Liz Coyne

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Digital Asset Summit 2021, New York City — Blockworks&#8217; Digital Asset Summit 2021 is our flagship US-based institutionally focused crypto <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/events/digital-asset-summit-2021-2/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">conference</a> for asset managers and financial services professionals.



Hosted Tuesday and Wednesday, Sept. 14 &#8211; 15, this in-person event features leaders from the world of finance and digital assets discussing crypto from the perspective of industry practitioners.



While the event is sold out, we are thrilled to be able to bring you all the main stage content via livestream.



<a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/events/digital-asset-summit-2021-2/#form0" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Follow this link and log-in to watch now.</a>

Blockworks

Digital Asset Summit 2021 Live from NYC

Macauley Peterson

A proposal to pre-mint 60 million crvUSD to bootstrap Curve’s new Yield Basis AMM is sparking debate across the <a href="https://gov.curve.finance/t/pre-mint-crvusd-allocation-to-yield-basis/10774">governance forum</a> and social media, raising deeper questions about the DAO’s authority, risk management, and how to safely scale the protocol’s stablecoin footprint.



Yield Basis, led by Curve founder <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/michael-egorov">Michael Egorov</a>, is a new Curve-native AMM that uses constant leverage to eliminate impermanent loss in Bitcoin pools. To launch its first three pools — wBTC, cbBTC and tBTC — Yield Basis is asking for a 60 million crvUSD allocation, which it says would be borrowed and paired with BTC to create LP positions on <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/curve">Curve</a> without selling the stablecoin into the market.



CrvUSD currently has a market cap of about $127 million, placing it around the 25th-largest stablecoin. Among decentralized stablecoins, however, it’s the third-largest behind <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/usds">USDS</a>/DAI and <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/gho">GHO</a>.



Proponents argue the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/michael-egorov-yield-basis-protocol">Yield Basis</a> design solves a key bottleneck for scaling <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/crvusd">crvUSD</a>: demand-side absorption.&nbsp;



“In a way, the pre‑mint is just a borrowing cap,” community member Llamaste <a href="https://gov.curve.finance/t/pre-mint-crvusd-allocation-to-yield-basis/10774/5">wrote</a>, since crvUSD is paired with BTC inside Curve pools rather than sold. Other backers compare the mechanism to Curve’s existing <a href="https://docs.curve.finance/crvUSD/pegkeepers/PegKeeperV2/">PegKeepers</a>, which also hold pre-allocated crvUSD that doesn’t count toward circulating supply.&nbsp;



But some are more skeptical.



TokenBrice, a builder of the DeFi transparency tool <a href="https://www.defiscan.info/">DeFiScan</a>, <a href="https://x.com/TokenBrice/status/1958071708776104004">called it</a> “a proposal suggesting to mint out-of-thin-air, unbacked, 60M crvUSD,” adding that this kind of “upgradability risk” contributed to Curve’s “Stage 0” rating in DeFiScan’s decentralization framework. That designation reflects Curve’s powerful DAO permissions, including the ability to arbitrarily mint crvUSD or assign control of key contracts.



Curve contributor Saint Rat, who helped draft Curve’s DeFiScan profile, defended the DAO’s structure but acknowledged the optics.&nbsp;



“The Curve DAO could choose to mint $1 trillion crvUSD… but that would kill the DAO,” they <a href="https://x.com/saint_rat/status/1958416971223245111">wrote</a>. Still, perception matters.



One way to contain the risk: structure the ask more explicitly as a credit line. Multiple governance commenters, including benoxmo, krypthye, and Saint Rat, have called for a capped, on-demand facility that only mints crvUSD when needed, with explicit per-pool limits and a kill-switch controlled by DAO governance.



Risk mitigation remains a core concern. The June 2025 <a href="https://www.halborn.com/blog/post/explained-the-resupply-hack-june-2025">Resupply exploit</a>, which led to nearly $10 million in losses due to a “donation attack” on a crvUSD-adjacent vault, was cited by several participants.&nbsp;



“[Resupply] was audited, yet a vulnerability was missed,” Saint Rat <a href="https://gov.curve.finance/t/pre-mint-crvusd-allocation-to-yield-basis/10774/6">warned</a>, asking what backstops would exist if Yield Basis is exploited while holding an active crvUSD balance.



In response, Yield Basis contributor ybllama <a href="https://gov.curve.finance/t/pre-mint-crvusd-allocation-to-yield-basis/10774/9">said</a> the system has undergone six audits and is currently running a <a href="https://audits.sherlock.xyz/contests/1102">Sherlock contest</a>. They reiterated that crvUSD is only minted when BTC is deposited, and that caps would be enforced at launch.



Still, the proposal as written does not include a first-loss insurance vault or an explicit risk fee paid to the DAO for underwriting systemic exposure. Several in the thread are now urging those additions, alongside telemetry dashboards and staged rollout — for instance, starting with WBTC only.



Yield Basis is being launched as a separate protocol with its own token (YB), which also raises some hackles, given that crvUSD bears the systemic exposure. Supporters counter that Curve will receive a portion of YB emissions to use for vote incentives in crvUSD/USDC and crvUSD/USDT pools, which should reinforce liquidity and fee generation for veCRV holders.



Yield Basis may offer a novel way to scale crvUSD, but several commenters argued that if Curve bears so much risk, the governance structure must evolve to reflect that.&nbsp;With veCRV <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/curve-governance-votes-on-6m-team-funding-proposal">voting power</a> already fragmented across liquid lockers and participation trending low on high-stakes votes, the outcome may hinge on whether the proposal is revised to include stricter constraints and safety levers.



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Curve

Curve debates 60M crvUSD pre-mint for Yield Basis amid governance pushback

This article was generated with the assistance of AI and reviewed by editor&nbsp;<a href="mailto:jeffrey@blockworks.co" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jeffrey Albus</a>&nbsp;before publication.



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Ethereum researchers <a href="https://blog.ethereum.org/2025/08/22/protocol-update-002">published</a> a new protocol update today, outlining a multi-pronged strategy to expand blob throughput for layer-2 scalability while maintaining decentralization and censorship resistance.



Following on <a href="https://blog.ethereum.org/2025/08/05/protocol-update-001">from</a> Protocol Update 001, this update details how PeerDAS, the centerpiece design for the upcoming Fusaka upgrade, will permit nodes to sample rather than fully download blob data. This enables up to eight times higher throughput without significantly increasing hardware requirements.



Between major upgrades, “Blob Parameter Only” (BPO) forks will incrementally raise blob limits, while bandwidth optimizations like cell-level messaging <a href="https://blog.ethereum.org/2025/06/03/checkpoint-3">reduce</a> redundant data transfers.



According to AllCoreDevs discussions, Fusaka is targeting an early November mainnet launch, just <a href="https://blog.ethereum.org/2025/03/05/devconnect-2025">ahead</a> of Devconnect Buenos Aires. PeerDAS (EIP-7594) has been confirmed as Fusaka’s headliner, and a BPO mechanism (EIP-7892) has been scheduled for inclusion.



Fusaka testing is already underway on devnets, with client teams preparing for public testnet deployments through September and October before mainnet activation. 



Meanwhile, developers are <a href="https://blog.ethereum.org/2025/07/29/checkpoint-5">preparing</a> Glamsterdam, the subsequent network upgrade expected around mid-2026, which will further extend PeerDAS with advanced networking and pipelining techniques.



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Ethereum protocol update details plan to boost transaction capacity with blobs

This article was generated with the assistance of AI and reviewed by editor&nbsp;<a href="mailto:jeffrey@blockworks.co" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jeffrey Albus</a>&nbsp;before publication.



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Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s <a href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/powell20250822a.htm">keynote</a> at the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium delivered a cautiously optimistic signal that seems to have renewed momentum across crypto markets.&nbsp;



Bitcoin <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/btc">rebounded</a> to trade near $115,800, up around 2% in the last 24 hours, responding to Powell’s implicit dovish lean on monetary policy. ETH and other major tokens are also showing strength, reflecting renewed investor interest heading into what could be a pivotal September Federal Reserve meeting.



