Binance Bridged USDT (BNB Smart Chain)

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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So lending markets have yet to make a comeback this cycle — and it kinda makes sense.&nbsp;



But Galaxy may have some good news for us all: Lending could be ready for some green shoots of its own.&nbsp;



“The convergence of traditional financial expertise with blockchain-based innovation suggests a future where crypto lending services become increasingly sophisticated and reliable, while maintaining the unique benefits of blockchain technology,” Galaxy’s Zack Pokorny wrote.



“As the sector continues to mature, it may well serve as a bridge between traditional finance and the emerging digital asset ecosystem, facilitating broader adoption of cryptocurrency-based financial services.”



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdGeYUkL4j9yywfyEiegcpEXxvuANCiCNVKv0Wzoyaw1DSrKcTSJgjQtyjVvOiYAWVPgn-9tihplUcPVC1wOUd4IV49eP-lpB-UpA8ul1WL0u4AUlLqCZ9KkY0Cwxiu-3vTqQT6eQ?key=cg99dqhikuDosdVOGNmsTCEf" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A look at the players in the space, courtesy of Galaxy. </figcaption></figure>



At the end of last year, Tether, Galaxy and Ledn led the CeFi lending pack. Combined, the three had a loan book of $9.9 billion.&nbsp;



Lending, at its peak, had a total loan book of $34 billion, per Galaxy’s data — and it dropped as low as $6.4 billion after the collapse of the sector. Yikes.&nbsp;



Depending on your vibe this morning: The segment is up 73% from the lows, if you want to look at it positively, or down 68% off the highs.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfYezQcJqmWjpfI-BhIaPHSmz8bvXdzGBxyon4nxnkFqmx9XHln5Sx8jAH3E67bYnbpQbloq0R1sO90QZ0r4jefegf5HtkfAB46CV62_3z6fbNw10lw206DxwxJ38Bm22SR5zJ0?key=cg99dqhikuDosdVOGNmsTCEf" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A look at the performance of lending over the years. </figcaption></figure>



But let’s not just focus on the CeFi of it all, right?&nbsp;



DeFi lending has actually seen more of a comeback. There’s been a whopping 959% increase — with $19 billion in open borrows at the end of last year — in “open DeFi borrows on the observed chains and applications in the eight quarters since the bottom was set.”



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXf6nBeKMJzI29nUIpxvPRwzH7Klupde7QYB2wLAahjpGcC9z5EhtaIyV_linUw1UcIvx_aQqhZhVKbocv8qMyprJ7UPzz8Db1XbY9dpBPR4VXrdwRjmh8c-bX7LMDtC2nuxVRFc2A?key=cg99dqhikuDosdVOGNmsTCEf" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Just in case you’re more of a visual person.</figcaption></figure>



At the end of last year, the number of outstanding loans through onchain lending apps was roughly 18% higher than the peak — $16 billion — set at the height of the bull market last cycle.&nbsp;



The strength of the recovery “can be attributed to the permissionless nature of blockchain-based applications and the survival of lending applications through the bear market chaos that felled major CeFi lenders.”&nbsp;



I know what you’re thinking: This data is great, but what’s next for both CeFi and DeFi lending?&nbsp;



Well, the answer is pretty obvious for CeFi — it all boils down to TradFi adoption. That subsector of the larger lending market will bounce back as we see more institutional adoption. Easy peasy — or so it looks.&nbsp;



But funnily enough, DeFi’s in a similar boat. Pokorny noted that DeFi lending’s future is tied to more institutions being onboarded, and, of course, building on the lending apps.&nbsp;



“The cryptocurrency lending market appears poised for a new phase of growth, characterized by improved risk management frameworks, greater institutional participation, and clearer regulatory guidelines,” he noted. 



I know we’ve been talking so much about institutions coming in, but this is why.



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CeFi lending’s up 73% after the sector’s collapse: Galaxy

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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Solana DeFi has matured rapidly in recent years.&nbsp;



But even as core behaviors like high-speed trading, airdrop farming and multi-leg strategies gain traction, many users still face infrastructure built for slower, passive chains. And while recent attention has turned toward liquid restaking, most new LRTs are functionally yield wrappers with limited composability. That leaves users in a situation where they must either sacrifice liquidity for returns or forgo yield entirely to participate in DeFi strategies.



Blueprint Finance, the team behind the Ethereum-based Concrete protocol, saw an opportunity. After quietly acquiring Jet Protocol&#8217;s Solana-native lending platform last October, they&#8217;ve spent months rebuilding it from the ground up — not just as a lending platform, but as a full-stack liquidity engine for active Solana users.



The result is Glow Finance: a rebranded and re-engineered protocol that officially launches today on Solana mainnet.



It&#8217;s introducing a composable, margin-first architecture explicitly built for Solana&#8217;s high-speed trading environment. According to the team, Glow Finance enables non-custodial margin accounts with integrated adapters that allow users to borrow, lend and trade — all within a single wallet-controlled interface. These margin accounts are programmable and modular, offering sub-account functionality similar to what power users expect from centralized exchanges.



Glow Finance introduces several key primitives that form the backbone of its trading-first architecture. At the core are Margin Accounts, or fully onchain, multi-strategy accounts that allow users to deposit assets, earn passive yield, and simultaneously use those assets as collateral. 



To enable composability across the Solana ecosystem, Glow integrates Adapters. These protocol-level connectors plug into Solana-native DEXs like Jupiter, letting users deploy leveraged strategies without jumping between platforms. According to Glow Finance, this allows users to route trades and deploy capital within a native environment, eliminating the friction of switching platforms or manually managing positions.



These primitives pair with the launch of a new asset called $glowSOL: a liquid restaking token that will earn yield through Solayer&#8217;s mega validator while acting as an entry point into the broader ecosystem.



&#8220;Early $glowSOL users will have influence in governance over the Glow Finance protocol as well as first access to new features. We see $glowSOL as the optimal entry into the Glow Finance ecosystem. Earn some of the highest staking yields and drive utility through borrowing, lending and trading,” co-founder and CEO of Concrete &amp; Glow Finance, Nicholas Roberts-Huntley, explained to Lightspeed.



Behind it all is Blueprint Finance, a team of quant devs, protocol engineers and institutional investors with backgrounds spanning Coinbase, Morgan Stanley, Consensys, and Avalanche. The team’s Ethereum product, Concrete, boasts over $650m in TVL and powers automated yield strategies with institutional-grade liquidation protection.



Glow Finance now extends that toolkit to Solana, though Roberts-Huntley told us that Glow won&#8217;t stop there. The protocol is already preparing to expand into a new wave of chains like Fogo and Atlas, which he describes as &#8220;building around DeFi-centric design that is uniquely powered by the SVM.&#8221;



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Exclusive: Glow Finance goes live

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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The SEC has done a lot between Gary Gensler’s January departure and Paul Atkins’ confirmation last week.&nbsp;



Some of the most recent actions are <a href="https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/speeches-statements/cf-crypto-securities-041025">statements</a> on crypto-related disclosures from the agency’s Division of Corporation Finance. And the SEC again asked the court to pause its litigation with Binance.



