Arweave is a data storage protocol built on blockweave technology. Arweave is developing an underlying network where data can be stored forever and accessed on its permaweb, a secondary layer where data is accessible in a human-readable manner (e.g. via web browsers). 

Arweave

Ben Strack

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



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You’ve heard again and again about the crypto industry “maturing.” More M&amp;A deals are likely to be an ongoing byproduct.



The quarterly number of M&amp;As in crypto is building, reaching a record level during the first three months of 2025. While momentum could snowball from here, the economy’s stability remains a wild card.&nbsp;



There were 62 crypto M&amp;A transactions in Q1, according to advisory firm Architect Partners — up from 59 deals in the final quarter of 2024.&nbsp;



Each of those totals is nearly double that of Q3 2024 (33 deals). The end of 2024, of course, had lots of crypto optimism: Donald Trump’s election <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/donald-trump-declared-president-2024-election">win</a>, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/new-sec-crypto-task-force">regulatory</a> progress/promises, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-actions-timeline">a softening SEC</a>, and rising crypto prices.



“I see larger financial players stepping in to add crypto platforms, markets and custodians to their already-diversified financial services offerings, now that the risk of negative outcomes is greatly reduced,” Baker Botts partner Samuel Dibble told me.



During Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit last month, 10T Holdings CEO Dan Tapiero alluded to an M&amp;A boom coming alongside <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-ipo-boom-etoro-kraken">an expected pick-up</a> in crypto IPOs.&nbsp;



The Q1 crypto M&amp;A activity was unprecedented in more ways than one, noted Architect Partners founder Eric Risley. Aside from the record deal count, there were seven transactions over $100 million and the largest in crypto history: Kraken&#8217;s $1.5 billion acquisition of NinjaTrader.&nbsp;&nbsp;



So-called “bridge transactions” — made between crypto and non-crypto companies — will remain a theme going forward, Risley said. The Kraken buy was a bit atypical, given it was a crypto exchange that acquired a traditional foreign exchange and futures business.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The Kraken-NinjaTrader deal also touches on another trend likely to continue — companies seeking out regulatory compliance and licensing.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“NinjaTrader is registered with the CFTC and has a lot of regulatory ‘stamps of approval’ that acquirers see as a fast track to expanding — or simply bolting on — crypto capabilities to their existing businesses,” Dibble noted.



Related to that, Dibble said he expects more non-US companies swooping in to acquire US-licensed operators to quicken business plans in what is now a more attractive market.&nbsp;



“We will see what ultimately unfolds, but I think it has all the signs of being a feeding frenzy,” Dibble noted.



Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz said on the company’s earnings call last week that a lot of private crypto firms probably want to sell.



“They see [TradFi] companies coming in with big balance sheets,” he noted. “And most crypto businesses, fortunately or unfortunately, are tied to the overall index of crypto prices.”



Indeed, economic uncertainty is the counter to a pro-crypto Trump administration, Risley argued. Crypto price performance has proven to be highly correlated with traditional assets, which have taken a hit given tariff unknowns and even the possibility of a recession.&nbsp;“The state of the global economy matters, and crypto will be buffeted by economic weakness if it develops,” Risley said. “Economically stressed market participants simply withdraw or take less risk.”



He added: “Skew toward optimism. But perhaps not as strongly, as the economic and foreign policy uncertainties have emerged.”



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‘Feeding frenzy’ possible as crypto M&A picks up

Kate Irwin

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



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The shooter game Off The Grid has faced some disapproval — and some praise — over a purported confidential letter.



The letter in question was reportedly emailed to Gunzilla Games’ private investors in regard to its GUN token that became tradeable on Binance this week. GUN launched on Monday and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/gunzilla-games-gun-token-launch">hit a $68 million</a> market cap within hours of launch, but that number has since fallen to $40 million.&nbsp;



The <a href="https://x.com/pixiekate13/status/1906777971005829541">letter</a> references a SAFT, or a Simple Agreement for Future Tokens, that means investors gave the company money upfront for tokens at a later, future date.&nbsp;



The copy-pasted text of the letter was posted on X yesterday by a crypto trader and got over 115,000 views in less than a day. The larger post also included the trader’s scathing criticism of the decision. We don’t know more about the specifics of the SAFT yet, though.&nbsp;



The supposed text of that email also references a change to GUN’s vesting tokenomics — and offers investors a chance for a refund if they don’t want to agree to the new terms.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeRnExDMneGra87-nxiF_LMsC_Rqwi-NJsDLFab0L7gsGEMhBxWcl4X8UOhP55BLz7hCXmV2XUrt7RsViNNND1emY-lX02ZBLAH-Yfmy8zvJZcxTLBVe7y470pA8LDZwY9Up6OyUw?key=eiHP8XU0o4ADlGCoXjX4cQe7" alt=""/></figure>



What exactly might these changes be? The trader who leaked the purported letter, Grail.eth, <a href="https://x.com/graildoteth/status/1906737689191473480">claims</a> seed round investors were supposed to get 5% of their GUN tokens unlocked on launch day, while strategic round investors were supposed to see 2% of their tokens unlock on launch.&nbsp;



According to the public GUN whitepaper, the strategic round is seeing 0% of tokens unlocked on launch. The Private A and B rounds have been granted the same. This means these groups’ tokens won’t be unlocked for at least a year because their tokens have a 12-month cliff, with 18 months of vesting.



Some traders on Twitter speculate that the changes may be in order to fund the token’s listing on Binance, though this has not been confirmed by Gunzilla or Binance.&nbsp;



&#8220;We do not charge listing fees to projects listing on Binance,” a Binance spokesperson tells Blockworks. “Regardless, deposits from project teams are refundable and designed to help protect users by ensuring that projects are serious about building their projects, keeping them alive and continuing to build after listing on Binance. The deposit also serves to help protect users in situations where projects harm them by failing to deliver on their commitments.”



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfy0oO4-u2jb-Gae6lELR0Rmlgzr6ycjF5jtd-DhwFlZ0tnU50XGDHoi7LWhAA_AuNfm7aku0Da3TTDeYBxB0h4P_qwa-JXtnkxtrN8qAWS710KnGqEZ1-BdX_Og3SHF0rB4KYmlw?key=eiHP8XU0o4ADlGCoXjX4cQe7" alt=""/></figure>



Others have <a href="https://x.com/0xAkina_/status/1906731320849641653">criticized</a> GUN’s tokenomics for allotting a significant amount to investors in the first place.&nbsp;



But not everyone’s seeing these tokenomics in a negative light.&nbsp;



I’m personally a fan of any project that makes investors wait longer to unlock their tokens. The “dump on retail” price action isn’t fun for anyone, and it can kill excitement around a new project fast if it happens shortly after a token launches.&nbsp;



“A rare instance where the project chooses its users over VCs,” <a href="https://x.com/avery_bartlett/status/1906738335428587882">wrote</a> Ava Labs Marketing Lead Avery Bartlett in response to the post with the letter, while also admitting he understood the criticism around it (Gunzilla is using its own Avalanche L1).



