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Plasma received $500 million in stablecoin deposits rather quickly yesterday, shocking some and affirming that the token sales appetite is back in full force.
But let me back up for a second. Plasma, which raised $24 million from the likes of Framework Ventures, is gearing up for a sale of its XPL token. Plasma team member Googly was careful to clarify that the sale hasn’t yet happened.
Ahead of the deposits, Blockworks Research penned a subscriber-exclusive note from analyst and 0xResearch podcast host Boccaccio, which dropped before the deposits even went live. If you didn’t already know, Plasma is a stablecoin company building a Tether-focused blockchain.
“We expect Plasma to allow 3-4 rounds of deposits over the deposit phase, with the total deposit reaching $1.5B to $1.75B. At this level, if Plasma launched at $2B TGE, APR on deposits would range between 35-50% if the lock up was for 3 months, and range between 25-40% if the lock up was for 4 months,” Boccaccio wrote yesterday.
His tone in the piece was cautious yet optimistic, he noted that there are “uncertainties” but also told me that he likes Plasma “overall.”
“They are purpose-built and focused on stablecoins, particularly payments, with their zero-fees on payments model. There are a few other stablecoin chains launching, some similarly backed by Tether/Bitfinex/Paolo [Ardoino]. At this point, it’s really a product, [business development] and [go-to-market] competition between these chains,” he said.
For me, Plasma also served as an example that pump[dot]fun’s targeted $4 billion valuation through its $1 billion raise — a story Lightspeed’s Jack Kubinec and I broke last week — will have a lot of appetite despite how upset people were on X.
“Pump would not have looked to raise 1B if they didn’t think they could fill it. I think Pump will fill quickly, and it’ll get some [of] the ‘it’s extractive’ people off its back. People want exposure more than they want to philosophize about morality, and this should give them the opportunity to do so,” Boccaccio said.
