First Digital USD

Casey Wagner

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



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In terms of companies insulated from tariff announcements, one sector of the crypto industry that is decidedly not safe is bitcoin mining. 



With much of the bitcoin mining supply chain based in Asia, US-based operations are going to face higher prices to get equipment onshore. 



Beijing-based Bitmain Technologies is the largest mining machine manufacturer, with a 90% market share, and it moved a large part of its production line to Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand years ago, according to a Bloomberg <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-26/trump-s-made-in-usa-bitcoin-relies-on-chinese-rig-maker-bitmain">report</a>.



Imports from these countries to the US now come with levies of 24% to 37%, per Trump’s Wednesday Liberation Day announcement. Bitmain <a href="https://x.com/BITMAINtech/status/1866124016819339335">announced</a> late last year it would open a “US production line,” presumably to get ahead of tariffs.



The tariffs also come on the heels of widespread supply chain delays in the bitcoin mining space. Mining equipment has just started to move out of US ports after being stuck for months at points of entry into the US.&nbsp;



Bitcoin mining stocks on Thursday took a hit. Marathon Digital Holdings was down more than 8% midway through today’s session. Riot Platforms and Core Scientific lost around 7% and 10%, respectively.&nbsp;



President Trump, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/revisiting-trumps-crypto-promises-after-his-election-win">on the campaign trail</a>, touted making the US a hub for bitcoin mining.&nbsp;



“Made in America bitcoin,” though, now may be a tall order.



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Bitcoin mining stocks slip as investors weigh tariff exposure

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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As global markets react to President Trump’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/market-reactions-to-trump-tariff-plans">sweeping reciprocal tariffs</a>, the post-election optimism that the new administration would bust open the US IPO window is wavering.&nbsp;



An international trade war isn’t exactly the most ideal backdrop for entering the public market, and Trump just upped the ante.&nbsp;



Of course, any company can go public whenever it wants — it’s not like there’s an actual regulatory window — but it’s best to avoid entering the market during a major downturn.&nbsp;



A wave of first-quarter IPO and M&amp;A announcements were penned at the end of 2024, when the prospect of tax cuts and deregulation had bankers and VCs riding high. Now, tariffs, rising fears <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/february-cpi-print-tariffs">of a recession</a> and slower growth have them taking a step back.&nbsp;



We could also see funding slow. After all, venture firms invest in startups because they see a light at the end of the tunnel: a successful exit via acquisition or public market debut. A poor IPO market limits exit strategy options. The longer the trade war rages on, the worse things could get for US startup funding.&nbsp;



Even so, the environment didn’t stop stablecoin issuer Circle from moving forward with <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/circle-ipo-stablecoin-competition-investors">its IPO plans</a> this week. I’d say a company that generates most of its revenue from interest earned on US Treasurys, and which sells an intangible product, is fairly insulated from Trump’s trade policies, at least directly. It’s not like USDC is shipped from China.&nbsp;



Still, though, we’re in a risk-off era, which doesn’t usually bode well for crypto equities.



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Tariff announcements push IPO window closed

Felix Jauvin

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As I write this piece, I’m in shock.&nbsp;



The tariffs that President Trump announced yesterday were significantly larger than even the most aggressive of estimates.



The basics have already been discussed to death, but let’s summarize them anyway just to set things straight: Trump issued a blanket tariff of 10%. For 60 or so countries, there’s a tariff of roughly half of the “total sum of all unfair trade practices,” as calculated by the Trump administration.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd7-nhfwzkk_557MtbrKSnjrWpFKsiv2TNVlIzKJFOcAUvtS3gR-z0M5hav46jYz-yY2-eABZdGzw4SvdLDGKqVMdA9YnhnzdzPdtS9vorQHskaHoU93mJKRPFkqdJ_idp16K2gLg?key=W6yNtBPQeTMkhGR4SzN_Du94" alt=""/></figure>



As seen in this chart from the Budget Lab (a Yale think tank), the total weighting of all these tariffs leads to an effective tariff rate at 22.5%, which would be the highest it’s been in a century. 



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdBTlmfThwOuC2kY65PlGv0PwMC7ulDURdIx0UrvSXxPWYt_jM_r49cGzbDHVo9EiG4a9h6VmGs6KOYaqpQSFwXGUweLtHYULBTonAofn-oP_Jc0ixI5EqyKLSLWHyDS3Nz6-__xQ?key=W6yNtBPQeTMkhGR4SzN_Du94" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: The Budget Lab</figcaption></figure>



Other estimates are as high as 26.5% to 30%.



Now, how exactly did the Trump team quantify these estimates of tariffs imposed on the US? It turns out that it was a crass estimation of the country’s trade deficit divided by its exports.



In chart form, you get this extremely simplistic linear extrapolation:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdN-CbMLU13V0WYGLVmd_oZgnXY3nYzdTb3gN3By04DKfncyvNQpOQ8_6Y2nPGSoKAYFCm15zdsmh7XC0qFa8GFfSi9tbyi5073WaTTtbDd-zi5Co7u5gjnyzsAXmSwGlxTsJ-_3g?key=W6yNtBPQeTMkhGR4SzN_Du94" alt=""/></figure>



I walked through the mechanics of how the Trump team calculated these estimates, because it&#8217;s important to grasp how little thought was put into coming up with the numbers. They quite literally made this simplistic estimation, then decided the reciprocal tariff would be half of that made up number to seem forgiving. It’s not forgiving.&nbsp;



Now let’s move into discerning the economic impact of these announcements, assuming they hold (and given what we’ve seen from the administration so far, who the hell knows if they will).&nbsp;



The Budget Lab analyzed the impacts of the tariffs and came up with the following:&nbsp;



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Short-term: US real GDP growth in 2025 is expected to be 0.9% to 1.0% lower due to the tariffs.</li>



<li>Long-term: The US economy is projected to be permanently 0.3% to 0.6% smaller — equivalent to an annual loss of $90 billion to $180 billion in 2024 dollars. Global GDP also shrinks in the long run, though China’s GDP remains largely unaffected, per the estimates.&nbsp;</li>



<li>Prices: The short-term price level on all goods rises by 2.1% to 2.6%, translating to a per-household consumer loss of $3,400 to $4,200 in 2024 dollars. Food prices specifically are projected to increase by 3.7%, nearly double the recent grocery inflation rate.</li>
</ul>



In chart form, the GDP hit looks something like this, and remember that this doesn’t even consider retaliation from other countries: 



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcKHAZPxWH-G9mhkzE1piXmzoGFImjJYA624-sczafH8dnVQYgm-2PGx7SALqKvbxXsVo8lEOK2vzW0FzDqTtQ-YJp9SrEBdMtgN86oSoat1cMUixUXumq1JVF7Kht9pB-Hjw_9?key=W6yNtBPQeTMkhGR4SzN_Du94" alt=""/></figure>



I liked the way Brad Setser, one of my favorite economists on trade, put it: 



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXddKQdzeVqSsluKgtqJHnKYYMXmY1hv3H8VFIQlO9qhbbcEIRLzJZOTdJAJpHJ3p8DGVyhwwm1cQTV3QDKO8ysBdKAi8FZZa3olz0SLzj-heSzPZX2WZZTevrKgigtNIQ9zgLMf?key=W6yNtBPQeTMkhGR4SzN_Du94" alt=""/></figure>



If you’re not familiar with the impact of oil shocks on the economy, the experience of seeing what follows (hint: a recession) is a sobering one.&nbsp;



How likely is said recession? Well, Neil Dutta of Renaissance Macro has moved up his implied probability of recession to 89%. I listen when Neil warns about recession because he was one of the only economists who said a recession being imminent between 2022-2024 was nonsense whilst everyone else had their odds at 100%.&nbsp;



Breathe in, breathe out.&nbsp;



This is all under the assumption that these tariffs hold. I, as well as the market as a whole, seem to be in denial and think cooler heads will prevail. Let’s hope so.&nbsp;



Buckle up — the uncertainty and volatility are only just getting started.