Markets had pulled back in the days leading up to the speech, with BTC dipping below $112,000 and ETH <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/eth">sliding</a> over 4%. Traders positioned defensively amid uncertainty, but Powell’s measured tone, emphasizing flexibility and data reliance, appears to have reassured markets enough to trigger a modest relief rally. Price action suggests crypto remains highly sensitive to shifts in central bank policy expectations.



Interest rate easing typically increases liquidity and investor risk appetite, which could further boost capital flows into DeFi platforms, stablecoin infrastructure and tokenized financial instruments. Institutions and retail alike may view this environment as more conducive to launching and scaling in Web3.



However, market watchers caution that Powell’s approach was more observant and data-driven rather than decisively dovish, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/view-feds-powell-opens-door-september-easing-2025-08-22">suggesting</a> any further rallies could hinge on forthcoming economic data and Fed communication.

Powell’s Jackson Hole speech sparks renewed momentum amid rate‑cut hopes

Byron Gilliam

<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“Investing is about beliefs in the future, and what to do when they’re wrong.”&nbsp; — Rohit Krishnan
</blockquote>



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<a href="https://dba.xyz/fundamentals-vs-flows/">Fundamentals vs. flows</a>



The crypto investor Jon Charbonneau explains that crypto investing is just investing.



Whatever the asset class, he argues, there are only two basic ways to approach investing: forecasting fundamentals or predicting flows.



Fundamental investors form beliefs about future cash flows: “The whole point of fundamental investing is that you don’t need other people to agree with you” (aka the Warren Buffett way).



Flow investors form beliefs about future trading flows: “You’re just hoping someone else will buy it from you at an even higher multiple” (aka the greater fool theory).



These are familiar concepts, but it’s helpful to see them framed so thoughtfully in the context of crypto.



Either approach can work, Charbonneau says, but things get muddled if you don’t know which one you’re taking.



For example, is ETH a fundamental investment or a flows one?&nbsp;



It seems to be a little of both, which makes the investment case more complex: “It requires taking more leaps of faith around human behavior and market psychology.” That sounds difficult.&nbsp;



The simplicity of Bitcoin’s flows-based investment thesis, by contrast, has been so successful that it “can straddle the line of ‘fundamental investing’ and ‘greater fool investing’ depending on how you quantify monetary utility.”



I personally think “monetary utility” is mostly fake news, but I also think bitcoin has probably hit escape velocity and can now be considered a fundamental investment, like gold.&nbsp;



Crypto investing more generally may be at a similar inflection point.&nbsp;



“Historically, it has paid off to be primarily flows-driven as a crypto investor,” Charbonneau notes. “Looking forward though, I believe that focusing more on fundamentals&#8230;could finally produce more alpha as the industry matures.”



That would be good news because, as Charbonneau adds, “narrative trading” is a zero-sum game (I’d call it negative sum), while “allocating capital to projects capable of generating cashflows can be a positive-sum game.”&nbsp;



Charbonneau highlights digital asset treasury companies as flows-based investments, so it’s perhaps ironic that they’re catching on with TradFi investors at the same time that fundamentals are catching on in crypto.



“Crypto investing is becoming relatively more fundamentals-driven,” he says, while “TradFi investing is becoming relatively more flows-driven.”



“Someday they’ll converge, and we’ll just be talking about investing.”



Let’s hope they meet somewhere on the fundamentals side of center.



<a href="https://ritholtz.com/2024/02/transcript-david-einhorn/">Rethinking the value game</a>



To Charbonneau’s take on fundamental investing, I would add that people who think they are investing on fundamentals are often investing on flows.&nbsp;



Last year, David Einhorn declared that &#8220;markets are fundamentally broken,&#8221; because his standard playbook of buying a stock at, say, 10x earnings and then selling it at 15x earnings was no longer working.



&#8220;The competitors have effectively left the field,&#8221; he explained.



That sounds like good news — it’s always good to have less competition, right? But fewer competitors gave Einhorn fewer opportunities to play his preferred game of &#8220;anticipating the anticipations of others.&#8221;&nbsp;



So he was forced to find a new game: “We can’t count on other long-only investors to buy our things after us,” he <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-02-09/uk-house-prices-perk-up-but-stresses-remain">explained</a>. “We’re going to have to get paid by the company.”



Charbonneau and Buffett would approve.



<a href="https://youtu.be/n02QEe2AHnY?si=GpAeUlAvcGPWZKXn&amp;t=355">The revenue meta</a>



Luca Netz is also hopeful that crypto investing will become more fundamentals-driven: “The days of no revenue being worth billions of dollars has to be over,” he told Laura Shin. “I think this is going to be the era of result-driven success and less speculative success.”



This, he says, will help crypto build “disruptive technologies that change the world&#8221; and not just “pseudo-disruptive technologies that you tell a story around.”



Let’s hope so.



Note: Netz runs a cartoon-penguin business based on an NFT collection and an affiliated memecoin.



<a href="https://blockworks.co/analytics/treasury-companies/bitcoin-treasury-companies">Chanos is winning</a>



MSTR is down 21% over the past month, vs. bitcoin down just 2.5%.



That has taken MSTR’s all-important “mNAV” metric to just 1.34x (i.e., the stock is worth 34% more than the bitcoin it holds).



The falling mNAV represents a profit for short-seller Jim Chanos and a problem for Michael Saylor.



Saylor has said that Chanos doesn’t understand Strategy’s business model, but his <a href="https://x.com/saylor/status/1957413273122287738">decision</a> to continue selling stock at current levels seems like a tacit admission that the investment case for MSTR remains circularly dependent on the premium investors are willing to pay for it.



I’m not sure how investors should think about this.



The Ethereum DAT BTCS, for example, now trades at 0.65x NAV — does that make it a better or worse investment than, say, the Ethereum DAT BMNR at 1.35x NAV?



You usually want to pay as little for a stock as possible, but if the value of that stock is a function of people paying more for it, maybe you want to pay more?



I really don’t know. But falling multiples are certainly not good for existing shareholders.



Metaplanet (the Japanese version of Strategy) now trades on <a href="https://metaplanet.jp/en/analytics">1.95x NAV</a>, down from 8x just two months ago.



What’s the math on breaking even if you bought the stock at 8x NAV and you’re getting diluted by new sales at 1.95x?



Flows-based investing is hard.



<a href="https://reducibleerrors.com/prediction-markets/">The case against prediction markets</a>



Trader-philosopher <a href="https://x.com/AgustinLebron3">Agustin Lebron</a> says prediction markets are 1) bad at being markets and 2) bad for society.



They fail as markets, he explains, because every participant is trying to do the same thing: to make money trading.



This is different from financial markets, which work because “different participants have different risk preferences.”&nbsp;



Differing preferences means that both sides of a trade can benefit — like an airline buying a futures contract from an oil company, for example.



In prediction markets, where the buyer and seller have the same motivation, trades are zero-sum (just like the flows-based investing).



Supporters of prediction markets say they provide a service by giving people better information.&nbsp;



But Lebron (who, no, does not play for the Lakers) argues that “most or all of the supposed value of [prediction markets] for hedging evaporates under closer inspection.”



In short, he argues there’s no risk that can be effectively hedged by betting on something like a presidential election.



And since there’s no benefit from hedging, “prediction markets only work when there is a steady supply of dumb money.”



Casinos, sports betting and memecoins have proved there is a steady supply of dumb money, so I’d note that prediction markets might well be a successful market.&nbsp;



Lebron hopes they don’t, though, because “the very existence of the prediction market influences and hence distorts the underlying event that&#8217;s being predicted.”



He cites the example of someone who claims to have bet on Zoran Mamdani to win the New York City mayoral race and then funded Mamdani’s campaign to win the bet.&nbsp;



I’m not sure how likely or repeatable that is, but it illustrates the feedback loops that might amplify the kind of chaotic events that people like to bet on.



As a result, Lebron warns that, if prediction markets get big enough, “they might just kill our society.”



Let’s hope everyone does some fundamental investing instead.



