In the weekly roundup episode of Blockworks&#8217; podcast &#8220;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENLJXzXvLNY" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">On the Margin</a>,&#8221; Michael Ippolito, co-founder, sits down with his new co-host Mark Yusko of Morgan Creek to dive into expensive equity market valuations, slack in the labor market, John Paulson and Gary Gensler&#8217;s comments on crypto, and FTX.US plans for world domination.



They also cover:



<ul class="wp-block-list"><li>Wealth inequality</li><li>US vs. China regulations</li></ul>



Watch the full episode below! 👇



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Paulson Calls Crypto Worthless, Gensler Crackdown, FTX.US Acquisition" width="1024" height="576" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ENLJXzXvLNY?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div></figure>



&#8220;On the Margin&#8221; is a two-part show.&nbsp;Once a week, Mike interviews industry experts, and then at the end of the week he is joined by co-host Mark Yusko where they break down the top crypto and macro stories. Episodes go live every Wednesday and Saturday morning.



Subscribe to &#8220;On the Margin&#8221; today on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lyn-alden-explains-connection-between-inflation-bitcoin/id1558223079?i=1000513411286" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Apple</a> or <a href="https://spoti.fi/3bTa9uw" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Spotify</a>, or watch episodes on <a href="https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvER9nHSRN3xVs_p-dl7L7K_ZgL6lSudu" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">YouTube</a>.



Are you a UK or EU reader that cant get enough investor-focused content on digital assets?<a target="_blank" href="https://cms.blockworks.co/events/das-london/" rel="noreferrer noopener">Join us</a>&nbsp;in London on November 15th and 16th for the Digital Asset Summit (DAS) London. Use code ARTICLE for £75 off your ticket.&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://cms.blockworks.co/events/das-london/" rel="noreferrer noopener">Buy it now</a>.

Podcast: Mark Yusko Talks FTX.US Acquisition, Gensler Crackdown, More

Byron Gilliam

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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<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>
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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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<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>

Stocks trade sideways ahead of political updates, Jackson Hole

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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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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<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>

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

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



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<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>
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Solana memecoin launchpad burns 100% of its revenues

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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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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<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>

How liquid funds thrive in spot crypto markets

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">
&#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/empire">Empire</a>: Crypto news and analysis to start your day.</li>



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<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>.



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



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.



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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>



<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

Ben Strack

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;



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DAT-a crunch: Momentum builds around ETH treasury companies

Macauley Peterson

Ronin, the gaming chain launched by <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/sky-mavis">Sky Mavis</a>, is making its way back into the Ethereum fold.&nbsp;



Today, the team announced that Ronin will migrate from a standalone sidechain to a full Ethereum layer-2 rollup.



Scheduled for Q1-Q2 2026, the shift aligns Ronin with Ethereum’s settlement layer while retaining <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/ron">RON</a> as the chain’s native gas token. Users won’t pay ETH directly, but transaction data will be posted to Ethereum, and the chain will inherit Ethereum’s security guarantees.



For <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ronin">Ronin</a>, this marks <a href="https://blog.roninchain.com/p/ronins-homecoming-to-ethereum">a kind of homecoming</a> — not just technically, but economically and strategically. Its next evolution involves new tokenomics, with “Proof of Distribution” rewarding builders rather than just validators or liquidity providers. It’s a classic layer-2 model: Preserve the ecosystem’s internal coherence while plugging into Ethereum’s shared infrastructure.



But Ronin’s return to <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ethereum">Ethereum</a> also highlights an increasingly relevant design question: if Ethereum is the center of gravity, how should aligned systems connect to it? Should app-specific ecosystems become <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/rollups">rollups</a> with their own sequencers? Or should they integrate more deeply, adopting shared sequencing via Ethereum validators — so-called “based” architectures?



Ronin is choosing to keep sequencing local. Control over order flow, fee logic and transaction inclusion will remain with the chain’s own operators. But not everyone sees this as the optimal path forward.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Based and beyond</h2>



Take Taiko, the self-described “first <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/unpacking-the-based-rollups-debate">based rollup</a>,” which just shipped a major milestone: <a href="https://blockworks.co/podcast/bellcurve/0345b516-eb15-11ee-854f-cbb5ba1433a1">preconfirmations</a> live on Ethereum mainnet. The rollout made <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/taiko">Taiko</a> the first production implementation of a rollup that outsources sequencing directly to Ethereum proposers. Instead of running its own centralized sequencer, Taiko uses Ethereum block proposers to order transactions, preserving decentralization and aligning incentives with the base layer.



Preconfirmations fill a key gap: While Ethereum validators publish blocks every 12 seconds, apps need to give users faster feedback — sometimes known as “soft confirmation.” Taiko’s preconf system introduces a fast path — about two seconds — for users to get confirmation that their transaction will be included. It doesn’t feel instant, but it’s a breakthrough for systems that refuse to compromise on decentralization in exchange for speed.



An adoption hurdle for Taiko has been that its design made transactions consistently more expensive than its rollup rivals. But that’s changing, according to Lin Oshitani, protocol researcher at Nethermind.



“At some point, being a based rollup becomes more cost-efficient than having a centralized sequencer, and it can provide these composability guarantees and all that,” <a href="https://x.com/i/spaces/1RDxlzAXLnRGL">he said</a> in an X space Friday. “Blob aggregation is the first step.”



Taiko’s milestone was the first time preconfirmations went live on a mainnet-based rollup. But it won’t be the last.



Puffer Labs <a href="https://x.com/puffer_unifi/status/1956013582027460733">just launched</a> the second testnet of its UniFi stack, another based architecture that pushes the model even further. Puffer is building infrastructure for application-specific chains that use Ethereum’s validator set for sequencing and settlement. They call them “based appchains.”



