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.

Given April’s price action was a bit of a textbook shakeout, May felt like the market was quietly exhaling, letting out the blows endured via Trump’s ever-changing tariffs. BTC chopsolidated for most of the month, ETH hovered as if it was waiting for permission to move, and most alts ultimately played dead unless they were plugged into the shiny new meta: ICM (Internet Capital Markets).

Thankfully, there remained signal beneath the stillness. Spot ETF inflows were net positive, stablecoin supply crept higher, and onchain activity finally ticked back up. Buried amidst headlines of political infighting and overhyped token launches, it became clear that capital was once again warming up. No, not full risk-on mode, but at least increasingly willing to take selective bets. May wasn’t necessarily a break out, but rather a nice V-shaped recovery considering how Q1 unraveled.

Soft Prints, Strong Bids

Economic data stayed confusing as it has all year. Leaving most macro desks waiting for something definitive, inflation didn’t quite cool enough, but job growth didn’t slow quite fast enough either. US Q2 GDP forecasts were revised lower, real rates remained mildly positive, and 10Y treasury yields hung around 4.3-4.4%. Despite this, risk assets didn’t seem to care.

Crypto, equities, and even commodities all behaved like liquidity was back. After all, BTC ETF inflows breached $1b on the month, pushing cumulative flows to +$15b since approvals. To no surprise, BlackRock’s IBIT continued to dominate, with over 40% of total AUM under its belt.

Meanwhile, CME’s crypto futures suite quietly hit new highs. Moreover, open interest on BTC and ETH futures climbed to levels not seen since Q4 of 2021. Derivatives positioning remained with basis mostly flat and no major wipeouts. Consistent with April’s messaging, capital is sidelined, but eager to bite on the rails it trusts most.

Venture

Volumes in private markets remained moderate, although Thiel’s heavy bet on stablecoin infra managed to stir excitement.

Just days after announcing the aforementioned strategic round led by Founders Fund, Plasma, a crypto-native stablecoin payments platform, raised over $10m in a public onchain Dutch Auction akin to the ICO days. Unlike the vaporware of 2017, Plasma already had product. Furthermore, payments were live and the team was doxxed (trusted).

For months, crypto has seen infra starved of attention while meme tokens have been in the spotlight. Hyperliquid, and now, Plasma are helping realign the narrative. Instead of offering some shiny new chain, it offers a bet on dollar rails. The involvement of Founders Fund also added weight. Thiel’s camp has been notoriously sparse in its public crypto bets over the last two years. A move this visible, into a startup focused on permissionless payments, confirms speculation that stablecoin infra could be a new institutional wedge.

Narratives

May offered yet another month of consolidation around a few clear winners, both in terms of usage and attention. Solana, as has become routine, continued to lead the pack. Daily DEX volumes consistently breached $3 billion, and ecosystem stickiness remained high. Despite price action dwindling, SOL is still the default venue for launching, trading, and managing onchain assets.

Highlighting the above notion was the rise of Believe, a new social app that has sparked a meta that CT has willingly coined ‘Internet Capital Markets’. It’s powered by Launchcoin, which essentially acts as the native currency of tokenized crowdfunding. The experience is pretty simple. Tag a tweet with @launchcoin, and within seconds, a tradable token is born. If correctly marketed (and genuine), what follows is speculation-based liquidity, mimicking early-stage venture markets in real time. Believe has already processed over billions in volume, and its native token briefly eclipsed a market capitalization of $300m, unheard of in the trenches recently. More importantly, it reinforces the idea that some of the most important new capital formation experiments aren’t coming from VCs, but from founders publicly launching on SOL rails.

Outside of Solana, Hyperliquid continued to quietly post some of the strongest onchain metrics. May marked the highest fee month in its albeit short history, with a $4.65m single day peak and nearly $55m in total protocol revenue. With 97% of fees funneling back to the protocol’s Assistance Fund, which is used to buy and burn HYPE, there is always an active buy TWAP so long as volume remains. While Hyperliquid’s roots lie in perps, the emergence of HyperEVM has broadened their scope, bringing general-purpose smart contract support to an already active ecosystem. It’s still early in the growth cycle, but they’re already onboarding protocols at a decent pace and giving builders a performance-first alternative to the usual EVM suspects.

Portfolio Update

May didn’t blow the doors off like many expected it to. BTC chopped, alts lagged, and the headlines were quieter than usual. However, capital kept flowing, but only intentionally. Spot ETF demand stayed steady, newer projects like Believe actually retained users, and Hyperliquid showed it’s not just a one-trick perps pony.

There’s no guarantee the next leg up comes soon. In fact, the longer we hover here, the more conviction it takes to stick around. If it means anything, the market and its delinquent participants are maturing. Less rotating into anything that moves and more focus on who’s solving real problems.