GM!
Today’s top news:
Crypto majors fall 3-7% as stocks sell off; BTC at $62.3k Saylor raises $300M in cash; MSTR falls 5% Fomo app raises $75M at $550M valuation as they expand into everything app Bitmine, Sharplink and others team up for new R&D project ETHLabs Trump signs executive orders accelerating U.S. quantum development Fomo Raises $75M at a $550M Valuation as Big VCs Bet on Consumer CryptoA consumer crypto trading app just pulled in $75 million from investors who normally steer clear of crypto entirely.
Index partner Julia Andre said the firm sees a real market shift in consumer blockchain trading and a team that can capture it, putting it plainly that “we’re not doing Fomo because it’s a crypto business.” Co-founder Paul Erlanger was blunt about the problem they’re attacking: “Onchain trading is just impossible.” His goal is for Fomo to not read as a crypto app at all, the same path Coinbase and Robinhood are walking.
And Fomo’s ambition runs past tokens. It added perps in June and wants to be the front end for equities, derivatives, and prediction markets as they move onchain, which puts it on a direct collision course with Coinbase’s “everything app” and Robinhood. Co-founder Se commented how they plan to make acquisitions and build the engineering team with the new funds. They certainly have the warchest to make it happen now…
Strategy increased its USD reserve by roughly $300 million to $1.4 billion, money set aside to support the credit quality of its preferred shares and cover dividends and debt.
Some are calling this damage control for STRC. Saylor’s dividend-paying preferred stock, the engine he’s used to fund Bitcoin buys, fell to a record low of $83 last week before clawing back, and the selloff dragged down Bitcoin and rattled sentiment across the market. By raising common equity and stockpiling cash instead of buying more Bitcoin, Strategy is signaling that shoring up its balance sheet matters more right now than adding coins.
Strategy’s CEO even bought $1 million of STRC himself and said he’ll hold it until it returns to par, a public show of confidence as critics question whether the model holds up in a prolonged bear market.
So it’s becoming clear Saylor and Co are going to protect STRC and Bitcoin. And that likely means “sacrificing” MSTR (MSTR fell 3% on Monday while IBIT jumped 2.5%). Concerns of Saylor blowing up are likely exaggerated, but MSTR shareholders are likely in for more near-term pain…
The two biggest ETH treasury companies just put money behind Ethereum’s research itself.
BitMine and SharpLink are the two largest corporate holders of ETH, so the players with the most ETH on their balance sheets are now bankrolling the research meant to make ETH more valuable. Tom Lee framed it around institutions and AI agents driving adoption and the ecosystem needing more talent and research to support it. ETHLabs is also explicitly targeting value accrual and DeFi’s real-world traction, the exact areas ETH holders have long argued the Foundation underweights in the name of credible neutrality. To keep that money from looking like influence, ETHLabs routes every contribution through an independent grants administrator, putting a buffer between the researchers and the treasuries paying the bills.
This arrives during an Ethereum Foundation talent exodus and a louder fight over who steers Ethereum’s direction and how ETH the asset captures value. ETHLabs is being pitched as complementary to the Foundation rather than a breakaway, framed as two halves of a whole, idealism and pragmatism. The bet is simple: align the institutions that own the most ETH with the researchers who can grow it, and let an independent administrator keep everyone honest.
