The Sui blockchain hasn’t yet catapulted into the bull-run conversation. But its DeFi ecosystem is trending up and to the right, creating an opening for one of its biggest protocols to capitalize.

Suilend, which facilitates crypto borrowing and lending on Sui, raised $2 million in February and just closed on an additional $4 million, its pseudonymous founder Rooter told CoinDesk. The funding trove will allow Suilend to weather potential market shifts, he said.

“It’s the time to do it and make sure that we have capital to last for the next four years, if there’s a long bear market,” Rooter said.

The latest round was led by Tarun Chitra’s Robot Ventures with participation from a bevy of venture firms and angel investors. It comes days ahead of Suilend’s debut of a new token, called SAVE.

Suilend is the chain’s second-largest DeFi protocol by total value locked, or TVL, as measured by DefiLlama, and its biggest lending protocol, with nearly $470 million of TVL. Its 30-day revenue of nearly $820,000 also places it among the chain’s top earners.

Those numbers aren’t much when compared to the top venues on other ecosystems on fast and cheap layer-1 blockchains like Solana, where Suilend has its roots. An associated lending protocol on Solana called Save (formerly Solend, once Solana’s top lending protocol) has accrued $500,000 in monthly revenue off $450 million of TVL.

But Rooter isn’t concerned with Sui’s current ranking against Solana. He’s an evangelist for Sui’s relative upsides that could eventually give it a greater capture of the market. For example, he’s found that software developments can proceed “a few times faster” on Sui.

“We’re actually able to ship more” on Sui, Rooter said, pointing to a recently launched liquid staking token project and automated market maker that will soon join its core lending suite.

Suilend’s LST design is informed by the missteps Rooter and Solend endured firsthand. Its “infinitely liquid” design means holders don’t wait through unstaking delays to unlock the tokens underlying their LST, he said. Issues with a Solana LST’s multi-day unlock once caused chaos at Solend.

“Building three protocols in a year — I don’t know if that would have been possible for us to do on Solana,” he said.

Memecoins undoubtedly capture a big slice of crypto observers’ attention — even if not everyone is a fan. But data shows they’re gobbling up a growing amount of the crypto economy too.

The sector — powered by the likes of dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB) — made up 3.16% of the combined market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies on Dec. 1, up from 1.3% at the beginning of the year, according to a new report from crypto exchange CEX.IO. If you exclude crypto titans bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH), memecoin market share jumps to 11.21% from 4.2%.

That equates to big dollars: more than $140 billion of market value, per CoinGecko data, stashed in cryptocurrencies that don’t pretend to have any utility. Extremely volatile by nature, they tend to be named after animals, viral internet jokes and political figures or events.

As bitcoin topples the $100,000 threshold for the first time, memecoins are also rocketing higher. Dogecoin has soared 168% since Donald Trump’s election spurred throughout the crypto market. Dogecoin is now the seventh-largest cryptocurrency by market cap at $64 billion, according to CoinDesk data.

The question is whether this is just how things work in the early stages of a bull market these days, or a harbinger that things have gotten overheated.

“In previous cycles, memecoins typically experienced their largest capital rotation toward the end of the post-halving bull run,” Alexandr Kerya, vice president of product management at CEX.IO, told CoinDesk in an email.

“Halving” refers to the once-every-four-years event — the most recent one was early in 2014 — when the reward for mining bitcoin gets slashed by 50%, which often correlates with crypto gains.

“However, this cycle stands out due to the significant rise in memecoin influence occurring well before the halving, and persisting even during bitcoin’s consolidation mid-year,” Kerya added.

The oldest memecoin, dogecoin, was created as a joke in 2013 and gained significant attention during the bull market that ended in 2021 as Tesla CEO Elon Musk repeatedly posted about it on social media. Other dog-themed coins, like SHIB, rode on DOGE’s coat-tails and reached billions of dollars of valuation. Over time, memecoins came to be considered as a crypto investment category in their own right, in the same vein as decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens, artificial intelligence tokens or privacy coins.

“While memecoins may eventually reach a plateau, similar to DeFi, the market is still in the process of determining where that equilibrium will be established,” Kerya wrote.

