💰 Retail gets a seat at the IPO table

🔎 Quick Explainer: What does “30% retail allocation” mean?

• IPO shares are usually handed to Wall Street funds before trading starts.

• Retail investors normally only buy after the stock lists, often at higher prices.

• Gemini is reserving 30% of its IPO shares for apps like Robinhood and Webull, so everyday traders can buy at the IPO price alongside institutions.

• The catch? Anti-flipping rules. You can’t dump those shares for the first month.

💡 On a side note: How did Figure do?

Figure’s IPO was the first billion dollar crypto IPO to hit this week. Figure is a fintech that uses blockchain to speed up home loans, and it just pulled off a solid IPO. It raised $787.5M at $25/share, giving it a $5.3B valuation. This is a positive sign for Gemini, which has a much broader market appeal.

📈 Market Watch

All eyes on AVAX

This week, the Avalanche Foundation unveiled plans for two treasury firms in the U.S. One created through a merger with a listed company, the other a SPAC raise. Together, they aim to raise $1B for an AVAX treasury, with backing from Hivemind and Dragonfly Capital.

The playbook looks like this:

• $500M private placement into a Nasdaq-listed company.

• Another $500M via a SPAC deal, expected to close in October.

The market liked it. AVAX jumped to $29.12, a three-month high, adding fresh momentum to a token that’s been clawing back relevance since its gaming hub days.

Avalanche’s pitch is clear: it wants to be the blockchain for capital markets. Ethereum, Solana, and BNB are already in that race, but Avalanche is betting a deep treasury plus partnerships with names like BlackRock and Visa can tilt the odds.

Of course, there’s a catch. Some of the treasury funds may come from Avalanche’s own reserves, sold at a discount. It is a way to monetize holdings without dumping on the open market. That raises the question: does a $1B war chest show confidence, or just clever accounting?

👉 Avalanche is trying to level up from “another alt L1” to “Wall Street-ready ledger.” The $1B treasury could make AVAX more attractive to institutions, if they believe the chain can win real market share.

But this treasury magic could also backfire, we have seen the playbook before. Short term price pump does not mean that retail might be in for the long term, and AVAX has to stand the test of relevance in a market dominated by crowd favourites like SOL, ETH and BNB.

 🤯 This blew our mind

 👀 Charts everyone is talking about

Here are Cryptopolitan’s top picks:

1. Linea token crashes immediately after going live as whales rush to sell

2. BNB aims for $1000

3. Oracle looks incredible

4. Tech stocks effectively are the stock market

5. Apple stock retraces after the launch of Iphone17

Headline picks: Curated by SEO team

💰 Big Deals

Oracle + OpenAI ink $300B cloud pact

OpenAI just signed one of the largest cloud contracts in history: a five-year, $300B deal with Oracle starting in 2027.

The scale is absurd. It’ll take 4.5 gigawatts of power, enough to run 4 million homes, just to fuel the new data centers. For comparison, that’s more output than two Hoover Dams.

Oracle’s stock went vertical (+42%), pushing Larry Ellison’s net worth up $100B overnight to nearly $400B. OpenAI, meanwhile, is betting its entire future on growth, since the contract means shelling out ~$60B a year while only pulling in ~$10B in revenue today.