AI Rig Complex

Byron Gilliam

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



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The legendary Peter Lynch advised investors to stop following the news.



&#8220;The person who never bothers to think about the economy, blithely ignores the condition of the market, and invests on a regular schedule is better off than the person who studies and tries to time his investments, getting into stocks when he feels confident and out when he feels queasy.&#8221;



The news has been unusually nauseating this year: trade wars, real wars, recession fears, AI doomerism.



And yet, here we are, right back at the all-time highs in both the Nasdaq and S&amp;P 500.



There’s nothing particularly new about this.



Writing in the simpler times of 1993, Lynch noted in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/One-Up-Wall-Street-Already/dp/0743200403/ref=asc_df_0743200403?mcid=06a3bcc798a1339bb508b59f992086b6&amp;hvocijid=18147238387577396879-0743200403-&amp;hvexpln=73&amp;tag=hyprod-20&amp;linkCode=df0&amp;hvadid=721245378154&amp;hvpos=&amp;hvnetw=g&amp;hvrand=18147238387577396879&amp;hvpone=&amp;hvptwo=&amp;hvqmt=&amp;hvdev=c&amp;hvdvcmdl=&amp;hvlocint=&amp;hvlocphy=9004338&amp;hvtargid=pla-2281435179778&amp;psc=1">One Up on Wall Street</a> that “if you had paid close attention to the negative tone of most of our ‘whither the economy’ sessions over the past six years, you would have been scared out of your stocks during the strongest leg of the greatest market advance in modern history, when investors who maintained their blissful ignorance of the world coming to an end were merrily tripling or quadrupling their money.&#8221;



Markets have gone on to far greater advances since then, and I&#8217;d argue that the only way to have fully captured them was to have remained blissfully ignorant of the world.



It&#8217;s easy to look at the long-term performance of stocks and think everyone should always be fully invested.



It’s much harder to look at the daily news and think now is the time to be invested.



Lynch suggests you don’t try.



&#8220;The best way not to be scared out of stocks is to buy them on a regular schedule, month in and month out.&#8221;



US investors have taken that advice to heart, to a degree that Lynch probably would not have imagined.



Now, an <a href="https://www.ici.org/401k">estimated</a> 70 million American workers invest in 401k plans, metronomically pouring pre-tax money into equities, no matter what the news is.



This makes the stock market <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w21749">less volatile</a> than it otherwise would be. Or should be, probably.



And that should make them more valuable, too, because investors will accept lower returns (i.e., higher valuations) for assets that cause them less worry.



So it makes sense that equities would be more expensive now than they used to be.



They might get even more expensive.&nbsp;



As long as we have jobs — and therefore 401k plans — it might be hard for the market to go down much.



That would make stocks increasingly less scary — and increasingly more valuable.



Let’s check the charts.&nbsp;



Still saving:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXf0CdTEdndC0ELMWMKRXea2e5gXkHrAzqXdHLxm7EO765pJWKMrB6dH5sY6x3hmmcby86ZRcIlEbi9Asa1g1xNE3kyOle_H1dcPAfP7TnIkRntJt0DYgakh0wLhj9ZRUPww7LeHOQ?key=womsqVlgj8jTxzn3VX3-yA" alt=""/></figure>



The US personal savings rate ticked down to 4.5% in June. That’s low by historical standards, but still 4.5% of a large and ever-growing number. Some portion of those savings will go into buying equities every month, whatever the news.



Sentiment still has some catching up to do:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdOxbmvGu24eXZ--zEKV2pO3rnBTvsufLyBiszLsZPqRtJtaEJ0gQ2cZmYCnMV1xuCCdQDEftIWLXbiI6RdazxyKdmh2mHn6ZVEj3-DHv8kahrLFXSRWSVHLaVolIChyJvz1TQo8Q?key=womsqVlgj8jTxzn3VX3-yA" alt=""/></figure>



Stocks are back at all-time highs, but investor sentiment, as measured by AAII, remains on the bearish side of neutral.



Moving out on the risk curve:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdaw4Qltlu2yDv4jQh5FgswdigVK0lIuGUjRkGoJ4i1GS_tQXsdFA_u1gvIv9MHelOS-wdPV4x2_saINMbeoe4q3tGlA5ThMixq6FBhQwaXi5u3UbW1rD0qjQqceUH3FgJ3YIKWTg?key=womsqVlgj8jTxzn3VX3-yA" alt=""/></figure>



US investors are embracing risk, perhaps because stocks seem less risky after weathering all the seemingly bad news this year. If equities are less risky overall, it makes sense to buy higher-risk equities.



The rest of the world is buying value:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd0wBUVjqfswDbw8ZHcmrNKjIFGcGYEwPqYGI7YSqQNAnHGWkoQeN4zA80t6-ghDYzJNdUt0R2utT4RPW7S4Zmy3f4xaCSwHSA5jlqZhN_TPE3rCx5DSTSjr69k20fdGfWI51zkWw?key=womsqVlgj8jTxzn3VX3-yA" alt=""/></figure>



Per Goldman Sachs, there’s been an unprecedented divergence between the outperformance of growth stocks in the US (the dark blue line) and the outperformance of value stocks in the rest of the world (the light blue line). While the rest of the world reaches for safety, US investors are all-in on growth.



Is everything safe now?



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdWvbyWbMIN-wmQJh8a9yWe9hviXJwu5P9PT8sTd9Sb50HdUnrkfJS_E5MGUfwDyfDd5WBHJQb9BBcLcX5Lv0T8XBANj3L4ALED4zC6xciB1eF_usCKwVP6JjYjoKRe8ukyhCXmoQ?key=womsqVlgj8jTxzn3VX3-yA" alt=""/></figure>



Ed Yardeni notes that profit margins in the semiconductor industry continue to rise. Semis were historically the most cyclical and therefore riskiest sector to invest in. Now, they seem almost defensive.



Good news or bad for humans?



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd2kPoU8IplUKpwRTpnZw25Cai9qnrmofuyHa6isuIz1j_gk2hgPyin07QTEZ2OoHnUBOkaEC94TzPNiisxY4lnUDQMUzq1vENlqyQLXCHc0mgF-0JHoJ0MTKP9qi_BZCcoCPvG?key=womsqVlgj8jTxzn3VX3-yA" alt=""/></figure>



Less than 10% of companies polled by the US Census Bureau report employing AI over the past two weeks. That might mean AI has only just started disrupting the job market. Or it might mean humans are more useful to employers than the AI hype would have you believe.



The proximate cause for all-time highs?



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXf8yLCrXPDYXEXMjlgL7fdZyQpj_B5F_qsXu5p2HaJWImXDAJefM1ijWVn089QGO7PWlN7HYhnoGTNFKUUkT4Z0klxtkWngQF3jV8dJ58dMctf23CVuOFej3THEZyLp0R1MifgUzQ?key=womsqVlgj8jTxzn3VX3-yA" alt=""/></figure>



Expectations for an imminent rate cut are giving investors a reason to buy now.



One less reason to worry:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeyxhbgXm5wszaF7lxyyBCtAz2Bp3GU9DwaPmk18KHbDToCLAdjdaQdX3kfddOFDuG3D1j_1YdhDutccQNcyiKvG4ed02_Mkljny1-Nissd6pK8CRZqHGNb7EdP8kFbZz6_G0X-2g?key=womsqVlgj8jTxzn3VX3-yA" alt=""/></figure>



The Cleveland Fed InflationNow model sees US prices, as measured by CPI, rising at an annual rate of just 1.6% in Q2.



Stocks for the long run:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcuydBiqR10sZL6C1QpRNdyoF7k3OMmOLKYlz-ZlM8Pd7iLH1bH0uP9f468MNIA2TrDrBvk461FWwFpaKfDi_zhKzoY-5tiz4YENUB7_DXIaGb407Cy9w9fTtLQhVQy48BN7PO60Q?key=womsqVlgj8jTxzn3VX3-yA" alt=""/></figure>



Bank of America strategists say US equities are on the cusp of just the seventh “great breakout” since 1990.



Noting the new highs in equities this week, a <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-26/wall-street-goes-all-in-on-risky-stocks-as-bears-race-for-cover?fromMostRead=true">Bloomberg article</a> listed all of the things that should be worrying markets at the moment — tariffs, the economy, consumer spending, and even professional advice to be cautious — and then concluded that “investors appear to be ignoring all of it.”



Peter Lynch would approve.



Have a great weekend, breakout readers.



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The Breakdown Newsletter

Friday charts: Retail is one-upping Wall Street

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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A major topic at Permissionless was stablecoins and broader tokenization. It was, in fact, one of the main themes of the “Rebooting the Global Financial System” panel I moderated yesterday.