Eating up market share

The memecoin sector underwent explosive growth early this year, the report said, when the daily number of projects deployed on Pump.fun — a Solana-based crypto project that makes it easy for users to launch tokens — went from a few dozen a day in February to thousands per day in March. Nowadays, over 60,000 memecoins are created daily, half of them through Pump.fun, the report said.

As a sector, memecoins saw a 330% increase in their combined market capitalization over the period from Jan. 1 to Dec. 1, the report said. For comparison, bitcoin is up 140% since the beginning of the year, while ether is up 71%. Memecoin trading volume grew 979% in the same period, and now accounts for 5.27% of the entire crypto market’s volume. Furthermore, memecoins retained significant volume in June while other sectors of the crypto economy saw declines.

“As a gateway for new investors, the growth of memecoins highlights the increasing influence of retail-driven narratives in the crypto market. As a sentiment bet, it reflects market optimism and the anticipation of a continuation of the post-halving rally,” Kerya wrote. “However, with increased share of memecoins, it also highlights the potential for the faster appearance of speculative bubbles. While this could amplify the intensity of a bull run, it might also shorten its duration.”

The memecoin sector has changed over the years. Dogecoin and Shiba Inu dominated trading volume and market capitalization in 2021. In contrast, 2024 has seen a wide variety of newer memecoins — such as dogwifhat (WIF), Brett (BRETT), Peanut the Squirrel (PNUT) and Popcat (POPCAT) — crack (or come close to) the top 100 coins by market cap.

And whereas the majority of the largest memecoins were dog-themed up until March, cat-themed and AI-themed tokens have been stealing market share from dog tokens. Political memecoins also fared well into the U.S. election in November, after which they saw an 80% drop in trading volume.

The networks on which trading activity occurs have also shifted. Dogecoin has its own proof-of-work blockchain, which mimics the Bitcoin network’s. Ethereum-based memecoins such as pepe (PEPE) and MAGA (TRUMP) have also seen some popularity. But Solana, thanks to Pump.fun, is the big winner of the memecoin craze in 2024; the network accounts for 30% of the sector’s trading volume, and 15% of memecoin market cap is based on it.

However, Telegram’s TON network’s memecoin trading volume grew 750 times in the last six months, even though the blockchain still only accounts for 1% of the total memecoin market cap.

“Given memecoins’ ability to boost retail involvement and revenue generation for DeFi platforms, 2025 could see stronger integrations between launchpads and decentralized exchanges to capitalize on this trend,” Kerya wrote. “However, in ecosystems like Solana, heavy reliance on memecoins has raised concerns and could eventually backfire, straining its broader development.”

Wilbon calls on Warriors to trade for LeBron to maximize Steph’s window originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

After their gold medal-winning run in the 2024 Paris Olympics this summer, there inevitably would be an appetite for Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James to unite with Warriors guard Steph Curry on an NBA court.

Various NBA personalities have suggested Curry could join James in Los Angeles, but ESPN analyst Michael Wilbon called on the Warriors to make a move to bring their longtime foe to the Bay.

Wilbon expressed a lack of confidence in the Warriors’ and Lakers’ current rosters on Friday’s episode of “NBA Today.”

“Let’s cut to the chase. All those assets are great if Steph and Draymond were 31 and 32 years old,” Wilbon stated. “You could sort of wait on them — and I love [Jonathan] Kuminga — but they’re not 31 and 32 years old. You’re talking about maximizing now. They’re not catching Oklahoma City. They’re not catching Dallas … with the personnel they have currently assembled.”

So, in Wilbon’s eyes, why not take a shot at acquiring an all-time great, even though he wasn’t sure that Golden State could rise to the top of the Western Conference even with James?

“But if you tell me, if anybody watched the Olympics this summer, and you watched LeBron James and Steph Curry play together, how can you not want to see that?” Wilbon continued. “I’m not saying it’s easy when you will tell us how possible it is, if at all. But you tell me, the Lakers stink … Is LeBron going to ride out another season like that? Why would he?”

Given the fairly close proximity between the two California teams, Wilbon proposed a unique work-life arrangement for James.

“You can’t play in San Francisco and live in Los Angeles if you want to?” Wilbon speculated. “This is tailor-made for those two guys to play together and finish their careers.”

