The Morning Minute (5.21) ⏰Top News: -Bitcoin taps $108k as crypto majors continue grind up -Solana’s new ‘Alpenglow’ upgrade aims for 100x speed boost -Vivek’ ‘Strive’ wants to acquire $8B in Mt. Gox Bitcoin -Cookie DAO launches SNAPS InfoFi product, rivals Kaito -Pudgy Penguins partner with Random House for children’s book 🌎 Macro Crypto and Memes -Crypto majors are up 1-2% as BTC makes a run at ATH; BTC +1% at $106,700, ETH +2% at $2,550, XRP +1% at $2.35, SOL +2% at $169 -PI (+12%), FET (+11%), and UNI (+9%) led alts -Solana developers have proposed the 'Alpenglow' upgrade, which seeks to decrease block finalization time from nearly 13 seconds to as little as 0.1 seconds -Bernstein analysts have raised their Bitcoin price forecast to $200,000 by the end of 2025, citing a "new institutional era" as the driving force -Texas passed its Bitcoin Strategic Reserve bill through its House, allowing the State Treasury to accumulate digital assets over $500B in market cap -Vivek Ramaswamy’s Strive targets Mt. Gox claims, aiming to acquire distressed creditor rights tied to up to 75,000 BTC -Blackstone disclosed a $1M Bitcoin position, quietly purchasing shares in BlackRock’s spot BTC ETF (IBIT), marking rare crypto exposure for the $1T asset manager -Energy company KULR Technology Group increased its Bitcoin treasury to 800 BTC with a $9 million purchase -Mayor Eric Adams announced plans to create a crypto advisory council to boost jobs and investment in New York City's crypto industry -Crypto lender Genesis filed a lawsuit against Digital Currency Group and CEO Barry Silbert to recover over $3.1 billion, alleging fraud and improper asset transfers -The SEC charged Unicoin with $100M crypto fraud, alleging the firm misled investors by falsely claiming its tokens were backed by high-value real estate assets In Memes -Memecoin leaders were very green; DOGE +3%, Shiba +3%, PEPE +8%, TRUMP +11%, BONK +6% & FARTCOIN +9% -Launchcoin eco held steady at $430M in total size, with LAUNCHCOIN at $250M; GLMPS (+75%), PROMPT (+60%) an RIP VC (+170%) were top movers -moonpig (+42%) and NEET (+30%) were other notable Solana movers -Trump to host private dinner for memecoin holders, with notable guests including Tron founder and billionaire Justin Sun, ahead of this week’s political-crypto gathering 💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker -Believe App founder Ben Pasternak teased a new API coming allowing builders to do programmatic burns of their app tokens (and for the Believe team to do so as well) -Cookie DAO launched its own InfoFi product rivaling Kaito, with an invite-only gating system to start -Kaito jumped 20% to $2.19 after founder Yu Hu teased big revenue for Q2 and a new time-weighted loyalty system -SUI led all blockchains in stablecoin inflows over the past 24 hours, gaining $83.4 million in new deposits -OSF shared the vision for REKT as the first ‘Brand Coin',’ leading to a 25% rally in the token past $100M FDV -True Markets raised $11M to build a mobile-first non-custodial DeFi trading app on Solana 🤖 AI x Crypto -Overall market cap jumped 2% to $10.7B, leaders were mostly green -FARTCOIN (+6%), VIRTUAL (even), ai16z (+2%), FAI (+6%) & AIXBT (+2%) -COOKIE (+29%), SHOGGOTH (+24%) and REKT (+23%) led top movers -Virtual led mindshare with a 16% share; Cookie was next with 14% after its InfoFi launch 🚚 What is happening in NFTs? -ETH NFT leaders were mostly red; Punks even at 46.99 ETH, Pudgy -3% at 9.8, BAYC -1% at 12.8 ETH -BTC NFT leaders were mostly red; Taproot Wizards -6% at 0.197 BTC, Bitcoin Puppets -5%, NodeMonkes -3%, OMB -7%, Quantum Cats -3% -Abstract NFTs were very green led by Final Bosue (+33%) and Dreamilio (+10%) -Pudgy Penguins partnered with Random House Kids (world’s largest children’s book publisher) to release ‘The Worst Birthday Present Ever.’ -The Pudgy Penguins also launched "Pengu Clash," a Telegram-based game featuring 1v1 battles and optional NFT wagering, expanding its ecosystem