In a DM, Bartlett told Blockworks: “The people I know didn’t get [a letter]. I got nodes on secondary and didn’t get it,” suggesting validator investors did not see a change to their tokenomics.



Theodore Agranat, Gunzilla’s Director of Web3, told Blockworks he was “not sure” when asked about the letter’s legitimacy.



“I do know that whatever letter was sent out had [a] confidentiality clause attached to it. So not sure,” he said, adding that he would speak with his team.



Agranat’s response indicates a letter was sent confidentially — we just don’t know with 100% certainty if this copy-pasted text matches it.



When Blockworks reached out a day later to follow up regarding the letter, Agranat did not respond by time of publication.&nbsp;



Blockworks has reached out to Gunzilla for additional comment.



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Off The Grid confidential letter sparks speculation around tokenomics

Donovan Choy

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



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If you ask the average person in crypto what problems the industry faces today, “too many chains, not enough apps” quickly comes up as a common gripe.



This complaint has a striking parallel to the days of the early internet.



During the dot-com boom of the late 90s and early 2000s, skeptics similarly criticized the perceived overinvestment in excessive infrastructure, particularly fiber optics.



Telecom companies (Global Crossing, WorldCom, AT&amp;T) spent billions laying undersea cables and long-haul fiber networks based on the belief that internet traffic would grow exponentially.



Even internet pioneer Bob Metcalfe criticized this perceived overinvestment, arguing that there simply wouldn’t be enough demand.



With the luxury of hindsight, we now know that Metcalfe was wrong (Metcalfe <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1d1xg1/til_robert_metcalfe_predicted_in_1995_that_the/">literally ate</a> his words in 2006 after he conceded his error).



The explosive surplus of bandwidth is what makes amazing products like YouTube, cloud computing, and Netflix possible today.



Netflix, for instance, was a mail-based DVD rental business for years until it slowly began its transition to streaming in 2007 — thanks to the foundations of bandwidth infrastructure that had been laid prior.



In short, the bet that “if we build it, demand will come” eventually proved true for the internet, though it took a decade and the bankruptcy of internet infrastructure companies like Global Crossing.



Ethereum is (kind of) placing its chips on a similar bet today.



Per its <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-scaling-interop-sequencing">rollup-centric roadmap</a>, the Ethereum L1 today in effect gives up execution fees to L2s.



But Ethereum plans to eventually reap the profits in data availability (DA) fees through its upcoming upgrades to scale the supply of DA. The idea is that Ethereum DA will eventually be so abundantly plentiful that it would induce eventual user demand.



Just like the early internet builders, Ethereum researcher Justin Drake <a href="https://youtu.be/yvP39-EOADU">believes</a> that “if we build it, demand will come.”



Drake’s moonshot math looks like this: At 10 million TPS, with each transaction paying $0.001 in DA fees to Ethereum, that comes up to ~$1 billion per day of revenue for Ethereum.



(This assumes L2s use the Ethereum L1 for DA, as opposed to an alternative DA layer like Celestia or EigenLayer. But Drake believes the benefits of synchronous composability will make it so.)



It’s a bold thesis, considering DA consumption today; Ethereum’s blob gas fees came up to about a mere $272k in March.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcwR4OD-izr37fe2tJxfQPEgMPmGLChD4Lq9RPqgXfte5MCKTMg5C8Ad-_O40CKd9H1PDqa2tmA4ZWZITRVDEW9CsUuqtwI4UaxsFcgSRSecsLbRkl63O1TG98sLgEXNpZnZqt_YA?key=kRoqvm_ZUgyHO1lsNH38B_Eu" alt=""/></figure>



Maybe Ethereum bulls believe Web3 will play out similarly to the history of Web2, but Ethereum doesn’t exist in a silo, and it faces stiff competition from other chains.



We also still have so few guesses as to the kinds of onchain applications that will dominate blockchain usage. Will the world need that much data availability?



But I digress. The claim that there are “too many chains” may eventually be true. But it’s too early to tell, as it was in the early days of the internet.



If true, markets are serving to curb further wasteful spending. Case in point: The L1 premium has been rapidly compressing.



The days of $300-$500 million dollar raises for an L1 are over. L1/L2 blockchain raises in 2024 ranged from as low as $14 million (<a href="https://x.com/initia/status/1838929323954200974">Initia</a>) to as high as $100 million (<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/evm-compatible-layer-1-blockchain-vc-interest">Berachain</a>) and $225 million (<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/evm-compatible-layer-1-blockchain-vc-interest">Monad</a>).



The high costs of running an L1 and a lack of value capture sends a feedback signal to markets to stop funding these things.



In comparison, L2s are much cheaper to launch, about $5-$15 million, per <a href="https://x.com/JasonYanowitz/status/1846936073382809626">estimates</a> by Blockworks’ Jason Yanowitz.



That may explain the Celo L1’s recent transition into an L2, or what Kydo, EigenLayer’s head of special projects, <a href="https://x.com/0xkydo/status/1906050837186584983">calls</a> Ethereum’s “inevitable gravity toward efficiency.”



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Can Ethereum win big with data availability?

David Canellis

Pete Rizzo

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



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Few things are built to stand the test of time. Bitcoin is.



Engineers design bridges to last only around 100 years. Modern-day dams might be built that only make it to half that. 



Perhaps regular maintenance could stretch those numbers by a few decades. They would still crumble much sooner than Bitcoin was ever intended to.



Today is the 11th anniversary of a testament to exactly that: BIP-42, the clutch proposal that averted a potential supply crisis 240 years from now.



Bitcoin Core contributor <a href="https://x.com/pete_rizzo_/status/1880616287363059980">Pieter Wuille</a> submitted BIP-42 on April Fool’s Day, 2014, years after Satoshi Nakamoto’s last post. BIP-42 was based on a solution proposed by <a href="https://x.com/pete_rizzo_/status/1878079505052413965">Gregory Maxwell</a>. Fittingly, it was both very serious and deeply unserious at the same time.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcxexSwe6D6Dhm0k2ObNvIs8ip8LXwulYlpFsHj7RnslBpy5T5ITyr6oDzmLEi3sbexIIAONmCO811Ta6XOTdTHKQs3rrpRmcZefPRMGtkb3l6KGj_7NtHThZ5Bcf8c6oqRP_j-Mg?key=OWOEEWME-Gq6nfqaq74dza6b" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">BIP-42 doubled as a roast of Satoshi Nakamoto (<a href="https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0042.mediawiki">source</a>).</figcaption></figure>



As it turns out, Satoshi had made a grave but obscure error when coding the logic for bitcoin halvings.&nbsp;



The block reward had been correctly set to halve every 210,000 blocks, all the way down to an unspendable fraction of a sat by the year 2140 or so. This is what makes the BTC supply predictably and provably finite.



But the code was written in such a way that it determines the mining reward using the current block height. And when the block height gets too high — much higher than it is today — Satoshi would’ve had to write special rules informing the software how to process such a calculation safely.



The exact impact of the bug isn’t really knowable, but the largest of unintended consequences would have been that the block reward reverted to its original state of 50 BTC. BTC’s supply issuance curve would be rebooted to 2009.



