KuCoin Ventures Weekly Report: Navigating Crypto Winter: US Listing Plays, On-Chain Bridges & the AI Frontier
1. Weekly Market Highlights
The crypto project uses a shell structure to achieve a U.S. stock market listing, with a knockoff MicroStrategy model capturing liquidity from U.S. equity markets
Influenced by the continued rise of USDC issuer Circle’s Nasdaq listing to new highs, several major crypto projects, following MicroStrategy’s model, leverage U.S.-listed shell companies through acquisitions or other capital maneuvers to “package” their tokens onto the balance sheets of these listed entities, aiming to capture U.S. market liquidity.
Beyond the well-known MicroStrategy, which purchases BTC, companies emulating the “MicroStrategy” model have emerged around tokens such as ETH, SOL, TRX, HYPE, and XRP. For instance, SharpLink raised $425 million through private financing to acquire 176,000 ETH, becoming the largest ETH holder among publicly listed companies. DeFi Development holds over 600,000 SOL. SRM Entertainment, advised by Tron co-founder Justin Sun, raised $100 million privately to purchase TRX and rebranded as Tron Inc. Evenovia invested $50 million in HYPE, became a validator node for Hyperliquid, and plans to rename itself Hyperion DeFi. Additionally, tokens like Sui and TAO are being strategically allocated by U.S.-listed companies, with Everything Blockchain announcing a $10 million investment in SOL, XRP, SUI, TAO, and HYPE to position itself ahead of potential institutional capital inflows.
The essence of “securitizing and packaging” native token assets lies in crypto projects leveraging the compliant framework of U.S.-listed companies to capture liquidity from traditional financial markets, enhance asset valuations, and bolster brand credibility. The core logic is to establish a value transmission channel between cryptocurrency and traditional capital markets. This trend is driven by two factors: first, a pro-crypto stance following Trump’s inauguration; second, the exhaustion of native crypto market narratives, which has accelerated this shift.
Through “securitization packaging,” crypto projects achieve three forms of value arbitrage:
Liquidity Arbitrage: U.S. stock markets offer greater liquidity and trading volume than crypto markets. Traditional capital, such as pensions and mutual funds, restricted by compliance from directly investing in cryptocurrencies, can indirectly allocate to crypto assets—especially non-BTC assets—by holding listed company stocks.
Valuation Arbitrage: Crypto tokens often lack utility and demand. However, MicroStrategy’s stock market value, for instance, carries a premium relative to its 592,100 BTC holdings, enabling it to raise debt to purchase more BTC, thereby creating demand.
Regulatory Arbitrage: By embedding tokens into a listed company’s balance sheet, investors purchase stocks rather than tokens directly. Listed companies’ financials, audited by Big Four firms, indirectly provide institutional holdings with a “stamp of approval.”
This “securitization packaging” resembles a reverse RWA model, and more altcoins—especially public blockchain network tokens with clearer revenue models—are likely to adopt this approach. As a growing share of token circulating supply becomes part of listed companies’ balance sheets, pricing power may shift, akin to BTC’s current primary demand stemming from U.S.-listed companies and institutional investors rather than the crypto native community itself. However, companies financing token purchases through debt face risks in a bear market, including token price crashes leading to insufficient collateral, forced liquidations, and a potential downward spiral. This is particularly concerning for tokens yet to experience a bear market, where outcomes are unpredictable. Moreover, companies like SharpLink exhibit high stock market premiums relative to their crypto holdings, coupled with weak revenue from their original businesses, indicating significant irrational market exuberance.
2. Weekly Selected Market Signals
Escalating Geopolitical Risks Trigger Market Risk-Aversion, Crypto Assets Under Pressure, Key Macro Data Awaited
Last week, tensions between Israel and Iran in the Middle East persisted. Notably, on the evening of June 21st US time, market reports indicated US airstrikes on three suspected nuclear facility targets within Iran, causing a sudden escalation of the situation. This move quickly ignited global market risk-off sentiment, with the US dollar index strengthening in early Asian trading, international crude oil futures jumping sharply, while US stock index futures experienced a slight dip.
Affected by this, volatility in precious metals and crypto asset markets intensified. In early Asian trading on June 23rd, spot gold prices once neared $3,400 per ounce at the open, before retreating somewhat. In the crypto market, BTC prices plunged sharply on the evening of June 22nd, once breaching the $99,000 threshold and hitting its lowest level in over a month. The price has currently rebounded to around $101,000, temporarily finding support. ETH prices also plummeted in tandem, once falling over 10%, with the price hitting a low near $2,100.
Source: TradingView
Observing the 10-week leading indicator of global M2, the current leading liquidity indicator suggested by global M2 still shows that overall market liquidity is relatively abundant. This provides a basis for Bitcoin to maintain range-bound trading at high levels amidst a complex geopolitical backdrop. However, it is worth noting that after Bitcoin hit a new high in May, preliminary signs of a bearish divergence have appeared on the weekly chart, and subsequent trends warrant close attention.
