GeckoPulse: A Second Wind for BTCFi?

Putting the BARD in Lombard

Bitcoin-based DeFi protocol Lombard will be deploying its native BARD token through a community sale on the Buidlpad platform.

The sale aims to raise $6.75M in exchange for 1.5% of the BARD token supply, implying a valuation of $450M.

Between August 26 and August 29, users will be allowed to submit their KYC details in preparation for the sale.

Eligible users can then commit their funds on September 1 using either LBTC, BNB, or the USD1 stablecoin.

However, LBTC holders and existing Lombard users will have the opportunity to gain priority access to the sale.

As of yet, further details regarding the TGE date for BARD, the total token supply or even a potential airdrop, have yet to be revealed.

From the Roads to the Range

Crypto gaming project Wilder World has revealed an early access build of its new first-person shooter at the 2025 Gamescom Conference.

Available on the Epic Games Store, the shooter will feature a 10-person free-for-all game mode, with each match lasting approximately 10 minutes.

Each match will take place in an alternate 1:1 recreation of Miami, simply known as ‘Wiami’, which will also be the base of its upcoming metaverse.

To commemorate the title’s launch, Wilder World will also be holding a tournament with a $100K prize pool.

Wilder World’s native WILD token recently spiked to $0.54 upon its listing on Binance Alpha, but has retraced by 20.4% to $0.43 today.

Return of the King?

The ‘SPAC King’ is back!

Bitcoin investor Chamath Palihapitiya has recently submitted a filing to raise $250M for a new SPAC known as the ‘American Exceptionalism Acquisition Corp A’.

The entity would be led by Chamath as the chairman as well CEO Steven Trieu, a managing partner from the VC firm Social Capital.

The fundraise will offer up to 25M shares for $10 each, which will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the AEXA ticker symbol.

The SPAC itself will specifically target energy production, AI, defense and most importantly, DeFi.

While it’s unclear which verticals within DeFi that the duo are currently focusing on, both Chamath and Trieu cited CRCL’s IPO as a sign of DeFi and stablecoins’ impact on the TradFi sector.

Interestingly, the DeFi sector has seen some pullback after ETH’s 10.5% retracement from $4,770 to $4,270, with the DeFi market cap falling by 5.2% to $162B today.

In Other News…

DOGE Acquisition Gets Thumbs Up. Thumzup, a crypto treasury firm backed by the Trump family, is acquiring Dogecoin miner, Dogehash in an all-stock deal. Dogehash will be renamed to Degohash Technologies Holding, trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker, XDOG.

Not Looking Too Good. Pirate Nation, an Ethereum-based RPG game, is shutting down in September due to a lack of players. This continues the trend of GameFi firms shutting down due to rising costs and lack of players. Some parts of the game however, will live on as a minigame on an arcade app on the Abstract Network.

Hold The Line! ETH treasury firm Sharplink Gaming announced on Tuesday that their firm has acquired over $601M worth of ETH last week. Sharplink continues to acquire more ETH, moving towards its goal of acquiring 1.2M ETH (~$5B).

Alt Season is Cancelled. Global search interest in “altcoins” has plunged this week down to 45 from a peak of 100 just last week. Most altcoins such as DOGE and XRP had most of their earlier gains wiped out, returning back to previous levels.

Mitosis Airdrop Checker Live. DeFi protocol Mitosis has unveiled their official airdrop checker in addition to the tokenomics for their upcoming MITO token. Mitosis is an upcoming L1 that specializes in cross-chain liquidity provision.

Over 100K. Solana has briefly achieved over 107K transactions per second during a spike in activity on the network last weekend. However, most of these transactions consisted of no-operation program calls which did not include meaningful operations or state changes on the network.

Figure Tech is next. Crypto lending company Figure Technology has filed for an IPO on the Nasdaq under the ticker, FIGR. Some of its current shareholders will be selling their stocks in the IPO.

Caught-cha. Hackers are now using fake Captcha fields to distribute the Lumma Stealer malware. The malware instantly searches devices for important credentials including passwords, private keys and seed phrases.

Back on top. Pump.fun is once again the king of memecoin launchpads on Solana after bouncing back from a 5% market share to 90% in the past 2 weeks, as activity on competitor LetsBonk has fallen drastically.