But the SEC’s most meaningful move in recent months? The agency’s swift creation of a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/new-sec-crypto-task-force">crypto task force</a> and corresponding <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/inaugural-crypto-roundtable-clarity">roundtable meetings</a>, according to StoneTurn partner Kyla Curley.&nbsp;



The roundtables are especially crucial, given they “extend well beyond the perspectives and objectives of the regulators and lawmakers by including stakeholders in all aspects of the industry,” Curley told me.



The SEC’s second crypto roundtable, hosted last Friday, focused on tailoring regulation for crypto trading. The panelists came from a range of employers, including centralized giant Coinbase and decentralized player Uniswap Labs. Speakers also included legal experts and a leader from the New York Stock Exchange.&nbsp;



SEC Acting Chair Mark Uyeda acknowledged (in a pre-recorded virtual appearance) some challenges. For example: While national securities exchanges can only list registered securities, most tokenized securities in the market today are unregistered.&nbsp;



Compliance with the “order protection rule” may not be possible for various tokenized or non-tokenized securities trading in on- and off-chain markets, he added. There’s also the fact that crypto trading platforms (unlike securities exchanges) might handle custody, execution and clearing.



<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">5/ Jake with the 30k foot view of what today&#39;s roundtable is (and should be) focused on: <a href="https://t.co/Epoi8sjXNZ">https://t.co/Epoi8sjXNZ</a>&mdash; Blockchain Association (@BlockchainAssn) <a href="https://twitter.com/BlockchainAssn/status/1910763805698630045?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 11, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



At one point, the panelists were asked about their main wishes in regards to upcoming SEC actions.&nbsp;



NYSE chief product officer Jon Herrick had a general ask: “precision” on the problems to solve (rather than starting with a solution and then searching for issues it can clear up).&nbsp;



Texture Capital CEO Richard Johnson said the goal should be getting to a point where we use blockchain as the official record of ownership for securities; we use smart contracts for settlement; and we use <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tokenized-yield-funds-complement-stablecoins">stablecoins/tokenized Treasurys</a> for the cash leg of securities transactions.&nbsp;



Coinbase’s Gregory Tusar got a bit more specific, asking for a “holistic and integrated” market structure that allows securities and commodities to trade side by side.&nbsp;



“When we have the conversation about securities and commodities, it sort of leads us to believe that there are these very clear swim lanes,” he said. “But in actual fact it’s nowhere near going to be that clean and precise.”



Some panelists went a step further, with Johnson and Urvin Finance co-founder Dave Lauer saying the SEC and CFTC should merge.&nbsp;



Austin Reid, FalconX’s head of revenue and business, noted that regulatory consolidation would unlock innovation and allow US firms to better compete globally. He noted that firms like FalconX and Coinbase, for example, could find themselves working with more than 50 regulators (the SEC, CFTC, US states and agencies in other regions).&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



Uniswap Labs chief legal officer Katherine Minarik also urged the commission to not deliberately (or accidentally) hinder the future potential of DeFi tech by requiring it to act like centralized finance.



Her wish was thus: “For the SEC to be a champion for the importance of peer-to-peer transactions, self-custody technology and the value of the privacy and safety to everyday people that can come from that type of technology.”



Chelsea Pizzola, associate general counsel at Cumberland DRW, said that while many in the industry are optimistic for crypto legislation, the SEC shouldn’t wait for that to offer more guidance and/or rulemaking. She’d love to see the commission clarify instances in which secondary market transactions would or wouldn’t fall within their jurisdiction, for example.



Pizzola’s first point echoed Uyeda’s earlier comment that “a time-limited, conditional exemptive relief framework for registrants and non-registrants” could boost US blockchain tech innovation while the SEC develops a long-term solution.



Next up is an April 25 roundtable on crypto custody considerations. Here’s to the ongoing back and forth.



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Execs share ‘wish lists’ for SEC at agency’s second crypto roundtable

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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If you logged off on Friday at the close and didn’t check futures prices or the news until this morning (unlikely, I know, but maybe you spent the weekend at the Masters), you have some catching up to do.&nbsp;



To recap: The US Customs and Border Protection late Friday night <a href="https://content.govdelivery.com/bulletins/gd/USDHSCBP-3db9e55?wgt_ref=USDHSCBP_WIDGET_2">issued guidance</a> exempting certain consumer electronics (smartphones, computers, etc.) from both reciprocal tariffs on China and the 10% global tariff on all imports. Machines used to assemble semiconductors are also exempt, the guidance noted.&nbsp;



On Saturday afternoon, though, White House senior adviser Stephen Miller <a href="https://x.com/StephenM/status/1911092862076289243">said</a> that these products, when imported from China, are still subject to a 20% levy.&nbsp;



Trump doubled down (sort of) on Sunday, writing in a Truth Social post that “there was no tariff ‘exemption’ announced on Friday.” Semiconductor tariffs will be moved to a different “bucket,” he said, adding that he would clarify everything on Monday.&nbsp;



When asked about it this morning, Trump told reporters this: &#8220;Look, I&#8217;m a very flexible person. I don’t change my mind, but I’m flexible, and you have to be.”&nbsp;



He added that “there’ll be many things coming up” and he “[doesn’t] want to hurt anybody.” 



We try to cover news as close to schedules as possible, but this administration loves to keep everyone on their toes. With that in mind, as of time of writing, Trump didn’t provide any specifics on tariffs on electronics. 



We’ll be watching for updates, but buckle up in the meantime. It’s looking to be another unpredictable week.



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Trump administration walks back tariff ‘exemption’ on electronics

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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Abstract, the Ethereum L2 blockchain that claims it’s “leading the next generation of consumer crypto,” is featuring and endorsing a crypto mining game that <a href="https://x.com/mondoggg/status/1909671762159116722">some</a> <a href="https://x.com/InspectorMNBL/status/1911744910996222210">have</a> <a href="https://x.com/Carlitoswa_y/status/1911335077230919830">accused</a> of being a Ponzi scheme.



Abstract has added “The Big Badge” as a visual badge reward for users who engaged with Bigcoin, an app that gamifies the BIG token and lets players “mine” the token from their virtual “facilities.”



“Bigcoin aims to become the most recognized coin on the planet by combining the proven emission mechanics of Bitcoin with viral, community-driven incentives,” the token’s white paper <a href="https://www.bigcoin.tech/whitepaper.pdf">reads</a>. Pseudonymous X user “Satoshi Bigmoto,” also known as “Bigtoshi,” is listed as Bigcoin’s creator and white paper author. Their <a href="https://x.com/satoshibigmoto">account</a> was created in February, just a few months ago.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd6FyIJYpsW-7J6bl2N7dbf0CE2ewkip91HBkIc04NR4yXC8s1tOLF3TceE4RxrA6iOGCynJXeQ9HYvPCSe7PZYSH4PvSR0Lj3bL3m5JkZIS33LYyw7syt1asuxI-oQhoEtxBNtrQ?key=Y5tL__aF8Xs03D6Eak9X-40X" alt=""/></figure>



But to “mine” BIG and increase their hash rate, players have to buy “miners” for their pixelated “facilities” using BIG itself (both the size of one’s facility and the number of miners increase one’s hash rate). Players also have to spend BIG to “upgrade” those virtual mining rooms.



