🤝 By way of Introduction(.com)

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Table of Contents

• What We’re Looking at 👀

• Funding Rounds 🤑

  • From Introduction.com Members 💳️

  • Non-Members 🤠

• Events 📆

• Top Stories 📰

  • Wrap Up ✌️

🌟 Another week, another batch of bullish alpha dropped straight from the blockchain gods. Limitless is cooking, Kalshi’s flexing their CFTC badge, and Coinbase just hit ATHs while launching perps like it’s 2021 again.

Meanwhile, Solana’s staking ETF is playing 4D chess with the SEC, and everyone from TradFi boomers to meme-loving whales is suddenly back in prediction markets. The summer of crypto is giving 2017 energy—but with better UX and actual compliance. CoreWeave’s $9B AI acquisition drama? Peak entertainment.

So slap on some SPF 100 and scroll down: there’s alpha everywhere, and we already did the work, so you don’t have to. 🌟 

Limitless

Secured $4M led by Coinbase Ventures preceding their upcoming TGE 💰️💰️ 

This puts total funding at $7M to date. The recent uptick in funding highlights investor belief in the value of the prediction market platform and the likely expected value add from their TGE.

Head of Business Development at Limitless and Introduction.com Member - Jacques Whales - had this to say: “We are extremely excited to integrate our market across wallets and other DeFi projects. We are thrilled to see how engaging and receptive the community has been.”

Prediction markets are nothing new. We have seen their popularity explode with Kalshi and Polymarket etc both securing huge funding as of late (discussed below). The difference here is that Limitless is Web3.

Web3 prediction markets are relatively new, the oldest being Augur. Augur, which has been quickly surpassed in volume by Limitless, has not secured funding since 2021 likely due to higher fees for gas / less composability. Limitless' main competitor in the Web3 space appears to be Thales. However, Thales clearly focuses more on power users compared to Limitless’ more every day “casual” and mobile user positioning.

While Web3 prediction markets have not secured as much funding as their Web2.5 counterparts to date, both investment and trade volume are heating up this summer 🔥 

Portal (Acquisition 🤩 )

Big Congratulations to long-time Introduction.com member Harry Alford, the founding GTM Lead at Portal, recently acquired by the Monad Foundation. It’s a strong signal that Web3 infra is maturing from composable, modular pieces to full-stack, purpose-built ecosystems.

Monad and Portal are no longer competing with other L1s like Solana or Avalanche; they’re stepping into territory typically owned by Circle, Fireblocks, and even fintech giants like Stripe. Most players still rely on multiple vendors to stitch together payment and infrastructure layers; Monad now has both in-house.

Builders saw the deal as a clear win for long-term usability and adoption, especially in the payments vertical. Some compared it to Stripe’s early days: an infra play that could quietly power a huge chunk of the ecosystem. While token prices saw a small uptick, the real value is in what this unlocks for devs building stablecoin-native apps.

1. World Liberty Financial. 🦅

   Secured $100M from fund Aqua1 a UAE based fund. Aqua1 now stands as the largest single token owner by percentage outside of the Trump family.

   Aqua1’s recent addition highlights the Trumps ties to the middle east.

   Strategically, they can act as a liaison to the middle east and asian markets paving the way for regulation and stability through RWA tokenization and stable coin adoption in the region.

2. Canton Network. 🤫

   Secured $135M from their parent company Digital Asset. Canton receives the bulk of its investor support from TradFi institutions with Citadel, Goldman, Tradeweb, and DRW as majority holders. Its last funding round was back in 2022.

   This fresh capital shows renewed investor confidence in the transition from TradFi to DeFi as Canton positions itself as a premier Web2.5 player.

3. Bit Digital. 🔒

   Raised $150M in a public share offering with their last offering dating back to 2018. This most recent offering brings in fresh capital at the expense of previous shareholders by diluting the value of previous shares.

   Bit Digital plans to use the fresh capital to purchase more Ethereum. This move highlights crypto dominance as the value of Ethereum outweighs the devaluation in stock from the fresh offering.

4. Kalshi. 🔮

   In a series C round raised $185M with the help of the Paradigm fund. Per CEO Tarek Mansour this puts the companies valuation at $2B. This is all while competitor Polymarket is close to raising $200M in a round that values it at more than $1B.

   Both of these funding rounds come at the heels of Kalshi’s legal wins as a CFTC DCM. The legal win paves the way for increased federal regulation to overcome significant red tape by circumventing state oversight. This will ultimately lead to quicker adoption and scalability all while promoting Prediction Platforms as a whole including the Web3 space.

_{Web3 Summit 2025 Berlin, Germany; 7/16-7/18} 🍻 

_{NapulETH Naples, Italy; 7/17-7/19} 🎩 

Second‑Longest Bitcoin Bull Run in Progress 🐂  

Bitcoin bull run surges past day 640. This is the 2nd longest in the coin’s history. 🥵 

Technicals, on-chain metrics, and cycle-pattern analysis point to continued gains. However, strong emphasis on Oct 2025 as a potential cap, echoing past cycles - per Rekt Capital.

