ARK Puts a $1.3B Venture Fund Onchain

Welcome back to The Warmup.

A $16 billion options wall wanted $76,000. Bitcoin stayed near $84,000 and declined the invitation.

Here’s what we’re watching:

• Market Snapshot

• ARK Puts a $1.3B Venture Fund Onchain

• TAO at Resistance

• A $16 Billion Options Wall Hits Friday

Market: Crypto leads higher, with SOL and ETH outperforming.

ARK Puts a $1.3B Venture Fund Onchain

What’s going on:

Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest is tokenizing ARKVX, its $1.3 billion venture fund, through Securitize on Ethereum.

The fund already owns stakes in private and public tech names such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Stripe, and Databricks, and this is the first ARK product to live as an onchain share.

Tokenization here means eligible investors get a digital claim on the same fund instead of a paper subscription.

Securitize handles issuance and access, so the underlying companies do not move onto a blockchain.

The token is a wrapper around an existing regulated vehicle.

What it means:

Private-market exposure that used to sit behind high minimums and slow transfer paperwork is being packaged for wallets that already hold Treasuries and tokenized stocks.

ARK invested in Securitize last year, so this is also the firm eating its own research on how private and public markets might share rails.

The buyer still has to be eligible, and liquidity will look nothing like a spot bitcoin ETF on day one.

TAO at Resistance

What’s going on:

TAO is kissing the descending trendline from the November 2024 high near $748.

Price is $301 after tagging $312 on the day, a poke at the line rather than a close above it. The bounce off the $160–$200 base is intact.

Key levels we’re watching:

• Support: $260, then $200

• Resistance: $303–$320 trendline

• Breakout target: $400–$500 if $320 flips to support

• Breakdown risk: Daily close under $260 weakens it, under $200 invalidates

Directional Bias: Cautiously bullish

Until $320 holds as support, TAO is still in the $200–$320 range.

What we’re waiting for:

• Daily close above the trendline, then a retest of $320

• Follow-through after today’s $312 wick

• Risk defined under $260

A $16 Billion Options Wall Hits Friday

What’s going on:

Deribit is settling one of the year’s largest quarterly books today, with roughly $16 billion in bitcoin options and about $2 billion in ether options coming off the board around 08:00 UTC.

Bitcoin rallied through $87,000 earlier this week, then spent Thursday and Friday holding near $84,000 after a flush of longs.

Calls dominated the expiry, so dealers who sold those contracts had been buying spot as price rose.

Once those contracts disappear, that forced buying can fade even if nothing else in the news changes.

What it means:

The same week JPMorgan argued that a sustained move above its $85,000 estimated production cost could ease miner selling after 280 days below that line, and hash rate is already off about 19% from the October peak as some miners lean into AI compute.

The beginner lesson is to separate the tape from the hedge book.

Options flows can add or subtract a few thousand dollars for a session. They do not rewrite ETF demand, miner costs, or the fact that bitcoin is still about a third below last October’s high near $126,000.

• Fed proposes reserve limits, capital standards for stablecoin issuers under GENIUS Act

• New York moves to block Polymarket from the state

• Bitget confirms $351.6M security breach affecting exchange hot wallets

Bitcoin tagged $87,000, then spent Friday near $84,000 through a quarterly options wall, a $351 million Bitget hot-wallet breach, and a New York lawsuit aimed at Polymarket.

The same stretch brought ARK’s venture fund onto Ethereum and a Fed proposal that would pin payment-stablecoin reserves to short-term Treasuries and other cash-like assets under the GENIUS Act.

Keep the process boring.

Hold what you sized before the squeeze, do not add because a fund landed onchain or because Friday’s gamma book rolled off, and treat custody news as a reminder that hot wallets are still the weak way to hold your crypto.

— The Warmup Team

Always do your own research. This newsletter is supplemental material to help educate readers as they make their own decisions. Projects mentioned here are provided to give a potential early-mover advantage.