Quant

Byron Gilliam

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



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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
&#8220;There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.&#8221;



— Mark Twain
</blockquote>



The 2004 edition of the Economic Report of the president included a creative proposal it hoped the statistical agencies would consider: reclassifying fast-food cooks as manufacturing workers.



&#8221;When a fast-food restaurant sells a hamburger,” the <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/sites/default/files/books/presidential-documents-archive-guidebook/the-economic-report-of-the-president-truman-1947-obama-2017/2004.pdf">report</a> asked, “is it providing a &#8216;service&#8217; or is it combining inputs to &#8216;manufacture&#8217; a product?&#8221;&nbsp;



I hear you snickering, but it did make some fair points.



The report noted, for example, that “mixing water and concentrate to produce soft drinks is classified as manufacturing” — so why shouldn’t assembling a hamburger count, too?



The answer lies in the Census Bureau’s definition of manufacturing, which the job counters at the BLS follow: “the mechanical, physical, or chemical transformation of materials, substances, or components into new products.”



Heating a frozen hamburger patty does indeed create a “chemical transformation” — heat causes a burger’s proteins to unfold and reconfigure in ways that irreversibly change it.



(You can freeze and melt a soda as many times as you like and still drink it, but try that with a burger and you’ll regret it.)



It would be a stretch, however, to argue that heating a burger transforms it into a “new product,” so it’s no surprise that the BLS continued to categorize burger flippers as service workers.&nbsp;



If the BLS rejected the White House’s suggestion on its merits, everyone else rejected it on its politics — a transparent attempt by the White House to make the manufacturing sector look healthier than it was.



It wasn’t the first time the seemingly mundane process of counting jobs became a political flashpoint.&nbsp;



In 1971, the Nixon White House shut down BLS press briefings after the agency unenthusiastically described a 0.2% drop in unemployment as only “marginally significant” (the Secretary of Labor described the same data as “of great significance”).



A month later, a statistical error caused the BLS to overstate a further drop in unemployment, this time raising fears that the White House was manipulating the data to make the economy seem better than it was.



Investigations found no evidence of political influence on the jobs data, but the OMB nevertheless responded by issuing a directive that tightly restricted early access to the data for political appointees.



More surprisingly, there have also been accusations that the White House manipulated jobs data to make the economy look worse than it was.



In 1961, Reader’s Digest published an article accusing the Kennedy White House of using data techniques to “magnify the unemployment problem” as a pretext for more government spending and regulation.



Again, an investigation found no basis for the claim.



A similar investigation in 1944 dismissed similar claims that the BLS had &#8220;obsequiously acquiesced&#8221; to White House demands to understate inflation, with the goal of keeping wages down too (while the government had war-time powers to set wages).



All of these unfortunate episodes are <a href="https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2018/article/the-current-population-survey-tracking-unemployment.htm?utm_source=chatgpt.com">recounted</a> on the BLS website, which highlights just how much precedent there is behind President Trump’s new accusations of political bias at the non-partisan agency.



In fact, his shock decision to fire Erika McEntarfer wasn’t even the first time a BLS commissioner lost their job for political reasons.



In 1932, Ethelbert Stewart was “involuntarily retired” as head of the BLS for publicly disagreeing with the Hoover administration’s rosy portrayal of the Depression-era labor market.



In response, The San Francisco News <a href="https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/first-hundred-years-bureau-labor-statistics-5181/fulltext#:~:text=%E2%80%9D%20The%20San%20Francisco%20News%20was%20more,his%20honest%20work%20on%20employment%20is%20particularly">opined</a> that &#8220;in the city named for George Washington, it seems they fire people for telling the truth.&#8221;



Now, by contrast, McEntarfer has been fired for the gravest form of not telling the truth: statistics.



On Friday, President Trump accused the BLS commissioner of “miscalculations” that he is sure were politically motivated.&nbsp;



But every jobs report is a miscalculation — by design.



When the BLS reported on Friday that the US economy had added 73,000 jobs in July, McEntafer and everyone involved with the number knew it was wrong.



Like every month, July’s report was based on incomplete data: The BLS doesn’t wait for all 121,000 surveyed employers to respond. 



Instead, it goes with what it’s got at the end of the month — typically just 60% or so of what it’d like to have — and then updates its models as additional responses trickle in afterwards.



But even with all the data in, it’s still just an estimate based on a lot of assumptions.



Without adjusting for seasonality, for example, the BLS would have reported that the US economy lost <a href="https://www.bls.gov/regions/mid-atlantic/data/xg-tables/ro3fx9585.htm#ro3fx9585.f.p">1,066,000 jobs</a> in July.



The difference between 1,066,000 and the 73,000 that everyone thinks of as “the” number of jobs created in July is just one measure of how “wrong&#8221; the BLS’ model is.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



“All models are wrong,” as statistician George Box famously said, “but some are useful.&#8221;



The BLS model that comes up with a monthly jobs number is one of the useful ones — an early warning system that allows businesses, investors and the Federal Reserve to adjust to the direction of the job market.&nbsp;



The true size of the job market won’t be known until everyone reports their taxes in a year or so, as I’m sure the president is aware.&nbsp;



But the president also seems acutely aware of the power of numbers to affect our perception of reality.



A hamburger, for example, is far more than its calorie count: It’s protein, a night out with friends and a piece of culture, too.&nbsp;



But the moment you read &#8220;1,600 calories&#8221; on the menu, a bacon cheeseburger becomes something else entirely: judgment. Liability. Guilt.



Numbers often wield more power than the reality they attempt to represent, so we should of course try to get them correct.



That’s especially true with economic data, where feedback loops can cause the perception of a slowing economy to become the reality of a recession.



But with high-frequency data like non-farm payrolls, correct is the enemy of useful.



And always has been.



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The Breakdown Newsletter

The ‘jobs’ number is always wrong

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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Phantom has acquired the Solana trading and analytics platform Solsniper, Blockworks has learned exclusively. Phantom declined to disclose the deal terms.



Solsniper is one of a raft of platforms that provide advanced features and tracking tools for memecoin traders. Solsniper’s web app will continue to operate as a standalone platform, and Solsniper’s team, led by co-founder and CEO Max Zhuang, will join Phantom.



While Phantom cut its teeth as a crypto wallet, the acquisition perhaps signals the <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/335305/phantom-wallet-raises-150-million-at-3-billion-valuation">well-funded</a> platform’s plans to deepen its trading capabilities, especially after Phantom began offering perpetual futures trading <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/phantom-hyperliquid-integration-winners">by way of Hyperliquid</a>.



Solana’s memecoin craze has been lucrative for token creation platforms like pump.fun and Letsbonk, but it has also been quite profitable for the picks and shovels that facilitate the discovery, tracking and trading of those memecoins.



DEX Screener, which offers popular trending token lists, made $2.9 million in the past month just by charging memecoin projects to update their token information, Solana onchain analyst adam_tehc <a href="https://x.com/Adam_Tehc/status/1952281150283808969">noted</a> recently.



Over time, popular trading venues have begun integrating these picks and shovels-like services. Jupiter and pump.fun both offer in-house trading terminals. With the Solsniper acquisition, Phantom may be poised to do the same, although it has not yet made announcements on that front.



“We see a wide variety of experience levels in crypto today, from new folks to professional traders. This acquisition helps Phantom provide more advanced tools that grow with the user’s expertise. Solsniper has done a great job of building a platform, and we’re excited to bring Phantom’s distribution and infrastructure into the product,” Phantom head of corporate development Joe Wadcan said.



Sweetening the deal further, Solsniper also offers a Telegram trading bot, which is a popular product among some memecoin traders.



Picks and shovels may be valuable to trading platforms because value often flows to the venues and platforms where users actually are. This is why memecoin industry watchers tend to be <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/why-owning-the-end-user-is-profitable-lessons-from-axiom-and-google">bullish on Axiom</a>, which is attempting to win end users while staying agnostic to specific networks or platforms.



By acquiring Solsniper, Phantom could take a segment of its users who currently leave the wallet app to go track, trade, or discover memecoins somewhere else and bring them back in-platform.&nbsp;



Phantom’s acquisition plans likely will not end with Solsniper.



“As we build the next evolution of Phantom, we expect to aggressively pursue acquisitions to expand our product surface area and build the leading consumer finance platform,” Phantom co-founder and CEO Brandon Millman said in a blog post.



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Lightspeed Newsletter

Phantom acquires Solana trading terminal Solsniper

Casey Wagner

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



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It’s bounce-back day on Wall Street after Friday’s jobs report-fueled dip.



