The Breakdown - Bored Apes Rally, Canton Raises at $2B and Saylor Raps the Bears | The Breakdown

Episode Date: May 11, 2026

David covers three Monday stories: the NFT mini-revival (Bored Apes doubled in a month), Canton raising $300M at a $2B valuation, and Saylor's AI rap video defending Strategy from “Ponzi” accusations. Enjoy! TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Intro (01:15) Are NFTs Back? (07:24) Nexo Ad (07:59) Are NFTs Back? (Cont.) (12:06) Canton (16:52) Nexo Ad (17:46) Canton (Cont.) (23:27) Strategy Rap FOLLOW THE SHOW › David — https://x.com/dcanellis › The Breakdown — https://x.com/TheBreakdownBW SPONSORS › NEXO Nexo is the premier digital wealth platform. Receive interest on your crypto, borrow against it without selling, and trade a range of assets. Now available in the U.S with 30 days of exclusive privileges. Get started at http://nexo.com/breakdown Get top market insights and the latest in crypto news. Subscribe to the Blockworks Daily Newsletter: https://blockworks.co/newsletter/ DISCLAIMER As always, remember this podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely their opinions, not financial advice.

It is Monday, May 11. This is The Breakdown. I'm your host David Canales. We've got a few quick stories for you this morning to get you ready for the working week ahead in crypto. We are talking about this morning. Our NFTs back. Bored apes are up. They've doubled in the past month and so have some other what we used to call blue chip NFTs. Is the market back? We're going to find out. We're also looking at Canton, the institutional focused blockchain, has raised a bunch of money. the institutional super cycle happening right now, and Canton is the focus point. We're going to be taking a look at that. We're also going to be looking at strategy and the cringe that is coming out of Sailor's

Twitter account as he looks to cool heads over the potential for strategy to actually sell Bitcoin instead of hold it forever. But without further ado, this is the breakdown. Let's get to it. This episode is brought to you by Nexto. Step into a new era of digital wealth. Earn interest on your digital assets. Borrow against them without selling and trade all in one platform.

Get started at nexus.com slash breakdown. All right. First, let's take a look at the NFT market because there was, I think it was a story in CoinDest or something like that that was chatting with Euda Labs about how they view the NFT market. And basically they were making the case that everything was oversold and that, you know, the real material interest, below the surface has been percolating ever since, which, you know, which, okay, perhaps that,

and I, and I overuse the term, perhaps that is an over, over optimistic read of the situation with NFTs, but, but let's still have a look. I mean, so Bored Apes was the one. I've got this on screen on FNFT,florePrice.com, and yeah, we can see that over the past month or so, yeah, the floor price has about doubled at times. So this time last month, floor price for Bored apes was about 14.3k and earlier this month it hit a top of about 26k so yeah around about doubling which isn't too shabby and it's not just bored apes too i mean we can have a look at at crypto punks crypto punks has gone about the same kind of growth we were looking at about 60k usd oh no so nowhere near the same amount of growth we were at 60k usd this time last month now we're up to about a top of

nearly 75k earlier this month and holding somewhat steady. So not quite doubling for the crypto punks, but still seeing some degree of growth. And then if we check out Pudgy Penguins, these are the top three NFT collections. Let's see what the deal is here. We're looking at, yeah, about this time last month, about 9.3K. And we've pumped up to about nearly 14K at the start of the month and kind of holding around 13K right now. So, boarding. Ape seems to be the one that is seen the most growth, but in general, the trajectory across the top three NFT collections is trending up and to the right. So does any of this mean that the NFT market is coming back? I mean, we can have a quick look. I mean, I've pulled up Hill Dobby's

dashboards. Hill Dobby is probably the goaded when it comes to NFT dashboards, at least on June. And so if we're looking at NFT volume, and this is all the EVM chains, and this is represented in USD, so not in ether, anything like that. I mean, it is tough to say that the NFT market is coming back, but at least it is not trending downwards. We can see that basically the last time that it seemed like NFTs were back was around September last year. And I believe this was due to buzz around potential open sea token and an open sea air drop.

