Sam Reynolds

<div id="highlights-block_6014540ab5609" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>The trust will be offered under Rule 506(c) framework</li>
 <li>The size of trust and premiums are currently unknown</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



BlockFi is the <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/blockfi-seeks-new-funding-ahead-of-ipo-plans/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">latest company</a> to signal its intent to offer a Bitcoin trust investment vehicle, <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1842696/000095010321001273/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml">filing the initial documents</a> with the Securities and Exchange Commission Friday morning.&nbsp;



BlockFi did not disclose the range of the asset values that will be placed in trust. For the sake of comparison, Grayscale’s bitcoin trust has over $20 billion in assets. Toronto-based Ninepoint Partners recently <a href="https://www.ninepoint.com/about-ninepoint/press-releases/bitcoin-trust-completes-cad-230-million-initial-public-offering/">established</a> a bitcoin trust with an asset value of $180 million ($230 million CAD).&nbsp;



BlockFi’s trust will be offered under the SEC’s 506c rule, a common legal framework used to issue private placements in funds and trusts. However, this will limit participation in the trust to accredited investors.&nbsp;



The New Jersey-based BlockFi has raised $158.7 million to date and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/75338/blockfi-raises-50-million-eyes-potential-spac" rel="noreferrer noopener">has said</a> it plans to go public in the second half of 2021 through a special purpose acquisition company.

BlockFi Registers Bitcoin Trust With SEC

Byron Gilliam

This is a segment from The Breakdown newsletter. To read more editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/brand/the-breakdown">subscribe</a>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“We are what we repeatedly do.”



— Aristotle
</blockquote>



Central banks are buying gold in the 21st century for the same reason Romans bought it in the first: It has value because people perceive it to have value.&nbsp;



That circular logic has proved so durable that the purchasing power of gold is <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w18706/w18706.pdf">virtually unchanged</a> since antiquity.



In that sense, central banks are buying gold now because Romans were buying it then.



Perception has become reality through repetition.



The bet with crypto is that it can pull off the same trick, but faster — compressing millennia of belief into a few short decades.&nbsp;



Lately, it’s started to look like it might.



Recent <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5029660">research</a> offers empirical evidence that people are using crypto to protect against the risk of government default: “A 10% increase in sovereign CDS spreads is associated with a 2.9-4% increase in crypto app downloads.”



10%!!! 



It doesn’t take much to move a credit default swap 10%, so that correlation suggests people are quick to turn to crypto at any sign of a debt crisis.



Importantly, the correlation tests positive for causality: “Crypto adoption jumps in the months following news related to sovereign risk.”



The researchers established cause and effect by studying credit-risk events like inflation shocks in Argentina, Turkey and Venezuela and sovereign debt crises in Sri Lanka, Greece and Ecuador.



Advocates have been telling these stories for years as proof of crypto’s utility, but with limited effect likely because the evidence was only anecdotal.



But the data now supports the narrative.



In short, the study confirms that when bank depositors are reduced to <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/15/what-is-behind-lebanons-bank-robberies-explainer?utm_source=chatgpt.com">stealing their own money</a>, people really do turn to crypto.



Other studies also suggest that crypto’s narratives often line up with reality.



Bitcoin, for example, has long been framed as an escape hatch from irresponsible economic policymaking by corrupt governments — and that is, in fact, how people use it.



“We document a flight-to-bitcoin (FTB) phenomenon,” one <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3278469">study</a> concludes, “whereby local demand for bitcoin increases with local economic policy uncertainties.”&nbsp;



“FTB is driven by investors’ lack of confidence in government as FTB is stronger in countries where the confidence in government is low and corruption incidents surge,” the authors explain.&nbsp;



It gets even better for the broader crypto narrative: “Bitcoin ownership shifts from centralized exchanges to decentralized wallets amid such turbulence.”



What could be more crypto-narrative-confirming than that?&nbsp;



Another <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1544612325013984">study</a> even cites crypto as a reason for corrupt governments to change their ways, concluding that “the control of corruption appears to discourage cryptocurrency adoption.”



Crypto advocates sometimes celebrate government dysfunction as another confirmation of their narrative (and who doesn’t love having their narrative confirmed?). But if crypto could frighten governments into good-governance reforms, that would be an even better story, I think.



The same study finds that “higher emigrant ratios in…lower-income countries are associated with increased cryptocurrency usage” — with the implication that people find crypto useful for remittances.&nbsp;



Remittances is one of crypto&#8217;s original use cases, but it’s always been surprisingly hard to quantify.&nbsp;



Western Union still hasn’t been fully undermined by crypto, but seeing the empirical evidence makes the remittances narrative more substantial.



Finally, another <a href="https://www.emerald.com/jfrc/article-abstract/33/3/406/1274488/Sanctions-and-cryptocurrency-a-catalyst-for?redirectedFrom=PDF">study</a> backs one of crypto’s grandest storylines — that it puts money and finance beyond the reach of government control. 



Studying the relationship between international sanctions and crypto usage, the authors conclude that “sanctions can act as a significant motivator for countries to adopt cryptocurrencies.”



Satoshi set out to create non-sovereign money, and sanctions evasion is proof that it works as such.



If these academic studies feel, well, academic to you, you’re probably reading from a developed economy: All of the studies found their results primarily in emerging markets.



In the US, by contrast, bitcoin’s “digital gold” narrative took a hit in 2023 when it failed to hedge against 9% inflation.



But the study on sovereign default risk showed that people mostly use bitcoin to hedge inflation risks resulting from a sovereign debt crisis, and not, say, supply shocks.



Even with CPI at 9%, no one doubted the US’s ability to service its debts, so people didn’t feel compelled to swap their dollars for bitcoin.



But there are signs that crypto’s value proposition is starting to be recognized in developed countries, too.



“In just the last year,” the lead author of the paper on sovereign debt <a href="https://youtu.be/YEXsFk4XKX0?si=kXyB3ybbVzjp-MGA&amp;t=2827">observed</a>, “we’ve seen [the crypto] narrative migrate from being just an emerging markets’ story to one that folks in advanced economies are contemplating, too.”



The signs are mostly anecdotal so far, but also impossible to miss: Larry Fink referring to bitcoin as a “flight to safety” asset class; Jim Cramer recommending both bitcoin and ethereum as a hedge against deficit spending; even the US government itself starting a strategic bitcoin reserve to hedge against its own irresponsibility.



The risk of US default remains small — but not so small that Wall Street, CNBC and the US Treasury can resist hedging it with bitcoin.



The more that behavior is repeated, the more the perception of crypto will become its reality.



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Empire</a>: Crypto news and analysis to start your day.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forward-guidance">Forward Guidance</a>: The intersection of crypto, macro and policy.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">The Drop</a>: Apps, games, memes and more.</li>



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Are crypto narratives becoming reality?

Macauley Peterson

Skeptics of Ethereum’s rollup-centric roadmap have speculated that layer-2 networks might eventually peel away from the ecosystem. The concern was that rollup teams would grow tired of paying Ethereum’s data availability fees and break off into sovereign layer-1 chains with their own validators.



But so far, that hasn’t happened. Instead, the gravitational pull has flowed the other way: independent layer-1s are re-architecting themselves as <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ethereum">Ethereum</a> L2s.



Celo and Lisk are two prominent examples. Celo launched in 2020 aiming to build a mobile-first, payments-centric L1 with its own stablecoins and identity layer. Lisk’s origins go back even further to 2016, when it launched with a focus on onboarding JavaScript developers through a custom SDK and sidechains.



But by the 2022–2023 bear market, both faced a common challenge seen across many mid-tier L1s: limited liquidity, fragmented developer ecosystems, and difficulty attracting and retaining users beyond niche use cases.



Rather than double down on independence, both chains opted to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/celo-migration-to-ethereum">plug into Ethereum</a>. Celo completed its migration in March 2025, relaunching as an <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/optimism">OP Stack</a> rollup using <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/eigencloud-launch-a16z-eigenlayer">EigenDA</a> for <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-roadmap-data-availability-da">data availability</a>.



“It was the right time to return home to Ethereum,” Rene Reinsberg, Celo co-founder, told Blockworks, citing new infrastructure like rollup-in-a-box stacks. “This allowed Celo to maintain its unique technical advantages like 1-block finality, sub-cent gas fees, and ERC-20 tokens as gas currencies… while gaining Ethereum’s security, community, and network effects.”



Celo says its community overwhelmingly supported the shift, with unanimous votes through onchain governance and proposals reviewed in public calls and open forums.&nbsp;



“Building in the open was, and remains, a core priority,” Reinsberg said.



The results are <a href="https://blockworks.co/analytics/celo">showing in the metrics</a>. According to Celo, daily active users now top 600,000, and stablecoin transfers have reached over 123 million across more than 1.1 million wallets. The chain also reports over $1 billion in monthly stablecoin volume and a 365% increase in protocol revenue since the migration. Celo’s onchain FX platform, Mento, recently processed over $200 million in a single day.



Much of the usage has been driven by real-world applications like MiniPay, a mobile wallet integrated with Opera’s browser.&nbsp;



“MiniPay’s built for everyday users,” the team said, noting that it recently surpassed 8 million activated wallets. Meanwhile, DeFi integrations have accelerated, with <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/aave">Aave</a> V3 hitting its initial supply caps, prompting governance to raise limits for USDT, ETH, and CELO.



Lisk’s path followed a similar arc. In May 2024, it migrated its <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/lsk">LSK</a> token to Ethereum and relaunched as an OP Stack rollup using Ethereum’s blobspace for DA. Its “DAO Season 1” campaign reportedly attracted over 277,000 new accounts and 48 million transactions. Lisk is now betting on distribution and Ethereum-native interoperability to power its next growth phase.



“The so‑called ‘crisis’ in Ethereum was never truly real, because Ethereum has never been just another ecosystem,” Dominic Schwenter, COO of Lisk, told Blockworks.



“Projects are joining the Ethereum ecosystem to interoperate, not compete…It has set the highest standard for what it means to scale technology at the most decentralized level possible,” he said.



The contrast with the feared L2-to-L1 narrative is stark, with virtually no examples of successful pivots. DYdX <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-solana-cosmos-convergence-blockchain-founders">left StarkEx</a> for a Cosmos appchain in 2023. Starknet continues to post data to Ethereum, and every major rollup launched since 2021 — <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/arbitrum">Arbitrum</a>, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/base">Base</a>, OP Mainnet, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/zksync">zkSync</a>, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/unichain-mainnet-is-live">Unichain</a>, Linea — remains anchored to Ethereum.



“The Ethereum community has the strongest network effects,” Reinsberg said. “This fact has helped guide the migration.” And rather than see it as a step down in sovereignty, Celo sees its L2 status as a way to scale Ethereum into emerging markets where mobile-first financial access is critical.



The upshot is, Ethereum’s center of gravity is growing stronger. Despite the persistent “L1 premium” reflected in certain token prices, no L2 has broken away to become a sovereign L1 in the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/rollups">rollup</a> era, while several L1s have chosen to become L2s.&nbsp;



For users, that means cheaper fees, more stablecoin liquidity, and a better onchain UX. For Ethereum, it signals a future where more of the network forms around a shared security and settlement core.



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Rollup reality check: It’s the L1s that are defecting

Ben Strack

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forward-guidance" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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More crypto IPO filings from Gemini and Figure affirm investors will soon have a more complex investment universe to navigate.&nbsp;



<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/circle-shares-nyse-day-one">Circle’s IPO turned heads</a> in June. Bullish followed suit with its own <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bullish-stock-surges-ipo-110">NYSE listing</a> two months later. It’s safe to say we’re just getting started.&nbsp;



I’m a journalist, so I won’t tell you which stocks to pick. I also don’t know; that would depend on the specific exposure you’re looking for. You must know by now that crypto companies are not a monolith. You have your miners, your exchanges, your stablecoin issuers, etc. Coinbase was one of the only renowned crypto stocks in town for a while after its 2021 direct listing.&nbsp;



More recent <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/genius-act-passes-house">regulatory</a> <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/us-house-passes-clarity-act">tailwinds</a>, crypto price surges and TradFi’s embrace of the space spurred demand for more pure-play exposure to crypto sectors with big growth potential (i.e. stablecoins and tokenization), Bitwise research head Ryan Rasmussen noted.&nbsp;



You therefore saw what he called the “massively oversubscribed” IPOs for Circle and Bullish. And he argued that investors haven’t fully gotten their fill.



“We expect investors to remain excited about crypto IPOs through the year end and beyond,” he told me. “Despite a handful of recent and successful crypto IPOs, there remains a massive shortage of publicly traded crypto companies.”



Gemini submitted an <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2055592/000110465925079323/tm255912-12_drsa.htm">S-1</a> with the SEC on Friday, marking its latest step toward an IPO. Blockchain-based lender Figure followed <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2064124/000162828025040673/ftintermediateinc-sx1.htm">suit</a> Monday, applying to list its Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Market.



Asset manager <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/grayscale-exposure-signals-etfs">Grayscale</a> and crypto custodian BitGo are among those also waiting their turn.



I asked Dan Weiskopf, co-PM of the Amplify Transformational Data Sharing ETF (BLOK), about how to evaluate this growing set of public companies. His fund was essentially the first to focus on blockchain/crypto equities when it launched in 2018.&nbsp;



The space, of course, was a lot smaller seven years ago. The category’s universe has expanded by 25-35% over the past six months alone, Weiskopf told me.&nbsp;



BLOK’s process begins by evaluating the management’s experience in and commitment to the space. It tries to omit positions in firms “just trying to chase the fast buck,” Weiskopf noted.&nbsp;



“We are focused on operators who are trying to solve the necessary infrastructure problem beyond just facilitating transactions,” the BLOK PM added.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Also, valuations matter. Overpaying will obviously hurt returns.&nbsp;



“We have learned from past cycles that patience can be rewarded,” Weiskopf said. “We nibbled on CRCL when it first came out, but the run-up was too fast. We will be watching for the moat to be built on partnerships and distribution.”



