GM,

 What the hell is going on with the markets this week?

 This is W3VE, your Web3 whisperer here to translate Web3 jargon into plain Jane simple English.

Table of Contents

• Company Highlight

• Fear & Greed Index

• Project power rankings of the week

• Market Updates and News

• Growth Marketing Tip of the Week

• Recently Funded Companies

• Meme’s of the Week

Company Highlight

Web3 Marketing is hard. Like really hard. Your community never grows, your engagement is nonexistent and you’re lost in a sea of AI content. 

We’ve personally seen W3VE come up in the space and take on giants like StakingCabin who are validators for projects like Sui, Aptos and Cosmos.

That’s why I’m confident in recommending it, because it feels like a 10 person in-house marketing team without any of the hassle.

• Book a call to explore your Web3 goals: W3VE Calendly

Fear & Greed Index

Project Power Rankings of the Week

Market Updates and News

1) Polymarket raises at a $9 billion valuation:

Wall Street just placed a $2 billion bet… on betting itself. The Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, is in advanced talks to invest in Polymarket at a $9 billion valuation. A deal could land as soon as Tuesday, according to the Wall Street Journal, and Polymarket wasted no time confirming the news on X.

For Polymarket, this isn’t just fundraising—it’s graduation. ICE isn’t some crypto-native VC riding hype cycles. It’s a $90 billion titan that runs the NYSE. If the deal closes, it’s not just money on the table, it’s validation as it signals that prediction markets are moving from crypto’s casino corner into the marble halls of traditional finance.

Polymarket has been quietly setting the stage all year. It snapped up derivatives venue QCEX, hashed out a deal with the CFTC to get on regulators’ good side, and expanded its markets from election odds to company earnings forecasts. They even added Bitcoin deposits because, well, why not let traders wager their digital gold directly?

The timing couldn’t be juicier. Rival Kalshi is scaling fast, reportedly raising at a $5 billion valuation. Suddenly, prediction markets are the hottest asset no one thought Wall Street would touch - and ICE just decided it wants first dibs.

What does this all mean? For Polymarket… instant credibility. For ICE, a front-row seat in the crypto casino. And for the rest of us? The future of finance might look a lot like Vegas, except the house is the New York Stock Exchange.

2) India plans to double down on CBDC:

India is doubling down on digital cash, but not the crypto kind. Union Minister Piyush Goyal made it clear at a government event in Doha: the country is all-in on a central bank digital currency (CBDC), while keeping private cryptocurrencies firmly in the “no go zone”.

The CBDC, aka the digital rupee, has been in pilot mode since late 2022, and Goyal says the goal is simple: make payments faster, cut down on paper, and ensure every transaction is traceable. “Our idea is that this will only make it easier to transact. It will also reduce paper consumption and will be faster to transact than the banking system. But it will also have traceability,” he said. In other words, the government wants the convenience of crypto without losing control. Controversial take, but from my understanding, the digital rupee is just a bank card, so why call it a digital currency???

Private cryptocurrencies? Not banned, but heavily taxed. The logic is clear: discourage use without outright banning, and definitely don’t make it seem “legitimate.” Reuters reported in September that India isn’t rushing into comprehensive crypto legislation because doing so would effectively hand crypto a government seal of approval, something they clearly want to avoid.

And yet, India’s citizens haven’t been shy about crypto adoption. According to Chainalysis, India has topped global crypto adoption rankings for the second year in a row, leading in retail, institutional, and even DeFi activity. Asia Pacific as a whole is emerging as the global grassroots crypto hub, but India is holding the crown.

So, the story is this: the government is pushing state-backed digital money, discouraging private crypto, but the people? They’re quietly proving they can’t be stopped. India wants a digital rupee in your wallet, but don’t think that’s slowing down the broader crypto craze.

3) Sam Bankman-Fried says his biggest mistake was handing FTX to a new CEO before bankruptcy:

 Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried has a new confession: his biggest mistake wasn’t the missing billions, the unauthorized transfers, or the global embarrassment - it was simply handing over the keys to FTX. Yes, the guy who ran a $32 billion exchange into the ground claims that signing the wrong signature at the wrong time is what really did him in.

According to SBF (SBF is too cool of a name, I’m going to call him Samuel), minutes after he passed the torch to new CEO John J. Ray III, a call came in about a potential investment that could have saved the company. Too bad the pen was already down. Timing: 0. Ego: 100.

FTX’s collapse wiped out $8.9 billion of investor funds, mostly because SBF thought Alameda Research could play fast and loose with customer money, what the internet now lovingly calls the Alameda gap. A month later, SBF was arrested in the Bahamas, extradited to the U.S., and is now serving 25 years for seven felony charges. Ouch.

Meanwhile, creditors are slowly seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. After a $1.2 billion payout in February, $5 billion in May, and another round in September, $7.8 billion has been returned so far. With $16.5 billion in recovered assets, another $8.7 billion could still flow back, reimbursing almost everyone 118% of what they had in November 2022. Not bad for a company that exploded spectacularly.

So, in crypto history, SBF’s “biggest mistake” might go down not as reckless fund mismanagement, but as the ultimate oops, handed over the keys too soon moment. Sometimes, timing really is everything… especially when you’re billions underwater.

Growth Marketing Tip of the Week

Classic us vs them ad

Why this works:

1) Humans want to belong and they love labeling things. For example, there are 2 types of people in this world, an Apple person and an Android person, this was strategically done to polarize people into groups.

2) It simplifies decision making for users which means that instead of weighing dozens of product features, you're choosing between two identities or philosophies. This reduces cognitive load and makes the choice feel more meaningful than just comparing specs.

3) If you’re a small company, this works especially well as people love supporting the underdogs so by comparing core features to a big company, it 1 - gives you creditability and 2 - make’s people psychologically think of you as a competitor to a big company and therefore elevates your status.

Recently Funded Companies

Meme’s of the Week

That’s it for this week.

Keep showing up, keep cheering each other on — and as always, head for the moon!