So it kind of inspired a little bit more usage around that time. And then we dropped off significantly again as kind of everyone realized that maybe we have to wait a little bit longer for an open C token. But we have seen a small uptick over the past month or two in terms of trading volume. But nothing exactly to write home about. Let's see if there's anything else interesting that we can spot from this. I mean, in terms of NFT volume where the market share is, it is still mostly open C and a little bit of blur. where the most latest reading was about 70% of all NFT volume is on open sea. So perhaps still a little bit of activity there trying to farm for a potential

irdrop, not too sure. And an overwhelming majority of NFT volume in terms of EVN chains is happening on Ethereum, which I suppose is to be expected. And NFT trading addresses, in general, I mean, this came up when we were talking about the mega-eath air-drop and anirdrop farming, how big the, I don't want to say addressable market, but how big the interested market is or active market is in terms of these actual, in terms of trading NFTs. We're looking at about every week, there's something around 15 or 20,000 addresses trading NFTs. Yeah, tough to say that the NFTs are back. One thing that has always fascinated me,

And I know that what I'm showing you on screen is only EVM chains and it doesn't show what's happening on Solana. And, you know, maybe we can do another segment in the future on just the NFT market on Solana. But something that is always fascinated me is just how, I mean, I don't want to say it's small, like how outsized the influence on the zeitgeist on the market. Actually, the NFT space really is. If we're looking at board apes, right now there is 5,600 unique addresses holding NFTs. So we'll look and this is, I mean, it's a function of the board at Yacht Club. It's meant to be an exclusive community that you gain entry to by holding a board apes. So of course it's going to be somewhat small.

You know, but we're, and just an aside here, we have a nice chart here that shows the sales of board eight yacht clubs over the past three months. So we can see a big uptick somewhere around the start of April. We saw a big jump up. So, and by big, I mean, we were seeing five, five and a half sales per day on either blur or open C for board eights. And now we've jumped up to around 10. So we've doubled the amount of trades per day over the past month or two. So that gives you a little bit of context.

But the holders, I mean, you know, at its peak in early 2022, the number of Bored Apes holders was only 6,400, and that's addresses. So, you know, and now we're down to around 5,500, 5,600. And if we look closer at the holders of Bored Apes, we can see that the top five or six holders hold, you know, 100, over 100 board apes. And then if we go down to the top 25, they're holding 20 board apes. So it's It's a highly concentrated market. Step into a new era of digital wealth with NXO, the Premier Digital Assets Wealth Platform. Earn interest on your digital assets, borrow against them without selling.

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Do your own research. The kindest description that you can give of these people is that they're taste makers. We're now entering a new period of the crypto market that, you know, okay, a lot of the retail speculation has gone away, bare market, retail, bare market, institutional ball market. But there is still this small enclave of, you know, influential holders of these blue chip NFTs that can change the sentiment of the entire crypto space on a dime because all it took was a small rise. I mean, you know, we could debate whether the board apes floor price doubling in value is a small rise. I would say that it would be

small to small medium size considering how a liquid this market is. So it just takes a few, a few buys and all of a sudden the floor price starts chugging upwards and and so we get this rollover effect but if it was the case that you know there were all of a sudden another thousand more interested buyers in board apes i can imagine that that would really significantly pump up the price of not just bought apes but the other blue chip nfts as well there would be a flow on effect and it is just taste it is just you know a belief that we might be turning a corner in the bear market into something a little bit more,

a little bit more conducive to more speculative action in markets. And NFTs, they have been elevated somewhat. I mean, since the 2021-2020 crazy mass adoption era of NFTs, there has been slow percolation of digital art movements, NFTs showing up in museums, and other sorts of in the art world. It's obviously not as big as it was in 2021, 2021, but it would not surprise me if we started to see more quote unquote cool people

start to come back around on NFTs and at least maybe cool only in the crypto context and not of the greater population. But perhaps we could be looking at the start of some kind of resurgence in interest in digital art as a speculative asset rather than just the butt of the joke. At least, hey, that's how I'm feeling at least. You know, NFTs obviously, there was so much nonsense when it comes to NFTs. But in terms of the crypto DNA, and I see that term bandied about a lot, probably by slot posters trying to talk about, you know, the difference between Web 3 and crypto and Wall Street

and suit coins and stuff like that. But I still hold a very soft spot for NFTs. And I really don't believe we have seen the last of them. So, I mean, we might not be looking right now at an immediate bull market for NFTs, but when I see that the, how small the market continues to be, then by warrant of logic it only takes a relatively small group of interested parties to come back around to NFTs that we would see some kind of significant price action on these things and i can only imagine that the crypto space needs that kind of relief uh that there could be some interest not from people in suits, but from people who are interested in digital art, digital culture, crypto culture that's a really ugly term these days.