“Rebooting” could have been replaced with “rebuilding,” a couple panelists agreed.&nbsp;



But first, from an offstage chat with CoinFund president Christopher Perkins: He told me “stablecoin summer” is going to unlock “DeFi fall.”&nbsp;



“Tokenization is the new ETF,” he explained. “It’s a new wrapper with superpowers — of instant settlement…and 24/7 access to capital formation.”



Those using stablecoins will want yield, and will seek that out onchain via money market funds, alternatives, etc.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“So you’re going to see those dollars coming [onchain] translate to second- and third-order implications for DeFi,” he said.



Tokenized public equities are particularly exciting, Perkins added, as it unlocks constant access to those companies for anyone with internet access.&nbsp;



That sentiment was elaborated on by Inversion founder (and Empire podcast host) Santiago Santos, who took the Day 3 main stage with Blockworks founders Jason Yanowitz and Michael Ippolito.



Crypto has historically tapped into “trapped pools of capital” around the world in part because of the lack of access to the US stock market, he argued. A Chinese investor with such limitations, for example, might resort to holding ETH to express a long position in technology.



“What happens when you now have tokenized stocks onchain?” Santos posed. Capital that previously flowed to layer-1s or memecoins could migrate, he noted.



While we’re on the tokenized stocks subject, Dinari said yesterday it secured Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) broker-dealer approval for its Dinari Securities subsidiary.



Why is this significant? Dinari believes it’s the first company tokenizing publicly traded shares outside the US with an affiliated company now licensed to do the same for American customers, Chief Business Officer Anna Wroblewska told me.



Dinari Securities expects to start offering tokenized stocks to US users in Q3. As this begins, Dinari plans to test a blockchain ledger system for brokerage clients as it continues talking with the SEC about a tokenization framework, Wroblewska explained.



During the aforementioned panel, Ondo Finance CEO Nathan Allman noted the firm’s plans next month to launch a tokenization platform offering exposure to public US stocks, bonds and ETFs. (He called these highly liquid securities the “low-hanging fruit” in my latest <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stablecoins-iceberg-rwas-mature-ondo">interview</a> with him.)



Sitting beside Allman, Apollo Global Management’s Christine Moy noted efforts to tokenize the more illiquid private markets (the firm brought its Diversified Credit Fund on-chain in January).&nbsp;



On the segment growth evolution front, an S&amp;P Global <a href="https://www.spglobal.com/en/research-insights/special-reports/look-forward/future-of-capital-markets/tokenization-financial-markets-value-flow">report</a> published this week addressed tokenization use cases expanding in three phases.



The first (from 2025-2028) centers around cross-border payments and collateral operations. The ability to instantly swap an asset for a cash payment offers tangible commercial benefits to institutions involved with repo transactions and intraday liquidity management, the report notes.



Phase two (2027-2033) would include credit expansion as tokenization connects borrowers to lenders. Corporations using tokenization for cross-border payments will also seek onchain loans, the analysts wrote.



In a third phase (2031-2035), blockchains could support transactions between wallets controlled by AI agents, for example.



The S&amp;P Global analysts conclude: “If the adoption of tokenization increases as expected, it will intersect with other megatrends — such as the growth of private credit and AI — to significantly disrupt the future of capital markets over the next five to 10 years.”



Gradually, then suddenly.



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Equities

How tokenization’s ‘superpowers’ could transform US stock access

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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Brave is one of the few web browsers that’s embraced crypto.



It has the affiliated BAT rewards token and a built-in crypto wallet, to name a few of its tie-ins.&nbsp;



But it’s also taken a privacy-forward approach — and splashed that across its marketing to help set it apart from other Chromium-based browsers.



“We’re kind of in [a] metaphysical rebellion against the big tech surveillance powers that evolved on JavaScript,” Brave CEO and cofounder Brendan Eich, who created the JavaScript language, said onstage during Blockworks’ Permissionless conference this week.



“We didn’t think about this enough in the mid-90s. The cookie was for keeping your login tokens,” he added. “It wasn’t for third-party traffic, but that’s how it evolved, and JavaScript was just fuel on that fire.”



Eich argued that internet advertising is inherently a “toxic system” where involved parties are “all fighting each other and cheating each other.”&nbsp;



But tech that can use blockchain rails, like ZK Proofs for privacy plus “proof of humanity” verification for fraud prevention, could help bring about a new, browser-native, more private ad system.



“We’ve gotta get onto blockchains that are faster and private by design,” he <a href="https://x.com/StakeWithPride/status/1937916138425618523">said</a>.



<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 href="https://twitter.com/brave?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Brave</a> in May 2025 passed 88M Monthly Active Users (MAU). On track for 100M in Q4. The well-known &quot;summer slump&quot; on desktop (school breaks, holiday trips =&gt; people outside) started, but overall browser + search growth holds strong. Also, we saw a nice bump in user-minutes. 1/6 <a href="https://t.co/aDakeadfCS">https://t.co/aDakeadfCS</a>&mdash; BrendanEich (@BrendanEich) <a href="https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1930811477365293561?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 6, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Brave began as a web browser, because that type of product is a starting point with the potential to reach a mass consumer audience.&nbsp;



“It’s the universal app, the daily driver. We have more user minutes and a smaller user population than X does,” Eich said. Brave’s <a href="https://brave.com/transparency/">transparency</a> page lists 38.6 million daily active users and 88.1 million monthly.



And while not all Brave users may like this bit, Brave Search is helping the firm’s AI business by using that data to refine its LLM (Brave offers Leo AI).



“It seems like the browser is still relevant, but we found that the flipside of the browser coin is Search,” the CEO said.



Eich previously cofounded the Mozilla Foundation and its affiliated company and worked on Mozilla projects for 11 years. He spoke onstage with Midnight Foundation President Fahmi Syed (Midnight is a Cardano-affiliated, ZK- and privacy-focused chain). Midnight, whose foundation <a href="https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/midnight-foundation-launches-to-support-growth-of-secure-and-decentralized-blockchain-network-822794925.html">launched</a> just last month, is planning to include BAT holders in its upcoming NIGHT airdrop.



<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">Had a great discussion with <a href="https://twitter.com/BrendanEich?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BrendanEich</a> of <a href="https://twitter.com/brave?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@brave</a> at <a href="https://twitter.com/Permissionless?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Permissionless</a> on building a user-first web. We covered privacy, wallet-native identity, and <a href="https://twitter.com/MidnightNtwrk?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@MidnightNtwrk</a>’s new tokenomics and incentives whitepaper. Catch the recording:<a href="https://t.co/M8SmAMfZb4">https://t.co/M8SmAMfZb4</a> <a href="https://t.co/i0TPOlZ6jd">pic.twitter.com/i0TPOlZ6jd</a>&mdash; Fahmi Syed (@F_ZK_Now) <a href="https://twitter.com/F_ZK_Now/status/1937955388260815161?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 25, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Last month, Brave <a href="https://x.com/brave/status/1921945493870874799">said</a> it’s adding Cardano support to the Brave Wallet, which already supports lots of chains including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, and others.&nbsp;



During the Permissionless talk, Eich concluded with some advice for crypto devs that may give vibe-coders pause: Rewrite your code.&nbsp;



Then maybe consider writing it again, and again.



“Human intelligence is not about to be surpassed by these [AI] models,” Eich said. “Be a human, write and read code.”



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internet

Brave CEO: We’re in a ‘metaphysical rebellion’ against big tech surveillance

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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Permissionless Day 3 concluded yesterday, and we’re back with some highlight quotes. In case you missed it, we also did a recap of Day 2 <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/0x-permissionless-day-2">here</a>.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">What role will crypto play in working AI products?</h4>



Haseeb of Dragonfly Capital: “We all know the obvious answers which [are]: engineer, accountant, lawyer, girlfriend, maybe in reverse order.”



Casey Caruso of Topology cited brain models coming within the decade: “The long story short is that we don&#8217;t have enough data on neural activity to train a brain model today and one thing that crypto is really good at is incentivizing people to aggregate data, so I&#8217;m super convinced that there&#8217;s going to be a DePIN network to collect this data, and from there we&#8217;ll have a model that can actually unlock things like mind reading — as crazy as that sounds.”