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US economy braces for the largest tariffs in over a century

Donovan Choy

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FDUSD, the sixth-largest stablecoin (market cap $2.5 billion), saw a significant depeg yesterday morning to $0.91. The peg has since recovered, though FDUSD suffered a market cap loss of about $200m.



The cause? The tweets of Tron founder Justin Sun.



Sun blasted First Digital, the issuer of FUSD, in a tweet alleging that the Hong Kong-based firm was “effectively insolvent and unable to fulfill client fund redemptions” for its stablecoin.



<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">First Digital Trust (FDT) is effectively insolvent and unable to fulfill client fund redemptions. I strongly recommend that users take immediate action to secure their assets. There are significant loopholes in both the trust licensing process in Hong Kong and the internal risk…&mdash; H.E. Justin Sun 🍌 (@justinsuntron) <a href="https://twitter.com/justinsuntron/status/1907453216524243373?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 2, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Sun’s tweet included a link to a CoinDesk article detailing Techteryx’s lawsuit against First Digital’s CEO Vincent Chok for alleged mismanagement of the former’s reserves. Sun had previously been <a href="https://fortune.com/crypto/2024/12/18/justin-sun-coindesk-matt-murray-banana-resign-article/">accused</a> of influencing CoinDesk’s editorial decisions, which resulted in the removal of key editorial staff.



Techteryx is the issuer of the TrueUSD (TUSD) stablecoin, and had previously established First Digital as a fiduciary to manage its reserves.



The lawsuit alleges First Digital had misappropriated $456 million of Techteryx’s monies into “unauthorized trade finance loans.”



First Digital immediately denounced Sun’s allegations as a “smear campaign,” claiming that FDUSD was &#8220;completely solvent&#8221; and that the company would &#8220;pursue legal action to protect its rights and reputation.”&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 recent allegations by Justin Sun against First Digital Trust are completely false. This dispute is with TUSD and not with <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24FDUSD&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$FDUSD</a>. First Digital is completely solvent. Every dollar backing <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24FDUSD&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$FDUSD</a> is completely, secure, safe and accounted for with US backed T-Bills. The…&mdash; First Digital (@FirstDigitalHQ) <a href="https://twitter.com/FirstDigitalHQ/status/1907469378876215803?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 2, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Sun doubled down in a second <a href="https://x.com/justinsuntron/status/1907481239143199016">tweet</a> an hour later, asserting that his claim regarding FDT’s insolvency was “a factual statement.”



According to First Digital’s latest February 2025 <a href="https://firstdigitallabs.com/transparency">monthly reserve report</a>, the company’s reserves at the time totaled $2,051,348,188 — backing a total issued supply of $2,041,924,819 FDUSD.



Like most centralized stablecoins, First Digital’s collateral backing consisted of primarily US Treasury bills, overnight fixed deposits, and US dollars.



While attestation reports are helpful, there is still an element level of trust and counterparty risk inherent to stablecoins, Cork Protocol co-founder <a href="https://x.com/robdogeth?lang=en">Rob Schmitt</a> told Blockworks.



“If stablecoins are to underpin the global financial system, there will be a clear demand to hedge against these risks, without which there could be a lot of contagion potentially.”



“It’s not so different from what happened with USDC’s depeg during the Silicon Valley Bank chaos. There wasn&#8217;t fraud as claimed, but there was spillover of collateral damage from counterparty risk, which is inherent to any stablecoin design.”



FDUSD is largely known for being a stablecoin used on the Binance exchange, acting as a replacement for Binance’s BUSD stablecoin.



BUSD’s issuer, Paxos, was ordered by the New York Department of Financial Services to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/binance-fdusd-busd">shut down</a> the stablecoin in February 2023.



<a href="https://intel.arkm.com/explorer/token/first-digital-usd">Arkham</a> data shows that Binance holds the large majority (95%) of the FDUSD supply.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdZnCkfuFMdTBTFzC9SPIsdi6Jg6NWZccSwHS56qP4R7g4GyFY4EmKcFm1DBmu7wuULbRauWcCByQz_N8WqPxslEgy_KCE2QXnkh0w9juYFd5grvH6ZF2J-334Qiq9D2-GgrCUTbA?key=G9xeC3Fqx62zQphdlmNqvEM5" alt=""/></figure>



In response to the debacle, Aave has frozen FDUSD depositing and borrowing on its BNB Chain deployment.



<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 don&#39;t think there&#39;s any issue with fdUSD, but as an abundance of caution and to protect Aave users,<a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24FDUSD&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$FDUSD</a> deposits &amp; borrows have been frozen on Aave BNB instance. If you&#39;re a current user no change or risk, freezing a reserve just means no new position can be created.&mdash; Marc “Billy” Zeller 👻 🦇🔊 (@lemiscate) <a href="https://twitter.com/lemiscate/status/1907472403795791903?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 2, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



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Justin Sun’s allegations of FDUSD insolvency cause 9% depeg

David Canellis

Pete Rizzo

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Can BitCoin be “trusted”? Will anyone accept bitcoins as payment? Could bitcoin eventually replace national currencies and “break the monopoly power of the Federal Reserve”?



These were questions fielded by then-lead developer Gavin Andresen, 14 years ago this week.&nbsp; Andresen was speaking on the <a href="https://www.econtalk.org/andresen-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currency/">first podcast episode dedicated</a> to “BitCoin.” (The price was a cool $0.73.)



This hour-long EconTalk chat was recorded in March 2011, back in the very early months of GPU mining. It&#8217;s still worth listening to this episode, for nothing more than to transport yourself back to your first few times hearing about Bitcoin.&nbsp;



You can relive the curiosity in real time, as Andresen walks host Russ Roberts — the one who sounds eerily like <a href="https://x.com/pete_rizzo_/status/1886391766460330376">Michael Saylor</a> — through the basics (as they were when you mined coins on your laptop and they traded for 90 cents apiece).



Those days are obviously long gone. Almost 95% of the bitcoin supply has been mined, and solo mining is no longer guaranteed to net any bitcoin at all. It’s that enshrined scarcity that’s now drawing institutions and sovereigns to buy bitcoin that already exists. They don’t even need to run the software.



But just because mining is not necessarily profitable now doesn’t mean it’s not possible — you can mine Bitcoin today with solo rigs like the <a href="https://bitaxe.org/">BitAxe</a>, <a href="https://d-central.tech/the-piaxe-one-asic-one-vote/">PiAxe</a>, and other <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/mine-bitcoin-from-your-pocket">customized Raspberry Pi builds</a>. And solo miners regularly solve blocks — at least more than a <a href="https://mempool.space/mining/pool/solock">dozen over the past year</a> — with their luck usually boosted by <a href="https://theminermag.com/news/2025-01-30/bitcoin-foundation-solo-mining/">donated</a> or otherwise shared hash rate.



However, it’s still so rare now that when solo miners do solve blocks, we <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solo-bitcoin-miner-solves-block">collectively celebrate</a>: Successful solo mining is the exception and not the rule, even if it wasn’t always meant to be that way.



