This broke less than an hour ago, so let’s rewind for a second. Twelve months back, ‘presale’ was still a nerd-only term kicked around on Telegram. Today, July 1, 2025, Visa is name-dropping Layer-2 rails on CNBC and every second Discord channel is shilling a whitelist. It feels like 2017, only turbo-charged by TradFi money that’s suddenly decided crypto isn’t a dirty word.
Here's What Actually Happened
At 07:14 UTC, Mastercard’s experimental Web3 desk quietly pushed an update to its developer portal: support for on-chain settlement of presale invoices. Ten minutes later, two ETF issuers—Bitwise and VanEck—filed amendments citing “allocation windows for unlisted digital assets.” The filings don’t scream presale, but c’mon, that’s exactly what it is.
Markets reacted on cue. Dextools shows presale-tagged pairs clocking a combined $218 million in volume in the first hour of the European session—more than double last Monday’s open. I’m not entirely sure whether it’s pure FOMO or real fundamentals, but the numbers are impossible to ignore.
Now Here's the Interesting Part
Three presales are hogging the spotlight:
1. CarbonFi (CFI): Soft-cap hit in 27 minutes, raising 4,200 ETH (~$14.8M). Backed by former Polygon BD lead Sandeep Nailwal as an angel. Whitelist oversubscribed 3×.
2. AtlasName (ATN): Decentralized domain registry. Seed round in April led by Animoca; today’s public phase already soaked up 1.1 billion ATN at $0.006. Hard-cap is $12M and they’re 82% there, according to CoinList’s live dashboard.
3. YieldHunt (YHNT): Cross-chain real-world-asset farming. I honestly raised an eyebrow when they promised “8% US Treasury–backed APY,” but the crowd doesn’t care—$6.4M in USDC shown on the multisig at 08:05 UTC.
Arthur Hayes even lobbed a half-serious tweet: “‘Presale szn’ only ends when Visa pulls the plug. Until then, strap in.” We know Hayes loves drama, but his threads do move smaller caps.
Why This Matters for Your Portfolio
If you ignored presales all year, today’s data is a wake-up call. Presale ROI averages 162% (Messari five-day window) versus 38% for freshly listed IDOs. Of course, averages hide the landmines—remember the RugGPT implosion in March? But the reward skew is tilting back to early-stage risk.
Question is, can retail still get a fair bite? Gas wars are thankfully passé, thanks to Blast and Base L2 rollups. Both CFI and YieldHunt are using Base’s batch-mint contract; I paid 0.17 USD in fees this morning. That’s lunch-money territory compared with the 2021 madness.
I’m Still Puzzled by One Thing
Visa’s dev note mentions “select ERC-3643 compliance hooks.” That’s the tokenized securities standard. Does that hint at presales morphing into quasi-regulated SAFTs? If so, the SEC can’t stay silent much longer. Remember, Chair Gensler hasn’t uttered a peep since the spot-ETH ETF approvals in May. We could see surprise guidance drop right in the middle of this frenzy.
The Community Temperature Check
Hop into any X Space today and you’ll hear the same split: veterans chanting “Take profits, kids!” while newcomers cheer every green candle. I leaned into a couple of Telegram chats—Nansen Alpha and the rather rowdy WagmiDAO room. Sentiment? Greed is back on the menu.
One moderating voice worth quoting is @0xKong, on-chain sleuth and auditor:
“Whitelist doesn’t equal diligence. Read the vesting, read the audit, or enjoy your exit liquidity role.”
Can’t argue with that. We’re still fielding unaudited contracts, some copy-pasted from GitHub last night.
Bottom line: Presales are no longer side-quests; they’re front and center, powered by TradFi validation and L2 efficiency. If you’re playing the game, set alarms, diversify allocations, and, for the love of Satoshi, verify contract addresses twice.
