BRICS vs. Trump: What Happens Now?

If there’s one thing you can bet Donald Trump isn’t a fan of, it’s a club of nations bent on countering the dominance of the US and the dollar. And, if you happen to be a member of such a club of nations, then the one person you probably don’t want to see in the White House is… Donald Trump.

The BRICS project certainly seems to have lost some of its swagger since DJT regained the presidency. China’s head honcho Xi Jinping was notably absent from its recent summit in Brazil, where little of any consequence was achieved. With the US flexing its economic muscles and significant divisions between its two largest member countries, BRICS appears to be on the back foot.

But, behind the scenes, the whole justification for the bloc’s existence is growing stronger by the day. Trump’s tariff onslaught earlier this year was yet another example of the US trying to bully other countries with its economic strength, made easier by the fact that it issues the global reserve currency. From the perspective of BRICS members and indeed many other countries, the need for a counterweight to US hegemony is becoming increasingly urgent.

In today’s video, we assess the current state of play with BRICS and dig beneath the surface to see what they’re up to. We examine the recent signs of weakness that have been on show and ask what it all means for us, the world and the markets. The BRICS may be down, but they sure as heck aren’t out.

You can watch that video here.

📈 Crypto Market Forecast 📈

Pullbacks are ideal for crypto prices to continue moving higher. That’s because they help reset positioning and sentiment. This makes rallies sustainable and results in higher highs. What’s not ideal is that crypto pullbacks are often accompanied by a large amount of long liquidations, which cause forced selling and crypto prices to fall more than people expect in the short term.

Naturally, this causes people to panic, especially when the crypto market was experiencing gradually lower lows just a few weeks ago. As the saying goes, when in doubt, zoom out. Even with more than $1 billion in long liquidations, most cryptocurrencies continue to be in a clear uptrend. More importantly, stocks have been hitting all-time highs, suggesting a bullish macro backdrop.

Logically then, this suggests that the long liquidations which caused crypto prices to fall are not only a factor that’s specific to crypto, but a factor that’s likely to be resolved with a continuation higher. Unless there is some bearish macro catalyst by the time you read this, chances are that Bitcoin and most of the cryptos you’re watching have started rallying, or have even recovered.

But of course, a continuation higher requires a bullish catalyst, be it crypto or macro related. On the crypto front, the most obvious catalyst is the SEC’s highly anticipated innovation exemption, which would basically legalize everything in crypto in the US for a limited time. It looks like the SEC is making progress by recently asking for feedback about the proposed exemptive order.

On the macro front, the one to watch is the Fed’s next meeting, which will take place this Wednesday, July 30th. The CME’s FedWatch tool signals the Fed will not change interest rates, but Jerome Powell could signal in his speech that the Fed will make moves at its next meeting, be it in terms of rates, or balance sheet. So long as he’s not hawkish, it should be bullish.

There are two big caveats though, and that’s the two macro catalysts that will occur two days after the Fed’s meeting. The first is the unemployment rate for July which will be published this Friday, August 1st. This number is likely to be benign and have a muted effect on the markets, but any deviation above or below the 4.1% rate investors expect could result in volatility.

The second macro catalyst is evidently more important, and that’s the fact that the US will officially implement tariffs on foreign countries starting on Friday, August 1st. In case you missed the news, some of these finalized tariffs are higher than expected, whereas most are lower than expected. Regardless, the final amounts could change leading up to this date, causing volatility.

This is why it’s interesting that OpenAI is reportedly planning on launching GPT-5 at the beginning of August. To bring you up to speed, most of the gains we’ve seen in the stock market have come from a handful of tech stocks known as the Magnificent Seven. In turn, the reason why these tech stocks have rallied so much has been due to the ongoing hype around AI.

Given this fact, the launch of OpenAI’s GPT-5 model could reignite speculation in tech stocks, particularly if experts begin claiming that this newest model is bordering on Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI. At the very least, it’s likely to be a catalyst analogous to the launch of DeepSeek out of China back in February, which caused lots of inflows into Chinese tech stocks.

Put simply, the launch of GPT-5 in early August could be a catalyst that either takes the stock market to new highs, or rescues it from a bigger drawdown after the tariffs are implemented on August 1st. And as most of you will know, crypto is highly correlated to the stock market. This means crypto would likely participate in that rally, particularly AI-related cryptos.

In the shorter term, the key trend to watch is the slow rotation from Bitcoin into Ethereum, which can be seen on the ETH/BTC chart. This kept altcoins surprisingly resilient during the pullback late last week, evidenced by the fact that Bitcoin Dominance continued to fall, despite the crypto market drawdown. This suggests investors were buying altcoin dips rather than fleeing to safety.

Notably, this is a dynamic that the crypto market has not seen for some time, and it suggests that higher highs for BTC, ETH, and many altcoins could be in order in the coming weeks. As we’ve noted, however, there are a few more hurdles to jump this week before the coast is clear.

😮 pump.fun Postmortem 😮

Many believed the $PUMP token would see a massive run up after TGE. After all, the $500 million ICO sold out in less than 12 minutes.

Data from Dune showed that the average buy per ICO participant was $44,000, whereas the median was around $550. It also showed that more than 23,000 unique wallets completed KYC measures to participate in the sale, with fewer than half of them (around 10,000 buyers) being able to successfully purchase tokens in the sale. While half of these buyers made a purchase of less than $1000, around 200 ICO participants had each invested over $1 million into the token.

On the surface, all of this seemed to suggest intense demand. Not to mention, pump.fun and memecoins have dominated mindshare for most of this cycle. Surely, a $PUMP long trade was a no-brainer? In fact, for the first few days post launch, $PUMP was trading at 50% above its ICO price.