UniFi’s differentiator is speed. While Taiko targets two-second preconf times, Puffer claims sub-10 millisecond latency on testnet, which is approaching Web2 performance territory. That’s enabled through a preconfirmation AVS (Actively Validated Service) built on <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/eigenlayer">EigenLayer</a>, which restakes ETH to back a distributed set of preconfirmers. Add in a multi-TEE (trusted execution environment) prover setup spanning both Intel TDX and AMD SEV, and Puffer is trying to minimize trust assumptions while maximizing responsiveness.



Puffer opts for the TEE route, for now, because current zk-provers lack real-time proving — a prerequisite to achieving synchronous composability — according to Amir Forouzani, a contributor at Puffer.



“As ZK technology matures, we are gradually transitioning toward fully trustless real-time proving, while continuing to use TEEs as a safeguard to catch potential bugs in the zk-circuits, ensuring maximum safety,” Forouzani told Blockworks.



Unlike Taiko, UniFi shares <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/mev">MEV</a> and congestion rewards across all parties, including the Ethereum Validators and Rollup owners. So there is no longer the tradeoff of giving up MEV or priority fee to become based. Unlike most rollups — and of course L1’s like <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/circle-l1-impact-ethereum">Circle&#8217;s planned Arc chain</a> — UniFi appchains don’t need to centralize sequencer logic or fee capture. They get the sovereignty of an appchain with the alignment and finality guarantees of Ethereum.



If Taiko is the “proof of concept” for based rollups in production, Puffer can be seen as a forward-looking blueprint with different tradeoffs. It’s more configurable, faster and has a clearer path toward institutional use cases. Its second testnet introduces <a href="https://eip7702.io/">EIP-7702</a>-based atomic withdrawals, custom gas token logic and optional privacy features, making it attractive to both permissionless builders and enterprise clients.



Taiko offers a simpler, fully live architecture with no reliance on trusted hardware or external AVS networks, prioritizing neutrality and <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/decentralization">decentralization</a> today.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The alignment spectrum</h2>



What’s emerging is a spectrum of Ethereum-aligned architectures. At one end, you have Ronin joining the status quo of rollups, with its own sequencer and token logic, drawing security from Ethereum but keeping execution local. In the middle, you have based rollups like Taiko, which rely entirely on Ethereum’s validator set to handle transaction ordering. And on the far end, Puffer proposes sovereign appchains that share sequencing and economic alignment with Ethereum while maintaining full control over execution environments.



Like Ronin, Circle’s Arc is built for a specific use case with a custom gas token. But unlike Ronin, it’s not trying to be part of the Ethereum stack at all.



All are responses to Ethereum’s current limitations: latency, throughput, cost or governance overhead. But they diverge on the question of how deeply to plug into Ethereum (via shared sequencing), partially (via settlement), or not at all.



Beyond the battle between rollups and L1s, it’s a tussle over who controls order flow, who earns MEV, and where economic gravity pulls. For developers and users alike, the trade-offs are getting sharper: faster UX vs deeper alignment, composability vs. sovereignty, local revenue vs. shared security.



Ronin’s return to Ethereum as an L2 shows that the mainstream rollup-centric roadmap playbook still holds weight. But Taiko and Puffer suggest a new one is being written, where Ethereum’s broad base of validators have a more direct role in the execution of everything that builds on top.



Updated Aug. 15, 2025 at 3:20 pm ET: Added comment from Puffer. Updated Aug. 16, 2025 at 7:36 am ET: Clarified how UniFi handles MEV.



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Ronin rejoins Ethereum as rollup strategies diverge

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Winklevoss twins-backed exchange Gemini launched a wallet product yesterday, presumably to better compete with rivals like Coinbase and Kraken in the consumer market.



So how does it hold up — and where does it fit into the increasingly competitive wallet landscape?



The Gemini Wallet is a self-custody solution that also ties into a web-based dashboard, dubbed “<a href="https://onchain.gemini.com/portfolio">Onchain</a>,” which essentially offers a bigger screen to examine your crypto portfolio and make trades.



As of right now, this experience is on the web — there’s no standalone Gemini Wallet mobile app (yet). It’s not a Chrome browser extension either, though that could change at some point. Instead, some browser pop-ups will help you navigate the wallet sign-up and settings.



The onboarding process is a little different from what we’ve seen before. There are no Gmail single-sign on (SSO) flows, no passwords and no visible seed phrases. It doesn’t ask for any personal information, unlike onboarding with Gemini via an exchange account, which involves KYC.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfVpxvbvj_WX6BTyKd8p8Oz52iS1uP_y55GYBb02OCbiic1a80rqpyNF0gI6b1caNGqjNvW8n-B6kdKqx_qQqBVxr2ilaadoDNnhplSgwvDkWDfNrT34PwOLpMb3nmccYdzYSspEg?key=4wtK2839eBZvCsEpeak85Q" alt=""/></figure>



Instead, it takes about two seconds to generate a wallet via your device’s passkey tech. After you pick a .gemini.eth username, you’re ready to roll.