Abstract Marketing Lead Phin Totten confirmed to me that Bigcoin isn’t actually using players’ physical computers to mine the token — and that the token isn’t actually being mined at all. Instead, what’s happening is a simulation, facilitated by the token’s smart contract.



<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">Okay I think I’m done upgrading now 😅 <a href="https://t.co/UC8mW85S6M">pic.twitter.com/UC8mW85S6M</a>&mdash; Phin (@Phin_totten) <a href="https://twitter.com/Phin_totten/status/1910812777981018509?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 11, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



One X user <a href="https://x.com/waleswoosh/status/1910967683207569756">declared</a> over the weekend that “Bigcoin has taken the timeline by storm and made a lot of money for people who got in early,” adding, “Congrats to everyone who got in early.”



While others have <a href="https://ktla.com/news/nationworld/trump-crypto-reserve-plan-opinion/">argued</a> that all of crypto is a Ponzi scheme, Bigcoin has less utility and less legitimacy than its inspiration, Bitcoin, which has been adopted by Wall Street in the form of bitcoin ETFs.&nbsp;



Cornell Law School <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/ponzi_scheme">defines</a> a Ponzi scheme as: “a type of investment fraud in which investors are promised artificially high rates of return with little or no risk. Original investors and the perpetrators of the fraud are paid off by funds from later investors, but there is little or no actual business activity that produces revenue. The scheme generates funds for previous investors so long as there is a consistent flow of funds from new investors.”



It’s currently unclear what the point of Bigcoin is, however, besides enriching miners who “got in early” with a layer of gamification on top.



Despite its token burn and sink mechanisms intended to help keep the token’s price higher, BIG’s price has fluctuated and can be as volatile as other low-cap tokens. It had a market cap of $6.9 million as of 11:15 am ET Monday morning, per Gecko Terminal <a href="https://www.geckoterminal.com/abstract/pools/0x4e8e8cc1c6548aa41ecb187967d377bf15673c15?utm_source=coingecko&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=searchresults">data</a>.



A few minutes later, its market cap spiked to $7.5 million. It then lost about 15% of its market cap in less than an hour, then regained that loss just as quickly and then lost it again.&nbsp;



The token’s price had spiked 40% in the past day as of Monday morning, but it quickly fell to just a 12% gain, showing big price swings.



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Bigcoin mining game faces Ponzi allegations amid token price swings

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>.



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Bitcoin is a dumb base layer. In its native scripting environment, computation is stateless, meaning each transaction is validated independently — with no built-in memory of prior events or intermediate results. This limits Bitcoin to simple, one-off logic like multisig, timelocks or a basic inheritance contract.



True Bitcoin layer-2 (L2) networks will need stateful computation on Bitcoin, which is where StarkWare’s <a href="https://x.com/avihu28/status/1910312884996825597">newly proposed</a> ColliderVM comes in.&nbsp;



The idea is to let Bitcoin validate complex computation across transactions, something which not long ago was thought to require a new soft fork upgrade. While still in the early phases of development, ColliderVM joins a growing class of trust-minimized L2 bridge architectures that seek to bypass the current stalemate around new Bitcoin opcodes like CTV or CAT. No forks required.



ColliderVM builds on ideas from BitVM2 and StarkWare’s earlier <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/colliderscript-bitcoin-covenants-no-fork">ColliderScript</a>, using hash-collision-based puzzles to pass data across Bitcoin transactions. This makes it “at least x10,000 more efficient” than ColliderScript, according to <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/starkware">StarkWare</a> co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson.



But as <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-rollups-closer-than-expected">BitVM</a> creator Robin Linus noted to Blockworks, that may not be as impressive as it sounds, since “ColliderScript is impractically slow.”



ColliderVM avoids the fraud proofs central to BitVM2. That means operators aren’t forced to prepay withdrawals while waiting for fraud windows to expire. Instead, computation is validity-based and verified directly on Bitcoin.



“Think of this as step two on the journey to deliver [zk validity proofs],” Ben-Sasson told Blockworks.



The tradeoff is cost. As <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-defi-without-upgrades">Bitcoin PIPES</a> creator Misha Komarov puts it: “It requires about 30 hours of the whole Bitcoin network <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/glossary/#hash-ratepower">hash rate</a> compute to spend one covenant. [That] results in a cost of millions of dollars [he estimates $40m] per tx.”



Ben-Sasson acknowledges that ColliderVM is still expensive, and not ready for prime time. “The newly released research is important because it shows that it works — not that it’s financially viable,” he said.



However, ColliderVM’s capital efficiency and simplicity, with no need for onlookers or interactive challenge protocols, may appeal to developers frustrated by BitVM2’s complexity.



Linus himself is looking forward to further Bitcoin upgrades. “CTV is great for BitVM,” he said, especially when <a href="https://blockworks.co/podcast/supplyshock/86484632-01de-11f0-a5f6-bfc4efdcbc33">paired with CSFS</a> to “eliminate the <a href="https://x.com/robin_linus/status/1910149061359116596">existential honesty assumption</a>” and simplify bridge logic. ColliderVM, on the other hand, circumvents the need for CTV entirely — but at the cost of real-world feasibility, for now. That could change with the advent of specialized hardware.



Meanwhile, PIPES represents an alternative approach — one preferred by Botanix Labs’ co-founder Willem Schroé. In his view, BitVM is “too complex,” and ColliderVM is “brilliant, but energy-intensive.” PIPES is “very simple, very clean, but very theoretical and might not work.”



Komarov agrees. “PIPES, in comparison to this hash collisions trick, are much more experimental from the theoretical point of view,” he told Blockworks. “But once they work, they’re much cheaper.”



Schroé has strong views on the bridge verification space. Regardless of what approach becomes production-ready first, he thinks they do something crucial: They show users want covenant-like behavior.



“<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/126-million-btc-how-bitcoins-absolute-scarcity-was-saved">Bitcoin Core</a> is not even thinking about covenants,” Schroé said. “But PIPES and Collider allow you to show that demand.”



Botanix’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/chainlink-integration-bitcoin-l2-spiderchain">Spiderchain</a> uses a federated proof-of-stake validator set that can scale over time. While it starts with 15 handpicked orchestrators, it’s expected to expand to thousands. “Let’s build a proper successful sidechain and then show to Bitcoin Core the demand,” Schroé’s thinking goes.



Whether ColliderVM is the path forward remains to be seen — but it’s another signal that Bitcoin L2 proponents are not waiting for protocol changes. It’s still early days, Ben-Sasson explained.



“[As] with many technologies, this will continue to unfold, and subsequent steps are likely to further reduce costs,” he said. “We’ve proved it’s possible; now the challenge is to make it viable.”



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



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock">Supply Shock</a>: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.</li>
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How does ColliderVM, StarkWare’s Bitcoin bridge play, stack up?

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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Coinbase brought bitcoin to Wall Street long before BlackRock and Fidelity.



Four years ago today, Coinbase went public at a $86 billion valuation — a figure that briefly jumped to $100 billion to rival Facebook’s debut in 2012.