As the sudden events occurred over the weekend, Bitcoin spot ETF fund flow data has not yet fully reflected the latest market dynamics. Reviewing last week's data, although Bitcoin's price was under pressure, overall, spot ETFs did not see large-scale net outflows. This phenomenon may indicate that after enduring multiple tests of extreme market conditions, Bitcoin's traditional label as a "risk asset" is fading, while its "digital gold" narrative continues to strengthen.
Source：SosoValue
Source: CoinMarketCap
The total issuance of USDT is still seeing a modest increase, while USDC issuance has been in a narrow consolidation over the past month. It has not seen a significant increase due to Circle's IPO and its soaring market capitalization. Overall, the volume of new capital inflow from stablecoin channels remains limited.
Source: FED WatchTool
On the macro level, according to the latest Federal Reserve dot plot disclosed last week, the median forecast for the federal funds rate at the end of 2025 remains unchanged at 3.875%, theoretically leaving room for approximately 50 basis points of potential rate cuts in 2025. Although the median number of projected rate cuts for the year remains unchanged, the number of committee members supporting no rate cuts this year has increased by three compared to the first quarter. This shift can be interpreted as a signal of a marginal tightening in the Federal Reserve's stance on future monetary policy easing.
Key Macro Events to Watch This Week:
Monetary Policy Signals: This week, Federal Reserve Chair Powell and New York Fed President Williams will deliver speeches on monetary policy. The market will closely monitor their policy stances and any changes in wording.
Key Economic Data: Pay attention to key data releases such as the latest US initial jobless claims data (to be released on June 26th) and the May core PCE price index (to be released on June 27th). These will provide important references for assessing the current labor market and inflation situation.
Primary Market Financing Observations:
Source: cryptorank
Last week, the total single-week funding in the primary market reached $807 million. Looking at monthly data, the entire month of June continued the positive trend of frequent large funding rounds seen since March 2025. It is noteworthy that this week's large funding rounds primarily originated from OTC (Over-The-Counter) deals for mature projects and treasury allocation strategies of listed companies, rather than venture capital for early-stage projects. Meanwhile, the compliant stablecoin ecosystem and AI remain the core narratives attracting the most attention in the current primary market.
Major large funding events last week include:
Lion Group Holding (LGHL) to build a crypto treasury: Nasdaq-listed company Lion Group Holding announced plans to establish a crypto asset treasury worth up to $600 million, initially focusing on allocating Hyperliquid's native token HPYE.
Eigen Labs secures further backing from a16z: a16z invested an additional $70 million in Eigen Labs via an OTC deal.
Ubyx: $10 Million Seed Round to Build a Universal Stablecoin Clearing Network
Ubyx, a stablecoin clearing startup founded by former Citigroup executive Tony McLaughlin, recently announced the successful completion of a $10 million seed funding round. The round was led by Galaxy Ventures, with participation from prominent institutions such as Founders Fund, Coinbase Ventures, Paxos, and VanEck.
Ubyx is dedicated to building a global, multi-issuer, multi-currency, cross-blockchain stablecoin clearing system. Its core goal is to enable any user to conveniently redeem stablecoins at par value instantly and deposit them directly into their existing bank or regulated non-bank financial institution accounts. Through a standardized clearing process, Ubyx aims to help stablecoins achieve the crucial "cash equivalent" status under IAS7 accounting standards, thereby unlocking the potential for large-scale enterprise adoption and enabling stablecoins to truly become universal digital cash in personal and commercial scenarios. Founder Tony McLaughlin joined Citigroup in 2004, possessing a strong traditional finance background and having held key positions such as Head of Core Cash for Asia Pacific and Head of Global Transaction Services for the UK, bringing extensive experience. Ubyx plans to officially launch by the end of this year, initially supporting mainstream blockchain networks like Solana and Base, and has already partnered with industry leaders such as Paxos, Ripple, and AllUnity.
Ubyx's funding round appears more like a strategic play led by top-tier venture capital firms, involving a coalition of major US stablecoin issuers, crypto exchanges, and ETF/asset management companies. This move reflects a combination of seasoned traditional finance professionals and crypto-native forces, aiming to leverage the current popularity of stablecoins to further consolidate and expand their business footprint and competitive moats within the compliant stablecoin ecosystem.
EigenLayer Rebrands to EigenCloud: a16z Adds $70 Million via OTC, Deepening the Verifiable Cloud Service Narrative
Eigen Labs recently announced a brand upgrade for its core product, changing its name from EigenLayer to EigenCloud, and disclosed that it has received an additional $70 million in strategic investment from a16z via an OTC deal. This series of actions signifies a deep strategic shift for Eigen Labs, moving from its initial "Restaking coordination protocol" towards a vertically integrated "verifiable service platform."