Essentially, the username is a free ENS name attached to your Gemini Wallet, which is a nice perk.&nbsp;



After running through the setup flow myself, I was impressed and surprised by how speedy and smooth the onboarding process was. It was easier than MetaMask, Coinbase, Phantom, and Ronin Wallet, all of which I’ve used before (but whose UX has improved with time).&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXf3e8XAmDuwSQ4PG2Wbta6z-qjFxCz71YMlUDxh5QmsznncRqGbldyOAbiWFpVJtM4F_fu2UDQcNR58p3VtffI7NnO0WkgKvLWoduLvJkvCNVzcI3dSmxcDGKHxZ-KjXFlN3Lp0Ww?key=4wtK2839eBZvCsEpeak85Q" alt=""/></figure>



So far, the main embedded feature on Gemini Onchain, besides making basic crypto trades, is access to Gemini’s “vaults.” Traders can choose from the “Prime” vault (lower-risk) or the “Core” vault (higher-risk).&nbsp;



A pop-out explanation of the vaults describes them as a way to “invest and receive returns on your holdings by matching you directly with borrowers at better rates than traditional lending protocols.”&nbsp;



Gemini is <a href="https://www.gemini.com/blog/launching-the-gemini-wallet-a-simple-and-secure-way-to-go-onchain?utm_source=thedrop.beehiiv.com&amp;utm_medium=newsletter&amp;utm_campaign=sink-or-swim">covering gas fees</a> for “key actions,” though it’s unclear for how long that gas sponsorship might last. The wallet currently supports Ethereum’s mainnet, plus ecosystem extensions Optimism, Polygon, Base, and Arbitrum.



The Gemini Onchain experience feels like a soft landing spot for total newbs to DeFi. Maybe it’s for people who come from a non-technical field, or the crypto-curious who have never touched it before. The wallet is not intimidating, but it’ll feel too simple for some traders.



One thing about the “Onchain” hub is that it’s not much of a hub as it stands right now, besides being a way to manage your own wallet via buys, sells and swaps, plus access to those vaults and some educational resources. The buttons to other trading tools like Uniswap link out to the external site without keeping you logged into your Gemini Wallet over there.



Maybe the team will add onto and build out this hub over time so it can feel more like a crypto destination.&nbsp;



I’m glad the Gemini Wallet exists — it’s one of the nicest onboarding processes I’ve encountered.



But because it could still use more functionality, I probably wouldn’t switch from my other existing wallets if given the choice.



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Winklevoss twins’ crypto exchange launches Gemini Wallet

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“The miracle of compounding returns is overwhelmed by the tyranny of compounding costs.”&nbsp;



— John Bogle



<a href="https://www.economist.com/business/2025/08/06/how-loyalty-programmes-are-keeping-americas-airlines-aloft">Could stablecoins kill the airlines?</a>​​



The Economist writes that the four biggest US airlines would all have made a loss last year if not for their side hustle selling loyalty points.



Delta, for example, made an operating profit of $6 billion on the year, $7 billion of which came from selling loyalty points to credit card companies.&nbsp;



Incredibly, Delta says 1% of America’s GDP is spent through its co-branded cards.



In total, US consumers paid $187 billion in credit card interchange fees last year, which always seems ripe for disruption.



But The Economist points out that roughly three-quarters of interchange fees are returned to customers as rewards or rebates.



People love their rewards, especially the airline rewards that make travel feel like it’s free. This could be a defensive moat for the credit card companies that stablecoin issuers are hoping to disrupt.



Understandably, the airlines would like the card companies to maintain that moat — so much so that they lobbied against an amendment to the GENIUS Act that would have lowered interchange fees.



In a <a href="https://www.digitaltransactions.net/opposition-mounts-to-the-durbin-marshall-amendment/?utm_source=chatgpt.com">letter</a> to Congress, the airline industry warned that the legislation would “lead to significantly fewer passengers and flights.”



The amendment was dropped, but if stablecoins really catch on, it could have the same effect: fewer flights and higher ticket prices.



But what if stablecoins offer points, too?&nbsp;



The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/13/business/wall-street-banks-crypto-stablecoins.html">reported</a> this morning that big US banks planning to issue stablecoins also “plan to operate rewards programs, similar to existing credit card promotions, to woo customers to their own coins.”



<a href="https://www.wsj.com/finance/currencies/trump-family-crypto-1e7ab14a?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=ASWzDAi8AHEWU5AffhZBSv_TQbcTnUofOrvKWrD2LDnjVPiUPUopD2VUdx7lmQIqyKQ%3D&amp;gaa_ts=689cfe24&amp;gaa_sig=Of7yLxXiom12TAQLQTXDx1x7fG8CZhe2xrGRkEyM2ozPTIWhlZbOAZYs8_QD2FXa_OxhUqBdMYcgIFsrUAD5sg%3D%3D">PancakeSwap diplomacy</a>



The Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/finance/currencies/trump-family-crypto-1e7ab14a?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=ASWzDAiQ5e0ijjCRuKB28f0bK_cN-PmNcO3Dyy02yWmbP9s183aOIDOA0m1-a4bbJgE%3D&amp;gaa_ts=689e03f8&amp;gaa_sig=3K9u0zdaSpLfTwXipkjvw7rHnBrH0tIRlcEJWoLgejOE9AE3oTMfO_0XBeVBIGyjfT96cOUq-MiqwWHb9zLXrA%3D%3D">reports</a> that Binance is making a concerted effort to promote World Liberty Financial’s USD1 stablecoin, presumably to curry favor with President Trump.



Amusingly, much of it is happening on PancakeSwap.



90% of the trading in USD1 happens on the breakfast-themed decentralized exchange, where volumes exploded over the last two months.



The reason? “Crypto investors were chasing prizes worth up to $1 million for generating as much USD1 trading as possible as part of a ‘Liquidity Drive.’” (I’m guessing paid by Binance.)



Popular USD1 pairs include Torch of Liberty and Eagles Landing — memecoins launched with the explicit goal of getting people to use the president’s stablecoin.



Despite the America-first branding, most of the activity happens in China: “Traders, mostly writing in Chinese, gather in groups on the Telegram messaging app to talk about competing for rewards paid out to top users of USD1 and advertised by PancakeSwap.”



Recent events have left many <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/why-is-trump-being-so-generous-to-china/a-73594826">wondering</a> why Trump is being so nice to China.



Could it have anything to do with a Chinese crypto exchange paying Chinese traders to use a US president’s stablecoin, to trade US-themed memecoins, on a US-breakfast-themed exchange?