Left unchecked, the bug would return again and again every two and a half centuries, making for potentially infinite bitcoins over the millennia.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdjMI40BjNZZ0vsmV8py9UXnvBjp6ClH_kHUnIPe0yIFLdhoOvkQZAYWKbJSYMnUuzBWoQ5kxzAVX8e3-lUPN-agTUHcKfVj9BLdg38Y-zX1f0AgKB8PJlh3SUh8rzlbmSEk_-Riw?key=OWOEEWME-Gq6nfqaq74dza6b" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Bitcoin’s circulating supply would hit 126 million in the year 3417, without fixing the supply bug.</figcaption></figure>



“Although it is widely believed that Satoshi was an inflation-hating goldbug, he never said this, and in fact programmed Bitcoin&#8217;s money supply to grow indefinitely, forever,” Wuille wrote.



What’s humbling is that BIP-42 aborted a cataclysmic event that would’ve occurred 10 generations from now — in the approximate year 2265, when the block height should reach 13.44 million (today, it’s under 890,000). That’s over a century after the last slice of spendable bitcoin is expected to be mined, in 2140.&nbsp;



So, I suppose our great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandchildren will have Wuille and Maxwell to thank for making sure that’s so.



— David



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Rizzo’s view, as the Bitcoin Historian</h2>



It’s nice that David can have a laugh over BIP-42. It is one of the more objectively quirky events in Bitcoin development history. That said, a more sober assessment raises thorny questions about the management of the Bitcoin software.&nbsp; One that I always linger on is the natural tension over what defines a “bug” in Bitcoin. Should we consider BIP-42 through the lens of jurisprudence, it helped enshrine two interesting views.&nbsp;



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>First is the assertion that the code which BIP-42 patches is indeed a “bug” because it contradicts what Satoshi wrote, namely, that Bitcoin would have a fixed supply. </li>



<li>Second is the view that the code is a “bug” because it contradicts what he told users to expect (creating a kind of social contract). </li>
</ul>



There’s a truth to both assertions, but it seems to get more problematic when compared to how other code debates were handled. Take the infamous “block size,” for instance. In this case, Satoshi said it would be raised over time, and it’s also what most (if not all early users) expected.



Ergo, the unchanged block size checks similar boxes as BIP-42. Yet no action was ever taken to change it. How to square this circle? Perhaps there’s the issue of safety. It’s true that eliminating the block size could lead to DDOS attacks, block withholding attacks, and potentially contribute to Bitcoin’s ultimate centralization. Equally, it could be said that rebooting the Bitcoin supply would constitute economic attacks. So, perhaps this was what swayed the decision.



I talked to Luke Jr. about this, and here’s what he had to say: “It was the behaviour everyone expected. And also there was no guarantee future CPUs would have the previous behavior for the existing code either.” Unfortunately, due to the tone of the patch, however, we might never know what all the participants had to say.



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126 million BTC? How Bitcoin’s absolute scarcity was saved

Katherine Ross

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



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There’s no denying that North Korea’s Lazarus Group is a threat, especially as crypto works overtime to be seen as a safe and acceptable industry (sorry degens, there are still corners for you).&nbsp;



Paradigm’s samczsun <a href="https://www.paradigm.xyz/2025/03/demystifying-the-north-korean-threat">highlighted</a> the good, the bad, and the ugly, a month after the Lazarus Group pulled off the biggest digital heist in history. Oof, that hurt to write.&nbsp;



The upside is that only one bad actor (which, I guess on the downside, is North Korea) has been so successful in stealing funds.&nbsp;



But “there’s more to the DPRK than just the Lazarus Group,” he warned.



Unfortunately, the team would later find out that the group had managed to compromise SafeWallet’s own infrastructure, deploying “a malicious payload specifically targeting Bybit. This was a level of sophistication that no one had considered or been prepared for, and it was a major update to many of our threat models.”



But there are ways to stay safe, samczsun noted. He urges caution across the board for individual folks like us. And organizations should “install Mobile Device Management (MDM) and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) software” on work devices for security prior to any hack and to ensure visibility afterwards.&nbsp;



Samczsun’s tune was slightly more optimistic than Paradigm advisor ZachXBT, who earlier this month said the effort to try to freeze funds tracked to the Bybit attack had been an “eye-opening” experience.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXet4pzhRcDbBuh26UAGIlTfK496-5aWkZP-pf6T7Co25HZfgKVz4kLRHLtch_p3Gc5YKjdRtaQNedw7fmsNMUeVj-1mDgM_yQfYjAWiz3t9a4u9wPRIn1otLodLOr-hOdc4O1VmYw?key=Uyw_GkgyI-NUIl5ahE5nEq4m" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">From ZachXBT’s Telegram group.</figcaption></figure>



“The industry is unbelievably cooked when it comes to exploits/hacks,” he wrote.&nbsp;



Samczsun’s holding out hope that the FBI’s unit dedicated to both tracking and preventing DPRK attacks is strong, an encouraging sign given his recent work with them.



Whether or not the FBI paired with super sleuths such as ZachXBT and samczsun — alongside members of Seal 911 — remains to be seen.



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">Forward Guidance</a>: Reporting and analysis on the growing intersection of crypto and macroeconomics, policy and finance.</li>



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">The Drop</a>: For crypto collectors and traders, covering apps, games, memes and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock">Supply Shock</a>: Tracking Bitcoin’s rise from internet plaything worth less than a penny to global phenomenon disrupting money as we know it.</li>
</ul>

Paradigm’s Samczsun warns there’s ‘more to the DPRK than just the Lazarus Group’

Bill Barhydt, the CEO of Abra and an early Bitcoin adopter who famously bought bitcoin when it was <a href="https://x.com/pete_rizzo_/status/1763544742862762180">trading below $5</a>, has sharply criticized Michael Saylor&#8217;s plan to render his substantial personal bitcoin holdings inaccessible to anyone else forever. In a new interview on the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mastercard-building-venmo-crypto-blockchain-digital-assets-2025-3">Supply Shock podcast</a> with <a href="https://x.com/pete_rizzo_">Pete Rizzo</a>, Barhydt expressed his frustration, stating Saylor&#8217;s strategy &#8220;makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.



Saylor, known for his bullish stance on Bitcoin and his company Strategy&#8217;s substantial bitcoin investments, recently hinted <a href="https://x.com/pete_rizzo_/status/1904555177077514482">in a CoinDesk interview</a> that he might send his personal stash of over 17,000 BTC to an &#8220;unsendable wallet&#8221; for eternity.



Barhydt acknowledged Saylor&#8217;s perspective that this move would benefit the Bitcoin community by reducing the total supply (and potentially increasing the value of remaining coins) but offered a spirited rebuttal.&nbsp;



&#8220;His perspective is that this is a gift to the Bitcoin community because if you lower the denominator and the numerator, it helps everybody else in terms of the purchasing power. My take is, the Bitcoin community does not need that gift,” he asserted.



<iframe loading="lazy" width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/496uF9L7LOg?si=AnlW8s4OALbq0xfd" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>







Before founding Abra, a global cryptocurrency wealth management platform, Barhydt held roles at companies like Goldman Sachs and Netscape. He gave the first-ever Bitcoin TED Talk when the price of Bitcoin was just $5.