After the first three hours of trading Monday morning, the S&amp;P 500 and Nasdaq Composite indexes were up 1.3% and 1.8%, respectively. I’m not shocked to see things back in the green, but I’m curious as to how long the rally may last.&nbsp;



Investors are going to be watching for any additional fallout from the July jobs report. As a reminder, Friday’s release showed the economy added just 73,000 new positions last month (compared with expectations for 104,000).&nbsp;



May and June also received significant downward revisions (a combined -258,000 positions), marking the biggest revision since 2020. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.2%.&nbsp;



The numbers were not good for stocks, although the report did help boost expectations of a September interest rate cut from the Fed.&nbsp;



Chair Powell has stressed in the past that he’s primarily concerned with the unemployment rate as opposed to the number of positions added. Last week’s Fed decision (in which it opted to once again hold interest rates steady) came with an addendum we haven’t seen in decades: a double dissent.&nbsp;



JPMorgan chief US economist Michael Feroli called the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/powell-resolute-amid-rate-dissents">two dissenting opinions</a> in last week’s Fed decision (from Governors Waller and Bowman) a “job application,” and I’d have to agree. With Powell’s term set to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/fomc-june-powell-term-end">expire next May</a> (and Trump’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/trump-criticizes-fed-chair-powell">vocal distaste</a> for Powell), the position is up for grabs.&nbsp;



Here’s an excerpt from Waller’s opinion:&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“While the labor market looks fine on the surface, once we account for expected data revisions, private-sector payroll growth is near stall speed, and other data suggest that the downside risks to the labor market have increased. With underlying inflation near target and the upside risks to inflation limited, we should not wait until the labor market deteriorates before we cut the policy rate.”
</blockquote>



From Waller’s mouth to the president’s ears? We’ll have to wait and see.&nbsp;



Aside from Powell, there’s another (former) government official on Trump’s bad side: Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer. He fired her on Friday following the release of July’s employment report, accusing her of manipulating the data to show a bias against his administration.&nbsp;



“A lengthy history of inaccuracies and incompetence by Erika McEntarfer, the former Biden-appointed Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, has completely eroded public trust in the government agency charged with disseminating key data used by policymakers and businesses to make consequential decisions,” the White House wrote in a Friday statement.&nbsp;



The BLS earlier this year said it would have to reduce its data collection on consumer prices, which impacts its CPI report. Last week the agency clarified that the changes were implemented “to align survey workload with resource levels.”&nbsp;



The situation adds a layer of political complexity to Friday’s disappointing report, and takes a hit to investor confidence in data. Noelle Acheson, from Crypto is Macro Now, put it best in her note today:&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“So, will the next BLS commissioner be able to avoid large revisions going forward? Obviously, they’ll have to if they want to keep their job, which elevates the temptation to publish late or to suppress new information as it comes in. Neither will be an improvement on the current situation.”
</blockquote>



We’ll be on “labor report fallout watch” all week, so keep an eye on your inbox.



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Stocks move higher after July jobs report dip

Macauley Peterson

Hot on the heels of Ethereum’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/reflections-ethereum-10th-anniversary">10th anniversary</a>, the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ethereum-foundation">Ethereum Foundation</a> has unveiled a bold new vision for the decade ahead.&nbsp;



Published by researcher Justin Drake, the “Lean Ethereum” initiative represents a fresh formulation of the network’s long-term priorities: survive anything, scale everything, and simplify the core.



Once known internally as “<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-consensus-beam-chain">Beam Chain</a>,” the idea of overhauling Ethereum’s consensus layer has now evolved into a more holistic reimagining of the entire L1 stack.&nbsp;



The renaming isn’t just aesthetic; it reflects a broader philosophical commitment to modularity, minimalism, and resilience and extends the principles across consensus, execution, and data availability layers. The shift from Beam to Lean signals that what began as a network-layer refactor has become a cohesive strategy for Ethereum’s evolution.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Fort mode…</h2>



Drake frames this vision in two modes. First, “fort mode,” in which <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ethereum">Ethereum</a> must survive even the harshest adversaries — such as hostile nation-states or quantum computers breaking today’s cryptography. This means moving away from dependencies like BLS signatures and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-rollup-data-availability-alternatives">KZG commitments</a> and toward simpler, hash-based primitives with post-quantum security.



That long view of resilience resonates with core Ethereum developer Preston Van Loon, who helped lead the transition from <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/proof-of-work-2">proof-of-work</a> to <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/proof-of-stake">proof-of-stake</a>.&nbsp;



“Ethereum’s 100% uptime since genesis is more than just a technical milestone; it represents a decade of resilience through countless challenges,” Van Loon told Blockworks. “From failed network attacks to major upgrades like <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/Ethereum-Merge">the Merge</a>, the chain has never stopped producing blocks. That reliability has become the foundation of trust for the entire ecosystem.”



Van Loon also emphasized the evolution of Ethereum’s development process: “What began as a small, [Ethereum Foundation-led] initiative has grown into a decentralized network of hundreds of independent developers and multiple client teams. This distributed model has made Ethereum more resilient, more secure, and better equipped to handle the complexity of its future.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">…and Beast Mode</h2>



At the same time, Drake’s “beast mode” embraces the need for Ethereum to remain competitive and performant at planetary scale, with ambitions for one <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/conduit-gigagas-throughput-sequencer">gigagas</a> per second on L1 and one teragas per second on L2 — throughput targets for the base layer and rollups, respectively. These shorthand metrics describe orders of magnitude increases in transaction-processing capacity compared to today.



The urgency implied in “beast mode” echoes Blockworks Research analyst Marc Arjoon’s observation, in <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/flashnotes/ethereum-july-2025-update">his July 2025 update</a>, that while Ethereum’s fundamental metrics have improved of late, the network “still trails <a href="https://blockworks.co/analytics/solana">Solana</a> and <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/tron">Tron</a> in <a href="https://blockworks.co/analytics/chain-comparison/chain-compare-overview/blockchain-key-stats">REV share</a>, and its burn rate, while up month-on-month, remains historically low.”



But REV is <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/valuing-blockchains-rev-debate">not the whole story</a>, and Arjoon concludes, “Ethereum’s trajectory took a decisive turn in July, as a surge in price and onchain activity marked a potential inflection point.”



ETH surged about 49% as open interest, transaction count, MAAs, data availability usage, ETF flows, and treasury accumulation all hit all-time highs. L2s pushed monthly data availability usage past 100,000 MiB for the first time, while Ethereum L1 processed 46.7 million transactions — up 11% month-over-month.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">&#8220;Maturity&#8221; playing out</h2>



The new Lean vision slogans pack a punch, and they’re backed by real architectural proposals. “Lean consensus” imagines a hardened Beacon Chain with finality in seconds and upgraded signature schemes. “Lean data” looks to extend EIP-4844’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-blobs-balancing-act">blob-based model</a> with variable blob sizing and post-quantum data availability sampling. And “lean execution” proposes a minimal, SNARK-native instruction set — <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/vitalik-ethereum-evm-scaling-l1-plan">possibly based on RISC-V</a> — that remains <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/evm">EVM-compatible</a> while being much more efficient to verify.



Both Arjoon and Van Loon pointed to <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/stablecoins">stablecoin</a> adoption as a visible marker of Ethereum’s progress: “We’re now seeing the results of that maturity play out in real-world adoption, particularly in stablecoins,” Van Loon said.&nbsp;



“Ethereum has become the primary home for dollar-backed assets, with record usage and liquidity flowing through the network every day.”



What’s new isn’t just the vision, but the way it’s being communicated and coordinated. The launch of leanroadmap.org, a public research tracker, signals a more transparent effort to organize this multi-year journey. Spearheaded by client developer <a href="https://x.com/ReamLabs">ReamLabs</a>, the site aggregates workstreams around lean consensus and aims to build bridges with client teams, rollup developers, and the broader research community.



The Ethereum Foundation isn’t mandating these changes, but it is laying out a plausible and verifiable path toward them. And with core protocol researchers increasingly vocal about the need to prepare for quantum adversaries and huge data demands, Lean Ethereum is likely to become the playbook for decisions leading up to and long after the upcoming <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-consensus-evm-upgrade-fusaka-devs">Glamsterdam</a> hard fork.



In short, Ethereum’s pivot from Beam to Lean marks a maturation of protocol thinking. It’s less about rushing the next upgrade and more about designing for a century of security, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/scaling">scalability</a> and simplicity.&nbsp;



In Drake’s words: “This is about legacy. We are builders. We are missionaries. We are Ethereum.”



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blockchain

From Beam to Lean: Ethereum plots a century of resilience

Kate Irwin

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



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Eve Frontier — an upcoming MMO from Eve Online studio CCP Games — isn’t your typical crypto game.



In fact, it’s probably more accurate to call it an expansive survival space MMO with blockchain rails that let players effectively “mod” the game to create their own features and challenges. And yes, there will be an EVE token underpinning it all, as well.



CCP CEO Hilmar Pétursson has been in game development for over 25 years building Eve Online. That game has over 7,800 star systems, a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrH6jyZ5j7g">complex economy</a> and ever-evolving, long-term battles driven by players.&nbsp;&nbsp;



And it’s been live for 22 years.



“The loop of creation to destruction is kind of the heart of the economy loop,” Pétursson told me in an interview. “And this is often what games get wrong at the heart of it, if things don&#8217;t leave the economy, then it’s, by definition, almost like a mathematical definition, an inflationary economy. The effects of an inflationary economy is that you add stuff into it, but you never take them out.”



