Skillful AI

Byron Gilliam

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



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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
&#8220;The global economy is going to work 100 times better because it&#8217;s using this new technology that lets us move money in a permissionless, programmable way.&#8221;



— Jesse Pollak
</blockquote>



Imagine if Twitter, instead of publishing the world’s stream of consciousness in real time, embargoed our posts during the day and released them all at once at 2 am every day.&nbsp;



Or if the New York Times stockpiled its journalists&#8217; daily output and published it in a single daily batch.



Such is the pre-internet dystopia in which our banking system still lives.



Credit cards, Venmo and Apple Pay make it feel like we’re sending money in real time, but this is smoke and mirrors.&nbsp;



For the most part, banks still collect our payment instructions during the day and process them in one giant batch in the middle of the night.



That’s because, behind the scenes, banks still keep their internal ledgers on creaky mainframes powered by COBOL — a programming language old enough to collect Social Security.



A <a href="https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-BANKS-COBOL/010040KH18J/">Reuters study</a> from 2017 estimated that 43% of the world’s banking systems run on COBOL, including those accounting for 80% of in-person transactions and 95% of ATM transactions.



At the time, the industry was estimated to be running on 220 billion lines of COBOL — and banks continued to <a href="https://techchannel.com/cobol/special-report-cobol-survey-results-prove-pervasiveness-value-and-a-bright-future/">pile it on</a> in the years since, digging themselves ever deeper into a hole of legacy code.



Many fear there is no way out.



One top banking regulator <a href="https://www.americanbanker.com/news/small-banks-feel-like-hostages-to-their-core-systems-occs-hsu">said</a> banks “feel like hostages” to their core COBOL-based systems, which are too mission-critical to risk replacing — or pausing, even.



“Some of these systems have been running for decades without being turned off,” <a href="https://www.thebanker.com/content/e22f03a8-305b-5a6d-bb07-a192a2e27bb6">according</a> to a software executive who refers to banks&#8217; COBOL systems as “zombie code.”



“If there is a power shortage,” he adds, “many banks will have no idea how to turn the core systems back on.”



This risk is not just theoretical.&nbsp; When the British bank TSB turned its COBOL systems off in 2017 to migrate to a modern Java-based platform, for example, it failed to get the new system turned on correctly.



This left as many as 1.9 million customers without access to their accounts, including tens of thousands of business customers who were unable to pay their employees.&nbsp;



The disruption lasted for the best part of a year and cost the bank more than £400 million in customer compensation, consulting fees, operational losses, fraud and regulator fines.



TSB’s chief investment officer was personally fined £81,000.



Not many banks have risked replacing COBOL since.



Recognizing that these legacy systems are effectively impossible to replace, banks have instead been looking for ways to simply avoid them, with only modest success — the real-time payments we make with Venmo and PayPal continue to be batched overnight by COBOL.



But JPMorgan’s deposit coin, <a href="https://www.jpmorgan.com/kinexys/content-hub/deposit-tokens">JPMD</a>, hopes to do better.



Announced last week, JPMD will allow whitelisted customers to move deposits held with JPMorgan on Coinbase’s BASE blockchain.



A fully KYC’d digital dollar on a corporate blockchain is not exactly cypherpunks’ dreams come true, of course.&nbsp;



But it’s undeniably useful.



In effect, it would allow banks to move money with hundreds of lines of smart contract code instead of 100,000s of lines of COBOL code.



Similarly, Jesse Pollak told the <a href="https://youtu.be/4zSMFup894w?si=f5dFUcwZ_wHe6Xx4">Unchained podcast</a> that Coinbase has helped Shopify build an onchain payments protocol that will use smart contracts to do the same job that previously required “millions of lines of code of offchain systems.”



This, he says, will allow Shopify to move money “way more efficiently, way more cheaply and fully, fully global.”



In Pollak’s telling, that is how crypto and blockchains will make the global economy “work 100 times better.”



I don’t blame you for being skeptical.



Most of the blockchain-based reimaginings of finance that I write about here are crypto-native fever dreams that end up leaving little impression on reality.&nbsp;



But TradFi appears to be paying attention this time: Shares of Visa and Mastercard slumped last week on fears that stablecoins really will disrupt payments, while newly issued Circle shares were skyrocketing.



The even better evidence that something is different this time may be today’s <a href="https://www.wsj.com/finance/currencies/stablecoin-crypto-fiserv-smaller-banks-aa9049ea?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=ASWzDAiuAOuttUqOTsDK7Rw3bPhbyXWO5DB7RRm4R5nnzbZTnWYscLPRv7w-V5NaNAA%3D&amp;gaa_ts=68599256&amp;gaa_sig=xfuRwlSpsPotDMadI8fhOGGFW5wkTZl0qCfPx5bgXHQ24XoqIJnAtwoUZvutqdPi1iZEesSpbdWf6ZRBsQwX-w%3D%3D">news</a> that the fintech giant Fiserv plans to issue its own stablecoin and launch a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/fiserv-solana-based-stablecoin-bank-transfers">Solana-based payments platform</a> for smaller banks to use it on.



I find this instructive because Fiserv is one of the three major fintech companies that provide “middleware” connecting banks’ batch-processing COBOL systems to real-time payment systems like FedNow.



If Fiserv’s stablecoin catches on, it might render its middleware offering redundant — and help banks out of the mainframe-sized hole they’ve dug themselves into.



It won’t happen overnight, of course.&nbsp;



But stablecoins and deposit tokens might eventually do to COBOL what the internet did to newspapers and email did to the post office: Make it obsolete by making it irrelevant.



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thebreakdown">The Breakdown</a>: Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily.</li>



<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/forwardguidance">Forward Guidance</a>: The intersection of crypto, macro and policy.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch">0xResearch</a>: Alpha directly in your inbox.</li>



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

The Breakdown Newsletter

Blockchains may finally free banks from COBOL

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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One of the biggest payment processors on earth is dropping its own stablecoin. This morning, the $90-billion payments giant Fiserv <a href="https://investors.fiserv.com/newsroom/detail/2848/fiserv-launches-new-fiusd-stablecoin-for-financial-institutions">announced</a> it will launch a bank-friendly stablecoin called FIUSD.



According to the company, this will be a dollar-backed stablecoin built on Solana, catering specifically to banks, merchants and financial institutions. The company indicated that the launch will happen later this year, though it has not yet given an exact date.



FIUSD will run natively through the same infrastructure that already powers 90 billion transactions annually, including Clover POS systems and banking tools used by 10,000 financial institutions.



Most global commerce still runs on systems designed for a slower age. Funds take days to clear, cross-border transfers are expensive and error-prone, and small businesses often wait until Monday for weekend payments to settle.



The rise of crypto has been <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stablecoins-accelerating-payments-commerce">promising</a> to change that for over a decade, but banks and enterprises are slow to evolve. Until <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/fidelity-stablecoin-launch-market-yiel">recently</a>, most have lacked a compliant, scalable way to interact with decentralized assets.



Fiserv&#8217;s solution is a regulated, programmable digital dollar built using infrastructure from Circle (USDC) and Paxos (PYUSD).



Fiserv also <a href="https://investors.fiserv.com/newsroom/detail/2849/fiserv-and-paypal-expand-partnership-to-advance-stablecoin-payments">announced</a> an expansion of its partnership with PayPal. The two firms will build interoperability between FIUSD and PYUSD to smooth cross-border payments, merchant settlements and real-time payouts.



Banks and merchants would tap into FIUSD via SDKs baked into Fiserv tools like Experience Digital and Commercial Center. Then, they can track transactions on the Finxact core ledger, with compliance, fraud monitoring and risk controls handled on the backend.



It sounds like end-users will mostly be unaware they&#8217;re even interacting with crypto. They&#8217;ll gain all of the speed, transparency and efficiency benefits of Web3 with none of the persisting friction.



It doesn&#8217;t take a genius to figure out why Fiserv has chosen to do this now.



Just six days ago, the US Senate <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/genius-stablecoin-act-passes-senate-vote">passed</a> the GENIUS Act — short for Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins — by a wide 68-30 margin.



The bill creates a comprehensive federal framework for payment stablecoins, defining them as a new legal category of regulated payment systems, not as securities or commodities.



Large issuers will fall under federal oversight, while smaller ones may opt-in via aligned state-level rules.



The Act mandates 100% backing with high-quality liquid assets, strict transparency, monthly reserve disclosures and AML compliance under the Bank Secrecy Act.