Nobody wants to think that crypto is a culture, but I'm not ready to give up on that dream just yet. But in any case, it's something to keep watching. So, on to the next story. Okay, so we have this Bloomberg report about digital asset, the firm behind. the Canton blockchain, raising it a $2 billion valuation. So not too shabby at all. Digital Asset Holdings is raising money from investors, including ACC and Z crypto.

This is according to sources with knowledge of the matter, according to Bloomberg. They say finances is expected to close in the coming weeks and the final amount raised could change. And they're raising around $300 million in the round. The last time they raised money, it was $50 million from backers, including Bank of New York Melloncore and NASDAQ, late last year. Earlier in 2025, I announced raising $135 million from firms, including Liberty City Ventures, QCP Group and B&B Parabar. So, yeah, big money flowing into Canton. So I suppose they have very big plans about how to expand and use that money. Let's see, several of the firms' investors, including trade web markets, have been using Canton, are involved with.

this governing entity, the Global Synchronizer Foundation. A copper research report published in October said the network had experienced parabolic growth. Yeah, A16C did just raise $2.2 billion. So it seems like some of that money is flowing into Canton, but TBD on that whether the new Fund 5 is actually involved in it. Yeah, they note here that Canton coin has diverged from the wider crypto market over the past six months, according to Kiko. its resilient trajectory makes it a clear outlier in an otherwise stressed environment.

We're going to have a look if that really is the case with up to the minute data. And okay, that about covers it for the Bloomberg report. So, I mean, okay, so Tradfey is still super bullish on Canton, and Canton has copped a lot of flack since Das, NYC, when, you know, in the wake of that, considering Don Wilson from DRW that Bax Digital Asset was basically making the case on stage at Das NYC that MV that chains with MEV are possible are just unsuitable for financial markets. And then there was this whole thing about Canton trying to make the case that it was indeed a permissionless

blockchain when there are at least parts of the serious architecture that that handles transaction that are permission, namely that they have supervalidators, that are basically white listed validators, but I digress. So let's just have a look at the health of Canton coin in general, in context of all of this. So right now, Canton is sitting in about 21st place in terms of market cap. So in between Tong Coin and Stella. So a serious asset when it comes to when it comes to its placement in the crypto market by market cap at least. When did the coin launch?

The coin only launched in November. And we are seeing a little bit of growth. I mean, there was a decent dip just after it launched, which is to be expected. It looks like it listed at about 12 cents. It immediately dropped 50% in a month. But since then it's climbed back up, it hit a top of close to 20 cents in February. And we've kind of tapered off since then. And now we're sitting at around 16 cents.

So it has been obviously resilient. but I would say that this is just a function of price discovery, considering it is a brand new coin effectively. So what are we at? We're up maybe 30% or so since its list price. So, I mean, that's the coin itself. If we want to look at the growth in terms of what's happening on Canton, I think the Thai probably has the most detailed dashboard right now

about the Canton network. And if we, I mean, it's also, it doesn't tell us how much notional volume, how much dollar volume is flowing through the chain. All we have is daily active users and daily transactions. And yeah, validator rewards that are coming to them. But I can't tell if this is in dollars or in just the token itself. But in any case, we can see that, yeah, the active users has exploded. And I worry here that the tie is conflating daily active users with daily active addresses, which if you want some more context on that,

please go back to one of the very first episodes of the breakdown earlier this year where we broke down the concept of the most used chain and how that is basically a fallacy when it comes to on-chain analytics. Let's take a moment to talk about NXO. Nexto delivers a premier digital assets wealth platform designed to help clients build, manage and preserve their wealth, earn interests on your digital assets, access crypto-backed credit without selling your holdings, trade with advanced tools, all supported by 24-7 client care. Now back in the US, Nexo offers new clients 30 days of exclusive Wealth Club Premier Access,

that means enhanced interest rates, reduce borrowing costs, and up to 0.5% crypto cashback on trades. Benefits typically reserve for Wealth Club members and private clients. Nexo is also expanding its global presence, becoming the official crypto partner of Tennis Australia, the organisation behind the Australian Open, and the digital asset partner of the Audi Revolut Formula One team. If you're ready to approach digital assets with a more structured wealth strategy, visit nexo.com slash breakdown to get started. As always, investments in blockchain technology involve risk. Terms and conditions apply. Do your own research. But in any case, we are looking at at least, okay, so there was a big spike in active addresses at the end of last

