Crypto market review this week: meme coin war heats up, SEC speech triggers new regulatory landscape

This week, the crypto market has shown an upward trend with the easing of trade relations between China and the United States, as well as CPI data meeting expectations. Although there was a brief drop on Thursday evening, the market quickly stabilized afterward. Currently, the price of Bitcoin remains above $104,000.

The overall performance of the market is mixed. The stock price of a certain trading platform initially surged due to its inclusion in the S&P 500 index, but then fell by 7.2% due to regulatory investigations and user data breaches. FTX is set to begin a $5 billion compensation payout, but the Wisconsin Investment Board has sold its Bitcoin ETF holdings. Meanwhile, Russia has sent an additional 640,000 soldiers to Ukraine, increasing the market’s wait-and-see sentiment.

The meme coin market has entered a heated stage, with the three major platforms Pump.fun, Believe, and LetsBONK.fun competing fiercely in terms of token issuance, liquidity, and community influence. At the same time, the SEC Chairman delivered an important speech on asset tokenization, providing a clearer regulatory framework for the issuance, custody, and trading of encryption assets, indicating that a new era of compliance and mainstreaming is about to arrive.

meme coin market competition intensifies

With Believe joining the anti Pump.fun camp, the competition in the meme market this week has become increasingly fierce among Pump.Fun, Believe, and LetsBONK.fun. The three platforms are engaged in intense rivalry for Glonk’s Ticker. Tom, the founder of LetsBONK.fun, and Alon, the co-founder of Pump.Fun, are calling each other out on social media, pushing this meme frenzy to its peak.

Pump.Fun became the target of criticism.

1. Pump.fun has a strong cash flow, does not need to issue tokens, and regularly sells Solana to suppress the local currency price. Data shows that Pump.fun has sold approximately 3.868 million SOL, worth 702 million dollars.

2. Pump.fun dominates the Solana ecosystem, and the lack of competition is detrimental to ecological development. Pump.Fun accounts for 71% of the daily token issuance on Solana, especially after the launch of PumpSwap, directly competing with other DEXs and further consolidating its market share. This dominance may suppress innovation and lead to ecological homogenization.

To respond to competitive pressure, Pump.fun announced on May 13 the launch of a creator revenue-sharing program, sharing 50% of PumpSwap’s revenue with token creators.

Believe’s Web2 gameplay

Believe was founded by 26-year-old Australian entrepreneur Ben Pasternak. Ben developed the game Impossible Rush at the age of 14, which has over 500,000 downloads. He dropped out of school at 15 and moved to New York, where he founded the social commerce app Flogg, raising $2 million in funding.

Believe has pioneered a new operating model by attracting Web2 talent into Web3. For example, the Yapper project was launched by Harvard graduate Emmet Halm, who has launched several blockbuster products in the Web2 space and successfully exited twice. Similar cases include:

• Noodle: A Snake game launched by Web2 entrepreneur Alex Leiman, who previously had a total download of over 10 million for his released applications.

• GOONC: A token issued by employees of a large AI company.

• MSCP: The developer is suspected to be a software engineer for a certain social media company, but this was later debunked.

However, recently the founder of Believe, Ben, stated that he will no longer recommend new tokens but will focus on existing tokens.

LetsBONK.fun

LetsBONK.fun has received support from many senior participants in the Solana ecosystem and launched popular projects such as Useless, Hosico, and Ikun. If you want to participate, you can follow the founder Tom and ecosystem supporter Bonk Guy, who often publicly announce projects on social media.

Robot Wars

The Believe platform allows users to issue new tokens by replying to any post on social media and mentioning specific tags. This simple and quick process has led to a large number of bots monitoring new issuances and quickly buying in to take advantage of the initial price surge. This has transformed the meme battlefield from an initial person-to-person interaction into a bot-versus-bot scenario. In this model, when the Believe officials and founders directly recommend a certain meme, early investors have already positioned themselves, creating a high-risk entry point for retail investors.

meme crypto market的竞争格局

Although Pump.Fun still holds a leading position in the Meme market, its market share is being eroded by emerging platforms. The ultimate winner of this meme battle is still unknown, but for retail investors, it could be a golden period for meme coin when the three platforms compete against each other.

Key Points of SEC Chair’s Speech on Asset Tokenization

asset issuance

Current Situation and Challenges: Currently, only four encryption asset issuers have completed legitimate issuance through registration or specific rules. Certain information required by existing forms may be unrelated to encryption asset investment decisions. The SEC plans to formulate clear and reasonable guidelines for the allocation of encryption assets that are securities or subject to investment contracts.

Regulatory Goal: The SEC plans to provide registration exemptions or a safe harbor for projects that have been issued but are non-compliant, as long as they can make corrections.

custody

The SEC plans to relax the identity restrictions for custodians, gradually expanding to brokerages, financial institutions, and more. The previous requirements for the capital occupation of custodians have been revoked.

Regulatory objective: to provide registrants with more options when deciding how to custody encryption assets, clarify the types that qualify as “qualified custodians,” and consider reasonable exemptions for self-custody.

transaction

Current Situation and Innovation: Support allowing registered platforms to trade a wider range of products, responding to market demand, such as providing trading of securities and non-securities through “super apps”.

Regulatory Objective: To plan the modernization of the ATS regulatory system to better accommodate encryption assets, and to explore further guidance or rule-making to achieve the listing and trading of encryption assets on national securities exchanges.

Conclusion

1. Strict regulation will curb fraud and make the market more standardized.

2. Asset tokenization will become mainstream, focusing on compliance while improving efficiency.

3. Market liquidity will significantly increase, and the overall scale is expected to expand.