We know that Satoshi had <a href="https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/posts/bitcointalk/20/">pushed</a> to “postpone the GPU arms race as long as we can for the good of the network,” and in the first two years <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/36vnmr/heres_what_satoshi_wrote_to_the_man_responsible/">encouraged</a> Laszlo Hanyecz to slow down work on GPU mining, <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/satoshi-invented-gpu-mining-to-defend-the-network-says-early-dev">saying</a> that “the big attraction is that anybody can download Bitcoin and start mining with their laptop.”



It was those laptop miners who bootstrapped bitcoin with their CPUs. Satoshi, by opting not to sell his coins, left the responsibility of distributing and decentralizing the supply with new users.&nbsp;



Whether those initial miners were aware of their critical role in bitcoin’s future is moot — they were interacting with the Bitcoin network in a tangible way that supported Satoshi’s vision of what it could be.



This all means that solo mining is anything but performative. Far from it. Consider solo mining on par with spiritually fighting alongside Satoshi in the trenches of the GPU arms race.



Because Bitcoin is more than a technology — it’s a supratechnology, encompassing computer science, math, sociology, politics, philosophy, psychology and economics.



Listening back to Andresen speak in 2011, what stuck most of all is that the reason Bitcoin is so attractive to institutions and sovereign nations in 2025 is very different from what made it so interesting to early adopters in the nascent 2010s. And that’s okay.



In the podcast, Andresen reasons that when Bitcoin mining reaches the point it has today, i.e. when it takes “dedicated fleets of computers with high-speed network interfaces […] big iron to actually do all that transaction processing,” that those who’d been generating bitcoins on their own computers, “and who like the fact that they can be a self-contained unit,” might not be so happy about “trusting someone running these bigger data computers.”



Obviously, there are many reasons to solo-mine bitcoin, even with the few extra steps required now compared to 2011.&nbsp;



But most importantly, among them is the very off chance that you’ll (at least for the time it takes for Bitcoin to add the next block) be the one to dictate the state of the network — not multibillion-dollar companies or other hypercapitalized operations, however well-intentioned.



— David Canellis



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



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



“Benevolent dictator.” “De-facto lead.” While there’s a lot of nice descriptions about Bitcoin’s inner-workings in this 2011 podcast (I personally think mainstream coverage of the subject was actually better “back then”), it’s hard not to focus squarely on its real historical significance. This podcast provides an almost eerie backdrop to the events that would force Gavin Andresen from his “leadership position” in the open-source project he inherited from Satoshi not some months before the recording.



Fast-forward to the 23:00 mark, and you’ll find Andresen opening up about some of the thornier parts of the software development process that are still a mystery (even to people who have spent a decade watching the Bitcoin charts like me).&nbsp;



At around this mark, Andresen begins diving into the rights and privileges he believed he had as project maintainer, which, while common to open-source projects, were eventually torn away by the project users, who didn’t want to run <a href="https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_XT">his more experimental forks</a>. As Bitcoin begins to consider coming soft fork upgrades, (see my most recent conversation with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdgQ3IflBJ0">Jeremy Rubin</a>), it’s a reminder that the core of the system remains fragile human consensus, along with software, a written medium that, due to the nature of evolving hardware, must change. That Andresen himself was <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2017/05/19/where-is-gavin-andresen-the-quiet-exile-of-bitcoins-former-face">eventually evicted over his attempts</a> to exert authority over this process makes listening to this podcast, with this context, bittersweet. 



— Rizzo



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



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



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



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



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



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

Bitcoin is up 11,000,000% since this 2011 podcast episode

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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WisdomTree’s giving institutions access to their <a href="https://www.wisdomtree.com/investments/digital-funds">tokenized funds</a> across Arbitrum, Base, Avalanche, Ethereum and Optimism with its WisdomTree Connect, the team exclusively told Blockworks.&nbsp;



“Historically, WisdomTree Connect was only on Ethereum, and we think it&#8217;s really important for availability” to allow users to get access to other EVM chains, especially given that WisdomTree prides itself in being “chain agnostic.” Its more retail-focused Prime app, for example, is built on Stellar, WisdomTree’s Maredith Hannon told me.



It also means that its clientele can use the various chains without ever leaving their own ecosystem.



The team had a “lot of interest” from institutional clients for tokenized funds, which led to it launching 13 tokenized funds on its institutional RWA platform.



“We, on purpose, built a suite that really allows any investor to build a diversified portfolio onchain. A lot of the input that we&#8217;ve received from the market is, ‘There&#8217;s plenty of money market funds. What else do you have?’”



The suite includes equity index funds, fixed income funds, asset allocation funds and, of course, WisdomTree’s signature money market fund, WTGXX.&nbsp;



Hannon added that their institutional clients have been looking for alternatives as yields come down. Specifically, investors have been aiming for higher-yield option alternatives to fixed-income products.&nbsp;



“This just gives them more optionality and more availability, where they can build out a diversified portfolio that they would do in the traditional world for asset management, in a way that&#8217;s still onchain and still also being able to be held native in their own wallets,” Hannon explained.&nbsp;



The Connect platform itself is what Hannon called “tech first,” allowing the clients to own the wallet infrastructure. Instead of a whitelist, they use soulbound NFTs that “essentially tag the wallets as WisdomTree wallets,” allowing peer-to-peer transfers between flagged Connect wallets.&nbsp;



“This is really the starting point for us to be able to say clients [can] […] create a network of networks. So let&#8217;s say that [a] […] financial institution developed its own type of identity solution. We could start to create a network of networks of identity to bring more and more investors onchain organically,” Hannon said.



Outside of the newest rollout, the team has been busy applying its Government Money Market Digital Fund as a <a href="https://gov.frax.finance/t/fip-427-wtgxx-as-reserve-asset-for-frax-usd/3649">reserve asset for Frax USD</a>. They also <a href="https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/wisdomtree-wtgxx-step-application/28756/1">applied</a> for an investment from Arbitrum’s RWA ecosystem.



The market cap of WisdomTree’s WTGXX sits at $108 million, according to rwa.xyz. That puts it below the offerings from both Franklin and BlackRock.



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



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

Exclusive: WisdomTree Connect expands to Base, Arbitrum, Avalanche and Optimism

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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There was talk at last week’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-exchange-etf-event-vegas">Exchange ETF conference</a> around more crypto products coming as different types of investors enter the market.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Grayscale Investments is among those expanding its product lineup, introducing a Bitcoin Covered Call ETF (BTCC) and a Bitcoin Premium Income ETF (BPI).



The strategies “may be considered as an alternative income stream that’s less correlated to traditional income-oriented investments,” the firm notes. They aim to distribute income monthly.



BTCC buys and sells call and put option contracts that utilize a bitcoin ETP (i.e. its GBTC and BTC trusts) as the reference asset. Its sale of call options may limit the fund’s gains when those bitcoin ETPs see share price increases.



As for BPI, the ETF writes calls targeting so-called out-of-the-money strike prices (those higher than bitcoin’s spot price). It’s meant to balance upside participation and income generation.