month, but we've dropped back down. So basically, at the start of the year, let's say, let's have a look. At the start of the, basically at the start of October, there was about 5,000 active addresses on the network on any given day. Now we're up to about 57,000. So the active addresses has at least on 10x. But that said, 57,000 addresses, it is a decent healthy number, but it's not like it's exponentially more than than Bitcoin, Ethereum or Solana or anything like that right now. Daily transactions followed the same trajectory as the daily active addresses, and we're looking at about a million or so worth of transactions flowing through Canton per day right now. But, you know, we can't tell what those transactions are, at least from this particular dashboard.

And so I won't make any judgment calls about the quality of those active addresses or the daily transactions right now. But there is something to be said for that. So far, the cumulative unique addresses over the entire lifespan of Canton, which has been online for, I want to say, about a year. We're up to about 600,000 cumulative active unique addresses. So there's something to be said for that. definitely people are using this chain, you know, but we'll chalk this up to another case of it being an institutional cycle, institutional ball market. But it remains to be seen how this benefits the rest of the crypto space.

I like the idea of segmentation across the crypto space. I would like for if in the next five or 10 years we can get away from treating crypto as this ecosystem that is separate from the rest of finance because crypto is a technology. Blockchain is a technology. And I know this goes against what I just said about crypto being a culture or potentially the idea of crypto being a culture. because when we think about the stock market, you know, does the stock market have a culture? Can we just say that the stock market is bad? Perhaps if you're a socialist or something like that

or you're a tanky, you could make the case that the stock market is bad. But there is just so, the stock market is diverse. Crypto is becoming more diverse. and Canton having a larger role, but Canton having a larger position within the crypto space only makes it more diversified and it only goes to show that crypto itself is a technology. And that's about all it is.

So, you know, over time, perhaps even we'll stop talking about crypto and as a term. And we can just talk about, you know, defy or something like that instead of this label of crypto and the crypto space. So when I see that the biggest raises, or some of the biggest raises are at least going towards the more institutional focus projects, it allows me to say, or it allows me to think in my own mind, like, okay, that part of the market is seeing a lot of attention.

and maybe this is a flow-on effect. We don't get to Sailor in a minute, but maybe I would argue that this is a flow-on effect from the financeification of Bitcoin through Michael Saylor and other digital asset treasury companies. So when I see that, you know, a butterfly flaps its wings its strategy and then all of a sudden we have Canton

raising it a $2 billion valuation a couple years later, a few years later, then what is going to be the flow-on effect next? Perhaps it will be a pendulum that will swing back and all of a sudden we will be funding anonymous founders and anime profile picture startups all by run all run by autonomous agents. And we'll finally get a little bit of like grit back into the crypto space, a little bit of griminess that we can point to and say, hey, yeah, this is punk rock. This is this is something exciting and energetic that is outside the best. of what the suits and regulations want the crypto space to do. So what I would like to see is more investment in TradFi-type crypto products and crypto teams, because, again, that might give cover to the scrappy underdogs that are fighting back

against that system and will see a competitive rivalry between. two parts of the market that do seem at heads with one another. But because crypto is a technology, all of them can coexist, even if they're at far opposite ends of what they want out of on-chain finance. So that's my Monday morning rant about all of this stuff. All right. On to the next one. Yeah.

All right. I mean, I don't want to get myself in trouble by reacting too, too fiercely against this. But this is from Saylor's Twitter timeline yesterday. And to give you context, I mean, perhaps you already know, but, you know, strategy posted a pretty sizable loss last quarter. And it was so big that it forced Fongle, the CEO. to kind of telegraph that perhaps soon strategy might have to start selling Bitcoin in order to fund its dividend payments to shareholders. And since then we've had Michael Saylor kind of, I think over the weekend he said that

whatever Bitcoin they sell, they're going to buy 20 times the amount that they sell. So it's all within context of itself and that trying to say that a strategy selling Bitcoin might not be the worst than the world. They have a ton. They have enough to sell. So no worries there. But I'm just going to play this. I'm not sure if we're going to get all the way through it.

But this is essentially what we are working with right now. Let me recap the earning call. They said, Mike, don't touch the Bitcoin stack. Now I'm buying more while they fighting into black. Estriasi printing. Engine running clean, watching debt transform into the Bitcoin. Bitcoin dream turned on the BTC drive. No shame in my face.