Instead, Barhydt suggested Saylor could use his bitcoin to fund educational services for low-income individuals, establish bitcoin-based banking operations in developing markets, or develop bitcoin-based remittance services.&nbsp;



He emphasized that these initiatives would provide long-term benefits in terms of increasing the total number of the technology’s users.&nbsp;



Barhydt drew a comparison to the early days of Bitcoin, when enthusiasts like himself gave away bitcoin to promote its use and understanding. &#8220;When we were giving away bitcoin, it wasn&#8217;t like we were telling people, ‘Here, go build your financial fortune.’ It was like, no, you need to understand how this decentralized system allows you to move value between two parties without some trusted third party in the middle,&#8221; Barhydt explained.



He contrasted this with Saylor&#8217;s plan, which he sees as primarily focused on increasing the value of existing bitcoin holdings. &#8220;[Using the money] is a very different perspective than saying, ‘I&#8217;m gonna help the value of your bags by burning my bags,’&#8221; Barhydt stated.



Elsewhere Barhydt questioned Saylor&#8217;s comparison between his own actions and those of Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, arguing that Michael Saylor doesn’t need to make a benevolent exit from the software project in quite the same way.&nbsp;



&#8220;Saylor is not perceived to be a benevolent dictator of Bitcoin,&#8221; Barhydt said, arguing that Saylor&#8217;s decision carries different implications for the network.



Listen to the full interview on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=496uF9L7LOg">YouTube</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/supply-shock/id1558223079">Apple Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/2yFL2nSsQucf1rzdEKbFZY">Spotify</a>.&nbsp;



Editor’s note: This article was produced with the assistance of AI tooling.



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Investor who bought bitcoin at $5 says Saylor is making a $1.5B mistake

Jeff Albus

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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Following Hyperliquid&#8217;s $13 million <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/hyperliquid-jelly-short-blockworks-research">brush with disaster</a>, some in Solana&#8217;s orbit are wondering: Could Jupiter&#8217;s JLP vault — a similar product to Hyperliquid’s vulnerable vault — face a similar exploit?



Nope.



That&#8217;s my short but genuinely confident answer. Let&#8217;s unpack why.



To recap briefly: Last week, some unknown trader thought they&#8217;d get cute by manipulating the price of thinly-traded Jelly-my-Jelly (JELLY) memecoin on decentralized perp exchange Hyperliquid. The presumed goal was to mobilize a massive short squeeze, allowing them to profit from leveraged long positions while forcing the protocol to absorb the loss from their short.&nbsp;



The attacker’s leveraged long positions quickly created over $13 million in unrealized losses to Hyperliquid’s HLP risk vault and an emergency shutdown that forcibly closed all JELLY positions at a price favorable to Hyperliquid&#8217;s balance sheet.



Now, we can argue <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/hyperliquid-decentralization-validator-put">whether it was a bailout</a>, anathema to a decentralized ethos, or just pragmatic damage control another time. The point is, it worked.



By forcibly settling all JELLY positions at the exploiter’s short entry of $0.0095, the protocol basically reversed the attack. Which is to say that Hyperliquid actually, hilariously, ended up posting a profit of around $700,000 while the attacker walked away with less than they deposited. The Hyperliquid team promptly assured users they would be made whole through the Hyper Foundation, and everyone lived happily ever after.



Hooray.



But if perps DEXs can be attacked, that raises questions about Jupiter, Solana&#8217;s biggest DEX aggregator and perps exchange. Like Hyperliquid, Jupiter&#8217;s platform is powered by a vault that acts as the counterparty to all trades. This would be the very creatively named (/s) Jupiter Liquidity Provider pool, or JLP. The JLP collects trading fees and earns big when traders lose but takes a hit when they win.



HLP. JLP. It sounds pretty same-same. So with that in mind, could this vault be squeezed in a similar way? In theory, yes. Anything&#8217;s possible. I&#8217;m not going to call the Titanic unsinkable. But Jupiter&#8217;s architecture makes it an improbable outcome in practice.



First, consider its asset list. No offense to JELLY, but the token had very little liquidity, making price manipulation easier. Hyperliquid listed it because it prioritized volume, novelty, and a wide-open asset strategy to attract degens.&nbsp;



Jupiter doesn&#8217;t do that. Its perpetuals are limited to major assets like SOL, ETH, and wrapped BTC. That decision alone eliminates the kind of thin-market vulnerability that made JELLY so exploitable. A Jupiter representative said the platform’s maximum order size is much smaller than Hyperliquid’s as well.



Second, price execution. Hyperliquid relies on its internal orderbook to match traders directly against each other. Users submit their own limit orders, giving them more flexible, dynamic pricing. However, that also leads to a plethora of exploitable scenarios. A motivated attacker can influence the price displayed on the platform, setting up artificial moves that trigger cascading liquidations and/or dislocations. No bueno, compadres.



Jupiter&#8217;s perp markets operate in a totally different way, choosing instead to execute at oracle prices from external sources like Pyth. Even if a trader tried to pump the spot price of SOL on another exchange, they&#8217;d still be trading against the median on-chain price, not a manipulated in-platform quote.



Frankly, it&#8217;s just harder to game the house when the pricing comes from outside the casino.



Third, Jupiter handles risk with guardrails, not emergency exits. JLP is always the counterparty. If a trade gets liquidated, the levers for that would pull automatically at the set Oracle price. As far as we know, there&#8217;s no handoff to a second vault, no delay that a bad actor can game, and no pause for a team call or validator vote. Losses go straight to the pool.



Again, one could argue this makes the system blunt or unforgiving, but it&#8217;s something LPs accept as part and parcel (and the reasons why should now be pretty clear).



That&#8217;s not to say that JLP is immune to risk, because it&#8217;s not. It regularly takes losses in the case of a one-sided market where most traders win, for instance. But Jupiter bakes in defenses for that, too. Traders pay borrow fees to open leveraged positions, which go straight to the pool. If everyone piles into longs, funding rates rise to balance the associated risks.&nbsp;



Could some unforeseen scenario force Jupiter to intervene someday in a way that its users find questionable? Yes. Every protocol has an edge case. But in this specific scenario, Jupiter seems to have designed JLP to absorb such hazards. While Hyperliquid had to delist a token to save its vault, Jupiter has taken the opposite approach: limit risk at the door.



So, with that in mind — rest easy, Lightspeeders.&nbsp;



Jupiter isn’t playing the same game Hyperliquid nearly lost.



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Jupiter’s risk vault unlikely to face Hyperliquid-style attack

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



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There’s a new institutional-grade DeFi yield platform in town, we’ve exclusively learned.&nbsp;



Upshift, which aims to give retail access to yield opportunities typically available for hedge funds, is being spun out of prime brokerage firm August and is coming out of stealth.&nbsp;



The platform already has around $250 million in deposits, the team told me.