A reminder: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/circle-shares-nyse-day-one">CRCL shares opened</a> at $69 (up from the IPO price of $31). Circle stock peaked near $300 later that month but was trading around $134 as of this afternoon.



When the bench of public crypto firms is deep enough, retail and institutional investors will want exposure via index funds, Rasmussen explained — like they do across other markets, from energy to biotech.&nbsp;



“Most investors don’t want to spend time attempting to pick winners and losers,” Rasmussen said. “They just want to own the market.” (I’ve heard that sentiment on <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/hashdex-crypto-etfs-index-sec-interview">the tokens front</a>, too).&nbsp;



And there will, indeed, be winners and losers.



Gemini, in its S-1, noted the “highly competitive industry” in which it operates — adding that DEXs and DAOs “may be able to innovate faster and offer products and services that we do not offer.”&nbsp;



The crypto platform, which lost $282 million in the first half of 2025, looks to diversify its revenue streams beyond mainly transactions.



Figure summarizes its mission as “building the future of capital markets using blockchain-based technology.” Its success will depend in part on the continued demand for home equity lines of credit, which Figure notes comprised over 99% of its total loan originations in 2025’s first half.



So as the crypto stock universe expands, take note of the nuances. Or, I guess, just buy the index.



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Evaluating crypto stocks with more IPOs on deck

Kate Irwin

This is a segment from The Drop newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/the-drop" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Wyoming’s Stable Token Commission is launching its state stablecoin, FRNT, across seven blockchains using LayerZero’s tech. There are plans for it to be yield-bearing.



LayerZero CEO Bryan Pellegrino emphasized in an interview that would be a key differentiator between what could set FRNT apart from other stablecoins.



The “Frontier” stablecoin, which is backed by US dollars and short-term US Treasurys and won’t have a fixed supply, is being deployed on Ethereum, Solana, Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon and Avalanche.&nbsp;



It’s a first for any US state — and a sign that you can just do things.&nbsp;



It has taken a few years, though: The Wyoming Stable Token Act passed in March 2023, which established the Commission and set all this in motion.



“When I heard that a state was doing this, I was like, okay, like, that’s kind of crazy. Clearly very forward-thinking and innovative,” Pellegrino said.



“Wyoming has done this with their banking regulation around crypto, with all of the DAO structure. They&#8217;ve been really, really progressive on that side,” he added. “They had the vision of like, hey, we have a competitive advantage here that no central issuer has, right?”&nbsp;



Some of the profits from FRNT interest will be paid to the Wyoming School Foundation to fund state-level education (the <a href="https://www.wyoleg.gov/Legislation/2023/SF0127">Stable Token Act</a> states that after operational costs are deducted, some profits will be kept as savings for future expenses).&nbsp;



The Commission says the stablecoin facilitates “secure, transparent, and efficient digital transactions” and is intended for people and businesses around the world. Like all crypto transactions, FRNT transactions in theory let users avoid middlemen payment providers, but users will still have to pay a nominal fee every time.



Besides funding education, the move puts Wyoming on the global stage yet again as a key crypto player — and destination.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Today, Commission Chairman &amp; <a href="https://twitter.com/GovernorGordon?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@GovernorGordon</a> announced the mainnet launch of the Frontier Stable Token (FRNT). This historic move marks Wyoming as the first public entity in the United States to issue a blockchain-based stable token. FRNT is designed to provide secure&#8230;&mdash; Wyoming Stable Token Commission (@wyostable) <a href="https://twitter.com/wyostable/status/1957767185415245891?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 19, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Pellegrino predicts FRNT will see adoption from emerging markets looking to gain access to the US Dollar and economy.



“Getting exposure to it will become easier and easier as it’s adopted in more places,” he said.



Wyoming Stable Token Commission Executive Director Anthony Apollo explained in a statement that using LayerZero’s tech allows them to adhere to state guidance to take a “multi-chain, technology-neutral” approach.&nbsp;



The stablecoin on Solana will be available on Kraken “in the coming days,” according to a <a href="https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/WYGOV/bulletins/3ee734a">release</a> from Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon.



FRNT will also be available to spend via a Visa <a href="https://www.rain.xyz/resources/frontier-stable-token-frnt-debuts-rain-issued-card-on-avalanche-for-everyday-stablecoin-spending">card</a> from payments firm Rain.



The governor’s office and the Stable Token Commission are expected to make another announcement when FRNT becomes more publicly available.



Based on a <a href="https://stabletoken.wyo.gov/pages/about-us">timeline</a> from the Stable Token Commission, that may be as soon as next month.



“Everything’s just like a really great bellwether for the industry as a whole,” Pellegrino said. “Just shows the US leaning in in a way that they were not a couple of years ago.”



Updated 8/19/2025 at 3:05 p.m. to reflect future plans about FRNT as a yield-bearing token.



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Wyoming FRNT stablecoin on Solana to go live on Kraken

Donovan Choy

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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The decentralized wireless company Helium is planning to funnel 100% of Helium mobile subscriber revenues to HNT token burns, co-founder and CEO Amir Haleem <a href="https://x.com/amirhaleem/status/1957200674539581521">tweeted</a> yesterday.



It’s not clear if Helium plans to buy HNT on the open market or simply burn tokens from its treasury, but the initiative is going into effect “this week, barring any weird logistics,” he <a href="https://x.com/amirhaleem/status/1957214730344624605">said</a>.



In any case, that’s an <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/flashnotes/helium-halving-tailwinds">estimated</a> $2.3 million in monthly gross revenues offchain that otherwise would have gone to Helium’s parent company, Nova Labs, now being redirected to HNT token holders.



HNT is Helium’s native SPL token, which migrated to Solana from its own L1 appchain in April 2023.



When users pay USD to use Helium’s network, it’s swapped under the hood to HNT, which is then burned for a consumable fixed-price token of $0.00001 known as “Data Credits.”



Today, Helium has about <a href="https://world.helium.com/en/network/mobile">1.1 million</a> daily users across 108,850 hotspots.



The majority of Helium’s revenues is driven primarily by WiFi carrier offload, rather than its own mobile virtual network operator (MVNO).&nbsp;



When users of big telcos like AT&amp;T or T-Mobile are near a Helium WiFi spot, they can shift that data onto Helium’s network automatically and pay Helium on a per-demand basis.



This way, major carriers avoid additional CapEx while still managing to improve coverage for customers in hard-to-serve or obscure locations.



Earlier this month, Helium also went through its biennial emission halving, halving annual HNT emissions from 15 million to 7.5 million.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXehCb3TC7b1tPlN4mCnp1nz9rbFuYoKbLj1q3V5pwGT4ge0_YBpqmyaz-fgctD4RW-OLhjO82YBENqd6vYl35HA3eFcxmpqaJElcqmngTOvZwF7OyJy_VaMZI09Ivun7fs-QgR9?key=F1UcsFQTLvYx0-0eewtjyQ" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/flashnotes/helium-halving-tailwinds#top-idea">Blockworks Research</a></figcaption></figure>



Both mechanics in tandem — an emission halving and circulating supply burn — could create a net deflationary effect for the HNT token.



Blockworks’ Nick Carpinito told me: &#8220;Amir&#8217;s announcement creates immediate deflationary pressure on HNT by burning tokens equivalent to Helium Mobile&#8217;s subscriber revenue, which could accelerate the timeline for HNT to become net-deflationary sooner than expected.”&nbsp;



“While we don&#8217;t yet know the specific mechanics (whether Nova Labs will burn from its treasury or make open market purchases, or whether this applies to gross vs. net revenue), this represents a significant step toward integrating Nova Labs&#8217; offchain revenue streams directly into HNT&#8217;s tokenomics as we anticipated in our July analysis.&#8221;



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Helium eyes a potential path to deflationary tokenomics

Ether treasury company BTCS is leaning into its “Ethereum-first” identity with a one-time blockchain dividend: a $0.05 per-share payout in ETH, plus an optional cash alternative for investors who don’t opt in.&nbsp;



The company also unveiled a $0.35 per-share loyalty payment — payable only in ETH — for holders who move shares to book entry with its transfer agent and keep them there through Jan. 26, 2026. Instead of your shares being held at your broker, they’re recorded in your name on the company’s official shareholder register.&nbsp;



Framed as both a reward and a balance-sheet signal, the move arrives while BTCS trades below its asset base. Management points to a $4.41 share price on August 15 against roughly $6.65 per share in cash and digital assets. That valuation gap also shows up in Blockworks Research’s mNAV (enterprise value / net asset value) tracker of Ethereum-treasury peers.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdnPSIUZtIaAVGfpYrsrezJFjbsSOFHZ-f3gYwwp9-v7PJGXa9JjCqaUPw87n2LmDR5bN1dLnhPk1Y0rfFQEblKUJjoQC9VCSJbAU_uLYefbAPXQ3gt0PIG4iNcsfJvISKoVaOlrw?key=LR3gLDoIhpkH5qeVLviMHA" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/treasury-companies?dashboard=366">Blockworks Research</a></figcaption></figure>



As of Aug. 18, BTCS sat near the low end at ~0.75×, compared with SBET ~1.08×, GAME ~1.20×, and BMNR/BTBT ~1.40–1.45×; only DYNX was lower. In other words, the market is still assigning BTCS a below-peer multiple on its balance sheet.



CEO Charles Allen cast the program as both shareholder alignment and a shot across the bow against short sellers.



“As the largest shareholder of BTCS, let me be perfectly clear: my goal is to grow our market cap primarily through share price appreciation, not toxic dilution,” he <a href="https://x.com/Charles_BTCS/status/1957397105661657378">wrote</a> on X, adding that concentrating shares at the transfer agent is intended to make them harder to borrow for shorting.



Operationally, investors who want ETH must complete an opt-in at bividend.com and transfer shares to Equity Stock Transfer before the record date; otherwise, they’ll receive $0.05 in cash. The loyalty payment is paid after 120 days to those who keep shares in book entry for the full window.



Whether this closes BTCS’s valuation gap is the open question. The persistent mNAV discount suggests investors are still pricing execution risk around the company’s DeFi/TradFi “accretion flywheel,” ETH-denominated revenue exposure, and liquidity dynamics.



Still, paying out effectively a share dividend in ether is novel. If the program meaningfully shrinks lendable float and builds a stickier base, the multiple could drift toward peers. If not, BTCS will still have delivered a crypto-native distribution that puts real ETH in loyal holders’ wallets but, considering its shares have fallen about –40% over the past month, while ETH is up 20%, that may be a small consolation.



The record date for the “bividend” is Sept. 26, 2025. To qualify, you’d need to own shares by the close on Wed, Sept. 24 (or earlier).



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BTCS rolls out Ethereum ‘bividend’ as NAV discount lingers

Luke Leasure

This is a segment from the 0xResearch newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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We’ve all seen the USDe chart as of late. It’s up and to the right, now crossing $11.4 billion in circulating supply. There are a few key reasons behind this, which aren’t fully reconciled with sUSDe’s 6-9% APY.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeY-F7ogqwEGtQU_TCQW0XaDsvtDq5jlHg47d0WJaylU5iddj3KbSoh_0DgCVuraxzVkoZJinC8PrQjJ-NXS_kbSpbqJWOZNfBWzKGyq5TEY38qD_W5MwPg_Y1UafC_aqxXS0NCTQ?key=pcjPED5ZQ4NjfOmnFZGasA" alt=""/></figure>



Looking under the hood, the USDe market on Pendle for the September maturity now accounts for over $3.4 billion in USDe, 30% of USDe’s circulating supply.&nbsp;



Unlike sUSDe, USDe itself is not natively yield-bearing, and is intended to represent the value of $1. On this Pendle market, however, USDe liquidity receives a 70x sats boost from Ethena’s points campaign, and the YT buyers on this market are pricing the value of these sats at an implied APY of ~14%, a steep premium to the underlying APY of 0% and the benchmark yields provided by sUSDe or USDC supplied on Aave. As the price of ENA has risen from $0.25 at the start of July to $0.67 today, the expected value of ENA distributions from sats has risen along with this.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdPEkkLqyLut9wfwiuaT1SbOKCD1-3snltVJGSudZMb7CVgo1HYolaaF6yhV3zBYUF963iR5uSznhPE0JE7TcfAxaxGQLp8F2nGQ_wT3kPP6XUMCyRIQjjSvCS-VdLE0Z0RSDcX?key=pcjPED5ZQ4NjfOmnFZGasA" alt=""/></figure>



Herein lies the flywheel-points farming. Spend on growth with “points”, making USDe more attractive on Pendle. The USDe supply grows, accelerating top line metrics for Ethena. The growth in the top line leads the liquid markets to price ENA higher, raising the expected value of ENA distributions through points. As the market raises the implied valuation on points, the USDe supply continues to grow to crowd out this now 14%-16% implied yield, continuing the flywheel. Over $1 billion of USDe has been added to this market since last week.