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Does this Bitcoin-treasury-strategy thing going on in TradFi actually have legs?</h4>



Thomas Lee CIO of FundStrat Capital is optimistic:



“Oil companies have historically traded on a premium to their proven reserves because of expectation of future reserves. ExxonMobil was in the top five largest stocks in the S&amp;P 500 for 25 years from 1990-2015. Never valued on earnings but a price premium to its proven reserves.&nbsp;



“[Strategy] will probably become the biggest stock in the US. It doesn&#8217;t make earnings — it’s valued purely on its price to bitcoin reserves.”&nbsp;



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Joe Lubin of Consensys on what motivated their lawsuit against the SEC:</h4>



The SEC “secretly decided to reclassify ether as a security…[and] tried to pin it on essentially people responsible for the Merge — on us as promoters, EIP writers, builders and Danny (Ryan)&#8230;When we saw that researchers were getting subpoenas, that’s when we decided to sue the SEC.”&nbsp;



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Felix Jauvin on the macro factors driving stablecoin hype:</h4>



“We’re going into this world now where fiscal deficits are increasing…The big question at hand is, who is to be the one buying this debt? There’s a very logical reasoning for why we’re seeing such a push for the GENIUS Act right now, because that is a huge unlock for US T-bills coming forth.”



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Joe Cutler, Partner at Perkins Cole, lamenting the entry of institutions into crypto thus far:</h4>



Crypto was about “democratizing access to the control over value, and that&#8217;s not happening in the institutional rebuild. I worry about that.&nbsp;



“The second thing is, it was also destined to sort of remake the value propositions of aggregation of wealth, money, power and control into a more balanced system than it was before, and I don&#8217;t see that happening either in the march towards institutional adoption…&nbsp;



“I just hope that we get out the map once in a while and remind ourselves what country we&#8217;re in, not what road.”



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Is <a href="https://www.jpmorgan.com/kinexys/content-hub/deposit-tokens">JPMD</a> a permissioned coin on a permissionless network?</h4>



Suresh Shetty CTO of Kinexys by JPMorgan: “I’d say JPMD is a deposit token that is going to connect to public chains of which its primary use cases are cross border payments and settlement of securities.”



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0xResearch Newsletter

Recapping Day 3 of Permissionless IV

David Canellis

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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It’s satisfying to think that Bitcoin has won. After all, the sitting US President himself is a big fan.&nbsp;



Regulators are, meanwhile, paying it little mind, at least publicly, while many of Wall Street’s largest operators support bitcoin trading and even offer ETFs directly to their customer base.



The US strategic reserve is the ultimate cherry: Bitcoin — both the asset and the underlying blockchain — are now formally intertwined with the health of federal finances, even if that’s only marginally so compared to gold.



Sounds bullish. But it’s enough to make any card-carrying cypherpunk a little nervous.



There&#8217;s a lot of precedent for the government wanting to monitor crypto and personal data. 



Thirty years ago, activists were gearing up to rally against a new Senate bill that would’ve made encryption tools, as we know them today, outright illegal.



On June 27, 1995, Senator Chuck Grassley introduced the so-called “<a href="https://archive.epic.org/crypto/ban/grassley.html">Anti-Electronic Racketeering Act</a>.” Grassley was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee on administrative oversight at the time.&nbsp;



Today, he’s President Pro Tempore of the Senate, the third in line for succession of the Presidency behind the Vice President and Speaker of the House.



Grassley sought to crystallize an existing drive from the Clinton administration to ensure the government could decrypt any and all encrypted communications, indefinitely, under the guise of protecting society from criminals and other baddies who might want to hide their wrongdoing from authorities.



At the time, the administration was pushing for a government-backed hardware encryption system known as the <a href="https://www.wired.com/1994/06/nsa-clipper/">Clipper Chip</a>, which used a classified encryption algorithm known as Skipjack.&nbsp;



Such an implementation would require two US government agencies to keep copies of all encryption keys related to Skipjack in escrow. This was meant to be a national standard for secure voice and data communications, but the public itself was not to be mandated to use Skipjack.



Grassley’s bill took it one step further by criminalizing the use of computers to facilitate racketeering, particularly through the lens of encryption. The most offensive provision was for a “universal decoding device” for any encryption method that would need to be shared with the Justice Department — meaning the only legal forms of encryption were those that could be easily decrypted by the US government.



The proposed law would’ve also made it a crime to distribute encryption software that didn’t have a backdoor over any network accessible to foreign nationals, which of course, included the internet.&nbsp;



US authorities were mulling whether to prosecute legendary cypherpunk <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/zimmermann-cypherpunk-bitcoin">Phil Zimmermann</a> over his creation and dissemination of the source code to Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), one of the first-ever encryption tools available to the public.&nbsp;



PGP’s source code had been uploaded online and printed in book form to sidestep US export restrictions that were central to the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/cypherpunk-movement-history-wired-1993">Crypto Wars</a> of the ‘90s. After years of probes, no charges were ever brought against Zimmermann.



Grassley’s bill never made it off the ground, thanks in no small part to the barrage of denouncements from tech professionals, scholars and activist groups — including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Computer Professionals for Responsibility, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, among others.



Obviously, Bitcoin could never exist if the US government had a secret backdoor to everyone’s private keys. It’s not unimaginable that at some point in the past decade and a half of discourse, officials might have hoped that a backdoor would be possible.



The conversation around encryption has clearly evolved since 1995. The same can be said of Bitcoin over the past five years.&nbsp;



But in a world where Bitcoin is on par with gold or oil for strategic and economic importance to the most powerful governments on the planet, would those governments be inclined to stay hands off?&nbsp;



Perhaps Bitcoin is impervious to that level of influence. 



But odds are that it won’t go without saying — as was the case with Grassley’s bill.



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</ul>

Bitcoin

Why the fight for Bitcoin to exist might not be over yet

Jack Kubinec

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>.



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



Firedancer has quietly delegated stake to 32 Solana validators to kick off its new delegation program, according to the client’s <a href="https://delegation.firedancer.io/validators">website</a>.



Delegation, or staking some of an organization’s crypto with a number of validators based on some criteria, has been <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-foundation-pruning-validators-delegation">used by the Solana Foundation</a> to help smaller validators get started on the network. Firedancer may be hoping the delegation program can help convince validators to start running its Frankendancer client, which currently <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/solana?dashboard=131">accounts</a> for just 8% of all staked SOL. That <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/4-big-questions-following-the-solana-accelerate-conference">proportion is up</a> from 5-6% around a month ago.&nbsp;



Firedancer is a from-scratch rewrite of Solana’s software being created by Chicago-based trading firm Jump. Firedancer would be Solana’s first true alternative client from the original built by Solana Labs, which is now known as Agave. With two clients, Solana would be protected from having a single point of failure on the client side — which can cause things like network downtime.



A limited version of the client, called Frankendancer because it combined chunks of the Agave client with Jump-written code like Frankenstein’s monster, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/lightspeed-newsletter-solana-firedancer-testnet">went live in late 2024</a>. Full Firedancer is live in <a href="https://x.com/solana/status/1837375225341583686">non-voting</a> mode. The participants in Firedancer’s delegation program are running Frankendancer.



Onchain data <a href="https://solscan.io/account/AjLzAtJHDVQ4c2WMnSXt94a5BNt4CorH63af2uEmgkyF#stakeAccounts">shows</a> an account labeled as having been funded by Jump Crypto delegated roughly 20,000 SOL to the approved validators. One validator, Watchtower, received over 1.2 million SOL. In a Discord message, Solana Foundation validator relations lead Tim Garcia <a href="https://discord.com/channels/428295358100013066/1069760203240784002/1385498863070347345">said</a> a user named italo, who is <a href="https://x.com/italoacasas?lang=en">associated</a> with Watchtower, is running the delegation program for Firedancer.



The Firedancer delegation participants I spoke to had generally positive things to say about the client.&nbsp;



H2O Nodes noted that Frankendancer is more stable now than the original Solana client was when it started running a validator in 2022. Ian Unsworth from Kairos Research said the firm’s validator has been packing more compute units into blocks since switching to Frankendancer, which translates to incrementally higher rewards compared to the network average. RockawayX founder and CEO Viktor Fischer agreed — estimating that Frankendancer offers 10-15% higher performance when measured by average compute units.&nbsp;



Unsworth said Frankendancer is yet to face a true stress test, but added that the reported forthcoming pump.fun token could spike network activity and push Frankendancer’s limits.



Firedancer has <a href="https://delegation.firedancer.io/blog/introducing-the-firedancer-delegation-program">said</a> that it plans to delegate 2 million SOL to around 100 validators in the first phase of its delegation program. It also noted every iteration of the program will run for around 3 months.&nbsp;



Notably, Firedancer’s initial delegation standard of 20,000 SOL per validator is less generous than the Solana Foundation’s Delegation Program. The Solana Foundation stakes 35 million SOL across 569 validators, for an average of roughly 60,000 SOL per validator.



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



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



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

Lightspeed Newsletter

Firedancer begins delegating stake to Solana validators

Macauley Peterson

The stage is set for Lido DAO to finally implement “Dual Governance.”&nbsp;



A vote of LDO holders running through 10:00 a.m. ET on Monday, June 30, will determine whether to change how power is distributed within Ethereum’s largest liquid staking protocol.