“If you look at the value prop today, DeFi’s super complicated,” Upshift CEO and August co-founder Alexandre Elkrief explained to me.&nbsp;



“It&#8217;s across three main axes: It&#8217;s fragmented, it&#8217;s hard to access, and it&#8217;s a lot more complex to manage fragments, obviously, because we&#8217;ve gone from one chain to a gazillion chains. It&#8217;s clear that it&#8217;s not gonna stop today. [August supports] 15 chains, right? And so the retail user is not gonna rebalance their position across that many different opportunities, and it&#8217;s becoming a full-time job,” Elkrief continued.



Elkrief and fellow co-founder and CEO of August, Aya Kantorovich, are no strangers to this space. Kantorovich was part of the founding team for brokerage firm FalconX, and Elkrief spent some time running the books for a DeFi hedge fund. The two initially started working on Fractal, later rebranded as August, and began fundraising right before the FTX collapse and closed the deal “the week that FTX collapsed,” Kantorovich told me.



She admitted both founders felt like they lost a couple of years off their lives after that, but it also solidified their belief in the need for both an August and an Upshift in crypto.



And so far, their work has paid off. August <a href="https://fortune.com/crypto/2025/03/06/crypto-prime-brokerage-august-raises-10-million-dragonfly-ventures/">raised</a> $10 million in a round led by Dragonfly earlier this month. It focuses on giving institutions DeFi access by connecting them to networks like Aave or Uniswap, and facilitates roughly $7 billion in monthly volume.&nbsp;



Upshift, which has been in beta since last September, is focused on the retail side of things. That was a focal point for me given that we haven’t seen retail activity levels return just yet.



“Our hypothesis is that it’s a question of complexity,” Elkrief said. Retail’s really been forced to focus on things like memecoins, which are obviously out of style now.&nbsp;



And this market is focused on “rewarding simple products,” Kantorovich noted.



“If you just zoom out for a second, the value proposition of yield is generally the onboarding mechanism for all types of new financial products. Crypto aside, Marcus by Goldman Sachs started attracting users by having a 4% savings account, right? … We&#8217;re giving every asset issuer the opportunity to augment their product with a yield-bearing option.”



Essentially, asset issuers can then partner with hedge funds or managers to curate and package the product to offer yield. Hopefully, on the flip side, also driving onboarding to said product.&nbsp;



While the August roadmap is about integrating a custodian, Elkrief said, Upshift’s going to become a product by itself. The team is “working through” the motions to split the August and Upshift teams apart currently, with Elkrief taking the helm.&nbsp;



Thanks to the lack of regulation currently, Upshift isn’t something that can be offered to US users, though both Kantorovich and Elkrief are eager for the day that path opens up.



But for now, Upshift’s focused on “making some noise” and getting to $1 billion in deposits. Then, in the next 18 months, the plan is to hit $2 billion or $3 billion.&nbsp;



Easy peasy.



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Exclusive: DeFi yield platform Upshift exits stealth

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



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The word “bitcoin” appeared once in BlackRock CEO Larry Fink’s 2024 letter to investors.&nbsp;



The asset (and tokenization too) got a bigger shoutout this time around.



Fink’s sole mention of BTC last March came when bringing up BlackRock’s recent bitcoin ETF launch. That was part of a broader effort to “bring better liquidity and price discovery to more opaque markets,” he wrote.



The CEO’s 2025 letter, published today, included seven “bitcoin” references. He again addressed the aforementioned IBIT product, which has notched net inflows of $40 billion to date.



More than half of that demand has been from retail investors, Fink noted, with three-quarters of those investors never owning an iShares product before.



But more interestingly, Fink wrote there’s no guarantee that the dollar will forever serve as the world’s reserve currency.  



“If the US doesn’t get its debt under control, if deficits keep ballooning, America risks losing that position to digital assets like bitcoin,” he explained.



He added: “Decentralized finance is an extraordinary innovation. It makes markets faster, cheaper and more transparent. Yet that same innovation could undermine America&#8217;s economic advantage if investors begin seeing bitcoin as a safer bet than the dollar.”



Fink gives this warning while clarifying that he’s “obviously not anti-digital assets.” He has, after all, called <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/blackrock-tokenization-investment">tokenized securities</a> “the next generation for markets.” And we’ve reported on BlackRock’s tokenized money market fund, which earlier this month <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tokenized-yield-funds-complement-stablecoins">hit $1 billion in AUM</a>.



Fink reaffirmed this sentiment, arguing that <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stablecoins-tokenization-blackrock-galaxy-das">tokenizing</a> every stock, bond and fund would “revolutionize” investing.



“Markets wouldn&#8217;t need to close,” Fink wrote. “Transactions that currently take days would clear in seconds. And billions of dollars currently immobilized by settlement delays could be reinvested immediately back into the economy, generating more growth.”



Solving for digital verification will be critical if tokenized funds are to become as familiar to investors as ETFs, he added. A TradFi giant like BlackRock continuing to focus on these categories should no doubt make such a thing possible.&nbsp;



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Could USD lose to BTC? BlackRock’s Fink says it’s possible

Casey Wagner

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



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In a fitting end to a rocky first quarter, US stocks fell back into correction territory Monday.&nbsp;



The S&amp;P 500 was trading 0.2% lower at 2 pm ET, putting it around 4.8% in the red since the start of 2025. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite is slated to close out Q1 almost 12% lower.&nbsp;



It’s the worst first quarter performance for the Nasdaq Composite since 2020.&nbsp;



One silver lining in Q1: gold. The precious metal is about to notch its best-performing quarter since 1986. Analysts attribute the rally to the Trump tariff-induced trade war. (More on that later.)&nbsp;



Digital gold, though, is a different story. Bitcoin is slated to close out its worst Q1 since 2018. The narrative of bitcoin as a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/investors-bitcoin-narrative-confusion">safe-haven asset</a>, apparently, has not taken.



Looking ahead, things could get worse before they get better.&nbsp;



Tariffs are set to remain a dominant market narrative in Q2. President Trump is slated to announce his global tariff plans on Wednesday, which he’s dubbed “Liberation Day.”&nbsp;



To Team Trump, April 2 will mark a turning point for domestic manufacturing. To some analysts, “Liberation Day” could also bring salvation to US equity prices (at least in the short term).&nbsp;



The logic goes: If Trump announces a comprehensive reciprocal tariff regime, investors will gain clarity. Hopefully the daily headlines will slow down and markets can stop wondering whether a levy will be delayed or amended. Concrete answers on the tariff front would leave investors free to focus on impacts of other Trump administration economic policies, like tax cuts.&nbsp;



In the long term, I’m less optimistic. Even Trump’s closest Cabinet members <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/29/trump-aides-tariffs-liberation-day-fears-00259081">reportedly</a> aren’t fully up-to-speed on what the president will say on Wednesday, so I’d imagine markets will also be shocked. If the announcements lead to a significant escalation in the trade war, any “clarity” bump will quickly be reversed.



I’d also argue that these reciprocal tariffs are not priced-in, so expect some short-term volatility later in the week as investors digest the announcements from the White House.&nbsp;



OK, I’m putting the crystal ball down now. Keep an eye on your inbox later this week to see how my predictions hold up.