Key observables seem to  include the 50-week MA, SOPR metrics, and leveraged trade ratios.

👉🏻 Solana staking ETF launching imminently on REX Shares

After much back and forth with the SEC reports indicate there are no new hurdles to surmount and all previous objections have been addressed 📈 

Important to note that REX Shares is unique in the space as they plan to bypass the standard 19b-4 filing process that most other crypto ETF providers have used for staking proposals, which are all still awaiting a decision from the SEC

👉🏻 COIN is up and betting on perps

Huge win as all-time high close price on Thursday 6/25 breached $375. Benchmark analysts gave it a $402 price target. Bernstein analysts set an even loftier price target of $510 🚀 

Coinbase said it will be offering U.S.-regulated perpetual-style futures for Bitcoin and Ethereum. Perps have done close to $400B in volume in the last month. Lets see how this number grows with the addition of Coinbase’s offerings. 

👉🏻 CoreWeave plans $9B all stock acquisition of Core Scientific

This acquisition represents a maturing of markets. For those keeping score, Core Scientific, founded in 2017 as a Bitcoin mining firm, pivoted early into AI and HPC hosting by 2019. After filing for bankruptcy in late 2022 due to crypto market pressures, it reemerged in 2024 with a leaner balance sheet and a major AI infrastructure deal with CoreWeave.

While they still maintain significant BTC holdings and have a mining operation, the CoreWeave acquisition positions the combined company as a vertically integrated AI compute powerhouse.

The market, however, disagrees with the approach as Core Scientific shares dropped sharply—between 16% and 22%—on the announcement of the $9 billion all-stock acquisition, reflecting investor skepticism about the valuation and deal terms.

CoreWeave’s stock also declined by 2–4%, prompting analysts to downgrade the stock due to concerns about dilution, higher valuation multiples, and the risks of transitioning into a capital-intensive infrastructure model.

While these are both still valuable companies, this deal shows cases the current difficulties of remaining profitable as a mining operation in today’s era. Additionally, investors seemed to be cooling to AI related gains due to overstimulation from a flooded market. Time will tell if the gains from AI are able to buck the trend. 

👉🏻 BlackRock Sees Big Crypto Opportunity via IBIT ETF 

BlackRock COO Rob Goldstein highlighted crypto’s long-term potential at Coinbase’s 2025 State of Crypto Summit.

Goldstein pointed out that BlackRock has been exploring crypto since 2017, with a focus on stablecoins for their utility in moving cash more efficiently, similar to money market funds but with more flexibility.

He emphasized that the IBIT ETF is a “bridge strategy” designed to offer Bitcoin exposure to investors without direct ownership, and that it’s “barely in the early innings,” signaling still vast opportunity ahead in crypto innovation. Goldstein also noted that while parts of finance remain slow and costly, digital assets and tokenization can drive significant disruption.

BlackRock’s IBIT (iShares Bitcoin Trust) is a spot Bitcoin ETF launched on January 5, 2024, designed to track the actual price of Bitcoin rather than futures contracts. Since its debut, it has grown into the largest U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF, managing over $75 billion in assets and holding approximately 700,000 BTC. The fund now generates more than $187 million in annual fees—surpassing BlackRock’s own S&P 500 ETF—highlighting strong institutional demand for regulated crypto products.

IBIT’s success has legitimized Bitcoin as a mainstream asset class, encouraging broader adoption and laying the groundwork for future spot ETFs in assets like Ethereum and Solana. Beyond IBIT, BlackRock’s crypto exposure includes tokenization initiatives, such as its BUIDL fund, and a growing presence in Ethereum ETF filings, reflecting a deepening integration into digital assets.

👉🏻 Centralized Entities Control 30% of Bitcoin

A new joint report from Gemini and Glasse reveals that 216 centralized entities now hold over 30% of Bitcoin’s circulating supply – a dramatic increase (~924%) since 2015.

These centralized holders include exchanges, ETFs, custodians, public companies, DeFi contracts, and sovereign wallets. The data was derived from on-chain analytics, combining Glassnode’s wallet tracking with Gemini’s market context, highlighting sizeable holdings like BlackRock’s ~661,400 BTC via its IBIT ETF.

This rising concentration reflects Bitcoin’s maturation into an institutional-grade store of value, but also signals custodial centralization, raising concerns about single points of failure and regulatory influence over major custody hubs.

For the market, institutional dominance stabilizes volatility and bolsters legitimacy—yet it challenges the ethos of decentralization foundational to Web3, creating trade-offs between efficiency and resilience.

✨ Alright, fam—let’s recap. Solana’s ETF move is spicy, Limitless is flipping Augur in volume, and COIN’s chart is giving giga long vibes. With BTC whales now more institutional than ever (thanks BlackRock), we’re in this weird limbo where decentralization is thriving and slowly getting KYC’d. AI miners are going corporate, perps are back on U.S. shores, and tokenization isn’t just a buzzword, it’s the new cash. Bottom line: if you're not glued to the chain this summer, you're gonna miss a lot. Catch you at NapulETH or Berlin, and remember: not financial advice… just vibes and blockspace. ✨