Adrian's DeFi Alpha #39: ICM Explosion | Alt Season Brewing | Hyperliquid EVM | SUI | HeyAnon & MORE
Definitely no financial advice, just insights based on my own journey in DeFi.
I hit pause on content but now I’m here to show you exactly which DeFi plays I’m back on for 2025’s rally
Hello Friend!
Remember when everyone thought Bitcoin would just keep grinding higher while altcoins die for good? Well, the market had other ideas. We're now witnessing what might be the earliest signs of Alt Season, that magical time when Bitcoin dominance drops and everything else starts playing catch-up.
This week, Internet Capital Markets are exploding as the hottest new narrative with Believe.app processing an astonishing 20,000 token launches, while ETH is finally showing signs of life. Hyperliquid has transformed from a slick perp DEX into a full-stack ecosystem with its own EVM, and AI agents continue their relentless innovation with tools like HeyAnon that could change how we analyze the markets.
️ On today's Episode:
📈 Market Update – ICM Narrative Explosion, Funding Rates, Alt Season Early Signals
💻 Project Updates – VIRTUAL Staking, Coinbase S&P 500 Inclusion, SUI
🐂 Alpha Section – Hyperliquid's Evolution and HeyAnon’s new DEFAI tool
💎 The Premium Section with my take on a new AI agent and Portfolio Updates
1. Market Update
Highlighting the key developments in Crypto and their implications.
Weekly Crypto Bubbles
A sea of red … besides some memes (WIF) and one of our favorites, good old HYPE which continues to print.
ICM: The New Narrative Taking Over
Internet Capital Markets (ICM) is emerging as one of the hottest narratives of this year, with Believe.app as the primary launchpad:
What is ICM?: Think Kickstarter meets Uniswap. An entrepreneur (or degen) mints a token for their concept; the open market prices the dream in seconds; liquidity becomes seed capital; the community becomes first users.
In practice, that means:
Founders tap retail liquidity without cold-emailing VCs
Retail traders buy ideas as easily as meme coins
Protocols plug tokens straight into DeFi money markets, creating instant utility
These two factors have aligned to make ICM possible:
Cheap blockspace: Solana and Base push fees below a cent, so spinning up a micro-IPO is technically free
Narrative heat: ICM trended across Crypto-X this week; influencers label it "the 2025 ICO wave"
Solana Accelerate: This week's Solana event will feature ICM prominently, potentially catalyzing this sector further. → Stay on top of this for faster alpha in my Telegram group
Believe.app Explosion: This Solana-based launchpad allows anyone to tokenize an idea by simply tweeting and tagging @launchcoin. The numbers are impressive:
$2.5B in trading volume
~5,000 tokens created on May 13th alone
20,000 tokens launched on the platform
$200M market cap across all Believe coins (without Launchcoin)
$12.36M in fees generated in the first 3 days
$6.3 million in fees in a single 24-hour period
LAUNCHCOIN Performance: The native token has pumped ~3300% between May 11th and today, going from ~$0.007 to ~$0.24, with market cap now over $246M.
Why is this narrative gaining so much traction?
Reframing Speculation: Rather than calling them memecoins, ICM tokens are framed as "funding an early-stage firm" (idea + founder)
AI-Enabled Development: The "vibe coding" trend means even people without extensive coding knowledge can create apps, while experienced devs can 10x their productivity
Success Stories: Examples like $DUPE (100k+ monthly active users), $BUDDY ($300k yearly revenue), and $FITCOIN (300K app downloads) have created a growth flywheel
KOL Promotion: Industry heavyweights including Nikita Bier (ex-Facebook), Imran Khan (Alliance DAO), and backing from Solana Foundation & Multicoin Capital
User Experience: Unlike competitors like Boop.fun, Believe app allows users to buy/sell tokens connecting directly with Twitter.
Essentially, Believe is building a future where attention is capital and anyone with a good idea can get funded by the community, quickly. No more waiting on VCs —founders can get funding from day one.
But of course, there are significant risks to consider:
Legal Concerns: No matter how it's presented, raising funds to build a venture likely falls under securities law in the US
Narrative vs. Reality: While marketed as "venture funding," Believe explicitly prohibits value flowing back to tokens in the form of dividends in their legal section
Accountability Gaps: Anyone can launch a token with minimal verification, creating opportunities for scammers and allowing even legitimate builders to abandon projects.
If you want exposure to this narrative, consider:
Buying $LAUNCHCOIN directly for broad exposure
For individual tokens, look for verified experienced devs, realistic product goals, regular communication, and an active community
Treat these as high-risk plays (1-3% of your portfolio)
→ Could this be the genesis of another billion-dollar narrative or just a fad with basically the same outcome like pumpdotfun? Only time will tell, but for now, if you're looking for exposure to the next hyped narrative, you might want to consider exploring ICMs.
Market Pulse: Funding Rates
Funding rates give us a straightforward glimpse into how bullish traders are feeling.