And for all of the business savvy shown by CEO Brian Armstrong and his executive team, Coinbase’s story is one of harnessing Bitcoin’s natural inertia.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">On This Day — Coinbase goes public</h2>



At the time of Coinbase’s public debut in April 2021, Armstrong had <a href="https://www.benzinga.com/markets/cryptocurrency/21/09/23131441/1-000-millionaires-were-created-when-coinbase-went-public-says-ceo-brian-armstrong">commented</a> that the listing had minted a thousand fresh millionaires overnight.&nbsp;



It had also made Armstrong $16 billion <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/04/14/business/brian-armstrong-coinbase-ceo-billionaire/index.html">richer</a> by way of his 40 million Coinbase shares, and allowed early investors, employees and other backers to cash out billions of dollars of their own on day one.



They’d earned it: Armstrong had led the firm through the brimstone — regulatory crackdowns, fearmongering, climate hysteria and community infighting — for nine years leading up to Coinbase’s Nasdaq debut. They emerged on the other side, headfirst into a powerful bull market.&nbsp;



In a <a href="https://bitcoinhistorynl.beehiiv.com/p/bitcoin-in-1991?utm_source=bitcoinhistorynl.beehiiv.com&amp;utm_medium=newsletter&amp;utm_campaign=bitcoin-in-1991&amp;_bhlid=95cd01548d98a1736dec9b2524894079c46ad259">past edition</a> of Supply Shock, we looked back at Armstrong’s post on Hacker News from March 2012, in which he searched for a ride-or-die co-founder.



Coinbase was Bitbank back then, a PayPal-like app for sending and receiving bitcoin via email. Three months after the Hacker News post, Coinbase was Coinbase, and Armstrong had <a href="https://allthingsd.com/20120629/betting-on-bitcoin-coinbase-wants-to-be-the-paypal-of-the-internet-only-currency/">raised</a> $165,000 for the startup to get off the ground.



<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">10/ After meeting with more than 50 possible partners (it’s a lot like dating), I met <a href="https://twitter.com/FEhrsam?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@FEhrsam</a> through Reddit and we set out to build Coinbase. <a href="https://t.co/7PVzUEFzYb">pic.twitter.com/7PVzUEFzYb</a>&mdash; Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) <a href="https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/1382432462677045248?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 14, 2021</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Swapping bitcoin for US dollars was the business model that stuck. It took less than a year for Coinbase to hit a key milestone: Users had <a href="https://venturebeat.com/business/coinbase-bitcoin/">exchanged</a> $1 million worth of bitcoin in a single 30-day period by February 2013. Coinbase revenues have been positively correlated with the price of bitcoin ever since.



Eventually, those exchange services morphed into the full-blown trading and financial suite Coinbase offers today.



So if Brian Armstrong was Ben-Hur and Coinbase was his chariot, then Bitcoin would be the <a href="https://www.pololine.com/articles/the-horses-of-ben-hur-and-the-most-epic-scene-in-movie-history/#:~:text=The%20four%20beautiful%20white%20horses,of%20the%20lovely%20mare%20Mira.">four white horses</a> of Ilderim. Bitcoin even set an all-time high as COIN went public — proof of their symbiotic relationship regardless of whatever <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2023/05/17/the-blocksize-wars-revisited-how-bitcoins-civil-war-still-resonates-today">sides</a> were taken during the Block Size War.



Looking back, “PayPal for Bitcoin” was an elevator pitch with a clear expiration date. On a long enough timeline, all companies will become bitcoin companies — including PayPal itself, which began rolling out crypto functionality in the months leading up to Coinbase’s direct listing.



<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">2/ The Coinbase journey started when I read the Satoshi whitepaper while I was home for Thanksgiving in 2010. As I read it, I realized that crypto had the power to unlock a future where economic freedom was a reality for everyone.&mdash; Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) <a href="https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/1382428343291629569?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 14, 2021</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Coinbase is now working to run back its valuation, having somewhat diversified revenues away from bitcoin trading fees, and is currently worth about half its April 2021 mark.



At the same time, we’re now on track to see more crypto companies go public over the next year or two, starting with stablecoin issuer <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/circle-files-s1-ahead-of-ipo">Circle</a> and potentially trading platform <a href="https://www.etoro.com/news-and-analysis/press-releases/etoro-announces-confidential-submission-to-sec-of-draft-registration-statement-for-proposed-ipo/">eToro</a>.&nbsp;



There’s a clear difference, however. Bitcoin doesn’t represent the beating heart of those firms, at least not in the same way it was for Coinbase in its formative years.&nbsp;



— David



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading">A Historian’s View</h2>



“On a long enough timeline, all companies become Bitcoin companies,” David writes above. For Coinbase, however, it seems to be taking longer than usual.&nbsp;



Certainly, there are positive aspects of the company. Coinbase has managed to safeguard the industry’s bitcoin, and its reputation, for over a decade. Counter to the Ben-Hur analogy, I’d argue Coinbase is really the mini-van of the crypto industry — safe, reliable, the uncomfortable living room you sit in with extended family.



That said, the legacy of Coinbase (from a Bitcoiner’s view) arguably hangs in the balance.&nbsp;



Case in point, you can look at its anemic bitcoin investments. Coinbase HODLs <a href="https://bitcointreasuries.net/">fewer BTC than Tesla</a>, despite its 10-year market advantage. Then there’s its technical ambivalence to Bitcoin. Recall that Coinbase was among the first bitcoin exchanges to go crypto, prioritizing developments and listings on Ethereum — it’s invested untold millions into L2s, Solana, and other “competing L1s.” Yet, despite the fact that bitcoin remains a significant part of its business (driving 30% of all transaction <a href="https://s27.q4cdn.com/397450999/files/doc_financials/2024/q4/Q4-24-Shareholder-Letter.pdf">revenue</a> last year), the company’s product and development roadmap all but ignores it. Coinbase is perennially the last mover on upgrades like Lightning and Taproot. Coinbase at times seems like it’s trying to make amends, like when its head of custody made a surprise <a href="https://x.com/Pledditor/status/1911001856433660187">appearance at the OP_NEXT conference</a> this weekend. Other times, it simply pays lip service to bitcoin (it’s a running joke that Brian Armstrong only says “bitcoin” when forced).&nbsp;



On multiple fronts, it’s hard to argue that Coinbase’s legacy won’t be something similar to AOL, an early web success story that completely fades from internet relevance for failing to build its architecture in the same way that built the most value in the long run. (You can read the latest investor hand-wringing about <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/layer-2-reason-for-ethereum-declining-investment-appeal-crypto-venture-capitalist">the problems with L2s</a>.)



Like most of the other major exchanges, Coinbase is investing in scaling blockchains. We’ll see how many memecoins need to go to zero before it starts taking Bitcoin seriously again.