This is <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-aws-moment-stablecoins">a major turning point</a> in US digital asset policy and clears the way for enterprise-scale stablecoin adoption. That clarity likely removed one of the biggest remaining hurdles for Fiserv, which operates deep in regulated financial infrastructure.



For normal people, these changes could mean that your paycheck starts arriving on Sunday. Your international orders could settle in seconds. A business in Brazil could get paid instantly by a partner in Boise.



Look out, world. <a href="https://x.com/blockworksres/status/1935690126405095600">Stablecoins</a> aren&#8217;t just for crypto traders anymore.



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thebreakdown">The Breakdown</a>: Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily.</li>



<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/forwardguidance">Forward Guidance</a>: The intersection of crypto, macro and policy.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch">0xResearch</a>: Alpha directly in your inbox.</li>



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

Lightspeed Newsletter

Solana-based stablecoin to settle merchant and bank transfers instantly

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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With easier access to crypto companies proliferating, we now have another bitcoin-focused firm looking to go public…



And with a treasury strategy that’s becoming less fringe.



That would be Anthony Pompliano-led ProCap Financial, via a merger with a SPAC called Columbus Circle Capital Corp. Oh, and the company said Monday it intends to buy up to $1 billion of bitcoin for its balance sheet.



The story is becoming more common. Pompliano was the latest to voice what more are believing: Bitcoin is disrupting the legacy financial system.&nbsp;



ProCap Financial plans to not only acquire BTC, but generate revenue from those holdings.&nbsp;



So deploying “cash flow–oriented structures that balance upside potential with downside protection,” said Constantine Karides, the chair of Reed Smith&#8217;s crypto and digital assets group and lead lawyer on this deal. He didn’t get more specific.&nbsp;



“It reflects a broader shift in the marketplace — away from speculative token models and toward capital-markets-tested frameworks that can support long-term sustainability,” Karides told me.



Karides was also the lead lawyer on Trump Media’s $2.5 billion bitcoin treasury deal.



And you might recall, Strive Asset Management moved last month to combine with Asset Entities and form a Nasdaq-listed bitcoin treasury company. The firm then signed a $750 million private investment in public equity with Asset Entities for its “first wave” of BTC buys.



Twenty One Capital — a new entity that was set to combine with Cantor Equity Partners in April — holds 31,500 BTC, according to its website.



Strive board member Ben Werkman <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/companies-building-btc-treasuries-corporate-reserves#">had told me</a> he wouldn’t be surprised to see 25-35% of all bitcoin one day held by corporations. Strategy, by itself, owns roughly 3% of the bitcoin in supply.



<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">Strategy has acquired 245 BTC for ~$26.0 million at ~$105,856 per bitcoin and has achieved BTC Yield of 19.2% YTD 2025. As of 6/22/2025, we hodl 592,345 <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24BTC&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$BTC</a> acquired for ~$41.87 billion at ~$70,681 per bitcoin. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24MSTR&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$MSTR</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24STRK&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$STRK</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24STRF&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$STRF</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24STRD&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$STRD</a> <a href="https://t.co/bnE0OC9kEv">https://t.co/bnE0OC9kEv</a>&mdash; Michael Saylor (@saylor) <a href="https://twitter.com/saylor/status/1937118945057915061?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 23, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Werkman, also Swan Bitcoin’s CIO, noted today: “As confidence in the dollar and US Treasurys to preserve balance sheet strength erodes, bitcoin is emerging as the new standard for long-term corporate resilience.”



That is, despite its volatility. BTC, up 58% from a year ago, recently dipped below $100,000 and was down nearly 4% over the past week, as of 1:30 p.m. ET. 



Kraken CFO Stephanie Lemmerman said at an April event that she expects about 20% of the roughly 55,000 public companies <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/corporate-bitcoin-adoption-boom-inevitable-kraken">to hold BTC</a> a couple years from now.



ProCap raised $516.5 million in equity and $235 million in convertible notes. Alongside various institutions, Eric Semler is listed as an investor.



Semler is the chair of Semler Scientific, a medical tech provider that held ~3,800 BTC at the end of Q1. It seeks to hold 10,000 bitcoin by the end of 2025 and looks to 10x that (to 105,000 BTC) by 2027’s end.



ProCap Financial intends to ultimately list on Nasdaq, Karides said. A next step is filing a registration statement with the SEC, and the transaction could close within roughly 100 days from there.&nbsp;



“This deal…won’t be the last of its kind,” the lawyer added.



The point is that getting regulated exposure to bitcoin through a listed vehicle is “a model that is becoming increasingly attractive in today’s evolving capital markets landscape,” Karides said.



It’s been roughly five years since Strategy started accumulating BTC. MSTR’s stock price is up more than 3000% over that span.



And beyond bitcoin treasuries, just look at what happened when investors had the chance for public equity exposure to stablecoins <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/circle-shares-nyse-day-one#">via Circle’s IPO</a>.&nbsp;



CRCL was trading around $264 at 1:30 pm ET — up 10% on the day. 



<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-ipo-boom-etoro-kraken">As Dan Tapiero said</a> at Blockworks’ DAS in March, investors like owning companies.



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



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

Fringe to frequent: Inside ProCap’s bitcoin strategy, listing hopes

Kate Irwin

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



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A security flaw on CoinMarketCap’s website let an attacker briefly add a malicious pop-up onto the homepage that resulted in victims losing thousands of dollars.



The MetaMask team <a href="https://x.com/MetaMask/status/1936185313640300659">warned</a> users on Friday evening against connecting their wallets to CoinMarketCap’s website because the coin tracker’s frontend had been compromised to push a wallet drainer scam.



About an hour later, CoinMarketCap <a href="https://x.com/CoinMarketCap/status/1936197663931933117">confirmed</a> that visitors to its site should not connect their wallets when prompted.



Later that evening, CMC <a href="https://x.com/CoinMarketCap/status/1936273633611334081">explained</a> that a vulnerability in a “doodle image” on its homepage “contained a link that triggered malicious code through an API call, resulting in an unexpected pop-up for some users.”



Crypto cybersecurity firm Coinspect Security <a href="https://x.com/coinspect/status/1936231159320453579">said</a> it was able to recreate the JavaScript injection vulnerability that facilitated the CMC wallet drainer attack via an exploit in Lottie animation JSON files.



Three cybersecurity experts from other firms separately confirmed to me over the weekend that Coinspect’s assessment of the incident is accurate.



Trey Blalock, founder of cybersecurity firm Verification Labs, told me he was able to retrieve copies of CoinMarketCap’s source code using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine to examine the incident.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdAgKFlMDIIQuCDXQw3YHtrLC8YNNFMz2gT3K9_EJZ_DSl9pLsvGPN0dQWQ2UjLFwqyymd4Qk-tG985FUw9voxCkypCSqgl2d_PUyx3bDmsTcahzcvr0D5zzFIZl4VRYgw-uUajHw?key=qdzbrQ-ATNfVznfGkYRHWA" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Image of the malicious pop-up on CoinMarketCap’s site.</figcaption></figure>



“What is immediately noticeable is the heavy use of Scalable Vector Graphic (.SVG) images,” Blalock said of CMC’s site. “SVG is an excellent format for creating performant websites that look great across various display sizes, but recent security vulnerabilities have allowed attackers to embed HTML script tags inside SVG images that contain URLs to an attacker-controlled website, enabling them to execute a form of cross-site scripting.”



What can CMC and other sites do to avoid attacks like this in the future?



Blalock said companies should use security tools that test site elements and look for scripts within SVG files.&nbsp;



“This is relatively easy to do, but it is rarely done,” he said.



C/Side Security Analyst Himanshu Anand also noted that sites need to vet all third-party integrations more carefully.



“They should monitor client-side activity continuously to detect and alert on unusual behaviors like DOM (JavaScript) injections,” Anand said, adding: “Platforms should treat every external asset as a potential entry point for malicious code. Real protection means watching what actually runs in the browser, not just what’s served from your own systems.”



Nic Adams, CEO and cofounder at cybersecurity firm 0rcus, said eliminating all third-party JSON dependencies is another security strategy.



“Browser-in-the-browser style phishing has changed: Bad actors can embed interactive brand-perfect overlays that trick users into approving malicious transactions,” Adams said in a message.



CMC said late Friday night that it had fixed the issue, and vowed to keep its support team available to anyone with concerns.



On Monday, CMC <a href="https://x.com/CoinMarketCap/status/1937094379304374302">said</a> it will reimburse all 76 accounts that lost funds as a result of the attack, and said that $21,624.47 was lost in total.