I mean, it’s only natural to feel more generous toward someone that’s making you a lot of money.



Improbably, I know. The US-China détente is probably not about PancakeSwap.&nbsp;



But we can’t rule it out!



Which is wild.



If memecoin traders on PancakeSwap ease tension between China and the US, it will all have been worth it.



<a href="https://blog.bitmex.com/treasury-company-advisory-agreements/">DATs are more expensive than you think</a>



BitMEX Research details the hidden costs of investing in digital asset treasury companies.



Many DATs pay an outside asset manager just to hold on to their crypto for them.



The Solana DAT Upexi, for example, pays an annual fee of 1.75% of its assets to custody its SOL tokens.



Verb Technologies, a Toncoin DAT, pays an annual “advisory fee” equal to 2% of its market capitalization (every year!) to the investment firm Kingsway Capital Partners.&nbsp;



How much there is to advise on with a DAT is unclear — you just buy the token, right?



And paying your advisor as a percent of market capitalization instead of NAV seems particularly egregious.



MEI Pharma, the Litecoin DAT, pays 0.75% a year to an advisor and 1.75% a year to an asset manager.



ATNF, the latest ETH DAT, pays an asset manager 2% assets for custody, with a hefty annual minimum of $1 million.



ATNF is up 113% this week, so you can see why investors might not care just at the moment.



But they should because the “tyranny of compounding costs” is inescapable over time.



Most of these new DATs issue warrants and/or options to their advisors as well, which will dilute shareholders when exercised.



BNC, the BNB coin DAT currently trading at $28, has granted options to its advisor at an exercise price of $0.00001 per share.



“In some cases,” BitMEX adds, “there is often an incentive or payment linked to the market capitalization or premium to mNAV.”



You can also throw in the cost of the C-suite incentives, payroll, legal advice, banker advice, auditor fees, exchange-listing fees…&nbsp;



All of which must add up to multiple percentage points of NAV per year. Every year.



Or you could hold an ETF for an all-in annual fee of 0.2%.



Or hold the crypto yourself for a fee of 0.00%.



“The end game here is that many of these companies eventually trade at a significant discount to mNAV and become zombies once again,” BitMEX concludes, “potentially still paying significant fees.” Emphasis added to make John Bogle roll over in his grave.



<a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2025/08/11/3130918/0/en/Safety-Shot-Announces-Strategic-Alliance-with-Bonk-Founding-Contributors-Initiating-BONK-Treasury-Strategy.html">Bonk treasury strategy</a>



Markets have a knack for chasing any profitable strategy right up to its breaking point — and for DATs, they may have hit it this week.&nbsp;



Could a Bonk treasury company be to DATs what Pets.com was to e-commerce — a cartoon mascot that ends up discrediting the whole category?&nbsp;



Maybe. The token dropped 5% after the announcement.



<a href="https://stargate.discourse.group/t/layerzero-foundation-acquisition-of-stargate-stg/682">Merger arbitrage comes to crypto</a>



The financial blogger Mojo <a href="https://mojo3324106.substack.com/p/the-factory-that-makes-investment">explains</a> why “merger arbitrage” is the best way to learn about markets.



Speculating on whether a company with a pending takeover offer will ultimately be bought and at what price requires deep knowledge of both bidder and target, the industry it’s in, antitrust law, how the regulatory bodies work and much more.



It also makes you think harder about investing: “Merger arbitrage forces systematic thinking and mastery of process in ways that picking growth stocks never could,” Mojo writes.



Unlike most investing, merger arb generally requires you to be right for the right reason — being carried along by momentum or catching a narrative won’t save you from lazy decision making.



I’d argue that being right for the wrong reason is especially prevalent in crypto.&nbsp;



If so, the merger-arb situation announced this week might be especially educational.&nbsp;



On Monday, the LayerZero Foundation, which develops the LayerZero messaging protocol, proposed the acquisition of Stargate, a bridge protocol that uses LayerZero.&nbsp;



Just like a stock-based deal, the foundation’s offer was $0.1675 per token, paid in ZRO at a ratio of 1 STG to 0.08634 ZRO.



To know whether that presents an opportunity for arbitrage (by buying STG and shorting ZRO), you’ll need a deep understanding of DAO governance, how both protocols work, who the stakeholders in each community are, the crypto borrow-and-lend market&#8230;



There’s a lot more to it than, say, guessing how much the market will overpay for a DAT.&nbsp;



“Merger arbitrage strips investing down to its essential elements,” Mojo sums up.



Crypto investing could use some of that, I think.



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Thursday links: Points, pancakes, DATs and merger arb

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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Here’s a weekly snapshot of the Solana ecosystem.



SOL’s price briefly flirted with the $200 mark before it dipped to $193 amid a broader market dip this morning.



Unlike BTC and ETH, SOL does not enjoy an institutional bid (yet) from treasury companies. SOL DATs, mainly Upexi (UPXI) and DeFi Development Corp (DFDV), have accumulated about $596 billion in SOL, compared to $11 billion in ETH and $86 billion in BTC.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfo3qnUVE2EwsXbB3ctZI-7qkQ1miqzkVGMBKhAQgPGYvT0kpRmhwNcQhyLZUjW_E8h9viFaTkW9zcUgrFlvwWiJU7ZtfEFkVvC_B04TbZa9rUvmEM5Cpg9w818GtNgGc7GpUUEHA?key=lCGEZ20LQzDEgtY3bmAgFw" alt=""/></figure>



Looking at daily REV (all fees paid to transact onchain), Solana’s REV has stayed relatively stagnant at the $2.5 million to $3.5 million mark for months.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcWMB1FxPxzEY5E6gzvo0iwUJxtt8T-TWPWZuafG-SA2tKqylwxIFaqvxLAbPmk2FvbjuUCujqz0K0GSA-2MTDEnPc0yvYAH82fvJACo30UyRkzNW7BWePw2pWDm9Jt3kMvRp2rGw?key=lCGEZ20LQzDEgtY3bmAgFw" alt=""/></figure>