When it comes to strategy, the worlds are designed in a way that encourages interactions between players.&nbsp;



“First, we create nature, a strategic landscape that requires specialization, cooperation and conflict. Conflict creates destruction that takes that loop — and we have that look pretty tight from Eve — then we add this energy mechanic. That&#8217;s where the token comes in,” Pétursson said of Eve Frontier.



“So that’s kind of the economy side. When we look at the general blockchain side, then we have created something called <a href="https://poolpartynodes.com/eve-frontier-smart-assemblies-a-beginners-guide/">smart assembly</a>, which is basically a combination of an in-game item and a smart contract. This allows you to basically program all the phenomena inside the world.”



<iframe loading="lazy" width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WgyB9h_euhw?si=x4YG_6FzPswh8t67" 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>







Pétursson used an example where one player created a stargate using smart assembly that requires other players to bring the dead body of his enemy in order to use it.&nbsp;



“This is something that the player just programmed into the world without our permission. We needed to do nothing,” Pétursson said.



Eve Frontier is using the EVM L2 chain Redstone (built using the OP Stack codebase) for its blockchain elements.



While Eve Frontier comes from the same parent studio as Eve Online, there’s only overlap in a few areas on the development side that’s been symbiotic.&nbsp;



The new game’s team is building autonomously, Eve Frontier Community Manager Ben Sisson told me in an interview.



CCP has a separate design team for Eve Frontier as well as a separate team focused on the game’s crypto elements. Eve Online and Eve Frontier’s finances and funding are separate as well.&nbsp;



“CCP doesn’t use Eve Online money to pay Eve Frontier staff,” Sisson explained. But like Eve Online, Eve Frontier will generate revenue through a subscription-based model.



Both games do use CCP’s own Carbon game engine, though, so there is some overlap on the platform side.



“We did a huge engine upgrade last year, spent almost all of 2024 working on this engine upgrade,” Sisson said. “That team was doing that at the behest of Frontier. But that is a change that’s also going to benefit Eve Online.”



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Gaming

How EVE Frontier is using crypto to change the game

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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Is Galaxy really a strong buy?&nbsp;



That was the deep dive in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNLFPx0m2I8">today’s Empire episode</a> with Duncan from Flood Capital and Matt from Rittenhouse Research, which rated Galaxy a strong buy in a recent research note. 



Both Duncan and Matt made their <a href="https://blockworks.co/podcast/empire/c2d367ac-6f1c-11f0-821d-53761026ec5f">bullish cases for Galaxy</a> in Empire today, highlighting it as one of the more successful crypto firms. But before we dive in, I want to note that Empire co-host Jason Yanowitz and both Matt and Duncan all disclosed they hold GLXY.&nbsp;



“ I basically break down Galaxy into three main buckets. They have their balance sheet, so the market cap today it&#8217;s trading around. You know, just under 28 bucks. So that&#8217;s around a $10 billion market cap. And they have a crypto balance sheet, which consists of, as of March 31st, $1.3 billion in Bitcoin,” Flood Capital’s Duncan noted.



Matt from Rittenhouse took more of a look at the businesses within Galaxy: “There&#8217;s a lot of strategic value in the digital assets business of Galaxy, just because they&#8217;re the only full platform that has this comprehensive set of offerings that&#8217;s tailored specifically for institutions and companies operating within the crypto ecosystem.”



<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">Rittenhouse Research is long Galaxy Digital <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24GLXY&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$GLXY</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24BRPHF&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$BRPHF</a> We believe Galaxy&#39;s flagship data center Helios will generate $1.7B of EBITDA and $32B of equity value in the near-term, w/ significant further upside. Our full thesis can be found via PDF here: <a href="https://t.co/mZ3JwW1CYD">https://t.co/mZ3JwW1CYD</a> <a href="https://t.co/4jNHn10oYV">pic.twitter.com/4jNHn10oYV</a>&mdash; Rittenhouse Research (@RHouseResearch) <a href="https://twitter.com/RHouseResearch/status/1923076150693187726?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 15, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



If you need a comparison to a traditional firm, Duncan said it’s most like Goldman Sachs.&nbsp;



“They&#8217;ve won really big contracts — being kind of like the Goldman in the room, the adult in the room — like the whole FTX estate deal, right?” Duncan noted. “They were in charge of custodying those assets. They have over $3 billion in staked assets, which I think this is gonna [pick] up a lot in the next few quarters with all these treasury plays. They&#8217;re the fourth-largest validator in Solana,” Duncan said.&nbsp;



And then there’s the trading business, which is also quite large when compared to other crypto firms. 



<iframe loading="lazy" width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cNLFPx0m2I8?si=lfgM6am4qQVshf4X" 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>







“So derivatives, lending, trading, structured products. [From] the last quarter, so I think probably March 31st, [it had] nearly a $900 million loan book. So that&#8217;s like the second or third largest CFI lender in all of crypto,” he continued.&nbsp;



Meanwhile, Rittenhouse believes that Galaxy is also a strong way to play the AI data center from the bitcoin mining pivot.&nbsp;



“Galaxy is the most attractive way to play the &#8216;Bitcoin miner pivoting to AI data center operator&#8217; investment thesis,” the note said. “Galaxy benefits strongly from the fact its Bitcoin mining operations were never a material part of its operating business.”



The stock, prior to market open, is trading around $27, up 181% over the past year. And there could be more room for it to run.&nbsp;



“ I think it could be worth like a hundred dollars a share in the next few years. So that&#8217;s personally how I&#8217;m thinking about it. It&#8217;s definitely a long-term investment. I think as they execute on the data center business, if they continue to execute there, then like, I&#8217;m really happy to hold this for a very long time,” Duncan said.&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"><a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24GLXY&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$GLXY</a> is my largest position, take a minute to read why, I think $100/share is on the table in the next few years and there is ample liquidity to size into this. Here is a short summary of why I believe <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24GLXY&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$GLXY</a> is such a sleeper and significantly undervalued/misunderstood by the… <a href="https://t.co/gAkkGqqpTr">pic.twitter.com/gAkkGqqpTr</a>&mdash; Duncan (@FloodCapital) <a href="https://twitter.com/FloodCapital/status/1945176853305606343?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 15, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



But if you want to boil down the stock price to just what it should be at today, then that would be roughly $55, per Duncan’s analysis.&nbsp;



“ There could be other kinds of green shoots of positive surprises where something in their crypto business allows &#8217;em to make an acquisition or do a joint venture that adds like a ton of value to the company long term,” Matt noted.&nbsp;



Galaxy’s set to report earnings tomorrow, so we’ll have to see whether the bull cases stand.



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Empire Newsletter

Galaxy’s broad crypto strategy covers key ‘buckets’: Flood Capital

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



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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
&#8220;We are not measuring the world, we are creating it.&#8221;&nbsp;



— Niels Bohr
</blockquote>



Two of history’s greatest minds — Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr — disagreed on the fundamental nature of reality.



Is the world around us, as Bohr argued, created only when we observe it?&nbsp;



Or does reality exist independently of our gaze, as Einstein believed?



The two greats debated it throughout the 1920s and ‘30s, and their disagreement has remained central to quantum mechanics ever since — forcing physicists to grapple with what their mathematical equations tell us about the nature of reality.



Until this week, when the debate was settled in favor of Bohr.



By bouncing a single photon off just two atoms, <a href="https://news.mit.edu/2025/famous-double-slit-experiment-holds-when-stripped-to-quantum-essentials-0728">scientists at MIT</a> showed that the behavior of the photon (wave or particle) remained unsettled until they had measured it.



This confirmed Bohr’s belief that observation is not simply a passive act of seeing what already exists, but an active process of creating the very thing being observed.



In other words: Observation changes the system being observed.



This is how markets work, too.



&#8220;Financial markets constantly anticipate events, both positive and negative,” George Soros wrote, “which fail to materialize exactly because they have been anticipated.”



For example: The US labor market is weakening, but because the Bureau of Labor Statistics observes it for us every month, markets have reacted in a way that will change the labor market.



After the BLS report this morning, 10-year Treasury yields fell 20 basis points, and <a href="https://polymarket.com/event/fed-rate-cut-in-2025?tid=1754065758939">Polymarket odds</a> of a Fed rate cut jumped 15 percentage points.



Moves like these can change things: The more that markets anticipate a recession, the less likely a recession becomes.



It works in the other direction, too.



At one point this week, each of the four AI hyperscalers — Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta — were valued at over $2 trillion.



In total, the stock market is assigning $10 trillion of market capitalization to those four, based on the observation that they’re likely to be among the primary beneficiaries of next-generation AI.



If so, the act of observing the trend in AI will have played a large part in making AI happen.



Morgan Stanley estimates the four hyperscalers will invest $2.9 trillion in AI capex between 2025 and 2028, but that they’ll be $1.5 trillion short of cash needed to fund it.



Only the massive valuations markets have granted them will make up the difference.



In that sense, what AI becomes will depend, at least in part, on the market’s observations and predictions about it.