But that’s not all — Cointelegraph also experienced a similar incident over the weekend on Saturday. Attackers <a href="https://x.com/blockaid_/status/1936976381490995403">used</a> the crypto news site’s frontend to inject a malicious phishing pop-up for a fake airdrop.



Cointelegraph <a href="https://x.com/Cointelegraph/status/1937077253373866301">said</a> early Monday morning its banner publishing system had been compromised, but it has since removed the unauthorized code. We don’t yet know how many might have been impacted by this incident.&nbsp;



Binance CEO CZ <a href="https://x.com/cz_binance/status/1936991040420110834">warned</a>: “Hackers are targeting information web sites now. Be careful when authorizing wallet connect.”



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CoinMarketCap

76 wallets drained in CoinMarketCap frontend exploit

Donovan Choy

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



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We’re kicking off this week with a collection of charts around political markets on Polymarket, Maple’s unstoppable SyrupUSDC growth, and an ambitious Celestia proposal to leave proof-of-stake behind.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Polymarket political markets</h2>



Polymarket is back in the limelight amid recent geopolitical conflicts.



In the last week, markets in the “Politics” category saw a jump from $3.9 million to $19.5 million in volumes, as denoted by the light blue bars in the chart below.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXc7hUObP8pVy4XKuQ58DPZVGrHGak8rhCt8v4aJbESeWy1ZQbuUOs4sbrb2FYKWggkDpthx_SlAP5mWnRfzly6ZwKn_SuQT_Cy7_J43tKo6nP2JCAWMz03oVChiBY4ORL56tYOy?key=cRSo9z7KKeL8tZciBY-DLw" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/polymarket?dashboard=53">Polymarket</a>.</figcaption></figure>



All eyes were focused on the “US military action against Iran before July?” market, which <a href="https://polymarket.com/event/us-military-action-against-iran-before-july?tid=1750273470067&amp;utm_source=hs_email&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_content=367725286&amp;_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8TeV1lleAcBdX0r-vOK9uiPIEv5Nbrs65tK4kFmpL4j8SICyG1mHZ5ThEudBWgPAtIcq25zZeOdR1gHD7q0PLJeWtOTg">contract</a> resolved yesterday following reports of US strikes on alleged Iran nuclear facilities. The market saw a total $29.9 million in trading volumes.



Just before the market surged to 99%+ near certainty, “Yes” shares on the market had been trading at $0.59, meaning markets were pricing in about a 59% probability of the US taking military action against Iran.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Celestia’s governance</h2>



Celestia should abandon proof-of-stake consensus for “proof-of-governance” (PoG), argues Celestia co-founder John Adler in an ambitious new governance <a href="https://x.com/jadler0/status/1936813032140636643">proposal</a>.



If passed, the following material changes will be enacted:



<ol class="wp-block-list">
<li>TIA issuance will be cut by about 20x, or 95%.</li>



<li>Delegated staking and liquid staking contracts will be phased out. No more onchain governance.</li>



<li>All TIA issuance will be routed solely to validators as payment for running nodes.</li>



<li>Validators would be picked by off-chain governance, because Celestia lacks general execution and is not suited to support onchain token voting. </li>



<li>Network fees would be burned as a form of value accrual to TIA token holders. Celestia’s protocol fees amount to <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/celestia?dashboard=138">$100–$300</a> daily.</li>
</ol>



TL;DR: Reduce Celestia’s constant emissions in a bid to stave off its declining price action (see chart).



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfSvCeKCWgEbxevKpPXgnWus4Riw0ipBzOlV5NxZJXyWREgS2YblbE3G60fXhrjPF6SRSni1lOALN0SjbEic-fYrINK9x6YkolncwKAfXNjP-w1UUfNYyNFV0ePpOReClVD0MoV?key=cRSo9z7KKeL8tZciBY-DLw" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/celestia?dashboard=134">Blockworks Research</a>.</figcaption></figure>



The proposal challenges many common sense “wisdoms” of Ethereum thought, namely where a chain’s “economic security” is derived from (not slashing), the framing of PoS as really permissioned “proof-of-authority,” and how to think about “blockchain profitability.” Expect Ethereum maxis to be triggered.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">SyrupUSDC growth</h2>



Maple’s yield-bearing stablecoin SyrupUSDC is now at a market cap of $780 million, making it the fastest-growing stablecoin this year.



Users deposit USDC onto the platform, which is then used to issue overcollateralized loans to institutional borrowers. The interest charged on those loans is resulting in above average APYs of about 10% today (6.4% base yield +3.5% Drip points), driving SyrupUSDC’s rapid growth.



You can also forgo points to snag a <a href="https://app.pendle.finance/trade/markets/0x9a63fa80b5ddfd3cab23803fdb93ad2c18f3d5aa/swap?view=pt&amp;chain=ethereum">9.2%</a> PT fixed yield on Pendle instead.



About $587 million is used across DeFi, mainly 55% in Spark and 19% in Pendle.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcjOKU0Y9_fXBG5bWNQwjMk2DQKWWs9NpxTbl0ymw9c9uktQr7seFQ99V8g68hy9po0-e3bF8G6ydZ4EeDvKgf4x1O8GqkxftYu3-ITL9x3u5dxyRYFLqrQV8ax3CWGXtL7mFsDcw?key=cRSo9z7KKeL8tZciBY-DLw" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://dune.com/jonaso/syrup-usdc-usage-in-defi">Dune</a>.</figcaption></figure>







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0xResearch Newsletter

Polymarket ‘politics’ markets surge, Celestia rethinks consensus

<a href="https://nexus.xyz/?utm_source=blockworks">Nexus</a>, the company building a Layer 1 blockchain for the AI era, today launched the final testnet, marking the last major milestone before mainnet later this year. More than 2.1 million users and 3.6 million nodes contributed over a 5-day period in the previous testnet. 



Nexus makes it easy for anyone to contribute compute power from any device, even a laptop or phone. With just one click, users can connect at <a href="https://app.nexus.xyz/rewards?utm_source=blockworks&amp;utm_medium=pressrelease&amp;utm_campaign=TN3?utm_source=blockworks">app.nexus.xyz</a> to start earning rewards and help scale a verifiable network built for the AI economy.



By offering compute power, users strengthen the Nexus blockchain by equipping it with the speed and scalability required to support AI systems at global scale. In doing so, they help build a world where every action can be proven, every model audited, and every interaction verified.



Users can also run more powerful nodes using a streamlined, copy-and-paste command line interface (CLI). An interactive global map shows active contributions, and a public leaderboard tracks top participants.



“We need to fundamentally rethink blockchain infrastructure in the age of AI,” said Daniel Marin, CEO and Founder of Nexus. “As AI models become more intelligent, they’re consuming compute and issuing transactions at exponential rates. How do we generate enough compute power to enable billions of transactions per second, and do it in a way that people can trust? The Nexus Layer 1 blockchain is our solution. It’s a world supercomputer that gets more powerful with each connected device.”