65 billion and I'm still winning the race. They panic when I say. Sell a little coin just to prove the whole market doesn't break or get destroyed. Company fine. Bitcoin fine. World still spins. You scream Ponzi while the wheat cave in. Bitcoin getting stronger.

Every cycle reborn while I keep building through the middle of the storm. I'd like nothing better than to rip your wings off. Every short position getting weaker when we lift off. I'd like nothing better than to. We use the equity ATM. Yeah, we said it with pride. Okay. I mean, for those that aren't following this on screen,

we basically have a Zoom call populated with all the executives at strategy. and it's obviously AI being led by a rapping Michael Saylor and they're all dancing on screen, you know. And it's just odd that we see Sailor really leaning into this kind of content considering Vitalik really pioneered this type of energy when it comes to when it comes to crypto and addressing, getting your story across through dance. Let's say that.

And I'm not sure that I would ever put Saylor and Vitalik side by side in terms of, of, I'm using this word a lot today, culture that they bring to crypto, but here you go. I mean, obviously it's all fun. And Sailor has done, I mean, I said it in the previous segment. I said it only 10 minutes ago that Sailor has done an incredible amount when it comes to justifying the value proposition of Bitcoin. And we can debate how deep that. really runs all day considering the texture that he brings to Bitcoin is essentially that he's buying

a bunch of it and pumping the price up, if not directly, but indirectly as well. You know, so I don't want to, I don't want to really, you know, stir the pot too much when it comes, when it comes to sale of stuff. But at least this is what, this is, this is about where we are at. But I will say, I mean, the Bitcoin is the digital capital people. have really been going on an offensive, you know, over the past few days because I think over the weekend on May 7th. So yeah, late last week, we had Jeff Walton, who is from Strive, another Bitcoin Treasury company, sit down with Coffey-Zilla to discuss micro-strategy and strategy. And, you know, if you're not familiar with Coffizilla, he brands himself as the internet detective.

And he does a lot of exposing crypto scams and stuff like that, which, you know, I think even the Bitcoin Maxis in the audience will appreciate that someone is out there fighting the good fight when it comes to, you know, taking down Logan Paul's NFT scam or what have you. and he's very energized at taking apart frauds and everything. He focused a lot on Celsius, a lot on SBF. And in general, he's also been making the case that strategy through its relentless Bitcoin buying and it's like financial engineering of different types of shares and financial systems in order to, to continue to pay out dividends on strategies, Bitcoin holdings in different ways,

started to brand strategy as something of a Ponzi scheme. And if you miss this chat between Jeff Walton and Coffizilla, it's worth checking it out. Essentially what it comes down to is that strategy and all other digital asset companies that they believe that the price of Bitcoin is going to appreciate every year on average over the next decade, two decades,

and that is essentially how they are able to tailor these products to people who are willing to take on that risk, who also believe that the price of Bitcoin is going to increase every year for the next 10, 20 years. And it is essentially a disagreement of belief in that particular fact. I would definitely attach this podcast if you can because it is quite illuminating to see how the mind of the, the skeptic works,

when faced with true belief in something that something is going to go up and to the right ad nauseum forever, as Sala likes to say. But it's just curious that we have this Coffee Zilla podcast dropping, Sala dropping dance memes, and rapping on eggs to kind of bite back to the bears who might say, who might like to,

poke fun at strategy for finally having to sell Bitcoin. They haven't sold any yet, but something that was curious in Sailor's wrap going back to that is that they mentioned, he mentioned that they could just sell Bitcoin to prove that nothing bad would really happen to the price of Bitcoin, even if they did sell a little bit of it. And that reminds me of what Tesla did. Tesla also bought a bunch of Bitcoin and then chose to offload some of it. Elon Musk said at the time that they sold off, I think 10% of their supply. in order to test the liquidity of the Bitcoin market to prove the value of the asset that they were keeping on their balance sheet. And it's just funny to see Saylor essentially making the same case, which, hey, I suppose it could be true.

But that about covers it today. It wasn't too deep in terms of different news stories today, but it's only Monday morning. It's a little bit of a slow weekend in the grand scheme of things. But we're going to catch you on Wednesday for more. and let's see what else is happening across the crypto space in the next day or two. In the meantime, please take care of yourselves and we'll catch you next time. Goodbye.