(Bonk)

Meme coin wars

Bonk launches LetsBonk to evolve beyond its meme coin origin story and compete with Pump.fun

LetsBonk, which allows users to issue their own tokens and meme coins, has already launched nearly 86,000 new coins.

5/22/25 4:49PM

Since its inception at the end of last month, the new meme coin generator LetsBonk has seen more than 85,700 token launches, with cumulative fees so far exceeding 32,194 Solana tokens worth about $5.8 million.

Unlike competitor Pump.fun, LetsBonk uses fees generated to buy and burn Bonk. “We take the weekly fees from the platform and buy $BONK with the fees in the open market and burn them,” according to a core contributor of the meme coin, who goes by the X username @iamkadense.

Similar to a traditional finance firm that buys its own stock to reduce the number of outstanding shares, token buybacks and burns are deflationary tactics that occur when a crypto project purchases its tokens and permanently removes them from circulation.

Of the total fees, 35%, or roughly 11,300 solana tokens representing $2 million as of Thursday afternoon, has been allocated to buy and burn the bonk meme coin.

LetsBonk is the newest step for bonk, which started in part as a morale-boosting token airdrop for users during the depths of solana’s post-FTX crash.

On-chain data from blockchain explorer Solscan shows 925,234 addresses are currently holding bonk, a higher figure than the trump meme coin, which has 638,328 holders. Parker White, CIO and COO of DeFi Dev Corp, told Sherwood News, “Bonk is more than just a meme coin.”

Why LetsBonk started

A few factors contributed to LetsBonk’s debut in April, @iamkadense explained. First, the US Securities and Exchange Commission provided new regulatory clarity around meme coins.

In February, the staff of the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance said meme coin transactions do not involve the offer and sale of securities. As such, users typically don’t need to register their meme coin transactions with the SEC, in the view of the division.

The second reason for LetsBonk stems from soured sentiment surrounding Pump.fun, the leading solana meme coin launchpad responsible for fartcoin, pnut, Moo Deng, and goatseus maximus.

@iamkadense pointed at Pump.fun’s fees and what it does with solana tokens as an issue. The platform has accumulated about $646 million in fees since it started last year, data from blockchain analytics platform DefiLlama shows, but the address that collects fees for Pump.fun often sends fees, denominated in solana tokens, to centralized exchange Kraken.

On-chain data from SolScan shows Pump.fun’s fee account has sent more than 1.6 million solana tokens worth over $290 million to Kraken this year alone. The platform’s pseudonymous founder, who goes by the X username @a1lon9, previously said on the social network, “You can send assets to an exchange without intending to sell those assets.”

Though a profitable crypto business doesn’t have an obligation to bring value back to its native blockchain ecosystem, Ryot, the pseudonymous founder of solana-based DeFi project Xitadel, argued that Pump.fun’s deposits to Kraken are not ideal. “It kind of sucks that our ecosystem is being extracted so badly,” Ryot told Sherwood.

LetsBonk’s @iamkadense said, “We have a longstanding reputation for goodwill and community on solana and saw an opportunity to have the benefits of the launchpad stay in the ecosystem.”

Bonk’s new corporate partner

Meanwhile, DeFi Development Corp. announced last week a joint venture with the bonk community that entails operating a validator to secure the solana network. The fees earned from the validator operations will be divided between DeFi Dev Corp and bonk, DeFi Dev Corp’s White said.

White told Sherwood, “The bonk team intends to use these proceeds to purchase $BONK, while the DeFi Dev Corp team will use them to add to our balance sheet and increase $SOL per share.”

Even though the market cap of bonk has decreased about 23% in the year to roughly $1.7 billion, the meme coin has increased 61% in the last 30 days.

In the stock market, DeFi Dev Corp has seen a sharper rise. The solana-focused company has seen its stock increase over 6,000% since early April, when former Kraken execs got a majority stake in the company formerly known as Janover and relaunched it as Defi Dev to focus on becoming the Strategy of solana.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

Bitcoin tumbles as oil and gas prices spike and the market’s mood turns risk-off

Bitcoin ETFs reverted to outflows and bitcoin suffered $192 million in liquidations in the past 24 hours.