Going one level further — as the market raises the implied valuation of the points, the fixed yield on the USDe-type PTs is lifted as well, making them more attractive for looping. As discussed last week, these instruments have shown profound utilization rates on Aave, which now holds over $4 billion in PTs, with borrow capacity and LTVs completely maxed out. As leverage across these instruments is continually dialed up, risks of an unwind continue to amplify.&nbsp;



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Peeling back the onion on USDe’s growth

David Canellis

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Crypto is tribal. That’s one of its best qualities. Think about it: What would this space even be without purity tests?&nbsp;



Notice that I used the word “space” and not “industry,” “asset class” or “sector.”&nbsp;



Crypto has always had intense rivalries, but the nuances are mostly lost on those on the outside. It’s not their fault — the regulatory war that raged in the US over the past few years united otherwise squabbling camps against a common enemy (Gary Gensler). An “<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-ripple-gary-gensler">enemy of my enemy is our enemy</a>” situation.



The thermal effect of that chumminess has largely worn off, however, and things are only destined to get uglier from here, especially if/when the market rolls over.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">can CT even survive another bear market lmao&mdash; VanEck (@vaneck_us) <a href="https://twitter.com/vaneck_us/status/1957568763236073831?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 18, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



For sure, there is a crypto industry. And there is a crypto asset class. And a crypto sector. But they’re not filled with the same stuff.



With Gensler gone and the SEC headed by someone more agreeable, it’s easy to forget that a lot was hinging on the Ripple verdict, for reasons that don’t feel as pertinent now.&nbsp;



The question of what exactly a so-called “crypto security” is ultimately mattered to every single person working in and around crypto, in a very different way than the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/roman-storm-guilty-one-count">Roman Storm verdict</a> and the Samourai Wallet guilty pleas were important.&nbsp;



Let’s run through a hypothetical: Pretend we believe that — even if XRP was not a security when sold to institutional backers — there exist many tokens that are clearly as centralized as XRP, or even more so. Some are more centralized in very different ways. In that case, the long-term viability of any coins we hold directly depends on whether the underlying tech (and the broader ecosystem) is truly decentralized. And for that, we need purity tests.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Ethereum vs. Solana is not the vibe Ethereum/Solana vs. Ripple, Stellar, Hedera, and all of this other centralized drek that are looking for institutional and regulatory capture, is the vibe Faster both communities realize this the better imo&mdash; _gabrielShapir0 (@lex_node) <a href="https://twitter.com/lex_node/status/1868677562681217471?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 16, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Perhaps we will get regulatory clarity (read: a state-sanctioned purity test) from the SEC about what makes a token a “security,” in such a way that plainly dictates what is and what isn’t a sufficiently decentralized asset on blockchain rails.&nbsp;



It might even come out in the wash of the XRP and Solana ETF applications — but if regulation by enforcement was bad, then don’t be surprised if regulation by ETF application is worse.



If I had to pinpoint the vibe right now, I’d say it’s that there is an unconscious understanding that this is destined to come to a head.&nbsp;



After all, why is it that institutions are gravitating towards Ethereum as they migrate onchain, rather than Solana? Could it have something to do with a perceived degree of centralization in and around Solana, one which just isn’t there with Ethereum?&nbsp;



Hammer out the differences between the two networks and you’ll have devised your own purity test. Although, perhaps it has nothing to do with home validators at all.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">the level of social coordination amongst Solana stakeholders is second to none. whatever they are “waging war” against is what people need to double down on. centralized block production decentralized block validation always has been <a href="https://t.co/Et95qEno3G">https://t.co/Et95qEno3G</a>&mdash; namik // mega-chef Σ: (@NamikMuduroglu) <a href="https://twitter.com/NamikMuduroglu/status/1950119561258230247?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 29, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Alongside this tension, stress has bubbled through the proof-of-work side of the crypto space. But decentralization is much easier to prove in that world. All that really matters, at a bedrock level, is whether the hash rate is distributed enough so that the blockchain can withstand a 51% attack. Anything less is centralization.



Monero has just passed such a test — but only barely. You probably saw that AI project Qubic attempted to 51% attack Monero by incentivizing its users to mine XMR. Qubic only got as far as about 28%, according to one <a href="https://shai-deshe.gitbook.io/parallel-thoughts/proof-of-work/the-qubic-minority-report">analysis</a> (up to 35% if considering selfish mining).



“The elephant in the room is not what this means for Qubic, but what this means for Monero,”



Independent researcher Shai Wyborski wrote. “Monero brands itself as a provider of military grade security, suited for sensitive, high-profile applications. They aspire to become part of the global economic infrastructure designed to provide reliability and robustness. Having been disrupted to such a thorough extent by an overall niche movement should considerably undermine their ability to do so.”



Monero is largely an old head Tornado Cash or Samourai Wallet: a network you jump in and out of to muddy the provenance for your coins, hypothetically speaking. But would the disappearance of any of those three really impact the crypto “industry,” “asset class,” or “sector”? I’d argue not; in fact, it might even be really good for business.



That said, losing those platforms and protocols and others like them would be absolutely detrimental to the “crypto space.”&nbsp;



There we go again, another purity test.



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Why crypto is headed for straight PvP

This is a segment from The Breakdown newsletter. To read more editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/brand/the-breakdown">subscribe</a>



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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please; we ought to see what it will please them to do before we risk congratulations.”



— Edmund Burke
</blockquote>



When Queen Victoria sent President Buchanan a 98-word message over the first transatlantic telegraph cable, it crossed the ocean in just 16 hours.



This technological feat inspired The New York Times to describe the invention of telegraphic communication “full of hopeful prognostics for the future of mankind.&#8221;



Some even foresaw the end of disinformation.



“The infallible Telegraph will contradict their falsehoods as fast as they can publish them,” a contemporary journalist <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Information-History-Theory-Flood/dp/1400096235">predicted</a>.



Telegraph signals were spoken of as an invisible current carrying the truth itself — a technical channel free of human bias that would broadcast news from a single, trusted source (the Associated Press).



It didn’t work out that way.



Another journalist soon noticed that “intelligence thus hastily gathered and transmitted has also its drawbacks, and is not so trustworthy as the news which starts later and travels slower.&#8221;



Instead of re-broadcasting a canonical version of the truth, local newspapers put their biased spin on news arriving via telegraph — and the speed of transmission amplified mistakes and misinformation.&nbsp;



100 odd years later, however, people had similarly high hopes for the internet.



In 1996, cyberlibertarian John Perry Barlow confidently <a href="https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence">predicted</a> that cyberspace would be shaped and defined by “ethics, enlightened self-interest and the commonweal.”



By freeing information from government control, many believed the internet would topple dictators and return power to the people.



In 2007, Al Gore assured us this hope was being realized: “Broadband interconnection is supporting decentralized processes that reinvigorate democracy,” he <a href="https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2007/05/assault-reason/">wrote</a> in The Assault on Reason. “Networked democracy is taking hold. You can feel it.”



If you’ve been on social media recently, you’re probably not feeling it.



But that was only the first iteration of the internet.&nbsp;



The internet’s second act — Web3, aka crypto — comes with similarly high hopes: What the telegraph promised to do for information, blockchains really will do for money.



“Bitcoin is a tool for freeing humanity from oligarchs and tyrants,” Naval Ravikant promised.



“Follow the protocol,” The Declaration of Bitcoin’s Independence <a href="https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/declaration-bitcoins-independence">urged</a>. “It has anarchistic implications&#8230;Bitcoin undermines governments and disrupts institutions because bitcoin is fundamentally humanitarian.”



But anarchy is not generally conducive to humanitarianism.&nbsp;



The French Revolution, for example, promised liberté, égalité and fraternité, but delivered famine, terror and dictatorship.



There are risks to crypto’s idealist visions, too, like North Korea exploiting mixers, pig-butchering scams enabled by stablecoins and corporations re-centralizing everything.



I don’t expect any of those external villains to precipitate a crypto reign of terror.



But the biggest risk may come from within: insiders extracting value from the very retail investors crypto was intended to empower — because the decentralization of finance increasingly seems to be centralizing wealth in the hands of a few.



Low-float, high-FDV token launches make the system feel rigged. Memecoin launches really are rigged. Giant insider unlocks flood the market with supply. Holders of public tokens often find themselves subservient to holders of private equity. Sniper bots and sandwich attacks are an invisible tax on retail.



The latest example is digital asset treasury companies, where insiders invest at or below NAV in private raises while everyone else invests at a fat premium on public exchanges.&nbsp;



In many cases, retail investors are getting stuck with the bill for paying bankers, asset managers and stock — the very things that crypto was meant to disintermediate.&nbsp;



In other cases, they’re providing exit liquidity for executives of failed shell companies.



In a few cases, as Andrew Keys explains <a href="https://youtu.be/KHGEZf0TnzY?si=eyQitqf1cAG8_MyA&amp;t=828">here</a>, they&#8217;re creating a “honeypot for class action lawsuits.”



This all seems dangerously contrary to the spirit of an industry that started with the fair launch of Bitcoin and the Ethereum ICO, open to all for 42 days.



The original high-minded ideals of that era still stand as a counterweight to the scams, grifts and insider games we’re currently suffering.&nbsp;



These ideals can still prove transformational — just as the telegraph did, in its own way, even while falling short of its promise to end misinformation.



&#8220;Professor Morse&#8217;s telegraph is not only an era in the transmission of intelligence,” The New York Herald opined in 1842, “but it has originated in the mind an entirely new class of ideas, a new species of consciousness.&#8221;



Crypto is similarly meant to be an entirely new class of money and new species of investment — one that can not only democratize investing, but change the world.



These are high-minded ideas, worthy of pursuit.&nbsp;



But, to paraphrase Edmund Burke, we might want to see what people do with their new financial freedom before we risk congratulations.



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Decentralization in progress: High ideals and hard realities

Casey Wagner

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forward-guidance" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Investors seemed to be looking for direction during Monday’s session. Major indexes traded sideways all morning and into the early afternoon, flipping between the mildest of gains and losses ahead of what may turn into a volatile week.&nbsp;



First, geopolitical tensions will take center stage as the world waits for updates from Ukrainian President Zelensky’s White House visit Monday. The meeting comes after Trump’s Friday trip to Alaska, where he met with Russian President Putin.&nbsp;



Trump and Zelensky started speaking with reporters in the Oval Office right as we were finalizing today’s newsletter. Trump said he thinks he can arrange a Putin-Zelensky meeting. Zelensky said he was open to this possibility and wanted to find a diplomatic way to end the war.&nbsp;



Later this week we’ll see the minutes from the FOMC’s July meeting (out Thursday). It’s the first look we’ll get into what went down last month when two Fed governors <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/powell-resolute-amid-rate-dissents">dissented the decision</a> to hold rates.&nbsp;



The Jackson Hole Economic Symposium (the Kansas City Fed’s annual conference) kicks off Thursday. Fed Chair Jerome Powell will speak on Friday morning. As of Monday, markets were pricing in an 83% chance of a 25 basis points interest rate cut in September — up from a month ago (56%), but down slightly from a week ago (86%), per CME Group <a href="https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/interest-rates/cme-fedwatch-tool.html?redirect=/trading/interest-rates/countdown-to-fomc.html">data</a>.&nbsp;



Powell’s speech is the main event of the week. Historically, his Jackson Hole remarks tend to be followed by a mild boost. The S&amp;P 500 has had a median increase of 0.4% on the day of Powell’s Wyoming address between 2018 and 2024, according to data from MarketWatch.&nbsp;



2022 was an exception, when the S&amp;P 500 slid 3% the day after Powell took a more hawkish stance in his comments.&nbsp;



Powell effectively claimed victory over price stability last year, noting in his <a href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/powell20240823a.htm">speech</a> that his “confidence has grown that inflation is on a sustainable path back to 2%.” Weeks later, the Fed made its first cut in more than four years and slashed interest rates by 50 bps.&nbsp;



This time around, the data isn’t looking as promising. Plus, there’s significant pressure from the White House (although, as we’ve written before, given that Powell knows he’s on <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/fomc-june-powell-term-end">the way out</a>, we doubt he’s taking the president’s thoughts into consideration).&nbsp;



The Fed has held off on cutting so far this year because officials wanted to wait and see how tariffs impact inflation. July’s US wholesale price data, as measured by the producer price index, came in much hotter than expected at 0.9%. That was the largest jump in more than three years. The concern now is if (or when) producers pass on higher prices to consumers.&nbsp;



The labor market is also looking weaker. Unemployment for July was unchanged at 4.2%, but payroll growth over the last three months averaged 35,000 — levels not seen since the pandemic.&nbsp;



Finally, earnings season comes to a close with big box retailers including Target, Walmart and Lowe’s set to report this week. We’ll be listening for any comments about tariffs and consumer prices.



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Stocks trade sideways ahead of political updates, Jackson Hole

This is a segment from The Drop newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/the-drop" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Yuga Labs wants its “Otherside” game to be like the Roblox or Fortnite of crypto — and isn’t giving up, despite the ongoing blockchain gaming lull.&nbsp;



Part digital social space, part video game with the goal of making user-generated content a massive part of the experience, Otherside is arguably the most ambitious crypto metaverse project still in development.&nbsp;



“This cycle is very different. I feel like every crypto cycle is a little bit like a revenge on the excesses of the last one,” Yuga Labs CEO and cofounder <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/yuga-labs-ceo-bayc">Greg “Garga” Solano</a> said in a recent <a href="https://x.com/RealJonahBlake/status/1955700364071858277">interview</a>.&nbsp;



“It’s a weird cycle in that, like, the quote-unquote ‘consumer-crypto’ part of things is actually insanely quiet. Whereas North America is coming onchain via treasury companies, ETFs. And then it’s like just the Zoomers that are coming onchain via like memecoins and pump.fun,” Solano said.