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Investors hope for clarity on tariffs after Q1 downturns

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



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Gunzilla Games’ GUN token — for its Off The Grid game and Avalanche subnet Gunz — is now live.&nbsp;



GUN climbed up 12% since its launch early Monday morning, but has since fallen slightly. As of 11:30 am ET Monday, its price was $0.09. The token had a market cap of roughly $60 million at that time, with 604 million GUN in circulation out of a possible 10 billion.&nbsp;



GUN already has a trading volume of $126 million just a few hours after launch, per CoinGecko data.



The Gunz chain has already seen over 487 million transactions across 14.5 million wallets, according to Avascan <a href="https://testnet.avascan.info/blockchain/gunz/home">data</a> and Gunzilla’s Director of Web3 Theodore Agranat.



“Unlike most Web3 projects, we&#8217;ve spent five years now building everything first and testing it in testnet for over a year,” Agranat said in an interview with Blockworks, noting that the team chose to launch the token on Binance because it’s the biggest crypto exchange.



Agranat says he’s seen crypto exchanges engaging with gaming projects less over the past year — but says those projects that did launch have largely missed the mark.



Off The Grid is free to play on PC and console — and doesn’t require a wallet or any crypto. The game is largely a skill-based shooter, though some characters’ “cyberlimbs” grant special abilities. Items can also be bought and used in the game.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeEE9mf7TDDXNwtDpxGWAaM8DzbkoDP8gzkb1e2W7RrG35rkx26w_ebsyrJltaAU0AH-FujHnIV_FwgGhzc1nryOqcSRwotQyKpazi6FBop8RHhH_0JdUQUA8kMgNpiBX71Tqqx?key=85KaLESEJlio0CfvG8yaPPXA" alt=""/></figure>



Those wishing to pour money into the game can pay for Off The Grid’s Pro membership ($12 a month) to use the game’s marketplace, which uses blockchain on the backend. But even if you’re playing for free, you’ll slowly earn GUN as you go.&nbsp;



If you’ve already been playing the game, though, those GUN token numbers you’re seeing won’t be turned into actual GUN tokens, Gunzilla has confirmed.&nbsp;



“Their main benefits are the rare items that they earned or received with OTG Pro — many of which no one will ever be able to access in the future,” Agranat explained on the benefits for early players in a message.



“Hexes” and other items earned early on will transfer over, though. And though it’s challenging, extracting hexes while playing the game will get you more loot (each hex can be decoded to reveal an item). Agranat noted during our interview that over 380,000 hexes had been extracted in just one day last week.&nbsp;



I’ve sunk some hours into the game so far, and I like both solo mode and trios mode. This game is fast — more like Call of Duty: Warzone than Apex Legends in terms of time-to-kill and overall speed. But even without its crypto elements, Off The Grid brings something unique to the extraction battle royale shooter genre with its cyberlimbs and gritty, futuristic aesthetic.&nbsp;



A little scoop: Tomorrow, on April 1, expect a “very, very fun new skin activation,” Agranat shared. There’ll be a new skin coming out — could it be April Fool’s-themed?



Bigger picture, Off The Grid is just the beginning for Gunzilla.



“It is just the first of many games that we will launch in our ecosystem,” Agranat said.



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">Forward Guidance</a>: Reporting and analysis on the growing intersection of crypto and macroeconomics, policy and finance.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch">0xResearch</a>: Alpha directly in your inbox. Market highlights, data, degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: Built for Solana investors, developers and community members. The latest from one of crypto&#8217;s hottest networks.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">The Drop</a>: For crypto collectors and traders, covering apps, games, memes and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock">Supply Shock</a>: Tracking Bitcoin’s rise from internet plaything worth less than a penny to global phenomenon disrupting money as we know it.</li>
</ul>

Gunzilla Games’ GUN token hits $68M market cap within hours of launch

Macauley Peterson

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"/>



In the realm of macro risks, this week is stacked with market-moving events — particularly relevant to risk assets.&nbsp;



“Liberation Day” on Wednesday could trigger sweeping tariffs and exacerbate trade war fears, while Friday’s US jobs report will test the resilience of the labor market and offer clues into future Fed policy moves. Throw in Eurozone CPI, Fed Chair Powell’s post-jobs-report remarks, and a Congressional hearing on the future of stablecoins, and you have a volatile mix of economic, political and regulatory items converging at once.



Oh, and don’t overlook Japan, where a new fiscal year on April 1 <a href="https://x.com/acrossthespread/status/1906591368765681835">could trigger</a> large-scale capital redeployment, notwithstanding headline-driven US tariff chatter. I’m tired, boss!



DeFi, on the other hand, has its own set of risks to worry about. Navigating the part of the crypto game where risks are too often opaque and inconsistent leads the degens among us to simply ignore them. Yet, as protocols like Morpho scale into multi-billion dollar platforms, that problem compounds. The risks aren’t just about smart contracts anymore; they span asset types, market design and human factors like governance and custody.



But things are improving. The latest tool in the toolbox is Credora’s <a href="https://x.com/CredoraNetwork/status/1905614429183791337">recent launch</a> of risk ratings for Morpho vaults. These aren’t merely marketing labels — they’re probabilistic, institutional-grade assessments that break down risk at the collateral, market and vault level.



A vault rated A+ should be more than a vibe; it should be a signal derived from a consensus process involving crypto-native and traditional credit experts that simulate real-world defaults and loss probabilities.



This move towards pushing risk transparency forward reminds me of other standout projects:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Bluechip.org is one <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/liquity-v2-staked-ether">source</a> for stablecoin analysis, providing transparent and curated risk profiles for fiat-backed and decentralized assets alike. Its community-first model prioritizes credibility over hype — though it’s hard to keep up with all the new launches these days.</li>
</ul>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Serenity Research <a href="https://serenityresearch.substack.com/">brings</a> a similar rigor to stablecoin yield hunters. Its risk-adjusted yield rankings aim to standardize a discount rate for constructing risk-reward profiles.</li>
</ul>



Risk curators like Gauntlet and Chaos Labs have spent years advising protocol governance on risk parameters using agent-based simulations. It’s critical work but advice that often stays inside governance forums or within core teams.



What’s new here is the shift toward user-facing, accessible risk signals. A Credora score is an accessible way to help users understand and trade-offs. That opens the door to something bigger: risk-aware capital flows. Firms can build structured products with embedded risk scores. Wallets can surface safer options by default. Insurance markets can price policies with real inputs.



Risk, in other words, becomes composable. DeFi players have spent years optimizing for yield. The next phase is about risk-adjusted yield — and how to verify it. By translating complexity into standardized, transparent metrics, we can set the stage for more intelligent capital allocation.



The dream isn’t risk-free DeFi. It’s know-your-risk DeFi.