Right now, the average funding rate — basically the cost of leverage — is sitting at around 8% for $BTC. This is still not very high, which means there isn’t a lot of greed in the market at the moment.
It's a great thing to see as it shows this pump hasn't been driven by leverage. $BTC still has a lot of room to grow.
Altseason: Signs of The Cycle's Next Phase
For the first time since Q4 of last year, we're observing sustained rallies across altcoins and memecoins. Meanwhile, it appears that BTC dominance may have peaked.
It appears that the crypto markets are sniffing out these key macro factors:
Conditions finally start to loosen (think $USD and oil dropping), which historically sets the stage for a bull run in crypto.
A wall of refinancings across government & corporate debts is coming in Q3-Q4 ($3.5-$4 trillion)
Inflation is dropping, which could give the Fed the green light to cut
This points to favorable liquidity conditions, even with the Fed currently sitting on its hands.
If we are truly entering "altseason," what are the factors that we look for to confirm it?
BTC dominance in the 65-70% range at the start ✓
Shift from QT to QE (not yet, but increasingly likely)
Rising ETH/BTC ratio (early signs)
Renewed retail interest (starting)
To be clear, we are early in this process right now. ETH/BTC is still at .024 with ETH trading 46% off its all-time high in USD terms. The Fed is still doing QT.
With that said, the 35% move that ETH made last week was a great start.
In 2021 the ETH/BTC ratio was .03. It went to .07 just four months later, with ETH/USD rising 370%.
This kicked off a huge pump across altcoins, NFTs, "metaverse" tokens, and alt L1s with very few pullbacks from January '21 through May '21.
Portfolio Positioning for Altseason
So, how am I playing the current setup?
I'm not interested in buying BTC at these levels
Instead, I'm recycling a small percentage of profits further out on the risk curve in case we see a dip.
Historically, the things that perform well at the end of cycles are:
Assets that outperformed earlier in the cycle
New/shiny things with strong narratives
I think assets such as TAO, SUI, HYPE and VIRTUAL will do well.
DeFi projects with strong fundamentals could also outperform. Examples include Maker/Sky, Pendle, Aerodrome, Maple, Kamino, Jupiter and Raydium.
🌊 Where’s the Money Flowing?
As for flows this week, capital isn't CLEARLY rushing into one chain at the aggressive rate we saw previously, but Arbitrum sees more inflows most likely due to Hyperliquid again. For DeFi enthusiasts who've been starved of action, there’s many airdrop opportunities on HyperEVM which I will hightlight in the next weeks.
Berachain looks bad after Boyco liquidity unlock. The outflows are huge and the token suffered from this.
2. Project Updates
What dApp and project updates you need to know in this week in the world of crypto
You can find the links attached to the images
VIRTUAL Staking Launch
Virtuals Protocol has released $VIRTUAL staking with these features:
veVIRTUAL: 20% of all Virgen Points will be distributed to veVIRTUAL holders.
Active Usage: Virtuals has seen explosive growth which can be monitored with new tools like the dexu dashboard for tracking agent performance.
Price Performance: VIRTUAL is up 221% over the last 30 days, becoming again the top-performing protocol on Base.
→ Tweet with more info
Coinbase: Mixed News
Coinbase had a week of very contrasting developments:
S&P 500 Inclusion: Coinbase became the first and only crypto company to join the S&P 500, automatically including crypto exposure in nearly all traditional US pension funds.
Security Breach: Cybercriminals accessed customer data including names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, ID images, and account data. Coinbase refused to pay a $20M ransom.
SEC Investigation: The SEC is investigating whether Coinbase overstated its "100+ million verified users" claim during its 2021 IPO period.
Market Impact: Coinbase stock dropped and recovered 7% following the breach and SEC probe news.
SUI Network Momentum
SUI continues to gain significant traction:
Phantom Integration: SUI is now available via Phantom, the most popular wallet in the Solana ecosystem, allowing users to activate the network in settings.
Franklin Templeton Partnership: SUI secured a partnership with the $1.5T asset manager.
Gaming Developments: Mystenlabs co-founder hinted at upcoming news involving Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and more games on-chain.
Stablecoins: $SUI stablecoin market cap hits $1B ATH, doubling in just 2 months.
AI Ecosystem Highlights
The AI x Crypto has some cool news for us this week:
Nous Research: Launched The Psyche Network testnet, a decentralized training network built on Solana that aims to bring the world's compute together to train powerful AI models.
NRN: Released its robotics SDK, introducing Sim-to-Real training and a new frontier: Robotic Sports. Current market cap: $110M.
Magic Newton: Just launched on Base with impressive traction (10K+ wallets, 29K+ agent requests). Users set automation rules like "buy ETH under $2,800" and Newton's agents execute them with zero-knowledge proofs for security. Their innovative zkPermissions system enforces precise limits on what agents can do. The team also announced NEWT, the upcoming governance token.