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The Breakdown Newsletter

Thursday links: Investing, revenue meta, DATs, prediction markets

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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Did Shopify dropping Ye push him to promote his own crypto payments processor — and memecoin?



The rapper formerly known as Kanye West’s X account, which has been frequently purged after bizarre bouts of antisemitic and incoherent tweets <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/article/unpacking-kanye-wests-antisemitic-remarks">for years</a>, is now promoting “YZY Money.”&nbsp;



Earlier this year, Shopify stopped powering payments for Ye’s Yeezy apparel website after the rapper began selling swastika t-shirts, resulting in the website’s temporary disappearance.&nbsp;



A Shopify spokesperson <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2025-02-11/ye-kanye-west-swastika-shirt-yeezy-demonetized-shopify">said</a> at the time back in February that the Yeezy site “did not engage in authentic commerce practices and violated our terms.”



Shopify’s legal counsel ultimately <a href="https://thelogic.co/news/shopify-takes-down-kanye-west-nazi-tshirt-store/">clarified</a> that the Yeezy Shopify site was taken down due to a risk of fraud to consumers, not because of the Nazi swastika itself.&nbsp;



Details of an internal Slack memo from Shopify legal counsel described the t-shirt as a “vile, disgusting, and inexcusable” stunt. They also said it “was not a good faith attempt to make money” and “brought with it the real risk of fraud.” 



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1208" height="1461" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-3.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-106456" style="width:460px;height:auto" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-3.png?w=1208 1208w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-3.png?w=248 248w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-3.png?w=847 847w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-3.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-3.png?w=212 212w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-3.png?w=216 216w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-3.png?w=181 181w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-3.png?w=66 66w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1208px) 100vw, 1208px" /></figure>



Now there’s a YZY memecoin, Ye Pay, and the YZY Card.&nbsp;



Let’s all take a moment and ask ourselves: What could go wrong?



The memecoin is live and a contract address is visible on the Yeezy website and the rapper’s X account.&nbsp;



But RugCheck’s <a href="https://rugcheck.xyz/tokens/DrZ26cKJDksVRWib3DVVsjo9eeXccc7hKhDJviiYEEZY">analysis</a> of the token cautions: DANGER.



“The contract creator can make changes to the token contract such as contract metadata, disabling sells, changing fees, unrestrictive minting of more tokens, transferring tokens etc.,” a <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/yzy">warning</a> from RugCheck that appears on CoinGecko reads.



The YZY Money website <a href="https://money.yeezy.com/">claims</a> the whole point here is to “put you in control, free from centralized authority.”



But of course, if you buy in, it’s helping Ye free you of some of your cash.



Here’s a look at the “YZYNOMICS” of this token:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd4ZzMdPLKlnDQOYcSmb_Jrei4o70d8toUSEo-KwgrFZWqswpQXMr_thukdECZ29QTCPMtskxjNIryS3maeuldAIGeEE3ewQ56Frk5omNo5RklnhkqIZcR1W9lecnu4lPPss72s9g?key=1ULqmJqXnQH-tthM7R4w4Q" alt=""/></figure>



The YZY Money website suggests Ye Pay is a “payments processor” that will be available to other online merchants.&nbsp;



The non-custodial Yzy Card is not currently available, but a waitlist has seemingly been opened for it. It’s envisioned as a way to spend YZY and Solana-based USDC.



The Yeezy site currently accepts credit card and debit card payments, as well as USDC on Solana. It promises that payments in the YZY token are “coming soon.”



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXecqOzJiUFVezYLRxwd37g6nTFIzmdGz4HmqNlLI8MYtWaQYbJP_FZb5SgCTzbJRr1WvptsppQTlJNmGE5QFap4syOzjwKNY3Pzxz0lFXqNKJ3nbLBd5AomUl-4_nH9IMahY7jMKQ?key=1ULqmJqXnQH-tthM7R4w4Q" alt=""/></figure>



Symbolically, all of this is the last thing crypto needs. Crypto does not need more <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/07/arts/music/ye-takes-back-apology.html">Nazis</a>,<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/07/arts/music/ye-takes-back-apology.html"> </a>self-described <a href="https://prasad.dyson.cornell.edu/doc/USATd.12Jan24.pdf">or otherwise</a>.&nbsp;



Do we really want figures like Ye being the spokespeople of our industry? Do we want this to be the thing your Average Joe thinks about when he thinks about crypto?



Crypto still has a bad PR problem — and moves like this will only make that worse.



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The Drop newsletter

Kanye West’s YZY memecoin is the last thing crypto needs

Felix Jauvin

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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As we reach the end of August, all eyes are once again on the Grand Tetons.&nbsp;



Not because of its striking views, but because the annual Woodstock of central banking is about to go down.&nbsp;



Tomorrow morning, Fed Chair Jerome Powell will deliver his keynote speech. Historically, these speeches have served as key inflection points for the Federal Reserve’s thinking on monetary policy from a high level. More importantly, it’s an opportunity for Powell to speak for himself and not on behalf of the whole FOMC committee.



There are two key catalysts to consider as we await tomorrow&#8217;s speech.&nbsp;



The first: any indication about whether a rate cut will come in September.&nbsp;



Right now, CME futures project a 71% odds of a cut, down from 92% odds last week: 



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdxi8FHpRLLE0Ds3c6oBluGhKF7Rj6c57hFUDN2RsI3bHGduMaRqvJK9owVNicqYccB_UCn3tE4c56dmvt_2MEaCwNANYvqkPGwxchlRA5jr0LwFH-FLn3G9vCmhzMk_QrYHIEp?key=Nxka_Imr3e70r4FrpKLjbA" alt="" style="width:692px;height:auto"/></figure>



The crux of this consideration is a very weak jobs report last month, combined with inflation that seems to keep surprising to the upside and shows no signs of returning to the Fed’s 2% target.&nbsp;



Andy Constan <a href="https://x.com/dampedspring/status/1958145296195579914">tweeted out</a> a helpful framework of how to think about the probabilities of what could happen here:



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdFsxHS3n3ZWRCOoDBtJe7GRElR0a1UVi-bp9aRcEV4ImAmbPLQUuMDCWt9mmOhBqS3EP3X9mB5OS6BMlvfzi1tUZlGfYE9Vl_TQeBmEU__nJWoLdVfJsHma79vBOCf1n1Kv53rLg?key=Nxka_Imr3e70r4FrpKLjbA" alt="" style="width:615px;height:auto"/></figure>



The second potential catalyst: The Fed will publish the results of its five-year monetary policy framework review.&nbsp;



In its last review in 2019, the FOMC introduced its flexible average interest targeting (FAIT), which targeted an average of 2% of inflation over the long term. With inflation running above its 2% target for nearly five years now, this framework is expected to be retired and a return toward a hardline target of 2% is anticipated.&nbsp;



Underlying this shift are implications around what the Fed perceives to be the neutral rate.&nbsp;



Right now, the Fed sees the current federal funds rate as slightly above neutral. This opens the possibility of Fed cuts without an easing stance. If the Fed were to move its neutral rate higher, such a move could indirectly imply that it no longer thinks the cuts are restrictive and thus dampen expectations of imminent reductions.



Personally, I believe the FOMC meeting minutes from July lay the groundwork for a hawkish surprise tomorrow.&nbsp;



The minutes were outright hawkish and hinted at a committee that is not inclined to cut at all: 



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdQ_p01JGnqvfSZriRG3RTUhYb90af9JwOMQIic-Ufq35sV6J7MjeVGSun6f363lQQFY8d7LvzF_qY-GSxprB8RZOSLMVyHi92vzTbtW711F3SHuQLKLHeJjEj4ebFtU-FxO5miXg?key=Nxka_Imr3e70r4FrpKLjbA" alt=""/></figure>



That said, these minutes were written before the weak jobs report that sparked expectations of rate cuts in September, so they could be seen as stale. I disagree with that notion.&nbsp;



These minutes can be tweaked up until right before they are released and every FOMC member needs to sign off and approve them —&nbsp;including non-voting presidents and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/powell-resolute-amid-rate-dissents">the dissenters</a> from the last meeting.&nbsp;



I believe that despite the weak jobs report from last month, the inflation story is still so volatile that Fed officials were keen to still showcase these hawkish minutes. Knowing that these were going to be the last breadcrumbs of monetary policy stance before Powell’s Jackson Hole speech, I believe they hint at a committee that is much less committed to a September rate cut compared to what markets currently believe.