Net inflows into SOL’s sole institutional ETF — the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-rex-osprey-first-solana-staking-etf">REX-Osprey SOL Staking ETF</a> (SSK) — have slowed. The fund drew $3.7 million for the week of Aug. 4-10, compared to $58.3 million in its launch week. Daily net flows were $5.2 million on Tuesday.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXct3Z7-BJMyI0zuS63L0ZiIxoe7iKMmEkXZ9UpEw5JF1QSUVUKOzqHgdg5kfef8XDMD-7N-mkbtWTGuk8ce-rWYNps_6Hp2KpdYlwkB5b4MxLGpbkxmkyKUGZ6SxqlBJ3SfEpnsOg?key=lCGEZ20LQzDEgtY3bmAgFw" alt=""/></figure>



Over on the memecoin side of the world, Pump lost its dominance to Letsbonk through July, but recently reclaimed its spot in the last week. Yesterday, Pump saw 30,550 tokens launched compared to 1,499 on Letsbonk.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcDeKL_YMDtlTDWEb8gcdq50zqOhvnnDOxsKsG2-K6uIAVjQCKUxQTEkownKiknmlTyZ6BaNDxZpw-8INqb68Nz_ccjmQf5XK_idxIapkzuLvc9mmMRNdiGBfOyRJEJOF3r0zu1rQ?key=lCGEZ20LQzDEgtY3bmAgFw" alt=""/></figure>



The PUMP token has traded down to $0.0036, after it briefly touched its ICO price of $0.004 last night.



The Axiom trading platform continues to dominate the market, regardless of which launchpad is winning. Axiom has grown to 60% market share since its inception in February.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeug22PZabAQnYntB4Qmse1Enj0UAkrHrPkPZyx22I8JvI2_nJCh_surFQY2SjYJg14zH6v8Lmn6HOtPQ1IOi9uADXAXUzc9RVC9ec4nmzAw24YSMBmhQkiHeaX3nR-ZEnf1d-oqg?key=lCGEZ20LQzDEgtY3bmAgFw" alt=""/></figure>



Over on the perps market, Drift has been having a good month, <a href="https://x.com/cindyleowtt/status/1955668879398568134">hitting</a> $500 million in open interest yesterday. Its zero-fee trading for BTC and ETH introduced in mid-July has sparked a growth of volumes, as seen in the below chart.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXc8qZoCqS4QJUiHzCtAXqV9_2PsK38b2rAQTl8I53QYpjFamiVfbcZhCt-E-otlXFXUxQveTX5KpvWKoApbKa6_Aw8nZlFbf_QKDRnpYD87UFs5jNcG2QN8qqntT5i9OkjJh3oRrQ?key=lCGEZ20LQzDEgtY3bmAgFw" alt=""/></figure>



Despite its growth, though, the perps crown in Solana is still held by Jupiter.&nbsp;



Based on trading volumes, Drift has about $17.1 billion in the last 30 days, compared to Jupiter perp <a href="https://defillama.com/protocol/perps/jupiter">volumes</a> of $23.1 billion. Both are of course still eclipsed by Hyperliquid’s trading volumes of ~<a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/hyperliquid?dashboard=135">$371 billion</a> within the same time period.



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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>



<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>

The state of Solana in 6 charts

Felix Jauvin

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 amazing how quickly things can change in one week.



It feels like only yesterday that the Fed appeared unlikely to cut rates at all in September. Now, we’re beginning to price in the chance of not just a 25 basis point cut, but a 50 bps one!



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcIqLXVnFPxgRS9-SQdjWp3QktkkCO7GOzrD5hMp4MTlc65rMLV_DMlDl8FXkrveiiTbx2mlyszeDAJCpomXmce_fvTtZ_36yjHYCYpzffvHxKyoB52CWJVqjUZrUETprAab8Z9?key=QdJD92B_gjB-YBebhmyAqg" alt=""/></figure>



In a Tuesday Fox Business interview, Treasury Secretary Bessent added fuel to the speculation by saying &#8220;the real thing now to think about is: Should we get a 50 basis point rate cut in September?”



I’m old enough to remember when Bessent said he wouldn’t comment on future monetary policy decisions. But here we are.&nbsp;



So, should the Fed cut 50 bps in September? Let’s look at both sides of the argument.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">No cuts</h2>



Although this month’s CPI print was pretty tame and consensus, there are some underlying inflation pressures building.&nbsp;



Core goods, one of the biggest drivers of the disinflation story over the last couple years, is now beginning to accelerate higher, largely driven by tariffs:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfxynCt7Fbq84LrOU49AcJo-R6lEirkgOm2MqZNFb1PXKKFSV6DP5CsPqXhgqzvegULkOl01gOsvxvHXTBB3VxPX4500nHkdAyWN8454L6i4yQTSJbz9NdntZgrdgRFcRRaLb0Uxg?key=QdJD92B_gjB-YBebhmyAqg" alt=""/></figure>



Despite a pretty nasty jobs report last week, forward-looking estimates point to a labor market that is beginning to reaccelerate again.&nbsp;



In the most recent business headcount surveys, the amount of businesses that planned on meaningfully increasing headcount in the next year bounced higher:<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd2Y48iD6dzODB5onj4GCQPcoIhm8f7AyZrCQth5vH3RRbs2l4PwQuhvUOz-M9B_5piBInOGXMWx9B6L7-U7H1vnX2BQLANCd07rEPKuPK-UHVBmiZV_DpBtJ1Rdq1h9uFk7O-Y?key=QdJD92B_gjB-YBebhmyAqg" width="624" height="375">