If approved, the proposal will activate a new framework that gives stETH holders — users whose ether is staked via Lido — a formal mechanism to delay or veto governance actions, adding a novel layer of accountability to the voting system. The new technical mechanism has implications for all of crypto, not just Lido, according to the prominent albeit pseudonymous researcher and advisor Hasu.



“Lido really reduces the risk that users have from any kind of governance attack [and] the trust that they need in the maintainer companies and the LDO holders,” Hasu told Blockworks.



That should further institutional adoption of stETH, the team expects.&nbsp;



At the heart of Dual Governance is a custom-built dynamic timelock module. Unlike static timelocks that simply delay execution by a fixed period, this design scales in response to opposition registered from <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/steth">stETH</a> holders. For example, if 1% of the total stETH supply signals objection to a proposal, execution is delayed by an additional five days. If opposition grows to 10%, the delay extends linearly up to 45 days. This mechanism ensures that in the event of a controversial or potentially harmful decision by LDO token holders, stETH users have a predictable window to exit before changes take effect.



That’s never been done before in a governance system, but is absolutely essential for Lido, given the variability of the Ethereum staking withdrawal queue itself.



The idea emerged from the core tension between providing liquidity and minimizing trust assumptions. Liquid staking protocols inherently rely on pooled delegation and active protocol maintenance to stay compatible with Ethereum upgrades. We saw this in practice during <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-hard-fork-updates">debates around the delayed Pectra upgrade</a>, in which Lido’s Ivan Metrikin was an important voice in the All-Core Devs decision-making process.



While traditional time locks give users a chance to exit before governance decisions are enforced, to withdraw stETH back to native ether can sometimes take weeks, making a short fixed period inadequate. The dynamic timelock aims to bridge that gap by adjusting execution delays to match the scale of user opposition, rather than applying a one-size-fits-all delay. Simple or uncontroversial changes can pass quickly, while the governance system will automatically hit the brakes on the process if big stETH holders begin to object.



Lido contributors, including Hasu and Victor “kadmil” from the DAO operations team, acknowledged the design was <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/lido-dao-proposes-governance-switch-up">years in the making</a> and incorporated dedicated stress tests to ensure it could resist governance attacks and flash loan manipulation.



“We have paid people to try to break the design with flash loans,” Victor told Blockworks, with subsequent adjustments tailored “to make it flash-loan resistant.”



Wrapped versions of stETH — like those used in <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/eigenlayer">EigenLayer</a> restaking or <a href="https://blockworks.co/podcast/0xresearch/65fe22d6-fd1e-11ee-b6dd-27c1387857db">Pendle</a> yield strategies — are not eligible to vote directly, but the withdrawal process gives holders time to reclaim their base stETH and participate if needed.



This is about giving users access to liquidity while preserving the right to exit in a way no other protocol has managed, Hasu explained.



“There used to be this dilemma between trust and liquidity, and dual governance is effectively breaking that dilemma,” he said. “You no longer have to choose — you can have both.”



The initiative has drawn comparisons to <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/makerdao">MakerDAO’s</a> “emergency shutdown” lever, but differs by offering a non-destructive, graduated response rather than a single catastrophic reset. It also reflects a broader trend in DeFi governance toward more nuanced, multi-stakeholder systems that separate capital voting from user safeguards.&nbsp;



Hasu expects Lido’s implementation to become a blueprint for other protocols facing similar governance risks.



An earlier Snapshot vote on the proposal <a href="https://snapshot.box/#/s:lido-snapshot.eth/proposal/0x3bdf528b31956e029e867ebf79b02ee07e9a973987b34c5cffc14392e8b4480c">passed</a> nearly unanimously. If the on-chain Aragon vote passes as anticipated, it will formally decouple the authority to propose and pass measures from the power to immediately execute them, thus placing stETH holders effectively in the role of constitutional overseers of the DAO.



As of 9:00 a.m. ET Friday, just 4% of token holders have participated. To pass, <a href="https://vote.lido.fi/vote/189">the on-chain Aragon vote</a> requires a minimum quorum of 5%.



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blockchain

Lido gears up for Dual Governance

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>.



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



I know Permissionless is over, but let’s take it back to the main stage one more time. Specifically, I want to focus on the Bell Curve x Empire Round Up.



One of the most interesting parts of the conversation between Blockworks co-founders Mike Ippolito and Jason Yanowitz, Framework’s Michael Anderson, and Inversion’s Santiago Santos is the idea that crypto could — at some stage — have its own version of the Mag 7 (a term coined to describe the “magnificent seven,” or some of the top stocks over on Wall Street).&nbsp;



“The meta-narrative is: Tokens need to make money. Tokens need to have a business model. There needs to be a value accrual to the token, just in the same way that there is to Robinhood and Coinbase or anything else that&#8217;s publicly traded and we don&#8217;t have GAAP accounting,” Anderson said.&nbsp;



“The next step is going to be: How do we get GAAP accounting so that everybody can look at these things on an apples-to-apples comparison basis? And if you&#8217;re making money, then you have a shot at being in the Mag 7. If you&#8217;re not, you don&#8217;t have a shot.”



<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">i think the meta narrative that is forming is maybe we don&#39;t have the mag seven quite yet, but we will, and it&#39;s moving in that direction. the meta narrative is, tokens need to make money. tokens need to have a business model. there needs to be a value accrual to the token, just… <a href="https://t.co/EVMBBqTCOp">pic.twitter.com/EVMBBqTCOp</a>&mdash; Permissionless (@Permissionless) <a href="https://twitter.com/Permissionless/status/1938240575657930950?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 26, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



At this point, Anderson thinks that pump.fun, when it launches a token, could be considered part of crypto’s top tokens. But he also thinks that BNB, Binance’s native token, has the “best token model that exists.”



“As US persons, we&#8217;re not allowed to be Binance customers, and therefore nobody knows about it, but that is the fundamental basis of BNB. Not only is it 20% or 25% of the profits, which I don&#8217;t think is actually the case anymore, that&#8217;s how it started…Now, BNB is — if you stake BNB within Binance, you get discounted fees, but you also get airdrops of any tokens that are listed on Binance, which you can sell — and they do — immediately.”



Meanwhile, Santos says that the focus right now is very heavily on: What’s the next public crypto company (not meaning a SPAC or Treasury vehicle, but an actual crypto firm), and how can investors get a piece of the pie like Circle, Robinhood or Coinbase?



“I would probably take the bet that more and more liquidity is going to go in the public markets,” he said, adding that folks are more likely to look at ETFs and crypto stocks than tokens currently.&nbsp;



And that, I would say, was a pretty constant theme of Permissionless. I, admittedly, wasn’t there in person, but I watched nearly all the panels via livestream, and the themes were pretty dang obvious.



Stablecoins took up a whole lot of space, alongside discussions of how the industry improves token frameworks; and of course everyone’s curious about the next company to debut via the public markets. If the rumors are to be believed, it’s quite a long list.



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Empire Newsletter

Do tokens need fundamentals?

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



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



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“Great things in business are never done by one person, they’re done by a team of people.” — Steve Jobs
</blockquote>



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcV3kLIRva-_oRY1fjMdlO1HuKiv4B9XH2Of4YZ059fpLU0-M-5aDH9wtG2iVtkuXA_05gvzMj3wG2dksL82rjPgnrjhGMlgqQ0oMw5iPpISLWVTWlRBp2aus_ER4YNBC9H-Pih-A?key=jAbiypjm3gXzOvW6tKo1fw" alt="" style="width:612px;height:auto"/></figure>



Steve Jobs <a href="https://youtu.be/njYciFC7mR8?si=jDinkTcfmeVGT2Df">liked to tell a story</a> of a “slightly scary” old man from whom he did odd jobs as a kid, including, one time, gathering some rocks out of the yard.



The man put the rocks into a tumbler in his garage, added some liquid and grit, and told Jobs to come back the next day to see the result.



Jobs says he was amazed as the rocks emerged from the tumbler as smooth, shiny objects of desire.



Later in life, he found this works with people, too.



“A group of talented people, bumping up against each other, having arguments, having fights sometimes, making some noise. By working together they polish each other and they polish the ideas.” In other words, put a group of people in a room together and they’re all likely to look smarter when they come out.



Unlike rocks, however, they do have to be the right kind of people.



As individually visionary as Steve Jobs was, he <a href="https://pca.st/episode/26dcb911-925b-4fae-b13c-9c7ccc50688c?t=1697">attributed his success</a> at least in part to the people he chose to be around:&nbsp; “I think I consistently figured out who the really smart people were to hang around with. You must find extraordinary people.”