Let’s see how much of that ends up being correct tomorrow or whether I’ll be eating crow.



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Economy

Could FOMC minutes be hinting at a hawkish Jackson Hole speech?

DBS, Singapore’s largest bank, has taken a notable step onchain by moving its structured-note tokenization efforts onto <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ethereum">Ethereum</a> mainnet.&nbsp;



The bank announced Thursday that it will issue crypto-linked structured notes as $1,000-denominated tokens, distributed through three digital investment platforms: ADDX, DigiFT, and HydraX.



This is DBS’s first use of Ethereum’s public blockchain for token issuance, expanding beyond earlier experiments on permissioned networks. The bank framed the launch as part of a larger strategy to “scale this ecosystem by fostering responsible innovation” and meet demand for more flexible portfolio tools, according to Li Zhen, Head of Foreign Exchange and Digital Assets, Global Financial Markets at DBS.



Unlike traditional structured notes, which typically require a $100,000 minimum investment and are tailored individually, tokenization breaks instruments into smaller, fungible units. DBS said this “bite-sized” format should make structured notes more liquid and accessible to accredited and institutional investors.



Still, the extent of that liquidity is bounded. Compared to crypto-native structured products — such as <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/boros-pendle-tokenizes-funding-rates">yield instruments from Pendle</a> — DBS’s notes will not circulate freely across Ethereum’s open ecosystem.



Kelvin Tan, who heads tokenization at DBS’ global financial markets group, said the aim is to help investors “manage their portfolios across platforms with greater precision and agility.”



“Tokenising a structured note on the Ethereum public blockchain provides eligible accredited and institutional investors with greater flexibility to transfer and trade individual ‘bite-sized’ tokens between whitelisted wallets across different platforms, compared to an entire structured note,” Tan told Blockworks.&nbsp;



That design reflects how banks are approaching Ethereum: as settlement rails and programmable infrastructure rather than an open market. Tan acknowledged the bank will not deposit tokens in decentralized liquidity pools, a contrast with DeFi tokens, which often circulate unrestricted.



DBS also sees Ethereum as a foundation for future features.&nbsp;



According to Tan, “the Ethereum public blockchain gives DBS the flexibility to explore future on-chain use cases for the bank&#8217;s tokenised structured notes. This could include atomic settlement of token issuances with stablecoins, as well as wrapping tokens for re-distribution across other blockchains.”



For now, distribution remains confined to accredited and institutional investors via DBS’s selected partner platforms. That ensures compliance with KYC and AML requirements, but it also highlights the difference between bank-issued and DeFi-native instruments. Standards such as ERC-1400 and ERC-3643 exist to allow issuers to embed compliance into token behavior. However, DBS has not disclosed whether it’s using one of these established frameworks, or a custom, proprietary contract.



But the bank did say the demand for such instruments is rising.&nbsp;



In the first half of 2025, its clients traded more than $1 billion of crypto options and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-tradfi-degen-products">structured notes</a>, with volumes up nearly 60% quarter-on-quarter. The tokenized offering extends access to accredited and institutional investors who are not already DBS clients.



The bank’s first issuance is a cash-settled crypto-linked participation note, designed to deliver payouts when cryptocurrency prices rise while capping potential downside. Beyond that, DBS plans to tokenize equity-linked and credit-linked notes.



Singapore’s financial sector has been at the forefront of tokenization efforts under the country’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/project-guardian">Project Guardian</a> initiative. While open finance broadly thrives on open liquidity and permissionless composability, DBS’s experiment on Ethereum highlights both the promise and the limits of tokenization when banks come onchain.



Updated 8/21/2025 at 4:00 p.m. ET to clarify that DBS&#8217; tokenization is not part of Singapore&#8217;s Project Guardian.



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Banking

DBS taps Ethereum for tokenized structured notes, but trading stays fenced

Donovan Choy

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



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The Solana ecosystem revolves heavily around the aptly named Jupiter protocol, and for good reason.



They’re an ambitious team trying to do damn near everything in DeFi.



In 2021, Jupiter launched a DEX aggregator on Solana, the dominant venue today for routing order flows to DEXs and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solanas-proprietary-amms">prop AMMs</a>. Alongside the aggregator, Jupiter founder meow also launched Mercurial DEX, rebranded today as Meteora.



A perps DEX followed in 2023, then a memecoin launchpad in 2024, and then a majority stake <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/jupiter-majority-stake-moonshot">acquisition</a> in the Moonshot memecoin trading platform earlier this year. There’s also the upcoming omnichain network “<a href="https://meow.bio/jupnet.html">JupNet</a>,” which plans to aggregate liquidity across chains.&nbsp;



But all eyes this week are on Jupiter Lend, the superapp’s first formal foray into the Lending vertical.



<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">jupiter lend public beta coming this week 👀👀👀 devs had a last-minute idea to make it even better, can&#39;t wait to show you all&mdash; Jupiter (🐱, 🐐) (@JupiterExchange) <a href="https://twitter.com/JupiterExchange/status/1958228036555313204?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 20, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Jupiter’s lending product is built on Fluid’s liquidity/risk engine. If you’ve never heard of Fluid, it’s a protocol that took the Ethereum world by storm over the past year.



To see the promise of Jupiter Lend requires a baseline understanding of how Fluid actually works. It’s not the most straightforward product, but here’s the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/defi-superapp-competitor-to-aave-uniswap">gist</a>.



Fluid (previously Instadapp) is an integrated application consisting of DEX, lending and borrowing. All three draw from a unified liquidity layer, which enables unique features that just aren’t possible on other DEXs or lending protocols.



For instance, a borrower on Fluid can denominate their debt to serve as liquidity for Fluid DEX (what the team calls “smart debt”), rather than letting it sit idle as posted collateral.



This, in effect, puts a borrower’s debt to “work.” As traders on the DEX side are paying fees to trade, that lets borrowers earn fees to reduce their debt. It’s somewhat unintuitive, for it inverts the logic of how we commonly think of debt as an unproductive asset that needs to be paid down.



This is how Fluid opens up billions of dollars in “TVL” that isn’t actually TVL, at least not in the conventional DeFi sense. Which leads to memes like these:



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeD-OeW5i3Mb0RfbF0-sfWmO04iAlUfag15JjUB1Nv9PbJe3drG1tqWZNLwmpO7B5NxH9gGFg2CDfrDbmYxCdKk4thi6BK75EPHxLYtflMIEI56kJ4DMeRqrIzhUUu_jg-6l1wd?key=oyKFHnWHafLE8mY6xJPfeA" alt="" style="width:671px;height:auto"/></figure>



Fluid also has perhaps one of the most advanced liquidation engines in DeFi. Its borrowing vaults bucket positions into “ticks,” which liquidates positions partially as markets move, rather than in one fell swoop.&nbsp;



Again, Fluid’s tight integration allows liquidations to simply settle as ordinary swaps on its own DEX.



This combo drastically reduces slippage and penalties (~0.1%). And the end result is that it enables abnormally high loan-to-value (LTV) ratios of 90-95% on its lending product. For context, even highly liquid assets like WBTC/WETH have LTVs of 70-85% on Aave.



As a testament to Fluid’s success, its lending has $1.4 billion in active loans since its launch on Ethereum less than a year ago, per Blockworks Research data.



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdBGcx0EQFgjZUbmUK6e7lza9DjxgN5oMfIKeN2nIVeuP08SL4dp_bvQfSQYoDOEi2VW_sVOgZB-lUoYNSXqHmdKMXM5het0ycDcUhkNsQeh8DMyycRQPAgT2AVdjGjTeXo9bXt?key=oyKFHnWHafLE8mY6xJPfeA" alt="" style="width:668px;height:auto"/></figure>



And you can see strong traction on its DEX product too.