3. Alpha Section
Good projects and opportunities I discovered
Alpha 1: Hyperliquid - From Perp DEX to Full-Stack Airdrop Machine
What began as a sleek on-chain perpetuals exchange has evolved into a juggernaut with CEX-grade UX, a native EVM stack, validator staking, and the most aggressive buyback engine in crypto:
Current Status: $HYPE = $26.92, Market cap ≈ $8.94B (333.9M circulating / 1B max supply) with an impressive recovery since the lows in April.
Market Position: Now in the Top 15 cryptos, capturing 60% of all perpetual-DEX volume, more than the next five DEXes combined
The infrastructure is unmatched:
Performance: HyperCore + HyperBFT process ~200k orders/second with ~0.2s median finality, fully on-chain
Revenue Model: Trailing 12-week run-rate implies ≈$595M revenue/year; 97% is auto-swept into daily $HYPE buy-backs and burns
Tokenomics: 31% distributed in the 2024 airdrop; 42% will be used for future community rewards
This creates ETF-grade demand pressure on a token 35× smaller than ETH—and the bought tokens are burned.
Why This Matters Now
HyperEVM Ecosystem Explosion: Mainnet went live February 18, 2025; TVL just broke $1B (up 7× since April), now at $1.2B
Limited Competition: Only ~94k addresses have ever touched HyperEVM—this playground is still not too crowded
Season-2 Farming: Already underway since HyperEVM launch, with 42% of supply still unallocated
The Bottom Line
Hyperliquid combines CEX-speed trading, fully on-chain settlement, and the most aggressive real-yield mechanics in DeFi. If you're staking $HYPE and routing capital through HyperEVM today, you're positioning for one of 2025's most lucrative rewards.
Alpha 2: HeyAnon HUD - AI-Powered Crypto Intelligence
HeyAnon, the DeFi AI assistant, is releasing a new feature: HeyAnon HUD. This Chrome extension overlays critical information directly on your existing Solana trading platforms, making crypto research 10x more efficient.
What makes it cool:
Onchain Overlay: HeyAnon has built real-time Solana data infrastructure to collect and organize onchain data, displaying:
First 100 buyers
Bubblemaps clusters
Current & historical Top 10 holders
Smart money, Insiders, KOLs
Bundlers
Advanced Whale Tracking: Get instant visual readouts of average entry prices for:
Top 10 holders
KOLs that fully sold
KOLs that partially sold
KOLs still holding
AI-Powered Technical Analysis: With a single click, the HUD provides:
Technical analysis with support/resistance levels
Entry strategy tailored to the token
Potential exit strategy
Confluence heat-maps
Accumulation zones for whales
Levels where the team is selling
Built-in Research Assistant: "Gemma," HeyAnon's AI assistant, is always available on your screen. She can:
Summarize any crypto content you're reading
Read content to you (useful while driving)
Draw from sources like Telegram, Messari, Cookiedotfun, and Bubblemaps
Monitor crypto-relevant Twitter accounts, hashtags, and trending topics
The HUD extension launches next week, with a mobile application coming in June. This is the type of tool that degens and Solana traders will really like. By eliminating the friction of juggling multiple apps and analyses, HeyAnon HUD could streamline the entire research and trading process into a single interface.
The Token:
$ANON token is one of the strong DEFAI performers in recent weeks and on my watchlist.
At a 100m market cap it is valued similar to $GRIFFAIN which also recovered well.
My Reservations: The product looks promising but has to be tested extensively. I'm not convinced the original natural language interface use case delivers much value because most experienced DeFi users already know protocols and what to do—they don't need an AI assistant for basic interactions.
Where It Could Shine: The newer features focused on trading tools look more promising, as trading remains the #1 blockchain use case alongside stablecoins. These tools could potentially generate significant revenue, which is ultimately what we want to see in these projects.
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GM GM readers of Adrian’s Premium Alpha,
After tracking meme-token volatility and ICM flows, I uncovered an AI-agent play primed to double in the next 2–3 weeks. I’ll walk you through why it’s different, where I’m sizing in, and how we hedge risk.
And as always, I’ll keep you updated on our portfolios.
🎯 Portfolio Thoughts & Strategy
Looking back at the end of February, my conviction calls on MKR and HYPE proved to be spot-on. Both projects recovered well and continue to generate strong revenue. These wins reinforced an important lesson I want to share:
Less is More: I'm consolidating my holdings into a maximum of 10 positions. This is perhaps the most important portfolio adjustment I'm making coming out of this short bear market.
Why? It's simply not possible to do proper research and stay up-to-date with more than 10 projects simultaneously. When you spread yourself thin across 30+ tokens:
You can't react quickly to breaking news
You miss important ecosystem developments
You end up with many small positions that barely impact your portfolio even when they do well
This consolidation doesn't mean I'm not tracking other opportunities. I'll maintain a separate trading watchlist for shorter-term plays, but my core portfolio will be streamlined to ensure I can deeply understand each position and make informed decisions.
My highest conviction bets and therefore biggest altcoin positions are:
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