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="827" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AD_4nXemI6RLXEzi0jDKFGhTRLDWC2cRcCo3UFx77zOIJm2UAq-hgWGyumYnu5LeYUl0ehvH64o5j1QyZ-1C14BGsI9TzsTSRDXLssFybFMbSeW6h-fqtcSjbqauT2pX93vMauGBJM_oeQ.png" alt="" class="wp-image-104170" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AD_4nXemI6RLXEzi0jDKFGhTRLDWC2cRcCo3UFx77zOIJm2UAq-hgWGyumYnu5LeYUl0ehvH64o5j1QyZ-1C14BGsI9TzsTSRDXLssFybFMbSeW6h-fqtcSjbqauT2pX93vMauGBJM_oeQ.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AD_4nXemI6RLXEzi0jDKFGhTRLDWC2cRcCo3UFx77zOIJm2UAq-hgWGyumYnu5LeYUl0ehvH64o5j1QyZ-1C14BGsI9TzsTSRDXLssFybFMbSeW6h-fqtcSjbqauT2pX93vMauGBJM_oeQ.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AD_4nXemI6RLXEzi0jDKFGhTRLDWC2cRcCo3UFx77zOIJm2UAq-hgWGyumYnu5LeYUl0ehvH64o5j1QyZ-1C14BGsI9TzsTSRDXLssFybFMbSeW6h-fqtcSjbqauT2pX93vMauGBJM_oeQ.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AD_4nXemI6RLXEzi0jDKFGhTRLDWC2cRcCo3UFx77zOIJm2UAq-hgWGyumYnu5LeYUl0ehvH64o5j1QyZ-1C14BGsI9TzsTSRDXLssFybFMbSeW6h-fqtcSjbqauT2pX93vMauGBJM_oeQ.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AD_4nXemI6RLXEzi0jDKFGhTRLDWC2cRcCo3UFx77zOIJm2UAq-hgWGyumYnu5LeYUl0ehvH64o5j1QyZ-1C14BGsI9TzsTSRDXLssFybFMbSeW6h-fqtcSjbqauT2pX93vMauGBJM_oeQ.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AD_4nXemI6RLXEzi0jDKFGhTRLDWC2cRcCo3UFx77zOIJm2UAq-hgWGyumYnu5LeYUl0ehvH64o5j1QyZ-1C14BGsI9TzsTSRDXLssFybFMbSeW6h-fqtcSjbqauT2pX93vMauGBJM_oeQ.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AD_4nXemI6RLXEzi0jDKFGhTRLDWC2cRcCo3UFx77zOIJm2UAq-hgWGyumYnu5LeYUl0ehvH64o5j1QyZ-1C14BGsI9TzsTSRDXLssFybFMbSeW6h-fqtcSjbqauT2pX93vMauGBJM_oeQ.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AD_4nXemI6RLXEzi0jDKFGhTRLDWC2cRcCo3UFx77zOIJm2UAq-hgWGyumYnu5LeYUl0ehvH64o5j1QyZ-1C14BGsI9TzsTSRDXLssFybFMbSeW6h-fqtcSjbqauT2pX93vMauGBJM_oeQ.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AD_4nXemI6RLXEzi0jDKFGhTRLDWC2cRcCo3UFx77zOIJm2UAq-hgWGyumYnu5LeYUl0ehvH64o5j1QyZ-1C14BGsI9TzsTSRDXLssFybFMbSeW6h-fqtcSjbqauT2pX93vMauGBJM_oeQ.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Under the hood, the Nexus supercomputer is designed to scale verifiable computation through a unique Layer 1 architecture, where each node runs secure workloads using zero-knowledge virtual machines (zkVMs).



This approach prioritizes proof over promises and unlocks exponential scalability, massive performance improvements, and auditability essential to power the next generation of AI agents, applications, and systems.



Nexus recently launched two new initiatives to make Verifiable AI a reality and the Nexus ecosystem now includes more than 50 partners.&nbsp;



The <a href="https://blog.nexus.xyz/nexus-verifiable-ai-lab/?utm_source=blockworks">Nexus Verifiable AI Lab</a> is a dedicated R&amp;D division focused on the intersection of verifiability, economics, and artificial intelligence. The <a href="https://blog.nexus.xyz/introducing-via-the-verifiable-intelligence-alliance/?utm_source=blockworks">Verifiable Intelligence Alliance</a> brings together leading institutions to promote responsible, verifiable AI infrastructure.



This is the final testnet before the Nexus mainnet release later this year.&nbsp;



Join the testnet at <a href="https://app.nexus.xyz/rewards?utm_source=pr&amp;utm_medium=pressrelease&amp;utm_campaign=TN3&amp;utm_content=prannouncement?utm_source=blockworks">app.nexus.xyz</a> today to contribute compute power and help build a verifiable world. 



Nexus is building a Layer 1 blockchain for the AI era. Nexus has a team of experts in cryptography, research, and engineering developing the Nexus Layer 1 blockchain and Nexus zkVM (zero-knowledge virtual machine) to create a verifiable world. Nexus is backed by premier investors including Blockchain Builders Fund, Dragonfly Capital Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Pantera Capital.



This content is sponsored and does not serve as an endorsement by Blockworks. The veracity of this content has not been verified and should not serve as financial advice. We encourage readers to conduct their own research before making financial decisions.



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Nexus activates testnet for 2.1M users ahead of mainnet launch

David Canellis

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



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Just one coin has ever come close to flipping bitcoin, around this time, eight years ago.



In June 2017, bitcoin was in the final stages of warming up for a historic push to nearly $20,000 by Christmas.



Altcoin prices were <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/historical/20170612/">wacky</a>. Bitcoin would be flat one week, while coins like BitShares would jump massively, by 250%. Others, like Stratis and DigiByte, were down up to 50% in the same period.



Ethereum, meanwhile, was poised for an explosion in token projects. One <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/ethereum-ico-boom-history-crypto">study</a> calculated that $7 billion flowed into ICOs throughout 2017, practically all of it going to Ethereum-based projects. That was supposedly 4x more than the equity investments into crypto companies across the same period.



The price of ETH rose as investors piled into coin offerings through Ethereum’s native token. And on June 12, the market cap of ETH came within 17% of surpassing bitcoin’s: $36.8 billion to $44.3 billion.



Had bitcoin stayed flat, ETH would’ve only needed to jump from $400 to $470 to slide into the No. 1 spot. 



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcFOWSH_PJ_7fr_LdiZAkcB84ThHr2Oh5U-3OOjH_fxa5BDF9rgkV7eOaH87xa0tubyKuWNvQtyNM3O8MNEOk6mgex8qlZE4ao09nu_jFmjQMon9Osudrk2bLaYtjg3bb1xvDdvIw?key=jS_4PelAAmFF3xIXRPdgkw" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">This banger from the New York Time was published days earlier.</figcaption></figure>



But it would never be: BTC and ETH both fell by 60% over the next month, preceding a 10x pump through the end of the bull market for BTC — but only a 9x for ETH. Ether never made the ground back.



Still, ether came much closer than the other two primary hopefuls ever did. Litecoin made it to 10% of bitcoin’s market cap in late November 2013, $11.8 million to $1.18 billion, while XRP reached more than half in May 2017, about a month before ether’s attempt.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdvu6L6WDTkbxkMimY7B74ybyCvYx8P6XSv0DBETjUOVpaZNl0a-e7ESmLoQ18cV7oZMXkM3FKX7MKFLwGS9T657fR0Gq19Zz8uuCYz6hGV6Dqkfs4kXqL7rsG_41k9LlIpUOVa?key=jS_4PelAAmFF3xIXRPdgkw" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">By late June 2017, it was becoming clear the Flippening was no longer realistic.</figcaption></figure>



These days, ETH sits at around 13% of bitcoin’s market value, with bitcoin <a href="https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/BTC.D/?timeframe=60M">dominance</a> currently at almost two-thirds — its highest point since January 2021.&nbsp;



If there’s a status quo in crypto, it’s bitcoin.



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Ethereum was close to flipping Bitcoin in 2017 — then never again

Katherine Ross

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



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



Ex-Chorus One CIO Xavier Meegan is launching a $20 million crypto native pre-seed fund, we’ve exclusively learned.&nbsp;



At Frachtis, Meegan holds the role of General Partner with four others on an investment and advisory committee, including Chorus One’s Brian Crain and Felix Lutsch. The fund is based in Lisbon, Portugal. 



“There are five of us around the fund right now, and all of us have experience operating crypto-native businesses, which I think is kind of rare. There are only a few funds in the space that do that. Mix that with the fact that we also have experience operating blockchain infrastructure,” Meegan told me.



He said that they’d raised over the past 12 months, and noted that crypto’s currently in the “consumer apps era. The next big winners in crypto will be applications that leverage the infrastructure we already have.”



The infrastructure days, he told me, “are over.” It’s time to focus on building for the future of crypto, instead of launching more L1s and L2s, he added. Instead, he sees the demand focusing on consumer and mobile apps.



Though he’s also interested in the crossover between AI and crypto, adding that he’s closely watching AI agents.



“One big thing there, which we have another thesis around, is that these agents need way faster and more contextualized data, for example. And so, we need to build this infrastructure. Maybe the agents need certain permissions to access certain things; otherwise, there&#8217;s going to be a lot of security risk there,” he said.



“AI personalization, retention, and also loyalty of certain kinds of apps is going to get more and more important as there&#8217;s more and more stuff going live in crypto. I think that&#8217;s going to be a way that some of these teams can win: by using AI to enhance your applications, enhance the usability, enhance the engagement for the users.”



Right now is a “great time” to invest, Meegan told me. It’s been difficult for founders to raise, which has had the unforeseen benefit of forcing founders to strengthen their ideas.&nbsp;



He expects, over the next 12-18 months, to see LPs come back and get a bit more active.&nbsp;



“Everything we&#8217;ve invested in…had a long-term thesis around, and I&#8217;ve spoken with many teams&#8230;I believe [are] going to win long-term. And we have a framework for how we do this, actually, and how we analyze these founders and teams that we&#8217;ve developed over several years,” Meegan added.