It was clear that <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-etf-options-trading-begins">options on bitcoin ETFs</a> — letting institutional investors better manage BTC exposures in different market conditions — <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-etf-options-trading-begins">marked a new chapter</a> for the asset class. Issuers have debuted funds utilizing options to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/calamos-btc-etf-downside-protection">offer downside protection</a>, for example.&nbsp;



Another new chapter? Crypto index funds.&nbsp;



A Grayscale registration statement <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1729997/000095017025047994/gdlc_s-3_032525.htm">filed</a> Monday is another step toward the firm trying to uplist its Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund to an ETF (after NYSE Arca’s <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/11/04/2974196/0/en/Grayscale-Digital-Large-Cap-Fund-Ticker-GDLC-Application-to-Uplist-as-Exchange-Traded-Product-Now-Published-in-Federal-Register.html">19b-4</a> last year). That fund, currently trading on OTC Markets, holds bitcoin, ether, solana, XRP and cardano. 



Hashdex, Bitwise and others are also looking to offer index ETFs that go beyond <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/trump-media-etf-cryptodotcom">BTC and ETH exposure</a>. We’ll find out in the coming months what the SEC has to say about that.



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



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



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

New Grayscale launches, filing reflects crypto product innovation boom

President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced sweeping new global tariffs that will place a 10% levy on almost all imports, plus higher rates on about 60 countries the administration says have the highest trade deficits with the US.&nbsp;



Among those countries, China will be hit with a 34% reciprocal tariff, the European Union 20%, Vietnam 46% and Taiwan 32%.



“Foreign nations will finally be asked to pay for the privilege of access to our market, the biggest market in the world,” Trump said Wednesday afternoon during remarks from the White House Rose Garden. “We&#8217;re right now the biggest market in the world.”&nbsp;



Trump said his team determined the “worst offenders” by considering levies, “currency manipulation and trade barriers” foreign nations place on US exports. China, Trump claimed Wednesday, charges a total of 67% on US imports. 



<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">They made a chart. <a href="https://t.co/hQQlDj7Rs3">pic.twitter.com/hQQlDj7Rs3</a>&mdash; Ben Strack 🟪 (@strack_ben) <a href="https://twitter.com/strack_ben/status/1907530578754163002?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 2, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



In an effort to bring automobile manufacturing back onshore, a 25% tariff on car imports — which Trump first announced last week — will go into effect tonight at midnight. The administration says additional levies on auto parts will be rolled out in May.&nbsp;



“Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country, and you see it happening already,” Trump said. “We will supercharge our domestic industrial base, we will pry open foreign markets and break down foreign trade barriers.”&nbsp;



Critics of the policies say tariff hikes will lead to higher prices and reduced consumer spending, which in turn will lower business expansion and investments. Analysts from Goldman Sachs raised their <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/trump-to-unveil-tariff-policy-plans">recessionary odds</a> for the next year from 20% to 35% earlier this week.&nbsp;



After a relatively flat day of trading Wednesday as investors waited for this afternoon’s announcement, the S&amp;P 500 and Nasdaq Composite closed in the green, gaining 0.7% and 0.9%, respectively. Futures, however, dipped into the red. The S&amp;P 500 slipped almost 2% in after-hours while the Nasdaq Composite lost 2.7%.&nbsp;



Bitcoin and ether, on the other hand, fell in the moments after Trump’s announcement, losing about 2.4%.



Markets had likely priced in reciprocal tariffs between 15% and 20%, Sevens Report Research founder Tom Essaye said Wednesday.&nbsp;



The Trump administration was tight-lipped about the policies leading up to Wednesday’s announcement. The president was still finalizing plans late Tuesday evening, according to people familiar.&nbsp;



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

US equities, cryptocurrencies fall on Trump’s sweeping global tariffs 

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 is waffling around the $130 mark after a dip under $123 earlier this week. And we seem to be trailing the broader market hokey-pokey around the ongoing <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/trump-to-unveil-tariff-policy-plans">Trump tariff drama</a> and bitcoin&#8217;s rejection below $88k.&nbsp;



But a more compelling story might be bubbling beneath the surface of this modest recovery.



Solana has been in cooldown mode for a while now, following its record-breaking Q1 surge driven by election euphoria and memecoin speculation. Daily network fees have <a href="https://defillama.com/fees/solana">plunged</a> more than 97% from their January peak. Transaction volume has <a href="https://defillama.com/chain/Solana?chainTokenVolume=true">cratered</a>. Even the retail-magnet pump.fun is <a href="https://dune.com/queries/4322646/7260251">fatigued</a>: Fewer than 1% of new tokens now reach tradable status, and bonding levels are at their lowest since January.



But the cooldown isn&#8217;t a collapse. Not yet. It looks more like a recomposition, actually. The memecoin tide is receding in the wake of fresh Solana protocols like Zeta Market&#8217;s <a href="https://x.com/bulletxyz_/status/1899941207155114495">dedicated</a> <a href="https://x.com/bulletxyz_/status/1899941207155114495">trading layer</a> Bullet, BlackRock&#8217;s <a href="https://x.com/Blockworks_/status/1900279952630579432">tokenized $BUIDL fund</a>, and Solana-based Zebec Network&#8217;s <a href="https://x.com/Zebec_HQ/status/1905268164159553627">crypto debit card</a>. None of these are really designed for peak virality. They&#8217;re just useful. It&#8217;s crazy, I know, but they actually have genuine utility. Madness.



Meanwhile, Solana ETF filings from Fidelity and Franklin Templeton are <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-exchange-etf-event-vegas">advancing</a>. Institutional futures products <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sol-futures-etfs-to-launch">are live</a>. BlackRock is onboarding real-world dollars. Solana&#8217;s uptime is still <a href="https://status.solana.com/uptime">perfect</a>. Validator diversity is holding. It&#8217;s actually wild that the price hasn&#8217;t caught up with all the good news yet.



Technically, SOL is hanging on to a key support zone. Recent price drawdowns mirror the drop in activity, even as the foundation underneath looks sturdier and sturdier. The only thing that&#8217;s really changed is that the speculative froth is gone. But what&#8217;s left behind is evidence of structural integrity.



Now, all we need is the façade: tools, platforms, utilities and apps that solve real problems, but which wear the same chaotic, meme-dripping, degen-vibe game-feel that brought the whole world to Solana in the first place. The pipes are ready; we just need to get the milk and honey flowing.



My best guess is that the next up cycle will belong to whoever figures out how to make actual usefulness feel like irreverent mischief.



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



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



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

Post meme-ism: Solana’s quiet pivot to utility

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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We already revisited the Dan Tapiero quote about an imminent <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-ipo-boom-etoro-kraken">“crypto IPO, M&amp;A, SPAC boom.”</a> And I wrote about the possible <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-ma-mergers-feeding-frenzy-kraken">“feeding frenzy”</a> coming on the M&amp;A side.&nbsp;



Then late yesterday, Circle, the issuer of stablecoin USDC, laid out <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/circle-files-s1-ahead-of-ipo">plans for an IPO</a>.&nbsp;



&#8220;The confluence of traditional financial infrastructure and blockchain innovation, as exemplified by companies like Circle, presents compelling opportunities for institutional investors,” Offchain Labs’ Ira Auerbach said in a statement.&nbsp;



It seems <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/forward-guidance-stablecoins-bullish-institutional-das">optimism around stablecoin growth</a> (and the potential for legislation) would signal high interest in Circle. Not to mention the potential for the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stablecoins-tokenization-blackrock-galaxy-das#">broader tokenization segment</a>.