— Pete



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock">Supply Shock</a>: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.</li>
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Coinbase has come a long way from ‘PayPal for Bitcoin’

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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I have some good news: The Forward Guidance guys — Felix Jauvin and Quinn Thompson — still feel pretty good about bitcoin.&nbsp;



But I also have some bad news: Thompson’s not super keen on alts here.&nbsp;



In this morning’s episode of Empire, we saw two worlds collide as Empire’s Jason Yanowitz and Santiago Santos spoke to Thompson and Jauvin about the macro outlook and, of course, crypto.&nbsp;



Aside from Thompson’s astute point that he’s finding certain levels in crypto to be “interesting” but not necessarily worth throwing “a dart on the dartboard,” Jauvin’s points about bitcoin’s potential performance caught my attention.&nbsp;



<iframe loading="lazy" width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LTvPTTvhHdA?si=d3nj93jq6LykmrXt" 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>







“ I&#8217;m bullish Bitcoin and crypto on a mean reversion basis, but for an explosion past all-time highs on — let&#8217;s focus on Bitcoin, &#8217;cause I do think our asset class is getting old enough where we start piecing those apart separately,” he explained. To sum it up: Folks would have to bet against President Trump’s investment thesis if we want bitcoin to jump past all-time highs.



Basically, Jauvin argues that some of the things that aren’t great for macro — like the bond market and US dollar losing faith, and the Federal Reserve being forced to act — would be fantastic for bitcoin.&nbsp;



“These are factors that bitcoin was born for,” he noted.&nbsp;



It’s not stopping Jauvin from remaining bullish on things like stablecoins and the underlying technological advances pushing crypto forward, though.&nbsp;



“ People want alts to leverage Bitcoin a lot. You almost might be better off if you look at the stats and run the ratios of risk leveraging your Bitcoin,” Thompson explained.



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What it would take for bitcoin to top all-time highs 

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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Last week, Meanwhile announced a whopping $40 million raise co-led by Framework Ventures and Fulgur Ventures.&nbsp;



However, the raise is a bit more significant than was initially reported.&nbsp;



&#8220;This is the largest equity investment that Framework Ventures has ever made,” Framework’s Michael Anderson exclusively told me.&nbsp;



If you&#8217;re not familiar, Meanwhile is a bitcoin life insurance company valued at $190 million after their Series A announcement. Oh, and here’s an interesting factoid: They only have 10 employees.&nbsp;



“We&#8217;ve written all our own technology,” Zachary Townsend, Meanwhile’s CEO, explained.&nbsp;



I asked Townsend whether or not the firm would consider creating a US-based subsidiary, as its current subsidiary is fully licensed and regulated by Bermuda. Through that license, I should note, Meanwhile’s able to offer its services in a variety of countries including the US, UK and Canada.&nbsp;



Townsend explained that it’s on the cards in the future to build an “onshore life insurance company that interacts with our offshore company to offer Bitcoin products to folks in the US,” but it’s going to take a lot more than a friendly regulatory environment to make that happen.&nbsp;



“Insurance is regulated on a state-by-state basis, and obviously there are states that are more crypto-friendly versus states that are less crypto-friendly. I think doing the particular thing we do, which is having everything in Bitcoin, which we consider […] safer, would be quite difficult in the United States in the near term,” he noted.



Townsend explained Meanwhile has some plans to put the $40 million raised to use.&nbsp;



“Expanding globally is also an expansion of the products we offer and what those customers are interested in,” Townsend explained. “Sometime this year, [we’re] going to launch something that looks like an annuity in Bitcoin. So that would be … you put Bitcoin into an account, there&#8217;s a yield or rate of return in many countries that return [of] the account’s tax advantages.”



Meanwhile’s whole life product is a “massive unlock in terms of anyone who [wants] to be able to put Bitcoin into the policy when it&#8217;s lower [and] … anybody who does that will be able to borrow Bitcoin out of their life insurance policy over their lifetime,” Anderson said.&nbsp;



Townsend said Meanwhile’s product fit has found success in places like Argentina, Nigeria and Turkey, where folks may not want to take out insurance because of the limitations of the currencies.&nbsp;



“So much of the world has inflation risk, currency risk, regime risk [&#8230;] and cross-border risk, so no matter where you live, the idea of having life insurance in this global, decentralized store of value is incredibly attractive,” he said.



Has Meanwhile somehow made it — dare I say fun — to look under the hood of an insurance firm? Never knew that was even possible.&nbsp;



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Meanwhile’s $40M raise was Framework Ventures’ ‘largest equity investment’

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>.



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When Donald Trump paired his Solana memecoin with USDC, the Solana network’s stablecoin supply predictably shot upwards — creating 306 days of supply growth over a long weekend, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-stablecoin-supply-soars">as we put it</a> in this newsletter.



Although much of this supply growth stemmed from a memecoin that had about 48 hours of relevance, Solana’s stablecoin supply is still <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/solana?dashboard=sol-onchain-activity">near</a> its all-time high. On February 11, Solana had $12.4 billion in stables. Today, it has $12.1 billion.



“Definitely it has been stickier than anticipated,” Blockworks Research analyst Carlos Gonzalez Campo said of Solana’s stablecoin supply when I asked him about it <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXE1V57DOys">on the Lightspeed podcast this week</a>.



The stablecoin supply growth means Solana’s liquidity is deeper now, Gonzalez Campo said, noting the stickiness could be partly a result of bear market conditions where users are swapping out of riskier tokens to hold stablecoins on Solana apps instead. He also noted how USDC borrows on Solana money market Kamino are around all-time highs, which he interpreted as meaning investors are leveraging up on long SOL exposure following its <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-shrugs-off-bearish-march">recent price slide</a>.



Solana is also seeing an accelerating number of new stablecoin brands joining the network. One such example is USDG, a new stablecoin from Paxos with backing from partners including Robinhood, Galaxy Digital and Standard Chartered. The token <a href="https://solscan.io/token/2u1tszSeqZ3qBWF3uNGPFc8TzMk2tdiwknnRMWGWjGWH">has</a> a little over $100 million in supply on Solana.



There’s also the stablecoin infrastructure platform M^0, which <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stablecoin-infrastructure-platform-solana">launched on Solana</a> on Tuesday, we reported exclusively. Two new stablecoins from the stablecoin banking outfit Kast are first on the agenda.



USDC and USDT work pretty well as non yield-bearing stablecoins, and some have wondered whether new stablecoins are necessary. I made the case a couple times this week that Solana likely does want to change its stablecoin supply makeup from the current 76% USDC. Circle’s S1 filing revealed that 50% of revenue from the Treasurys backing USDC go to Coinbase, which operates a Solana competitor in the Ethereum layer-2, Base. Why wouldn’t Solana try to find a similarly cushy setup?



“I think your thought process is right, but you&#8217;re skipping a step,” Blockworks Research head of data Dan Smith said in response to this point on our <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZMNkxnJfx0">Lightspeed podcast roundup episode</a>. Stablecoin distribution comes from applications, so “I think it skips the chain and goes to the app layer,” Smith said.