Things certainly are much quieter on the gaming front. DappRadar <a href="https://dappradar.com/blog/state-of-blockchain-gaming-in-q2-2025">reported</a> last month that crypto gaming funding is down 93% year-over-year, and user activity is on the decline as well.



Yuga saw over <a href="https://decrypt.co/99156/yuga-labs-sees-561-million-in-otherside-ethereum-nft-sales-within-24-hours">half a billion</a> dollars in “Otherdeed” virtual land NFT sales in less than a single day during the 2022 NFT boom — after raising <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bored-ape-yacht-club-creator-secures-whopping-450m-seed">$450 million</a> in funding.&nbsp;



If you ask me, if anyone has the dough to actually ship an expansive crypto game, it’s Yuga. But that also comes with a lot of pressure.



“The core Otherside holders don’t actually overlap a ton with Web3 gaming. It is a very collector-minded audience. And I think that’s also being taken into account,” Solano said of the decision to give Otherside a large social component.



On the development side, Solano said the Otherside team is “shipping at a faster cadence than we ever have.”



When asked whether Otherside has enough funding for another two to three years of development, Solano told crypto investor Jonah Blake:&nbsp;



“Yes. Hands down. We can do that just with cash without ever even touching any crypto assets that we own.”



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Yuga Labs CEO on crypto market: ‘This cycle is different’

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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When do buybacks make sense?



According to the wisdom of TradFi, buybacks have typically been motivated by three reasons: when growth opportunities are scarce and revenues cannot be increased further, when a stock trades below its intrinsic value, or as a tax-efficient way to return dividends to investors.



From this viewpoint, the dozens of crypto companies spending multimillion-dollar budgets on token buybacks seem to be doing something grossly wrong.



The growth opportunities to launch an adjacent product in crypto are vast (forking open-source code is free), plus most tokens have not been around long enough to establish any kind of fair market value.



But buybacks in crypto serve a uniquely different purpose of marketing. Specifically, buybacks signal legitimacy in a token market plagued by what has been called crypto’s <a href="https://youtu.be/99XsVSN_doQ">lemon market problem</a>.



So if you’re doing buybacks, you may want to put the pedal to the metal and go all in.



That’s the plan of “Heaven,” the latest memecoin launchpad to open its pearly gates on Solana.



Backed by the Solana Foundation’s Colosseum accelerator/hackathon, Heaven is purportedly committing 100% of its protocol revenues to buybacks of its native token, LIGHT. And the buybacks aren’t for a period; but<a href="https://x.com/heavendex/status/1956106489732420069"> forever</a>.&nbsp;



That’s nuts! This is a team that only raised $27 million in an ICO two weeks ago.



About<a href="https://dune.com/adam_tehc/heaven-dex"> $1.4 million</a> in lifetime revenues (by “lifetime,” I mean one week) has been spent on buyback-and-burns for 2% of its total token supply — what the team terms its “God Flywheel.” The result is a six-day-old token that has traded up 225% to a $64 million market cap as of today.



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcrk-EY_jaavwfh4DQma9TGjCftVKOSSvvZcke7fnSVYMDtOdM2YNsTTZkKYmqhuMJWkmDq4MrNxF0v8Jg4d1F3Mi8aoSdlXwT8NbM5wJYZv0F90h9Xh_osDcD1utSc7yPQYLe76Q?key=0y5Dimtew96e8fjdrGIxrg" alt="" style="width:784px;height:auto"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: Trading View</figcaption></figure>



You can see Heaven’s traction based on the corner blot of black on the chart below. Yesterday saw Heaven deploy 3,865 tokens, or about 15% of launchpad market share.



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeMlbPE52opD-EFjWuFF8ufBWxrC2u-XjGF3QvMGyYGEYtKfJmWpYEGGCzo2HQFMC-N86Vmtcy4jkdDMhqclO9ACSUdMdnPnIL-EZoqAYleP-te5O39a4pgU6pTF1wb_dFeyTSuEA?key=0y5Dimtew96e8fjdrGIxrg" alt="" style="width:686px;height:auto"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: Dune</figcaption></figure>



Pump still has the lead, but Heaven’s revenue buyback gimmick has garnered it enough attention to put it ahead of launchpads like LetsBonk, Moonshot and Jup Studio, all of which have been around for a while.



Heaven’s memecoin launchpad is tightly integrated with its own AMM DEX, which launches tokens exclusively from its own launchpad from the second one.



This vertically integrated design eschews the standard bonding curve design of memecoin launchpads in pursuit of two key objectives.&nbsp;



One, it lets Heaven customize stricter parameters around fee collection.



Heaven-launched tokens are manually gated by the team and categorized under one of three categories. Tokens<a href="https://docs.heaven.xyz/permissioned"> flagged</a> under the &#8220;Creator&#8221; (i.e., serious) label can claim 1% of fees for themselves, those under the “Community” (i.e., non-serious) label are entitled to only 0.1%, while “Blocked” tokens are entitled to none.



In the founder’s<a href="https://x.com/peacefuldecay/status/1945573113196155338"> words</a>: “&#8230;When you trade a token and see Heaven as the DEX, you know that it&#8217;s gone through the heaven gauntlet.”



All<a href="https://docs.heaven.xyz/fees"> protocol fees</a> from token trading on the DEX go directly to buying back and burning LIGHT.



Second, the design lets the team protect token launches with anti-MEV mechanisms. Heaven implements a linearly-decaying six-second “sniper tax” for new tokens.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeZ3F68NRy-Tdmd_jfINuYyrPVpav0_YxBgp-9N_7dOdWr3EJrmp93OQMexYevc7jPGXrR_eaDQCF6zmfVqzY4z410UoLRla3rLoqRZrP3J3Pr6TV1hg8b7Q2X2-LuWn071eaFZCg?key=0y5Dimtew96e8fjdrGIxrg" alt="" style="width:519px;height:auto"/></figure>



These features seem to create something of a theoretical moat around the Heaven product, one that the average launchpad lacks.



Yet Heaven’s closed surface design may create liquidity silos from DEX aggregators if Heaven’s pools aren’t well integrated or economically competitive in routers. How much routing it wins remains to be seen.



Updated August 18, 2025 at 4:21 pm ET: Modified headline for clarity. 



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Solana memecoin launchpad burns 100% of its revenues

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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We know there’s an obvious disconnect between the average retail investor and the whales with enough size to really influence markets.



Perhaps the most extreme gap is between, say, someone who holds a few thousand dollars’ worth of coins they’ve bought on an exchange, and a VC fund that holds the exact same tokens. The VC fund very likely acquired those coins for much, much cheaper. By orders of magnitude, even. In fact, it was never possible for the retail investor to have bought the tokens at the same price, considering the VC bought them for a flat price years before they were ever listed on an exchange.



Over the past year or two, liquid funds have become increasingly common in crypto markets. These operate similarly to traditional hedge funds in that they freely buy and sell publicly-tradable tokens according to their mandate.&nbsp;



In many cases, liquid funds trade via the same spot markets utilized by retail traders and market makers, although often with more sophisticated trading systems for more precise execution, with liquidity sourced via OTC desks, and so on.



“What is your mandate, Seth?” Yano asked Seth Ginns, Managing Partner and Head of Liquid Investments at CoinFund, on today&#8217;s Empire podcast episode.



“Our mandate is, as an investment firm, to find the best, fundamentally driven opportunities on the venture and liquid side. And then [on] the liquid side, we drive absolute return strategies,” Ginns said.&nbsp;



“So we’re investing in secular growth opportunities where we think that the addressable market is very large, the team is fantastic, and there&#8217;s the opportunity to have a large return based on a fundamental underwrite over a multi-year period.”



Ask a retail investor what their mandate is and they’d probably tell you something similar, albeit with less jargon: find the least risky coins with the most potential to go up, and buy that.



<iframe loading="lazy" width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QX6jxGQlM-w?si=mxChyLkfoXldLOje" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>







Cosmo Jiang, General Partner and Portfolio Manager at Pantera Capital, distilled his firm’s strategy into generating outperformance — which generally means beating bitcoin’s returns by picking tokens.&nbsp;



Both Jiang’s and Ginns’ funds hold between 10 and 20 or so different coins right now.&nbsp;



Jiang said: “The edge of other managers is going to be around perhaps the acquisition part of the token, and others might be around the execution side — that’ll be the market-neutral guys, the market makers and things like that.



“But on the far end where I&#8217;m on, I believe the vast majority of our performance, if I were to do performance attribution, comes from token selection and less so the actual execution.”



He explained that Pantera uses a variety of options, primarily spot trading with some derivatives to access liquidity elsewhere. Pantera’s fund is domiciled in the US, which means it cannot trade on international exchanges.



As for how these funds actually pick their coins, Ginns had this to say:



“It’s an environment where if you do the work, if you have the connectivity, if you&#8217;re going to the developer conferences, if you can see where the tech is going, you can actually drive really good returns like that.”



He continued: “That was the biggest frustration over the last few years: You could do the work, but you weren&#8217;t seeing those positive fundamentals reflected in the token valuations. And there&#8217;ve been some really big changes that have happened, so it&#8217;s not just the change in [US] administration that&#8217;s been a catalyst.”



Catch the full episode (which includes insight into both portfolios) on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@empirepod">YouTube</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/4UTePv1CR3APdKOiosR3Iq">Spotify</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/empire/id1554930038">Apple Podcasts</a> and <a href="https://x.com/theempirepod">X</a>.



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How liquid funds thrive in spot crypto markets

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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
&#8220;100% of the information you have about any business reflects the past, and 100% of the value of that business depends on the future.”&nbsp;



— Bill Miller
</blockquote>



Are markets still forward-looking?



A core tenet of investing theory is that asset prices are driven by the market’s best (and sometimes worst) guesses about the future.



This is why stocks are valued on forward earnings multiples, not trailing ones. And bonds are priced on what the economy is expected to do, not what it’s already done.



It doesn’t feel like that’s what’s happening just now.



This week’s data showed inflation ticking back up again, and every week’s data shows the federal deficit exploding. But Treasury yields are flat on the week and down on the year.



Meanwhile, the US economy seems headed into recession, but stocks keep making new highs.



There are two possible explanations.



One is offered by valuation expert Aswath Damodaran, who <a href="https://pca.st/episode/5916b67a-b936-40eb-89f2-e553872470f7?t=955">thinks</a> the market has given up on being a “predicting machine.”



After years of forecasters missing the mark, he says, the market has shifted into “reactive” mode, where he expects it will stay “until we figure out a better predictive mechanism.”



In other words, investors are living in the moment and not worrying about tomorrow.



The second possible explanation is the opposite: that the stock market is still in prediction mode; it’s simply predicting that things will be good.



That may seem hard to square with the constant drumbeat of worrying headlines: a weak jobs market, the president at war with the Fed, a politicized Bureau of Labor Statistics.&nbsp;



But the market might be looking through all that and seeing its favorite thing: easy money.



The FOMC is expected to start cutting interest rates at its next meeting and might be bullied by the president into cutting more, and faster, than it probably should.



And a federal court may be on the verge of repealing the president’s tariffs, at the cost of higher deficits and the benefit of higher earnings.



Lower interest rates, bigger budget deficits and higher earnings is a surefire recipe for higher stocks.



But investors may be even more forward-looking than that.



With the stock market valuations nearing all-time highs, it’s easy to think investors must be blind to the risks we see in the headlines every day.&nbsp;



But <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5127501">recent research</a> suggests investors don’t think in terms of risk, as textbooks assume, but in terms of fear: “Fear provides an alternative explanation for the magnitude of the excess return realized [by stocks] historically.”



Could anything be more fear-inducing than the AI boom?



Chief AI doomer Eliezer Yudkowsky, for example, <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-destroy-humankind-yudkowsky">warns</a> that artificial general intelligence could lead to human extinction in as little as two years. On a longer timeline, he generously gives us a “shred of a chance” to survive.



For investors, though, the truly existential risk is in missing out.



That may turn out to be less hyperbolic than it sounds because even reasonable people can fear that superintelligent AIs (should they choose to let us live) might take all the jobs.



If so, the only way to make money will be from investments — and you’ll need to make those investments before the AIs take over, which could be any time now. Personally, I think there will always be plenty for humans to do, so I’m not as pessimistic as that.



But record-high stocks might be a prediction that I should be.



Let’s check the charts.



There’s more money:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXf2wkUE1KaUpYMN05dR0zfy6twUk-JSvBRFltKWtHRdtzOh83y1fzqUujC_D4FMeI54RbcimghYMHlcHygU3Yy60aL24iGS0Js7ovu-o6MlJPgIiKw75ooU94FxMzPCm9D_guV6lw?key=8QFttY5ASmmE069NR2oSqw" alt=""/></figure>



M2 money supply is growing again, thanks to increased bank lending and deficit spending (I think). There should be a lot more of both to come. The FT <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/efe1e350-62c6-4aa0-a833-f6da01265473">writes</a> that the AI boom has created “a race among private capital providers to offer more and larger loans” to build data centers.