One place to find extraordinary people is at conferences.



The magic of an innovation cluster like Silicon Valley is the critical mass of tech people constantly bumping into each other.



Conferences create temporary innovation clusters, like a pop-up version of Silicon Valley.



“One way to think about an industry conference,” Byrne Hobart <a href="https://x.com/ByrneHobart/status/1800537690787471849">explains</a>, is that it “synthesizes high real estate prices by charging an entry fee (and plane tickets plus hotels are also going to have the same economic effect); they make time more expensive, so they raise the relative value of the highest-utility interactions.”



Translation: the high cost of attending conferences weeds out the riff-raff.



If you’re still wondering why people incur the cost of attending a conference in person that they could watch for free at home, I think that’s pretty much it.



You get to meet the kind of people you’d want to be tossed into a rock tumbler with.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">A panel on crypto’s current meta: Treasury Asset Companies</h2>



I’m a skeptic of crypto treasury companies (to put it mildly), simply because I think companies should be in the business of making things, not just holding them.&nbsp;



I still feel that way after listening to this morning’s panel with three enthusiasts for companies that mostly just hold crypto, but there was more nuance to the story than I had expected.



Dan Kang notes that DeFi Development Corp also runs validators, which allows it to grow its Solana stake independently of the NAV multiple that investors assign to its stock (DFDV).



Could they earn enough Solana by running validators to service their dollar-denominated debt if their stock fell below 1x NAV? I expect we’ll find out, eventually.



In the meantime, DeFi Development Corp “gives you the ability to accumulate crypto even faster than you could on your own.”



I’d like to see the math on that for people paying <a href="https://defidevcorp.com">3.1x NAV</a> for DFDV today, but that’s the service they provide to investors.



Thomas Lee rationalized the seemingly inexplicable valuations that crypto companies command by saying it’s “similar to how oil companies trade on a premium to its proven reserves.”



“MicroStrategy will probably become the biggest stock in the US,” he predicts. “And it’s not valued on earnings, it’s valued at a premium to its bitcoin reserves.”



Call me old-fashioned, but I’d prefer the biggest stocks in the US be valued on earnings — because earnings are a measure of how valuable a company’s product or service is to their customers.



Lee says the crypto treasury companies with the highest NAV multiples have effectively turned their investors into customers.



That’s true, but I’d bet that most of these “customers” still think they’re investing, which could cause problems.



David Grider injected a welcome note of caution, predicting that “several of these will go bankrupt.”&nbsp;



He didn’t sound particularly concerned about it, but I think people should be, because how is this meant to end?



Treasury Asset Companies “equitized tokens,” as Thomas Lee phrased it, and earlier this week, DeFi Development Corp <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2025/06/23/3103316/0/en/DeFi-Development-Corp-Partners-with-Kraken-to-Tokenize-DFDV-Stock-on-Solana-Becoming-the-First-U-S-Listed-Crypto-Treasury-Strategy-to-Go-Onchain.html">announced</a> that its stock will soon be tradable as a token on Solana.



Tokenizing a Crypto Treasury Company is the equivalent of tokenizing equitized tokens.



If that’s worth doing, it’s only a matter of time until someone starts a Crypto Treasury Company that will equitize the tokenized equity that equitized tokens.



This, I fear, risks a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wrEEd1ajz4">Ghostbusters moment</a> in which the streams will be crossed and the crypto world comes to an end — and maybe take the rest of the world with it.



I see no other logical end point because, as Joe Lubin said on another panel, there’s a “race to acquire the highest-power money” (bitcoin and ether, in his view).&nbsp;



Whatever the risks, Crypto Treasury Companies are one way to run it.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">One newsy panel</h2>



Speaking this morning, Joe Lubin casually filled in some recent crypto history — from his well-informed vantage point, at least.



Explaining why Ethereum seemed to have fallen behind over the last couple of years, Lubin shared his suspicion that “Gary Gensler was given a mandate, probably from Elizabeth Warren, to kill or slow Ethereum.”



In particular, “It appears they had secretly decided to reclassify ether as a commodity.



“They were trying to pin it on people who were responsible for The Merge,” he explained. “When we saw a bunch of researchers were getting subpoenas, we decided to sue the SEC.”



I imagine few Permissionless attendees would find any of that surprising, but it hasn’t been part of the official record, so I think we got to hear it first.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Day III Quotes</h2>



“It’s the ultimate meme.” — Santiago Santos on the bull case for bitcoin



“The highest-power money is bitcoin and ether, because they’re permissionless.” — Joe Lubin&nbsp;



“Ethereum got their shit together. The Ethereum Foundation is firing on all cylinders now.” — Joe Lubin



“MSTR is so big it has a sovereign put.” — Thomas Lee



“The meta-narrative is: Tokens need to make money.” — Michael Anderson, Framework Ventures



Overheard: “The product is how to get rich quick.” — Anonymous, on crypto’s true product-market fit



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Permissionless IV Newsletter Awards:</h2>



Best elevator pitch: <a href="http://zeoapp.com">zeoapp.com</a> — WeChat + Pinduoduo with crypto rewards. (IFKYK.)&nbsp;



Best merch: personalized coin purses, Aptos



Wackiest moment: Jason Yanowitz interviews Dennis Rodman (I hear he had alpha)



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdQgeUBE6PywnaJSMNrY5eaPgRR2IQ2FDH910Td-IfuRR03ioa_8wPB-RQ608mIWY2tQZlo8tJYkBleWI9IL98oJ1vuXtg75_RpVMj810zcXh-1XFLrkdYrlHxpyyKRxYfDr0Qd?key=jAbiypjm3gXzOvW6tKo1fw" alt=""/></figure>



Best guerilla marketing: Uniswap posters on construction walls blocks from the venue



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdSjvJPriQ0t-IRcPhZYBUZu4okDaO0VZdbc8jQvgcmJqEqXEc-4YFDacolDWXXSUGrVd30wtnvEJs_HcBmAUE_PivPcFX_Wo5Dv6bzw3e6yhTFjC8DJI32y3fRg3uhiE1IDJC14g?key=jAbiypjm3gXzOvW6tKo1fw" alt=""/></figure>



The color-coordinated bicycle appeared to be serendipitous, unlocked, and there all week. Who says New York City has a crime problem?



Most mind-bending experience: The <a href="https://www.ryanoakes.com/?doing_wp_cron=1750957031.5636379718780517578125">magician/mentalist</a> in the Aptos lounge who made me question the laws of physics.



Most degen branding: “One App. 150x Leverage. 113% APR” — Merkle Trade.



Final Permissionless takeaway: It’s good to get off the sofa and see people for real.



And that’s a wrap for Permissionless IV.



Thanks for following along this week and I’ll see you at the next one.



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Permissionless

Permissionless IV, Day 3 takeaways

Felix Jauvin

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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Economic data is rolling over.&nbsp;



After an artificial bounce in economic data due to tariff front-running, the underlying economic data is beginning to roll. What comes next?



A couple of months ago on the Forward Guidance Roundup, we discussed the idea of an economic “mirage” forming, driven by the front-running of incoming tariffs.&nbsp;



The argument went like this:



Since the threat of tariffs was dangled for so long before they went live, companies were able to import as many goods as they could beforehand.



Because of this, net exports cratered, since that metric is computed as imports − exports, which mechanically leads to a lower GDP calculation. This is why we saw a very negative GDP print last quarter despite the actual economy being mostly fine.&nbsp;



This also led to a major acceleration in the trade balance:



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeTNVEzrcqQoO7Tx_xU77qMJfkmzsH2dCRJtI8F3SrhjpJMn7wNXaIGjkmydPNXpZMVdWjZlqZesaCUd9paQayfF4dhvSR2f1i08cQo2uM81C6h9htPP0YvwuNkwD1O6jyASc1Znw?key=jflsIHXMPKozAm1AwT1nrQ" alt="" style="width:579px;height:auto"/></figure>



Since companies had front-run all their imports, this dynamic reversed, where imports were minimal once the tariffs were actually implemented. 