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcLRTxoWd7arKoZfXozpSlcyQ4GEjyDlRH-vnYgrimJHpBpioI69b-SA2Ha4p1oI4rC24MlHM29tRHb45W9lCtC-wsawuFeIHVzjKylboFEyoutMHLy9BiRMpqppFcOEsYx5tzJDA?key=oyKFHnWHafLE8mY6xJPfeA" alt="" style="width:677px;height:auto"/></figure>



Jupiter founder meow has a close relationship with the Fluid founders. You can read more about that <a href="https://meow.bio/fluid">here</a>.



It’ll be interesting to see how well Jupiter can replicate Fluid’s success in the SVM world. Kamino has a stronghold on that market, but market leader positions in DeFi are fleeting. Definitely one of the major battles to watch on Solana.



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Lightspeed Newsletter

Jupiter Lend readies for public beta launch this week

David Canellis

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Kanye did it. He launched a memecoin on Solana.



Some say this is the top signal for which we’ve been waiting, making Yeezy the Lisan al-Gaib of bears.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="730" height="376" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/yzy.png" alt="" class="wp-image-106383" style="width:481px;height:auto" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/yzy.png?w=730 730w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/yzy.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/yzy.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/yzy.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/yzy.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/yzy.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 730px) 100vw, 730px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><a href="https://x.com/kanyewest/status/1958346810801697237">Source</a></figcaption></figure>



Maybe so. Although the top signals were much, much louder last time around.



For one thing, Yeezy has fallen off. I’m not sure YZY on Meteora in 2025 will ever have the same impact as if it was sold at the height of the Yeezy brand circa 2020.



Still, I spent my morning going over archives of crypto headlines from the tail-end of the monster 2021 bull market.



What were the signs that crypto would peak at a $3-trillion market cap in the second week of November?&nbsp;



Any top signal would need to come within six months of that cycle peak, I decided. You probably remember that 2021 saw two major tops, in May and November, so really any signal that came before May would’ve ultimately pointed to much higher prices (making them bullish signals).



And yeah, hindsight is 20/20. But tell me that these headlines weren’t screaming that a top was soon near.



“<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ftx-closes-900m-series-b-round-valuing-exchange-at-18b">FTX Closes $900M Series B Round Valuing Exchange at $18B</a>” — July 20, 2021 (yes, that’s a $900-million raise).



“Tim Berners-Lee sells web source code NFT for $5.4m” — June 30, 2021 (132 days until top).



“CityCoins Community Officially Launches with MiamiCoin, Its First City-Based Token” — August 3, 2021 (remember these?)



“El Salvador buys bitcoin as the digital currency becomes legal tender” — September 6, 2021.



“OpenSea admits insider trading of NFTs it promoted” — September 16, 2021 (arguably the most compelling yet).



“China declares all crypto-currency transactions illegal” — September 2, 2021 (68 days until top).



“<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbases-new-direct-deposit-feature-allows-users-to-get-paychecks-in-crypto">Coinbase’s New Direct Deposit Feature Allows Users to Get Paychecks in Crypto</a>” — September 27, 2021.



“TikTok Is Auctioning Its NFT Collection Featuring Lil Nas X, Grimes, Bella Poarch, More” — October 1, 2021 (NFT = Nearly Freakin’ Top).



“<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/celsius-valued-at-3-25b-after-400m-raise-amid-regulatory-headwinds">Celsius Valued at $3.25B After $400M Raise Amid Regulatory Headwinds</a>” — October 12, 2021 (narrator: Celsius would file for bankruptcy nine months later and its CEO would eventually be sentenced to 12 years’ prison for fraud).



“Bahamas-based crypto exchange FTX raises a $420.69M Series B-1 at a $25B valuation from 69 investors, including BlackRock and Tiger Global” — October 21, 2021 (I mean, this one was a doozy, especially paired with the Celsius saga).



“Facebook Changes Company Name to Meta in Focus on Metaverse” — October 28, 2021 (12 days until top).



“Incoming NYC Mayor Eric Adams: Pay Me In Bitcoin” — November 4, 2021.



“<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/05/technology/nft-nyc-metaverse.html">Crypto Is Cool. Now Get on the Yacht</a>” — November 5, 2021 (all about NFT.NYC, the New York conference that attracted a record 5,000 attendees just four days before the top).



“About 5% of Sotheby’s, Christie’s Contemporary Art Auctions Are NFTs” — November 8, 2021 (one day before the top).



To cap it off, Coinbase’s Q3 earnings were even <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-reports-q3-net-revenue-dropped-39-to-1-234b">released</a> on the exact day that crypto peaked. Revenue had dropped 39%, from $2 billion to just over $1.2 billion, lower than estimates, and the number of monthly transacting users dipped 16%. COIN tanked 12% in postmarket trading as a result.



So, does a lame ChatGPT 5 release, a new SPAC from Chamath, Meta hiring freeze and a memecoin from washed entertainer stack up to this monumental run of headlines? Not really.&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">The top signals rolling in fast. Chamath SPAC, Meta hiring freeze, OpenAI admitting GPT-5 is a “miss”, Kanye coin. All in 48h. <a href="https://t.co/qJdmpnzS8S">https://t.co/qJdmpnzS8S</a>&mdash; Adam Cochran (adamscochran.eth) (@adamscochran) <a href="https://twitter.com/adamscochran/status/1958353499848147190?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 21, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



But then again, it may be another cycle or two before crypto runs back its cultural significance, as it was in 2021. The signals might be quieter this time around.



Read More: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/paris-hilton-bitcoin-celebrity-indicators">Was Katy Perry a top signal in 2022?</a>



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Empire Newsletter

If Kanye’s memecoin is a top signal, then crypto has fallen off

Kraken has become the first major crypto exchange to fully adopt Distributed Validator Technology (DVT) across its Ethereum staking infrastructure, using the open-source SSV Network protocol.&nbsp;



The move marks a major shift towards a more decentralized validator architecture for <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ethereum">Ethereum</a>.



“Following the successful transition, [100%] of Kraken’s ETH staking infrastructure runs on distributed validator clusters, rather than single-machine validators,” a <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/kraken">Kraken</a> spokesperson told Blockworks.



DVT decentralizes validator operations by splitting responsibilities across multiple independent nodes that cooperate to perform attestations and block proposals. Kraken said each validator is now operated by “a cluster of typically four independent nodes,” with deliberate diversity in both software and geography.&nbsp;



“We design for maximum diversity: nodes are spread across different regions and run a mix of Ethereum client implementations to avoid any single-client bug impacting the whole cluster,” the spokesperson added.



Key management was also overhauled as part of the migration. “As part of our transition to DVT, validator keys were split and distributed to cluster operators to ensure no single operator holds the entire key,” Kraken said. For newly created validators, keys are generated in a distributed manner “so the full private key is never assembled.”



To reduce slashing risk, Kraken’s operators use a synchronized, distributed slashing-protection database. “If a node goes offline, it can sync the history of signed duties from the cluster before signing anything new,” the spokesperson explained.



SSV Labs, which is a core contributor to the DVT protocol, emphasized the modularity and configurability of its approach. “The nature of DVT is more diversity by design, and it is more of a ‘user’ choice. Every participant can optimize for diversity, whatever that means for them,” an SSV spokesperson told Blockworks.



Kraken’s implementation gives a strong boost to DVT adoption, according to Alon Muroch, SSV Labs founder and core contributor. “It demonstrates that the technology is ready for use at scale in institutional staking environments,” Muroch said.



Originally known under Blox.io and CoinDash brands, the team behind SSV Network pivoted, beginning in early 2021, launching the <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/ssv">SSV</a> token, to focus on noncustodial ETH staking infrastructure, and later DVT, <a href="https://medium.com/%40researchcoindelta/ssv-network-transforming-ethereum-staking-with-unrivaled-security-9c69aa7dbad7">supported</a> by an Ethereum Foundation grant. SSV Network was created <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ssv-network-decentralized-staking-infrastructure">to help decentralize staking infrastructure</a>.