The capex race:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdvFwaTA0Oh6ezmEUMC6kp9RgiPK5LWZzdpoCv6Mvwa-ZExWU2vj7mCIg62G-PGEesLdo25q38XLSdc6rB9ZoHpGubF1oFvi22hoTtN0Kz3YjkN5bUaPDKYxm-pf8xlHZo5DSvA?key=8QFttY5ASmmE069NR2oSqw" alt=""/></figure>



ChatGPT fired the starting gun and the race seems to be just getting going. The big four hyperscalers are expected to spend $350 billion on data centers in 2025, and another $400 billion in 2026.&nbsp;



Cash flows won’t cover it:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe3_XRttNpiuufovWYr26gEqKpARXrm6jHr0rWQUYTqKGZZbs_PbTfLThm_t7GCCqaXrVn3SRJPN3FrNMq63fXSm0bp0ix8TcatMoxyNGsk7CsZ2w3TQyK0cOV_mEBZf9uHmJL5fA?key=8QFttY5ASmmE069NR2oSqw" alt=""/></figure>



Morgan Stanley forecasts that the hyperscalers will spend $2.9 trillion on data centers over just four years, and that their cash flow will cover less than half of it.&nbsp;



Don’t forget the little guys:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXf_pg93sEwPtmqpzain5u94-e4gE3MtBT47v9dpAgYh6PaDRogUDpAR3zakhYBqHknGFPLoKPTMjApo49D3nh_5ptkIX0cpjZ3wJgHU8E85r4pNhX5w1Nt0FA4FJnIMZEllCZhH7w?key=8QFttY5ASmmE069NR2oSqw" alt=""/></figure>



Based on the surging number of new businesses, Torsten Slok says “the US remains the most dynamic economy in the world.” Thanks to AI, some of these might soon be <a href="https://www.economist.com/business/2025/08/11/how-ai-could-create-the-first-one-person-unicorn">one-person unicorns</a> (i.e., $1 billion companies with a single employee).



Transitory?



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfPkdMZQmA0PrTzVHc4tzkr5GLhN4rGYZBabGEw3pZaEdhOmSch8cZYKDJbRGD4y98bEoGvUlUSrAjmNSy2egxVdWjYO0aApyY5HTmJ6bUTR7BKa1RRR31z76y2jtSmqk8o1T40zQ?key=8QFttY5ASmmE069NR2oSqw" alt=""/></figure>



Producer prices were sharply higher in July, suggesting that companies are starting to pass the cost of tariffs through to consumers. Economists at Goldman Sachs estimate that consumers absorbed just 22% of tariff costs through June, with businesses absorbing the other two-thirds (through lower margins). Goldman expects those numbers to flip-flop by October, with consumers bearing two-thirds of tariff costs.



What tariffs?



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcfw8wbpB8_ZCvumbJKgVnTUJXWg02d_LqNS1_6S5ohmMvLwt-dlF7PK8f4fTE86q7b3ZLwffJz79WFSO-OS8RzpijwUlJzi6ygwx_TJLukN1piYZr9TF7XaLAm9vYQHlqKZy3s?key=8QFttY5ASmmE069NR2oSqw" alt=""/></figure>



Brad Setser <a href="https://x.com/Brad_Setser/status/1955813263033131152">notes</a> China’s trade surplus in goods (exports minus imports) continues to rise despite the trade war with its largest customer.



Time to renegotiate the rent:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXf1qPQpACTnf5_pdQcZaswbpOW-sX2N_WORjhzM3GOQtTn8Vn0Jleci1j0jSZ0DdfUFvbzcMkO_BAl-tDcFFFIOYqvPd3gLp9402l1gOEqJ6JSejpmazy9LA1cTy2YyaR6oyLKHcQ?key=8QFttY5ASmmE069NR2oSqw" alt=""/></figure>



Data from the Cleveland Fed shows an unprecedented collapse in the cost of renting, as measured by new rental agreements. Jeff Weniger <a href="https://x.com/JeffWeniger/status/1955264056559862151">speculates</a> it’s the result of non-citizen residents “<a href="https://x.com/JeffWeniger/status/1955264056559862151">self-deporting</a>.”



End of an era?



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfKMneElssmPwKnKoyXhFL0LWJElCMQG9bEZX-GJQs7JRSAUjNGBKWic8Be0aLVHQsf_rJSDT95HmdPYbO4E6n5WvPKD4_1Zj19uJ5mNJM-o-uwYP-M8nnc1FwolsTr0FPCTsRzfA?key=8QFttY5ASmmE069NR2oSqw" alt=""/></figure>



The rate of wage growth for low-income workers has dropped below the rate for high-income workers for the first time in 10 years. “The era of big raises for low-paid workers is over,” <a href="https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/low-wage-employees-pay-growth-cdf3cd36?st=EmRNsY">according</a> to the Wall Street Journal. If so, it was an excellent run.



FOMO valuations:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdEu11o4O7y8Of-mG9abmdBwzTXDY3Vnum941y5KsVn88TqnhH82t6fKXs1KSwm-D_TFD3MzcbfeqnR6MbD3tQClxGNlGhLyut8ReVXZLoxU_OhLVmyoZ0IKSW6pjxdMeLCDw-w-Q?key=8QFttY5ASmmE069NR2oSqw" alt=""/></figure>



27.2% of stocks in the S&amp;P 100 trade at a P/E of at least 50. Just one trades 10x.



All-time greatest FOMO?



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd8rVafhAalP4a5TNPitVrEFvRAIUT77GYVbi2YAIm52EwdL80YTu3Kdn05DM-1QW4RbcBguWblQJCPhWj2E6aDDwhpumRsaoWwneG_0drYNZUTlnnLjUlLlSfYffeui9j81Qjd?key=8QFttY5ASmmE069NR2oSqw" alt=""/></figure>



At nearly 100x next year’s sales, The Economist <a href="https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/08/12/palantir-might-be-the-most-overvalued-firm-of-all-time#">says</a> Palantir might be the most overvalued stock of all time.



Are markets still in the prediction business then? I think they are — and I think they’re predicting good things.



For investors, at least.



Have a great weekend, predictive readers.



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/the-breakdown">The Breakdown</a>: Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch">0xResearch</a>: Alpha in your inbox. Think like an analyst. </li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Empire</a>: Crypto news and analysis to start your day.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forward-guidance">Forward Guidance</a>: The intersection of crypto, macro and policy.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">The Drop</a>: Apps, games, memes and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: All things Solana.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supply-shock">Supply Shock</a>: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.</li>
</ul>

Friday charts: Investor’s crystal ball, cloudy with a chance of FOMO

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">subscribe</a>.



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We learned this week that Stripe and Circle are planning to launch their <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stripe-circle-l1s-solana">own L1 chains</a>.



Ethereum community members were quick to <a href="https://x.com/ryanberckmans/status/1955289483345113471">question</a> why corporations shouldn&#8217;t launch L2s instead.



Ethan Buchman has a simple <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/circle-l1-impact-ethereum">explanation</a>: Vertical integration is profitable.



Christian Catalini of Lightspark <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/christiancatalini/2025/08/11/stripe-is-building-a-blockchain-can-openness-survive-branded-rails/">echoes</a> this view in Forbes:



“&#8230; stablecoin issuers have strong incentives either to commoditize the rails — by issuing on multiple networks and positioning themselves at the center of interoperability across them — or to nudge most activity to a network they control. Either strategy gives them a shot at becoming massive global fintech leaders and capturing most of the value the technology creates.”



Circle/Stripe is doing simply what’s best for them. But that means these new chains aren’t contributing to Ethereum data availability fees, which does not elevate the bags of ETH token holders.



The team behind Phantom wallet faced similar “chain alignment” questions upon announcing its integration of Hyperliquid perps.



This as opposed to a perps DEX built on Solana like Drift or Jupiter.



Reasoning from a viewpoint of chain tribalism is pretty standard fare in this industry. But from an outsider’s perspective, it’s probably a very weird mental model to make decisions from. Builders should simply do whatever’s best for business.



Brandon Millman, CEO of Phantom, puts it plainly on this week’s Lightspeed <a href="https://youtu.be/ogdTMLHMRy8">podcast</a>:&nbsp;



“In the world of trading and perps, how do we get the best prices for users? If you just look at the objective numbers, price, execution, liquidity…all of that is an order of magnitude greater on Hyperliquid. And so by completely ignoring that, I think we would&#8217;ve been doing a pretty big disservice to users.”



To put it another way, Hyperliquid processed $371 billion in volumes over the last 30 days. Solana&#8217;s two largest perp DEXs, Jupiter and Drift, processed a collective $52 billion over the same time.



That’s roughly 7.1x more addressable volume, which should lead to a pretty straightforward business decision.



From my time speaking to application developers in the industry, most pursue a multichain strategy simply because it’s best for business.



Aave for instance, is deployed on something like 15 chains. This multichain strategy is proving unprofitable on several L2s like Soneium, Celo, Linea, ZKsync and Scroll. So they won’t do it <a href="https://x.com/DefiIgnas/status/1951238740526993611/photo/1">anymore</a>. Another simple straightforward decision!



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">We reached an L2 saturation point: Aave deployed on 16 chains, but the new deployments are operating at a loss (Soneium, Celo, Linea, zkSync, Scroll). As a result, Aave is unlikely to deploy on Bob BTC L2, even though it passed the temp check vote. Now, a proposal on the Curve… <a href="https://t.co/jl6FKICbOk">pic.twitter.com/jl6FKICbOk</a>&mdash; Ignas | DeFi (@DefiIgnas) <a href="https://twitter.com/DefiIgnas/status/1951238740526993611?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 1, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



It would be nice for businesses to show cultural loyalty or be altruistic.



But as the economist-philosopher Adam Smith taught us, it’s not from the benevolence of the butcher, baker or brewer that we expect our dinner from, but from a regard to their own self-interest.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/the-breakdown">The Breakdown</a>: Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch">0xResearch</a>: Alpha in your inbox. Think like an analyst. </li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Empire</a>: Crypto news and analysis to start your day.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forward-guidance">Forward Guidance</a>: The intersection of crypto, macro and policy.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">The Drop</a>: Apps, games, memes and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: All things Solana.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supply-shock">Supply Shock</a>: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.</li>
</ul>

Corporations don’t care about your blockchain

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forward-guidance">subscribe</a>.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



It’s worth taking another look at those corporations hoarding crypto — particularly as we see momentum around the ones accumulating ETH.&nbsp;



You may know them as crypto treasury companies or, as <a href="https://www.blockworksresearch.com">Blockworks Research</a>’s Dan Smith calls them, DATs, or digital asset treasuries. 



But no matter the label, they’ve grown big enough for many to notice — and we’re not just talking about <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/michael-saylor">Michael Saylor</a>’s Strategy.  



Though Strategy (holding 628,946 BTC) has historically dominated trading volumes in this segment of companies, we saw BitMine Immersion (BMNR) eclipse the firm on that metric a few times this week.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeQGAW-FTFm--xLQrgBOpu4J8C3H90cUtcLCaDKYFbcp2wwuUr2iK-yNFSS3QBfoOFFyuQrYXSr_f8o2JBSX40i7CN2QoxavnjMxmaHX_eVC8YH0HrnWA0EG3NQX4GzdPCjnAHmiw?key=yr74Q2nUOtE3n6BBNbnCUg" alt=""/></figure>



BitMine said Monday it held $4.96 billion worth of ether. That means that roughly five weeks after revealing its ETH accumulation plans, the company has the world’s largest corporate ether treasury. BitMine’s stated goal is to own 5% of the ETH supply.&nbsp;



Blockworks’ Smith previously addressed BMNR’s rising daily volumes within a broader “flywheel”:



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">&gt; smash the bid over the weekend &gt; open higher on monday &gt; increased volatilty = more volume &gt; more volume = raise more cash via ATM &gt; more cash = buy more ETH The Real Flywheel <a href="https://t.co/A0xDy8G7iW">https://t.co/A0xDy8G7iW</a> <a href="https://t.co/85xNMPpW3z">pic.twitter.com/85xNMPpW3z</a>&mdash; Dan Smith (@smyyguy) <a href="https://twitter.com/smyyguy/status/1954227040816603186?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 9, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Another big crypto treasury firm <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-treasury-strategies-sharplink-eth">focused on ether</a> is SharpLink Gaming. That’s the one with Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin as its board chair.



ETH treasury companies now hold nearly 2% of all <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/eth">ETH</a> — up from about 0.5% a month ago. Not quite the percentage bitcoin treasury companies (mostly MSTR) hold, but getting closer:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcaJF2uZ1jno3pcUZKcsPW1dOEEa4pIMDOVgRsondMOwXCAr0MFA1u0PrHDDYpJ_C0r-sPpwqr0JkPSNyCPOW8Zpp6xCCM7KG2OyKXIHn0hjWjchVrvBaNPbJ06s9X9PRuldLT5kQ?key=yr74Q2nUOtE3n6BBNbnCUg" alt=""/></figure>



To be clear, the market cap of companies building ETH treasuries is only about 11% of those with BTC-buying strategies ($107.6 billion to $12.7 billion).&nbsp;



Benchmark analyst Mark Palmer said he views the recent volume surge for ETH treasury-focused companies as “largely a new-entrant phenomenon.”



“We would expect treasury company launches focused on other cryptocurrencies to see similar surges in trading volume as they start to deploy the capital they have raised and attract investor attention,” he told me.



We’ve mentioned in this newsletter before about the firms looking to hoard crypto assets beyond BTC and ETH (i.e. SOL, BNB, SUI and HYPE). 



The <a href="https://blockworks.co/analytics/treasury-companies">growing number</a> of these types of firms has spurred some skepticism. Not all will last, some say — particularly any copycats with no differentiation, or those targeting less tested assets. Felix <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bIw1Pqa7Kg">discussed</a> this universe of companies on stage with industry executives at Permissionless IV, and the Empire podcast crew has also weighed in on the space plenty (see <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/appetite-for-dats">here</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHGEZf0TnzY">here</a>).