But it’s worth noting that while Circle’s 2024 revenue was $1.7 billion, it paid $908 million in distribution costs to Coinbase.&nbsp;



Circle’s net income for last year was $156 million. Its competitor Tether, meanwhile, <a href="https://tether.io/news/tether-hits-13-billion-profits-for-2024-and-all-time-highs-in-u-s-treasury-holdings-usdt-circulation-and-reserve-buffer-in-q4-2024-attestation/">reported</a> a profit of $13 billion in 2024.&nbsp;



Looking at another publicly-traded crypto company: Coinbase’s 2024 net income was $2.6 billion (on $6.6 billion in revenue). Meaning Circle’s net profit margin was nearly five times less than Coinbase’s, Dom Kwok <a href="https://x.com/dom_kwok/status/1907416370746102008">pointed out</a> on X. Kwok, a former analyst at Blackstone and Goldman Sachs, added: “If the Fed lowers rates later this year (as expected), Circle&#8217;s metrics will only weaken further.”&nbsp;



After all, the S-1 notes that 99% of Circle’s revenues come from reserve interest income, which is sensitive to fluctuations in interest rates.



Circle explains in the filing that the emergence of yield-bearing digital assets “represents an additional source of competition, particularly in light of the current high interest rate environment.”



Hence, probably, why Circle acquired tokenized money market fund issuer Hashnote to help market participants more easily move <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/circle-hashnote-deal-tokenized-money">between cash and yield</a>. 



There will be plenty to monitor here as to when we could see Circle stock on the New York Stock Exchange, and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/circles-valuation-could-top-5b-post-roadshow">at what valuation</a>. Stay tuned.



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



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

Circle plans an IPO, but faces a competitive landscape

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



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President Trump is slated to reveal his long-promised reciprocal tariff policies at 4 pm ET from the White House Rose Garden.&nbsp;



Just hours from the event, we still know very little. Trump and his team were working on the plans late into Tuesday evening, according to people familiar.&nbsp;



We do know, though, that Trump in the past has floated imposing additional levies on copper, lumber and pharmaceuticals. I <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/liberation-day-tariffs-us-market-growth">wrote yesterday</a> about why I’m personally most interested in hearing about a copper tariff — the US currently imports about 50% of the amount we use, and the metal is in just about everything.&nbsp;



Trump has also said he plans to slap tariffs greater than or equal to all foreign levies placed on goods other countries import from the US.&nbsp;



White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said yesterday that whatever is announced on Wednesday afternoon will go into effect “immediately.”&nbsp;



In addition to the new policies, Trump’s 25% tariff on imported cars will start just after midnight tonight. Imported auto parts will be taxed at the same rate starting in May. S&amp;P Global estimates that roughly 46% of cars sold in the US in 2024 were imported.&nbsp;



Ahead of the auto tariffs, General Motors on Tuesday announced that its Q1 sales were more than 16% higher than last year, a signal Americans may be planning their car purchases before prices increase.&nbsp;



It’s worth noting that while the discourse around tariffs has unsurprisingly revolved around the potential impact on consumer prices, the policies could also have a significant effect on growth.&nbsp;



Goldman Sachs this week upped its odds of a recession in the next year from 20% to 35%. Analysts said tariffs are expected to lead to a slowdown in business expansion and investments.&nbsp;



To be fair, the Trump administration has admitted that tariff policies are going to cause some “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/18/business/economy/trump-recession-tariffs-inflation.html">short-term pain</a>.” But they still maintain that these levies are the way to bring back domestic manufacturing. Those against the plan <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Business/trumps-tariffs-cause-recession-experts/story?id=120329597">argue</a> that it could take years for businesses to bring operations back onshore and the impact on consumer spending may have long-term effects on the economy.&nbsp;



Liberation Day comes after Republicans held on to two open Florida House seats in Tuesday’s special elections, although the party won with a much narrower margin than they had in November. This could present some challenges for the GOP come midterms.&nbsp;



As Americans (and the world) await what Trump will say, several lawmakers on Capitol Hill are already playing defense. Former Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell has joined Democrat Sen. Tim Kaine’s efforts to block Trump’s tariffs on Canada.&nbsp;



In a Truth Social post Wednesday, Trump called McConnell and other Republicans who have said they’ll back Kaine’s resolution “disloyal.” The president added that those supporting the effort to block his Canadian tariffs are “playing with the lives of the American people” as the levies are aimed at curbing fentanyl trafficking.&nbsp;



Alongside McConnell are fellow Republicans Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Rand Paul. We’ll be watching for any additional Congressional efforts to block tariffs after Trump’s announcement today.



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



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

Trump gears up to unveil ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs 

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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Babylon Labs has released details of Genesis, the first-ever bitcoin-secured layer-1 blockchain. 



Based on Babylon’s own bitcoin staking technology, the chain marks a turning point in bitcoin’s utility. Genesis has the potential to turn BTC from a passive store-of-value asset (derided as a “pet rock”) into a cornerstone for proof-of-stake (PoS) security and liquidity.



Ancient Babylon’s Code of Hammurabi, one of the oldest recorded legal codes (circa 1754 BC), introduced the concept of codified, public and enforceable rules with clear penalties for violations. It marked a transition from informal justice (based on trust, status or brute force) to a formal system of accountability.



Babylon’s bitcoin staking introduces a modern crypto-native parallel, codifying slashing-based accountability into bitcoin staking.



Since Babylon’s August 2024 launch of <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/0xresearch-newsletter-babylon-btc-staking-deposits">Phase 1</a>, the protocol has attracted as much as 57.5k BTC staked in self-custodial contracts. It <a href="https://defillama.com/">ranks</a> third by staking market cap — behind <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/lido">Lido</a> and <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/eigenlayer">EigenLayer</a>, which currently have about $4.4 billion in assets. Despite this impressive figure, it represents just 0.27% of bitcoin’s total supply.



Instead of relying on custodial bridges or centralized intermediaries, the Babylon protocol enables native BTC holders to secure PoS networks without ever relinquishing control of their coins. That focus on self-custody and trust-minimized participation appeals to long-time Bitcoiners like Spencer Yang, co-founder of Fractal Bitcoin.



“Bitcoin OGs really care about custodying [their] own keys, having control over [their] own financial decisions,” Yang <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UM4V2PLCPFQ">said</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The “three facets”</h2>



Babylon Genesis functions as:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>A bitcoin-secured L1 — built on CometBFT from <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/cosmos-ecosystem-changes-after-skip-acquisition">the Cosmos stack</a> with dual-quorum staking: 100 validators staking BABY (the L1’s native token) plus 60 BTC-staked finality providers. The network boasts hourly Bitcoin timestamping for fast unbonding and protection against <a href="https://github.com/slowmist/Cryptocurrency-Security-Audit-Guide/blob/main/Blockchain-Common-Vulnerability-List.md#long-range-attack">long-range attacks</a>.</li>



<li>A control plane — Genesis coordinates security and staking information across what it terms BSNs, or Bitcoin Secured Networks. BSNs use Genesis for timestamping, finality and protocol integration, sharing revenue back to Genesis participants.</li>



<li>A BTC liquidity hub — with DEXs, restaking, vaults and, in a subsequent phase, BTC LST minting. Genesis will compete as a prime venue for BTCFi, with other trust-minimized bridge destinations building on BitVM.</li>
</ul>



Babylon certainly has some narrative winds in its sails. “Babylon Genesis feels like something that could change the entire system,” <a href="https://x.com/jack_mfer/status/1907381085761134849">wrote</a> @jack_mfer on X. “Every network that connects to Genesis benefits from Bitcoin’s strength.”



