💎 Ethereum Strikes Back: What's "Protocol"?

GM.

Joyful June seems to be morphing into a Schizo June. The good thing is, we’re used to this since the start of 2025.

Markets got a nice green jolt after news broke that Trump is pausing tariffs on select Chinese goods until August 31st. That said, we’re now waiting on updates from other countries, who’ve been given a deadline to finalize trade deals by Wednesday—otherwise, the original tariffs go back into play. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.

As far as BTC price action is concerned, it's now trapped between the $107-109k level, which, if flipped, would send us back into bull mode, and around $103k, under which we can expect more downside volatility.

Crucially, even a drop to $95k (though $98k seems more likely, in my view) would still print a higher low—nothing that screams bear market just yet.

With the dollar index continuing to weaken and M2 money supply printing new highs, the background fundamentals for this run stay intact.

Perhaps the day's most important story is Ethereum’s launch of Protocol, aiming to finally improve the layer 1, scale blobs, and fix the UX. It certainly feels like Ethereum entered a full war mode, and I have a feeling we’ve got a hated comeback brewing here.

Even the spot ETFs are taking notice here. All eyes on ETH for the remainder of this cycle.

✍️ Advertise with us | 🧑‍💻 Join the Discord | 🐥 Follow on Twitter
📊 Sub to YouTube & Spotify

👇 And if you haven’t yet, hit subscribe below 👇

The important bits.

• Altitude explains productive collateral, learn how to make loans work for you

• Tari is continuously improving the XTM mining experience, try it out here

• Premia Blue releases new Weekly Alpha newsletter, read here

• Sophon announces partnership with Octane Security, read announcement here

• OpenServ reached 1000 Builder’s Platform users, full statistics here

• Magic Newton featured in new article by Yu Hu, read here

• Algebra DEX announces GLIQUID, a new V4 AMM on Hyperliquid, announcement here

• Stake DAO releases a V2 whitepaper, read in full here

• Hyperliquid’s native token HYPE is now listed on Binance spot

• LiquidLaunch launches LIQD staking, learn how to earn HYPE here

• Avalanche’s Balcony project to bring $240b of real estate onchain, read here

• Liquity announces BOLD stablecoin on Yearn, learn how to earn yield here

Even more important bits.

• Hong Kong's Reitar Logtech announces plans to acquire $1.5 billion Bitcoin

• Coinbase adds Ethena (ENA) to its listing roadmap

• The SEC released 2025 guidance clarifying which crypto tokens qualify as securities

• Nasdaq-listed Classover aims to raise up to $500 million to buy SOL

Charts and stats of the day.

• The supply of USDC on Arbitrum has reached a new ATH at 5.1B

• James Wynn has just deposited $20,460 of donated funds to his Hyperliquid account

• US GDP model nowcast of real GDP growth in Q2 2025 is 4.6%

• US tariff revenue rose to a record $22.3B in May, up from $16.5B in April

• Gold prices surge above $3400/oz as markets react to rising geopolitical tensions

• Commodities are deep green after this weekend’s Ukrainian drone attack

StalkChain spots the next big meme coins early by tracking top wallets and smart money moves in real-time.

See what whales are buying, follow top-performing traders, and analyze token trends before the crowd.

PS: Use code BLOCMATES for 20% off, but shhhh it's our little secret.

HL/WHYPE on Hyperswap 4H

Big pullback target on this $6.5m market cap meme, but I think there’s a decent chance we get it now. It’s been a strong runner and should continue after a trip down to the PoC (red line) and yearly VWAP. This is usually a good spot to pick up that first chunky meme pullback.

Right now I am mostly just riding the HYPE repricing. It will list on Binance US as a spot listing soon, which will be the first time the spot market is available without bridging to Hyperliquid. This should give us new inflows to send us towards $50 and perhaps higher over the longer term. NFA as always.
 
Come by the Lucky Luke Discord channel for comments, to roast my picks or to pump your own bags. All banter is welcome any time!

Solana smart-money movements show a comeback of interest for USELESS and House, while the latest runner MASK suffers outflows.

Ethereum smart-money flows favour PEAS today, a good quality DeFi token. This is why we focus on DeFi in Degen Corner (below) these days.

Undervalued DeFi bets: GammaSwap.

GammSwap aims to solve one of the most annoying features of DeFi farming: impermanent loss.

With their Yield Token coming soon, and having an estimated 25% yield attached to it, I believe this one is a good one to watch at its current $16m market cap.

The GammaSwap team has already proven itself as one of the most capable DeFi builders around, so I’m confident here also as far as safety goes. Not financial advice.

• Alchemist AI (AI)

• Liquid Loot (NFT market) - Launched today on Hyperliquid

• Nova (Solana trading platform)

To save you doom scrolling.

This James Wynn saga is not pretty. For all of you leverage lovers, don’t end up like this:

Predicting June correctly is a tough nut to crack. The best advice here is to add high-conviction bets on spot when a dip presents itself, and apply much patience.

Besides the Hyperliquid ecosystem, I really like the outlook of the strongest DeFi plays, and will continue looking for undervalued bets and writing about them in the Degen corner. Stay tuned.

stay safe homies,

Hix0n 🫡