The ongoing emergence of these models doesn’t necessarily make the segment a bubble (at least in the classic sense), Palmer argued.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“Unlike the dot-com era, when companies chased the same market with similar offerings, crypto treasury firms are taking siloed approaches in which a given firm focuses on a specific cryptocurrency and a single jurisdiction,” he explained. “Or it has a differentiated approach such as a franchise-based model aimed at accelerated token accumulation.”



I’ll be most interested to see the market cap growth of those focused on ETH (and other altcoins) relative to the BTC ones. Compared to Strategy, this segment’s companies are rather young and small. We don’t have to rush to judgment.&nbsp;



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/the-breakdown">The Breakdown</a>: Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch">0xResearch</a>: Alpha in your inbox. Think like an analyst. </li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Empire</a>: Crypto news and analysis to start your day.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forward-guidance">Forward Guidance</a>: The intersection of crypto, macro and policy.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">The Drop</a>: Apps, games, memes and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: All things Solana.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supply-shock">Supply Shock</a>: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.</li>
</ul>

DAT-a crunch: Momentum builds around ETH treasury companies

Join global sovereigns, endowments, pensions, foundations, and family offices as they explore this new asset class.


Allocators

Meet with VCs, hedge funds, private equity, global investment firms, and the likes as they build crypto strategies across their portfolios.


Asset Managers

Engage with banks, brokerages, credit unions, payment processors, fintechs, and insurance providers as they develop internal digital asset strategies.


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Speakers

Joseph Lubin is a co-founder of Ethereum, the founder and CEO of <a href="https://consensys.net/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Consensys</a> and Chairman of SharpLink. Since 2014, Consensys has played a foundational role in Ethereum’s growth, from pioneering products like MetaMask and Infura to shaping protocol development and staking infrastructure.



Born and raised in Toronto, Lubin graduated from Princeton University with a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He worked in the Princeton Robotics Lab, at tomandandy music developing an autonomous music composition tool, and at private research firm Vision Applications Inc. building autonomous mobile robots.



As a software and AI consultant, Lubin worked with eMagine on the Identrus project and was involved in the founding and operation of a hedge fund with a partner. He held positions as Director of the New York office of Blacksmith Software Consulting, and VP of Technology in Private Wealth Management at Goldman Sachs. Through these posts, Joe focused on the intersection of cryptography, engineering, and finance.



In 2014 he met Vitalik Buterin, a Canadian programmer, writer and Founder of Ethereum and joined the Ethereum Project as a co-founder. After the Project was launched, Joe established Consensys. Since 2014 Joe and the Consensys team have been working on the foundational software for web3, the next wave of the internet for a decentralized future.

Joseph Lubin

Chris is a passionate advocate for the potential of technology and the benefits of diversity and inclusion. His core policy focus is on digital technology for the public good with a particular interest in technologies such as AI and blockchain.



In Parliament, he specializes in legislation that deals with technology. He is a member of the House of Lord’s Digital and Communications Select Committee and was appointed to the Special Bill Committee considering Digital Asset legislation. He introduced a private members’ bill that proposed the regulation of artificial intelligence and was integral to the passing of the ground-breaking Electronic Trade Documents Bill.



On technology, he has previously co-authored House of Lords Select Committee Reports on: Democracy and Digital Technologies [2020], Artificial Intelligence [2018], and Digital Skills [2015] and under his own auspices published an influential report encouraging government testing of blockchain solutions for policy delivery, DLT for Public Good: leadership, collaboration and innovation [2017] He is also adviser to several tech and fintech companies.



On inclusion, and again under his own auspices, he has published influential reports on accessibility in the public realm and support for disabled students as well as Lords reports on Financial Exclusion [2017], Social Mobility [2016] and, for the Cabinet Office, The Lord Holmes Review on opening up public appointments to disabled people. He continues to advise the government on diversity and inclusion.



An ex-Paralympic swimmer, Chris won nine gold, five silvers and one bronze medal across four Games, including a record haul of six golds at Barcelona 1992.

Lord Holmes of Richmond MBE

Robbie Mitchnick serves as the Head of Digital Assets for BlackRock. He is a member of the Corp Exec-COO Executive team. Robbie is responsible for driving BlackRock's digital assets strategy, including working with internal business units to develop and execute on strategic initiatives around digital assets.



Prior to joining BlackRock, Robbie spent time at CPP Investment Board in Public Markets and Private Investments, and at Ripple. During his time at Ripple, Robbie co-authored 'A Fundamental Valuation Framework for Cryptoassets' along with John Bates Clark medal winner Susan Athey.



Robbie has BA &amp; BCOM degrees from Queen's University and an MBA from Stanford, where he graduated as an Arjay Miller Scholar and the Robichek Award winner in Finance. He holds a Blockchain Technologies Certification from MIT Sloan and is a CFA Charterholder.

Robbie Mitchnick

Daniel is the Chairman, Founder and largest shareholder in CoinShares International Limited, Europe’s largest digital asset manager with $6 Billion USD under management. He serves on the Board of the Tezos Foundation, StableMint, GTSA, Satohshi pay, and a number of CoinShares' affiliates. Since engaging initially in 2012 in crypto he has made numerous investments across the infrastructure powering crypto from data to blockchains to wallets, defi, mining, custody and crypto banks. He was formerly the global head of energy trading at JP Morgan and ran two successful commodity hedge funds. He holds three degrees: Physics, Management Science, and Applied Statistics.

Danny Masters

Ray Hindi is the co-founded L1D and currently acts as the CEO/CIO. Ray has an investment background in venture, hedge funds and interest rate trading. Ray holds a BEng from UCL and an MSc in Finance from Imperial College. He previously acted as the CIO of Bellegarde Capital AG an independent investment group with activities focused in fintech, blockchain and other alternative investments. Also previously at Swiss Capital (StepStone Group) responsible for the firm’s macro outlook, macro hedge funds and event driven coverage. From 2005 to 2011 Ray was part of Harcourt Investment Consulting AG, a USD 6 bn fund of hedge funds firm in Zurich, and responsible for USD 2 bn of investments (rates, macro and distressed). He started his career at Bloomberg LP in London and subsequently left the firm to trade interest rates for a London based proprietary group. Ray holds a BEng from University College London (UCL) and an MSc in Finance from Imperial College.

Ray Hindi

Mike Higgins is an early Partner and acting, International CEO and Global Head of Corporate Development at Hidden Road. An experienced Director with two decades of active engagement within financial markets, Mike possesses expertise in market structure across the full spectrum of Global Financial Markets, including Digital Assets, FICC and Synthetic Swaps. A strong emphasis on electronic trading technologies, methodologies and workflows. His specific skills in E-Commerce, APIs, GUI, price generation algorithms, risk management and hedging strategies to a diverse group of market participants prove invaluable as Hidden Road network continues to expand. Prior to joining Hidden Road, Mike successfully built, managed and commercialised a number of businesses within financial markets which included solutions in technology, trading and brokerage. Having started his career in New York on Wall Street, Mike moved with his family to London in 2009. Mike earned a bachelors degree in economics and statistics from Fordham University in New York.

Michael Higgins

Ben founded ParaFi in 2018 as one of the earliest investment firms focused on the blockchain and digital asset ecosystem. Prior to founding ParaFi, Ben spent the first 10 years of his career in institutional investing roles at leading asset managers including KKR and TPG. While at KKR, Ben served as a Director in the credit business, investing across a wide array of industry sectors and parts of the capital structure, including distressed special situations, private credit, and opportunistic and liquid credit. Ben also led KKR's blockchain research as part of the firm's Innovation and Disruption Council beginning in 2016. Prior to KKR, Ben served as a Vice President with TPG’s former credit business, Sixth Street Partners. As one of the first investment professionals to join the platform, Ben helped scale its private credit vehicle, TPG Specialty Lending, which went public in 2014. Earlier in his career, Ben was a member of the private equity team at Littlejohn &amp; Company and investment banking team at Rothschild &amp; Co. Ben has a passion for capital markets, behavioral economics and game theory, all of which drew him to the blockchain space. He grew up playing chess competitively and continues to play actively to this day (peak ELO 1871). He graduated with a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, magna cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania.

Ben Forman

Melvin Deng is the Chief Executive Officer of QCP, one of the first digital asset trading firms in Singapore and global market maker in digital asset derivatives. As the CEO, Melvin leads the company’s rapid growth and expansion towards its vision to partner the next generation of investors to unlock institutional opportunities in digital assets. Under his leadership, he has built the company’s institutional-grade experience, research and infrastructure into a compelling proposition for clients, in addition to overseeing all operations and risk management. He is a believer in the immense growth potential of digital asset derivatives, to unlock future adoption by traditional and institutional players. Inspired by the opportunity to disrupt financial services through digital assets and blockchain technology, he left a more than 15 year career in banking to join QCP in 2021. He was previously the Head of Treasury for a global bank, where he was a member of the Singapore management team, responsible for business and balance sheet strategy. In addition to oversight of all the bank’s Treasury-related activities, he also led balance sheet optimisation initiatives, and launched the first SORA bond in Singapore, deepening the local financial market. Melvin holds a Bachelor of Engineering with honours from the National University of Singapore, and speaks four languages.

Melvin Deng

Sandy Kaul is senior vice president, Franklin Templeton, providing advisory consulting for the firm and thought leadership as part of the Franklin Templeton Institute. She delivers actionable intelligence and insights on the future of the investment and wealth management industry for the firm and its clients. Ms. Kaul has cultivated deeply informed insights and has an extensive background in driving market leading research, thought leadership and predictive models centered on the evolution of the investment and wealth management industry. She identifies and champions opportunities to address industry advancements and drive transformation, with a focus on innovative distribution trends and digital disruption. She delivers strategic insights to inform the firm's decision-making on partnerships and investments, including within Franklin Templeton's growing digital asset business. Ms. Kaul has over 25 years of well-rounded industry experience and is a frequent speaker at industry events and a widely published author. She combines her unique blend of sell-side, buy-side and consulting insights to drive her research and thought leadership around what constitutes best practices and where innovation is occurring. Ms. Kaul joined Franklin Templeton in 2022 from Citi, where she served as Managing Director and Global Head of Business Advisory Services, and launched and built out the Citi's Business Advisory Services practice, a market leading provider of industry thought leadership spanning Citi's Markets and Global Wealth organizations. Ms. Kaul rejoined Citi in 2009, after originally starting her career there in 1985 as a Futures Research Analyst covering the soft commodities markets with Citi's predecessor firm, Shearson Lehman Brothers. She joined Commodities Corporation/Goldman Sachs Asset Management in 1995 as a Commodity Trading Advisor (CTA) and Portfolio Manager. After managing money for nearly six years, Ms. Kaul shifted her attention to consulting where she led the strategy practice within the Financial Services division of the renowned dot.com firm, Scient, and then went on to become a Partner at the capital markets niche management consulting firm m.a.partners/Detica. Ms. Kaul holds a bachelor's degree in history and political science from Colgate University.

Sandy Kaul

Jeff Park is the CIO of ProCap. He also serves as an advisor to Bitwise Investments.

Jeff Park

Nikita is a Managing Partner and Head of Fasanara Digital, the crypto division of Fasanara Capital, a $5 billion hedge fund based in London. He oversees the investment strategies and strategic direction of Fasanara Digital. He originally started The Quant Group from his dorm room, building quant strategies for digital assets. In 2018, the team joined Fasanara Capital and became Fasanara Digital, which has since grown into one of the leading and best-performing digital asset funds in the space.



Additionally, Nikita is the founder of The Digital Asset Conference, an annual event aimed at advancing industry adoption, and hosts the Speaking to Legends podcast. He’s a regular speaker at major crypto conferences and has been recognised by Forbes 30 Under 30 and Financial News’ Rising Stars in Finance. Nikita is also a Young Leader Circle (YLC) at the Milken Institute, and holds a BSc in Mathematics from the University of St Andrews.

Nikita Fadeev

Avi Felman is a Principal and Head of Digital Assets Trading at&nbsp;GoldenTree&nbsp;Asset Management. Mr. Felman is also a General Partner of&nbsp;GoldenChain, a wholly owned subsidiary of&nbsp;GoldenTree&nbsp;that manages the Firm’s funds focused on digital assets. Mr. Felman is one of the longest tenured traders in digital assets and has held several prominent positions, including most recently as Co-Portfolio Manager and Head of Trading for&nbsp;BlockTower&nbsp;Capital where he grew the flagship fund portfolio from $40mm at time of joining to over $800mm. Previously, Mr. Felman was Lead Trader at Wave Financial where he co- led the development of the first SEC-regulated Bitcoin fund and he also was responsible for the derivatives strategy and trading execution. Prior to joining Wave Financial, Mr. Felman founded Ledger Capital, a firm focused on cryptocurrency trading and investments. Mr. Felman received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering&nbsp;from&nbsp;Washington University.

Avi Felman

Meltem Demirors is Founder and General Partner at Crucible, an early-stage fund investing in the foundations of our digital future. Before launching Crucible in 2024, she served as Chief Strategy Officer at CoinShares, Europe’s largest and longest standing digital asset investment firm which oversees $7B in AUM. Meltem started her crypto career on the founding team at Digital Currency Group, which grew from 40 to 200 portfolio companies and 2 to 4 subsidiaries during her tenure. Beyond her corporate positions, Meltem has lectured at MIT and Oxford and is an active angel investor in over 100 startups. She leverages her vast network – ranging from major institutions to builders at the fringe – to find and fund unique opportunities for Crucible. Before joining the crypto industry in 2015, Meltem began her career trading and working in the oil and gas industry. She studied math and econ at Rice University and has an MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management. When she isn’t talking about data centers, the energy grid, or forward curves she can be found reading, wandering in the woods, or scheming with her magical internet money friends.