Frachtis has invested in eight projects so far, over pre-seed and seed stages — including Turtle Club and Hyve. And they’re just getting started.



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Empire Newsletter

Exclusive: Ex-Chorus One CIO launches $20M crypto fund

This is a segment from The Breakdown newsletter. To read full editions,&nbsp;<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;Just because I don&#8217;t care doesn&#8217;t mean I don&#8217;t understand.&#8221;



— Marge Simpson
</blockquote>



Financial markets are forward-looking, even though humans usually are not.



It’s fundamentally what makes investing difficult: &#8220;100% of the information you have about any business reflects the past,” the legendary Bill Miller notes. “And 100% of the value of that business depends on the future.&#8221;



That’s logical enough — but also kind of confusing: How can stock prices remain so unconcerned about the future when, like this week, war breaks out in the Middle East?



In times like this, our natural instinct is to assume “the market” doesn’t understand the news we’re watching.



When stock prices appear to be under-reacting, we think everyone else must be wrong, or asleep at the wheel, or not paying attention.



This, combined with our evolutionary bias toward action, is what makes so many investors act like traders. The fight-or-flight instinct we learned in the ancient Rift Valley has evolved into a trade-or-sell instinct in the modern stock market.



But we should resist that impulse because Marge Simpson is right: The market understands what’s going on. It just doesn&#8217;t care.



“Geopolitics doesn’t normally matter much for long-run market performance,” Deutsche Bank strategist Henry Allen wrote in a note to clients this week.



Data from <a href="https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/06/markets-are-forward-looking.html">LPL Financial</a> appears to back that up, demonstrating that geopolitical shocks impact markets far less than most anyone would predict in the moment.



Even the worst events are typically followed by full market recoveries within “only a few weeks to a couple of months.”



Yet, we insist on confidently predicting the dire investing consequences of every unfortunate event that comes along.



How often do you hear an investor say, “I don’t know”?



Not very. But we did hear it from the world’s best informed market watcher this week.



On Wednesday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell <a href="https://x.com/TheTranscript_/status/1935436244890087503">explained</a> the FOMC’s decision to leave interest rates unchanged by cautioning that, &#8220;we haven’t been through a situation like this and think we have to be humble about our ability to forecast it.”



He was talking about the economic situation, but that’s probably good advice for life ones too: <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/think-act-be/201907/how-often-do-your-worries-actually-come-true">Studies suggest</a> that most of the things we worry about don’t really matter.



As for markets, global prosperity has trended relentlessly upwards for decades despite our best efforts to disrupt it with wars, short-term thinking and economically illiterate policymaking.



So I find uneventful market weeks like this one reassuring.



When markets seem surprisingly calm, it’s probably not indifference or ignorance, but perspective.



Let’s check the charts.



Nothing ever happens: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcjocTjhL0Ms05A12TGJXSzquqaa-A1YQyj0evZPTC6th1HtyYZAH3WQOxEG4aoYb2unh9mDUJoOp5ayk-1YMruyt3h_VVREc79d6QYGrrxCAmP7TuQxEUmZNBOb8wq2Y7yz_Ohig?key=MdB9863qS6m-tBRLwI6GGg" width="624" height="435">



It feels like the world has had a tumultuous month, but you’d never know from financial markets: BTC, gold, stocks and bonds have all been sideways.



Expectations re-coupling with reality?



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfypM0QW599motUHNXWaNMzGM-iTAF5IaYbGM5t7Dh3Eadc9cB-yFOLd9q5Cwfvt9Cgj9BihP8HCFdOqb8AVVEY3JWuZby4y8WMa9BAnXCRCwejHcjKZx8fkrRdjYuRA44oZD5eXg?key=MdB9863qS6m-tBRLwI6GGg" alt=""/></figure>



The “soft” economic data (i.e., sentiment-based surveys) has rebounded back to where the “hard” data (i.e., actual economic activity) is. The hard data is trending down, but in the short-term at least, the economic impact of tariffs and policy uncertainty has not been nearly as bad as expected.



Long-term, the news is usually good:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeLOzMdghOauEVdqkPtrFMQ0M7QDC63oUZalbEvmm0SEXBETRWkPsHL2aebi-OvDaHOjMOU5HgXGMGY0k-UGzaNuhlrHc66fNyehyUN8Xk_CosYWs_F2FG6AqxWcxzbJb2RU1ip?key=MdB9863qS6m-tBRLwI6GGg" alt=""/></figure>



Scott Grannis <a href="http://scottgrannis.blogspot.com">notes</a> that the real (inflation-adjusted) net worth of US households has increased by 3.6% per year for decades. “The US economy is an astounding engine of growth and prosperity,” he concludes.



The news aside, things are unusually good right now:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcP7OPDHTI0GdYhbkI_RDHm3O08p4dYDd1d_69PvNHIm7DRymzJoNm90Wmrd_6Nv6k2HBP-r0Q-j8fvEUCvWMA5cj4fW4peWYPDF-fhJXkgs_ekqBLwr_39t1ZBdUAkx5kyL_pulw?key=MdB9863qS6m-tBRLwI6GGg" alt=""/></figure>



Ed Yardeni characterizes the current mix of inflation and employment as a rare instance of economic “nirvana”: “The history of economic nirvanas with both inflation subdued at around 2.0% year over year and the economy at full employment (i.e., with the jobless rate at 4.0%) shows eight such transcendental experiences since the 1950s, including the current one.”



The class of 2025 is not feeling it, however:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdRGg3Q0XoZiE6VzMkxuW4ZXrCM8ZAObAPBpvc-x-lrHqlSE1oSTLVosiC9fGv1MZeW2iV3SPxBRbeDTbpQ2sx9kYop_k-mc0Vgs2FlAIV27HbaqtmhKrzWFUaWfB4YgeazONS57g?key=MdB9863qS6m-tBRLwI6GGg" alt=""/></figure>



2025 might not be the worst year ever to graduate college — but it is probably the worst relative to how good the economy otherwise is. That might be because AI is doing the entry-level jobs now. Or, as Paul Krugman <a href="https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/bad-times-for-college-graduates">believes</a>, because political uncertainty has caused employers to stop hiring. Or something else, it’s too early to say for sure. But if you’re in school, consider staying there.



Off to a slow start:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfivkwW9FT6kY5F_Pt_GgM4wqtqKSicCCE0gqgNRuqMlnnp1Q_m5B4cR3iZnMUmRNYYHoWsMn-WBYkfrwvs4JEoWyzNveoWMMfRu9weE41QpvXqgkVt_WYs5rQtUT52Cr7lRJ2hNA?key=MdB9863qS6m-tBRLwI6GGg" alt=""/></figure>



Recent graduates are 3x more likely to be unemployed than the cohort aged between 35-44, which is probably even worse news than it sounds. Krugman notes that the consequences of early unemployment last “basically forever,” citing an NBER study that found that “those who join the workforce in a downturn have lower long-term earnings, higher rates of disability, fewer marriages, less successful spouses and fewer children.” Ugh.



You can’t see it in the data, though:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfmfuBG9PhMWyMjMXhTgG9VMg7XNOfBmV8wkg7Fx4yfuDzLK-WStxdy5oPDm7SrAxZKvM2K0wKMstECiKdWY_I9xhKliXoC9c3xgnT9rL79UDDDYFFzSA0p9yWmTlnRJpP_p4R8-Q?key=MdB9863qS6m-tBRLwI6GGg" alt=""/></figure>



The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model sees Q2 growth coming in at a robust 3.4%. This makes the consensus FOMC projection of 1.4% growth for the full year seem unnecessarily gloomy. Worse yet, the FOMC’s elevated inflation forecasts make it look like they’re <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/18/business/fed-stagflation-trump-tariffs.html">expecting stagflation</a>.



Inflation “forecasting” is getting even closer to guessing:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeDP_96Oaqlu60-Opa4JQ2b0HtUJSLUg8zeH2H91mHr2kbz4X7CIUDjD4Vai2waTfakXd8pLXqq2LSbIxlEZrwUdoyONOZj8UgnFWYz-3L9w-LW1PXWroBvfJLus51zsZEFTwLrMw?key=MdB9863qS6m-tBRLwI6GGg" alt=""/></figure>



Torsten Slok <a href="https://www.apolloacademy.com/the-daily-spark/?utm_medium=email&amp;utm_source=pardot&amp;utm_id=701Dp00000017sOIAQ&amp;utm_campaign=EXT_Daily+Spark">notes</a> that almost a third of the prices going into the CPI at the moment are guesses. This seems likely to get worse, because as Jerome Powell <a href="https://x.com/YahooFinance/status/1935416500136862202">noted</a> this week, layoffs are making it harder for the government to collect economic data — data that’s &#8220;a real benefit to the general public&#8221; because it ensures people &#8220;have the best possible understanding of what&#8217;s happening in the economy, and hence, what&#8217;s likely to happen.&#8221; As if that wasn’t hard enough already.