Sam Altman, for example, <a href="https://x.com/ns123abc/status/1950806901303754814">predicted</a> this week that we’re on a path to “superintelligence” — self-improving AIs that exceed humans in every domain.



“It&#8217;ll give people incredible superpowers that were sort of science fiction only a couple of years ago,&#8221; he optimistically predicts.



It may already be happening: &#8220;Over the last few months, we&#8217;ve begun to see glimpses of our AI systems improving themselves,” Mark Zuckerberg <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/30/zuckerberg-superintelligence-meta-ai">said</a> on Wednesday, adding that “superintelligence is now in sight.”



The pace of this self-improvement may be about to accelerate.



Also this week, a team of researchers <a href="https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/AlphaGo-Moment-for-Model-Architecture-Discovery-Liu-Nan/3c721709009511d70b5a1a87aa33dff957df35bc">released</a> an open-source model that “enables AI to conduct its own architectural innovation.”



Experts say this will transform AI research “from a human-limited to a computation-scalable process.”



In other words, AIs will now be bounded only by the amount of computing capacity that humans choose to give them — and the stock market, having observed the trend, is choosing to give them trillions.



Not even Niels Bohr could tell us what the consequences of that observation will be.



Let’s observe some charts and see what else happens.



The AI capex boom:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXco81VtzaDDJ_oU0QHxHEFLVzZAM4h7gbCYTDlaVOLuE1-TlznX_NTrGRrJvlXKQbfx5sRAW6cqbBfWdutDMpkUIClWIX6qgmpQ0PNSbZWOEXdrUXAJxCmR6MjvQ0bD7419bpld?key=F6qrqzkW-hiUC_t6nU_yig" alt=""/></figure>



The Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/tech-ai-spending-company-valuations-7b92104b?mod=e2twg">documents</a> the surge in capex among the four hyperscalers, which are on pace to collectively spend $400 billion this year alone.&nbsp;



Going all in:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfiBEk6gPS-wB4x19maBkyojgU64dquy-wmXqF7liSmOP9tsOpAhBscGimLUjvs_cwrnqBfnpSOB80Gr8t2V22SrIEc8URuIOzUi7J3TJDJGL_DGOL_JejG_iNPK-jqDoa2P0hfew?key=F6qrqzkW-hiUC_t6nU_yig" alt=""/></figure>



The hyperscalers are both making more money and spending more of it on capex.&nbsp;



This morning’s unemployment data:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeV0Z3l7LxrD_u7kN65oyPZghMj3TRUoh7cycRaIwrFc1GtmWbjTsc2fL7MUtm0armFBHozV5BYHMFYQfMetmxCpV0hGFTKAWbDo9bPv33ulisJ2S_cojnrtTfjPpnQVGVjkJT2?key=F6qrqzkW-hiUC_t6nU_yig" alt=""/></figure>



The US economy is estimated to have added only 73,000 jobs in July. But the shocker in this morning’s report was the 253,000 downward revision to the prior two months, taking the three-month average down to just 35,000. An economy that seemed surprisingly resilient suddenly looks <a href="https://x.com/Markzandi/status/1951283286959071744">unsurprisingly fragile</a>.



Contrary to popular belief…



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdV5U6mDAKg8c9Yxjit792Gi3Ltpt9AWQyXy2C2E2EhFa13islFuPLXASXyrMr7o_ogH2JLkAQ82MociYXftTIEPBorlNDZVCE-S0k0BZU6HGmkUc5dvocJouLWbR-uOcn7GPklsw?key=F6qrqzkW-hiUC_t6nU_yig" alt=""/></figure>



…the jobs do not seem to be going to China. Data from <a href="https://x.com/JonathonPSine">Jonathon Sine</a> shows that “China shed the equivalent of the entire US manufacturing sector (~15 million jobs) over the last 15 years.”



Inflation estimates are more of a guesstimate now:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdutUzvHyckYT0joxtaI0AzmPX34hCuN38St49CClhvSomA2FUl80MMvU2JgqIHxLj-o3YjhetA4c5CGbWeug3mhM70lwGjISUUW3IrI6Gb-k_ktce2UdotahBG1nqH3E7-QmLv?key=F6qrqzkW-hiUC_t6nU_yig" alt=""/></figure>



Thanks to funding cuts, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is collecting less inflation data, which means that a bigger portion of CPI is “imputed” (aka, guessed) based on the data it did manage to collect.



Not out of the inflation woods yet:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXc3L2WQj9d5QoLIWMsOO7hslLnkaeTDvnOuapYrfe6TLUiEd6DC4ucIXkcHqVBIPC1kZUCNvBwGJPi-sdpX4J6tFapuxBhaWws9_iLnbC-dKT5wu6rf2TCOqcFxxdY1OiOzhAwS?key=F6qrqzkW-hiUC_t6nU_yig" alt=""/></figure>



The two dissenting FOMC voters will feel vindicated by this morning’s weak jobs report. And the president will be even more irate than he was <a href="https://x.com/DavidBeckworth/status/1951014060465786937">yesterday</a>. But it might still be hard for Powell and the rest of the FOMC to agree on cuts when the price of core goods are rising at a 3.75% pace.



The price of copper is down, at least:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXehaPVtLe_dj3srQ7SZRUKEYZz7flLD8UWpcEt7wRYOWYBm-bkugtjzgpsGGO49kSbg6jtNre9vp2Zwia0OFLj988TUSSmCvx1pQj7K6T1x7X61XFEERLAAIirLVgX22mnnx9e9Eg?key=F6qrqzkW-hiUC_t6nU_yig" alt=""/></figure>



Copper futures fell 20% after it was announced that President Trump&#8217;s latest round of tariffs would exclude metals. That kind of whiplash policymaking is good for volatility traders and bad for anyone trying to run a business that requires copper.



Tariff update:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXckK9zwBADXIeVVTD6vOZbBnM1G3pqlN6Fl_Cv_iavC2PWCrMqhK4EGPERIJJa8VhempXyBx3IYTMlr0dtguk-KcLZJYtM1y5HsnetPwlGPl9WxvL0nVfwUvjPScCBovgCuLjferg?key=F6qrqzkW-hiUC_t6nU_yig" alt=""/></figure>



The pink line is the overall level of tariffs, according to what’s been announced. The black line is what importers have actually paid. The 10 percentage point difference between the two suggests that most of the impact on the economy is still to come.



Railroads next?



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXezBumsqxdj8JpRbe6uQjciA-WhFBbbMBX56kOLl2M4wG6Jg2oGB0qkNCQ4Qu6f94IL-S9Pq_-7cu3iVXarvPzjiJPBMWvWD4EUK9X14NCvScrp7rdrdGhB4eHSn8U5OKsSufar?key=F6qrqzkW-hiUC_t6nU_yig" alt=""/></figure>



As a percentage of GDP, AI infrastructure capex is already bigger than the internet telco boom, but still has a lot of upside to match the railroad boom.



What will AI become if the hyperscalers spend 6% of US GDP on it? Investors seem determined to find out.



Have a great weekend, observant readers.



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Friday charts: The observer effect

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



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



It’s been a week and a half since <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/jito-upgrade-block-assembly-marketplace">Jito announced BAM</a> (Block Assembly Marketplace), Solana’s most <a href="https://x.com/Lightspeedpodhq/status/1951269192943968490">significant</a> transaction processing upgrade ever.



In my view, much of the public messaging surrounding the upgrade has focused on BAM’s privacy-preserving use of TEEs and ability to give apps better control over transaction execution. What hasn’t been covered quite as much, which both of my guests on the Lightspeed podcast spoke about this week, is how BAM plans to create additional revenue for Solana apps.



BAM plugins are programmable interfaces that apps can use to control how transactions are sequenced. One potential example could be taker speed bumps, a spread-tightening mechanism that the perps DEX Hyperliquid has deployed to great effect.



These plugins will also come with some “TBD fee model,” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCnxsT5iCyA&amp;t=2301s">Jito Labs CEO Lucas Bruder told me</a>, meaning applications can start generating revenue from the sequencing of transactions through BAM. This value is currently being captured by takers or arbitrageurs in the market, Bruder added.



If BAM works as advertised, plugins could provide applications with a hefty payday.



“What I think we’ll see is applications earning multiples more than validators and stakers,” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIYN4Xbuw_4&amp;t=1357s&amp;pp=0gcJCccJAYcqIYzv">Blockworks Research Analyst </a><a href="mailto:carlos.campos@blockworks.co">Carlos Gonzalez Campo</a> said.



While Crypto Twitter will probably be none too happy to see more revenue flowing to the likes of pump.fun, keeping applications happy is important if Solana wants to be the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-market-microstructure-ace">internet’s financial ledger</a>. One of Ethereum’s most successful apps in Uniswap recently created its <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/0xresearch-newsletter-uniswap-layer-2">own layer-2 </a>chain in Unichain, thereby internalizing more value relative to its home chain. And without changes to how value is shared, Solana’s popular apps may someday find it prudent to do the same.&nbsp;



Bruder hopes Solana apps will send this new revenue source back to their native tokens.