This led to a huge positive reversal in GDP nowcast:



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfY4eDY3rZkoh3TkgKQwfxY6x58eFc4QClgjF-Skna7aQ5kKfqNB0_766g1P042XPZYhP9OmdzCUEJtvlgeHfn1lA4ynWrVncqsnm2fn-wXWTOTo02IWV0Zt4dkBSrbh60AP906Ng?key=jflsIHXMPKozAm1AwT1nrQ" alt="" style="width:708px;height:auto"/></figure>



Mechanically, this reversal in the other direction has trickled through the economy and led to a strong bounce in the soft data:



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdpoJ5Z-g1g7D_okb-gkRIXIT4c6EA5i9FEEszk4WILIHiFt7sYijyjK6BcFplXaEzkETfY2oA7b16gHXjI1PFgY2NwcF3S2-bypgEtX7sqYqPATB3qfbplL-R-0S9WWws-U9YZBQ?key=jflsIHXMPKozAm1AwT1nrQ" alt="" style="width:731px;height:auto"/></figure>



We’re now beginning to see early signs that this mechanical bounce in growth is beginning to head back lower.&nbsp;



In the labor market, although the topline data like the unemployment rate hasn’t increased, leading labor indicators are continuing their march higher:&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdXInmmz6KVlmKM-Wu3ZeVHESHadghmM3xwN_oQ6wjsk5EdUGzP9oUarr3-XIGX1y2p2OUe7Q2mmCM2ZYiQ5Cuj8Bh2uMByKpW9jJPRoBt_0rriClpuNGvQlKKEgPdXJQ_aIPtdmw?key=jflsIHXMPKozAm1AwT1nrQ" alt="" style="width:674px;height:auto"/></figure>



Further, it looks like the housing market is beginning to deteriorate after being frozen in place for the last year:



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1218" height="952" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/image-4.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-104452" style="width:556px;height:auto" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/image-4.png?w=1218 1218w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/image-4.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/image-4.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/image-4.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/image-4.png?w=329 329w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/image-4.png?w=334 334w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/image-4.png?w=280 280w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/image-4.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1218px) 100vw, 1218px" /></figure>



Overall, with the FOMC committed to being as late to restart rate cuts as possible, the risks are building up.



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Is the ‘mirage’ of reassuring economic data ending?

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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At least one VC thinks Coinbase’s “Just Coin It” strategy is a bad, bad idea.



This week, Coinbase exec Jesse Pollak <a href="https://x.com/jessepollak/status/1937959125461487756">called</a> BaseDrop, which is powered by rapper Waka Flocka Flame’s memecoin, “the new creator economy.” He described <a href="https://x.com/BaseDrop">BaseDrop</a> as an “onchain record label, where value for songs accrues back to $FLOCKA.”



Framework Ventures cofounder Vance Spencer hit back with a takedown, arguing that <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/base-coinbase-content-coin-crash-pump-memecoin">Coinbase’s “content coin” push</a> is “destroying broad swaths of the [crypto] industry.”



The idea that everything should have a token harms retail because said retail buyers are losing money on lowcaps and memes and will be alienated from crypto as a result, he argued.&nbsp;



Spencer also took aim at Coinbase’s decisions around its wallet, likening it to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/farcaster-blockchain-onboarding">Farcaster</a> and saying it’s “not what anyone wants or needs.”&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 Just Coin It Ethos is what is destroying broad swaths of the industry and burning retail badly to the point where they will never re-engage with crypto. Instead of focusing on a few coins that have legitimate PMF and generate real business metrics, people like Jesse are on… <a href="https://t.co/jUpBM6zU0a">https://t.co/jUpBM6zU0a</a>&mdash; Vance Spencer (@pythianism) <a href="https://twitter.com/pythianism/status/1937961002622222685?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 25, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Coinbase recently overhauled its wallet to include a slew of social media-like features in a move that turns it into more of a consumer superapp than a crypto wallet. The overhauled version remains in beta, and hasn’t been fully released yet.



My question is: Are we sure “retail” is actually who is buying these? More likely yes, in the case of celebrity-backed coins. But I suspect there’s also a lot of crypto-native degens and builders participating in the “Just Coin It” trend.



Coinbase’s head of Base and Coinbase Wallet responded, unsurprisingly, by <a href="https://x.com/jessepollak/status/1937976222438592528">rejecting</a> Spencer’s argument and calling what’s happening innovative for crypto.



“Tokenizing content is a powerful way of letting the market value content and then drive value back to creators and consumers,” Pollak <a href="https://x.com/jessepollak/status/1937976222438592528">said</a>.&nbsp;



“I think it&#8217;s cool that a large, well-known artist is literally pushing the boundaries of what can be done onchain with value accrual,” he added.



While some might be more open to taking Ls on content coins than others, Waka Flocka specifically has been accused of promoting questionable tokens, including his Solana memecoin, in the past:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd262ycotF0Ty7hxM-uRz-SwPw3GiLd-Tl8RgkKyMEvF6f9Pqn_yLMzBw8GBcNN-fv1mKwSCc5mKtPXOpte8brDeoqdufU5GI9W60mDwZuveq3TBTMrOVUbmIACzVTVuuF4112LnQ?key=a8-j85qSk8vPZxeUFTrtNg" alt=""/></figure>



When the rapper was <a href="https://youtu.be/C8IgNaz2Yfc?feature=shared&amp;t=366">asked</a> last year if his <a href="https://www.geckoterminal.com/solana/pools/7EcvDoojcej6aC99VPWwJcdZSw7fYTDNqwkbhLrrmRGh">FLOCKA</a> coin on Solana had a fair launch in light of ZachXBT’s findings that 40% of its supply was sniped beforehand, Flame claimed there had been an “Operation Take Down Flocka” against him.&nbsp;



Pollak <a href="https://x.com/jessepollak/status/1938028341631893535">said</a> he’s also spoken with the rapper and believes Flame, whose real name is Juaquin James Malphurs, was “convinced” to launch a coin by a team that then “rugged him.”&nbsp;



“Do I wish he had been able to see through the scammers in the first place and not made the mistake? Absolutely,” Pollak said.



“But do I think we should blackball an earnest, talented creator and musician who someone else scammed [&#8230;] and who, rather than giving up, doubled down on figuring out how to use onchain to do good in our space? Absolutely not.”



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Coinbase is ‘destroying’ retail crypto: Framework Ventures cofounder

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If you’ve been to crypto conferences, you know you’re not “supposed” to actually be at the panels. They’re recorded anyway — networking is priority. Opportunity costs abound!



To cope with my FOMO from Permissionless, I listened to every panel (almost) on Day 2. So ironically, I probably got more out of Permissionless from halfway around the world than most attendees.



Here are several choice quotes from Day 2 panels.



Konstantin Richter, founder of BlockDaemon, was asked how his investors would feel if he IPO’d onchain rather than on the NYSE. He responded:



“If my investors feel like the return they would get is a lot better, then I think it’s a fairly easy conversation in this regulatory landscape, (assuming) we could get the right legal structures to avoid ending up in an orange jumpsuit.”&nbsp;



Wen World Liberty Financial token?



Zak Folkman, co-founder of World Liberty Financial, said: “I don’t want to give away too much, but if you pay attention over the next couple weeks, everyone who wants to know ‘wen World Liberty?’ is going to be very, very happy. We’ll leave it at that.”



Cryptic.



Brendan Eich, co-founder of Brave, on what he thinks of his Javascript creation: “Javascript&#8217;s over 30 now, so it should get out of my basement. It&#8217;s doing fine.&#8221;&nbsp;



How should crypto purists feel about DeFi today integrating with centralized finance?&nbsp;



Here’s Kain Warwick’s excellent answer, paraphrased from the DeFi Renaissance panel:&nbsp;



“If you look at the history of fintechs over the last two decades, it&#8217;s kind of disastrous, because they’re dealing with a ton of regulation and legacy systems that aren&#8217;t interoperable. That&#8217;s the big difference between DeFi and fintech: in fintech, if you want to do something, you got to go to a bank, beg for access to an API which you probably won&#8217;t get. Whereas in DeFi, anyone can turn up and use it.&nbsp;



“A hybrid CeFi-DeFi system at least means that the rails are still interoperable in an environment where any new entrant can come in. The barriers to entry are lower. And that, to me, is the win. Even if we didn&#8217;t get ‘pure’ DeFi replacing the world, I think we’ve still won.”



A masterclass in marginal thinking if you ever find yourself reminiscing about the good ol’ cypherpunk days…



What are the biggest impediments to adoption today?



Privy co-founder Henri Stern: “Onramping and moving from fiat to crypto remains the single biggest hurdle for adoption today.”



What’s the most important scaling decision Ethereum has to make in the next year?



Dan Robinson of Paradigm: “Increase the gas limits on L1. I’d love to see some progress on latency by then, but I’m doubtful that we will.”



Unfortunately, the percentage of Ethereum validators signaling for a higher gas limit has slowed in recent weeks. The last time gas limits were <a href="https://blockworks-research.beehiiv.com/p/starkware-has-a-new-prover">raised</a> from 30m to 36m was in February 2025.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdC4470nvn4lkBc_JQjhJ2rtEOzhOgK3HDNOUwCJ6eP97XAPp4JAgh1BspyqUIbDAL8xPywWerUHIU3zmH5fMQGXhUcumukx2JGqvxXuZh63bOSOUGCpTG04cs3GTZjep06tGtZdw?key=mZseu0WZI1kaGIeSaOtTiw" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://gaslimit.pics/">gaslimit.pics</a></figcaption></figure>



Why would apps not just go off and build on their own chain?