Looking at Visa’s US spending momentum index, the consumer appears pretty resilient in the face of tariffs and their spending habits are looking like they’re beginning to tick higher:<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXc57w1GNEk5DGjGydNeqjW_7VvnHftktH-M6t6VMhN-5HhfrWeOSBQjWu7BGYJCFVSBWkqTf-jvb-A-6Jl6-IejRTxXhkFZT4Sx6pm0vgztMYvq8-ACUbR-sC8jzbBEumu2lpF9?key=QdJD92B_gjB-YBebhmyAqg" width="624" height="377">



Based on this confluence of data, I could make the argument that the economy is beginning to reaccelerate. If the Fed were to cut in September based on lagging data such as NFP, it could end up being a mistake that makes the bond market sell off like it did last year when the Fed did the same thing.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Cut and go big</h2>



Consumption is the engine that drives the US economy. Ever since Q4 2024, it’s been meaningfully slowing.&nbsp;



If purchasing power decreases due to the continued implementation of tariffs, we could well see further weakening in consumer spending that could quite quickly look recessionary.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXc86KmotSb3WAyp4UaTK4PCnHiGcK9uB_XGxmZsXTxJwhpFUyaEYBrM4i7c065zePzZdLWLB77kZ87lL4M0mbc52BQ1uvLiHYNVD23QSU8RCtwkCJKmzQQ4wh8SQyRnOpz5rf6Vng?key=QdJD92B_gjB-YBebhmyAqg" alt=""/></figure>



Meanwhile, tariff collections continue to surge higher — and someone needs to foot that bill:<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfo6SOm7VSHGBcekQ5hd2kECPnMYNo1---J3qozxcxv_WMVWG4Q56KVUklkplQ7frEqmHAe6gF2t9WY7ur2s8dNm_p3OiG8yny7McZUtn9t20AcK0CwJAvWshZO7UTYstAXmzCi-A?key=QdJD92B_gjB-YBebhmyAqg" width="624" height="377">



If companies pass on the tariffs to the consumer, those higher prices will eventually hurt aggregate demand since that additional price increase means that money cannot be spent elsewhere. Without an offset, this is negative for growth.&nbsp;



If companies absorb the price hikes, it will squeeze their corporate profit margins, which will also lower economic output. Either way, it’s negative for the growth outlook.&nbsp;



Finally, with a labor market that continues to surprise to the downside with downward revisions that continue to tick lower pro-cyclically, some sort of insurance rate cut could make sense here. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfxEa3gUV14t39q7WjqIHTMeKiFGmEMmo-rN_qgMfcMGx8WTumgAfvTF5K0PUH85Q9f7XlMePHrr2_sW-fdhIZqBgh6eCmmozx6qjbwhG3Rmxq5j90RpCR9_HdmQRvOfG7Y_YgI?key=QdJD92B_gjB-YBebhmyAqg" width="624" height="333">



Putting it all together, I can make the case for a pause as much as I can make a case for substantial cuts.&nbsp;



It’s no wonder the FOMC, on the question of where to go from here, is the most divided it’s been in decades.



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



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<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>

Should the Fed cut 50bps in September?

Circle is building its own blockchain —&nbsp;and it’s not a rollup, but a layer-1.



In doing so, the American stablecoin issuer is betting that the shortest path between a dollar and a smart contract is the one it controls — full-stack, sovereign, and custom-built for payments.



The new chain, dubbed Arc, will be Ethereum-compatible, but use USDC for gas, and feature sub-second deterministic finality.&nbsp;



The big question for Ethereum is whether Arc will shift stablecoin activity or function more like a hub-and-spoke architecture, internalizing issuance and settlement while routing liquidity and flow outward to the broader EVM ecosystem via <a href="https://blockworks.co/podcast/0xresearch/58c53fc4-c272-11ed-a55a-23d88d4d81ed">CCTP</a> and other bridges.



The decision to build a new sovereign chain — rather than deploying on a modular layer 2 — has reignited a familiar argument on Crypto Twitter: does this mark a return to enterprise chains, or is it simply the logical architecture for a dollar-native payments platform? Does it weaken Ethereum’s long-held role as crypto’s settlement layer for stablecoins, or further entrench it through cross-chain interoperability and network effects?



The answers may hinge less on ideology than execution, and whether <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/circle">Circle</a> pursues Arc as a walled garden or merely a better bank.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Vertical integration</h2>



Circle declined to comment on Arc’s technical design, citing a quiet period. But what we know from the <a href="https://6778953.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6778953/Arc%20Litepaper%20-%202025.pdf">published</a> light paper is that the L1 is built on <a href="https://github.com/circlefin/malachite">Malachite</a>, a new high-performance BFT consensus engine originally developed by Informal Systems as a rewrite of <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/cosmos">Tendermint</a>. Circle has hired the core team of nine behind Malachite, but the engine remains open-source and is already being used elsewhere, <a href="https://www.starknet.io/blog/product-market-fit/">including</a> in Starknet’s decentralization roadmap.



Informal co-founder Ethan Buchman told Blockworks he views Malachite as akin to the Rust language: “Originally developed at Mozilla, now used by everyone.”



For Buchman, Circle’s decision to launch its own chain is not a rejection of <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ethereum">Ethereum</a>, but a standard business choice for a team with sufficient resources. “It’s the same decision every time when people choose to build their own chain: they value vertical integration,” Buchman said.



“The kind of predictability that gives you, and how it sort of hedges uncertainty — because you have the stack, you have the team, you&#8217;re not dependent on some external team for core components,” he said.