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Solana stablecoins have been ‘stickier than anticipated’

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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It’s been quite a week.&nbsp;



We had Manic Monday and then Blink Wednesday, followed by what I’ll dub “That Didn’t Last Long Thursday.” Sadly, today’s not shaping up to be Fun Friday.&nbsp;



The good news: If you bought the S&amp;P 500 when the president told you to, you’re still in the green. For now, at least.&nbsp;



The bad news: everything else. Not to be dramatic.&nbsp;



The dollar is slipping: The DXY is down 3.7% today from Wednesday and the euro is at a three-year high against USD.&nbsp;



Treasury markets are still <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/trump-put-tariffs-market-inflation-bond">selling off</a> — worse now than the Tuesday night meltdown that <a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-tariff-rollout-decisions-46dc0959">reportedly</a> inspired the president’s pivot. Yield on the 10-year once again surpassed 4.5% Thursday morning, and it’s looking like Treasurys will post the biggest weekly loss since 2019, when the Fed had to step in.&nbsp;



Analysts say markets are realizing that a 10% baseline tax on almost all trading partners — although better than the initial plans — could still spell trouble for inflation and growth.&nbsp;



Consumers aren’t feeling too optimistic, either. Consumer sentiment fell to 50.8 in April, down from 57 in March and lower than expected, according to data released this morning by the University of Michigan. The one-year inflation outlook also rose from 5% to 6.7%.&nbsp;



In terms of clarity on the future of trade policy, we are back to where we were pre-Liberation Day. Bulls insisted early last week that no matter what the administration announced, having a concrete plan on the table would be a silver lining.



Now the administration has 88 days to ink deals with 150 countries. There’s also the fallout with China, which this morning raised levies on US imports from 84% to 125%.&nbsp;



Trump’s National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said on CNBC today that there’s “a big inventory of deals” approaching the “finish line,” so there’s that. We hope he’s right, but forgive us if the past week of White House communications has made us skeptical. 



I hope everyone is able to unplug this weekend. Maybe <a href="https://x.com/caseywagnerr/status/1908291167365611944">heed the advice</a> a friend gave me last Friday, which I certainly will be doing come 5 pm. We’ll see you back here on Monday.



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Rough dollar performance and Treasury market selloff close out a tumultuous week

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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With the Pectra fork now scheduled for May 7, Ethereum core developers have begun to shift their focus toward defining the next major upgrade: Fusaka. During yesterday’s All Core Devs call, the teams aligned on Pectra client release deadlines and began CFI’ing (considering for inclusion) a new set of EIPs for Fusaka.



Client releases for Pectra are expected by late next week, followed by a public announcement around April 22–23. Barring any last-minute issues, nodes will simply need to upgrade in time for the fork on May 7.



One proposal that didn’t make the cut: a small change to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-upgrade-testnet-hiccup">EIP-7702</a> that would have added an &#8220;authorization success&#8221; flag to transaction receipts. While it would have simplified tooling for account abstraction workflows, client teams warned it was too late in the cycle, and agreed to revisit it post-Pectra.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Performance first, with room for growth</h2>



Fusaka’s scope is now coming into focus. Devs reaffirmed that <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/0xresearch-newsletter-ethereum-tps">PeerDAS</a> and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-full-eof-despite-dev-friction">EOF</a> will remain its cornerstone features. The call then moved to evaluate which additional EIPs to include without derailing the 2025 timeline.



Coordinator Tim Beiko set the table: “I think the one thing that literally every single team agreed on with regards to their prioritization is that we should ship Fusaka in 2025, that PeerDAS should be in it,” Beiko said.



Among those CFI’d:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-7825">EIP-7825</a>: Introduces a transaction gas cap, preventing single transactions from monopolizing entire blocks — critical for parallel execution and fair bundling.</li>



<li><a href="https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-7907">EIP-7907</a>: Raises the runtime code size limit while metering costs more fairly. An init code size increase will also be bundled in.</li>



<li><a href="https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-7823">EIP-7823</a>: Caps modexp input size, helping reduce attack surface and memory bloat.</li>
</ul>



Blob fee market fixes: Two mutually exclusive EIPs (<a href="https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-7918">7918</a> and <a href="https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-7762">7762</a>) propose more responsive fee floors for blob data. Both were CFI’d for further discussion.



Raising the global gas limit was discussed at length but left unresolved. Teams acknowledged performance improvements are increasingly essential and should be factored into future forks, even if it means fewer new features per upgrade.



As Pectra enters its final testing phase, dev coordination is getting a shake-up. The ACD calls will now focus exclusively on future forks, while a separate weekly ACD Testing call will handle implementation details for current ones starting with Fusaka. Teams are also invited to contribute to the upcoming “Pectra Pages,” a retrospective effort collecting reflections from client teams, due April 28.



Thanks to narrowing scope decisions and core consensus solidifying, Ethereum’s 2025 roadmap is starting to look less like a brainstorm session and more like an engineering plan.



Some things naturally had to be put off. During the call, <a href="https://www.hadriencroubois.com/">Hadrien Croubois</a> presented <a href="https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-7819">EIP-7819</a> — a proposal to generalize 7702-style delegation for smart contracts — live from his local maternity ward, just hours after the birth of his daughter!



“My baby was just born this morning,” Croubois said, explaining his poor audio quality. Now that’s core dev energy! Someone get that man a <a href="https://poap.xyz/">POAP</a>!



“I think the rule is that we owe him a celebratory EIP inclusion now,” EF researcher Ansgar Dietrichs wrote in the live chat.



Unfortunately, while EIP-7819 ultimately wasn’t included in Fusaka, it will be re-evaluated — alongside those not in time to be CFI’d — for the next fork, known as Amsterdam.&nbsp; In any case, the moment instantly joined the pantheon of ACD lore.



“We’ll talk to you all next week, and let’s get Pectra shipped,” Beiko wrapped.



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Fusaka fork takes shape as Pectra enters final stretch

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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The world often feels very big. Billions of humans scattered across hundreds of countries, speaking thousands of languages and eating even more types of food.



But no matter how big it may seem, we can still reach out and touch it. You can just do things.&nbsp;



Today’s Bitcoin Legend, Plato, understood that much earlier than almost anyone else in Bitcoin. Fourteen years ago, he set off on a road trip across North America with a pioneering plan:&nbsp;



Make it from the East Coast to the West Coast without spending any dollars.&nbsp;



Only bitcoin.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Bitcoin Legend — The Real Plato</h2>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeM_r5lgdCOTe1zAASWaH6ZYFGoSw9gCkJToiKa1n4-61jh-eKGH8WdU_RG5aFcDAUJtMUBGKldOLB67P2Vi5gUxiLbVPOPhL7LNxpfPbZ-edSjkCDnlOuDECTRyNloZeegujTM-g?key=RkPfUR_14LpvMCE7dWoA2niK" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://x.com/TheRealPlato/status/1380640014648889357">@TheRealPlato</a></figcaption></figure>



Plato was an early adopter in almost every sense, having first discovered Bitcoin in 2010 and even mined coins when they were worth less than $1.



Inspired by its potential to change the world, Plato was pulled to spread the word. After losing his electrical engineering job in January 2011, by April he’d set off as a Bitcoin pioneer across a land largely unfamiliar with magic internet money.