EigenCloud has also introduced new features such as "Verifiable Service Composition" and "Cross-Chain Support," aiming to enable various Actively Validated Services (AVSs) to be flexibly combined like Lego bricks and run seamlessly on any L1 or L2 network through standardized API interfaces. This significantly reduces developer integration friction and accelerates the composability and innovation efficiency of the entire ecosystem.
Within the new "verifiable cloud" narrative framework, EigenCloud also demonstrates significant potential for integration with the AI field. For example, newly launched products like EigenCompute (for containerized verifiable computing) and EigenVerify (verification-as-a-service) are expected to enhance the transparency, trustworthiness, and verifiability of AI computation processes. This not only provides a new trust enhancement layer for existing AI applications but also lays a solid infrastructural foundation for the development of emerging formats such as decentralized AI model marketplaces, decentralized data annotation platforms, and decentralized federated learning.
3. Project Spotlight
Coinbase Advances Base Integration; JPMorgan's "Deposit Token" Pilot Highlights Institutional On-Chain Adoption
Coinbase is actively pursuing deeper integration of the Base chain into its main application. This could enable users to directly interact with DApps on Base using their Coinbase account balances, eliminating cumbersome wallet switching and on-chain transfer processes. While this feature is still under development, this direction aligns closely with the current trend of centralized cryptocurrency exchanges (CEXs) fostering on-chain and off-chain integration. For instance, Binance incentivizes on-chain trading data through its Alpha system, while Bybit is accelerating its TraFi module, allowing users to trade traditional assets like gold, stocks, and forex within its CEX application, demonstrating that a "one-stop trading experience" has become a key direction for platform evolution.
Concurrently, JPMorgan is piloting its "deposit token," JPMD, on the Base chain. As a compliant, institution-focused digital dollar instrument, it is backed by bank deposits and restricted to permissioned use, aiming to test the interoperability between traditional finance and on-chain systems. This initiative is led by Kinexys, JPMorgan's blockchain subsidiary, representing an early exploration by financial giants into issuing stablecoin-like instruments in a public chain environment.
From an industry perspective, the integration of Coinbase and Base strengthens its positioning as a compliant chain and a key entry point. If application-level integration is achieved in the future, it could significantly expand the on-chain active user base. JPMorgan's pilot, on the other hand, reflects traditional institutions' sustained interest in on-chain dollar circulation and settlement pathways, especially as policies around digital dollar assets become clearer. This could introduce new variables into the competitive landscape for compliant stablecoins. Both developments are significant signals of the "centralized institutions x on-chain ecosystem" trend, and their subsequent scaling, implementation pace, and policy interaction effects warrant close attention.
Sahara AI Announces Imminent Token Launch, Driving Data Assetization and Closed-Loop AI Application Development
This week, Web3 AI infrastructure project Sahara AI announced that its native token, $SAHARA, will be listed simultaneously on OKX spot trading and the Binance Alpha platform on June 23rd. Considering the project's positioning and resource backing, this listing timeline is not entirely surprising. However, against the backdrop of a cooling AI+Crypto trend, Sahara AI's ability to navigate market cycles remains a subject for continued observation.
Sahara AI aims to build an end-to-end platform covering the entire AI development lifecycle, including data annotation, rights verification, deployment, and computational power support. Users can earn incentives on the platform by participating in data refinement and annotation, and tokenize data assets into on-chain ownership NFTs, which AI developers can then use to train custom models. The platform also plans to offer GPU/CPU computing services to support the efficient deployment and operation of AI models. These processes will operate on its proprietary Sahara Chain, which is built on the Cosmos SDK, is EVM-compatible, and utilizes a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. It is designed to support the rights verification and transaction needs for large-scale data and model assets.
The "AI data assetization" path represented by Sahara AI offers an alternative to predominantly tool-oriented AI projects. It seeks to effectively connect users and developers through clear data rights verification and feedback incentive mechanisms, thereby establishing an application ecosystem with a sustainable economic model. The platform's ability to attract sufficient high-quality data contributions and developer participation will be key to achieving genuine network effects. Its post-listing market capitalization (MC) and fully diluted valuation (FDV) performance will also serve as an important benchmark for the market in assessing the development potential of similar projects.
About KuCoin Ventures
KuCoin Ventures, is the leading investment arm of KuCoin Exchange, which is a top 5 crypto exchange globally. Aiming to invest in the most disruptive crypto and blockchain projects of the Web 3.0 era, KuCoin Ventures supports crypto and Web 3.0 builders both financially and strategically with deep insights and global resources.
As a community-friendly and research-driven investor, KuCoin Ventures works closely with portfolio projects throughout the entire life cycle, with a focus on Web3.0 infrastructures, AI, Consumer App, DeFi and PayFi.
Disclaimer: This content is provided for general informational purposes only, without any representation or warranty of any kind, nor shall it be construed as financial or investment advice. KuCoin Ventures shall not be liable for any errors or omissions, or for any outcomes resulting from the use of this information. Investments in digital assets can be risky.