Disclaimer: This post contains thoughts on crypto, a volatile and risky asset class. It is not investment advice, and you should do your own research. All information is for educational purposes only. Please don’t take risks with money you’re not willing to lose.

While CT’s new main character prophesized ‘Joyful June’, the militant geniuses in the Middle East stalled what was likely to be a breakout month. Price action aside, the market continued to find structural footing in institutional positioning.

Circle went public and filed for a national trust charter, signaling stablecoins are now a permanent part of the global financial stack. PumpFun finally announced its token plans, reigniting sentiment in the SOL casino. Hyperliquid teased HIP-3 and CoreWriter, bringing new logic to perps infrastructure while also surpassing $9b in open interest across all contracts. Macro also began to cooperate as equities rallied, real yields dipped, and optimism around EOY rate cuts grew.

Consistent with the motif throughout Q2, the momentum is existent yet quiet as larger players get their feet wet.

Macro

June saw a subtle but persistent shift in the macro tone. The Fed held rates steady, but forward guidance softened. Minutes from the June FOMC showed most officials expect cuts “later this year,” and futures markets priced in a 75%+ chance of easing by September.

Goldman Sachs pulled its forecast forward, now calling for 75bps of cuts in 2025. Morgan Stanley expects even deeper policy easing into 2026, forecasting seven cuts that would bring the terminal rate to 2.5%. The Fed’s SEP projects two cuts in 2025, in line with prior guidance. These shifts reignited risk appetite as equities and crypto rebounded, reclaiming levels lost during April’s tariff-driven drawdown.

Geopolitical tensions also briefly returned after Israel launched strikes on Iranian military sites, rattling global markets. Oil surged, BTC sold off, but the flare up faded quickly. Deescalation headlines hit within days, and both commodities and crypto reversed course. For BTC, the episode reinforced its emerging role as a macro risk proxy, increasingly responsive to global volatility but resilient in the face of it.

Meanwhile, the tariff-driven ‘Liberation Day’ narrative faded from view. US–China trade talks continued in the background, with modest progress around tech and rare earths. The market priced in calm, retracing the full tariff selloff. The truce expires in early July, and a breakdown in negotiations could reintroduce headline risk.

Institutional-Political Barbell

Institutional flow into crypto deepened across multiple vectors. ETF inflows into BTC and ETH held strong, driven by stabilized macro expectations and growing conviction in crypto as a structural allocation. Over two dozen public companies increased BTC exposure in June, bringing the total to roughly 250. In fact, many are building validator strategies, staking treasuries, and using crypto yield to enhance equity returns.

SharpLink raised $425m to build a validator position of 400k ETH. Upexi and DeFi Dev Corp expanded similar strategies. These “public crypto accumulators” are becoming a new asset class: equity-wrapped crypto yield vehicles with structural demand and long-term alignment.

On the regulatory side, momentum picked up. The GENIUS Act passed the Senate with bipartisan support, setting the stage for the first comprehensive US stablecoin framework. The bill introduces strict reserve, custody, and licensing standards, banning algorithmic stables outright. Circle, Stripe, and PayPal all support it. If passed by the House, it would mark the clearest regulatory signal for dollar-backed stables in years.

The FHFA also made headlines by directing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to consider crypto assets in mortgage risk models. For the first time, digital holdings can support US mortgage applications, an early step toward integrating crypto into the consumer credit system.

Meanwhile, TradFi finally signaled its direction with action rather than words. JPMorgan launched JPMD, a tokenized USD deposit instrument on Base. While limited to institutional clients, JPMD represents actual cash held at JPMorgan. It’s programmable, wholesale-settleable, and most importantly, issued on a public blockchain. Safe to say Jamie Dimon loves money more than he hates crypto.

Circle IPO

Reshaping how crypto equities are perceived by traditional markets, Circle became the first major stablecoin issuer to go public on June 5. The IPO priced at $32 per share, raising $1.1b at an $8b valuation. By the end of its first trading day on Nasdaq, Circle had surged to $83. Two weeks later, it touched nearly $300 before cooling off. It now trades around $200, still a >6x from IPO pricing.

Notably, this wasn’t a soft launch. Circle’s IPO was oversubscribed, heavily allocated to institutional buyers, and immediately validated as a high-growth, cash-flowing fintech. In a market that has largely sidelined IPOs for the past two years, Circle’s debut proved that Wall Street is once again paying attention to the crypto equity complex.

