Morning Minute: NFTs Storm Back, Led by Bored Apes

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GM! Today’s top news: - Bitcoin notches highest weekly close since January at $78,500 before overnight selloff - BTC ETFs see $813M in net inflows over the past week - DeFi United rallies to close $200M bad debt gap for Aave - Western Union to launch stablecoin on Solana, along with a Stable Card - NFTs post major weekly rally with leaders up 15-20%; Punks pass 31 ETH, BAYC near 10 📈 Blue-Chip NFTs Post Their Best Week of 2026 The NFT market put up its strongest numbers in months this past week, with nearly every major blue-chip collection gaining double digits. CryptoPunks crossed 30.95 ETH ($72,000) up 16.2% on the week. Bored Apes are back above 9.65 ETH after two grail sales in the past 24 hours: a Gold Fur for 121.9 ETH and a Trippy Fur for 49 ETH. The move is broad. Azuki is up 49%. BAKC up 50.1%. Azuki Elementals up 37.5%. Otherside Koda up 32.2%. Meebits up 29.3%. MAYC up 24.2%. Nouns posted a 284.6% gain but on just 33 sales and 51 ETH in volume, so that number needs context. The only red on the board: Hypurr, denominated in HYPE, down 6.1%. While Punks are still up top, it’s the Bored Apes leading the way in this run. They’re up nearly 100% over the past month on the back of their new CEO and chatter of an IRL clubhouse, and they’re bringing energy back into NFTs. Vibes are good again (of course the green candles help). As to why NFTs are making their move at this point of the cycle, many are pointing to the end of the OpenSea farming program. Effectively, there have been incentives to trade NFTs across marketplaces like Blur, Magic Eden and OpenSea for most of the past 3-4 years. And incentive programs have historically destroyed demand for NFT collections. Now those farming programs are over and a true supply and demand economics can kick in again. Let’s see how strong the demand is… 💰 DeFi United Hits Its Target—Aave’s Bad Debt Crisis Has a Resolution Six days after the $292 million Kelp DAO exploit nearly broke DeFi’s largest lending protocol, Aave founder Stani Kulechov posted Saturday that the DeFi United recovery fund has reached its target. His exact words: “The recovery fund has now been reached for the purpose of fully backing rsETH, subject to pending votes, indicative agreements, and successful execution.” Arkham confirmed approximately $160-161 million raised against roughly $200 million needed. The largest contributors are Mantle and Aave DAO, together putting in 55,000 ETH. Stani personally contributed 5,000 ETH (~$11.7M). EtherFi added another 5,000 ETH, Lido 2,500 ETH, and Golem Foundation 1,000 ETH. LayerZero, Ethena, Frax Finance, and Ink Foundation have indicative commitments still pending formalization. The Arbitrum Security Council’s frozen $71.5M in attacker funds adds a recovery buffer, though its disposition is also pending a governance vote. The caveat in Stani’s post matters—this isn’t settled yet. Governance still has to play out. But the worst-case $230 million bad debt scenario appears off the table. DeFi United was designed specifically to avoid a 15% depeg across all rsETH holders that would have left Aave with $124 million in unrecoverable bad debt. It looks like it worked. ⚖️ DOJ Drops Powell Probe, Warsh Confirmation Now on Track The Department of Justice dropped its criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Friday, removing the last major obstacle to Kevin Warsh’s Senate confirmation. US Attorney Jeanine Pirro, who had vowed just two days earlier to continue the probe, announced she was closing the investigation and referring the matter to the Fed’s own inspector general, which had already been examining the central bank’s multibillion-dollar headquarters renovation since last summer. The move satisfied Sen. Thom Tillis, who dropped his confirmation hold Sunday morning, telling NBC he had received the assurances he needed “to feel like they were not using DOJ as a weapon to threaten the independence of the Fed.” The Senate Banking Committee scheduled a confirmation vote on Warsh for Wednesday. Powell’s term as Fed chair ends May 15. The politics around all of this remain messy. Trump told CNBC Friday he would be “disappointed” if Warsh doesn’t cut rates immediately after taking the role. Sen. Elizabeth Warren called the DOJ’s move “just an attempt to clear the path for Trump’s sock puppet.” And Powell has not said whether he will remain on the Fed’s board of governors after his term as chair ends (his board seat runs until 2028). That question may get answered Wednesday when Powell holds what is expected to be his final post-FOMC press conference. 