“Hopefully [apps] share those fees with the token holders and we&#8217;ll see a mass repricing of Solana DeFi,” Bruder said.



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Empire</a>: Crypto news and analysis to start your day.</li>



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



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



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



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supply-shock">Supply Shock</a>: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.</li>
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Jito

Jito’s BAM upgrade set to make Solana apps richer

Ben Strack

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



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Coinbase had a down second quarter from a revenue perspective, but remains undeterred in ultimately trying to bring every asset class onchain.&nbsp;



First, some numbers.



The company’s total revenue of $1.5 billion in Q2 was 26% lower than the prior quarter. Transaction revenue took the biggest hit, dropping 39% quarter over quarter to $764 million amid lower volatility. Subscription and services revenue fell 6% to $656 million.



Worth noting: Competitor Robinhood also saw April-June transaction revenue plummet — dropping 36% to $160 million.



COIN shares were trading around $318 in the early afternoon — down 16% on the day. HOOD’s stock price was pretty flat halfway through the session.



We noted <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-outlooks-mixed-q2-2025-earnings/">nuanced outlooks</a> from analysts heading into Thursday’s Coinbase report. And indeed — despite the overall revenue decline — the company claimed some victories.&nbsp;



Its stablecoin revenue, for example, grew 12% from the prior quarter to $332 million as average USDC balances held in Coinbase products reached $13.8 billion.



<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">Coinbase&#39;s stablecoin revenue is up 44% year-to-date vs. the same period last year, despite 100bps of rate cuts since then. <a href="https://t.co/Z1BoNH8Bhl">pic.twitter.com/Z1BoNH8Bhl</a>&mdash; Ryan Rasmussen (@RasterlyRock) <a href="https://twitter.com/RasterlyRock/status/1951023174575157418?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 31, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Coinbase expects stablecoin revenue momentum to continue given USDC’s new all-time high market cap in July. The company is thus projecting higher Q3 subscription and services revenue ($665–$745 million).&nbsp;



Executives also said they expect July transaction revenue to be $360 million — already nearly half of Q2’s total.



Beyond the numbers, CEO Brian Armstrong on Thursday labeled the number one thing Coinbase’s customers want from the exchange: enabling many more assets to trade in a “one-stop shop” on crypto rails. Coinbase is calling it the Everything Exchange.



Integrating decentralized exchanges into its app will help on the crypto-tokens front. And now Coinbase is working toward bringing tokenized equities “to meet the moment in this new regulatory environment.”



To that last point, Armstrong’s comments came just hours after SEC Chair Paul Atkins made a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-chair-atkins-project-crypto">speech of his own</a>.&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">A portion of SEC chair Paul Atkins&#39; response to yesterday&#39;s White House report. &quot;Project Crypto&quot; underway &#8230; <a href="https://t.co/yO5g0S806i">pic.twitter.com/yO5g0S806i</a>&mdash; Ben Strack 🟪 (@strack_ben) <a href="https://twitter.com/strack_ben/status/1950975816323493918?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 31, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



And Atkins’ comments followed the White House&#8217;s release of its “Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology” <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Digital-Assets-Report-EO14178.pdf">report</a>.



The report acknowledges tokenization benefits like “the programmability and peer-to-peer transferability of assets, operational efficiencies…and increased transparency relative to traditional finance markets.”&nbsp;



All things much of the industry <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stablecoins-tokenization-blackrock-galaxy-das">has already heard</a>, sure — but now the government is saying it formally.&nbsp;



At the same time as Coinbase’s update, Strategy reported its Q2 results. That included $10 billion of net income and ample forward-looking commentary.



Executives outlined a multi-year plan to retire its outstanding convertible debt and replace it with a preferred stock-focused funding model as it continues to accumulate bitcoin. Strategy’s holdings stand at 628,791 BTC.&nbsp;



Strategy’s corporate treasury (~$74 billion worth of BTC) is the fifth-largest in the world, Benchmark analyst Mark Palmer pointed out in a Friday note. Strategy CEO Phong Le envisioned a scenario in 3-5 years where the company’s capital base surpasses that of Berkshire Hathaway ($348 billion).



Palmer raised his MSTR price target to $705, which assumes BTC will hit $225,000 by the end of 2026. MSTR shares were going for $376 at the time of writing — down 6% on the day.



There’s a taste of where these chief crypto stocks stand. No financial advice here.



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Empire</a>: Crypto news and analysis to start your day.</li>



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



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



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

Coinbase

Coinbase eyes ‘Everything Exchange’ despite Q2 revenue decline

Donovan Choy

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



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



The 13-year-old design software company Figma IPO’d on the NYSE yesterday.



As I write this edition, Figma’s stock is trading at $115. That’s a ~250% pop from its $33 opening price — above Circle’s June <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/circle-shares-nyse-day-one">IPO pop of 168%</a>, and far above the average 17% day-one IPO pop of past decades.



Great success! But according to the Crypto Twitter commentariat, that’s “<a href="https://x.com/j0hnwang/status/1950957474359488614">legalized theft</a>.”



Specifically, theft by the investment bankers from the retail public.



The general idea underlying this criticism is that:



Investment banks deliberately underprice IPOs below fair value, then allocate shares to their preferred hedge funds and clients. These guys flip them for an easy profit at the expense of unsophisticated retail investors that naively buy into the IPO hype once the stock is already trading higher.



Retail investors lose because IPO offer prices are determined by private markets (as opposed to, say, Hyperliquid pre-launch perps that allowed price discovery pre-PUMP ICO).



Plus they <a href="https://x.com/nearcyan/status/1951012496380404021">don’t</a> get to buy in early — Wall Street does.



This status quo isn’t all that different to memecoins.



Recall the Javier Millei-affiliated <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/libra-latest-solana-memecoin-episode">LIBRA memecoin launch</a> in February. As my colleague David Canellis <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/libra-memecoin-sausage-gross">wrote</a>:&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
&#8230; anyone launching a memecoin in 2025 must fight against unseen forces that nobody has figured out how to beat: onchain snipers who will bid up fresh memecoins at the drop of a hat, only to dump them soon after on anyone buying into the pump they created, usually killing the project in the process.
</blockquote>



It was kind of an open secret in crypto anyway.



But in TradFi, it’s all perfectly legal as per capital market rules. Namely, the Securities Act of 1933, which forces companies to lock in a fixed public offer price before trading.&nbsp;



Like the genesis of most government regulations, the Securities Act wasn’t intended to enrich Wall Street at retail’s expense: It started out as well-meaning and targeted real abuses by bucket shop salesmen in the 1930s.



But today’s capital market laws hard-wire pricing power and share-allocation discretion into the traditional IPO.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Project Crypto</h2>



SEC Chair Paul Atkins unveiled yesterday <a href="https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/speeches-statements/atkins-digital-finance-revolution-073125">Project Crypto</a>, an initiative <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-chair-atkins-project-crypto">meant to achieve</a> “President Trump’s vision of making America the crypto capital of the world.”



It reads almost like a Christmas wishlist for the industry: most crypto assets will not be securities, create exceptions and safe harbors for ICOs and airdrops, protect software engineers, protect self-custody, make onchain software part of securities markets, etc.



<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 SEC&#39;s new &quot;Project Crypto&quot; is the most bullish thing I&#39;ve seen in a long time from a regulator. Read the speech, it&#39;s incredible: * Almost all tokens are not securities * Want to discourage decentralization kabuki theater * Americans should not get excluded by IP/VPN blocks…&mdash; Haseeb ＞|＜ (@hosseeb) <a href="https://twitter.com/hosseeb/status/1950966199116009656?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 31, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



But the devil’s always in the details.



And no one scrutinizes the details, except for the lobbyists and lawyers at the policymaking table.



How will this wishlist interact with existing laws? What will they morph into 10 or 50 years from now?



No one knows — just like how no one could’ve expected the Securities Act of 1933 to enable “legalized theft” today.



Government regulations are bad not because they were badly designed or that policymakers are evil per se, but because they are created and exist in a set of institutions that are static.



We like to think of the “government” as a precise machinery that voters can modulate to create laws that thwart specific problems. We like to think the government would remove laws that are deemed bad.&nbsp;



But democracy is more messy in practice. In reality, policymakers are saddled up with special interests, and uninformed voters dominate elections.



It’s what economist Mike Munger calls a “<a href="https://fee.org/articles/unicorn-governance/">unicorn problem</a>.”



Atkins’ words today are a breath of fresh air in the post-Gensler era. But don’t be surprised when today’s rules eventually harden around whoever learns to game them best. It’s just politics.



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0xResearch Newsletter

Imagine if Figma’s IPO had Hyperliquid’s pre-launch perps

David Canellis

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



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



When it comes to Bitcoin mantras, “not your keys, not your coins” is as pure as it gets.



But there are levels to it. Sure, you might be self-custodying, but you might still be required to trust a wallet explorer, for example, to tell you your BTC balance.



Run your own full node, however, and you’ll only ever need to trust your own copy of the Bitcoin ledger.



