Meme Crypto Roundup: PONS keeps hitting new all-time highs, Lobster surged over 80% to a new peak before pulling back, and the new Solana token Pistacio has attracted notable attention.

Ryan Myher, co-founder of Genius Terminal, announced in a post today that Genius.fun is set to launch its foundation page soon. He added, “I’ve been exploring various new mechanisms lately to better drive narratives on Genius.fun. There’s a really interesting feature that could help users reach their goal of accumulating stocks faster, which is especially exciting for our larger-cap meme coins.” On September 17, Genius Terminal—an on-chain trading terminal backed by YZi Labs and advised by CZ—officially launched its token issuance platform genius.fun on BNB Chain. The platform allows creators to transfer tokenized stocks such as bSTOCKS into a non-custodial foundation and split them, enabling subsequent attempts to exercise equity-related rights off-chain.

Beating AI Exclusive: Mirendil is in talks for a new funding round with a maximum valuation of around $5 billion, targeting a raise of up to $1 billion. Kleiner Perkins is negotiating to lead the round, while a16z may also participate. The deal has not been finalized. Just three months ago, Mirendil closed a $200 million seed round at a $1 billion valuation, led by a16z and Kleiner Perkins, with Nvidia joining as an investor. If this round closes on current terms, Mirendil’s valuation will have quintupled in a single quarter. Founded by former Anthropic researchers Behnam Neyshabur, Harsh Mehta, and others, the company currently has a team of just over 20 people. It focuses on “self-accelerating AI”: enabling AI to independently design experiments, conduct training, evaluate, and tune models, gradually automating the R&D workflow previously handled by AI researchers. Mirendil remains firmly in a heavy investment phase. In August, it signed a multi-year partnership with Google Cloud; TechCrunch notes the deal is worth over $100 million, and will leverage both TPU and Nvidia GPUs. The new financing will primarily fund the launch of Mirendil’s own models and continued training of subsequent iterations, with its first frontier model for engineering and research applications scheduled to launch early next year.

According to monitoring by Farside Investors, Bitcoin ETFs posted a net inflow of $714.7 million yesterday, marking their third consecutive day of net inflows exceeding $400 million. BlackRock’s IBIT recorded a net inflow of $350 million, while FBTC saw a net inflow of $257.4 million. Ethereum ETFs had a net inflow of $162.2 million yesterday, with ETHA registering a net inflow of $88.1 million and FETH notching $33.6 million in net inflows.

Huobi HTX Chief Analyst Cloud noted that Bitcoin bottomed out amid dual pressures of interest rate hikes and stalled legislative clarity, then rebounded rapidly, gaining roughly 16% in a week. On September 21, its intraday price rose to $87,307 (Huobi HTX spot price), marking a new high since January. This rally was driven by three factors: U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded a single-day net inflow of about $1 billion on September 21, the largest such daily inflow this year; short positions worth around $650 million were liquidated within 24 hours; and falling oil prices cooled inflation expectations. Unlike last week’s rebound dominated by passive covering, this week saw spot buying take the lead. Whether the rally can sustain depends on two points: whether ETF inflows can shift from a one-day pulse to a continuous trend, and whether leverage can remain at a non-overheated level. Currently, the funding rate is around 0.01%, sitting in the neutral range, but Bitcoin’s derivatives open interest has rebounded to over $61 billion. If market sentiment weakens, high leverage will amplify drawdowns. Market sentiment has entered the extreme greed zone, a historical precursor to short-term trend reversals. On the technical front, $87,500 is the immediate resistance level, while the first support zone ranges from $84,000 to $85,000. The trend has conditions to continue, but the phase of peak sentiment also brings the highest short-term volatility risk. Note: The content of this article is not investment advice, nor does it constitute an offer, solicitation, or recommendation for any investment product.

Bitunix has officially launched a demo trading feature, allowing users to practice USDT-margined perpetual contract trading with 50,000 USDT in virtual funds without exposing them to real capital risks. The feature supports real-time market data, covers multiple order types, leverage settings, and isolated and cross-margin modes, and can be accessed directly after logging in without completing KYC. This launch further lowers the entry barrier for contract trading, marking an important step for Bitunix in continuously improving its product ecosystem and providing a more user-friendly trading environment for global traders.

Current interest rate swap pricing shows markets expect the Federal Reserve to deliver three 25-basis-point rate hikes by June next year. Some traders worry actual hikes could be fewer, a scenario dubbed a "shallow rate hike cycle," so they are adding protective positions via Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR)-linked options. Over the past week, demand for put options on March 2027 SOFR contracts has risen sharply, indicating traders are hedging against the risk of a less hawkish Fed. Analysts note that rising oil prices amid Iran-related conflicts and long-term U.S. Treasury yields breaking above 5%—viewed by some as a "tax" on economic growth—may ultimately limit the Fed’s room for rate hikes. If an economic slowdown pairs with easing Middle East tensions, the Fed may end up hiking fewer times than currently priced in by markets.