The <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/obol-launches-obol-token-validator">rise of DVT solutions</a> like SSV and Obol help Ethereum <a href="https://blockworks.co/podcast/bellcurve/dca8d3ea-2574-11ee-b0e7-1b2252d58a45">reduce centralization risks</a> by distributing validator duties across diverse operators and geographic locations, enhancing uptime, slashing safety, and the overall robustness of network consensus.



Updated August 21, 2025, at 1:00 pm ET: Kraken clarified that all its validators are now on distributed clusters. Updated August 22, 2025 at 4:08 am ET: Clarified SSV Networks&#8217; role in DVT infrastructure.



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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>

Ethereum

Kraken completes full DVT integration for Ethereum staking using SSV

Kunal Doshi

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



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



The weakness in the market continues, with BTC and ETH down 7.5% and 9.5%, respectively, over the last seven days. With majors showing a first real sign of correction in weeks, it’s an apt time to ask if the local top could be in.&nbsp;



One segment of the market I like to watch is retail interest. When retail participation surges, it often signals that the crowd is in, which historically marks the local top in markets.&nbsp;



The first key indicator is weekly spot volume on CEXs. Last week, spot volumes reached $465 billion, approaching levels seen in January and March this year when the market was hitting new highs. Since most retail users trade through CEXs given the ease of onboarding, elevated volumes here provide a clear signal of growing retail engagement.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdsqsxAIBX1fsW9isKUsLqvY7vqxmSMOOerKhK4188P1Mn-klqSAEVNaHOJvasn9AQsLfiUSrH2LQEDtb71ngDkKs12_JwcY6E-O6RmagNotrbLDP8ug-cPbcm0Qph53pdvHss9KA?key=7EbrmKQzVODYrpHPXbYHAw" alt=""/></figure>



Search trends offer another powerful lens into retail sentiment. Interest in terms like “Crypto”, “Ethereum”, and “Altcoins” is climbing sharply, set to reach levels last seen at the peak of the 2021 bull market.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcYlbO3tbIIWZqAxNu-hE7gWZ7UFtvHrXR9q04jm9f-ycWnDtxyyP_2dXzBm0uMj2VM0LNd-FFwnhVTkkyMB0dRHfgQHxjLgq8I6VVDrs-hKHAPl92ONYahwC4SVRhK45jivyUcgg?key=7EbrmKQzVODYrpHPXbYHAw" alt=""/></figure>



Even anecdotal signals matter. I am noticing more friends asking how to get started in crypto, which always catches my attention. While retail adoption is positive for the long term, sudden FOMO-driven spikes in these indicators often reflect emotional, late-stage buying from people chasing quick gains.



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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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0xResearch Newsletter

Same game, new players — but retail’s now smarter

Katherine Ross

Stablecoin payments processor Loop Crypto raised a strategic round co-led by VanEck and Fabric Ventures, the firm exclusively told Blockworks.&nbsp;



This brings the total funding raised by the firm to $6 million, but the team declined to give specifics on the most recent round.&nbsp;



Co-founders Eleni Steinman and Shane van Coller noted that they — like many in crypto — couldn’t have foreseen the rapid rise in stablecoins.&nbsp;



For Steinman specifically, Stripe’s acquisition of Bridge earlier this year showed that bigger players “see the value in rebuilding the payment rails and that it&#8217;s working…people really are choosing stablecoin payments because of their value proposition of being faster, cheaper, and just inherently global.”



<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/vaneck">VanEck’s</a> Wyatt Lonergan said: “Once you start moving to stablecoins, like everything is instant, and in fact, that win, win, lose is inverted. The losers are kind of the banks that sit between you and the merchant, and the merchant can get access to their funds, and you can do all these really expressive, interesting things with stablecoins.”



“And that&#8217;s a lot of the tools that Loop has built to enable what feels like the same payment process for a merchant or a business to accept money,” Lonergan added.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/two-vaneck-funds-back-depin-dawn">Exclusive: 2 VanEck funds back Solana-based DePIN DAWN</a>



Loop has, as an example, built out the ability to charge a subscription using stablecoins.&nbsp;



“We basically get an approval from the user who&#8217;s paying in that stablecoin for our smart contract to spend that stablecoin on their behalf. So when they sign up for the subscription, the first thing that they do is sign this approval transaction, which gives us the ability to go and pull money from their wallets when that subscription becomes due in the future. So it really is a pull payment from the wallet, versus a payment that a lot of other payment solutions do,” van Coller explained.&nbsp;



Loop currently serves merchants such as Helius, OpenPay, Kaito, and Privy, just to name a few. A press release noted that paid transaction volume in the second quarter of this year jumped by 344% in comparison to the same time period last year.&nbsp;



Loop, the team noted, has had both crypto native and non-crypto native merchants looking for stablecoin payment solutions.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/vaneck-venture-fund-crypto-ai">Is crypto’s ‘ChatGPT’ moment nearly here?</a>



“​​Our game plan is to keep trying to grow…basically, how many merchants are using us, right? Are we solving their problems? And the quality of that merchant really matters to us too, so we don&#8217;t want to serve just like 1,000 merchants who are maybe doing a few transactions, but can we solve problems for 10 really good merchants and build tools that really meet their needs,” Steinman told Blockworks.&nbsp;



Lonergan added that he sees a “huge role” for projects in the space that are “neutral,” meaning that they aren’t pushing their own stablecoin and instead allow merchants to have a slew of choices based on their needs.&nbsp;



“It feels like even though it&#8217;s been massive growth, like it&#8217;s still really tiny compared to the payments. B2B payments is a $190 trillion category…And so I&#8217;m not quite sure that we know what businesses and consumers want yet. I think the winners are going to be ones that still could play that neutral role and just, again, facilitate whatever the customer needs,” Lonergan said.&nbsp;



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raise

Exclusive: Loop Crypto raises round led by VanEck, Fabric Ventures

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">
“Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.”



— Alfred North Whitehead
</blockquote>



Investors love the pricing power of “last mile” businesses.&nbsp;



Comcast charges $75 a month for internet access because it buried the cable outside your house that connects you to the world wide web.&nbsp;



Walmart is the last mile of consumer goods because its shelves are where supply meets demand, and brands pay dearly (in discounts and promotions) to win a place on them.



Amazon charges third-party sellers as much as 45% of their sale price for access to its virtual shelf space and last-mile network of warehouses and delivery trucks.



Is this how the stablecoin business will work as well?



Last week, we learned that both Stripe and Circle are building stablecoin-optimized blockchains, and the timing (on the same day, even) inevitably frames this as a competition: “Circle and Stripe now appear to be converging on the same goal: building rival financial networks for digital money,” Bloomberg <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-19/circle-bets-on-its-own-blockchain-in-challenge-to-payment-giants">reported</a>.&nbsp;



If so, they will likely be converging from different directions.&nbsp;



Stripe’s blockchain, Tempo, is expected to focus first on retail-merchant payments, while Circle’s Arc sounds more like behind-the-scenes infrastructure — “an enterprise-grade foundation for stablecoin payments, FX and capital markets applications,” as they pitch it.



It’s tempting to say Stripe starts with an advantage here, since it’s already a last-mile business — it owns the checkout button and the customer relationship, connecting directly to more than a million merchants.&nbsp;



Circle, by contrast, has no direct contact to its end-users at all — we get our USDC on exchanges, not from Circle itself.



But the last mile isn’t always the place to make money.



Gas stations, for example, earn only pennies on each gallon of gas they sell while the oil majors they buy from make much bigger profits upstream. Retail brokers have to offer customers free trading while the exchanges they connect to mint money from data and transaction fees.



In other industries, however, the last mile and the infrastructure can be equally profitable: Nvidia and AWS, for example, both do very well for themselves.