So here&#8217;s one of Bitcoin’s oldest cautionary tales about why the above still matters, a decade and a half later.



Picture this: It’s mid-2011, and there are two major exchanges to buy and sell bitcoin: Mt. Gox, operating out of Japan with about 80% global market share, followed by TradeHill, based in California.



Eastern Europe had its own primary venue: Bitomat from Poland.&nbsp;



Bitomat’s trading volume was small compared to Mt. Gox, only about 17,000 BTC per <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110604053716/http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/">month</a> — far below Mt. Gox’s 1 million BTC (worth $7.5 million at the time). But it was still enough for Bitomat to be considered the third-largest bitcoin trading platform in the world.



Until trouble struck.&nbsp;



On August 1, 2011, Bitomat’s admins disclosed the worst had happened: They had accidentally deleted the wallet.dat file for the platform’s hot wallet, immediately losing access to its users&#8217; bitcoin, which coincidentally amounted to 17,000 BTC.



The exchange itself had been paused for about a week by that point. Bitomat’s administrator, Bartek Szabat, had noticed that the main server — powered by an Amazon EC2 virtual machine — had been running at full capacity, and opted to boost its allocation of RAM.&nbsp;



That would’ve required the virtual machine instance to be rebooted.&nbsp;



But the admin had forgotten to enable persistent storage in the cloud server’s configuration settings. So, when the server was rebooted after adding more RAM, the local storage of the virtual-machine instance itself, which contained the exchange’s only wallet.dat file, was wiped, taking the private keys of Bitomat’s users along with it.&nbsp;



Amazon Web Services was unable to recover the file.



In an open letter to the Bitcoin community, Szabat asked for help in investigating the situation (the post has been automatically translated and edited for clarity):&nbsp;



“At the moment, I am unable to clearly determine the cause of crashes. I suppose that it is the result of actions of third parties, which are causing the server to crash to hide their illegal activities, or intentionally wanting the website to disappear,” he wrote.&nbsp;



“If my suspicions are confirmed, I will tell the police and prosecutors, [and] at the same time, take possible action through which it would be possible to recreate lost data. But I need to interact with the server&#8217;s owner [Amazon Web Services], and that, as I mentioned above, is difficult…&nbsp;



“At the same time, I am counting on your help in solving the problem. I realize that the situation is very difficult, and you fear for the fate of your BTC. We are constantly working on a solution to the crisis, and I&#8217;m open to your suggestions.”



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeB6CCaazWIdtzRy4vveH17ALpny7F86E8JlkG3ChzCKRO6OnyDAKCdZEFr1nkZGWzVS6yhgTpkiSa9f9jt4EzDuY9BHxPv861xadQlLaPs4c1J2igSnqkxQG76oggIrhFyywZhqg?key=QW7c4J6OZHHxNOfUyB3E4A" alt="" style="width:700px;height:auto"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Hacker News users had the right idea in July 2011 — only keep bitcoin in exchanges for as long as you need to.</figcaption></figure>



Szabat then offered to sell Bitomat the euro equivalent of 17,000 BTC ($220,000 then, $1.95 billion today), in an overt effort to make users whole.&nbsp;



“I wish to inform you that I had several conversations with potential investors from home and abroad,” he said, and directed anyone interested to reach out via email.



It was actually Mark Karpeles and Mt. Gox that answered the call. The deal meant Bitomat would shut down altogether and its domain would instead forward existing users to a Polish-language localized version of Mt. Gox, where they could log in as normal and trade bitcoin via a new Polish złoty pair.



“The acquisition of Bitomat.pl is a windfall for its users, especially in the wake of such a sudden and unsettling event. Also, for the first time ever on a bitcoin exchange, users are now able to access a substantially larger market with their local currency, so we think it’s a happy ending all around,” Karpeles <a href="https://siliconangle.com/2011/08/11/mtgox-acquires-bitomat-pl-in-bid-to-restore-confidence-in-bitcoin-market/#:~:text=Thursday%2C%20August%2011%20trading%20on,on%20the%20new%20site%20seamlessly">said</a> at the time.&nbsp;



Mt. Gox had only months earlier suffered through two of its many hacking incidents, one for 80,000 BTC ($~65,000) when a thief was able to copy the platform’s own wallet.dat file, and another for 300,000 BTC ($~1.5 million) two months later, with the hacker eventually returning all but 3,000 of the stolen coins.&nbsp;



Of course, Mt. Gox would go completely belly-up nearly three years later, potentially affecting any Bitomat users who had migrated over for a second time.&nbsp;



There’s no question that modern day crypto exchanges, at least the top-tier ones, are different beasts compared to the earliest platforms like Bitomat and Mt. Gox. But for all their assurances, we can never really know for sure how well exchanges are storing user bitcoin.&nbsp;



This is both the coolest and hardest part of using Bitcoin: It takes trust to trade bitcoin and significant operational security to store it yourself (although multi-sigs do help). Anything else is just managing exposure.&nbsp;



If it were easy, everyone would do it. Until then, in exchanges we trust.



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Bitcoin

The exchange that accidentally deleted its 17K Bitcoin wallet file

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



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



Comparing the slew of new digital asset treasury (DAT) companies to the ICO era is “apt,” Electric Capital’s Avichal Garg told Empire co-hosts Jason Yanowitz, Santiago Santos and Rob Hadick on <a href="https://blockworks.co/podcast/empire/7ffa3c40-6e62-11f0-a847-7f882b11347f">today’s weekly roundup</a>.&nbsp;



“ I think the most interesting question here is how long does it last? And is any of it actually durable?” he asked.&nbsp;



“Most of [the capital] doesn&#8217;t get anywhere, but actually, we got Ethereum outta the ICO cycle, right? You got a $500 billion asset that has had a transformative impact, right?” he continued.&nbsp;



But Garg isn’t fully on the “this is all bad” train. He believes that certain implementations are going to be very interesting. 



<iframe loading="lazy" width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PaVPrpVcVbE?si=zouWPSgZE9_6ueOU" 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>







Obviously, ETH, SOL and bitcoin will continue to dominate. But some of the smaller assets that are being bought up by various treasury companies may not have the same staying power.&nbsp;



“ Some of the longer-tail assets, I think, [are] gonna be very hit or miss. Some of them are clearly gonna not be around, and some of them actually have a shot of being around, because the exposure into a new capital market is sort of like front-running an ETF,” Garg explained.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXccMmREvUkmZ_WTG58wY364w_0vOSTOFUvM4IMxQYWo0FOi3R1ZE4V3_LzkU36rfiwe8qmhKs2qiSzMZr7Y1dW5rea47oYZWwatIAMLdgkOKF83vd5XZ_DOUBK6Zm0TGGcYBsOA-g?key=Yx0Tl2Txu21qGhcaj7BIFw" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: Blockworks Research</figcaption></figure>



Hadick added that he thinks there’ll be a lot of M&amp;A and capital activism, which means that the door for drama is wide open, depending on who and how folks approach activist stakes.&nbsp;



He also noted that we’re already seeing exhaustion in the market around these things, which is not super surprising given the sheer amount of announcements we’re getting weekly.&nbsp;



“ You clearly don&#8217;t need 30 of these, right? At the end of the day, the amount of copycats that are popping up right now is just astronomical, honestly,” he told the Empire crew.&nbsp;



The other thing to add — a very good point from Santos&nbsp;— is that hedge funds generally are not able to buy ETFs, which means that they’re closely watching these treasury companies and looking for opportunities they otherwise wouldn’t have.



“Other than retail, hedge funds that want to express a view on anything will buy these DATs. And I think that&#8217;s where you could see this [continue] for an extended period of time where you have a lot of demand coming in that way,” Santos added.&nbsp;



Though, as Blockworks’ Dan Smith noted, the ETH treasuries saw low trading volume on Thursday.



<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">Yesterday was the lowest trading volume day for ETH treasury companies since the initial announcements The group combined for $1.4b, down 76% from the recent highs <a href="https://t.co/WDhUSHsqRs">pic.twitter.com/WDhUSHsqRs</a>&mdash; Dan Smith (@smyyguy) <a href="https://twitter.com/smyyguy/status/1951209977856823739?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 1, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



I’m still wary of one too many DATs causing the whole thing to crumble, but I can’t argue with Hadick, Garg, or Santos, who have some very valid points.&nbsp;



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Why the appetite for DATs isn’t waning yet

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



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



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
&#8220;What unites people? Armies? Gold? Flags? Stories. There&#8217;s nothing more powerful in the world than a good story.&#8221;



— Tyrion Lannister
</blockquote>



<a href="https://blockworks.co/analytics/launchpads">Blockworks Research launchpad dashboard</a>



Here’s an incredible chart from Blockworks Research:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeXiGhOCL9YR33PP0PCMop0-hVjhw_i4zo868Zzt6FlzOiYxkG-_AyfgZgK-T1scrBx38uaefUW7PWxQFNO2L-BkaFi6bi2tc7grQ4gAGDr7O8aT_AsNL4EfxHvlBbM-MUNuQMbPQ?key=yoZ4ihdHd6uoHnz_rRLS0g" alt=""/></figure>



Incredible because it illustrates just how fast fortunes can change in the low-moat business of crypto.



