Stablecoin Wars Heat Up

Welcome back to The Warmup.

Good morning to everyone… except those still calling influencer memecoins “community-driven assets.”

Here’s what we’re watching:

• Market Snapshot

• Stablecoin Wars Heat Up

• BTC Holding the Line

• Trump’s Crypto Payday

Market: Crypto is leading, with SOL outperforming and ETH gaining momentum, while stocks take a small breather and volatility remains low.

Stablecoin Wars Heat Up

What’s going on:

Open Standard launched Open USD, a new stablecoin backed by 140+ major players including Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock, Google, Coinbase, Solana, Ripple, and Aave.

The big difference: Open USD gives the economics back to businesses.

Partners can mint and redeem for free, face no volume caps, and receive most of the yield from the reserves backing the coin.

That’s a direct shot at Circle and Tether, whose biggest profit engine is keeping the Treasury yield behind their stablecoins.

What it means:

Circle’s business adoption story just got a serious challenger.

If companies can earn more by using OUSD instead of USDC, the incentive is obvious. That’s why CRCL sold off hard on the news.

Open USD may not be live yet, but once it is, it could become a serious stablecoin competitor fast.

BTC Holding the Line

What’s going on:

Bitcoin bounced from the $58K support zone, giving bulls some short-term relief. But price remains below the 4H 200 EMA ($64.5K), so the broader trend is still weak.

Key levels we’re watching:

• Support: $58K–$59K → buyers defended this zone

• Resistance: $60K, then $64.5K (200 EMA)

• Upside target: $64K+ if momentum returns

• Breakdown risk: Losing $58K could send BTC toward $54K

Directional Bias: Neutral to cautiously bearish

The bounce is encouraging, but bulls need to reclaim $60K and eventually the 200 EMA to regain control. Until then, this is still a relief rally inside a downtrend.

Trump’s Crypto Payday

What’s going on:

Trump’s latest financial disclosure shows over $1.2B in crypto earnings from 2025.

Most came from two places: $635M from his memecoin royalties and $588M+ from World Liberty Financial token sales.

He also reported holding $50M+ in Bitcoin and $5M–$25M in ETH.

What it means:

This throws fuel on the crypto conflict-of-interest debate.

Trump is shaping US crypto policy while his family profits directly from the industry.

That makes the CLARITY Act fight even messier, with Democrats pushing to block the president and family from crypto ventures.

Odds of the bill passing dropped to 39%, and this headline likely makes the path even harder.

• ‘We are bullish on Morpho’: Standard Chartered sees token at $60 by 2030

• Bernstein sees 203% upside for Circle even as new stablecoin rival OUSD debuts

• Crypto hack theft falls 7% in June to $76 million as Humanity Protocol tops list

Crypto fundamentals keep compounding, even if prices aren't. Wall Street is moving toward tokenization, AI agents will need decentralized identity and ownership rails, and blockchains remain at the center of both trends.

The challenge is that markets rarely reward those narratives in a straight line. Historically, both stocks and crypto have generated most of their returns in just a handful of days, which means trying to perfectly time the market often does more harm than good.

Right now, sentiment is as bad as it's been since FTX, with interest and activity at multi-year lows. Ironically, those are often the moments when long-term opportunities are quietly being created, while everyone else has already given up.

— 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.