The business of moving money that Stripe and Circle are both hoping to disrupt is enormous: Austin Campbell <a href="https://youtu.be/cULv9k3ExdM?si=Zk9cEvnFaOvDG9xY&amp;t=621">notes</a> that international transfers alone move roughly $1.25 quintillion annually. The all-in cost for a bank to make an international wire transfer is <a href="https://www.financialprofessionals.org/docs/librariesprovider8/default-document-library/determining-your-true-cost-of-payments.pdf?sfvrsn=52b5166b_2&amp;utm_source=chatgpt.com">over $8</a>, so I imagine there’s a lot of money for Circle to make just from banks (without ever reaching the end user) if it figures out how to do it cheaper with stablecoins.



Payments are also highly complex.



A single dollar spent on a YouTube ad, for example, might be collected in euros, split between Google in Ireland, a content creator in India and a publisher in Brazil, then routed through multiple banks, in multiple currencies — all of which is set in motion by a click on a website.



If Stripe can use programmable money to automate that complexity at the de minimis cost of a stablecoin transaction, its Tempo blockchain could be a hit.



There are many more niches of the payments world to disrupt, so even if Stripe and Circle are destined to converge, it might be a long time before they actually compete.&nbsp;



There should be plenty for both to do — it’s reasonable to imagine that every kind of payment could someday be made in stablecoins.



Guillaume Poncin, CTO of the crypto infrastructure provider Alchemy, told me that banking infrastructure “will run on blockchain rails,” noting that stablecoins are particularly well-suited for cross-border payments, ACH transfers and interchange payments between banks.



It might happen fast. “In five years,” Cosmo Jiang told <a href="https://youtu.be/QX6jxGQlM-w?si=s6g2i_xxfXP0md8z&amp;t=4617">Empire</a>, &#8220;I&#8217;d be shocked if not all the financial applications on your phone were running on blockchain rails.”



If so, it probably won’t happen on a general-purpose chain like Ethereum.



For stablecoins to be used at scale in the real world, they will probably have to be on a specialized blockchain like what Circle is <a href="https://6778953.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6778953/Arc%20Litepaper%20-%202025.pdf">building</a> — with predictable fees, dispute resolution, privacy for users and transparency for regulators.&nbsp;



I’m sure Stripe’s yet-to-be-announced chain will have similar functionality. But that doesn’t mean it will be a direct competitor.



If the stablecoin market gets as big as they think it will, it might not be Stripe vs. Circle, but Stripe and Circle both.



Or neither, maybe.



Austin Campbell believes that in the race to build stablecoin payment rails, “the answer to who will win is none of the people on the field.”



The race itself is only in its first mile.



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</ul>

The stablecoin marathon enters its first mile

Ben Strack

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



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Recent developments in Congress and comments from senators indicate that a market structure bill won’t be as easy to pass as the GENIUS Act.&nbsp;&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Clarity on CLARITY?</h2>



Before Fed Chair Jerome Powell takes the Jackson Hole spotlight Friday, other bigwigs in the same valley gave us some regulatory tidbits to chew on at the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium. 



US Sen. Tim Scott and SEC Chair Paul Atkins shared the type of praise for Donald Trump you’d expect from a Republican leader and an agency head nominated by the president. Making the US “the crypto capital of the world,” yada yada yada.&nbsp;



But between the lines, there were some more substantial soundbites. For example, Scott — chair of the Senate Banking Committee — addressed market structure legislation. Perhaps you remember Scott, Cynthia Lummis and others introducing a “discussion draft” last month that built upon the CLARITY Act <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/us-house-passes-clarity-act">passed by the House</a>.



It looks to define “ancillary assets” in a bid to clarify which digital assets are not securities, and it directs the SEC to “tailor existing requirements to digital asset activity.”



Eighteen Democrats voted for the GENIUS Act. Scott said he thinks he’ll have between 12 and 18 Dems at least open to voting for a market structure bill.&nbsp;



But it’s “a far more complicated piece of legislation,” he acknowledged, and someone like Sen. Elizabeth Warren standing in the way of Democrats wanting to participate is, in his words, “a real force to overcome.”



Patrick Daugherty, head of the blockchain and digital assets practice at law firm Foley &amp; Lardner, agreed that this legislative effort is no sure thing. He also emphasized the difference between what the House passed and what the Senate Banking Committee revealed.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The CLARITY Act would help layer-1 blockchain builders, for example, raise capital more efficiently and protect them from failing to register with the SEC, the lawyer told me. Crypto exchanges would also be safer from attack for trading unregistered tokens.



Side note: To the contrary, it seems crypto project leaders may have to fend off overly friendly commissioners wanting to get coffee near their hometowns.



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeLzxBefKCZDDMAL8wKNkXH-Grfs0UA3qpnt15WCkY-_MRBywz_vX7J_20aPpr1vSlN0RqSUfcaWuZeWSWTItQnRF9qYep96CrRv15Vzr7DZlgi8IZyeEr9zECtr_r2waX1Uh0lSg?key=8kOZ-8YQc2Z_Vp7WC6s7Iw" alt="" style="width:772px;height:auto"/></figure>



This CLARITY legislation would give both the SEC and CFTC jurisdiction over certain parts of the industry — with regulation around this technology able to shift from one agency to the other, Daugherty added.&nbsp;



Scott’s proposal puts more of the rule-making and regulation burden on the SEC. It’s worth noting, though, that the Senate Agriculture Committee — with oversight of the CFTC — is expected to soon introduce its own draft language focused on digital commodities.



“More than the stablecoin statute, either market structure statute, if enacted, will require considerable rulemaking and interpretation by the SEC and the securities bar who are following developments closely,” Daugherty said. “Will CLARITY clarify the law? Yes, but less than some would like.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Atkins doubles down on ‘super-app’ approach</h2>



Atkins hammered home some of his “Project Crypto” priorities in a discussion later that morning — with some relating to the regulatory jurisdictions mentioned above. If you forgot the gist of the SEC chair’s broad plans:



<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">A portion of SEC chair Paul Atkins&#39; response to yesterday&#39;s White House report. &quot;Project Crypto&quot; underway &#8230; <a href="https://t.co/yO5g0S806i">pic.twitter.com/yO5g0S806i</a>&mdash; Ben Strack 🟪 (@strack_ben) <a href="https://twitter.com/strack_ben/status/1950975816323493918?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 31, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Atkins had also noted, in the July 31 remarks, that he would help the Senate craft a market structure bill “that future proofs our markets against regulatory mischief.”



He then said Tuesday: “I didn’t come to Washington to engage in a turf battle,”



He doubled down on themes of being flexible as the marketplace and technology evolves, as well as implementing a so-called super-app approach.&nbsp;



“Five or 10 years from now, things will be completely different I’m sure,” Atkins said. “And we can’t put things into little cement-surrounded pockets that are immutable.”



Friendly competition and a balance of power is key, he noted — in part to guard against one regulator becoming “too obstinate.”



Related is the super-app piece. Atkins is talking about (as elaborated on a few weeks ago), letting securities intermediaries offer a bunch of products and services “under one roof with a single license.”



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfqdwpPcuNa8UKy_-j5QRSXTYqzGlfD0aPdGQnkmwF9BC0SHOFi3iktxkZUaklGhNmBFSZPk0xo-0kH6IpSUlbUdxbU31J9a-qNPuZK3jm2H-hHcBIkp3FstM7bJtfxlFhYgWft0g?key=8kOZ-8YQc2Z_Vp7WC6s7Iw" alt=""/></figure>



Republicans previously <a href="https://www.banking.senate.gov/newsroom/majority/what-they-are-saying-support-for-scotts-september-deadline-on-digital-asset-market-structure-legislation">aimed</a> to advance market structure legislation by Sept. 30, and Scott reiterated on Tuesday the urgency of getting this done: “Executive action is not enough. Period.”



Between future-proofing this bill and getting enough bipartisan support, it seems this tall task could take longer than some hope.



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congress

Why a market structure bill is ‘far more complicated’ than the GENIUS Act

The term “Ethereum layer-2” is generally thought to mean that a chain <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/layer-2-secured-by-ethereum">inherits Ethereum’s security</a>. But the line has always been blurry, and remains so, especially with the rise of OP Stack chains that use alternative data availability (DA) layers. These so-called &#8220;Optimiums&#8221; settle to Ethereum but post data elsewhere, introducing some additional trust-assumptions.



