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OVERVIEW

Fortune Favors The Alts ⚔️

Before we dive in, here’s today’s crypto market heatmap:

Source: finviz

Source: Santiment

And here’s a look at crypto’s total market and altcoin market cap charts:

Source: TradingView

NEWS
Arc: Circle Builds A Stablecoin L1 🪙 

This is like that Oprah meme, YOU GET AN L1, AND YOU GET AN L1, EVURBOWDY GITS AN L1. 🎁

Circle built a chain that treats dollars like they matter. Not vibes. Dollars. Arc makes USDC the gas, bakes in an FX engine, settles in under a second, and gives you opt-in privacy without turning the chain into a maze of NDAs.

Before Arc: Where USDC Lived

USDC ran natively on a small army of L1s and L2s: Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon PoS, Stellar, Hedera, Sui, Aptos, NEAR, Cosmos via Noble, Polkadot Asset Hub, XRPL, plus others Circle keeps adding.

That multichain footprint was the point. Move dollars wherever the users are, deal with the quirks later.

What Changes With Arc

• Gas Then: ETH, SOL, AVAX, etc, or Paymaster hacks.

• Gas Now: USDC as native gas. Treasury stops hoarding volatile coins for fees.

• Finality Then: chain-dependent and squishy.

• Finality Now: sub-second and deterministic, via Malachite consensus.

• FX Then: DEXes, OTC, and spreadsheet therapy.

• FX Now: onchain RFQ with atomic PvP across stable pairs.

• Privacy Then: public rails or third-party experiments.

• Privacy Now: opt-in shielding for balances and transactions. Your auditor breathes.

• Liquidity Then: fragmented but improving with CCTP mint-burn moves.

• Liquidity Now: built to be home base for stablecoin-first apps while staying open and EVM.

Timeline

Private testnet in weeks. Public testnet this fall.

Personally,I want to see how fees hold during volume spikes, FX depth across non-USD stables, and how “selective privacy” plays across jurisdictions. Also whether liquidity grows natively or just ferries in, then wanders off. You know how tourists behave. 🤔 

SPONSORED
FBB4 Buys Infamous GameStop Stapler for $250K, Turning Meme History into Crypto Lore

In a move only the enigmatic FBB4 could pull off, the anonymous trader and cultural collector has revealed himself as the winning bidder for GameStop’s most infamous office accessory… the stapler that punctured a Nintendo Switch box after an employee decided to tack the receipt directly onto it before shipping.

The sale, which included the damaged console and Ryan Cohen’s underwear, hammered in at a jaw-dropping $250,000. To most, it’s an overpriced piece of plastic with a strange backstory, but to FBB4, it’s a tangible symbol of the chaotic, community-fueled energy that defined the GameStop saga of 2021… when memes and markets first collided in spectacular fashion.

That same energy drives one of FBB4’s largest conviction plays: $GME ETH, the memecoin born from the spirit of the original short squeeze that rattled Wall Street. Like the stapler, $GME ETH is more than its surface value. It’s a statement of rebellion, humor, and conviction against the odds. And it’s decentralized, and so it’s wholly owned by the people.

True to form, FBB4 doesn’t intend to stash the stapler away. Sources say it will be displayed as a piece of modern financial folklore, a reminder that memes, and those bold enough to act on them, can still move markets in an enormous way.

*3rd Party Ad. Not an offer or recommendation by Stocktwits. See disclosure here. 

MEMECOINS
SNEKs On A Plane Rocker 🐍 

Crypto.com and KuCoin just turned on SNEK for trading on their platforms. And back in April, Kraken did the same thing. 😱

🚨 $SNEK is now available for trading in the @cryptocom App 🐍

— Snek 🐍 (@snek)
1:33 PM • Aug 12, 2025

And just as I was about to finalize the Litepaper, the exchange HTX says they’re adding SNEK today, too. Might as well add it to the pile: already live on Bitget, Gate.io, MEXC, and others.

I’ve gotten emails about this memecoin over the past year and a half, and I’ll be honest: Litepaper readers are a sophisticated, informed, serious, crazy, risky, and stalwart group of people. I don’t often get messages/emails about memecoins.

Well, I don’t often get serious messages/emails that is. But I do for SNEK. 🤔 

Wut Is A SNEK?

Where does one start? Well, it’s a memecoin.

And it’s a Cardano native token. And it’s the only native Cardano token/asset that’s broken out of Cardano’s own DEX/DeFi ecosystem to be traded on multiple big exchanges.

Now, at first, that might not seem like a big deal. But SNEK is very different when compared to other memecoins.

1. It’s not a dog themed memecoin.

2. It’s a snake. Or, as SNEK fans will type, ssssssnake for ssssssSNEK.

3. 100% community driven. No team allocation or private sales. It was one of the rare (memecoin or otherwise) fair distribution launches with 90% going to the public and liquidity pools.

4. It’s not a pamp and damp. Clearly it’s not because, well, it launched on Cardano, a place well known for its memecoin launches. /insert_sarcasm.

5. It’s popularity and growth is healthly, slow, and constant (very Cardano-ish when you think aboot it) since it launched in April 2023 – a healthy community driven effort.