“I want adventure, and the only other real component is the altruism. I want to help Bitcoin,” Plato said on a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcjy__y3DzI">podcast</a> one week into his 3,000-mile journey.&nbsp;



The goal: prove bitcoin could work in everyday life, even if few people in the real world knew what it was at the time. He was the first known human to attempt travelling across the United States living solely on bitcoin — using it to pay for food, gas and lodging.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcATxNffdirhpZx2VK5GWYg2KNC7Qx5nJl78K4chkw9y5-xlEimEALkwOtvgjap4Q29frnzhwaaP-NdGfmxpeRF8wfh04V2jah2edMozbql5Znp-LDKUa2AB2FOlWJvp_EWJVvzMA?key=RkPfUR_14LpvMCE7dWoA2niK" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Plato was prepared to educate people about Bitcoin as he went</figcaption></figure>



Bitcoin had the power to reshape our lives in incredible ways, Plato believed, but it would first need to “hit some critical mass” of adoption. He only hoped to “accelerate the process a little bit.”



Friendly strangers from across the US could pin an interactive <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?ie=UTF8&amp;hl=en&amp;t=h&amp;msa=0&amp;ll=37.044066857423076%2C-101.0983746809892&amp;spn=55.922178%2C135.263672&amp;z=6&amp;mid=10uJ-SWxssIaKv2_TUx6OtfPSfOA">map</a> with their locations, so that Plato could drop by to barter bitcoin for supplies or shelter.



Mostly, surviving on Bitcoin alone in 2011 meant Plato had to regularly convince others to buy stuff for him with their own dollars, before paying them back in BTC.



A <a href="https://x.com/pete_rizzo_/status/1852698169718517906">video</a> from the trip shows Plato trading bitcoin for gasoline outside a 7/11 in Salt Lake City. The pair stepped through, sending BTC to each other using keys generated by <a href="https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/MyBitcoin">MyBitcoin</a>, an early hosted-wallet service that shut down due to a debilitating hack only months later.



Meanwhile, bitcoin was experiencing one of its first parabolic price rallies, going from $1 in March to $2 as Plato reached Alabama only two weeks into his trip, having <a href="https://x.com/pete_rizzo_/status/1852697570675490863">driven</a> 55 miles per hour the entire way to save gas.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXf1qc8nqMrzpi4MaBGR-s-9j328XvN5JcgvugTF6qMDIoXOapa8L24xhNlMRyfmodYJU5gtn-4RATfQ2twF9pPNJTPlDZv-vVUrok9ym8oAX7c-n-gVzK7vOY2qCOClCWa47j--gw?key=RkPfUR_14LpvMCE7dWoA2niK" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Plato’s map: Red pins were offers for gas, blue pins for food, lodging, etc, and green pins marked interesting things.</figcaption></figure>



In Alabama, he gave one of the first college <a href="https://x.com/pete_rizzo_/status/1852697657837257120">lectures</a> on Bitcoin, a technical breakdown of mining difficulty and transactions in a UXTO system. Bitcoin had climbed to $8 by the time Plato arrived in Denver toward the end of May, where Plato <a href="https://x.com/pete_rizzo_/status/1852697945419796621">went</a> skydiving and attended concerts.&nbsp;



At one point, having camped out in the woods for days, Plato was offered a place to stay by a friend, whose kitchen had been converted into an ad-hoc home mining setup.&nbsp;



One of those rigs successfully found a block — netting the 50 BTC reward — which was <a href="https://x.com/pete_rizzo_/status/1852698242418368875">donated</a> to fund Plato’s trip. What was $500 back then would be worth more than $4 million today.



<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">8. Soon, <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Bitcoin?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Bitcoin</a> surged to $10, but Plato was low on money His friend offered him a place to stay – and donated 50 <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24BTC&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$BTC</a> to his journey Here you can see his insane mining rig set-up in his kitchen❗ <a href="https://t.co/z2IcgCMQx3">pic.twitter.com/z2IcgCMQx3</a>&mdash; The Bitcoin Historian (@pete_rizzo_) <a href="https://twitter.com/pete_rizzo_/status/1852698242418368875?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 2, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Bitcoin broke past $14 when Plato arrived in Las Vegas. It quickly doubled again to $30 for the first time ever in June, and Plato made it to the West Coast shortly after and posted up in Portland.



On July 1, three months after he started the first ever Bitcoin road trip, Plato shared an update on Tumblr:



“Well, in a nutshell, I made it! CT to LA without spending a single dollar. Since then I’ve been exploring San Francisco and Portland. Somehow I’ve met fewer Bitcoiners in either of these cities than anywhere else, so I’ve been mostly sleeping in my car.”



“Portland is really sweet. It feels like a big city in a small town, in a big city… which sounds stupid but w/e. There’s cool people everywhere, and more culture than <s>a tub of yogurt</s> an art museum.”



<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">12. These days, we don’t hear from Plato often… Here he is on X, when <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Bitcoin?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Bitcoin</a> hit $10,000 The value of his <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24BTC&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$BTC</a> was up 1 million % 📈 <a href="https://t.co/S6ztSBWTlK">pic.twitter.com/S6ztSBWTlK</a>&mdash; The Bitcoin Historian (@pete_rizzo_) <a href="https://twitter.com/pete_rizzo_/status/1852698585021776009?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 2, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Plato introduced hundreds of people to Bitcoin on his journey and <a href="https://therealplato.tumblr.com/post/7100067988/what-happened-to-plato">continued</a> to use bitcoin <a href="https://www.tumblr.com/therealplato/7852020802/paying-btc-for-sysadmin-support">wherever</a> he could.&nbsp;



More critically, he proved that Bitcoin could reimagine money by going all-in himself, at a time when Bitcoin was, at best, an esoteric quirk to most people.



For that, Plato will forever be a Bitcoin Legend.



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First Bitcoin road trip proved it could be money, even in 2011

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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Digg was an early 2000s news aggregator, predating Reddit, that was dismantled and sold for parts in 2012.&nbsp;



The original site was founded by Kevin Rose, a man you might know better as the creator of the Moonbirds NFT collection. Yuga Labs purchased Rose’s NFT company, Proof Collective, and the Moonbird NFT brand for an undisclosed sum in 2024.



Now, more than ten years after Digg’s shuttering, both Rose and Reddit co-founder Alex Ohanian are back to reboot the news aggregator.



Rose’s crypto antecedents are clear, and Ohanian has also <a href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/alexis-ohanian-says-ethereum-is-his-best-early-investment/484104">praised</a> blockchain tech (plus Reddit added NFT avatars in 2022).&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">So is Digg making a crypto-powered comeback?</h2>



A crypto executive familiar with crypto wallet infrastructure firm Privy told Blockworks that Digg is using the firm’s tech — and shared a screenshot showing a login screen with a privy.digg.com URL. Another screenshot of the login screen <a href="https://x.com/devops199fan/status/1910352084052189683">shared on X</a> shows “protected by Privy” with Privy’s circle logo.&nbsp;



Privy will be the sign-in method for Digg at launch, Digg team member Forest Anderson, who describes his title there as “Shovel Sharpener,” confirmed to Blockworks in a DM Friday morning.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdfkYRpIcIbWFmYmz34-fmKvPmezzcqx5JFkaOHlABdLVfPOmVdINDLdMwf__NAQebRJZLBRM0DQiAPNhJkFSDmJa4QfGwyNXLOcFQcJw4TSOdb-5nJXg86TB5T1gp_EL8W-sDOqA?key=7W1jJdoGUnLzkKg0XJqMimf5" alt=""/></figure>



Privy offers crypto-powered login solutions for platforms to help “​​developers onboard any user to web3 apps securely,” according to the company’s <a href="https://www.privy.io/user-guide">website</a>. It can support both self-custodied wallets and embedded wallets. Business clients can tailor the design and login options. Crypto transactions can also be signed in-app after logging in. It’s not unlike what <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/exclusive-horizon-blockchain-games-sequence-rebrand">Sequence</a> is also doing in the space for developers who want to add wallets for users.