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



Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/daily">Blockworks Daily</a>: The newsletter that helps thousands of investors understand crypto and the markets, by Byron Gilliam.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Empire</a>: Start your morning with the top news and analysis to inform your day in crypto.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">Forward Guidance</a>: Reporting and analysis on the growing intersection of crypto and macroeconomics, policy and finance.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch">0xResearch</a>: Alpha directly in your inbox. Market highlights, data, degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: Built for Solana investors, developers and community members. The latest from one of crypto&#8217;s hottest networks.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">The Drop</a>: For crypto collectors and traders, covering apps, games, memes and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock">Supply Shock</a>: Tracking Bitcoin’s rise from internet plaything worth less than a penny to global phenomenon disrupting money as we know it.</li>
</ul>

From vibes to value: DeFi risk gets a new rating system

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



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



In this week&#8217;s roundup, David Canellis looks at a 13-year-old job post that transformed crypto, a Kenyan startup combining crypto mining with hydroelectric power, and Gamestop&#8217;s bitcoin buying spree.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Opportunity knocks</h2>



The year is 2012. Skrillex’s &#8220;Bangarang&#8221; is playing somewhere in the background, and you’re debating whether to see The Hunger Games or 21 Jump Street at the cinema.



You decide to scroll Hacker News instead. A new <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/1jka50f/job_post_for_the_role_of_coinbase_cofounder/">post</a> catches your eye — “Apply with me to YC [Y Combinator] in the next 3 days and change the world.”



Brian Armstrong, pre-Coinbase, wrote this 13 years ago. “I’m throwing a hail mary here &#8211; because desperate times call for desperate measures.”



Armstrong had a prototype, “PayPal for bitcoin,” an open-source Android wallet called Bitbank that let users send bitcoin via email addresses. Y Combinator showed interest, Armstrong said, but he’d deferred the meeting until he’d found a ride-or-die co-founder.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdgW-seq22agzzS2DCIZX_InpnCZnHQYgEhFfx5O_f9eo_oRuFepMH4jLvLB_BuWCQJ0sqq2ZI-OPBXUWFBQ9wsgcdTj7tlNOolG-vxN0c7IfjPZ3pCDg_STJLZi8LQkZOwjatKSA?key=bBulffZfSB5fG7bmsTZGRzxR" alt=""/></figure>



“The killer app will be in disrupting transaction fees that are a tax on every transaction in our economy,” Armstrong wrote. “This is going to be super fucking hard, but the payoff is that we have a non-zero chance of really changing the world in big way. This isn&#8217;t another photo-sharing app.”



He wasn’t wrong. While Armstrong didn’t find co-founder Fred Ehrsam until after he’d graduated from Y Combinator, Bitbank did eventually become Coinbase, which is today a $48-billion stock trading on the Nasdaq.&nbsp;



Conviction clearly pays.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Remote work</h2>



Legendary Bitcoiners have famously gone to great lengths in pursuit of the network.



Kenya-based startup Gridless is no different: It’s been busy in northwest Zambia, hauling a shipping container full of 120 mining rigs “across bumpy narrow roads 14 hours from the nearest major city,” <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly4xe373p4o">reported</a> the BBC last week.



The goal was to hook those rigs — which are each making around $5 per day — directly to a hydroelectric power plant harnessing the might of the Zambezi river.&nbsp;



Bitcoin mining now makes up about 30% of the plant’s revenue, and a revenue-sharing agreement with the company that built the plant means cheap power for the machines and cheaper electricity for locals. 



<iframe loading="lazy" width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wfwLy8MWbe4?si=9yt8C9iPCpxX3Z_2" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>







Increased revenue for the plant has also led to more reliable power for the people that live there — living proof that proof-of-work can turn stranded energy into real-world progress.



&#8220;Every day we were wasting over half of the energy we could generate, which also meant we [weren’t] earning from that to meet our operating expenses. We needed a major user of power in the area, and that&#8217;s where the game-changing partnership with Gridless came in,&#8221; plant operator Daniel Rea told the BBC.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Game-Start</h2>



GameStop gearing up to run the Strategy playbook is a turning point.



Ignore the mixed market reaction. The original meme stock will be the second large-scale firm to attempt an extreme bitcoin buying spree (mirroring Strategy), after Japanese holding company MetaPlanet.



And that includes issuing 0% convertible notes to the tune of $1.3 billion — cash it will use to buy bitcoin — the exact same move that Strategy has perfected over the past five years or so.&nbsp;



All while GameStop will continue closing its physical stores en masse.



<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">An announcement regarding Bitcoin <a href="https://t.co/gG8JRarIok">pic.twitter.com/gG8JRarIok</a>&mdash; GameStop (@gamestop) <a href="https://twitter.com/gamestop/status/1904628096705454308?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 25, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



GME initially jumped by about 10% after it announced its bitcoin plan, but then dropped 25% on details of the financing.



All noise. The stock might be a very different beast to Strategy and MetaPlanet, but the three will soon share one common denominator.&nbsp;



Forget Denzel — Bitcoin is the real equalizer.



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



Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/daily">Blockworks Daily</a>: The newsletter that helps thousands of investors understand crypto and the markets, by Byron Gilliam.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Empire</a>: Start your morning with the top news and analysis to inform your day in crypto.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">Forward Guidance</a>: Reporting and analysis on the growing intersection of crypto and macroeconomics, policy and finance.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch">0xResearch</a>: Alpha directly in your inbox. Market highlights, data, degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: Built for Solana investors, developers and community members. The latest from one of crypto&#8217;s hottest networks.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">The Drop</a>: For crypto collectors and traders, covering apps, games, memes and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock">Supply Shock</a>: Tracking Bitcoin’s rise from internet plaything worth less than a penny to global phenomenon disrupting money as we know it.</li>
</ul>

Bitbank to Coinbase: Brian Armstrong’s $48 billion job post

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



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



Remember Mesh’s Bam Azizi from our chat <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/mesh-crypto-payments-fundraise-82m">earlier this month</a>, after his firm raised a whopping $82M?



Azizi and Paradigm’s Charlie Noyes joined Yanowitz on <a href="https://blockworks.co/podcast/empire/46ed96f4-0bf7-11f0-b319-cfe252b998dc">this week’s episode of Empire</a> to chat about the raise and crypto’s killer app — stablecoins (sorry if you’re tired of hearing that).&nbsp;



But the thing is, as Noyes put it: “Stablecoins deserve all of the attention and excitement they’re garnering,” especially when we’re in such an awkward spot market-wise.&nbsp;



Not only does Noyes think that stablecoins offer up a viable and understandable use case on crypto rails (something the industry sometimes struggles with) — there’s also an additional add-on:&nbsp;



The talent pool is much bigger. Because a lot of these projects have FinTech qualities, they can seek out talent that’s not just crypto-native.&nbsp;



And, as the competition grows fiercer and fragmentation starts to occur, Mesh stands to potentially add more value, Azizi added.&nbsp;



While the dream would be for folks to use stablecoins for everyday payments, Azizi thinks that we’re more likely to see stablecoins leveraged for cross-border payments right now. Certain hyperinflation areas like Turkey or Colombia could see more retail stablecoin use cases, given that they don’t have the same access to bank accounts and credit cards as the US does.&nbsp;



Next stop for stablecoins? Getting the Netflixes and Amazons of the world to accept USDC, USDT, etc. That’s when real adoption happens.