Crypto Twitter/X is split on the net-impact. The bullish-ETH read (<a href="https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1955270488860614795">Ryan Sean Adams</a>, <a href="https://x.com/armaniferrante/status/1955261652892348782">Armani Ferrante</a>) says EVM-first corporate chains still feed Ethereum’s network effects. The bearish-ETH camp (<a href="https://x.com/jon_charb/status/1955260430890213650">Jon Charbonneau</a>) argues the marginal EVM developer now accrues close to zero to ETH if flows internalize elsewhere.&nbsp;



Others worry about censorship and developer gravity: <a href="https://x.com/EliBenSasson/status/1955237895473672568">Eli Ben-Sasson</a> fired a warning shot — “Corporate L1s / L2s won’t succeed” — against more open systems, while <a href="https://x.com/adamscochran/status/1955257074318823568">Adam Cochran</a> tried to disqualify Arc as “a consortium chain” rather than an L1.



The counter-narrative from operators is that deterministic finality and protocol-level controls are critical for payments and FX. Arc’s paper leans into that: “A transaction on Arc is either unconfirmed or it is 100% final and irreversible.”&nbsp;



This is the crux of L1 over L2 as a business decision. Rollups “rent” Ethereum’s finality and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-roadmap-data-availability-da">data availability</a>; sovereign L1s own the base-layer policy surface, including <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/gas-fees">gas</a> denomination, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/kyc">KYC</a> hooks, dispute/refund logic, and transaction ordering.



Circle will start with what amounts to a <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/cosmos">Cosmos</a> chain using Proof-of-Authority, with a closed validator set. “It’s very cheap to operate,” Interchain Labs co-founder Barry Plunkett told Blockworks.&nbsp;



For instance, 5-10 Cosmos validator costs on the order of a few thousand dollars a month. “Maybe an L2 is a little cheaper because you don’t need as many boxes and don’t have the overhead of paying third parties to operate them for you. But you do have DA costs, so it’s probably a wash,” Plunkett said.



If your profit margin lives on settlement economics and working-capital velocity, sovereignty is attractive. If your priority is time-to-market and broad composability, a centralized-sequencer rollup may be cheaper and easier to ship.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Stablecoin boom as backdrop</h2>



A Keyrock/Bitso <a href="https://documents.keyrock.com/hubfs/Stablecoin-Payments-The-Trillion-Dollar-Opportunity.pdf">report</a> out today argues stablecoins are already reshaping the payments landscape. Monthly stablecoin payments more than tripled to $6.3 billion by February 2025, with B2B volumes jumping from $120 million to $2.7 billion in two years; card-based flows crossed $1 billion/month. On their trajectory, annual stablecoin payment volume could approach $1 trillion by 2030.&nbsp;



That helps explain why companies with distribution are eyeing sovereign rails, according to Alchemy CTO Guillaume Poncin, formerly Stripe’s engineering head.



“We are seeing several companies race to build a stablecoin-first blockchain,” Poncin told Blockworks. “The revenue opportunity from owning the settlement layer will dwarf traditional payment processing margins.” The infrastructure costs are tiny by comparison.



Poncin similarly frames L1 vs. L2 analysis as boiling down to a question of control vs time-to-market. “Choosing between the two is a nuanced trade-off… L1s can be fully customized at every layer, [but] <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/rollups">rollups</a> are battle-tested and much easier to build and secure.” He’s not too concerned with fragmentation due to Arc’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/evm">EVM</a> compatibility, because it “speeds adoption by both developers and users.”



As crypto-native builders chase composability and yield, Circle is playing a different game: infrastructure that can compete with payments giants like <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/visa">Visa</a> and <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/stripe">Stripe</a>, or even <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/fednow">FedNow</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Ethereum isn’t going anywhere</h2>



Critics have framed Arc as a sign that Circle, whose USDC accounts for <a href="https://blockworks.co/analytics/ethereum/ethereum-stablecoins">nearly 30%</a> of stablecoin supply on Ethereum, is pulling away from the chain that bootstrapped it.



But that overstates the case, according to Buchman.



“I think Ethereum is here for the long term, no matter what decision Circle makes today. I think it, it has achieved a kind of breakout velocity, it&#8217;s entrenched itself as a technology of fundamental import to human rights… Its longevity will be related to its neutrality and its conservatism.”



Circle will continue to have to grapple with that. Past concerns over the influence of the USDC issuer over Ethereum’s direction have been muted by the proliferation of competing stablecoin issuers, in Buchman’s view.



“This is part of Ethereum&#8217;s evolution and the idea that Ethereum only works if all compute happens on Ethereum, I think, is obscene and just it kind of misses the fundamental role Ethereum is going to have over the next 100 years or so,” Buchman said.



Ethereum’s centrality as a destination for stablecoin flows can persist even as issuance and FX trading move upstream to Arc. We don’t yet know the extent to which Circle will court DeFi apps to deploy on Arc, but in general, the application layer still wants to live where liquidity is deepest.



One legitimate concern is whether Arc’s USDC-native design introduces new vectors for censorship or exclusion, especially in sanctioned jurisdictions. If USDC is both asset and gas, what happens when the token itself is frozen?



“Technically, fallback mechanisms are possible,” Buchman said, but the baseline should be the current banking system and he thinks Arc will certainly clear that low bar.



“Is it going to be as freedom-supporting and protective of human rights as Ethereum and Bitcoin themselves? No. I don&#8217;t think anyone&#8217;s trying to kid themselves about it. But I feel like Circle is trying to go to bat for an open economy.”



There remain open questions about system-level privacy and regulatory constraints, which Circle has only lightly touched on. “We pitched them hard on privacy,” Buchman added.



“They’ve acknowledged it, but we’ll see how far they take it,” he said. “Malachite is well-suited to support privacy-preserving chains, and that’s going to be a critical next step.”