A link to Digg’s community platform viewed by Blockworks lands on a “Groundbreakers” early-access page, which triggers a crypto <a href="https://x.com/pixiekate13/status/1910516311173849523">wallet pop-up</a>. Paying $5 via credit card gets “Groundbreakers,” or early community members, into a space where they can get updates on Digg’s development.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXefNzWasZBPPvAewh-1YQOG5Xk9rwvunkDTeLztDzOKcdrzdIH0JofE7h_UFri5248z84yAvGiTh8l6hpr8eugWwACQSIGbkcj-Gy5IF2peCeVBBEBcbbGNHRphbyMeYUcAwGBZ-g?key=7W1jJdoGUnLzkKg0XJqMimf5" alt=""/></figure>



Upon creating a Digg account and choosing a username, users receive a verification code email from Digg, featuring Digg’s logo, which also includes “powered by Privy” at the bottom.



Digg’s use of Privy, or of blockchain tech more broadly, had not been previously reported.



On Friday morning, after multiple tweets from X users about the Privy integration (including my own), and after I reached out to the Digg PR team for comment, Rose wrote this on the Circle community:&nbsp;



“Some of you have noticed we’re using Privy for auth, it’s true! The why: Privy gives us all the modern and legacy authentication methods we&#8217;d like to support. Embedded wallets are a future-proof feature worth having there from day one. We want to preserve maximum optionality as we move into a world of trusted users, their attestations, and powering transparent AI agents. More on this later in the coming weeks as will lift more of the curtain,” Rose wrote (emphasis mine).



Usernames from the Digg Groundbreakers forum will transfer over to Digg 2.0 when it ultimately launches, the team has confirmed.&nbsp;



What’s available on the Digg community platform right now is powered by Circle and isn’t actually what Digg will be in its final form. Rose shared a mockup in a post on the Circle site, showing part of what the real site’s design is looking like at the moment:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcdBUNjhvtkAY6opx_i5lY1J6NA0DybOZMIdyqlldFuAxT100oBoPClO4YZKOR-tZJPEBG47ixPs-96lDH1z4oqEnYSHW4f_xcw1NuSG77zzpAVhRMwGc_7N8YC3-xsy838FTIVCA?key=7W1jJdoGUnLzkKg0XJqMimf5" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Image: Digg homepage in progress.</figcaption></figure>



That homepage features a leaderboard of top users as well as featured news, top comments, and a look at communities.



A desktop web version and a Digg mobile app are in the works.&nbsp;



Gems — which take the whole digging metaphor to the next level — are an additional way the team wants to reward users for their contributions.&nbsp;



“We think that ‘followers’ was a great vanity metric for a long time,” Rose said in a voice note posted to the early-access forum when explaining his vision for Gems. But he called the follower metric “tired at this point,” in part because of bots.



Rose said he wants Digg users to be able to easily understand why certain types of content is being shown to them, as well.



Right now, it looks like crypto wallets via Privy will be optional in the final version of Digg 2.0.



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The new Digg is using crypto rails for accounts, wallets

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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Nova Labs, the firm behind DePIN Helium, <a href="http://wagmi">announced</a> that the SEC dropped its suit against the firm just a few months after filing it (in one of Gary Gensler’s final moves).&nbsp;



Nova didn’t get off scot-free; the firm still has to pay $200,000 to settle the SEC’s civil securities fraud charge. Basically, the SEC accused Nova Labs of misleading institutional investors about its partnerships, per the original legal filing. Nova Labs didn’t admit to or deny any wrongdoing as part of the settlement. 



On the bright side, Nova doesn’t need to worry about the SEC labeling any one of its three tokens — HNT, IOT and MOBILE — as securities.&nbsp;



“The outcome establishes that selling hardware and distributing tokens for network growth does not automatically make them securities in the eyes of the SEC. It also means that the SEC cannot bring these charges against Helium again,” Nova Labs wrote in a blog post.&nbsp;



Overall, though, the settlement can be read as a win and yet another sign of the times. As the SEC moves forward with new Chair Paul Atkins at the helm, we can expect more changes — though it seems that we’re running out of crypto cases to drop or settle.



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Nova Labs announces SEC settlement

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The week between the Liberation Day announcement and the 90-day pause gave a good indication of where folks are at when it comes to huge news events that have potential impacts on crypto.



Everyone approaches sudden downturns differently. Some use it as a buy-the-dip moment, some hunker down and prepare for the worst, and others adopt a wait-and-see mindset that allows them to think an action through before an immediate reaction.&nbsp;



SKALE’s Jack O’Holleran would probably say he’s in the third camp, especially as an executive in the industry.



“If you&#8217;re working in the crypto space, you&#8217;re making decisions that are short term, that impact days and weeks, but you also have to make decisions that impact months and quarters, and so you have to be planning ahead,” he told me.



“And it frankly, makes things incredibly challenging, knowing that there are all these other variables outside of your control that you can&#8217;t accurately predict. You have to build volatility and variability into your plan.”



I asked O’Holleran what he thought about fundamentals in crypto, and if we’ve really started to see that shift play out as Blockworks Research’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-fundamentals-metrics-to-watch">Ryan Connor believes</a>.



O’Holleran thinks we’re still on the path toward fundamentals. I know we’ve heard the 90s comparisons a couple of times here on Empire. But O’Holleran pointed out that at the beginning of the dot-com era (before it was a bubble), speculation swirled around the tech, even when the products weren’t live quite yet. Crypto’s operating similarly, he noted.&nbsp;



In crypto, the evolution toward fundamentals will shift into focusing more on project metrics. The industry is in what O’Holleran referred to as “loss leader” mode.&nbsp;



“People are less concerned about economic values than they are about TVL and trading volume,” he said.&nbsp;



“[In] March there was a strong indicator of success at the infrastructure level. Because I think there&#8217;s a general belief that as incumbents and new players gain market share and build moats, they&#8217;re going to be able to then increase their profitability, or token value capture.”



And one of the key things we’re building up right now is just how we value different segments in crypto. O’Holleran pointed out that folks are still gauging how something like DePIN or layer-2 projects should be weighted in their categories.&nbsp;



All of these things reaffirm what may be a bit obvious to us: The industry is really at a maturity inflection point. Prepare for some growing pains, but figuring out metrics to value a project will, in the long run, be a net positive for crypto.&nbsp;



Bring on the fundamentals.



This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.



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