Nashville roundup, Stonks tank, A $1.8M Website

Look, I’ll be the first to admit the TradFi section is the most boring (to write and to read) - but it’s the most important. If you don’t read it, you’ll be left wondering why your brokerage account has rendered you impoverished this morning.

This Week in Crypto

Rate cuts are being priced in, but fears over the health of the US economy is causing bearish price action. BTC ETF flows have been muted this week, with nothing to write home about and ETH flows have not yet broken free from GBTC outflows:

Circle, after having its secondary valuation of approximately $5 billion leaked ahead of its IPO, was promptly and totally mogged the morning after by Tether, who posed an eye-watering $5.2B profit for H1. Emphatic.

The Arch team has just about recovered from Bitcoin Nashville last week - thank you to all who stopped by and said hello and welcome to all the new readers!

In terms of highlights from the event:

• Here’s a recap of Trump’s keynote. While he did not end up announcing the U.S. government would buy more coins, he did say that they would transfer the currently seized coins to a strategic reserve. He also said he would fire Gensler on day one and make the U.S. the crypto capital of the world.

• Meanwhile, RFK pledged he would sign an Executive Order on day one buying 550 coins a day until a target of 4 million coins is held by the U.S government.

• Saylor gave his keynote which included his bear, base, and bull case for 2045. Spoiler alert, it was $3M, $13M, and $49M respectively.

  • Something tells me he may have some exposure?

$COIN posted a $1.45B revenue this week for the quarter, and a reduced profit given lower transactional revenues this quarter. Nevertheless, outsourcing again to Mr. Clemente here, it ain’t that bad!

And finally, a peak into the future of nation-state chess that will be played on the board of Bitcoin: Russia approves law allowing use of crypto for global payments as it faces ongoing sanctions. One to watch.

This Week in TradFi

The markets finally started to punish bad news.

• Intel (stock down 20% pre-market Friday) might have taken the worst of it (cutting staff by 15%, scrapping its dividend, and cutting capex), but the likes of Apple (slowing iPhone sales) and Amazon (margin pressure) were also in the firing line as their quarterly results failed to impress as well.

• I had to make this addendum just at the time of pushing, but today has been the worst day for stocks since the 2020 Covid Crash, with $2.9T wiped from major indices.

At the FOMC meeting, Powell calmly suggested that a rate cut in September could be on the cards, while the BoE finally cut by 25bp to 5%.

• The fear in the market now is that the Fed is behind the curve and is cutting too little, too late. Thus the markets are anything but calm on the back of it.

Price action suggests that market thinking is shifting from a soft landing for the economy to a hard landing.

• Employment growth is declining and unemployment is rising (4.3% vs 4.1% EST). A shocking July NFPs came out this morning - 114k MoM vs EST +175k.

Traders are penciling in up to 1.75% of rate cuts over the next 12 months which is recession-expectation territory, in the pace of cuts.

This Week in TradFi

Friend.com decided to take over tech Twitter with the announcement of their domain purchase price which reportedly cost them a whopping $1.8M dollars. There is no shortage of companies buying expensive domains, but it definitely creates news when the company has only raised $2.5M, which means ~72% of this went towards the domain!

This created quite the drama on Twitter, but as it turns out, expensive domains are often purchased on a payment plan. If the company ends up succeeding, it’s a small price to pay in hindsight and if it doesn’t, then the owner gets to keep ownership of the domain. This wasn’t broadly known and as a result provided Friend.com an incredible amount of free marketing.

Some companies, like Loom, had even crazier stories about how they acquired their domain.

We think Friend.com just put on a masterclass this week in consumer marketing, because they definitely got their name out with this domain story. And while the ultimate success of the company will come down to the product (an AI-powered necklace that serves as a friend??), we’re sure that their launch will be more successful than it otherwise would have been without the news!

As usual, below are this week’s fundraising announcements, M&A, and tech personnel changes that caught our eye:

• IPO markets are opening up as Skims and Chime take steps to IPO in 2025.

• Tiger Global’s Alex Cook is departing the firm after a 7 year fun.

• Moxxie Ventures raised a $95M fund for pre-seed and seed stage investments.

• Flo Health, a fertility tracking app, raised $200M from General Atlantic at a valuation north of $1B.

Arch is building a next-gen wealth management platform for individuals holding Alternative Assets. Our flagship product is the crypto-backed loan, which allows you to securely and affordably borrow against your crypto. We also offer access to bank-grade custody, trading and staking services, powered by BitGo.

Disclaimer: None of the above is financial advice, seriously.