Max Resnick of Anza: “If you want users, you should stay on Solana — that’s where they are. If you want to bring your own users and have them use a product, frankly, I don’t really know why you’re building on the blockchain.”



<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">if you want users, you should stay on solana, that&#39;s where they are. If you want to bring your own users and have them use a product, like, frankly, I don&#39;t really know why you&#39;re building on the blockchain. &#8211; max resnick <a href="https://t.co/WpjuYY4OpX">pic.twitter.com/WpjuYY4OpX</a>&mdash; Permissionless (@Permissionless) <a href="https://twitter.com/Permissionless/status/1937970915092140178?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 25, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Here’s another spicy one from DBA fund’s Jon Charbonneau: “If I had to take a bet, I would bet Base would not continue paying 10-15% (to Optimism), because I don’t think they’re getting sufficient value in return. My gut is the same for most rollups with their relationship to Ethereum. There just isn’t pricing power there.”



How is AI being used for ZK? Uma Roy from Succinct: “There was a fun example of a big Hyperliquid whale with zero formal programming background that vibe-coded an SP1 application over the weekend. The app proved he owned addresses with ~25m of HYPE across accounts and bootstrapped an anonymous X account without revealing his addresses.”



Finally, some dunk tank action from the folks over at Blockworks Research.



<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 just dunked <a href="https://twitter.com/defi_kay_?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@defi_kay_</a> 🤣 Courtesy of <a href="https://twitter.com/_dshap?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@_dshap</a>! Come dunk more <a href="https://twitter.com/blockworksres?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@blockworksres</a> employees! <a href="https://t.co/odlg4T7hy6">pic.twitter.com/odlg4T7hy6</a>&mdash; Marc Arjoon | Blockworks Research 🟪 (@marcarjoon) <a href="https://twitter.com/marcarjoon/status/1937979336390304129?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 25, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



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Breaking down Day 2 of Permissionless IV

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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Bitcoin is full of catchphrases.



“BTC is a store of value” just means that you can buy it, and if the price remains steady, you wouldn’t have lost any money.



That Bitcoin protects against “currency devaluation” is only a brainy way of saying that it might go up, while the foreign exchange rate for whatever fiat currency you use in everyday life could go down.



My favorite of all is that bitcoin is a &#8220;hedge against global instability.”



So how does that play out in real life?



Around this time in 2016, the UK was reeling: the people had just voted to leave the European Union. Brexit was <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-36620375">happening</a>.



The British pound had been trending down against the US dollar since mid-2014, but this was different. On Friday, June 24 — the day after referendum day — GBP fell more than 8% to a 31-year low.&nbsp;



It was the pound&#8217;s largest one-day fall in history, per <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jun/23/british-pound-given-boost-by-projected-remain-win-in-eu-referendum">the Guardian</a>, which was extended by another 3% on the following Monday.



Meanwhile, bitcoin’s price against the dollar was on the up, rising 70% between the last week of May and the week before the Brexit vote, from about $440 to nearly $760.



BTC briefly corrected by 20% in the days leading up to the referendum. But once it was done, bitcoin continued to grind higher as the pound sunk deeper over the following months.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcJxrsABoMtQJEQqUIPn2EuiUMyapyNiKE1S0HkXzCotFm71_NuLEmtLvRS28zdMQGTlaOIFYRILmztfjLPYeBKgiw8Rdi6Uj5pjcCPtkVkGb7fI9UmGqnYfXxBVI5teo6JU2kIiA?key=ymCxxPMjKOBJWuNIbHpTuw" alt=""/></figure>



It’s always difficult to directly prove that bitcoin going up has anything to do with macro events like Brexit.&nbsp;



Looking back and zooming out, BTC/USD was clearly in an uptrend that started almost 18 months before the Brexit vote.&nbsp;



That uptrend, while not a straight line, went on for another year and a half, culminating in the December 2017 all-time high close to $20,000. The devil’s advocate might say it was a coincidental correlation.



But there are hints that the connection ran deeper, regardless of how short-lived. Fintech payments app TransferWise (now Wise) <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/23/bitcoin-surges-past-650-as-brexit-result-sends-uk-pound-tumbling-to-30-year-low/">warned</a> users of volatility for the pound around the Brexit vote, and even cancelled all GBP transfers that weren’t fully processed by 8pm UK time on referendum day.



Those moves are in and of themselves perfect advertisements for Bitcoin.&nbsp;



Before Brexit, the 2013 banking crisis in Cyprus had shown there was an appetite to hedge against instability by escaping into BTC. The price of bitcoin rose almost 350% in two months as local banks <a href="https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/bitcoin-hits-record-exchange-values-with-cyprus-banking-crisis/">teetered</a> on collapse.



It happened again two years later, in 2015, when bitcoin jumped 10% to break out of middling price action as the broader Greek debt crisis spiralled. But it was <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2015/06/29/greek-crisis-stokes-bitcoin-prices-higher.html">never</a> really clear just how much of that could be attributed to Greeks dumping euros for bitcoins.



Ten years later, the situation feels different. The US dollar reached three-year lows this morning as bitcoin continues to trend more-or-less sideways, as it’s done the past month and a half, sans some brief volatility around the renewed Israel-Iran conflict.



One read would be that bitcoin’s price is holding strong because US dollars are currently worth less. Another would be that Bitcoin’s hedge-case is clearly intact. Both are good for Bitcoin.



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Bitcoin’s best slogan: It’s a ‘hedge against instability’

Casey Wagner

A federal judge on Thursday denied a joint motion from the US Securities and Exchange Commission and Ripple Labs seeking to dissolve an injunction against the blockchain infrastructure company.&nbsp;



Ripple and the SEC in May submitted a settlement agreement to the court, requesting the judge vacate a prior ruling against Ripple and reduce its civil penalties from $125 million to $50 million. In the SEC’s initial lawsuit, it sought a $2 billion payment from Ripple.&nbsp;



Judge Analisa Torres, who issued the summary judgment in the case in 2023, denied the settlement proposal, citing Supreme Court precedent that judgments cannot be determined solely by private litigation between parties. 



“The parties must show exceptional circumstances that outweigh the public interest or the administration of justice,” Torres wrote in the ruling.&nbsp; “They have not come close to doing so here.”



The implications of this case are significant, Torres added, and the SEC and Ripple cannot erase a ruling simply because they have come to a private understanding.&nbsp;



“The Court respects the freedom of parties to amicably resolve their disputes,” Torres wrote. “It is also true that the SEC, like any other law enforcement agency, has discretion to change course after an enforcement action is initiated.&nbsp;



“But the parties do not have the authority to agree not to be bound by a court’s final judgment that a party violated an Act of Congress in such a manner that a permanent injunction and a civil penalty were necessary to prevent that party from violating the law again.”&nbsp;



Thursday’s ruling is the latest development in a years-long legal battle between Ripple and the securities regulator. The SEC filed a suit against Ripple in December 2020, alleging the blockchain firm sold its XRP token without registration.&nbsp;



The court eventually sided with the SEC in part, ruling in a summary judgement that while the institutional XRP sales constituted as an unregistered securities offering, its retail sales were not.&nbsp;



The SEC pursued an appeal under former Chair Gary Gensler, but issued a joint motion with Ripple to pause the appeal after Gensler left the agency in January. The Second Circuit granted this motion, issuing a 60-day pause in the case while the Southern District of New York reviewed the settlement motion.