As measured by trading volumes, Pump.fun (in green) went from a nearly 100% share of the market for launchpad tokens on June 9 to under 10% now.



But the even more incredible part might be what happened in between: the Pump.fun ICO.



Has there ever been a similar case where the underlying business of a company was collapsing in the same moment that investors were eagerly sending the company their money?



The closest I can find is when Blue Apron IPO’d in 2017, just a week after Amazon bought Whole Foods.&nbsp;



The prospect of Amazon delivering groceries the way it delivers everything else suddenly made Blue Apron’s business of delivering meal kits seem doomed.



It was — and most investors seemed to know it. The IPO was re-priced sharply lower, the stock immediately fell even further than that and the company was eventually acquired for less than one-tenth its valuation at IPO.



Crypto investors, by contrast, seemed weirdly eager to buy into a similar setup, with Pump.fun in the role of Blue Apron and Bonk.fun in the role of Amazon.



Bookmark the dashboard to see if they can rewrite the ending.



<a href="https://blockworks.co/analytics/treasury-companies">Blockworks Research DAT dashboard</a>



Another new Blockworks Research dashboard is the best way to follow the story of crypto treasury companies without having to pay attention to crypto treasury companies.



On multiple metrics, the story seems to be losing steam.



The collective mNAV (multiple of net asset value) for treasury companies investing in ETH and SOL, for example, has fallen below the mNAV for bitcoin treasury companies — which might be a sign that the MicroStrategy phenomenon is not as easy to replicate as its emulators seem to think.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcC-by3m_pod8uIc4XUEfcSICDHwgq0e-kSsPHcbhqVAJjae_OXwFGYpUr86hlr1OCCFeQuauhgHwu1ZHKWVlhegOjIqjdumHvrX8j6NKtq0y6XYNLg846A-T0-r_oBbWOtNGDzCQ?key=yoZ4ihdHd6uoHnz_rRLS0g" alt=""/></figure>



Personally, I blame this week’s announcement of a <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250728220301/en/Mill-City-Ventures-III-Ltd.-Announces-%24450000000-Private-Placement-to-Initiate-Sui-Treasury-Strategy">SUI treasury company</a>, which has surely taken things too far.&nbsp;



What would Michael Saylor say???



<a href="https://www.moneyness.ca/2023/08/who-are-money-launderers-in-tornado.html?m=0">Someone laundered the money</a>



Tornado Cash has long been a cause célèbre in crypto circles, mostly on the basis that code is speech.



The case that the prosecution just finished making against co-founder Roman Storm, however, is not that he wrote the code, but that he owned and controlled Tornado Cash.



Whatever the merits of that argument, it’s interesting to think through the implications should the jury return a non-guilty verdict for Storm — because someone laundered the money.



“Somewhere in the Tornado Cash stack,” JP Konig <a href="https://www.moneyness.ca/2023/08/who-are-money-launderers-in-tornado.html?m=0">wrote</a> when Storm was indicted, “someone is committing the crime of money laundering.”



The US government says that someone was Storm and his co-founder, Roman Semenov.



If a jury disagrees, it presumably means someone else was responsible, because no one disputes that money was indeed laundered.



“Crooks depositing dirty ether are still ending up with laundered ether, so there is by definition a ‘someone’ in the stack who is providing laundering services to them,” Konig wrote.



Could that someone be the users of Tornado Cash?



“A person who is aware that criminals are depositing dirty money into Tornado Cash smart contracts, yet decides to deposit their own funds into those same smart contracts…ticks all the boxes for a money laundering charge.”



No user of Tornado Cash could plausibly claim ignorance of its use for money laundering. So, if the co-founders don’t take the rap, users might have some explaining to do.



“Counterintuitively, the indictment [of Roman Storm] seems like a win…for fans of decentralized finance, or DeFi,” JP Konig concluded.



If so, a win for Roman Storm could, counterintuitively, turn into a loss for DeFi.



<a href="https://www.nasdaq.com/events/consensys-rings-closing-bell-celebrate-ethereums-10th-anniversary">Ethereum closing bell</a>



The 10th anniversary of Ethereum’s founding was celebrated yesterday with a ceremonial ringing of the closing bell for Nasdaq.



It’s surprising just how unsurprising that seems.&nbsp;



Crypto, conceived as an alternative financial system, is suddenly most celebrated by the traditional system it was meant to replace.



Crypto is worth more on the stock market than it is in crypto markets; stock market investors value Circle at 10x what crypto investors probably would have; crypto IPOs are hotter than crypto ICOs.



And no one seems particularly surprised about it.



TradFi is having a crypto moment. I get it.



But what’s unclear to me is whether crypto is changing finance or finance is changing crypto.



In the case of Ethereum, the community has been executing on its technical roadmap, but the token was languishing, which made people question the roadmap.



Now, the token is hot again, but only because the stock market has somewhat arbitrarily decided to like it for reasons unrelated to its technical development.



Is that good?



In investing, everything is a story and the stories determine what kind of businesses get built.



Now, Wall Street seems to be writing a new story for ETH and that might affect what kind of Ethereum gets built.



Jim Cramer, for example, says he’s buying ETH as a hedge against inflation and if that’s a story that catches on, it might just become that.



Ethereum isn’t a company, of course, so maybe it’s exempt from the perception-is-reality dynamics of TradFi.



Still, my guess is that celebrating Ethereum’s 10th birthday on a stock exchange will have an effect on what it becomes by its 15th or 20th.&nbsp;



<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/07/fact-sheet-the-presidents-working-group-on-digital-asset-markets-releases-recommendations-to-strengthen-american-leadership-in-digital-financial-technology/">A golden age of digital assets is coming</a>



In a statement this week, the White House declared its ambition to usher in “a golden age of crypto,” along with a report on the regulatory and legal changes that will make this possible.



The 160-page document makes clear just how committed the administration is to digital assets, detailing a broad suite of industry-friendly policies that I have no doubt will go a long way toward realizing that vision.



But the golden age of crypto will begin when none of that matters.



Crypto will only be ascendant when it’s routinely exchanged peer-to-peer, not when “regulators provide clarity regarding BSA obligations and reporting.”&nbsp;



When people routinely pay for everything in crypto, without any need for on- and off-ramps&nbsp; “with built-in AML and KYC protocols.”



And when DeFi is sufficiently self-sovereign that it can safely operate without studying the “AML/CFT obligations of actors within the decentralized finance ecosystem.”



In fairness, the full report refers to &#8220;digital assets” throughout and the statement frames the White House’s goal as “positioning America as the leader in digital asset markets.”



Which is good. 



I hope it really does usher in a golden age of digital assets.  But whether that, in turn, leads to a golden age of crypto…is an entirely different question.



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Thursday links: Dashboards, money laundering and a golden age of ‘crypto’

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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SEC Chair Paul Atkins dropped a crypto market bombshell this morning.



“Today I am announcing the launch of ‘Project Crypto’ — a Commission-wide initiative to modernize the securities rules and regulations to enable America’s financial markets to move onchain,” Atkins said in a <a href="https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/speeches-statements/atkins-digital-finance-revolution-073125">speech</a> to the America First Policy Institute.&nbsp;



Atkins’ talk came a day after President Trump’s crypto working group released its report, which contained a <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-30/trump-crypto-group-unveils-proposals-to-boost-digital-finance">slew</a> of fairly boring crypto-linked policy suggestions.&nbsp;



Atkins has injected some excitement with his pledge to move financial markets onchain, though his speech was somewhat light on the particulars. Will onchain markets run alongside traditional financial rails, or replace them altogether? Will those outside the US be allowed to invest? Curious observers will have to wait on more concrete answers.



“No one knows what it means but [it’s] provocative,” a host of crypto podcast The Rollup <a href="https://x.com/ayyyeandy/status/1950960636239765729">said</a> of Atkins’ pledge on X, channeling Blades of Glory.&nbsp;



Nonetheless, Atkins’ onchain-markets line feels like a new high-water mark in the crypto industry’s repaired marriage with US regulators. It’s one thing to drop a bunch of onerous lawsuits, as the SEC has. It’s another thing altogether to begin the process of moving the world’s largest financial markets onchain.



In other words, crypto replacing TradFi rails is quickly going from a crypto investor’s pipe dream to a crypto investor’s PIPE dream.



Blockworks co-founder Mike Ippolito asserted onchain financial markets are “[m]assively bullish Ethereum,” which makes sense given retail giant Robinhood’s planned move to begin <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/robinhood-l2-staking-us">tokenizing US equities</a> on Arbitrum.



But Ethereum’s chief competitor in Solana will be looking to capitalize on the major shift in regulatory winds as well.



The Solana Policy Institute lobbying group has already begun <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/358641/solana-phantom-orca-superstate-compliant-tokenized-securities-sec">pitching</a> the SEC on a framework to compliantly bring tokenized securities onchain. The SPI asked the SEC for exemptive relief for blockchain infrastructure, which would essentially allow crypto infrastructure to operate outside of existing regulations. Based on Atkins’ speech this morning, it seems like the SEC may be happy to oblige.



