnoy and the Memecoin Gold Rush

Another week, another celebrity pumping and dumping memecoins. This time, Barstool’s Dave Portnoy jumped into the mix, making $70K in profit trading meme tokens, before working to promote $JAILSTOOL, a token that briefly cracked $200M in market cap before crashing below $40 million.

Meanwhile, one of the world’s poorest countries also got in on the action with the Central African Republic also launching their own memecoin. At first, people thought videos of their President promoting it were deepfakes, but it turns out the project was a legit “experiment” launched by the second ever country to accept Bitcoin as legal tender. Unfortunately, so far the memecoin has not fared all that well — falling from a market cap of $800 million to under $100 million in just a day’s time.

The constant grift of people (or countries) launching memecoins that have a shelf life of only a few hours has prompted a renewed search for projects like Coinage that are building for the longer-term. After paying out our first distribution to NFT holders, the floor price for Coinage’s co-ownership pass jumped from 0.08 ETH on OpenSea to 3 ETH. Readers can learn more about our model and of course passes are still available to co-own the first Web3 media DAO on our site.

New L1s Finally Enter the Arena

It’s not just memecoins facing the same problem of price drops. Even new Layer 1 blockchains are struggling to figure out supply and demand.

Berachain, which has been anticipated for a year, officially launched last week — only to face a selloff right out of the gate. Crypto investor Arthur Hayes called out the team for mismanaging the launch, arguing they should have worked with market makers to launch tokens at a lower valuation to let the community ride the upside. After topping out around $14 a token on launch day, $BERA was trading around $5.50 on Monday.

Other upcoming projects like Monad and Story Protocol are also rumored to be launching soon, testing whether the appetite for new L1s still exists in a market that remains increasingly Bitcoin-dominated.

🔮 Other Web3 Headlines:

• Brit hunts for lost $768 million bitcoin treasure, seeks to buy garbage dump

• The top five crypto firms eyeing IPOs include Circle, Kraken, and Ripple

• The Black Keys Performed Crypto Gig Because They Needed Money

The crypto landscape is shifting quickly, and we’re here to cover it all. If you haven’t yet, mint a Coinage NFT to co-own the first-ever Web3 media DAO and join us in shaping the future of decentralized journalism. Subscribe to our free Substack newsletter.