Sage D. Young3/18/26

Payward, parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, puts plans for IPO on hold

Payward, crypto exchange Kraken’s parent company, has paused its plans for an initial public offering until market conditions improve, according to a report from CoinDesk that cited two people with knowledge of the matter.

Since the firm announced in November its preparation for an IPO of its common stock, the total market capitalization of the crypto industry has shed around $652.2 billion, from $3.2 trillion to $2.5 trillion as of Wednesday, data from CoinGecko shows.

The news comes two weeks after Kraken received approval for a master account from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, allowing the crypto exchange to connect to the Fed’s payment infrastructure used by traditional banks and credit unions.

Last year, Kraken raised $800 million at a $20 billion valuation from institutional investors such as Jane Street and Citadel Securities.

Payward, parent of crypto exchange Kraken, has put its IPO plans on hold

Last year, Kraken raised $800 million at a $20 billion valuation from institutional investors such as Jane Street and Citadel Securities.

Sage D. Young3/18/26

SEC and CFTC issue new guidance on how securities laws apply to crypto assets

On Tuesday, the US Securities and Exchange Commission, together with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, issued an interpretation clarifying how federal securities law applies to crypto assets, a first step toward developing a clearer regulatory framework.

The interpretive guidance introduces a token taxonomy for different types of cryptocurrencies, with SEC Chairman Paul S. Atkins adding that “most crypto assets are not themselves securities.”

Examples of a digital commodity, “a crypto asset that is intrinsically linked to and derives its value from the programmatic operation of a crypto system that is ‘functional,’” include:

Aptos, avalanche, bitcoin, bitcoin cash, cardano, chainlink, dogecoin, ethereum, hedera, litecoin, polkadot, shiba inu, solana, stellar, tezos, and XRP.

The guidance also includes definitions of digital collectibles (such as NFTs), stablecoins, digital tools, and digital securities (such as tokenized real-world assets and stocks).

This is a monumental step in the mainstream adoption of the industry and clears a hurdle in how crypto can operate going forward, according to David Pakman, head of venture investments at CoinFund. “This will allow new token designs with the confidence that their existence does not require registration with the SEC, etc.,” Pakman told Sherwood News.

Despite the clarification efforts from the two organizations, the market capitalization of the crypto industry has dropped about 2% in the last 24 hours as each of the tokens mentioned in the guidance are trading lower in the period, data from CoinGecko shows.

The joint agency action also complements congressional efforts to turn a crypto market structure framework into law. With the goal of providing regulations on the offer and sale of digital commodities, the CLARITY Act passed the House of Representatives last year and is now sitting in the Senate.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

3/18/26

Citi analysts cut 12-month bitcoin projection to $112,000 from $143,000

The analysts’ bear-case scenario is $57,537, based on “recessionary macro-factors, especially weak equity markets,” which could cause ETF flows to stall.

Sage D. Young3/17/26

Bitcoin sees 8 consecutive days of gains, a streak not seen in 4 years

Bitcoin is on a winning streak. The cryptocurrency has generated eight straight days of positive returns, a rare phenomenon that has occurred only 15 times since Satoshi Nakamoto created it, according to a CoinDesk report.

In the 30 days after posting an eight-day streak, bitcoin traded higher nine times and lower six times. The median return in the period is roughly 19%. Despite the historical gains that followed, the last time bitcoin had such a rally, four years ago, it dropped roughly 30%.

Most recently, bitcoin climbed from below $66,000 on March 8 to over $75,000 yesterday before settling around $73,800 on Tuesday morning.

Traders remain modestly bullish on the likelihood of further gains, though the sentiment is fading: prediction market-implied odds of bitcoin trading above $77,500 in the month stand at 54%, a decrease from 73% on Monday.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

Bitcoin hits rare 8-day winning streak – but 2022 bear market saw one too