Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions contained in the article represent solely the author's views and do not necessarily reflect the stance of Decrypt. You may also follow their daily news program “FOMO HOUR”, which covers all headlines and market trends.

GM!

Today's Top News:

• Mainstream cryptocurrencies experience volatility as oil prices rise; Bitcoin reaches $81,800
• Bitcoin ETF experiences a net outflow of $635 million, showing a clear reversal.
• a16z removes “crypto” from the fund name, but will still continue to invest.
• Pump Launches EVM Limit Order in the App
• Decrypt announces the provision of in-site trading through cooperation with Jupiter

Remove “a16z” from the fund name.

Andreessen Horowitz is renaming its crypto fund to “a16z Frontier” and expanding the scope of investments to include AI, autonomous machines, and biology. Chris Dixon has been in charge of the crypto team since 2018 and will lead this new fund alongside Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Eddy Lazzarin, and Guy Wuollet.

Although the “crypto” has been removed from the name, the company stated that this is merely “an expansion” and indicated that it will continue to invest in the crypto sector. The most recent publicly disclosed size of this fund was $2.2 billion, which was announced in May.

The view of Dixon is that blockchain has gradually moved to the background of the products launched by Wall Street and fintech companies – therefore, companies should be judged based on what they do, rather than their underlying infrastructure. If you have been reading this newsletter over the past month, it’s hard to argue against this point. JPMorgan Chase has already launched deposit tokens on Ethereum; Mastercard and Coinbase have built proxy payments on Base with their wallets; BNY and Citadel have tested tokenized government bonds. None of these projects have been promoted as crypto products; they simply use cryptographic technology.

This is what infrastructure looks like when it wins the market. No one would call Stripe a “TCP / IP company”.

Dixon regards Oculus, Skydio, and Zipline as examples: all of these were long-term bets that seemed absurd before they proved themselves. In 2022, when the market fell by two-thirds from its peak, he stated that he valued the activity of developers and entrepreneurs more than prices. He also made it clear that under the new investment framework, crypto still has its role: to enable AI to pay for each other on behalf of one another.

However, timing is everything. At the time this happened, Bitcoin was still in a downward trend since the beginning of the year, and ETF continued to lose value throughout October. Meanwhile, the funds within multi-strategy funds were also competing with the sweeping AI. A fund that originally only invested in cryptocurrencies now had to compare crypto projects with autonomous machine and biological projects during the same partner meeting. No matter how you call it, this is a substantial change and a tough battle. But this is the new reality of the crypto industry. Let's get started...

🌎 Macroeconomics, Cryptography, and Markets

• After yesterday's sell-offs, most mainstream cryptocurrencies remained stable; BTC stayed flat at $81,800, ETH remained flat at $2,400, SOL stayed flat at $104, HYPE fell 1% to $78, and ZEC fell 2% to $1,230.
• The best-performing altcoins include PEPE (+13%), DOT (+2%), and DASH (+8%).
• Oil prices rise by 2% to $101; gold prices fall by 0.4% to $4,040.
• As oil prices continue to rise, U.S. stock index futures weaken again; the Dow Jones futures fall by 0.6%, and the Nasdaq futures fall by 0.1%.
• Senator Richard Blumenthal has launched an investigation into the payments made by Tether to Nxum Group. Nxum Group is a consulting firm co-founded by Bo Hines. Previously, The Wall Street Journal reported that while Hines was still serving as Trump's advisor on stablecoin policy, Nxum received compensation for work related to Tether. Subsequently, Blumenthal issued letters to both parties.
• In the mid-term elections, cryptocurrencies were more often used as a target of attack against the industry; Fairshake confirmed that its large-scale election expenditures did not mention cryptocurrencies.
• SoFi launches SoFi Earn, calling it the first tokenized deposit issued by a national bank for consumers, where each token represents $1 held by SoFi Bank and offers an annual yield of 4.40%.
• The Attorney General of New York State is seeking $1.37 billion from the founders NovaTech, Cynthia, and Eddy Petion for alleged involvement in a crypto Ponzi scheme; the prosecution claims that the scheme raised $1.16 billion between 2019 and 2023, but only $25.99 million was actually traded.
• A Circle shareholder filed a lawsuit in federal court against Trump, World Liberty Financial, and the U.S. Special Envoy for Middle East Affairs, Steve Witkoff, alleging violations of relevant laws when a company injected $2 billion into Binance and used USD1 stablecoins; the company is associated with the UAE royal family. The complaint also states that this arrangement made it "impossible for Circle to compete."

Enterprise Treasury and ETF

• Bitcoin ETF saw a net outflow of $635 million on Thursday, experiencing a significant reversal; Ethereum ETF had a net outflow of $110 million.

Meme Coin Tracking

• Meme coin leaders see an overall rise, with PEPE leading the gains; DOGE up 1%, SHIB up 2%, PEPE up 13%, PENGU up 4%, TRUMP up 1%, SPX flat, and BONK up 8%.
• Robinhood The leading stocks on the chain are mostly flat; Pons fell by 2% to $170 million, AI rose by 3% to $80 million, Cashcat remained flat at $103 million, Torch rose by 50%, Microduck rose by 53%, and GF led the gain list with a 75-fold increase.
• Solana Tokens with the highest ecological gains include Nagi (+650%), Birb (+40%), and Monerochan (+130%); Kimchi has dropped by 50%.

💰 Tokens, Airdrops, and Protocol Tracking

• Decrypt has joined the in-site token trading feature through cooperation with Jupiter. Readers who hold Decrypt Money Accounts can exchange tokens without leaving the website or connecting to an external wallet.
• Pump launches a EVM limit order that covers networks such as ETH, RH Chain, Base, BSC, etc.
• Calculated by revenue, Hyperliquid leads the list of on-chain protocols with $2.78 million, followed by Pump with $1.94 million and Papertrade with $1.11 million.

🚚 What happened to NFT?

• NFT The overall trend is weak; Punks Remains flat at 31.3; ETH, BAYC Drops by 5% to 5.67; ETH, Pudgy Drops by 1% to 2.46; ETH
• Invisible Friends (+16%) and Azuki (+8%) lead the gains
• OpenSea has introduced a referral fee in mobile applications, where users can earn 25% of the transaction fees of the individuals they refer.

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