Toghrul Maharramov, a <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/rollups">rollup</a> researcher and former <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/scroll">Scroll</a> contributor, has been a vocal critic of looser L2 definitions, and <a href="https://x.com/toghrulmaharram/status/1958059218814029970?s=46&amp;t=yjAdM2ddX0KgGQimu7jcDQ">declared</a> Wednesday on X:



“Optimiums are not L2s. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to psyop you.”



A good example of this is Celo, which Blockworks reported <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/rollup-reality-check">as a case study</a> of an L1 becoming an L2. For the most part, Ethereum rollups post their data to Ethereum itself — originally via calldata and now, predominantly, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-blobs-balancing-act">via blobs</a>. That enables the useful property of permissionless <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/glossary#S">state</a> reconstruction and withdrawals from an L2 to Ethereum mainnet.



Optimiums, by contrast, outsource DA to off-chain networks like EigenDA, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/celestia">Celestia</a> or <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/avail">Avail</a>, and rely on attestations to prove that data is available. They may use fraud proofs and settle to Ethereum, but they add a layer of trust that Ethereum cannot directly verify.



Vitalik Buterin has used “L2” liberally, and indeed <a href="https://x.com/VitalikButerin/status/1838809754002690403">specifically referred</a> to Celo as moving to an “L2,” so we’re in good company there, but the difference is more than semantics.&nbsp;



Ethereum scaling tracker L2BEAT now classifies most Optimiums as “<a href="https://l2beat.com/scaling/summary?tab=others">Others</a>,” a catch-all category for chains that don’t meet the strict rollup criteria. Celo, for example, completed its transition in March 2025 to run on the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/optimism">OP Stack</a> with EigenDA.



According to L2BEAT, it fails two key checks for rollup status:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>It has fewer than five external actors who can submit fraud proofs</li>



<li>It has no DA bridge that posts EigenDA availability proofs on Ethereum</li>
</ul>



The result: no L1-enforced remedy if data goes missing.



Lisk, which migrated to Ethereum in late 2024, also falls into this bucket for similar reasons — reliance on a permissioned challenger set — although it does post data on Ethereum.



According to Sreeram Kannan, founder of <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/eigenlayer">EigenLayer</a>, we can think of rollups as “out-of-protocol scaling for execution,” while EigenDA is “out-of-protocol scaling for blob space.” In both cases, the data and logic happen outside Ethereum’s protocol rules — but only rollups ensure Ethereum can enforce validity directly.



“When a certificate from EigenDA shows up, you’re trusting that that certificate implies that the data is available,” he told Blockworks.



That trust model has no on-chain enforcement today.



“If the DA claimed the data is available and the data is not available, there’s no recourse,” Kannan said.



So, is “L2” just Ethereum-aligned marketing? Or should it reflect the protocol’s ability to enforce both correctness and availability?



L2BEAT’s current stance is that Ethereum must be able to reject bad state roots and verify data availability independently. Anything else requires more trust — whether that’s in a DA quorum, a governance council, or a permissioned set of challengers.



Optimiums without either state validation or a DA bridge remain in the “Others” category. But as the tech matures, some may graduate to “Validiums &amp; Optimiums” or even gain rollup status. To do that, you’d need some robust fallback mechanism or a way to make DA failures an “objectively attributable fault,” —&nbsp;a tough problem to crack.



Until then, the debate continues, grounded in practical considerations for users about who is trustworthy to keep funds safe.&nbsp;



“If you&#8217;re just honest, every layer-2 is controlled by a multisig, so we should be talking more about that,” Kannan said. This is certainly a prime bugaboo for critics of Ethereum’s scaling scheme, he acknowledges.



“But I would want to also point out that every app on <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/solana">Solana</a> has like a 2-of-3 or some very small <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/safe-exploit-comprehensive-review">multisig</a> that controls it,” he said, meaning there’s more work to be done to minimize trust all around.



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Optimiums and the ‘L2’: Ethereum security revisited

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Arbitrum’s gaming investment group is offering Ronin up to 750,000 ARB spread across three consecutive years to join them as an “Orbit” chain.



Currently, that’s worth about $367,500, which doesn’t seem like a whole lot.



But in this down-and-out gaming market, maybe that’s enough.&nbsp;



Ronin’s cofounders shared screenshots on social media of the offer from Arbitrum Gaming Ventures (AGV), noting that it would also include Gaming Content Creator Program access (social content support funded by Arbitrum DAO).&nbsp;



They’d also get financial assistance with audit costs via an existing $10 million Arbitrum ecosystem audit program.



“Cool to see Arbitrum throwing their hat into the ring,” Jeff “Jihoz” Zirlin, one of the founders, <a href="https://x.com/Jihoz_Axie/status/1957845308681195992">wrote</a> in a pretty neutral-seeming response to the offer, which came from AGV councilmember and Offchain Labs Head of Gaming and Consumer Partnerships David Bolger.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">The proposals are starting to roll in. Many of the questions we&#39;ve gotten around Ronin 2 revolve around: • How will Builder score be calculated? • Which L2 provider will be chosen? These are not fully up to Sky Mavis. They will be worked on and decided in conjunction with… <a href="https://t.co/zkq0jmh51G">pic.twitter.com/zkq0jmh51G</a>&mdash; Jihoz.ron (@Jihoz_Axie) <a href="https://twitter.com/Jihoz_Axie/status/1957845308681195992?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 19, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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The proposal emphasizes Arbitrum’s continued interest in gaming.



Despite some <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/arbitrum-gaming-catalyst-dao-relations-rep">controversy</a> earlier this year around how much money AGV more broadly was committing to gaming, they’re still pushing forward in the sector.&nbsp;



AGV was previously known as the Arbitrum Gaming Catalyst. Its founding partner, Daniel Peng, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/blockchain-gaming-reckoning-gdc">told me</a> back in March that they were talking to over 100 game teams (some of those talks seemed to have resulted in investments since).



Arbitrum Gaming Ventures is now helping fund <a href="https://x.com/ArbitrumPlay/status/1920545754432877026">titles like</a> Wildcard (a fun MOBA-style creature battler), plus gaming startups like Xai Games and Proof of Play (the latter of which recently killed its onchain game Pirate Nation).



“Studio Chain” is also <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/studio-chain-gaming-blockchain-launch">building</a> with Arbitrum, which is a gaming- and entertainment-focused Orbit chain from the My Pet Hooligan-affiliated Karrat Foundation.



Ronin’s founders don’t seem totally sold on the idea of jumping on the ARB train just yet. They’re still open to offers from other sequencers.&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">We&#39;re starting to see different L2 providers submit their proposals to Ronin. This means that they&#39;re looking to provide access to their sequencer technology which would facilitate Ronin becoming an Ethereum layer 2. What does a sequencer do? • Collects user transactions from…&mdash; Jihoz.ron (@Jihoz_Axie) <a href="https://twitter.com/Jihoz_Axie/status/1957942407028437202?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 19, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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Ronin and Sky Mavis cofounder Aleksander Larsen specifically <a href="https://x.com/Psycheout86/status/1958051860780032326">mentioned</a> Optimism and zkSync as other possible vectors for Ronin to become an L2 besides going the Arbitrum route.



Zirlin also emphasized that these decisions are “not fully up to Sky Mavis.”



“They will be worked on and decided in conjunction with the governing validators,” he explained.



Last week, Ronin’s leaders <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ronin-becoming-ethereum-l2">announced</a> they were planning to rejoin Ethereum, moving away from being a sidechain to turn into a true Ethereum L2.&nbsp;



The change could help speed up transactions and make Ronin more than just a gaming chain.&nbsp;



Where will they land? Guess we’ll have to wait and see.



But it’s probably a sign that sidechains are over. At least, for now.



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Arbitrum

Arbitrum Gaming Ventures offers Ronin 750K ARB to become Orbit chain

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Luke Leasure

Union's Technical Edge

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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.