There are ever more investors chasing pretty much the same number of stocks:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfyXuiP4B4j3zjm6nUfFB4Cz8QmXcj58Wty4T2kMLc1tbBtR2-FHXqjTKqeNzAc5b7YuslmhdDCh_dz8td4yZ9Le89mLsptPGaiZK99QCUDcczcptQzKJzYkbb3cLoc5JvPRnIJhg?key=MdB9863qS6m-tBRLwI6GGg" alt=""/></figure>



The US ranks second to Switzerland in average per capita wealth. It fares less well if using the median, but the number of new millionaires is impressive: Bloomberg <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-18/surging-stocks-helped-us-add-more-than-379-000-millionaires-last-year?cmpid=061925_morningamer&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_source=newsletter&amp;utm_term=250619&amp;utm_campaign=morningamer&amp;embedded-checkout=true">notes</a> that over 379,000 US residents became millionaires last year — more than 1,000 per day!



And we wonder why the market never goes down.



Have a great weekend, understanding readers.



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Friday Charts: The market understands

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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As a card-carrying member of the “nothing ever happens” club, many of my thoughts on whether or not news has been priced-in can be summarized by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/eberem/everything_is_priced_in/">this</a> classic Reddit post.&nbsp;



Nevertheless, one of my guests on the Lightpeed podcast this week explained why ETH has been slowly gaining ground on solana — and why he believes that trend may continue.



<a href="https://youtu.be/TUY-_P-9A9s?si=rjFfNy1XZh4dqFEt">I hosted Geoff Kendrick</a>, the head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered, to explain his Solana thesis. Standard Chartered is a relatively large global bank based out of the UK. This Solana report was the bank’s first, in what may be a show of Solana’s growing relevance to institutional investors.&nbsp;



The report is bullish on SOL, offering a price target of $275 by year’s end and a target of $500 by the end 2029, but it predicts that ETH will outperform SOL in the short to medium term. I found this surprising given how bad the vibes surrounding ETH have been in recent months — and how mostly positive things have been in Solana land.&nbsp;



SOL consistently <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/l1">leads</a> ETH in real economic value (a Blockworks Research metric for the tips and fees that measure demand to land transactions on a blockchain) despite Solana having a quarter of Ethereum’s market cap. ETH’s big headwind <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/non-crypto-native-companies-ethereum">is its L2s</a>, which have helped the blockchain scale but may be damaging to ETH’s ability to accrue value since they take on a lot of trading volume, but pay relatively little in fees to Ethereum. Geoff believes the bad vibes surrounding ETH are already “priced in.”



“There was a lot of debate in 2024 about, ‘Do [L2s] add or subtract value?’” Kendrick said. “So, let’s say that a lot of that story has already played out in a relative sense.” He later added: “For Solana, you came off massive multi-year lows post-FTX, had a comeback in 2023 thanks to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-market-impact-solana-memecoins">memecoin activity</a>, but now that memecoin trading is post-peak, Solana may underperform Ethereum in the near term.”



Kendrick argued that the market trades Solana at a discount relative to its economic activity from memecoins because it views memecoin trading as unsustainable. I would note that memecoin activity has proven more sticky than many might have predicted — pump.fun generated $50 million in revenue last month, despite a dip in usage — but we’ll have to see how all of this plays out over time. 



Kendrick’s thesis has been correct over the past month, at least. The ratio of SOL’s price to ETH’s price is <a href="https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/SOLETH/">down</a> nearly 15%.



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Solana’s price run might stall as ETH gains institutional favor

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



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FC Barcelona, the Spanish soccer club Forbes values at <a href="https://www.forbes.com/teams/barcelona/">$5.65 billion</a>, is releasing a wallet for its upcoming NFTs called Barça.Pass as part of its digital strategy.&nbsp;



Anyone with a Barça ID can now claim a wallet and will ultimately be able to use it to create an FC Barcelona avatar NFT, customize the character with official merch, and collect other types of digital items in anticipation of an upcoming FCB mobile racing game.



Crypto infra firm Futureverse set up the <a href="https://www.barcapass.com/">Barça Pass</a>. Futureverse CEO Aaron McDonald told me that the NFT avatars will exist on the gaming-focused L1 blockchain Root and can be equipped with “semi-fungible” wearable digital items. Root is EVM-compatible and uses XRP as its gas token as well as the XRPL XLS-20 NFT standard.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeskw6A0GOdCv2brTn2-JgsOvhES1Z3WYX7PD2ik9yUFV9eKPWM3BL-ERmJLuPxd_M4ZhCYVMw19Bl6JxYkaDVSDwj24Iie_20MIeBJA3EIaPt58qMFetpXs0u9_hfBW509T3lCRw?key=FusYrD0ftfVNux1Kj-6oIA" alt=""/></figure>



Wearables will be purchasable via FCB’s Shopify integration, McDonald explained.&nbsp;



Traders will also be able to buy or sell FCB digital items on marketplaces like Tradeverse that are integrated with the Root chain’s ecosystem, and can buy those items with crypto like ROOT or XRP.&nbsp;



Over 11 million Barça IDs had already been created before the launch, according to the <a href="https://www.fcbarcelona.com/en/club/news/4290230/bara-media-launches-barapass-its-first-digital-wallet-to-connect-with-fans-worldwide-in-collaboration-with-futureverse">post</a> from FCB.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXedWTjbZYwto09EPJeLRT3tQIpsOpP50MdpxJRkUUsuqZVYGEJwZJuWApUMCi7Gbg73TF4tSQZbBHCPrjBpwpRYXV-nJ33gk49NfHO6yBJ1ghnvvn4BWcX4CDQMCTKVcXIJ8meqkw?key=FusYrD0ftfVNux1Kj-6oIA" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Image: FC Barcelona image teasing the upcoming avatars.</figcaption></figure>



The wallet won’t just be a wrapper to hold your avatar, though. McDonald told me the Pass will support “a wide range of onchain experiences and applications that developers build.”



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeYfDHGq4QmaKzk4X_LkCo2H7EqPWix7kgyoodvVPzerpuqsSwRAfDcAoLSh1TbyKsvMzp3m17nvVB_DupllMSviOkxCy3F8OvYTy178ZwO-i3lVBC6C2y84_UzpsElDlYavS67Jw?key=FusYrD0ftfVNux1Kj-6oIA" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Image: Teaser image of FCB’s anticipated racing game.</figcaption></figure>



FCB has previously lent its name to different (non-crypto) mobile games over the years, including an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kmg0qoB1DvQ">endless runner</a> mobile game roughly a decade ago and even a cooking game in 2018.&nbsp;



Last year, it <a href="https://www.mundodeportivo.com/us/en/soccer/20240724/695812/barca-introduces-barca-games-its-innovative-worldwide-video-game-platform-nrt.html">launched</a> a mobile minigame app called Barça Games, but that app is no longer available on the Google Play Store.



Back in 2020, FCB tried its hand at crypto with an FC Barcelona fan token, <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/fc-barcelona-fan-token">BAR</a>, on Chiliz.&nbsp;



That token hit a market cap of nearly $125 million in 2021 — and today sits at $13.2 million.



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International

FC Barcelona unveils Barca Pass crypto wallet, NFT avatars

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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Ethereum core developers are tuning the protocol’s execution engine for higher throughput and flexibility ahead of the upcoming Fusaka fork. On the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=as4byc7tX8c">June 19 All Core Devs call</a>, contributors aligned on a batch of EIPs for inclusion in Devnet-2 and tee’d up more aggressive performance upgrades for a prospective Devnet-3 (to be confirmed).



The result is a tightly scoped but technically meaningful upgrade, focused not so much on new features, but optimizations. When <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-fusaka-fork-pectra-devs-call">we covered Fusaka</a> in April, it was still a somewhat mushy amalgamation of ideas: a tentative gas limit increase, early discussions about blob fee fixes and unresolved questions around contract size limits. Two months later, the fork has hardened into a clear package.