6. Oh, and I shit you not, there’s a SNEK energy drink.

Source: It’s On The Internet So It’s True

So there you go. 

If there’s any other memecoin you’d like me to look at or you’d like to see in the Litepaper, email me. But, for the love of all that’s holy, don’t send me message like ‘Bruh, this memecoin’s a 10kx bagger printing lambos, ape in bru.’ 🤦 

NEWS
The 51% Monero Attack That Was, Or Wasn’t, Or Could Have Been… 🔥 

After putting our oldest back to bed for the 30th time last night, I stupidly checked my phone for this heart arresting post on X 😨:

Monero appears to be in the midst of a successful 51% attack.

The privacy-focused blockchain, launched in 2014 and long targeted by governments and 3-letters agencies, is already banned from most major centralized exchanges.

The Qubic mining pool has been amassing hashrate for

— Charles Guillemet (@P3b7_)
7:44 AM • Aug 12, 2025

Then, six-ish hours later, the Qubic X account posted this:

Qubic has reached over 51% of Monero’s hashrate, effectively giving it control of the network.

Qubic chose not to launch the takeover yet, proving a powerful theory by action.

But this story isn’t over yet. What’s next for Qubic and the future of PoW chains?

Article below⏬

— Qubic (@_Qubic_)
1:24 PM • Aug 12, 2025

Did a little digging (fancy speak for I just clicked to see their most recent posts). And back on August 4, 2025, the pretty much told everyone something like this was going to happen:

There is much misunderstanding about what we are doing with Monero $XMR mining and what our process is. Let us clear it up.

1. We are not creeping up from the shadows to do a quick-hit-takeover. We are publicly announcing every move and let Monero prepare their defenses.

— Qubic (@_Qubic_)
11:29 AM • Aug 4, 2025

TL;DR

• Qubic told everyone on Aug 4 they’d stack Monero hash in public and welcomed DDoS as free pen testing. Then they did it.

• Some call it a 51 percent attack.

• Qubic frames it as a demo that validates uPoW and outsourced compute while juicing their token economics. 😐️ 

NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
AI, Stablecoins, & Privacy News 🕵️

🛡️ DJED goes open source – and private, cross‑chain

COTI + IOG’s algorithmic stablecoin is open‑sourcing key infra (order API, indexer, frontend) so wallets/dapps can build natively. Next: Private DJED via COTI’s privacy layer (garbled circuits) on COTI and Cardano, plus a wrapped Private DJED on Midnight for confidential, compliant flows across multiple chains. Goal: the first multi‑chain, privacy‑preserving stablecoin with enterprise‑grade use cases. COTI.

🤖 DeFAI on Polkadot: Agents That Make DeFi Feel Human

DeFi’s hurdle is UX, not TVL. Intent‑driven AI agents can bridge, route, rebalance, and hedge based on your goals – not your tab‑juggling. Polkadot brings the modular pipes; Phala provides confidential agents (TEEs), NeuroWeb supplies tamper‑proof knowledge graphs. OpenGov keeps it community‑aligned so agents empower users rather than control them – which is totally something that’s going to happen because I’ve watched Battlestar Galactica and I know how this ends. Polkadot.

🏛️ HashKey And IoTeX Partner On Regulated AI And Crypto In Hong Kong
HashKey and IoTeX are building an AI Ecosystem Center and compliant digital asset rails, complete with IOTX trading against HKD. The stack mixes identity, verifiable data, and tokenization with custody and audits under SFC rules. It’s a hotline for robots, regulators, and RWAs to talk without breaking anything. IoTeX.

NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
Metaverse, NFT, & Gaming News 🎮️

🎮 Avalanche And Helika Launch Web3 Gaming Accelerator

Avalanche and Helika opened a three month accelerator so studios can stop tweeting roadmaps and actually ship games. Teams get $25k upfront, up to $125k more, analytics, Avalanche integration, mentorship, and a Demo Day. Bring gameplay, not buzzwords, or enjoy the view from the rejection pile. Avalanche.

🤖 Ronin Welcomes Treasure’s Customizable AI Agents

Pay tokens to automate the grind and call it strategy. Treasure’s AI agents are live on Ronin, and yes, they will fish, cook, and claim rewards for you in Fishing Frenzy. Spawning one costs about 150 MAGIC, with personality presets from KOLs and hooks into more games coming. Ronin Network.

NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
DeFi, DEX, & Lending Protocol News 🏦

🟢 Binance Joins MANTRA Validator Set With OM APR Promo
Nothing says decentralization like a giant exchange and a shiny carrot for stakers. Binance is now validating on MANTRA mainnet, adding heft to security and governance alongside names like Nansen and Hex Trust. OM locked products dangle up to 29.9% APR on Binance Simple Earn through August. MANTRA.

LINKS
Links That Don’t Suck 🔗

👍️ Do Kwon pleads guilty to two charges related to his role at Terraform

🍺 Traditional beverage company safety Shot enters crypto with $25M BONK treasury strategy

🛑 XRP News Today: SEC ends Ripple legal battle focus shifts to crypto policy development

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Author Disclosure: The author of this newsletter holds positions in ADA, IMX, COPI, MIN, AGIX, ALGO, ZEC, XLM, and NEAR. 📋