Front Run The Week 6/23/25
This Isn't The Alt Season You're Looking For
We used to chase Altseason like it was the second act of a predictable script: Bitcoin runs, Ethereum follows, then everything else goes vertical. That formula is dead.
It died with 3AC, Terra, and FTX.
It died when institutions realized they didn’t need to play the retail game. The meme coin mania was fun—but for TradFi, it was always a phase.
They’re not here to flip tokens.
They’re here to build vaults.
Before We Begin: The Wreckage in the Sky
Before I get into the signals that matter this week—the ones beneath the headlines—I can’t stop thinking about the strange string of aviation disasters over the last 30 days.
Air India lost electrical power shortly after takeoff, forcing the Ram Air Turbine (RAT) to deploy. For a moment, the plane sounded like a Cessna before crashing into a medical building.
A small aircraft carrying six people vanished into the Pacific after hitting a dense marine layer near San Diego. The pilot radioed he was “struggling.” They haven’t recovered the plane.
Another flight, also with six on board, clipped power lines and crashed short of the Montgomery-Gibbs runway in San Diego. The pilot? Dave Shapiro of Sound Talent.
His last words to ATC stuck with me. When told the conditions, he said:
“That doesn’t sound too good, but we’ll give it a go.”
He didn’t say it seemed bad. He said it sounded bad.
A man in the music business, judging a visual situation with his ear.
Small detail. Huge signal.
The bigger lesson: systems break slowly, then suddenly. Tiny decisions, overlooked clues, stacked until failure is guaranteed. The same is true in markets.
What Is Vaultseason?
Vaultseason is the quiet phase before capital rotates. I coined this phrase to describe the flight path we’re on at the moment.
It’s not measured in candles. It’s measured in confidence:
TVL, not TikTok hype.
Stablecoin inflows, not Discord memes.
Deployments on Base, Blast, Morpho.
This is the infrastructure era—and it’s moving in slow motion.
Altseason Didn’t Die. It Evolved.
The altseasons of the past were frantic. Loud. Built on leverage and lies. Alameda Research didn’t back Cursor with legitimate profits—it seeded it after SBF dug through customer wallets for insider edge. (FTX liquidators later dumped Cursor and SUI faster than a degen chasing the next meme spike.)
Those were casino runs.
Now?
The exits are gated. The vaults are real. The upside is still here—but it’s locked behind structure.
Why Vaultseason Turns Into Altseason (Eventually)
Capital always rotates. But this time, it’s different.
When it comes back, it’ll favor:
Vault-native protocols: Morpho, Reserve, Euler
Yield-bearing stablecoins: USDY, deUSD
Real-world on-ramps: Base is the sleeper giant
Creators building early engines (you know what I’m working on)
Altseason 2025 won’t reward noise.
It will reward architecture.
Reading the Signals This Week
FOMC gave no cuts—but also no resistance. Liquidity isn’t flowing yet. But the gates are being tested.
JPMorgan’s pilot with Coinbase isn’t a headline. It’s a keystone. (Buy me a Boba tea and you’ll never miss Alpha like this, video breakdowns and more.)
Franklin Templeton is deploying its 12,000 advisors into DeFi. This isn’t theory. It’s motion.
The market is quiet. But everything is moving.
Marc Rowan of Apollo Management—one of the most powerful names in alternative assets and the force behind Athene—didn’t fade Web3. He just chose carefully.
Out of thousands of projects, Apollo only made two notable crypto bets. One was SUI, a respectable allocation. But the other?
A bigger, more deliberate position in a lesser-known Layer 1 purpose-built for tokenized real-world assets.
Apollo Quietly Hit $100M On-Chain. But Their Bigger Bet? It’s Not on Ethereum
While the market debates ETF inflows and Bitcoin halving cycles, Apollo just crossed $100M in tokenized private credit. That’s a signal.
Final Word
This isn’t the Altseason you’re looking for. But it’s the one that’s coming.
If you’ve been here, watching vaults fill, reading between the headlines—
you’re already ahead.
Let the others chase the next dog coin. (DogeBase… maybe?)
In the meantime, we’re front-running the economy.
Have a good week!
-Chip
P.S.
Coinbase is about to open the floodgates. Soon, its mobile app will integrate decentralized exchanges (DEXs), letting users trade nearly every crypto asset—not just the vetted handful currently listed.
I’ve already covered a few assets you can access right now using their Smart Wallet on Base. But here’s the trap: every time retail reenters the market, the Bitcoin grifters—not the true Maxis, but the shillers—start speaking in absolutes. “Own one whole Bitcoin,” they say, as if it’s a car or a house. They never mention Satoshis. Never mention owning a percentage. It’s a setup.
CNBC and similar outlets reinforce that idea. So when the app opens up, retail will rush in whenever we enter full FOMO. Sticker shock from Bitcoin’s price will send them scrambling into alts with familiar Web2-sounding names—Internet Computer, etc. And that’s where many will get burned.
But not all landing zones are equal. Base offers a smoother descent. DEXs like Aerodrome stand to benefit from this deeper Coinbase integration, and I like where it’s positioned right now.
Final squawk before I sign off:
At Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport, a plane tried to land in the dark, in the fog, no tower on duty—4AM. It came in too fast, too low, and ripped through the power lines before crashing short of the runway.
To the south of the airport? A boundary street named Aero Dr.
Sometimes, the coordinates say more than the headline.