Morning Minute: Fomo’s $75M Increase Reveals Huge VCs Are Nonetheless Betting on Shopper Crypto

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At present’s prime information:

• Crypto majors fall 3-7% as shares dump; BTC at $62.3k
• Saylor raises $300M in money; MSTR falls 5%
• Fomo app raises $75M at $550M valuation as they broaden into every part app
• Bitmine, Sharplink and others crew up for brand new R&D challenge ETHLabs
• Trump indicators government orders accelerating U.S. quantum improvement

📈 Fomo Raises $75M at a $550M Valuation as Huge VCs Guess on Shopper Crypto

A client crypto buying and selling app simply pulled in $75 million from traders who usually avoid crypto solely.

Fomo, a social-first crypto buying and selling app, raised a $75 million Series B led by Index Ventures at a $550 million valuation. Union Sq. Ventures joined, together with present backer Benchmark and angels together with Zynga’s Mark Pincus, Discord CEO Humam Sakhnini, and Eventbrite’s Kevin Hartz. Based in 2025 by three former dYdX workers, Paul Erlanger, Se Yong Park, and Prashan Dharmasena, Fomo is constructed to make onchain buying and selling really feel like a traditional client app: non-custodial, roughly 30-second onboarding, social options like leaderboards and replica buying and selling, and entry to extra property than Coinbase throughout a number of chains with out managing wallets, bridges, or gasoline. Since launching in Could 2025 it has crossed 625,000 customers and $4 billion in buying and selling quantity, is including round 3,500 customers a day, and runs all of it on a crew of 17. The spherical brings complete funding to about $94 million.

Index companion Julia Andre stated the agency sees an actual market shift in client blockchain buying and selling and a crew that may seize it, placing it plainly that “we’re not doing Fomo as a result of it’s a crypto enterprise.” Co-founder Paul Erlanger was blunt about the issue they’re attacking: “Onchain buying and selling is simply unimaginable.” His purpose is for Fomo to not learn as a crypto app in any respect, the identical path Coinbase and Robinhood are strolling.

There may be sign right here in who’s writing the test. Index made its identify on Figma and Scale AI, and Union Sq. Ventures not often touches crypto. Established, non-crypto VCs main a nine-figure elevate for a crypto startup in the midst of a brutal down market is a high-conviction guess that the following wave of customers arrives via a clear client app, not a clunky trade. The timing suits too, with retail search and buying and selling quantity ticking again up as Bitcoin steadies close to $64,000.

And Fomo’s ambition runs previous tokens. It added perps in June and needs to be the entrance finish for equities, derivatives, and prediction markets as they transfer onchain, which places it on a direct collision course with Coinbase’s “every part app” and Robinhood. Co-founder Se commented how they plan to make acquisitions and construct the engineering crew with the brand new funds. They actually have the warchest to make it occur now…

₿ Technique Raises $300M in Money and Buys Simply 520 BTC

Technique sold $335.5 million of MSTR stock final week however spent nearly none of it on Bitcoin, shopping for simply 520 BTC (~$35M) at a median of $67,068 to convey its stack to 847,363 cash. The remaining went to money.

Technique elevated its USD reserve by roughly $300 million to $1.4 billion, cash put aside to assist the credit score high quality of its most well-liked shares and canopy dividends and debt.

Some are calling this injury management for STRC. Saylor’s dividend-paying most well-liked inventory, the engine he’s used to fund Bitcoin buys, fell to a file low of $83 final week earlier than clawing again, and the selloff dragged down Bitcoin and rattled sentiment throughout the market. By elevating widespread fairness and stockpiling money as a substitute of shopping for extra Bitcoin, Technique is signaling that shoring up its stability sheet issues extra proper now than including cash.

Technique’s CEO even purchased $1 million of STRC himself and stated he’ll maintain it till it returns to par, a public present of confidence as critics query whether or not the mannequin holds up in a chronic bear market.