Developers have now committed to a 45 million gas ceiling, capped blob submission per transaction, a streamlined 48 KB contract limit (EIP-7907) plus a brand-new opcode (<a href="https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-7939">EIP-7939</a>) in CLZ (for “count leading zeros”). Previously contentious parameters like the blob fee floor (EIP-7918) have been settled, setting the stage for Devnet-2 on Monday.



Let’s start with the gas limit increase, which is already under testing and not strictly part of Fusaka. This change, if successful, could bump Ethereum’s transaction capacity by over 11%, but requires careful benchmarking. Developers flagged the need to keep block propagation within safe latencies as a key variable to monitor.



“All the clients seem to be OK with moving ahead with 45 million once the releases are done,” the EF’s Parithosh Jayanthi (commonly referred to as “Pari”) said on the call.



Alongside the throughput boost, developers are refining how blob data — introduced with <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-improvement-proposal-4844">EIP-4844 during the Dencun upgrade</a> — will be handled. While 4844 enabled cheaper off-chain data availability, it didn’t limit how many blobs a single transaction could include. <a href="https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-7892">EIP-7892</a> closes that gap, capping per-transaction blob usage to prevent any one rollup or dapp from monopolizing blobspace. Meanwhile, EIP-7918 sets a base fee floor and caps the total number of blobs per block, a move to balance scalability and network safety, explained Ben Adams of the Nethermind client team.



“Putting a lower limit on the max size of blobs means you can include more blobs — paradoxically,” Adams said.



Without a floor, the blob base fee can drop to near-zero during low demand, leading to inefficient use of blockspace.



Another low-level improvement greenlit for Devnet-2 is EIP-7939, which introduces a CLZ opcode to the EVM. This might sound obscure, but it’s the kind of tool that power devs reach for when squeezing performance or doing clever things with randomness or proofs. Most modern VMs already have it, and now Ethereum will too. A niche but handy boon for developer ergonomics, with minimal consensus impact.



Also of note is EIP-7951, the long-awaited precompile for secp256r1 — a type of cryptographic curve used in digital signatures. Its inclusion will unlock native support for keys commonly used in mobile and enterprise platforms — including <a href="https://webauthn.guide/">WebAuthn-based authentication</a> — thus bringing Ethereum one step closer to seamless and secure off-chain integration.



The refined Fusaka scope has drawn pushback from some high-profile stakeholders, notably Paradigm Chief Technology Officer Georgios Konstantopoulos, who <a href="https://x.com/gakonst/status/1935647629754437883">resurfaced</a> long-standing frustrations around the “stack too deep” error and the 24 KB bytecode size limit — two of the most cited pain points in Solidity.



The thread sparked a mild <a href="https://x.com/shemnon/status/1935781691357872384">rebuttal</a> from client developers, with Prysm developer Potuz <a href="https://x.com/potuz_eth/status/1935714467314028962">noting</a> that EOF had, in fact, aimed to resolve these issues. They had been prioritized until recently, driven in part by Paradigm’s Reth team changing their minds on a prior endorsement.



While Fusaka may lack a headline feature, it targets what many say Ethereum needs most in 2025: better performance without undue risk. It’s shaping up to be a quiet flex by Ethereum’s core devs.



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Gas, blobs and EIPs: Fusaka to boost Ethereum’s performance

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



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Everybody knows the symbol for the almighty dollar. But no one knows exactly where it came from.&nbsp;



Our best guess for the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/next-global-money-crypto-reserve-currency">origin</a> of “$” is that it’s a relic of the Spanish colonial peso, or the Spanish dollar. These large silver coins were widely used across the Americas in the 18th century, long before the US created its own dollar currency.



Early Americans had used a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/money/dollar-sign">shorthanded “Ps”</a> to represent the Spanish peso in text. Those two letters would merge, placing the “P” on top of the “s,” eventually morphing into something that resembles the modern-day dollar symbol.



Luckily, we know exactly where Bitcoin’s Unicode symbol came from — and it became officially usable around the world eight years ago today.



<h1 class="wp-block-heading">On This Day</h1>



Unicode 10.0.0 was <a href="https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode10.0.0/">released</a> on June 20, 2017, ferrying in 8,518 new characters to the universal typeset and bringing its total to 136,690.



Bitcoin’s symbol was finally among them. Unicode listed ₿ as an “important symbol addition” alongside 56 new emoji characters and a set of religious Typicon marks.



“It is described as ‘a capital letter B with two vertical lines going through’’ it, though the lines are only visible at the top and bottom,” the <a href="https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2015/15229-bitcoin-sign.pdf">proposal</a> reads.



This milestone had been a long time in the making. Infamous hardware hacker Ken Shirriff had submitted his formal proposal almost two years prior in October 2015.&nbsp;



It was Shirriff’s second such submission after a proposal for a group mark symbol earlier that year, which was also included in Unicode 10.0.&nbsp;



Shirriff is Bitcoin Legend material in his own right, having mined bitcoin with a <a href="https://www.righto.com/2014/09/mining-bitcoin-with-pencil-and-paper.html">pencil and paper</a>, as well as on a <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/this-guy-rigged-an-apollo-guidance-computer-to-mine-bitcoin/">52-year-old machine</a> that helped guide the Apollo spaceship to the moon.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXejxg8fh9Y28y0jTSp5V0_uEpubr26VEbBh-in1nRwUSRba7douZrywKiWbT5-7ontdZSHRDwQOUVA0034ffOfO9SRUQgurFSG_MqRSSpX8Uehv9K0pGqbQd0q46V3rrjBnfJEmnw?key=MWyn2Ub5f1NHq_Bo_aL4Kg" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">₿ was already found in Wikipedia and Wired magazine years before the 2015 proposal, and was community used in bitcoin wallet and payment apps.</figcaption></figure>



Bitcoiners had organized to push for an official symbol in June 2014, when the Bitcoin Foundation formed a volunteer Standards Committee to decide how it should look. Informal discussions had started in 2013, but the currency symbol had been a <a href="https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=369.0">recurring</a> topic since as <a href="https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=41.0">early</a> as February 2010.



Shirriff’s proposal had support of the Bitcoin Foundation and its Standards Committee, as well as <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/peter-todd-legend-bitcoin-brain-wallet/">Peter Todd</a>, Eric Martindale, Justin Drake, Theo Chino, Michael Marquart (under theymos) and a string of early Bitcoin startups.&nbsp;



Unicode accepted the pitch after only one month, in November 2015, leaving the Bitcoin community to wait for half a halving epoch to really celebrate. It was the first new currency symbol in 24 years, since the Korean won (₩) was included in Unicode 1.1, released in June 1993.



<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 <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Bitcoin?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Bitcoin</a> sign is accepted by Unicode. My second addition to Unicode, probably more useful than the group mark. <a href="https://t.co/ZOoBGGMmX3">https://t.co/ZOoBGGMmX3</a>&mdash; Ken Shirriff (@kenshirriff) <a href="https://twitter.com/kenshirriff/status/661396468796817408?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 3, 2015</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Before all this, the community was somewhat split over how they should represent bitcoin. The Thai baht (฿) was a common suggestion, but didn’t go down well with everybody. “You cannot and should not just steal [a] symbol from [an] existing official currency of [an] independent country,” one Bitcointalk user wrote. Ƀ was another.&nbsp;



However, ₿ is the closest to resembling the symbol that Satoshi had designed as the icon for their original Bitcoin client, making it the obvious choice once the proposal was finalized.&nbsp;



₿ represents a whole bitcoin, with the symbol for an individual satoshi still up for debate (as is the term “satoshi” every now and then.)



While Unicode may recognize bitcoin, the International Organization of Standardization (ISO) doesn’t.&nbsp;



The organization is yet to include BTC or XBT in its ISO 4217 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_4217">list</a> of active currency codes. Bitcoin’s official code cannot start with a “B” because it clashes with Bhutan’s country code, BT.&nbsp;



A Bitcoin Foundation working group had been <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20141008092159/http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-foundation-standardise-bitcoin-symbol-code-next-year/">tasked</a> with applying for ISO approval in October 2014, but apparently never succeeded.&nbsp;



No better time to revive those efforts than now.



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Happy ₿-Day: Bitcoin’s official Unicode symbol turns 8

This is a segment from The Breakdown newsletter. To read full 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">
&nbsp;“A 1921 version of Wakanda — and all is vibranium.”