Well, this façade quickly crumbled as the token struggled to break above an FDV of $6.8 billion. In less than 36 hours, $PUMP reversed course to revisit its ICO price. Almost instantly, trading volumes for $PUMP fell by almost 50%, foreshadowing further price pain and waning market confidence. Fast forward to the time of writing this article, $PUMP is trading at a price almost half its ICO price.

What went wrong?

Well, some reasons are obvious. For instance, the team’s deliberate opacity around certain aspects of the token supply left investors feeling vulnerable. In fact, there was massive uncertainty around how much of the token supply would go towards a possible $PUMP airdrop. Not to mention, if or when this airdrop would happen. Given the team’s reluctance to disclose this information, early investors began to risk-off their positions. In fact, two major investors dumped almost $100M of $PUMP shortly after it saw a second rejection at an FDV of $6.8 billion.

On the other hand, the broader market movement during $PUMP’s launch also played a role in its price decline. Notably, $PUMP launched right as BTC hit new all-time highs. Additionally, ETH also began to make a double-digit percentage price gain that week, after months of suppressed price action. In comparison, $PUMP’s relatively slow price action likely resulted in traders capitulating liquidity towards more established altcoins.

Another factor that contributed towards falling market confidence in $PUMP was the team’s well-intentioned but inconsistent buyback scheme. For instance, the massive multi-million dollar buybacks on days one and two were followed by sub 1-million dollar buybacks on day three and onwards. When you combine this with pump.fun competitor LetsBonk's recent rise in market share and transparent buyback scheme, you get a complete picture.

In fact, $PUMP’s price decline almost inversely aligns with $BONK’s price rise. While both projects seemed to be neck and neck on the leaderboard last week, LetsBonk has since consistently overtaken pump.fun as leader within the launchpad space. A closer look at the data shows that LetsBonk.fun has a clear edge over pump.fun when it comes to the number of daily token launches and percentage of tokens bonded. To be specific, the number of tokens being launched on LetsBonk is on average almost three times the number of tokens being launched on pump.fun. In other words, memecoin creators seem to prefer LetsBonk.fun over pump.fun at the moment.

This is likely why most of pump.fun’s recent updates/feature launches have been geared towards creators – for instance, its focus on live-streaming and the new option to redirect creator fees to a new wallet for CTO memecoins. This was also acknowledged by Pumpfun creator Alon in a recent interview with live-streamer ThreadGuy.

Notably, when questioned about what the team is doing to bring back creators to the platform, Alon offered vague responses that focused on upcoming improvements to the platform’s PumpSwap product. The broad strokes plan seems to be creating a “PumpSwap 2.0,” that will offer a better fee structure to incentivise creators, along with taking a mobile-first approach to prioritise convenience for onboarding new users.

In our opinion, this could be a viable path for the platform. Notably, according to a recent Blockworks Research piece, more than 66% of LetsBonk’s trading volume originates from third-party trading apps, while pump.fun only sees 30% of its trading volume from third-party platforms. In other words, third-party trading apps like Axiom and BullX control end user flows. Given its $2B war chest, pump.fun could make significant moves by potentially acquiring and integrating any one of these third-party applications into its native mobile-first stack.

Another viable option would be to create utility for $PUMP that drives boosted creator benefits on the platform. For instance, $PUMP stakers could receive boosted creator earnings, discounted platform fees and better infra for trading tokens. Other measures could involve redirecting a fixed percentage of revenue towards benefitting creators in the ecosystem. As one X user named Dougie suggests, a portion of PumpSwap’s daily earnings could be used to automatically purchase the top 5-10 tokens by volume every day. This would help create a positive flywheel that deepens liquidity, attracts more creators, pushes more trading through PumpSwap and generates more fees to finance the loop.

That said, while possible solutions are almost infinite, the crux of the market’s problem with pump.fun is that it remains indecisive and slow to execute. Especially as competitor LetsBonk seems to be leaning heavily into pump.fun‘s slow momentum to launch new features and creator benefits at an accelerated pace. In fact, Dougie’s suggestion about pump.fun redirecting revenue to ecosystem tokens was implemented by LetsBonk just a couple of days later.

As it stands now, the situation is almost similar to what we saw happen between NFT marketplaces Blur and OpenSea a few years ago. The incumbent market leader lost its throne to the new entrant and never recovered.

Only time will tell if history repeats or deviates. Until then, $PUMP holders are in for a bumpy ride.  

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🔮 Video Pipeline 🔮

* Summer Davos: The global shifts discussed & what it means for you?
* Bitcoin Dominance: What is it & how you can use it to profit?
* Bitcoin Games: Which free-to-play BTC earn games are worth it?
* Millionaire Migration 2025: Why are they leaving & where are they going?

🏆 What's New at CoinBureau.com This Week? 🏆

* Comparing Exodus and Solflare: Which Wallet Should You Choose?
* Understanding Strategic Bitcoin Reserves: A Comprehensive Guide
* Is Phemex A Good Crypto Exchange In 2025? An Expert Review
* Exploring Your Investment Choices: Cryptocurrency or Index Funds?
* Switching from Bitget? Here Are the Best Alternatives
* Ledger Recovery Key: Is This the 'Spare Key' Self-Custody Needs?

📖 Quote of the Week 📖

If entering a position makes you nervous, chances are that it could be one of your best trades ever.

“In investing, what is comfortable is rarely profitable” - Robert Arnott

Team Coin Bureau

Disclosure: Authors may own cryptoassets named in this newsletter. These are unqualified opinions, and a Coin Bureau newsletter, is meant for informational purposes only. It is not meant to serve as investment advice. Please consult with your investment, tax, or legal advisor.