Morning Minute | GrayScale Comes for AI Coins

TylerD's Market Summary

📈 Grayscale Announces Crypto AI Fund

All of the attention has been on ETFs lately.

BTC ETFs seeing hundreds of millions in inflows on a daily basis.

ETH ETFs set to launch next week.

And talks of future ETFs for alts like Solana.

Yet, Grayscale is zagging while others zig and focusing in a different crypto sector.

What Happened?

Yesterday Grayscale announced its new Decentralized AI Fund, seeking to provide its investors with access to blockchain x AI.

The fund is made up of a basket of 5 decentralized AI protocols, with market caps in the $1B-$7B range:

• NEAR: 33% ($6.7B mc)
• Filecoin (FIL): 30.6% ($2.6B mc)
• Render (RNDR): 24.9% ($2.5B mc)
• Livepeer (LPT): 8.6% ($550M mc)
• Bittensor (TAO): 2.9% ($2.3B mc)

These 5 represent 3 primary categories of AI assets, including:

• protocols building AI services
• protocols addressing centralized AI problems
• infrastructure and resources critical for development

The fund will rebalance the basket quarterly as token weights change in response to the market.

Grayscale’s Head of Product & Research, Rayhaneh Sharif-Askary had this to say:

"The blockchain-based AI protocols embody the principles of decentralization, accessibility, and transparency, and the Grayscale team feels strongly that these protocols can help mitigate the fundamental risks emerging alongside the proliferation of AI technology."

Why It Matters

This comes at a time when AI risk assets are as hot as ever.

Nvidia stock is up 150% on the year and now at a $2.9T market cap. And many are piling in at these levels for exposure to AI.

Tesla stock is up 34% this month as many believe it is primarily an AI company.

And soon, many will look to crypto tokens in the AI sector as a method to speculate on this growing trend (if they haven't already).

Grayscale has given them a blue print, by picking 5 strong AI tokens to watch.

Certainly there are more, but it's always nice to have a start.

And while many believe memecoins are the shiny object of this crypto cycle, AI coins are a dark horse to take that title.

It's definitely not a sector to ignore.

🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?

Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:

• Ethereum led NFT trading volume with $4.9M (+10%) on the day; SOL was next with $3.4M, and then BTC with $2.2M
• ETH NFT leaders were mixed on the day; Pudgy +1% at 10.65 ETH, Milady -1% to 4.95, Azuki +2% to 3.9 and BAYC even at 9.3; Doodles outperformed up 23% on the day to 2.09
• Full Send x Alien Frens was a notable top mover on the day, jumping 130%
• BTC NFT leaders were mostly red; NodeMonkes -1% at 0.182 BTC, Puppets -5% at 0.136 BTC, OMB even at 0.227 and Quantum Cats +3% at 0.32
• The Runes leaders were mixed; DOG -9% at $435M mc, RSIC -4% at $85M mc, PUPS +5% at $51M, BILLY +5% to $47M
• Solana NFTs were mostly green; Mad Lads +2% at 71 SOL, SMB Gen 2 +5% at 31.5, DeGods even at 18, Tensorians +3% at 12.5
• Snowfro announced a donation of Squiggle #9950 to the Moody Center for Arts at Rice University
• Coinbase revealed new info on its cryptic cat post + NFT link from yesterday, introducing a new "The internet needs an update" campaign leading to a "Mister Miggles Remix Challenge" offering the ability to mint a version of the shared cat
• A Pudgy Penguins plushie toy was featured on a segment on Fox News Miami
• Pirate Nation's PIRATE coin soared 24% to a $94M mc

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

Here's a rundown of major token or airdrop news from the day:

🌎 Around Crypto and Web3

A few other Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:

• Crypto majors are red this morning; BTC -1% at $64,550; ETH -1% at $3,440, SOL -2% at $159
• Memecoin majors are mostly red with DOGE -3%, PEPE -9%, WIF +11%, BONK -3%, MOG -8%
• The ETH ETF providers started disclosing their fees, with BlackRock and Fidelity coming in at 0.25% and Grayscale notably starting at 2.5%
• State Street is looking at launching its own stablecoin and deposit token as it looks to get deeper into blockchain and payments
• Vitalik Buterin shared a new blog post in response to the recent political crypto mania titled "Against Choosing Your Political Allegiances Based on Who is 'Pro-Crypto'", effectively saying there are more important issues to evaluate than pure crypto allegiance which is not a great indicator of true crypto values
• Jamie Dimon (JP Morgan CEO) has reportedly "changed his tune" on Bitcoin according to Donald Trump, who is pursuing Jamie for Treasury Secretary
• Arthur Hayes' Maelstrom Fund launched a Bitcoin grant program offering $50k-$150k per developer annually for 12-month periods with devs expected to contribute to Bitcoin technical development

🚀 Memecoin Movers 

• $SWAG (+340%, $10M market cap, ETH) 
• $KAMA (+130%, $10M market cap, SOL)
• $MONGY (+70%, $27M market cap, SOL)
• $mini (+65%, $17M market cap, SOL)
• $ANDY (+33%, $185M market cap, ETH)

📈 NFT Floor Price Increase (ETH)

• Full Send x Alien Frens (125%, 0.66 ETH Floor)
• PG Genesis (25%, 6.96 ETH)
• Doodles (21%, 2 ETH)
• Midnight Breeze (19%, 0.07 ETH)
• Sproto Gremlins (14%, 0.78 ETH)

🗓 Upcoming Mints and Events

Today is a busier day of mints, mostly focused in art.

Grant Yun's "An Old Soul" is the highlight, minting in partnership with Iconic and the Museum of Art + Light. It's an edition of 150 priced at $425 (in ETH), going live for its WL only sale at 12 pm ET.

The CyberKongz DECENTRALIZED team is also dropping their new mint "Untitled" today priced in their rune token.

See the full list and dive in for more details with Swizzy's daily mint monitor. 

• Weather Challenge (9:00 a.m. ET)
• DECENTRALIZED - Untitled (11:00 a.m. ET)
• Grant Yun - An Old Soul (12:00 p.m. ET)
• Chuck Anderson x Verse - Imagined Wreckage (1:00 p.m. ET)
• Sara Smith x 256art - Drive x (1:00 p.m. ET)
• David Seven - The Space In Between (1:00 p.m. ET)

Enjoy this write-up and/or want to sponsor the Morning Minute? Follow along with me on Twitter @tyler_did_it or reach out via email to tyler.warner@luckytrader.com.