Meltem Demirors

Amy is the head of emerging markets equity, a member of the Morgan Stanley Investment Management Operating Committee, the Morgan Stanley Investment Management Equity Technology Council, the Morgan Stanley Innovation Council and the Morgan Stanley Arts and Culture Committee. She manages digital asset initiatives at MSIM and has held roles in equity and FX trading, portfolio management support, product development and strategy. Prior to joining Morgan Stanley in 2001, Amy managed business development at Arc Worldwide. She has over 25 years of financial services experience.

Amy Oldenburg

Tony Ashraf, Managing Director, is globally responsible for Digital Asset Transformation at BlackRock. In this role, he partners both internally and across the industry to leverage blockchain to disrupt traditional operating models, with a focus on partnerships, scale creation and product innovation. His work includes the firms efforts around DLT to redefine market infrastructure, tokenisation and our efforts to develop institutional grade cryptoassets solutions.



Tony’s experience spans across both the buy &amp; sell side, having worked in various Operational, Technology, Project Management, Business Management &amp; Client Service roles in the UK, Japan, China, Singapore &amp; Hungary.

Tony Ashraf

Michael Howell is CEO of CrossBorder Capital, a London-based FCA registered, independent research and investment company that he founded in 1996. The firm provides asset allocation and capital markets advice to institutional investors, and manages US$1 billion of assets. Michael is involved with educational charities and currently advises a major educational foundation on its investment strategy. He brings 40 years finance experience and is a regular international conference speaker, and a media and social media commentator. He has also advised the World Bank on capital flows, co-authoring their publication Opportunities in Emerging Markets (World Bank, 1995), served as board director of a listed Japanese investment trust and recently authored the book Capital Wars (Macmillan, 2020). Previously he was Head of Research for Baring Securities and board member, where he focussed on Emerging Markets, and Research Director of Salomon Brothers Inc, the US investment bank. Before entering finance, Michael worked as Group Economist for Blue Circle Industries plc. He holds a Phd. in financial economics from London University, specialising in Fixed Income, and is a SEC-qualified US Supervisory Analyst. Michael lives in Oxford, England, and is married with four children.

Michael Howell

Jess is the CEO of WalletConnect, the connectivity layer for the financial internet. Previously she led Crypto at Checkout.com, a global fintech company. Jess was also a member of the Bank of England CBDC Engagement Forum and a member of UK Finance New Digital Money Steering Group, Innovate Finance Fintech Strategy Group and Department for International Trade Fintech Group.

Jess Houlgrave

Dan Tapiero is a renowned macro-focused investor with over 25 years of investing and entrepreneurial experience. He is the Founder, CEO and CIO of 1Roundtable Partners (1RT) and 10T Holdings (10T), which collectively manage over $1.4 billion of investments in 24 active companies across the Digital Asset Ecosystem (DAE). 1RT is a growth equity fund focused on mid-to-late stage companies in the DAE. Dan serves on several boards including Ledger, LEDN, Futureverse, and Quicknode. Before founding 1RT and 10T, Dan was Managing Partner of DTAP Capital Advisors, a global macro investment fund that he founded in 2003. He is Co-Founder of Gold Bullion International (GBI), a physical precious metals platform for the wealth management industry. GBI expanded into the cryptocurrency business through its integration with Uphold (fka Bitreserve) in 2014. Prior to GBI, he was formerly Co-Founder of the Agricultural Company of America (AGCoA), one of the largest farmland REITs in the U.S. at the time of its sale to the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) in 2013. Previously, from 1992-2012, Dan was a macro-focused portfolio manager and analyst at Duquesne Capital Management, SAC Capital Advisors, Tiger Management and Steinhardt Management Co. Dan graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Brown University, where he earned his B.A.'90 and M.A.'91 in European History. Dan has been on the Board of Trustees of the Lawrenceville School for the past 15 years and currently leads the Investment Committee for its endowment.

Dan Tapiero

Santiago Roel Santos (CryptoPunk #9159) is an investor focusing at the intersection of DeFi and the Web3 metaverse (NFTs/gaming). Most recently was a Partner at ParaFi Capital, one of the largest crypto funds specializing in DeFi. Prior to that, he was at Sageview Capital investing in Internet and software and, before that, at JP Morgan investment banking. Santiago began investing in crypto in 2012.

Santiago Roel Santos

Nicolas is a Founding Partner of Numeus, a global digital asset investment and trading firm founded by a team of finance, blockchain and technology professionals. Nicolas leads the firm's asset management division, Forteus, that is backed by Schroders and offers institutional funds for investors seeking exposure to the digital asset ecosystem. Nicolas brings over twenty years of professional experience in a career spanning crypto, traditional finance and consulting industries. Before co-founding Numeus, Nicolas was a founding partner of Argentière Capital, a volatility-focused multi-strategy hedge fund where he was a Senior Portfolio Manager focusing on volatility strategies across equities and FX. He was a member of the firm’s Risk Management Committee and was instrumental in building many of the tools and processes employed by the firm across investment and risk management functions.



Prior to launching Argentière, Nicolas was a Portfolio Manager in JPMorgan Chase’s Equity Proprietary Trading Group in London. He previously spent nine years at Bain &amp; Company, where he was a Manager running consulting projects in the areas of corporate strategy, M&amp;A, private equity and operational improvements for clients in Europe, US and Japan.



Nicolas obtained his BA / MA in Mathematics from the Ecole Polytechnique of Lausanne in Switzerland.

Nicolas Vanhoutteghem 

Eric Chen is the CEO of Injective Foundation. Eric has worked within the crypto industry for over six years with his latest project, Injective, garnering interest from leading professionals across hedge funds, venture capitals and blockchain projects, including but not limited to Pantera Capital, Mark Cuban, Hashed and Binance.



Eric was featured in Forbes 30 under 30 in 2024 for his work on Injective.

Eric Chen

Rebecca Rettig is the Chief Legal Officer at Jito Labs, where she leads legal, compliance, and policy strategy. She previously held the same role at the Aave Companies, a DeFi software developer, and Polygon Labs, a blockchain technology company; at both, she built the policy function and managed all legal and compliance matters. Ms. Rettig is a pioneer in shaping legal and regulatory frameworks for blockchain systems and applications, advising on matters including decentralization, token launches, and mechanisms. DeFi, structuring, and decentralized governance. She has liaised with policymakers and regulators globally on how DeFi systems operate and the appropriate intersection of law with this novel technology. Ms. Rettig began her legal career at Cravath, Swaine &amp; Moore LLP, litigating complex financial disputes, as well as a landmark peer-to-peer file-sharing case and one of the largest airline mergersin history. She was a partner at Manatt, Phelps &amp; Phillips and currently is Of Counsel at Arktouros pllc, a boutique law firm specializing in cutting-edge technology companies. She has been recognized as one of Crain’s Top Women Lawyers in New York City.

Rebecca Rettig

Hadley is the Chief Commercial Officer at Marinade Labs, the web3 software development team behind Solana liquid and native staking protocol Marinade. He previously founded and led Fidelity’s digital assets division, after serving as SVP of Fidelity Labs where he led several divisions to research and pilot several emerging technologies, including wearable computing, VR/AR, mobile applications (including the company’s first-ever app and app brokerage), AI, and others. He also led global digital asset custody for the Bank of New York Mellon, where he launched the industry’s first bank-grade platform for digital asset custody on bitcoin and Ethereum. He also served as COO at blockchain infrastructure company Bloq, and previously led Amazon Web Services’ AWS Innovation Lab.

Hadley Stern

William joined Marshall Wace in May 2022 to oversee Fintech and Digital Assets investments for MW Digital Finance Fund.



Prior to joining Marshall Wace, William worked at Candy Capital, a family office where he was responsible for various investments across the technology sector. Prior to Candy Capital, William worked for HSBC and Greyspark Partners, were he was heading Fintech Investment Advisory. William is also an active seed investor across digital assets and fintech.

William Benattar

Jakob is the President of GSR, he previously served as the Global CEO of GSR for over 2.5 years. Prior to joining GSR, he was Head of EMEA business at Two Sigma Investments and a board director of Two Sigma International. He has 18 years of experience developing business and investment solutions in systematic investment management, including roles at Winton Capital Management and Barclays Global Investors (BGI). Jakob earned a BSc in Economics from Lund University where he also completed the MSc coursework in Economics (without dissertation). He also holds a Ships Officers Degree, Class VIII from Chalmers University of Technology.

Jakob Palmstierna

Matt Hougan is one of the world’s leading experts on crypto, ETFs, and financial technology. He is Chief Investment Officer for Bitwise Asset Management, a pioneer in cryptoasset index funds with more than $1.2 billion in assets under management. He was previously CEO of ETF.com, where he helped build the world’s first ETF data and analytics system, the leading ETF media site, and the world’s largest ETF conference, Inside ETFs. Hougan is co-author of both "A Comprehensive Guide to Exchange-Traded Funds" and "Cryptoassets: The Guide to Bitcoin, Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies for Professional Investors" from the CFA Institute’s Research Foundation. He is a crypto columnist for Forbes, and a three-time member of the Barron’s ETF Roundtable.

Matt Hougan

Xiao-Xiao J. Zhu currently serves as Digital Operating Partner at KKR where he leads technology-driven value creation, innovation and digital transformation at the board and top management level of European private equity portfolio companies such as Axel Springer, GfK and Roompot Landal. He also leads KKR’s global Digital Assets &amp; Blockchain strategy, driving investments in foremost Crypto VCs such as Dragonfly Capital and Ethereal Ventures as well as Digital Assets companies such as Anchorage Digital. He is a regular speaker at key Digital Assets &amp; AI conferences, and is an angel investor in fast growing early stage technology companies such as Fuse Energy or Anagram. Prior to joining KKR, he was General Manager at BCG Digital Ventures in London and Beijing where he founded, launched and scaled new digital companies such as Heycar.com (backed by Volkswagen &amp; Daimler) or Tracr.com (backed by DeBeers). He began his career in management consulting advising Fortune 500 companies at the Boston Consulting Group in London. Notably, in an earlier life, he performed as a professional concert pianist on some of the world’s most prestigious concert venues including the Berlin Philharmonie, and played for global leaders such as George H.W. Bush, Helmut Kohl or Mikhail Gorbachev. He holds a MSc in Managerial Economics &amp; Strategy from the London School of Economics, a BA in Philosophy &amp; Economics from the Humboldt University Berlin, and a Masters in Concert Piano from the Berlin University of Arts.

Xiao-Xiao Zhu

Konstantin Richter is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and advisor. He has been active in the blockchain ecosystem as an advisor and contributor since 2015, with the likes of Gem, <a href="http://po.et/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Po.et</a>, and MadHive. In 2017, he created Blockdaemon in order to bring institutional-grade infrastructure to blockchain protocols, crypto native and traditional financial institutions. Subsequently, Konstantin has helmed Blockdaemon through three major funding rounds raising $400M to date. The most recent being a Series C raising $207M at a $3.25B valuation led by Sapphire and Tiger Global with previous backers SoftBank, Goldman Sachs, and Citi Ventures. Blockdaemon is the world’s largest blockchain infrastructure company for node management, MPC tech, and staking.

Konstantin Richter

Jonathan Cheesman

David Mercer is the Chief Executive Officer of LMAX Group, a global, high-growth financial technology company based in London. A former City banking executive and currency specialist, he joined LMAX Group in 2011 and after a successful management buyout, rapidly built LMAX Group into the leading operator of institutional FX and cryptocurrency exchanges with offices in 11 countries and global client base. An outspoken industry commentator, David is a long term champion of the UK’s fintech sector and passionate about supporting entrepreneurship in the UK.

David Mercer

With 7 years of experience across investment banking, hedge funds, and private equity, Guy has built a strong foundation in the financial sector. Prior to founding Ethena, he spent 6 years at Cerberus Management, a firm with $60 billion in assets under management, where he focused on investing in financial services businesses across the capital structure.

Guy Young

Sid Powell is the CEO &amp; Co-Founder of Maple Finance and with his Co-Founder Joe Flanagan founded Maple in 2019. Sid comes from a background in debt capital markets and institutional banking. During his career in traditional finance, he participated in $3BN+ of corporate bond issuance,and served as Treasurer for a commercial lending company in Australia. Maple has originated more than $5b in institutional lending since inception and currently holds over $550m in assets on the platform. We aim to be the global leader in tokenized private credit and first choice for institutional borrowers.

Sid Powell

Vivek Raman

Michael Bucella is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Neoclassic Capital, a digital asset investment firm with a strong focus on Asia. Prior to Neoclassic, Michael served as General Partner with BlockTower Capital from 2017 to 2022, growing the firm near inception to managing in excess of $1B in AUM across hedge fund, venture, and credit strategies. Previous to BlockTower, Michael spent nearly a decade with Goldman Sachs in New York across both the Asset Management (GSAM) and Securities Division.