Dozens of other protocols and teams have rallied around the Babylon ecosystem, such as:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Liquid staking: PumpBTC, Chakra, Solv, Acorn, Bedrock</li>



<li>Custodians/wallets: Binance, Anchorage, Cobo, OKX</li>



<li>Bitcoin-secured networks: Osmosis, Sei, Nomic, Manta, Corn, Cosmos Hub</li>



<li>Finality providers: Kiln, Chorus One, P2P, Figment, Blockdaemon</li>



<li>Infra: AltLayer, Ankr, Satlayer</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Next up: A trust-minimized bridge</h2>



To fulfill its role as a liquidity hub, Babylon is building a trust-minimized bridge between Bitcoin and Genesis, with research grounded in <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-scaling-price-evolution">BitVM2</a>. The goal is to remove the need for trusted multisigs in BTC bridging and enable native staking for apps and other networks without needing upgrades to Bitcoin Core, explained Babylon co-founder David Tse.



“Rather than waiting for protocol changes, simply leverage Bitcoin&#8217;s existing capabilities in novel ways,” Tse <a href="https://x.com/dntse/status/1906695727201620299">said</a>, “replacing trusted committees with bitcoin-backed stakers who face automatic slashing for misbehavior.”



The ambitions of Babylon Genesis thus go beyond being a proof-of-concept bitcoin-secured chain, but extend to a Bitcoin-native coordination layer designed around trustless interoperability, liquidity and PoS security with crypto’s premier asset.



Bitcoin’s market cap is larger than all other crypto assets combined, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKUvoJsKfxY">noted</a> Dan Held, general partner at Asymmetric. “If we unlock any sort of DeFi activity on top of Bitcoin, that would soon be larger than all other DeFi combined.”



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Babylon Genesis to launch as a Bitcoin-secured L1 and liquidity hub

Kate Irwin

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



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When it comes to crypto gaming, is there any point in taking on the risk that comes with building a “AAA” game — or should studios just focus on simpler mobile games with dynamic economies instead?&nbsp;



Crypto founders at Ronin and Avalanche clashed over the issue on X this week.&nbsp;



In light of <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/gunzilla-token-letter-speculation-off-grid">Off The Grid</a>’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/gunzilla-games-gun-token-launch">GUN token launch</a> on Monday and perceived success as a blockchain game thus far, Ava Labs founder and CEO Emin Gün Sirer declared: “AVAX won gaming for sure. If you’re developing a AAA game, there’s only one proven platform to build on.”



“AAA” is a gaming industry buzzword with no official definition attached, but it typically refers to games that cost $25 million to $40 million or more to make and come from larger studios with substantial marketing budgets.&nbsp;



Off The Grid studio Gunzilla Games has its own dedicated, private Avalanche L1 chain called Gunz. The chain is nearing 500 million total transactions since its launch, according to Avascan <a href="https://testnet.avascan.info/blockchain/gunz/home">data</a> as of Wednesday morning.&nbsp;



GUN’s future price will be difficult to predict given the slated long-term unlocks and added supply to come, as some have <a href="https://x.com/RealJonahBlake/status/1906739642176766237">pointed out</a>. The token currently sits at a $32 million market cap, and its price is down 54% from its all-time high. But only 6% of the token’s total supply is currently in circulation.



Ronin, which made a name for itself as a gaming chain with its flagship Axie Infinity back in 2021, has <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-gaming-biggest-hurdles">taken a markedly different approach</a> to crypto gaming. They’ve chosen to focus on mobile gameplay and game economies instead of on graphics, allowing them to keep budgets small while making the best games possible given those restrictions.



“AAA Web3 gaming is a waste of money,” <a href="https://x.com/Psycheout86/status/1907329569725481154">wrote</a> Ronin cofounder and chair Aleksander Larsen in response to Sirer on Wednesday morning.



“Come to $RON and let’s figure out the hard economic problems of web3 gaming together. $AVAX is focusing on the wrong thing and the token holders will suffer as a consequence,” Larsen continued, adding: “Congrats on your victory” with a salute emoji.



Is Avalanche focusing on the wrong thing? For one, the chain has other types of games that aren’t “AAA,” like Spellborne, a pixelated magic game.&nbsp;



Then there’s the question of objectives for each game — as well as each one’s target audience. Every crypto game will likely have a substantial cohort of players who are there just to “farm” or extract as much value as possible because of a crypto game’s play-to-earn elements, like <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/pixels-founder-botters-death-threats">Pixels</a> founder Luke Barwikowski has found with his Ronin-based pixelated MMORPG.&nbsp;



But should higher-fidelity graphics be the goal for crypto games — which result in much higher costs and risk?



Two years ago, with the likes of Shrapnel, Off The Grid, and other ambitious projects splashing onto the blockchain gaming scene, pushing for a “AAA” game was trendy. But with VC firms <a href="https://thedrop.beehiiv.com/p/sega-on-sui">pulling back</a> on the inflated funding rounds of the 2021 post-pandemic boom, the number of crypto games with AAA plans has declined significantly since 2020.&nbsp;



Last year, AAA titles made up less than 1% of crypto games, while indies made up over 90% of the total, per Game7 research. That ratio largely matches the broader gaming industry: <a href="https://vginsights.com/insights/article/video-game-insights-2021-market-report">Roughly 98%</a> of Steam games are classified as indie.&nbsp;



Across both crypto gaming and the broader gaming industry, more releasing titles have been indie. This may be due to broader economic factors, including the <a href="https://publish.obsidian.md/vg-layoffs/Archive/2025">waves of mass layoffs</a> and studio shutdowns we’ve seen for years now across the gaming industry.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfTw1aU41wO3PfUzGJaP0Xz2Mui1eUIAjLrHQ63L5sU2ccxsQ2sKUzbZfMsxi8iVt59l7IbNZ4Al3C-suJiDo-7xmtuhYE7NH0BlXwio0DxqVi2YYJbKe-hTNJsz9SoYDz5PXNDtg?key=YbN8Gw90K_EhQaG6kZkwLpgB" alt=""/></figure>



Mobile games also make up a large portion of the broader gaming pie, as <a href="https://www.pocketgamer.biz/mobile-accounts-for-49-of-global-games-market-share-despite-2-revenue-dip/#:~:text=Mobile%20accounts%20for%2049%25%20of,%25%20revenue%20dip%20%7C%20PocketGamer.biz">49% of games</a> are mobile titles, according to data from analytics firm Adjust published last year.



I think there’s substantially less room for multiple “AAA-budget” games in the crypto space specifically because you’re competing with the likes of Call of Duty and Fortnite and require much higher levels of continued capital and revenue. Whether AAA crypto games want to admit it or not, they’re in the same bracket as multibillion-dollar giants like Microsoft and Epic Games when it comes to PC player choice. Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War, for example, released in 2020 and reportedly <a href="https://www.pcgamer.com/games/call-of-duty/call-of-dutys-development-budget-ballooned-by-usd250-million-between-2015-and-2020-to-an-eye-watering-usd700-million/">cost Activision $700 million</a> to make.&nbsp;



Many typical gamers still aren’t going to get behind NFTs in video games, as we saw back in 2021 with smaller titles like the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. franchise. And we’ve seen this many times since with players’ mainly negative response to Ubisoft’s and Square Enix’s respective blockchain gaming endeavors.&nbsp;



Smaller games like mobile titles, however, aren’t at a major advantage. While 83% of mobile games are <a href="https://www.gamesindustry.biz/report-83-of-mobile-games-fail-in-the-three-years-after-launch">expected to fail</a>, those lower-budget games come at a lower cost to studios.