Circle's regulatory positioning helped. Unlike more controversial crypto companies, it’s a federally registered money transmitter with licenses across major jurisdictions. USDC, its flagship stablecoin, is broadly accepted by banks, fintechs, and payment platforms. That institutional friendliness is now an asset class.

Importantly, Circle’s success had spillover effects. Equities like Coinbase, Robinhood, and Galaxy rallied in the IPO’s wake. Liquidity rotated into listed names. It also reopened the conversation for crypto’s next batch of IPOs, with rumors swirling around Kraken and Gemini preparing for late-2025 or early-2026 debuts.

Finally, PUMP

This month, PumpFun confirmed plans to raise a staggering $1.3b at a $4b valuation, with a token that will distribute protocol revenue to holders. It’s a direct play on the meme economy, and a far cry from past crypto TGEs built on vapor.

Despite widespread disdain from Solana natives and CT alike, the protocol continues to outperform. In just over a year since launching, they’ve generated $780m in cumulative revenue, including $39m in June alone. Much of this resilience comes from PumpSwap, their vertically integrated AMM, which has captured $12.7b in monthly volume and generated $20m+ in protocol revenue since launch. That vertical shift reclaimed value from Raydium, which previously siphoned off post-launch trading volume.

Now, with $1.3b in fresh capital and a token model that includes buybacks (25% of revenue) and a sizable airdrop (~10-12%), they have the war chest and the incentive alignment to turn sentiment on its head. At a $4b FDV, it trades at ~2.45x market cap/revenue, a steep discount to peers like Jupiter, Raydium, and Hyperliquid, despite superior take rates and margins. If PUMP is valued at the average revenue multiple of comparable protocols, the token could justify an FDV between $8b and $11b—nearly a 2x upside from ICO.

While certainly a hated launch, it’s one of the most profitable protocols in the space finally offering exposure to the casino itself.

Narratives

This past month, DeFi saw less focus on flashy new tokens and more on the rails being laid beneath them. Two narratives stood out: Hyperliquid’s infrastructure push with HIP-3 and CoreWriter, and the intensifying battle between SOL-native launchpads.

Hyperliquid continued its shift from a vertically integrated venue to composable infrastructure. The release of HIP-3, now live on testnet, introduced permissionless perps via HyperCore. With HIP-3, anyone can spin up a perpetuals market by staking 1m HYPE to back it, configuring oracles and leverage settings, and optionally receiving up to 50% of fee revenue. Running parallel is the launch of CoreWriter, a system contract that allows smart contracts on HyperEVM to directly interact with the HyperCore engine. That means strategies like auto-hedging, algorithmic trading, and DeFi-native vaults can place and manage orders on the fastest exchange in crypto, permissionlessly. It’s a major architectural leap. DEX builders no longer have to choose between smart contract flexibility and exchange performance.

While Hyperliquid builds bottom-up, Solana’s memecoin mania continued to play out at the surface layer. In late June, letsBonk.fun briefly overtook Pump.fun in daily launches and volume. At peak, letsBonk facilitated 17k token launches in a single day and registered ~$144m in volume, compared to Pump’s 10k launches and ~$80m. For a few days, Pump’s market share dropped from 50–70% to closer to 20%.

letsBonk benefited from short-term excitement around BONK integrations and the novelty of free token launches. Pump remains dominant in aggregate, pulling in ~$39m monthly revenue and over $12.7b in AMM volume. It’s also preparing for a major unlock with the PUMP token, which may consolidate its moat further.

These trends are more than just isolated wins. Hyperliquid is proving that onchain perps infrastructure can rival centralized venues in both speed and composability. Meanwhile, Solana is showing that user experience, narrative velocity, and rapid iteration still drive attention at the retail layer.

Portfolio Update

June didn’t breakout like many expected. The setups were there, but follow-through was lacking. Still, under the surface, things are moving in the right direction. Institutional flows continue, product velocity is strong, and most importantly, there’s no real selling pressure.

BTC’s next leg higher feels like a matter of time. Positioning is clean, funding has reset, and capital is rotating back into risk slowly but deliberately. Sometimes the best thing to do is sit on your bags and wait. Patience remains the trade.

Jetavana July?