“I&#8217;m absolutely blown away by the breadth of the ambition of the agenda laid out in Chair Atkins&#8217; speech. Project Crypto, led by the SEC, is going to revolutionize financial markets generally, and ensure that the US remains at the forefront of Internet Capital Markets,” Solana Policy Institute CEO <a href="mailto:miller@solanapolicyinstitute.org">Miller Whitehouse-Levine</a>, who attended Atkins’ speech today, said.



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institutional adoption

SEC Chair Paul Atkins pledges to move financial markets onchain

Felix Jauvin

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



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Fed Chair Jerome Powell did quick work in yesterday’s FOMC meeting to quell any speculation about a September rate cut.&nbsp;



With no meeting until September, optionality to guide toward a cut during next month’s Jackson Hole symposium, and two more jobs reports and inflation reports to look at before the next meeting, there was very little incentive for Powell to signal any <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/dovish-fed-fomc-july-2025">sort of dovishness</a>.&nbsp;



As the dust settled, odds of a rate cut in September lowered from 58% to 39%.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeEmCzJqEJLR8Xveli0iBX3Ir-HjqZvRqZpulVQzONVkYdX42y5U40IVzn3LQJd9WImZgdBaUI8sMiYcFoFUytYJMQ-Ly16mHI1b2wiNidhDGBKXmh_22a5gS8ebzhb1mMYVtMaDw?key=ydIfj8BMlBf4wg6CCFVUAQ" alt="" style="width:669px;height:auto"/></figure>



Despite the hardline stance against any sort of easing from Powell, the committee was much less aligned beneath the surface about the path of policy.&nbsp;



For the first time in 30 years, we saw two FOMC governors dissent on the decision. Governor Waller and Governor Bowman both dissented to cutting rates at this meeting.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcNdK1eKksKWVlbFWkNPH-OxFkBogla9ZnugPAABnlR8kGbhT5oln2MAxQDBbrKuDr0vdQG4wKtqicpWI3uHu1Huc2tkh2YHXzXtPHRjHR3shPzRWQ_1iF0OvTtkGR5V_M-_5R2?key=ydIfj8BMlBf4wg6CCFVUAQ" alt="" style="width:660px;height:auto"/></figure>



A dissent of this magnitude highlights the fork in the road in the context of <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/fiscal-dominance-isnt-about-interest-rates">US monetary policy</a>.



Governor Waller has advocated for preemptive insurance cuts due to what he sees as emerging risks in the labor market and a high conviction that tariff inflation will be transitory.&nbsp;



Contrasting the unemployment rate with the “jobs hard to get less jobs plentiful” data point, you can see where he’s coming from regarding emerging risks to the labor market.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeq68aczE-V2W9xmZpF8kzUX_-1BHwNcpyJoSfiJw3yQYSo8A8eLAe8cy0cJy-DCRLS8gtqjUQ93oqywDEDdAynK7InaJZR0uwwcSUtX41P3BdFglgJFvNpJaYuYBJh0pAFs5O6?key=ydIfj8BMlBf4wg6CCFVUAQ" alt="" style="width:694px;height:auto"/></figure>



That said, it’s clear that inflation is starting to tick up due to tariffs. Today we received core PCE data (the Fed’s preferred inflation metric), and no matter which way you try to annualize the data, it’s clear that inflation is skewed higher, not lower. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXf0Hdc-YYMKirK4ZspiM03yLv2PEU0LIHoUoV8YbWZjyKfV9tfkDuDNrTaOZ0x6HwwsbKtdJcOyVv31xMFpBDObkm1nKrkXj6CZVqw7ou6dGHZh0hW0MkHccKxmTCA5nNV0n-ukSQ?key=ydIfj8BMlBf4wg6CCFVUAQ" width="624" height="387">



Picking apart services inflation from goods, it becomes crystal clear that the stickiness of inflation is being manifested by higher goods inflation brought on by tariffs. This is quite different from the past two years, where goods were outright deflationary and it was services propping things up:



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe6H76xOKkY0ckrl2tFEf7NN6F-YjNzVfr4xQPOX9my5pu3sSty73CxLbBybK4dhXpnMmSCXk5AT8TUmr9-6B2qioJSw9xc8EqXcRuiIIfGBvz1OoMipSgE4t5MAKjrAnV0nnVmHQ?key=ydIfj8BMlBf4wg6CCFVUAQ" alt="" style="width:635px;height:auto"/></figure>



This combination — paired with continued political pressure for it to cut rates —&nbsp;puts the Fed in <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/inflation-breakevens-eroding-fed-independence">a tough place</a>.&nbsp;



When Powell was asked about whether he was willing to “look through” tariff-related inflation as a one-time price adjustment, he sternly responded that “by not hiking rates right now, we already are.”&nbsp;



That sounds like a shot across the bow directly at the Trump administration. As we finish off the data-heavy week, tomorrow’s jobs report — if it comes in hot — could well be the nail in the coffin for any potential rate cut in September.



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Federal Reserve

Powell remains resolute amid dissents

Molly Jane Zuckerman

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



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NFTs, meet the Labubu —&nbsp;your worst enemy.



The possibility of crypto has long led artists to dream of creating characters that become universally beloved while also making a ton of money.



It&#8217;s not an impossible fantasy. It&#8217;s at the heart of pretty much all NFT collections, and no matter what the creators say about their mission to build community, money is the bottom line.



The blueprint for obsession already exists —&nbsp;look at Pokémon, My Little Pony, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Beanie Babies. People have proven they are willing to spend probably too much money and too much time collecting many versions of cute little things. That’s a given.&nbsp;



And yet, essentially all NFT collections have failed at creating lasting public interest in their version of “cute little things,” perhaps with the exception of Pudgy Penguins and their Walmart plushies.&nbsp;



But they’re clearly no Labubus.



It’s so humbling to see a completely non-blockchain, non-NFT, non-crypto collectible do what NFT collections have been trying to do for years, essentially overnight.



Labubus, sinister yet cute tiny monsters, were created by Hong Kong-Belgian artist Kasing Lung back in 2015. They only became the phenomenon they are today after partnering with toymaker Pop Mart for mass distribution in 2019. BlackPink’s Lisa (arguably one of the world’s largest popstars) wearing a Labubu on her purse in April 2024 did not hurt.



<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">Our biggest FAN. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/LISA?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#LISA</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/LABUBU?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#LABUBU</a><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BLACKPINK?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BLACKPINK</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24labubu&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$labubu</a><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/labubuOnSol?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#labubuOnSol</a> <a href="https://t.co/kzAUTATJaG">pic.twitter.com/kzAUTATJaG</a>&mdash; Labubu Fans (@labubufans) <a href="https://twitter.com/labubufans/status/1928724825733845398?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 31, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



What makes it such a laugh riot to me, an NFT skeptic, is that beloved worldwide phenomenon Labubus, physical plushies, can attribute their success to accidentally following the NFT “guide to success” that has failed so miserably with “digital” plushies.&nbsp;



What’s that guide? Rarity, exclusivity, community.



Labubus often come in “blind boxes,” meaning that it’s a crapshoot what your Labubu will look like. As Psychology Today <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/nz/blog/the-mind-of-a-collector/202507/what-labubu-dolls-say-about-us">writes</a>,&nbsp;



“This uncertainty is not unlike a slot machine, which taps into our brain’s reward circuits. A limited edition of ‘secret’ Labubus can spark joy, and even an obsession. Then, collecting is more than acquisition; it becomes a ritual, a source of community, and possibly a point of pride.”



This sounds like the “About” section on every failed NFT collection’s website, right after they explain their rare attributes, surprise mint schedules, and link to their community Discord.&nbsp;



More celebrities besides Lisa have more recently been spotted with a Labubu accessory —&nbsp;Rihanna, Kim Kardashian and Dua Lipa, to name a few.&nbsp;



And while some of the more well-known NFT collections did have their celebrity followers too (most notably Justin Bieber’s Bored Ape and Jay-Z’s CryptoPunk), we now cringe when we look back on the celebrity-studded NFT craze. Nobody is cringing that hard at Labubus — yet.



Yes, Labubus are probably also over-hyped, and yes, it is funny to see Labubus at both the playground and the bar. But they might’ve unlocked the long-lasting charm that no NFT collectible has come close to achieving.&nbsp;



Why am I so certain that you’ll never see a Pudgy Penguin bag charm on a Kardashian arm anytime soon?



There’s a whimsy to the Labubu that has always eluded NFT art. Maybe it’s the whiff of the cash grab that surrounds all NFT art, even when it comes to the coolest and cutest of the digital creatures. Maybe it’s that NFTs are inaccessible to anyone who isn’t hip to the technology.&nbsp;



There’s no denying the fact that Labubus have made it where NFTs have so far failed.



Let’s just hope that Labubus don’t come to the blockchain and prove me wrong.



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