Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW.

It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big-picture power shifts remaking our world.

What's going on, guys? It is Tuesday, November 18th, and today we are talking about an ICO fizzle. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying the breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit.ly. slash breakdown pod. All right, friends, well, Coinbase's first ICO is in the books, and frankly,

it was a bit of a dud. Monday saw the first fully compliant token sale in the U.S. in around seven years on Coinbase's new platform. The subject was Monad, a new layer one token that has been one of the hyped up projects in VC circles all cycle. The project was seeking to raise up to $187.5 million through the sale, and things got

off to a quick start.

There were $43 million in sales in the first half hour.

Sales quickly trickled off after then, and only around $100 million worth of the tokens

had been sold as of last night.

Now, raising $100 million isn't nothing, but the tepid demand, at least relative to expectations, isn't a great sign given other recent sales. Last month, Mega-Eath did their token sale and sought to raise $50 million from investors outside of the U.S., and that sale was vastly overcommitted, with investors pledging around $1.4 billion. That's the kind of frenzy that many were expecting from ICOs returning to the U.S. but it just didn't materialize. Many pointed to the terrible market conditions putting a damper on the sale, with Chain Yoda commenting, Monad waited three whole years for the bull market to end before launching a token. Others blamed Coinbase. Roids tweeted, Monad flopped by choosing Coinbase to host its ICO. No one wants to deposit into their Coinbase account just to use it for On Chain Stuff, and Normies couldn't care less about Monad flopped by choosing Coinbase to host its ICO. No one wants to deposit into their Coinbase account just to use it for on-chain stuff, and Normies couldn't care less about Monad. After 12 hours, it's still 50% undersubscribed. Mega-Eath was and still is the clear winner. They simply let us deposit directly into a contract, and they raised almost a billion and a half in three days. You'll be lucky if you can profit on this. Some argued the tokenomics, meanwhile, are not favorable for retail buyers. The coin-based sale consisted of just 8% of the tokens, while early investors in the team will have between 5 and 20% of their tokens unlocked on day one of the chain launching. The ICO priced the token at a $2.5 billion fully diluted valuation, which would put Monad just outside of the top 50. An analyst for stake, Cito said, VC coins are bad, and Monad has raised over 20% from VCs, and 50% of the total token supply belongs to teams and early investors. Simon Didick of Moonrock Capital tweeted, interest in the Monad public sale is surprisingly underwhelming, and that's despite it being one of the most hyped upcoming ecosystems and the very first public sale on Coinbase's official launchpad. Market conditions aside, I genuinely expected much more demand not going to lie. But honestly, I love to see it. It tells me retail is getting smarter, far more valuation sensitive, far less willing to buy every random narrative that gets pushed. To me, it's also a strong signal that the L1 infrastructure premium continues to fade. People are tired of the thousandth chain. They want real use cases, real businesses, and real revenue. And last but not least, if you want exit liquidity, maybe don't exclude Europe from your sale. Now, sources close to Monad noted that this ICO isn't being done on a first-come, first-serve basis and will remain open through to the end of the week, meaning, in their words, there's less incentive for a big rush on day one. Ultimately, Monad managed to catch the worst week for crypto sentiment for at least six months, so it's not all that surprising that demand is a little flat. In the bigger picture, the limp sale raises questions about Coinbase's ICO platform. The original plan was to fire off an ICO every month for the foreseeable future. Monad wasn't viewed as a small test launch, but as soon as the platform was announced, people began speculating about a potential base token. On Monday, the Coinbase Twitter account changed their bio to December 17th, which is a month from yesterday. Many imagine this was

hinting at a base token sale coming next month as the follow-up to this fairly mild debut.

Look, ultimately, I think that this is just another indication that retail never came back

this cycle and just doesn't care. Basically all the stuff we talked about on yesterday's show.

Now, back in Bitcoin land, Michael Saylor is buying more Bitcoin.

Micro Strategy announced the purchase of 8,178 Bitcoin worth around $836 million.

Micro Strategy buying hasn't really been newsworthy for some time, but this week's purchase

is a big deal for a few reasons. First, this is their largest purchase since July.

Micro Strategy slowed down after the summer, and although they rarely took a week off, most of their buys over recent months have been in the tens of millions. That slowdown has been driven by a lack of funding. The stock has been trading relatively close to the value of the Treasury, so Micro Strategy haven't been able to issue more stock without diluting their Bitcoin per share ratio. Issuance of bonds and preferred stock has also slowed right down as the market seemed

to be a little saturated by the company's myriad of securities.

Two weeks ago, Microstratogy rectified the situation by tapping into the European market

for the first time.

They raised $715 million in yield-bearing preferred stock denominated in euros, which funded

the bulk of this purchase.

...