Hey, it’s Marc. ✌️

Telegram is building a crypto trojan horse – and the numbers are exploding. Plus: Bitcoin is experiencing a consumer renaissance with Animoca Brands joining the ecosystem.

In case you missed it: We rebranded.

Let’s dive in. 🦈

📚 Top 5 Reads

• Consumer Crypto By The Numbers Q1 2024. By BlockchainBrett & Jon Gall. Link

• Why Web3 loyalty hasn’t taken off (yet). By Tareq Nazlawy. Link

• The scenecoin opportunity. By Josh Cornelius. Link

• Notes on Consumer Crypto. By Josh Cornelius. Link

• Investing in TON Network. By Paul Veradittakit. Link

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✨ Web3 & Brands

TON x Telegram 💬

TON (The Open Network), a Layer 1 network originally designed by Telegram and continued by the open source community, and its token (TON) have made headlines:

• Today, Pantera Capital announced its investment in TON. Link

• Recently Tether's USDT stablecoin was integrated into Telegram via TON, enabling peer-to-peer payments within the app. Link

• Telegram also enabled users buy channel advertisements with TON. The platform plans to share 50% of ad revenue with owners of public channels. Link

You can dive deeper in this X thread.

By the numbers: Telegram is the third biggest messaging platform, boasting 900M monthly active users, adding 36M users in January alone.

Meanwhile, TON has experienced remarkable growth.

• TON recently made its way into the Top 10 coins by market cap. Link

• TON’s total value locked (TVL) increased to $171M, almost doubling in April and the highest on record. Link

• Active monthly wallets on TON have increased six-fold. Link

What’s interesting: Distributing ad revenue in TON introduces Web2 creators to crypto-based income streams.

Why it’s important: TON enables TG to offer global, unrestricted P2P payments surpassing regional limitations of existing super apps.

Punchline: Telegram's massive user base and demand for seamless payments position TON as a bridge to Web3 adoption.

Bitcoin Goes Consumer 🎮

• Animoca Brands, Hong Kong-based game software company, is coming to Bitcoin. Link

• In a partnership with Opal Foundation, they aim to create the largest Web3 ecosystem encompassing gaming, decentralized finance (DeFi), entertainment, education, and culture.

What they’re saying: “With the advent of Ordinals, Bitcoin made the giant leap from simply being a way to store value to becoming a store of culture for the Web3 age” – Yat Siu, Chairman and Co-Founder of Animoca Brands

The big picture: Last year, the Ordinals (BRC-20) protocol brought NFTs to Bitcoin with over 66M inscriptions to date and a $2.65B market cap. Recently, Layer2 protocols, such as Lightning or Stacks, picked up as well.

Recently, Bitcoin Runes introduces a new fungible token standard on Bitcoin, enabling a host of new innovations such as DeFi, Tokenization, Stablecoins, and more.

Punchline: Bitcoin is experiencing a “consumer” renaissance and is turning into a serious contender to other L1 smart contract chains.

More on Web3:

• Gatorade and Rumble Kong League collab on an NFT-driven basketball game on Avalanche. Link

• Mastercard is kicking off Season 2 of its music artist accelerator program. Link

• Roblox announces immersive video ads are now available for sale. Link

• OpenSea’s activity drops to lowest since July 2021. Link

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🌎 Crypto & Macro

Bulls & Bears 🦬

Weathering the bear within the bull market :

• Digital asset investment products saw outflows for the third consecutive week totalling $435M, marking the largest outflows since March this year. Link

• Despite the initial hype, the Hong Kong BTC & ETH ETFs had a lackluster debut. Link

Yes, but: Consumer skepticism is dropping and adoption is happening.

• Major pensions are buying

• Morgan Stanley is prepping 15,000 brokers to recommend clients buy 

• BNY Mellon is reporting exposure

Kernel of evidence: The combined transaction volume of the top 3 stablecoins surpassed Visa’s 2023 monthly average. Daily BTC transactions hit a new ATH of 926,842 per day

Punchline: We’re in a period of consolidation, but broader crypto adoption is happening. Consumer sentiment is shifting while institutional interest is growing. 

More on Crypto:

• BlackRock leads RWA tokenisation platform Securitize’s $47M strategic round.

• BlackRock’s BUIDL is now the largest tokenized treasury fund, hitting $375M. Link

• Early Bitcoin investor Roger Ver arrested on charges of tax fraud. Link

🧠AI + Metaverse

• Worldcoin developer Tools for Humanity wants to partner with PayPal and OpenAI. Link

• Amazon releases its generative AI chatbot / automated assistant, Q. Link

💰 Money Moves

• Backed: Swiss tokenized asset issuer raises $9.5M round led by Gnosis

• Pantera Capital: VC firm looks to raise $1B for new crypto fund

• Natix: DePIN project focused on mapping data raises $4.6M ahead of token launch

• InfiniGods: Gaming firm raises $8M series A with Pantera Capital funding exclusively

• Immutable: Secures $50M for Web3 gaming rewards program

That’s all for now, folks. Thank you for being part of the journey.
Talk soon,

– Marc

PS: Follow me on LinkedIn and X for shorter insights.

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