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regulation

Federal judge denies Ripple, SEC motion for indicative ruling

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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“It&#8217;s the first time in US history, since the Great Depression, that you really can financialize anything,” Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour said yesterday during a Permissionless panel.&nbsp;



His talk, which was moderated by Paradigm’s Charlie Noyes, covered a range of topics from the rise of prediction markets to Kalshi taking on the CFTC and winning.&nbsp;



&#8220;The reason why [the legal fight against the CFTC] was important is, I never thought that there would be institutional adoption the way that we&#8217;re seeing today if we didn&#8217;t get regulated,” Mansour explained.&nbsp;



The fight, which he clarified started before Coinbase even took on the SEC, opened doors for both Kalshi and <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/07/polymarket-plans-to-return-to-the-us-founder-says-.html">other prediction markets</a>.&nbsp;



And then, just a few hours after the two were on stage, we got some news.&nbsp;



Kalshi raised $185 million in a Series C led by Paradigm. Other investors included Sequoia and Multicoin. The raise, according to Mansour, puts Kalshi at a $2 billion valuation, making yet another crypto-related unicorn.&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">I’m excited to announce our $185M Series C valuing Kalshi at $2B. The round was led by Paradigm with participation from Sequoia, Multicoin, Peng Zhao, Neo, and Bond Capital. People choose to work at Kalshi not because of the money we&#39;ve raised, but because of our ambition:… <a href="https://t.co/OGgZSwOPvj">pic.twitter.com/OGgZSwOPvj</a>&mdash; Tarek Mansour (@mansourtarek_) <a href="https://twitter.com/mansourtarek_/status/1937947818276339734?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 25, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Polymarket is in a similar boat, with a recent Bloomberg <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-24/polymarket-is-set-to-raise-funding-at-1-billion-valuation">report</a> claiming that Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund is leading a round that would put Polymarket’s valuation over $1 billion.&nbsp;



Is the $2 billion valuation for Kalshi a bit much? Actually, based on Mansour’s comments yesterday, I don’t think so. Prediction markets have really hit a mainstream audience — and are akin to stablecoins in that everyone acknowledges there’s a need and a product-market fit for them. Then there’s also the fact that Mansour, yesterday, said that Kalshi’s doing roughly $1 billion in monthly volume.&nbsp;



“We have around 1500 markets live today, up from 80 back in October. So, yeah, I think in terms of broader asset classes, I think prediction market is definitely the fastest one,” he said.&nbsp;



Mansour also alluded to where Kalshi — and prediction markets in general — may be going.&nbsp;



“Imagine a world where basically any difference of opinions can be settled on prediction markets, like you debate about something on a dinner table, and, whether this is the price of an asset or something happening in the future, and you can basically trade it actively on a prediction market,” he explained.&nbsp;



Getting a payout for a debate at the dinner table…and getting bragging rights…sounds pretty good to me.&nbsp;



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Why Kalshi’s new $2B valuation makes sense

This is a segment from The Breakdown newsletter. To read full 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">
“Trust is one of the greatest economic forces on Earth.”



— Charlie Munger
</blockquote>



The only thing I miss about being an equities trader is being around other traders, because the trading desks I worked on were a lot of fun.



They always have been: “Horse-play starts over nothing, and sometimes infects all but the staid oldsters,” a 1920 account of the outdoor “Curb Exchange” on Wall Street reported. “One irrepressible youth furtively knocks off another&#8217;s hat. The indignant victim grabs and throws the hat nearest to his clutching hand, and in a minute the air is full of sailing head-gear.”



Crypto, by contrast, isn’t nearly as lighthearted — partly because it’s a WFH industry (it’s difficult to knock off a colleague’s hat over Zoom).



But, it’s also because the founding ethos of crypto is that it&#8217;s “money for enemies.”



It’s difficult to have fun around someone you consider an enemy.



Bitcoiners in particular often come across as a bit humorless; perhaps more inclined to mansplain money and banking than they are to go for a laugh.



The rest of crypto, too, can feel like an adversarial, player vs. player and negative-sum place.



That is fun while you’re winning, but most of the time, most people aren’t.



This matters because fun is important in finance.



Even in <a href="https://x.com/MaxfieldOnBanks/status/1920569223509602378?t=sjxSuzc99arSp6NjGdHlTQ&amp;s=19">staid commercial banks</a>, going for laughs helps build the kind of trust that the finance industry runs on.&nbsp;



Nothing would happen in TradFi if people didn’t trust each other.



That is a feature, not a flaw, of both finance and humans.&nbsp;



The evolutionary biologist Joseph Henrich <a href="https://pca.st/episode/3101c90c-96ad-4c40-86d1-cb0239478b2e?t=1301">explains</a> that “humans haven’t succeeded because of our raw intelligence. Humans have succeeded because they cooperate.”



In other words, the reason humans made it to the moon and not, say, alligators isn’t because we’re individually smarter than alligators, but that we’re collectively smarter..&nbsp;



Henrich <a href="https://pca.st/episode/b724ebb0-b896-405f-bd6f-cfc21e0731d1?t=1411">notes</a> that human brains have been shrinking over the millennia as we’ve been naturally selected for our willingness to trust one another, not for our raw computing power.



As our individual brains have shrunk, our “collective brain” has grown.



But trust doesn’t scale over fiber-optic cables alone.



As Henrich puts it, “the collective brain requires trust in strangers,” and <a href="https://www.iese.edu/standout/face-to-face-conversations-power/">trust</a>, research shows, is built through real-life, face-to-face interaction.



That, I think, is why conferences are more valuable than they might seem.



Despite the industry&#8217;s dour reputation, crypto conferences are surprisingly fun.&nbsp;



Dunk tank, after parties, free merch and, most importantly, an abundance of actual people to talk to — not just Twitter handles.



I think that’s good news, because if crypto wants to fulfill its promise, it might need a little more trust and a lot more fun.



One good talk: Leo Dorlöchter, <a href="https://www.peaq.xyz">Peaq</a>



To the oft-asked question about crypto’s purpose, Peaq founder Leo Dorlöchter offers a sci-fi answer: Crypto will be “the computer of the machine economy.”



Specifically, Dorlöchter sees a near future in which autonomous self-driving taxis recharge their batteries with a “tokenized EV charger” that, in turn, sources energy from “tokenized solar panels.”&nbsp;



Humans might not have much gainful employment in that world (“machines will do most of the work”), but we will be able to invest in the machines.



DePIN, Dorlöchter says, is “creating a new asset class” by allowing people to “earn from autonomous machines.”



We’ve never been able to invest directly in a machine, he points out — only in the companies that own the machines.



That could change with “initial machine offerings,” in which crypto investors have the opportunity to finance the critical infrastructure needed for the fully autonomous machine economy to emerge.&nbsp;



(Don’t tell Eliezer Yudkowsky, though, he might want to <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-expert-bomb-datacenters">bomb</a> us.)



Beyond DePINs, the “good news” for crypto is that “the machines will go onchain” — for payments, identity, sensors, user interfaces and data.



Dorlöchter categorizes these activities as a “trust infrastructure” where autonomous machines will need to cooperate with each other.



Perhaps ironically, it’s only trustless crypto that can provide it.



Another good talk: Tarek Mansour, <a href="https://kalshi.com">Kalshi</a>



Kalshi isn’t a crypto company, but its founder Tarek Mansour thinks that’s a distinction that won’t matter for much longer.



“Any kind of fintech company is inevitably going to be a crypto company,” Mansour predicted this morning.



Kalshi, he said, will increasingly do business on crypto rails “because they work better.”



To my surprise, they’re doing a lot of business: $1 billion a month in prediction market betting volume, with millions of active customers and 1,500 live markets, according to Mansour.



I expected that prediction markets would remain a once-every-four years phenomenon, but it’s starting to look like people want to bet on more than just presidential elections.



Mansour thinks it will get a lot bigger, too: “In 10 years, I don’t see any reason why prediction markets wouldn’t be bigger than the stock market.”



I’m not sure that would be good news for the world.



Mansour says prediction markets are the fastest growing “asset class,” but if so, they are a weird kind of negative-sum asset — different in kind from positive-sum stocks, bonds and real estate.&nbsp;&nbsp;



If investors put money into prediction markets instead of productive assets, it seems like that would be a net negative for the world.



But Mansour asks us to “imagine a world where any debate can be settled in prediction markets.”



That might make them a net positive, because one thing I agree with Mansour on is that “financial markets see the future better than anything else.”



If prediction markets help us see the future better, we can all make better decisions.



Also, the markets will be settled in crypto, so that will be fun.



Miscellaneous quotes:



“We really want to reverse engineer into a Pizza Hut franchise.” — Konstantin Richter, Blockdaemon, in satirizing the current craze for crypto SPACs



“USD1 will be the biggest stablecoin…World Liberty Financial will be a household name.” — Zak Folkman, World Liberty Financial (in a moment of Trumpian understatement)



“The first thing in crypto that’s starting to work.” — Ali Yaha, a16z, on stablecoins



“If you want to do great things, you should reach out.” — Luca Prosperi, M0



“Be a human. Write and read code.” — Brendan Eich, inventor of JavaScript, after arguing that LLMs will never be as smart as humans



“We just ate shit for longer than anyone else and worked out.” — Tarek Mansour on the success of Kalshi



“If you sue a regulator, make sure you win.” — Tarek Mansour



“In the next five years almost all financial transactions will be driven by agents.” — Ali Yaha, a16z



Overheard: “I went to a cypherpunk meet up in 1994.”



Crypto conference innovation: Giant beanbags in lieu of chairs. (Bonus tip: Find one up against a wall, it’s less awkward.)



Today’s takeaway: Two slices and a Coke.



See you tomorrow for day three!



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