Again, is a Steph-LeBron alliance likely? Probably not. But it sure would be a must-watch.

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Bitcoin’s (BTC) price plunged below $94,000 late Thursday in rapid retreat from its newfound all-time high around $100,000.

There was no immediately obvious reason for the drop.

CoinDesk Indices data, which incorporates prices from several sources, shows bitcoin dropped as low as $93,468.34. Meanwhile, it got to about $90,500 on Binance and $92,000 on Coinbase.

The selling did not spread across the rest of crypto — which is unusual. While bitcoin went into freefall, other tokens didn’t really budge.

Bitcoin then rebounded back above $96,000.

The Indian hip-hop scene witnessed a storm this week as MTV Hustle, a popular rap reality show, found itself embroiled in controversy. Rapper Raftaar, a judge on the show, has addressed the allegations surrounding comedian Rohan Cariappa’s YouTube channel being targeted with strikes, which some believe were linked to his satirical commentary on the show.

Raftaar DEFENDS MTV Hustle artists amidst controversy over comedian’s YouTube ban, urges unity in hip-hop community

Raftaar Calls for Calm Amid Backlash

In a video shared on social media, Raftaar spoke about the need for unity within the community. He explained the importance of supporting creativity and resolving disputes constructively.

“We only have love. This is a whole community. We will stand with the community. Don’t worry, my brother, Rohan,” Raftaar said. He also appealed to MTV Hustle, urging them to de-escalate the situation. “Let’s meet in the middle and make it happen. Keep calm and be patient,” he added.

Raftaar highlighted the hard work of the participants on the show, saying, “There are several kids who write songs within 4-5 days on this show, and people are forgetting all the great work and artists here. We cannot forget them. We will find a solution. It’s that simple.”

The controversy erupted after Rohan Cariappa, known for his satirical content on YouTube, shared his ordeal on Instagram. He claimed that over 50 copyright strikes were issued against his channel, allegedly as retaliation for his critical videos about the show. In a heartfelt post, Cariappa wrote, “Killswitch aur Danish ke baad mera bhi elimination ho raha hai,” referring to recent eliminations of contestants on the show. His post resonated with fans, sparking outrage online and leading to the hashtag #ShameOnMTVHUSTLE trending across platforms.

Also Read: Raftaar opens up about artists’ struggles in the latest episode of MTV Hustle 4: Hip-Hop Don’t Stop; says, “Jitne sapne dekhe jaate hain unme se zyadatar toot jaate hain!”

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President-elect Donald Trump has named David Sacks as the White House’s AI and Crypto Czar, announcing the appointment in a TruthSocial post Thursday night.

“David will guide policy for the Administration in Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrency, two areas critical to the future of American competitiveness. David will focus on making America the clear global leader in both areas,” Trump posted.

Sacks is a limited partner in MultiCoin Capital, having come on board in March 2018, in addition to being a general partner and co-founder at Craft Ventures, which counts BitGo and Bitwise as portfolio companies.

In the hours after the news, dYdX, the native token of the decentralized crypto exchange by the same name, surged over 30%. Sacks’ Craft Ventures was an early investor, participating in a Series A round that raised $10 million.

Trump said that one of Sacks’ responsibilities will be to “safeguard Free Speech online, and steer us away from Big Tech bias and censorship.”

“[Sacks] will work on a legal framework so the Crypto industry has the clarity it has been asking for, and can thrive in the U.S,” Trump said.

Sacks is the former chief operating officer of PayPal, where he worked alongside Elon Musk. Sacks is part of the “PayPal Mafia,” a group of former employees of the payment processor who went on to create or lead major technology companies like Tesla, LinkedIn, Palantir and YouTube.

The news comes a day after Trump named former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins as his pick to head up the securities regulator when he takes office next month. Atkins works with The Digital Chamber, an industry lobbying group and is an adviser to Reserve and Securitize.

What we learned as Steph scores 23 in blowout loss to Timberwolves originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

SAN FRANCISCO – Stephen Curry scored 23 points in his return to Golden State’s lineup but the Warriors failed to find a reliable second scoring option and lost to the Minnesota Timberwolves 107-90 on Friday night at Chase Center.