Whether it will ultimately be a handful of new chains or a <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/daily/issue/post_afb749f3-24b3-4a45-a982-d6e174f353d7">Cambrian explosion</a>, it’s clear that some enterprises still prefer building sovereign chains, even in the era of modular, shared security stacks. The tradeoffs between customization, governance, cost, and platform risk are nuanced, whether it’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/robinhood-l2-staking-us">Robinhood’s rollup</a> on Arbitrum Orbit or Arc’s full L1, or whatever Stripe has in store its newly announced L1 <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stripe-circle-l1s-solana">Tempo</a>.



“I see it a lot like cloud versus on-prem[esis],” Buchman said. “Right now there&#8217;s this whole movement to move things out of the cloud back to on-prem and it&#8217;s going to oscillate back and forth until the end of time — and I think we&#8217;ll see something similar with L1s and L2s.”



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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>



<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>

Why Circle chose an L1 — and what it means for Ethereum

TeraWulf’s stock soared Thursday after revealing a 10-year deal with AI cloud platform Fluidstack that also aligns the bitcoin miner with Google.



The decade-long high-performance computing (HPC) colocation agreements — with two five-year extension options — come as bitcoin miners have looked to diversify income streams in recent years away from volatile crypto-linked revenues.



TeraWulf is set to deliver to Fluidstack more than 200 megawatts of critical IT load at its Lake Mariner datacenter in New York, the company said Thursday. TeraWulf estimates $370 million in annual revenue from this deal.&nbsp;



Perhaps a bigger takeaway from the deal is Google taking a roughly 8% stake in TeraWulf. The tech giant — as a result of backstopping $1.8 billion of Fluidstack’s lease obligations — is set to acquire about 41 million shares of WULF common stock.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coreweave-pending-buy-ai">CoreWeave’s pending Core Scientific buy gives ‘optionality’ as AI needs evolve</a>



TeraWulf’s move to host AI workloads exhibits how a large miner can turn its energy infrastructure into stable, long-term revenue, said BlocksBridge Consulting founder Nishant Sharma.



“The scale and Google’s financial backing make it a standout and could inspire similar moves from peers,” Sharma added.



Despite Google’s involvement making the deal unique, TeraWulf’s deal resembles similar recent pivots across the mining segment. Sharma pointed to Bit Digital entering into a $44 million credit facility in June with the Royal Bank of Canada to expand its AI-focused infrastructure.



Gaining more attention was Core Scientific last year signing various 12-year contracts with CoreWeave. The bitcoin miner offered 200 MW of infrastructure to host the cloud provider’s HPC services; expected annual revenue stemming from the deal was $290 million.



CoreWeave then revealed last month that it would <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coreweave-to-acquire-core-scientific">acquire Core Scientific</a> in an all-stock deal.



“Like Core Scientific’s multi-hundred-megawatt hosting deals with CoreWeave, this is a major long-term HPC commitment,” Sharma said.&nbsp;



“But TeraWulf’s version adds a strategic investor and backstop, giving it more financial certainty and independence.”



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<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>
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Google involved in BTC miner TeraWulf’s ‘standout’ hosting deal 

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



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Blockchain devs are increasingly centering their new products around user accounts and identities — and are launching their own chains as a result.



Zink, an SVM L1 from ATMTA, is the latest new blockchain to join the trend. ATMTA is the studio behind the in-development space exploration game <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/star-atlas-development-advances">Star Atlas</a>, which for years was expected to use Solana’s mainnet for all its crypto elements.&nbsp;



But that now appears to be changing. While some die-hard Solana fans might see the move as a shakeup, those unfazed by this reveal might argue Star Atlas making its own chain was inevitable for scalability, anyway.



Zink uses zero-knowledge proofs to power features like “zProfiles,” which will give users a central identity with “global permission settings” that can automate transactions and connect and apply to multiple apps, according to a statement.&nbsp;



ATMTA founder and CEO Michael Wagner told me via email that Zink is intended to be a “generalist consumer blockchain” long term, but that initially the studio is looking to bring other crypto gaming studios onboard to use the Zink chain.



“Zink will start as a largely centralized and permissioned blockchain. We do anticipate a validator set that includes several external parties on mainnet launch; large validators from Solana. But generally, ATMTA wants to control how the L1 matures in the early phases, and prioritize performance for Star Atlas,” Wagner explained.&nbsp;



<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">Star Atlas Dev Log 5: Spent time refactoring the crouch logic. State machine can get a bit complicated given support for toggle crouch and various movement abilities. Did you know if you hold forward and crouch during a dash or upon landing your character will try to slide? <a href="https://t.co/EUbT5c4rEg">pic.twitter.com/EUbT5c4rEg</a>&mdash; Chypto (@Chypto_) <a href="https://twitter.com/Chypto_/status/1955297614716363017?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 12, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



“However, we have a roadmap that ultimately leads to going open access and permissionless. I would anticipate we achieve that within 18-24 months, though expect greater degrees of decentralization over time in a more iterative fashion,” he added.



The studio has slated Zink for a December mainnet launch.&nbsp;



As with most blockchains, Zink’s native token of the same name will be used for staking, consensus and community incentives.&nbsp;



Next month, a ZINK airdrop campaign will track community members’ activity and contributions to let them earn XP (and then ultimately the token). Playing Star Atlas and its affiliated games, like the SAGE browser game, will earn XP, as will locking up Star Atlas tokens ATLAS and POLIS.



Other existing chains focused on user identities include Worldcoin’s EVM blockchain, which seeks to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/worldcoin-biometric-identity-vision">discern between</a> bots and humans, and the upcoming EVM L1 <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/animoca-moca-chain-mainnet-launch">Moca Chain</a>, which aims to give users more control over their identities and data.



How many of these blockchains we actually need is up for debate, of course, though ultimately metrics like revenue and user activity will answer that question in the long term.&nbsp;&nbsp;



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<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>
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Solana-compatible Star Atlas L1 plots December launch

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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

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.