Bitcoin Slips Further Into Danger Territory Despite Institutional Surge

For weeks, researchers and the squad here at Coinage have been warning that the more Bitcoin fails to break out of the range it finds itself in, the more worrisome it becomes.

And yet, despite increasingly more and more bullish headlines around institutional adoption (like JPMorgan launching its MONY tokenized money market fund) — nothing appears to be shaking the bearish sentiment. This week, we chatted with CoinFund Managing Partner Chris Perkins about that, and why he’s still confident about where things are.

“Institutions continue to slowly and steadily march forward,” Perkins said. “Institutions don’t move as fastly, but as they come on board the scale that they bring is absolutely insane.”

Plus — we dig into the drama forming around Base, and why a new token from a very famous fake influencer is flopping just as hard as the latest token from a very real rapper (universally hated by almost all of crypto.)

JPMorgan’s Big Move

We don’t need to dig up old history here, but JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon hated crypto for years. That’s what makes it all the more interesting to see him follow Larry Fink into believing there are big benefits to tokenizing certain things in their business.

JPMorgan announced Monday that it is launching a tokenized money market fund, MONY, on Ethereum with $100 million in seed capital. The fund will offer eligible investors ways to earn yield on idle dollars with interest paid and dividends accrued daily (while also accepting contributions in USDC.)

The move marks another interesting data point at Wall Street getting in on the act and coming for crypto’s lunch. It also notches another win for Ethereum in its battle to prove that it (and maybe not other chains) is the best place to build.

“I know institutions like modularization and they also like 10 years of history,” CoinFund’s Chris Perkins told us — noting it’s probably one of Ethereum’s biggest selling points for why JPMorgan went that route. “When I used to work with regulators, they would always want to see that 10 years of history. Ethereum has it, others don’t.”

Base’s Latest Drama

As Ethereum snags another big titan of Wall Street, the other chains are also continuing to do their best courting. Solana just wrapped up their big conference in the UAE, and Coinbase has another big launch day on the 17th.

Ahead of that, the man behind their Ethereum Layer-2 Base was stirring up more controversy with Crypto Twitter — and it’s not something I personally fault him for, cause I doubt anyone is really as plugged into the trenches as those still active on Crypto Twitter.

But Base founder Jesse Pollak was called out for buying and promoting the latest token from the rapper Soulja Boy. As famed crypto sleuth ZachXBT replied, “Why give SouljaBoy the platform to scam new people?”

As ZachXBT has documented, Soulja Boy has participated and promoted no less than about 70 crypto scams and rug pulls over his esteemed career. Though he later put out a statement saying he is a changed man, and didn’t know the full details around what he was promoting, critics pointed out that probably could’ve happened sooner than the 70th one.

What is more worrying about the state of the trenches, however, was the muted launch of one of the most famous ‘fake influencers’ the world has ever seen.

Despite not being a real person, Lil Miquela has over 2.3 million followers on Instagram and more than 3 million on TikTok. She also boasts brand deals with all kinds of big brands (including Calvin Klein, which culminated in a commercial the fashion brand later apologized for.)

Over the weekend, Lil Miquela (or the company behind her) threw her hat into the creator coin ring by launching her own creator coin (which was promoted by the Coinbase App X account and Jesse.) But after launching to top a $1 million market cap Saturday, the token had fallen to just under $275,000 by Monday.

To be fair, we don’t know if this is a knock on creator coins, or a knock on AI influencers. But as a project that launched one of the top creator coins in the space, and a very real media outlet that is co-owned by our NFT holders, we’d like to take this as a moment to celebrate that maybe real creators still matter?

CLARITY Act a 2026 Thing

Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott delivered the news that most people in crypto already assumed: Hopes that the last big crypto bill would get done this year are dashed.

Negotiations around the CLARITY Act, the bill that will finalize rules for what tokens are securities and which are commodities, are ongoing. On Monday, Chair Scott said those will take until early 2026.

“From the outset, Chairman Scott has been clear that this effort should be bipartisan. He has consistently and patiently engaged in good-faith discussions to produce a strong bipartisan product that provides clarity for the digital asset industry and also makes America the crypto capital of the world,” a statement to Coinage read. “The Committee is continuing to negotiate and looks forward to a markup in early 2026.”

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