Curry, who missed Thursday’s game against the Houston Rockets because of lingering bilateral knee soreness, shot 6 of 17 (3 of 9 behind the arc), made all eight free throws he took and had four assists in 32 minutes.

Jonathan Kuminga had 13 points and two rebounds one night after pasting the Rockets for a career-high 33 points.

Andrew Wiggins scored 11 points before leaving the game with ankle soreness. Draymond Green, who was held out of the previous two games, was eased back in and added 10 points, nine rebounds and five assists while coming off the bench for the first time this season.

Moses Moody also left the game with a left knee injury and did not return.

Golden State (13-9) has lost five straight and six of the last seven games against Minnesota (12-10).

The Warriors started well, struggled mightily in the second quarter then seemed ready to make a big run in the third quarter until an overturned foul call changed the momentum. After Gary Payton II appeared to score and get fouled – a potential three-point play that would have trimmed the deficit to 75-69 – officials reviewed the play and changed the call to an offensive foul on Payton.

The Warriors made another surge in the fourth quarter, pulling within 80-77 on Curry’s 3-pointer with 10:38 remaining before the Wolves pulled away for good.

The teams play each other again at Chase Center on Sunday.

Here are the takeaways from Friday’s game:

Draymond does it off the bench

Playing in a reserve role for the first time since returning from an NBA suspension last season, Green didn’t miss a beat and whipped up his usual batch of basketball gumbo.

In the first quarter alone, the four-time All-Star racked up eight points, four rebounds and an assist in six and a half minutes.

It wasn’t all flowers and balloons, though. After absorbing a hard hit and crashing to the court, Green got up and yelled at an official believing a foul should have been called. Instead, refs hit Green with a technical foul – Green’s seventh this season.

Terrible twos

The Warriors came out strong, scoring 31 points in the first quarter but then hit a wall in the second period when they were held to a mere 15 points.

Golden State’s offense had no rhythm or flow, which enabled Minnesota to pull away and build a double-digit lead. The Warriors shot terribly (5 of 19 overall, 1 of 9 on 3-pointers), had four turnovers, put up just four points in the first 9 minutes of the period and fell behind by 19.

It was easily one of the Warriors’ worst quarters of the season and would have been worse had they not put together a small run in the final few minutes.

Buddy’s buckets not falling

Buddy Hield was a scoring machine early in the season when he averaged 16.9 points and shot 49.1 percent from the floor through the Warriors’ first 13 games.

Since then, Hield has been shooting a lot of blanks.

In his previous eight games, Hield’s shooting had dipped to 34.2 percent. He was just 1 of 8 from the floor against the Houston Rockets on Thursday, then connected on 2 of 4 shots against the Wolves.

Coach Steve Kerr didn’t seem too concerned, saying before the game that it was just the normal ebbs and flows of a season.

Despite all that, Hield is still closing in on a milestone moment. The sharp-shooter needs eight more 3s to become the 17^th player in NBA history to have 2,000 for his career.

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A heavyweight from the once-hot NFT era is now getting into the cryptocurrency issuance game.

Pudgy Penguins launched three years ago as a set of 8,888 NFTs depicting colorful and comical birds.

Now, the team behind the project tells CoinDesk that they will release a token called PENGU this year on the Solana blockchain.

Nearly a quarter — 23.5% — of the 88 billion PENGU tokens will be reserved for owners of the project’s NFT collections like Pudgy Penguins, Lil Pudgys, Pudgy Rods and more. A further 22.02% will be available to the Solana and Ethereum communities, while 12.32% are set aside to provide liquidity on decentralized exchanges.

“With $PENGU, the millions of Pudgy Penguin fans and the hundreds of millions of people who see and share the Pudgy Penguin every day now get the opportunity to align themselves with the character and become a part of The Huddle,” the team shared in a statement.
Pudgy is among the rare collections that managed to stay culturally relevant in the otherwise dreadful NFT business following the price crash from the 2021-2022 bull market. Many NFTs lacked real utility beyond being a digital brag. It was also difficult to fully realize gains after price bumps — as market liquidity was often inadequate to fill orders.

