Summer is almost over, but there is still beach time left! I’m writing this newsletter from the Jersey Shore while soaking in the sun and pumping my fist.

Here’s the latest in the world of Deep Ventures:

• Portfolio company of the month - Bitflow Finance

• Industry insights - Coldcard exploit (ugh), CLARITY Act pauses (ugh) and memecoins dominate on Robinhood Chain (ugh)

Let’s go!

Portfolio Company of the Month - Bitflow Finance

Bitflow Finance is the #1 decentralized exchange on Stacks. We invested in Bitflow through the syndicate.

They just crossed a new Total Transaction Volume All-Time-High of $6B, and it’s still climbing!

Their new orderbook AMM, HODLMM, has executed $3.85B in total transaction volume, processed $275M in swap volume, and paid out $165K+ in fees. Each of these category totals is now at least 3x where it stood at the end of March.

They’ve also got a few things cooking with:

1. Institutional Bitcoin bonds - there is growing institutional demand for Bitcoin bonds as self-custodial staking of BTC is being designed on Stacks. The opportunity is for Bitflow to sit in the flow of funds as Bitcoin staking develops: first, through StackingDAO’s new liquid staking tokens, which will rely on their DEX infrastructure; second, through RFQ markets where makers can leverage the Bitcoin Bond and liquid staking token liquidity to create the most efficient BTC spot markets anywhere onchain.

2. Bitcoin-Centric AI Demand: The number of autonomous agents on Stacks grew from 700 to over 1,000 in Q2. Bitflow partnered with AIBTC to host a competition that yielded more htan 400 agent skill submissions in 30 days.

Love how Bitflow is flowing with progress!

Interested in investing with us? We’ve launched Deep Ventures Fund 1 and we’d love for you to be involved. Please take a look at our deck, ping me at [email protected], and schedule a chat!

Industry Insights

Coldcard exploit leads to up to $130M in losses

On July 30, attackers began draining Bitcoin from wallets created on vulnerable Coldcard firmware. The flaw, which was attributed to weak random number generation, enabled attackers to reconstruct weak seed phrases offline and sweep funds without the user’s device, PIN, or recovery phrase.

The initial attack was fast and furious. Roughly 594 BTC - about $38M at the time - left around 500 wallets in 25 minutes. Four waves ultimately took an estimated 1,816 BTC, or approximately $116M, from more than 5,200 addresses. TRM Labs called it the third-largest crypto hack of 2026, contributing to more than $1.2 billion stolen across 276 incidents year-to-date.

The exploit casts doubt over hardware wallet security generally, with concerns spreading to other manufacturers like Ledger and Trezor. And this may accelerate a shift toward managed custody solutions offered by exchanges like Coinbase and Robinhood.

CLARITY Act gets paused

The CLARITY Act, which would provide market structure regulations for the crypto industry, faced significant setbacks in July, as Senate Majority Leader John Thune delayed the floor vote until September.

The bill, which had already passed the House and Senate Banking Committee, saw its probability of passage by the end of 2026 plummet to just 14-23% on prediction markets, down from the 67-75% range estimated by Galaxy Research in mid May.

One of the key reasons for the holdup is the ongoing ethics conflict centered on government officials' cryptocurrency holdings. This issue became a hot topic after President Trump's financial disclosure revealed approximately $1.4 billion in crypto-related income during 2025, including $635 million from TRUMP meme coin licensing and over $500 million from World Liberty Financial token sales.

Ugh.

Robinhood Chain was supposed to be for RWAs…

You can’t argue against the success of Robinhood Chain in its first month.

The Eth L2 now sits at $484M in total value locked (TVL), frequently exceeds $500M in daily trading volume, and apps built upon it garner millions of fees each day.

The interesting thing is that the chain was built primarily for real world assets (RWA), but memecoins have stolen the spotlight.

Memecoins represented 79.2% of DEX volume as of July 27, while total tokenized RWA value on the chain was only about $26 million.

The Pons launchpad has been a major driver of these memecoin metrics.

PONS commands roughly 80% of Robinhood Chain's launchpad volume and accounts for 54% of all transactions on the entire network, most of which occur on Uniswap. The launchpad is on an annual fee run rate of $252M.

Crypto bros just love to gamble.

Conclusion

We hope you enjoyed this edition of the DV monthly newsletter!

Hit me up at [email protected] or @mikewchan on Telegram with your thoughts about the newsletter, what’s happening in crypto, or anything else!

Talk soon!