Narratives of the week : June 17
$BTC in a range, new ATH on $HYPE and on $SPX
Welcome to this weekly recap, I am Viktor and you can find me here on Twitter and here on Telegram. Enjoy your reading !
Ref link shill : The sniper I use to trade coins on Solana is Axiom. Very useful, it’s night and day compared to trading on Jupiter. You can access Axiom in one click via this referral link.
$BTC and the market overall
The price action of $BTC during the past 2 weeks has been pure chop in the new $100k - $110k range. On Thursday 5 we had a significant dip from $106k to almost $100k in just a few hours, on the day of the public conflict between Trump and Musk (which apparently reconciled just a few days later…). That dip was a great opportunity, because $BTC then went to $110k in 4 days without giving any meaningful dip.
On June 12, the quick escalation of the conflict between Israel and Iran lead to another dump back to $103k. Then $BTC got to almost $109k again yesterday, but we’re down only since then to as low as $103.5k, once again in a context of continued escalation of the conflict, and a potential involvement of the US into it…
I don’t have an edge trading these headlines or predicting what will happen, but usually any of these event-driven dumps can be faded. (At least, that worked well historically.) Altcoins keep bleeding down vs BTC, with OTHERS/BTC making new cycle lows once a week…
I remain very bullish on $BTC on mid to long timeframe, but much less on altcoins.
$HYPE new ATH at $46
The most noticeable coin among large caps has remained $HYPE, which is absolutely unstoppable since its sub $10 bottom on tariff FUD, and is consistently reaching new ATH while only having extremely limited drawdowns. The largest drawdown it’s had since April is less than -25%, and HYPE reached a new ATH at $46. This corresponds to $46bn FDV, which seems quite rich to me, and I have a hard time finding the r/r on this, but in the same time, the float is rather low, and as I wrote in a tweet, it’s possible that too many people want to get in to avoid the painful scenario of seeing it run like SOL in 2023/2024 while being sidelined.
$SPX and $FARTCOIN are the leading memes
Two other “large caps” that have been strong for the past weeks have been $FARTCOIN and $SPX. FARTCOIN got listed on Coinbase on June 5 (the announcement), with an effective listing on June 12. It ran from below $0.9 on June 5 to a local top above $1.5 a few days later. Whenever the market pumps, FARTCOIN tends to be a good bet. I am of the opinion that it is likely to reach a new ATH (ie almost $3bn), but you have to be aware of the fact that holding a meme over $1bn mcap doesn’t offer a huge upside.
$SPX has been absolutely unstoppable since early May, it had +250% returns in around a month, and went in a straight line from $1.1 to $1.7 in a few days, almost reaching a new ATH. Murad is now entirely focused on SPX and does not shill anything else from his list anymore, which makes SPX a great Schelling point for people to gather around. Is there still more room to run ? Maybe to a new ATH between $2bn and $3bn mcap, but probably not much more than that.
The crypto treasury narrative
The crypto treasury strategy playbook keeps spreading to new companies, and the narrative is still very hot. $MSTR has launched a new preferred stock called $STRD, and raised $1bn on the initial offering. 2 companies announced a $HYPE treasury strategy, and Justin Sun will do a reverse merger to launch a $TRX treasury company called Tron Inc. $SBET dumped massively (-70%) on the news that the initial investors are now allowed to sell their shares. This panic does not really make sense, but in the end it just corrected the mNAV premium to a more logical ratio (around 2 now). A lot of people on CT are scared about the crypto treasury playbook, and are talking about top signals every other day, but as I’ve said a few times, I really think this is only the very beginning.
$CRCL IPO and up only
$CRCL had its IPO on June 6 at $31, but it was 25x over-subscribed, which lead the price to literally 3x on day one, and it’s been going up since then, reaching yesterday a new ATH at $165. This seems quite absurd and definitely over-valued, since the market cap of Coinbase is around $66bn, and Circle is valued at $25bn at a price of $165. The conclusion is that fading this company was the midcurve move, you simply had to assume that Wall Street really wanted to have a piece of the “stablecoin pie” and wants to be exposed to this narrative.
Strength in DeFi coins
On June 9, SEC Chair Paul Atkins announced he’s directing staff to explore a new “innovation exemption” that would provide conditional regulatory relief to DeFi platforms and safeguard developers from being treated as brokers simply for publishing code. This has obviously been a bullish catalyst for DeFi coins, which lead to outperformance for most of them after that : $MKR/$SKY, $UNI, $AAVE, $COMP… UNI pumped +40% in two days for example. MKR is up +40% in June, and benefits from another catalyst which is the launch (today) of $SPK, the token of Spark, which is a SubDAO of the Sky/Maker ecosystem.