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



Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/daily">Blockworks Daily</a>: The newsletter that helps thousands of investors understand crypto and the markets, by Byron Gilliam.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Empire</a>: Start your morning with the top news and analysis to inform your day in crypto.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">Forward Guidance</a>: Reporting and analysis on the growing intersection of crypto and macroeconomics, policy and finance.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch">0xResearch</a>: Alpha directly in your inbox. Market highlights, data, degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: Built for Solana investors, developers and community members. The latest from one of crypto&#8217;s hottest networks.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">The Drop</a>: For crypto collectors and traders, covering apps, games, memes and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock">Supply Shock</a>: Tracking Bitcoin’s rise from internet plaything worth less than a penny to global phenomenon disrupting money as we know it.</li>
</ul>

Stablecoins ‘deserve all the attention’: Paradigm

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



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



We’re heading into the second quarter of the year, and — <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/grayscale-memecoins-impact-crypto">as I wrote last week</a> — this last quarter was a doozy.&nbsp;



But some folks are feeling kind of good about this next quarter…so far.



<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">Q2 starts tomorrow and it looks like the crypto retirement dreams are on hold You better close twitter and lock in&mdash; Alex (@AlexOnchain) <a href="https://twitter.com/AlexOnchain/status/1906616710372683848?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 31, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Unfortunately, with fresh tariffs on the US horizon, this morning is not off to a great start for crypto or equities.



Federico Brokate, head of US business at 21Shares, took away a silver lining to last quarter, which is that 21Shares saw “fantastic flows” for the ETFs. For Brokate, that gives an idea of how much client demand exists.



The continued volatility, especially out of Trump’s White House, may continue to spook some of the more risk-on investors. But Brokate remains pretty positive.&nbsp;



“I think we&#8217;re seeing all the right tailwinds. And so, yes, the volatility at a macro level is impacting performance here in this asset class — like every other asset class — but investors are taking this opportunity to come into the market even at a lower cost basis, which I think is the absolute right move,” he said.&nbsp;



None of this, unfortunately, is going to be enough to move us out of the wait-and-see moment we seem stuck in. The big tailwinds are still up in the air: actual regulation, word from the SEC on the slew of crypto ETF filings, and further clarity from the SEC (hopefully from the roundtables they’re hosting).&nbsp;



I know it’s not a surprise to any of you, but it’s where we remain. However, this quarter could get us out of this rut, if folks like Empire co-host and Blockworks co-founder Jason Yanowitz are right and we have <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/roadblocks-stablecoin-adoption-foresight">stablecoin legislation in the next few months</a>.&nbsp;



Funnily enough, though, Brokate thinks we’re actually going to become more narrative-driven as institutions continue to pile in. That’s not to say fundamentals won’t play a huge part, but he thinks that investing itself is narrative-driven, and the more crypto aligns with macro, the more important headlines and news events will be.&nbsp;



“I think the constant capital [that’s] trickling into the industry is certainly changing the way that prices react to different news. But at the end of the day, all investing, especially when it&#8217;s so regulatory and geopolitical — [given that] crypto is a global asset — so all these things are very narrative-driven,” he said.



Guess we’ll always have a narrative to fall back on.



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



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<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/daily">Blockworks Daily</a>: The newsletter that helps thousands of investors understand crypto and the markets, by Byron Gilliam.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Empire</a>: Start your morning with the top news and analysis to inform your day in crypto.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">Forward Guidance</a>: Reporting and analysis on the growing intersection of crypto and macroeconomics, policy and finance.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch">0xResearch</a>: Alpha directly in your inbox. Market highlights, data, degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: Built for Solana investors, developers and community members. The latest from one of crypto&#8217;s hottest networks.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">The Drop</a>: For crypto collectors and traders, covering apps, games, memes and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock">Supply Shock</a>: Tracking Bitcoin’s rise from internet plaything worth less than a penny to global phenomenon disrupting money as we know it.</li>
</ul>

Crypto’s seeing the ‘right tailwinds’: 21Shares

Jack Kubinec

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



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



In 2023 and 2024, a number of Solana startups <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/jito-airdrop-value">generated native tokens</a> to reward users and let investors and early contributors book returns.



Much of the attention surrounding these tokens went to how lucrative they were for recipients of so-called airdrops — and actual utility took a backseat, especially with a US regulatory regime eager to classify tokens as securities. Now with a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/washington-dc-blockchain-summit-takeaways">friendlier regulatory outlook</a> and the airdrop flow being stemmed, some are looking to how these new native tokens can become valuable assets.&nbsp;



One such example is early Solana investor Multicoin Capital, which recently published an asset report for JTO, the native token of its portfolio company Jito. Multicoin’s forward-looking base case priced JTO at $6.80, roughly three times its current price. I had the report’s author, Multicoin investment partner Shayon Sengupta, as a guest on the Lightspeed podcast this week to discuss his valuation further.



<iframe loading="lazy" width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Oz2uew_I9PI?si=uuQ2mnt6lO3MB-Fb" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>







“If you assume Solana <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/solana">REV</a> is going to increase and you assume that demand for priority blockspace is going to increase, Jito is going to be the direct beneficiary of that,” Sengupta said.



That’s likely true. 93% of the Solana network’s stake runs on the Jito-Solana client, which offers off-chain blockspace auctions that maximize economic returns for validators and makes it easier for users to land transactions. Jito tips from these auctions made up around 56% of Solana’s total REV in February. That’s not to mention Jito offering Solana’s largest LST in JitoSOL — a product it seems to be angling to have included in Solana staking ETFs.



What I’m less convinced of is the concept that Jito’s success as a company will trickle down to the JTO token. JTO’s price-to-earnings ratio swung wildly this year when Jito’s revenue greatly increased and its token price stayed roughly the same. That’s probably because there is currently no direct connection between Jito revenue and the JTO token.&nbsp;



The Jito Foundation — which oversees Jito’s stake pool as well as JTO — takes in revenue, but if the foundation were to do things like distribute its revenue to token holders, JTO might start to look uncomfortably like a security. That’s likely part of why the Uniswap Foundation is still yet to distribute fee revenue to UNI holders. Sengupta hinted to me that this may change.



“Our general framing is that as capital markets mature, you end up in a stage where revenues are going to matter,” Sengupta said, vaguely citing “changing policy dynamics” as one potential reason why.



Donald Trump’s presidency has brought previously unheard of legal possibilities to the crypto industry. Can it make native tokens great again?



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



Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/daily">Blockworks Daily</a>: The newsletter that helps thousands of investors understand crypto and the markets, by Byron Gilliam.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Empire</a>: Start your morning with the top news and analysis to inform your day in crypto.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">Forward Guidance</a>: Reporting and analysis on the growing intersection of crypto and macroeconomics, policy and finance.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch">0xResearch</a>: Alpha directly in your inbox. Market highlights, data, degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: Built for Solana investors, developers and community members. The latest from one of crypto&#8217;s hottest networks.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">The Drop</a>: For crypto collectors and traders, covering apps, games, memes and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock">Supply Shock</a>: Tracking Bitcoin’s rise from internet plaything worth less than a penny to global phenomenon disrupting money as we know it.</li>
</ul>

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