The pivot comes as fun tokens and memecoins, unlike NFTs, have taken off and flourished in the last two years. Liquidity, relative cheapness, virality and ease-of-use are key reasons why people have flocked to these latest hot asset classes — even though fun tokens and memecoins fundamentally represent the same idea as NFT collections did: belonging to a passionate community.

Official Pudgy Penguins channels have over 3 million followers across Instagram, X, TikTok and YouTube, and videos involving the characters have notched 32 billion views on Giphy.

One of the brand’s TikTok accounts is focused on spreading good vibes under the “Pudgy Kindness” moniker — popularizing it as a feel-good service in the mainstream, outside of crypto circles.

It goes beyond screens too. Parent company Igloo last year introduced Pudgy Toys, a toy line based on the digital art collection, and has since sold more than $10 million in collectible igloos and plushies that are carried at major retailers, including Walmart, Target, Amazon and Walgreens.

Pudgy Penguins is the third-largest NFT collection by market capitalization — $550 million in total — as of Thursday, data shows, trailing only CryptoPunks and Bored Apes Yacht Club. The collection came to life in 2021, and each penguin is hand-drawn and features various distinct traits such as backgrounds, body, face, head and skin.

Traders looking to impulsively take exposure to bitcoin (BTC) at record prices due to the “fear of missing out” (FOMO) should note that the market now looks notably confused, a shift away from the recent strong bull momentum.

The confusion is evident in BTC’s trading on Thursday, as it finally rose to six figures, tapping record highs near $103,900 before plummeting to $91,100, ultimately ending the day in UTC at approximately $97,000, data from TradingView and CoinDesk show. The trading range was so large that it engulfed all the price action since Nov. 20.

This led to the formation of a “high wave candle,” characterized by a small real body that shows the gap between the open and closing prices, along with large shadows (wicks) that reflect unusually wide price swings throughout the day.

It’s a sign that the bulls now have less than full control, with sellers looking to reassert themselves, serving as a cautionary indicator for those looking to chase the market at this moment. This cautionary signal becomes even more significant given that the pattern has appeared at record highs, representing a failure to maintain gains above the closely-watched $100,000 mark.

“The long upper shadows mean that sometime after the session’s open, buying pressure thrust the security’s price to an extended high. During the same session, selling pressure drove the price to a protracted low. Yet, by the session’s close, the price returned almost to the opening price. That’s confusion,” CMT’s explainer for high-wave candles says.

The high wave candle gets its name because Japanese traders liken the extended shadows, or wicks, to large ocean waves.

The high wave candle, coupled with the bearish divergence of the relative strength index, a momentum indicator, points to consolidation or a temporary bearish shift in the market trend. A bearish divergence occurs when the momentum oscillator sich as the RSI doesn’t confirm the new high in prices.

The message is consistent with several analysts expressing concerns about overcrowding in long positions and the potential for price pullbacks.

Moreover, directional plays become challenging while prices remain locked within Thursday’s range, indicating ongoing market confusion. If it breaks below the range, more sellers may enter the market. Conversely, a move above Thursday’s high would suggest a resumption of the bullish trend.

Notably, Deribit-listed BTC calls expiring at the end of December now trade at a three volatility premium over puts, down from the five or higher seen on Thursday, according to data source Amberdata. This shift indicates that bullish sentiment has tempered.

Shaurya Malwa

Shaurya is the Co-Leader of the CoinDesk tokens and data team in Asia with a focus on crypto derivatives, DeFi, market microstructure, and protocol analysis.

Shaurya holds over $1,000 in BTC, ETH, SOL, AVAX, SUSHI, CRV, NEAR, YFI, YFII, SHIB, DOGE, USDT, USDC, BNB, MANA, MLN, LINK, XMR, ALGO, VET, CAKE, AAVE, COMP, ROOK, TRX, SNX, RUNE, FTM, ZIL, KSM, ENJ, CKB, JOE, GHST, PERP, BTRFLY, OHM,
BANANA, ROME, BURGER, SPIRIT, and ORCA.

He provides over $1,000 to liquidity pools on Compound, Curve, SushiSwap, PancakeSwap, BurgerSwap, Orca, AnySwap, SpiritSwap, Rook Protocol, Yearn Finance, Synthetix, Harvest, Redacted Cartel, OlympusDAO, Rome, Trader Joe, and SUN.