$SYRUP is another Defi-adjacent coin and it’s been unstoppable for a few weeks now, it is up almost 5x since the early April lows, and still “only” $650M FDV for an almost fully diluted coin.
What else happened in the altcoin market ?
A recent Blockworks article reported that multiple asset managers, including 21Shares and VanEck, amended their Solana ETF filings to include staking, signaling growing institutional momentum and increasing the likelihood of SEC approval sometime in the coming 3 to 5 weeks ? ****Some Solana staking-related coins have been doing good since the announcement, especially $JTO and $MNDE.
Coinbase announced on June 13 that they’d be integrating Base network’s decentralized exchanges directly into the main Coinbase app, allowing users to trade on‑chain assets seamlessly from within Coinbase. This caused a significant move up on $AERO, the coin of the leading DEX on Base, which pumped almost +60% in 4 days.
Several coins have been listed on Upbit over the recent weeks and tend to always pump hard (2x-3x) on the listing announcement, but then retrace part of it over a few days : $LPT, $RVN, $AXL, $ALT. RVN has been surprisingly strong though, and pumped again after the initial cool-off.
Keeta ($KTA) is an “extremely fast” alt L1 with a token listed on Base, and it’s been one of the best performing coins of 2025, as it ran from a $40M to a $650M valuation in around a month, with a final vertical fomo spike of +65% in 2 days. Right after that, there has been a “FUD” about Keeta being vaporware which lead to a -33% dump in a few hours, and KTA has been weak since then, it is currently down almost -50% from ATH. Being long $KTA before its run was an incredible cook, but I don’t really like the r/r here. There is now a cult around the coin which is generally bullish, but it’s also clear that they are delusional, as if Keeta was a revolutionary alt L1 (”10M TPS!” when TPS are kind of a meme), which I don’t think is true.
$USELESS is the leading memecoin launched on the Bonk launchpad called Letsbonkfun. Bonk guy (Unipcs) has been shilling USELESS heavily, it first pumped to $40M mcap before retracing the move back to $5M, but then ran again to touch $100M. I don’t think current conditions are great to be holding a new meme at $100M mcap, and I also think that we already have a leading ironic ‘useless’ memecoin which is FARTCOIN, so I am not sure how high USELESS can still run.
$AURA is an old 2024 memecoin that peaked at $70M mcap back in July 2024, but has been ranging around $1M mcap since March 2025, and for some reason it ran like crazy in less than a week to reach $230M mcap. It has now corrected down to $150M, but as I said before, I don’t think conditions are appropriate to hold a new coin at this valuation, I am pretty convinced the r/r for a long on AURA is horrendous from here.
$MASK is one of the recent coins that has exhibited a price action similar as LAYER or WCT, ie several weeks of strong pumps without any meaningful drawdown, before rugging in a few hours. It went up +240% in a month, and then collapsed -50% in two hours on June 6.
Another rug-like price action recently has been $ZKJ, the token of the Polyhedra Network, which lost 86% of its value on June 15. I am not that surprised, given the fact that the valuation of this token was clearly “fake” : $2bn FDV for a coin with almost zero volume / mindshare, and a flat price action for weeks…
Two new coins launched recently : $RESOLV (an Ethena-like project) and $HOME (Defi dot app, a cross-chain DeFi hub which abstracts away the different chains). Both were great longs at around $200M FDV on the day of their launch, because they went up almost 2x from there, but then cooled off after that.
On June 5, World Liberty Financial (WLFI) (the Trump family–backed DeFi firm) sent a cease-and-desist to Fight Fight Fight LLC and Magic Eden over the unauthorized “Trump Wallet,” leading to the site being taken offline. They later announced that the Trump Wallet was cancelled but that both teams were aligned and that WLFI would purchase some $TRUMP tokens.
Most AI agent coins have been very weak over the past weeks, but the leader $VIRTUAL has managed to maintain relevancy and strength, as it’s still trading in the $1.6-$2 range, up 4x-5x from the bottom. Another AI agent coin that is quietly grinding up is $REI on Base, it is up from $10M to $100M now.
$JOE is an “OG” 2023 ETH meme that was launched around the same time as SPX but that has mostly traded below $50M mcap, it has been showing decent signs of strength recently with a 4x move from the bottom to $40M MC. Is it finally the time for this coin to try to reach a new ATH ?
Thank you for reading this article,
Cheers,
Viktor.
Ref link shill : The sniper I use to trade coins on Solana is Axiom. Very useful, it’s night and day compared to trading on Jupiter. You can access Axiom in one click via this referral link.