Arthur Hayes Home Office Research Director: Bullish on $CARDS summer reaching the $4 level; the on-chain trading card business is expected to surpass eBay

Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow

Collector Crypt (abbreviated "CC") tokenizes rating trading cards on the Solana platform and earns cash from it: the annualized profit in May was about $53 million, and at this rate, June's profit would be approximately $109 million, with a final issuance price of about $500 million. This is a product that surpasses cryptocurrencies, achieving deep market fit. It brings real cash and returns profits to holders, currently in a period of rapid growth.

We are still in the early stages. The rotation from eBay to CC has just begun, and because the token first launched on a decentralized exchange (DEX), liquidity is not yet in place. The upside potential at venture capital levels is among the industry's lowest valuation multiples.

Expected Value Collection

Most of Collector's profits come from gacha machines (digital card packs opening). Collector purchases trading cards in bulk at a 5-15% discount. After opening, users have two options: keep the cards or sell immediately at 7-15% below market price. Most users look for rare cards and sell most of their cards. This creates a powerful business model: users get card packs with an expected return of about 2%, while Collector earns about 4.5% profit.

Players aiming to build a $100k card collection can expect to obtain cards worth an average of $102k. Besides gacha, users can also trade cards directly on the secondary market. Since CC launched its native trading platform in late April, trading volume has grown rapidly, reaching about $650k in weekly total trading volume.

Beating eBay

Stablecoins have disrupted cross-border payments. Super-liquidity tokens have disrupted 24/7 trading. They have all improved the inherently flawed Web 2 processes tenfold on-chain and achieved capital liberalization. CC is bringing the same revolution to collectible card trading. This is a huge opportunity: eBay recorded a total transaction volume of $22.2 billion in Q1 2026, with revenue reaching $3.1 billion. Collectibles are its biggest growth driver.

Today, most card trades are conducted through eBay. Selling a Pokémon card on eBay costs 16% to 20% of the total sale amount. This includes standard transaction fees (13.25%), fixed order fees, optional promotional listings, packaging, and shipping costs. This is a exploitative market structure with high operating costs.

Credit cards are a whole different story: only 2% fee, instant settlement, cards stored in insured custodial institutions, and one-click trading. This is undoubtedly a disruptive change, and it now seems obvious in hindsight.

Star Numbers

Market value; 93% buyback rate; this can well approximate the overall profit margin of all card packs. After deducting incentives, the net profit margin is about 4.44%.

Last month, CC's annualized total revenue was $1.2 billion, meaning the annualized profit from gacha business was $54 million. In June, we expect to achieve an annualized total revenue of $2.4 billion and an annualized gacha profit of $109 million.

Besides the gacha mechanism, other profit drivers include:

Market fees: secondary market trading fees

Partnerships: projects based on CC infrastructure

eBay Sniper: allows collectors to set maximum bids in eBay auctions using USDC.

The gacha machine continues to bring inventory on-chain, and we are moving toward a critical point where CC's on-chain liquidity rivals eBay's. Secondary market trading activity and fees are expected to grow significantly.

Supply is approximately 40% tighter than predicted by FDV forecasts.

FDV is calculated based on a total supply of 2 billion tokens. This greatly overestimates the final supply after all tokens unlock in September 2027. Over 50% of the total supply is allocated to the foundation and community, most of which will never enter circulating supply.

Community: used for paying incentives. 2.5% allocated at token generation event (TGE), with 0.75% distributed to users every three months. As token prices rise, the team will slow down distributions. Conservatively, by September 2027, half of the community token supply may enter circulation.

Foundation: used for future hiring and job postings. Due to strong profitability, it may remain unchanged. Conservatively, by September 2027, 30% of the supply may enter circulation.

Even under the most optimistic assumptions, only 1.3 billion tokens will be actively circulating after all unlocks. Buying at a final valuation (FDV) of $500 million and holding until all unlocks, you are effectively purchasing about $325 million worth of valuation.

Buyback

So far, CC has accumulated about $23 million worth of trading card inventory and about $10 million in cash. These funds can be used for new growth opportunities and token buybacks.

Buybacks have already begun. On May 12, CC acquired shares from a pre-seed investor:

The settlement was very clear—funds were directly paid from the treasury pool into a custodial account, shared responsibilities. The team may have also repaid the seed investor's funds.

Additionally, CC appears to have been conducting market buy-ins since June 11. For a detailed analysis, see the article below.

Liquidity is marginalized

Like Hyperliquid, CC did not succumb to high listing fees on centralized exchanges (CEX), but instead prioritized developing decentralized exchanges (DEX). Trading volume has rebounded but remains insufficient to establish substantial liquidity positions.

The next hot product initially looks like a toy.

CC is not just a trading card company. It is building financial infrastructure for a whole new asset class. Trading cards and broader collectibles have become an emerging high-yield asset class—but so far, institutional investors have been unable to participate.

Imagine you run a family office wanting to allocate $10 million to buy trading cards. Would you place 10k orders on eBay and have sellers ship cards to your office? Obviously not. The emergence of trading cards opens the door for a whole new group of market participants.

Watches, cars, and wine—collectibles have long been a way for the wealthy to showcase status and identity. For younger buyers, trading cards are all the rage. As intergenerational wealth transfer accelerates, trading cards are becoming the next major collectible category.

With its small but highly potential user base, CC has built a rocket-like growth vessel at the intersection of cryptocurrency and Pokémon. The company has about 800 daily active users, with profitability surpassing many giants in the crypto space. Today, CC is expanding into more collectibles, such as sports cards, and venturing into Web 2.0. It has become one of the most profitable companies in crypto—and this is just the beginning.

Maelstrom target price: $4 by the end of summer. Not financial advice. Please do your own research.