The market has corrected to fit more realistic expectations — including expectations around funding. Can the crypto industry fund more than one AAA game at a time? I’m not sure.



Ronin is doing well in its niche, and Off The Grid is a rare breakout of a game for the blockchain gaming sector.



There’s definitely room for both to succeed — and I think they’ll continue to attract completely different types of gamers to their titles.



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Ronin founder accuses Ava Labs of focusing on the ‘wrong things’

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This week marks the anniversary of two serendipitous Bitcoin posts from celebrities on opposite ends of the cultural spectrum: Neil deGrasse Tyson and Paris Hilton.



Apex influencer Hilton came first, on April Fool’s Day in 2021. In a brief CNBC <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1OJeexYXx4">interview</a>, Hilton was asked whether she was a bitcoin investor, considering her interest in NFTs.



“Yes! I’m very, very excited about that as well. It’s definitely the future,” she replied. It was near-peak bull market at the time, with the price of bitcoin breaking past $60,000 only two weeks earlier.



“Have you been in bitcoin for a while?”



“Yes.”



“Well, I guess it&#8217;s been a good trade,” joked the interviewer.



<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">oh no. oh no Bitcoin <a href="https://t.co/VaVSqpjtBQ">pic.twitter.com/VaVSqpjtBQ</a>&mdash; Joseph Young (@iamjosephyoung) <a href="https://twitter.com/iamjosephyoung/status/1377893183481384967?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 2, 2021</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



One year later, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson was pictured giving two thumbs-up at a rooftop bar along with Bitcoiners Alex Gladstein, <a href="https://x.com/pete_rizzo_/status/1875905143603892262">Saifedean Ammous</a>, and Dan Held.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Tyson expressed curiosity about bitcoin’s resilience, even as its price tumbled alongside global markets shaken by rate hikes, inflation, and geopolitical unrest. Gladstein tweeted:



“Neil asked great questions. One of his first ones was, ‘What if aliens come to earth with much more computing power — couldn’t they mine all the bitcoin?’” Which led to a great Saifedean explanation of the difficulty algorithm.”



What’s clear, looking back, is that these were signposts marking the beginning of the end of Bitcoin’s celebrity era.



<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">Scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson learning about <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Bitcoin?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Bitcoin</a> from the best 🙌 <a href="https://t.co/EEasTKcStP">pic.twitter.com/EEasTKcStP</a>&mdash; Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) <a href="https://twitter.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1510267231032254470?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 2, 2022</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



The roots of the celebrity era can be traced to the music industry in late 2013 — also peak bull market — when Snoop Lion (née Snoop Dogg) <a href="https://x.com/snoopdogg/status/407350025677586433">tweeted</a> that he wanted to accept bitcoin for his next album, to be &#8220;delivered by drone.&#8221; The sale never materialized, but the tweet sparked attention from Coinbase and BitPay, both eager to make it happen.



About a week later, Spice Girl Mel B began <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20140125122619/https://www.melaniebrown.com/2013/12/09/mel-b-to-accept-bitcoins-via-her-website/">accepting</a> bitcoin for her single “For Once in My Life,” even offering a discount to fans who paid in BTC “due to the extremely low transaction costs of using bitcoins.”



Still, the intent for both Mel B and Snoop Dogg — two of the first celebrities to publicly show interest in Bitcoin — was to experiment with bitcoin as money.



Six months later, 50 Cent raked in 700 BTC (~$400,000) for his 2014 album Animal Ambition, when bitcoin was still trading under $700.



He then forgot about it, only to be reminded by TMZ almost four years later, when a reporter <a href="https://www.tmz.com/2018/01/23/50-cent-made-millions-bitcoin-animal-ambition-album/">pointed</a> out it would’ve been worth between $7 million and $8.5 million. 50 Cent later <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/feb/27/50-cent-denies-reports-he-is-a-bitcoin-millionaire">confirmed</a> that the bitcoin was sold immediately upon receipt.



<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">50 Cent (0.000046 BTC) posted on instagram about making millions of dollars in Bitcoin and forgetting about doing it <a href="https://t.co/fycFbwMaUZ">https://t.co/fycFbwMaUZ</a> <a href="https://t.co/aD6VLj3zfS">pic.twitter.com/aD6VLj3zfS</a>&mdash; Neeraj K. Agrawal (@NeerajKA) <a href="https://twitter.com/NeerajKA/status/955913503080108032?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 23, 2018</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Around the same period, Lily Allen revealed that she had been offered “hundreds of thousands of bitcoins” to livestream a concert about 5 years earlier — but had turned it down with a dismissive “as if.” Some celebs clearly strayed too far from Bitcoin, resulting in <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/kim-kardashian-in-sec-crosshairs-for-ethereummax-promotion">awkward and costly</a> entanglements — the most <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11892491/Gisele-says-blindsided-FTX-failure-trusted-hype-SBF.html">severe</a> of which were ultimately <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/one-year-since-terra">triggered by events</a> that <a href="https://www.nansen.ai/research/blockchain-analysis-the-collapse-of-alameda-and-ftx">occurred</a> only one month after deGrasse Tyson’s thumbs-up picture from April 2022.



If that picture marked the beginning of the end for Bitcoin’s celebrity era, Trump’s recent alignment can be celebrated as the end of the end.&nbsp;



Bitcoin was suddenly no longer a financial quirk, but both bona fide money used by the US President to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4u-L9sS2r4">pay</a> for burgers in bars, and a credible safe-haven asset <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-sovereign-state-era">managed</a> by the Treasury and Commerce secretaries. Any individual celebrity adopting Bitcoin may never be as impressive.



So, what comes next, now that Bitcoin is in its post-celebrity era?&nbsp;



Think of it like music: the “post-” in genres like post-punk signals a turn back toward experimentation. No neater way to bring Bitcoin full circle in the culture than that.



— <a href="https://x.com/dcanellis/">David Canellis</a>



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



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



Some celebrities are better price indicators than others.&nbsp;



Patron Saint of Bitcoin Bottoms: Paris Hilton



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfepv6FxDo2ZEuiZjviCCEfGqxnRIv8ZEKi6CxRMAeCSbf2ABTNNv4d7E1_GpOCCD07knPDtSJc8DUIbKkMx5fAu9e4nJNnITEy-kwGBN3YOw_rRtOmcl4AgDBFP34BWYDT9obk3A?key=PVNMjxZsbdy0xg6DokwMECCn" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Paris Hilton with the founders of the failed Ethereum project The DAO (<a href="https://www.facebook.com/jaesonma/photos/futuristic-discussion-with-the-block-chain-disruptors-founders-of-wwwethereumorg/10154189696695120/">2015</a>)</figcaption></figure>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeESQUB6iGEk_rNKaCkSaYZLqSoOWez1704MQKbIgsaFmc7nbJtl16dLW3ckpGyEjw1SU5KfeE4xGkgleV-Mo2-YRNLLM04D34klJymtlksuZrYMUoiPt3Sg2p76DDMXR5n-6fMsA?key=PVNMjxZsbdy0xg6DokwMECCn" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Paris Hilton bullish on NFTs (<a href="https://parishilton.com/nft/">2021</a>)</figcaption></figure>



