We’ve seen this movie before. Back in the summer of 2020—yes, the yield-farming fever dream—everyone on the desk was juggling six Discord servers, two DEX dashboards, and a half-finished cold brew when Aave ripped through resistance like it owed no one an explanation. Fast-forward four years and the names have changed, but the energy in the room feels eerily familiar.
Here’s What Actually Happened
Friday’s New York close printed a green weekly across the majors, and the smaller caps immediately started front-running the move. The three that refuse to leave our blotter are ONDO Finance (ONDO), Notcoin (NOT), and—because this market loves a good dog story—dogwifhat (WIF). All three are flirting with their all-time highs as July kicks off, and the order flow tells us the whales aren’t waiting for permission.
Quick Numbers Before the Storytelling
- ONDO: Current price ≈ $1.39. ATH sits at $1.48 from June 3rd—that’s a sneeze-and-you-miss-it gap of 6%.
- NOT: Trading around $0.021. It topped at $0.028 on June 2nd, so we’re 25% off the highs—decent breathing room for an impulse leg.
- WIF: Hovering near $3.50; ATH is $4.98 from late March—30% overhead, but the book has been exceptionally thin on the offer.
Now, if you’re thinking “those gaps aren’t exactly nothing,” I hear you. But here’s the kicker: context. BTC dominance is stalling, ETH/BTC just printed a higher low, and liquidity is starting to leak down the curve.
The ONDO Trade—TradFi Money Wants a Yield Play
ONDO’s real superpower is its narrative fit for the Bloomberg crowd: tokenized Treasuries with a sprinkle of BlackRock name-dropping. The July 10th launch of Ondo’s Asia Pacific fund is turning into a magnet for speculative flow. We caught two 800k ONDO clips going through Wintermute’s RFQ desk on Tuesday—size that doesn’t usually chase memecoins.
“If JPMorgan could launch an on-chain money-market fund tomorrow, it would probably look a lot like Ondo,” one ex-bank trader in our Telegram joked.
Key resistance: $1.50 psychological. If we print a daily close above $1.52, the chart has nothing but air until $1.90, which is the 1.618 Fib extension the quant guys keep pinging me about. I’m not entirely sure we clear that on the first run, but the risk-reward at $1.40 spot bids is too tasty to ignore.
NOT—Telegram’s GameFi Darling Refuses to Die
I’ll be honest, the first time the interns pitched Notcoin, I rolled my eyes. “A tap-to-mine game on Telegram? What is this, 2017?” But the community stickiness is off the charts. We’re tracking 30k active hot wallets farming the in-app missions daily. When engagement stays that sticky after TGE, it usually means one thing: sell-side pressure dries up quicker than you think.
Technically, NOT has a nasty supply pocket between $0.0228 and $0.024. Market makers have been capping every intraday spike there for weeks. The tell? Funding flipped positive on Bybit for the first time in three sessions yesterday, and OI climbed 18% despite chop. If we chew through that liquidity wall, $0.028 gets tagged in a heartbeat, and then we’re talking honest-to-goodness price discovery.
dogwifhat—Because Memes Print When Risk Is On
We tried ignoring WIF. Tried calling it frothy. Even bet beers it would fade back to $2 when the Solana memecoin basket cooled off. It didn’t care. One of our OTC counterparts keeps hoovering every sub-3.30 dip, and I finally asked why. Their trader deadpanned, “bro, every TikTok influencer under the sun uses that dog in their banner—makes Shiba look like old media.” Fair enough.
Volume profile shows a monster gap between $3.80 and $4.20—basically no historical trading. If WIF sneaks above $3.80 on a 4-hour close, shorts might get kneecapped into a slow Sunday. ATH at $4.98 could be a magnet in thin weekend liquidity. We’ve set lotto stop-buys at $3.82 for the desk. Shoot first, do the FA later.
But What Could Go Wrong?
I’m not going to sugar-coat this. CPI print hits July 11th. One ugly inflation surprise and the macro guys will smash the risk button faster than you can say “dot plot.” Add in Mt. Gox rumors rolling around Crypto-Twitter, and you’ve got potential spot BTC overhang that could nuke alt momentum in a single candle. We’re keeping tight invalidation levels—no point marrying bags in Q3 when politics, rates, and ETF flows are all in flux.
Why This Matters for Your Portfolio
From where we sit, July is shaping up like the classic “mini-season” we saw in April 2021: majors range, ETH gains a hair of dominance, and mids with strong narratives grind to new highs. If you’re under-allocated to high-beta names, these three give you differentiated exposure—yield tokenization (ONDO), GameFi/Telegram (NOT), and meme momentum (WIF). They won’t all work, but you don’t need all three to explode; one 2-3x can carry the basket.
Final note: I’m genuinely confused why more funds aren’t running simple relative-strength filters right now. The screener screams ONDO > LINK, NOT > AXS, WIF > PEPE on every timeframe. Maybe they’re still licking wounds from last month’s perp wipeout. Their hesitation is our edge.
Bottom Line—Control the Narrative, Control the P&L
Alt-seasons aren’t voted on; they’re ambushed. The second week of July has the ingredients—macro breathing room, flow rotation, and narrative juice. We’re long ONDO spot with tight $1.25 stops, running a NOT swing with partial size and rolling WIF calls because gambling money is still money. Just remember: bags are easier to carry when they’re green. Cut quickly, add aggressively—same playbook that saved our hides when DeFi rug-pulls were weekly entertainment.
