Morning Minute: The Trenches Just Had Their Biggest Week Since TRUMP

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors chop over weekend; BTC at $78.4k
• Bitcoin hits highest ever correlation with Gold at 0.56
• Trading apps post biggest volume week since Trump
• Hunter Biden announces Laptop coin coming on Base on Weds, protocols delete tweets about it
• Stonkfun and ZCAT soar over the weekend as Solana steals share back from RH

BitcoinBTC · USD

$78,335+0.21%

24H7D1M1YYTD

Sep 1Sep 3Sep 5Sep 6Sep 8

$81.8k$80.0k$78.3k$76.6k

24h HighHigh$79,432

24h LowLow$78,193

VolVol$1.5B

Market projectionsOdds by Myriad

TodayAbove $78,000Above $78k57% chanceThis weekAbove $78,000Above $78k53% chance

Price data by CoinGeckoCoinGeckoMore Bitcoin news and projections →

🎰 The Trenches Just Had Their Biggest Week Since TRUMP

Onchain trading terminals moved $6.35 billion last week, the biggest week since the TRUMP launch in January 2025.

Fomo did $2.38 billion and gmgn’s trading bot did $2.07 billion, so two apps accounted for 70% of the total. Pump.fun’s app managed $489.5 million and basedbot $450.5 million.

This volume was on the back of several new meme coins and infrastructure tokens running to $100M+ including ZCAT, Stonk, MEME and Marscoin. And of course there was the PONS token soaring to $600M+ leading the Robinhood Chain ecosystem.

Is this a local top sign? Well, other data points tell a different story. Total DEX volume across all 787 protocols DefiLlama tracks came in at $9.18 billion on the day and $217.33 billion over 30 days, up 1.81% on the week. Single sessions in early 2025 cleared $45 billion. So DEX volume is still at just 20% of 2025 highs.

The signal is that this is the trading apps cycle. Fomo and Pump.fun are seeing explosive growth across volume, users and revenue. Pump.fun is also pumping a ton of that revenue back into the trenches with their daily callout rewards ($300k-$1M per day this past week). Those fee rebates are very likely staying in the ecosystem and on the apps, helping drive those volume metrics.

As for the local top, there may be some signals (Hunter Biden launching a coin), but the data doesn’t back it up just yet. And if Pump and Fomo keep sharing these creator rewards every day in big size, it’s hard to see the trenches slowing down too soon. The music plays on…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors dipped on Friday after a strong jobs report and chopped over the weekend; BTC -1% at $78.4k; ETH -1% at $2,470; SOL -2% at $103; HYPE -5% at $83.3; ZEC -4% at $1,160
• Top alt movers include AERO (+18%), VET (+9%) and INJ (+9%)
• Oil +3% at $94; Gold -1 %at $4,470
• Stock futures are red as bonds and oil rise; DOW -0.7%, Nasdaq +0.0%
• Bitcoin's 90-day correlation with gold hit 0.56, the highest since tracking began in 2017 and above the 0.50 set in November 2020, while its Nasdaq 100 correlation fell to a one-year low near 0.30
• Solana triples its maximum transaction size on Wednesday from 1,232 bytes to 4,096, letting large proofs and multisig operations fit in one transaction
• Vitalik Buterin flagged progress on EIP-8141, which would let users pay gas in tokens or have apps cover it entirely without migrating to a smart account
• Roughly 4,000 BTC worth $320 million left the Liquid federation wallet, with the takers claiming to be white hats and negotiating a return through PGP-signed messages embedded in Bitcoin transactions.
• Hunter Biden will launch LAPTOP on Base on Wednesday with a 20% airdrop targeting wallets underwater on TRUMP, while founders keep 30% locked for six months (though multiple platforms have since deleted posts about the launch)
• Anonymous Cat has paid holders about 2,320 ZEC worth $2.8 million through a 3% transfer tax, more than the ZEC that is produced daily by the network

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

• The Bitcoin ETFs saw $175M in net inflows on Friday; the ETH ETFs saw $26M

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were mostly flat; DOGE -1%, SHIB even, PEPE +1%, PENGU -5%, TRUMP even, SPX -3%
• Robinhood chain leaders had a mostlyred weekend; Pons -10% to $510M; AI +8% at $235M; Cashcat -17% at $175M; Meme -17% at $100M; Moo +55%, Route +130x and Ouro +80% were top movers
• Solana was led by Stonk +33%, OTC +90%, Backpack +38x and Nasduck +180%; Ansem -14% at $180M

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• Hyperliquid ($12.3M) and Pump ($10.3M) were 5th and 7th respectively for protocol revenue in the past week
• Pons completed its first $10M revenue week on Robinhood Chain
• Stonkfun had it’s biggest 2 days of revenue on Sunday ($1.5M) and Monday ($1.2M) with 60% of the funds used for token buybacks

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were red; Punks -3% at 30 ETH, BAYC -8% at 6.8 ETH, Pudgy -2% at 3.7 ETH; Argonauts top mover over the weekend reaching a 0.55 ETH floor
• Goat Street (+28%) and Identity MD (+22%) led top movers