Patron Saint of Bitcoin Tops: Katy Perry



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1682" height="872" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Screenshot-2025-04-02-at-1.16.41 PM.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-99975" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Screenshot-2025-04-02-at-1.16.41 PM.png?w=1682 1682w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Screenshot-2025-04-02-at-1.16.41 PM.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Screenshot-2025-04-02-at-1.16.41 PM.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Screenshot-2025-04-02-at-1.16.41 PM.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Screenshot-2025-04-02-at-1.16.41 PM.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Screenshot-2025-04-02-at-1.16.41 PM.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Screenshot-2025-04-02-at-1.16.41 PM.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Screenshot-2025-04-02-at-1.16.41 PM.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Screenshot-2025-04-02-at-1.16.41 PM.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1682px) 100vw, 1682px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Katy Perry posts her “crypto claws” (<a href="https://www.instagram.com/katyperry/p/BeXchJzFkhJ/?hl=en">February 2018</a>)</figcaption></figure>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd_UebgMROYX07_Kcq6AMMlFhwDYd48HPKpL1BEDV0VACYSH7QbM_6WtZayHBx9mS6nkl6frS4GK6R8YDSiPEzA_pVmum95OSJMLu5XWctKgwd0BuJs_59s5yE91hKEV1sLYVAUsA?key=PVNMjxZsbdy0xg6DokwMECCn" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Katy Perry Instagram post (<a href="https://www.instagram.com/katyperry/p/CZ5Qw2-vVoW/?img_index=1">February 2022</a>)</figcaption></figure>



When you see Paris Hilton, buy. When you see Katy Perry, sell. I don’t make the rules.



— Rizzo



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Paris Hilton vs. Katy Perry: Which celebs are bitcoin buy signals?

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



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We finally have Circle’s <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1876042/000119312525070481/d737521ds1.htm#rom737521_1">S-1</a> and, honestly, it’s just as juicy as I had hoped.&nbsp;



It looks like Circle, which <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/circle-files-s1-ahead-of-ipo">plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange</a> under ticker CRCL, is aiming for a valuation of around $4 billion to $5 billion.&nbsp;



Some folks — including PitchBook’s Robert Le — have noted that it’s a rather low valuation. In Le’s case, he thinks it could be purposefully low.



Coinbase, when it went public in 2021, kicked off trading with a nearly $100 billion valuation. Obviously, the two companies, while very intertwined, have different business models, so don’t get too excited about Circle getting anywhere near those levels.&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">Circle earned ~$1.7b revenue in 2024 and paid out $900M+ to <a href="https://twitter.com/coinbase?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@coinbase</a> as a distribution partner That ~$1B going to Coinbase likely comes with little to no cost/opex to serve. At 10x earnings = $10 B mkt cap and likely contributes ~25% of <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24COIN&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$COIN</a> valuation For perspective -… <a href="https://t.co/2Et3yaSgas">pic.twitter.com/2Et3yaSgas</a>&mdash; James Ho (@jamesjho_) <a href="https://twitter.com/jamesjho_/status/1907187974594240647?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 1, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Especially if stablecoin legislation is passed.&nbsp;



But the roadshow will be the real test for the stablecoin issuer, Le told me.



“My guess is, if it all goes well, that valuation should push up much higher toward the end of their roadshow. And then that would be a positive signal,” especially if interest is higher than anticipated.&nbsp;



As Wyatt Lonergan of VanEck Ventures noted, the issuer will face questions around the market evolution and what could possibly be the beginning of “stablecoin wars,” which would see everyone, including big banks, look to issue their own stablecoins.&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">Partner costs are probably the biggest line item to pay attention to, but also the most misunderstood line item, coming out of Circle’s IPO filing. Today, Coinbase takes the lion share of USDC revenue as the primary distribution partner. $900m ish of that $1 billion number.… <a href="https://t.co/z7sFKTJRKw">https://t.co/z7sFKTJRKw</a>&mdash; Wyatt Lonergan (@Wyatt_Lonergan) <a href="https://twitter.com/Wyatt_Lonergan/status/1907191801884102978?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 1, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



It’ll “come down to how the market evolves and begins using stablecoins at scale. If that stable is USDC, then they’ll get a strong multiple even as their take rate declines, because the potential markets they can grow into are massive.”



But on the venture capital front, strong demand for the listing could open up a new exit path for crypto investments, and that would be a “shift that might encourage additional capital inflows into crypto startups.”



Circle could — and so far looks to be — just the start of a crypto IPO boom, with others like Kraken, Chainalysis and Fireblocks in the wings. Add in the pick up in M&amp;A activity and the liquidity routes are wide open for a lot of folks.



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Circle’s valuation could top $5B post-roadshow

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’ve got a dose of optimistic news for you this morning: From a venture capital perspective, the first quarter wasn’t so bad!



Preliminary data from PitchBook suggests that the quarter saw roughly $4.5 billion in VC spending, with half of that coming from Binance’s deal with Abu Dhabi’s MGX. To put that figure into context, we saw a little over $2 billion per quarter last year.



If we continue at this pace — and I know it’s early to say this — we could see spending hit $18 billion. That number is still nowhere near the $33 billion raised back in 2021, but it shows that the sector’s bouncing back, and it’s not looking frothy.



Back in December, PitchBook’s Robert Le told us he wouldn’t be surprised if we saw “multiple” $5 billion quarters and, clearly, we’re not too far off.



He told me that part of the momentum is coming from the larger deals, $100 million or bigger, that we haven’t seen too much of so far this cycle.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeWujWcpvtylZESfIjiXWqcWUsoLWLhWUoxihTHwb0m513yhP9dyKbUfRLAo5C_d0XgsjvZd0Hsa0P5b2tNZynI9NsDb0kRbUCdURtKgQ5yeLMch3pDu4GPj3x27CYqqHEObfzOjg?key=NB0rP1ohR988jmRNVbyn1kF2" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: TIE Terminal</figcaption></figure>



Right now the average deal size in March sits at roughly $60 million, though — looking at the chart above — that’s clearly a jump from the deal sizes we saw last year.



“I think as the mega funds come back to market, we&#8217;re going to expect to see a lot of those larger deals get funded, and that&#8217;s going to really [show in the] amount of venture capital dollars being invested,” he said.



There’s preliminary evidence to support that, too. Le said he’s heard that Katie Haun’s not having a hard time raising $1 billion for two new funds, which was first reported by Fortune. The interest shows that limited partners are looking to invest in some of the so-called mega funds.



“Overall sentiment” is good for crypto VCs across the board, even emerging partners focused on seed or pre-seed funding.



Speaking of those smaller rounds, we might be seeing more of them at the moment, but Le thinks that larger deals will pick up as companies scale; it’s just a matter of where we are in the cycle. Per TIE data, the seed stage round is currently the most active round type.



It should come as absolutely no surprise that Le expects projects focused on institutions to garner the most interest right now.



One thing that’s “great for startups in this space is that these institutions are more likely to partner or buy rather than build internally.” Le expects this to drive a “large chunk of venture funding” going forward.



On the flipside, Le doesn’t think we’re going to see a flock to app-layer spending — anything that serves retail, he clarified.



“The general view is that retail hasn’t come back to the market,” though Le admitted that this mindset might be “short-term thinking.” The “holy grail” for crypto is to integrate retail users who are using crypto apps with real-world value. They’re not going to come in just for the tokens, and some may not even interact with tokens.



In fact, social media projects could potentially be the winners in the sector. Look at Farcaster, for example. Le said the project’s doing an “okay job,” but he wants to see them focus on a larger audience outside of the crypto native crowd.



Given that they raised $150 million last year, he thinks they have the capital to start winning over a broader audience.



Let’s start onboarding.



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



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



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



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



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

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