Michael Bucella

James is General Partner – Fund Manager &amp; GP at Republic. Prior to this, James worked in a wide variety of investing, business building and operating roles across the Alan Howard ecosystem. Originally hired into Brevan Howard, his focus was Principal Investing across Crypto, Web3, Fintech &amp; Frontier Technologies. James was also one of the founding team at WebN Group, the well-known incubator for Fintech &amp; Web3 innovation, where over 18 months significant equity value was created. Twinstake, TruFin, Libre, Geometry and Soter are a few of those companies. Due to James’s extensive experience, he additionally spent 6 months restructuring, realigning and putting into place operational policies and scaling procedures at Elwood, a market leading EMS &amp; PMS provider backed by Goldman Sachs, Citi Bank, and Barclays. Having been heavily involved in Web3 &amp; Digital Assets Markets for over 8 years, James started his career with ~15 years of investment banking experience across multi-asset trading, derivative, sales and structuring desks at top tier banks. His deep understanding of the intersection between digital assets, financial technologies and traditional finance has been crucial to creating robust investment thesis’s, venture builds and implementing operational policies, scalable processes and go-to-market strategies in portfolio companies. Outside of work, James is an advisor to various companies, including Saltford FC and has published numerous quantitative, financial and regulatory papers across both traditional and digital markets, most recently for the Digital Economic Initiative. As a qualified Chartered Financial Analyst®, James holds a Masters in Finance (Distinction) &amp; graduated with an Honours Degree in Economics from Durham University.

James Newman

Lekker Capital is a global macro hedge fund with a particular focus on the emerging digital asset industry. Prior to founding Lekker, Quinn served as the Head of Capital Markets for two institutional lending businesses in the digital asset ecosystem, most recently at Maple Finance. Quinn spent five years in fixed income and capital markets at Guggenheim Partners in New York before his full-time foray into crypto.

Quinn Thompson

Co-founder of RootstockLabs and a pioneer of Blockchain and Bitcoin development in Latin America. With over a decade of experience in the industry, Diego has helped create a network of Bitcoin communities throughout Latam, with a presence in 9 countries in the region. He is also the co-founder of the longest-running Bitcoin Conference in the world — LABITCONF. He was recently inducted into the Crypto Hall of Fame, an initiative that honors outstanding business leaders and entrepreneurs who have made a significant contribution to the crypto industry. Other key figures inducted alongside him include Satoshi Nakamoto, Hal Finey, Nick Szabo, Vitalik Buterin, and Adam Back amongst others.

Diego Gutierrez Zaldivar

Prior to joining the Board of the Algorand Foundation, Staci ran the Global Market Development practice at the Milken Institute, where she led its work on capital market development, crypto/blockchain solutions, and innovative finance to promote the sustainable development goals. Prior to Milken, Staci ran JPMorgan’s EMEA public sector practice out of London. Before JPMorgan, she led the Nasdaq’s two markets for microcap companies, and in the public and non-profit sectors had senior roles at the U.S. Treasury Department, the Center for Global Development, and the Harvard Institute for International Development. Staci has done business in more than 50 countries and has advised and spoken widely on the potential for cryptocurrencies and blockchain to solve real-world problems, and for financial innovation to improve inclusion and reduce global poverty. In addition to the Algorand Foundation, she sits on the Boards of the Global Blockchain Business Council, the Rwandan Capital Market Authority, and the Energy for Growth Hub. She also serves on the advisory committees of the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), the European Parliament’s Science and Technology Committee (STOA), the U.S. Financial Technology Association, and Evolution Environmental Asset Management.

Staci Warden

Diogo is the co-founder of Anchorage Digital, where he served as President prior to joining Haun Ventures and where he currently serves as Executive Chairman. Anchorage Digital is the first federally chartered crypto-native bank in the US. Prior to founding Anchorage Digital, Diogo served as Platform Security Lead at Square (now known as Block). At Square, Diogo worked on the infrastructure security platform (including identity, access management, and responses systems) that is now used to move over $200B in annualized gross payments volume. Diogo also served as Security Lead at Docker, where he and his team wrote code that helps secure one of the core underpinnings of modern computing infrastructure: containers. Diogo serves as the Chairman of the NEAR Foundation. He previously served as an advisor to Airtable and StackRox.

Diogo Monica

Ian brings over 20 years of experience in capital markets and fintech and is widely regarded as one of the UK’s foremost experts in blockchain and digital assets. He most recently led KPMG’s UK Crypto &amp; Digital Assets practice, and previously served as Executive Director and Board Advisor to CryptoUK, the UK’s digital asset trade association.

Ian Taylor

David Karney

Marc Vanlerberghe is the Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at Algorand Foundation. Marc brings more than 20 years of experience in executive marketing positions, with a strong background in entrepreneurial, hyper-growth business environments. Prior to Algorand Foundation, he was the CEO of Rulai, a startup in the nascent conversational AI space. Before that, he was CMO at Medallia, the leading SaaS platform that enables companies to capture actionable customer data in real time. At Google, Marc was Vice President of Marketing for Access and Energy and anadvisor to CapitalG. Marc is known for launching Android and developing the brand into the most popular mobile operating system. In addition, he led marketing for Google Play and Google’s hardware and retail organizations. Marc lives in Sunnyvale, California. He sits on several boards and enjoys advising startup entrepreneurs. Marc received his MBA from Stanford University and his MS degree in engineering from the University of Ghent, Belgium.

Marc Vanlerberghe

Omar is a digital asset expert, investor, and consultant active in the space since 2016. As Chief Business Development Officer at SecondLane (Web3 native investment bank and asset manager with $100 M+ AUM) Omar leads strategic partnerships and oversees complex deal execution with a focus on legal and operational integrity.



In addition to his role at SecondLane, Omar is a LP in several leading crypto venture funds, including Multicoin Capital, Alliance DAO, and Topology Ventures, backing the next generation of protocols and infrastructure across Web3. His investment focus also spans the convergence of blockchain and artificial intelligence, with recent backing of frontier tech companies such as Figure AI and Apptronik.



With deep involvement at both the operational and capital levels, Omar operates at the intersection of institutional adoption, capital formation, and regulatory evolution in digital assets. He is driven by his deep belief in blockchain’s potential to drive long-term, meaningful social impact on a global scale.

Omar Shakeeb

Rob Hadick is a General Partner at Dragonfly, a ~$4bn crypto focused investment firm. Previously, he helped lead multi-stage investments into crypto companies and protocols at GoldenTree Asset Management ("GTAM"), a ~$50bn multi-strategy hedge fund. Prior to GTAM, Rob invested in and advised fintech, technology, and crypto companies while at Heritage Partners, Goldman Sachs, and PJT Partners. He holds a MBA from Columbia Business School, and a Bachelors in Economics and Political Science from Washington University in St. Louis.

Rob Hadick

Chris is the CIO of Digital Assets at Amitis Capital. In his early career, Chris worked at several major institutions including CIBC World Markets, Société Générale Barr Devlin, Antarctica Asset Management and ING Investment Management. In 2010, he joined SAIL Advisors (the family office of the founder of Duty-Free Shoppers) as Head of Research for Tactical Trading and Relative Value Strategies. He later joined Cliffwater LLC as Managing Director covering global macro and relative value strategies on the hedge fund research team. Most recently, Chris was the CIO of Digital Assets at Forest Road, where he oversaw a digital assets-focused venture capital fund of funds. Chris has a BA in Economics and Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania and an MComm in Finance from the University of New South Wales, where he was a Federation Scholar. Chris holds the CFA, CPA, and CAIA designations. Chris has broken 9 Guinness World Records and has run marathons on all 7 continents and in all 50 US states.

Chris Solarz

Leading Strategy and Partnerships for Digital Assets in Citi's Treasury and Trade Solutions Business. Working with a truly dynamic global team serving 140 countries, 160 currencies while regulated in 95 countries.

David Cunningham

Seth Ginns is a Managing Partner and Head of Liquid Investments at CoinFund, and a key member of the Venture Investment Committee. He has 20 years of Wall Street experience and has been deeply involved in the crypto community since his angel investment in Coinbase in 2012. He is also an angel in Starkware, Chainalysis, participated in the Ethereum ICO in 2014, and loves traveling globally to developer events as a way to keep a finger on the pulse of the market. His angel portfolio also includes Instacart, BillionToOne and DoorDash, and many earlier stage, high growth startups.



Prior to CoinFund, Seth invested in public growth equities over 18 years at Jennison Associates. He holds a BA in Mathematics and South Asia Studies from the University of Pennsylvania, where he serves on the International Advisory Board of the Center for the Advanced Study of India at the School of Arts and Sciences and served as an Overseer at the School of Nursing and Co-Chair of the Innovation Committee.

Seth Ginns

Ryan Rasmussen is the Head of Research at Bitwise Asset Management. Prior to Bitwise, he held a variety of corporate finance roles at Cetera Financial Group, a network of independent broker-dealers with over 8,000 financial advisors and $300 billion in assets under administration. Before Cetera, Ryan was a business analyst at Oakley and spent time as a research associate at UK Trade &amp; Investment in Sydney, Australia. He is a graduate of the Argyros School of Business &amp; Economics at Chapman University, with a B.S. in finance and a secondary focus in graphic and web design.

Ryan Rasmussen

Paul Faecks is the Founder and CEO of Plasma, a high-performance, scalable, and secure blockchain built for stablecoin payments. At Plasma, Paul is leading the team building a blockchain tailored for stablecoin transactions from the ground up. Before founding Plasma, Paul served as the CEO and Co-Founder of Alloy, a platform for institutional digital asset operations, beginning in August 2021.

Paul Faecks

Michael Sonnenshein is an executive with over 15 years experience across financial services. As the current President of Securitize, Michael is bringing compliant digital security solutions to institutional and individual investors, bridging the traditional and decentralized finance worlds.



 Prior to Securitize, Michael Sonnenshein was CEO of Grayscale Investments, the world’s largest digital currency asset manager. With over a decade in the crypto industry, Michael established Grayscale as the definitive leader in crypto investing, offering a wide range of investments including single-asset and diversified products. Under Michael’s leadership, Grayscale paved the way for the approval of Bitcoin ETFs in the US market. Michael is regularly featured on CNBC and Bloomberg and was honored in 2021 as one of 100 People Transforming Business by Business Insider and in 2018 as one of the publication’s Rising Stars of Wall Street. Prior to joining Grayscale, Michael was a financial advisor at JP Morgan Securities, covering HNW individuals and institutions, and an analyst at Barclays Wealth, providing coverage to middle‐market hedge funds and institutions. Michael earned his Bachelor of Business Administration from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University and his Master of Business Administration from the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University.ork University.

Michael Sonnenshein

Mathew has more than 25 years of industry and leadership experience, having previously held several leadership positions at Goldman Sachs globally and across different functions. As Global Head of Digital Assets at Goldman Sachs, Mathew is responsible for leading the firm’s cross-divisional digital assets strategy, which includes a wide range of client-led tokenization activities, crypto-linked product offerings and blockchain investments.

Mathew McDermott

Ryan is based in London and heads up Digital Assets globally and Strategic Investments across Europe and Asia at Barclays. The DA team is responsible for digital asset strategy, governance and the establishment of new asset, money and tokenisation initiatives across the bank. The SI team is responsible for originating, executing and portfolio managing all strategic principal equity investments made by Barclays in external companies.  Ryan joined Barclays in 2011 as an M&amp;amp;A advisor in the investment bank and moved to the Strategy and Corporate Development team in 2013, where he acted as a principal in originating and executing M&amp;amp;A transactions.Prior to Barclays, Ryan was at Nevsky Capital, a $7bn long/short equity asset manager, where he covered a range of sectors including oil &amp;amp; gas, chemicals and agriculture and before that worked at Deutsche Bank as a corporate finance advisor in the Industrials practice across Europe. Ryan holds a BA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the University of Oxford and also holds an MA (Oxon) from the University of Oxford.

Ryan Hayward

Jason Yanowitz

Michael Ippolito is a co-founder at Blockworks in charge of content and finance.&nbsp; Previously to co-founding Blockworks, Michael was a consultant where he advised mid-market manufacturing-focused companies on operational and capital efficiency as well as M&amp;A strategy.

Michael Ippolito

Felix Jauvin

Carolina

Ben Strack is a Denver-based reporter covering macro and crypto-native funds, financial advisors, structured products, and the integration of digital assets and decentralized finance (DeFi) into traditional finance. Prior to joining Blockworks, he covered the asset management industry for Fund Intelligence and was a reporter and editor for various local newspapers on Long Island. He graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in journalism.

Macauley was an editor and content creator in the professional chess world for 14 years, prior to joining Blockworks. At Bucerius Law School (Master in Law and Business, 2020) he researched stablecoins, decentralized finance and central bank digital currencies. He also holds an MA in Film Studies; film credits include Associate Producer of the 2016 Netflix feature documentary, "Magnus" about World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen. He is based in Germany.

Macauley Peterson

Nikhil Chaturvedi

David Rodriguez

Marc-Thomas Arjoon

Dan Smith

Boccaccio

Hear from the world's most sophisticated investors about how liquidity, interest rates and economic drivers are shaping their digital asset portfolios.

Macro Case for Digital Assets

Institutional investment will continue to drive this crypto cycle. At DAS you'll hear from investors on strategy, portfolio allocation, and more.

ETFs & Institutional Investment

Hear allocator's perspectives from the top funds in the world on how they are navigating the expanding public & private digital asset markets.

Allocator's Perspective

This year's programming will explore the evolution of global standards and regulatory frameworks that policy makers are crafting for the maturing digital asset ecosystem.

US & Global Digital Asset Policy

The largest financial institutions like Blackrock & JPMorgan are moving onchain to settle treasuries, collateral, and other securities. At DAS, these partnerships and innovations will be at the forefront of conversations.

Tokenization & Real World Assets

DAS will delve into the evolving landscape of stablecoins and digital asset payments. Consumers and institutions alike will gain from their insight into these payments innovations.