💰 Western Union Is Launching a Solana Stablecoin Next Month Western Union CEO Devin McGranahan used the company’s Q1 2026 earnings call last week to deliver a line that would have sounded absurd five years ago: “It is no longer a question of if Western Union will be active in digital assets. It is now how fast we can scale.” The 170-year-old money transfer giant confirmed its U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin, USDPT, is in final preparation and will go live in May, ahead of its original first-half 2026 target. USDPT is built on Solana, issued by Anchorage Digital Bank (a federally chartered crypto custodian), and backed 1:1 by US dollars. The stablecoin thesis is straightforward for WU: SWIFT is slow, expensive, and closed on weekends. Solana settles in seconds at sub-cent fees. For a company that processed 4.5 billion transactions in 2024, the cost savings compound quickly. McGranahan is also pitching USDPT as a way for Western Union to “own the economics linked to stablecoins”—capturing float, exchange spreads, and transaction fees that currently go to third-party stablecoin issuers like Tether and Circle. Alongside USDPT, Western Union is launching a Digital Asset Network connecting crypto wallets to its 360,000+ retail cash payout locations in 200 countries via API. A USD Stable Card, letting consumers hold and spend dollar-denominated stablecoin balances anywhere cards are accepted, is planned for later in 2026, with high-inflation markets like Argentina as the initial target. 📉 Trump Hosts $TRUMP Meme Coin Holders at Mar-a-Lago Saturday’s Mar-a-Lago gathering brought together the top 297 $TRUMP token holders for what the organizers billed as “the most exclusive crypto and business conference in the world.” The top 29 got a private champagne reception with the president. Attendees included Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino, venture capitalist Tim Draper, and ARK Invest’s Cathie Wood. Trump gave a 45-minute keynote in which he vowed he would not let banks derail the Clarity Act. “The crypto industry was created in America, its growth has been led by America, and its future will be made in America,” he said. He also touched on AI, the Iran war, and Trump-branded sneakers. The token fell 14% on Saturday despite the event. $TRUMP is now down nearly 47% year-to-date and more than 90% from its January 2025 peak. Meanwhile, Reuters separately found that the Trump family has taken in more than $1 billion from crypto asset sales, including at least $336 million tied to meme coin sales in the first half of 2025. Token holders are losing, while the Trump family is winning… 🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets - Crypto majors are slightly red after an overnight selloff; BTC -0.4% at $77.8k; ETH -0.7% at $2,320; SOL -2% at $85; HYPE +3% at $42.4 - Stable (+8%), Pengu (+6%), and JUP (+5%) led top movers - Oil -1% at $95; Gold +0.1% at $4,710 - Stock futures are flat ahead of the Monday open - Bitcoin notched its highest weekly close since January last night at $78,450 - Chainlink listed its Data Feeds, Data Streams, and Proof of Reserve services on the AWS Marketplace Thursday, giving millions of AWS developers direct access to blockchain oracle infrastructure through standard cloud procurement - Morgan Stanley Investment Management launched the Stablecoin Reserves Portfolio (MSNXX) Thursday, a government money market fund built specifically for stablecoin issuers to park the reserves backing their tokens - More quantum progress as an independent researcher broke a 15-bit elliptic curve cryptography key on a publicly accessible IBM quantum computer Thursday, winning Project Eleven’s 1 BTC Q-Day Prize Corporate Treasuries & ETFs - The Bitcoin ETFs saw $14M in net inflows on Friday, with $813M in total for the past week; the ETH ETFs saw $23M in inflows and $155M in total for the week - Metaplanet issued 8 billion yen (~$50M) in zero-interest bonds Thursday, its 20th consecutive bond issuance, with proceeds going directly to Bitcoin purchases Meme Coin Tracker - Meme leaders were mostly red except Pengu; DOGE -1%, SHIB -2%, PEPE -2%, TRUMP -6%, BONK -2%, PENGU +6%, SPX flat, FARTCOIN -1% - Henry (+100%), Belka (+100%) and Cards (+30%) led notable movers 💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker - Werstern Union is going to launch its stablecoin USDPT on Solana next month - Litecoin suffered a 13-block chain reorganization Saturday, reversing roughly 32 minutes of network activity after attackers exploited a vulnerability in its MimbleWimble Extension Block (MWEB) privacy layer to push invalid transactions through unpatched mining nodes 🚚 What is happening in NFTs? - NFT leaders were very green on the wek, up 15-20%; Punks +6% at 31 ETH, BAYC +22% at 9.6 ETH, Pudgy +20% at 5.26 ETH; Hypurr’s -6% at 365 HYPE - Nouns (+240%), BAKC (+50%), MAYC (+40%) and Azuki (+40%) were notable weekly winners - There were multiple 6-figure NFT sales in the past week spanning gold Bored Apes, an Ether Rock, a Lost Robbie and 3 Skulls of Luci; there also was a $600,000 loan against an XCOPY “Last Selfie”

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