So it’s changing into clear Saylor and Co are going to guard STRC and Bitcoin. And that probably means “sacrificing” MSTR (MSTR fell 3% on Monday whereas IBIT jumped 2.5%). Considerations of Saylor blowing up are probably exaggerated, however MSTR shareholders are probably in for extra near-term ache…

🔬 BitMine, SharpLink, and Joe Lubin Fund a New Ethereum Analysis Lab

The 2 greatest ETH treasury corporations simply put cash behind Ethereum’s analysis itself.

BitMine, SharpLink, and Joe Lubin are the primary backers of ETHLabs, a brand new impartial nonprofit R&D lab staffed by 5 researchers who got here out of the Ethereum Basis.

ETHLabs’ acknowledged purpose is to make Ethereum the settlement layer of the worldwide economic system, and its early work is aimed squarely at establishments: sooner settlement, native issuance, cross-chain motion, extra mainnet capability, and analysis grounding ETH’s financial properties. Past the three anchor funders, neighborhood backers embody Uniswap’s Hayden Adams, Base’s Jesse Pollak, and researchers Justin Drake, Danny Ryan, and Tim Beiko.

BitMine and SharpLink are the 2 largest company holders of ETH, so the gamers with essentially the most ETH on their stability sheets are actually bankrolling the analysis meant to make ETH extra priceless. Tom Lee framed it round establishments and AI brokers driving adoption and the ecosystem needing extra expertise and analysis to assist it. ETHLabs can also be explicitly concentrating on worth accrual and DeFi’s real-world traction, the precise areas ETH holders have lengthy argued the Basis underweights within the identify of credible neutrality. To maintain that cash from wanting like affect, ETHLabs routes each contribution via an impartial grants administrator, placing a buffer between the researchers and the treasuries paying the payments.

This arrives throughout an Ethereum Basis expertise exodus and a louder combat over who steers Ethereum’s route and the way ETH the asset captures worth. ETHLabs is being pitched as complementary to the Basis relatively than a breakaway, framed as two halves of a complete, idealism and pragmatism. The guess is easy: align the establishments that personal essentially the most ETH with the researchers who can develop it, and let an impartial administrator preserve everybody sincere.

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are very crimson this morning alongside shares; BTC -3% at $62.3k; ETH -6% at $1,660; SOL -7% at $69.10; HYPE -7% at $63
• DEXE (+35%)HASH (+15%) and RAIN (+9%) led prime movers
• Oil -3% at $73.80; Gold -1.5% at $4,140
• Inventory futures are very crimson as huge Tech sells off; DOW -0.5%, Nasdaq -2.75%
• The U.S. Senate passed a housing bill carrying a four-year ban on a Fed CBDCa win for crypto advocates who oppose a government-issued digital greenback on surveillance grounds
• OKX and the NYSE formed a joint venture led by Andrew Cuomo to bridge conventional and crypto markets, aiming to provide OKX’s 120 million customers entry to ICE futures and NYSE tokenized equities
• Trump signed two executive orders accelerating U.S. quantum computing and the shift to quantum-resistant encryption forward of “Q-Day,” a push that additionally underscores the long-term risk quantum poses to Bitcoin’s cryptography
• MoneyGram joined Solana as a validatordeepening its push into stablecoin funds by serving to safe the community it’s more and more constructing on
• Bitcoin AND Adam Again has made a bet that Bitcoin will make it to $500k-$1M by 2028 and believes its market cap will ultimately catch gold

Company Treasuries & ETFs

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were very crimson; DOGE -6%, SHIB -3%, PEPE -5%, PENGU -7%, TRUMP -8%, BONK -6%
• FARM (+75%) and GTA6 (+240%) led movers on Solana
• Base movers included PRVXT (+60%) and SYND (+60%)

📈 Myriad Market of the Day

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

🚚 What is occurring in NFTs?

• NFT leaders have been principally crimson; Punks -1.5% at 30.5 ETH, BAYC -1% at 9.18 ETH, Pudgy -3% at 4.65 ETH; Hypurr’s -6% at 213 HYPE
• Cow’s (+56%), NPC (+22%) and Cyberkongz (+14%) led prime movers