— Chief Egunwale Amusan on the Greenwood district of Tulsa
</blockquote>



1. <a href="https://x.com/RealJimChanos/status/1932497480547250574">The investment case for MSTR is gibberish</a>



The forensic short-seller Jim Chanos describes Michael Saylor’s investment pitch for Strategy as “complete financial gibberish.”



Chanos was responding to Saylor <a href="https://x.com/saylor/status/1932485145464021158">telling CNBC</a> that investors should value Strategy at a multiple of its growth in NAV.



But Chanos argues this is “like claiming that your house, which increased in market value last year from $450,000 to $500,000, is actually worth $1.5 million, because you also have to put a 20x multiple on the $50,000 increase!”



Matt Levine <a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/10u8kJ7PyVwhZOWya8aqJc?si=6eb4c4bd0d7a4fe4">agrees</a> with Chanos that this is “gibberish” — and also “crazy-making” in part, because the popular idea that MSTR offers leveraged exposure to bitcoin is nonsensical:&nbsp;



“It’s not levered bitcoin for you,” he explains. “You put in a dollar and get back $0.50 of bitcoin, which is the opposite of leverage.”



One thing that Saylor certainly has right, however, is that shorting MSTR is risky; Chanos is far from the first short seller to target MSTR and I’m not sure it’s worked out for any of them so far.



But it’s hard to argue with his investment advice that “it is usually wise not to pay $2 for each dollar bill.”



2. <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/13a6cead-af71-4811-9b90-553f233ac45f">Tron is “going public” on US exchanges</a>



The FT reported that “Justin Sun’s digital asset platform Tron is set to go public in the US.”



I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s exactly correct because it’s not Tron’s token, TRX, that’s being listed, but a new company, Tron Inc., which will hold TRX tokens.



Matt Levine more accurately <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2025-06-16/there-s-a-tron-treasury-company?srnd=undefined">describes</a> Tron Inc. as “a US-securities-law-compliant wrapper for Tron tokens.”



This feels like a shark-jumping moment (in my colleague <a href="https://blockworks.co/podcast/thebreakdown/d7554d1a-4be7-11f0-9cb0-e77c163c3df0">NLW’s phrase</a>). Because unlike bitcoin or SOL, it&#8217;s impossible to argue that TRX is decentralized enough to qualify as a commodity.



A TRX treasury company is therefore a blatant regulatory arbitrage that gives US investors access to an unregistered security.



They seem bizarrely eager for it — Levine noted that the Tron SPAC was trading at a 1,700% premium to NAV this week, “suggesting that the stock market will pay $18 for $1 worth of TRX.”



$18!



As long as investors keep paying irrational multiples of NAV for exchange-listed crypto, we’ll keep getting more of it.



Even HYPE, which approximately no one outside of crypto has ever heard of, <a href="https://x.com/mlmabc/status/1935051798701609329">has a reserve company</a> now too.



Show me the incentives and I’ll show you the (almost certainly bad) outcome.



3. <a href="https://www.coinbase.com/en-gb/institutional/research-insights/research/monthly-outlook/monthly-outlook-jun-2025">Crypto treasury companies are a systemic risk to crypto</a>



A report from Coinbase cautions that the current proliferation of Strategy copycats poses &#8220;systemic risks for the crypto ecosystem.”



The first risk they note is that if treasury companies are unable to repay convertible debt by issuing new debt, today’s buyers could become tomorrow’s sellers.



That seems obvious enough, although no one else seems to be worried about it.



The “subtler” risk, however, is if “one or more of these entities unexpectedly offloads a portion of their crypto holdings, even if it’s for routine cash flow management or business operation purposes…others may rush to sell as well, destabilizing the market well before any actual debt repayment issues emerge.”



That, too, would seem obvious — in hindsight.



4. <a href="https://ethdigitaloil.com">ETH as digital oil</a>



ETH has cycled through multiple elevator pitches — world computer, ultra-sound money, crypto app store — none of which have really caught on with investors.



But the team at <a href="https://www.etherealize.com">Etherealize</a> wants to try again, now framing ETH as “a productive reserve asset: digital oil powering the digital economy.”&nbsp;



This, they estimate, justifies a short-term price target of $8,000, a long-term target of $80,000, and a “<a href="https://www.bankless.com/podcast/ethereum-is-digital-oil-the-bull-case-for-eth">thought-experiment</a>” target of $740,000.



The latter would make Ethereum worth $89 trillion.&nbsp;



Lord, give me the confidence of an investor who believes a $300 billion asset can be mispriced by 30,000% (even as a long-term thought experiment).



Only in crypto.



5. <a href="https://youtu.be/k9rj08wiuDg?si=eCpisUAKfLRjj3o0&amp;t=2334">A black-swan risk to markets?</a> 



Mathew Pines of the Bitcoin Policy Institute tells David Beckworth that he expects the US to end the exemption that makes interest on Treasurys tax-free for foreign holders “in the next two months.”



Beckworth responds that this seemingly mundane change in tax law “would be shocking.”



The risk is that ending the exemption would likely lead to higher interest rates as foreign central banks switch out of Treasurys and into alternatives like German Bunds, Swiss francs, gold and maybe even bitcoin (which Pines believes is an easy 10x in that scenario).



More importantly, this could destabilize global financial markets, which have become fundamentally dependent on Treasurys as the world’s only risk-free asset.



Shocking indeed — people are increasingly worried that the US is slowly losing its “exorbitant privilege.” But this seems like a way to lose it quickly.



Markets have been unusually adept at pricing in all the political shenanigans this year, but I don’t think anyone is ready for that.



6. <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2060670/000095010325007019/xslF345X02/dp229587_3-tarbert.xml">Circle executive’s big payday</a>



If I’m reading his SEC filing correctly, Circle’s chief legal officer, Tarbert Heath, owns 839,761 restricted units of newly IPO’d CRCL shares and 939,968 stock options (with an exercise price of $25.09).



At this week’s share price of $150, that would be worth a whopping $243 million.



Other Circle executives hold even more CRCL but I&#8217;m mentioning Heath here because he joined Circle two years ago.



It&#8217;s one thing to hit that kind of IPO jackpot as a founder; it&#8217;s another thing to make it as a recently hired employee.



I knew I should have gone to law school.



7. <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/06/02/1002538572/black-wall-street">Black Wall Street was the original Wakanda</a>



In recognition of the Juneteenth holiday in the US, I thought I’d highlight the amazing — and tragic — story of the Greenwood district of Tulsa.



Amazing because, just three decades removed from the Civil War, Greenwood was such an economic success story that it came to be known as “Black Wall Street.”



Like Wakanda from Black Panther, this honorific is a little mythical — there was no Black Goldman Sachs in Greenwood, for example.



But by 1900, Greenwood had become “a self-sustaining ecosystem of Black excellence and prosperity,” according to one <a href="https://www.blackartdepot.com/blogs/black-history-blitz/black-wall-street-a-legacy-of-economic-excellence-and-a-vision-for-tomorrow">account</a>, and “an intentionally all-Black community” where “all was vibranium,” according to <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/06/02/1002538572/black-wall-street">another</a> (referencing Black Panther again).



Ironically, part of that success was attributed to Jim Crow laws that forced Greenwood’s residents to spend their money with businesses owned by their neighbors.



“In Greenwood, a dollar would change hands 19 times before it left the community,” according to the local attorney Buck Colbert Franklin. “That’s what you call real wealth-building.”



Some of the residents of all-Black Greenwood were so wealthy that when envious white rioters came to burn the neighborhood down in 1921, the nicest residences were said to be spared because the arsonists couldn&#8217;t believe that such wealthy homes could possibly be owned by Black Americans.



That attack on Greenwood was originally declared a “riot,” in part to falsely imply that there was blame on both sides.



But, perhaps even more cynically, there was a financial reason as well: Calling the events of 1921 a “riot” allowed insurance companies to deny claims filed by Greenwood’s residents.&nbsp;



Dozens of Black-owned businesses and more than 1,000 homes were destroyed in the “riot,” but the only insurance claim paid out was to the white owner of a pawn shop that had been raided for guns and ammunition to be used against the Black people in Greenwood.



These events have since been named the Tulsa race massacre.



Greenwood residents put up a stout defense but were hopelessly outnumbered by their white Tulsa neighbors, who were seemingly enraged by the economic success of an all-Black neighborhood.



Black Wall Street became a tragic story because it was a success story first — one especially worth remembering on Juneteenth.



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



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Thursday links: Systemic risks, digital oil and Black Wall Street

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



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We’re seemingly coming down to the wire for SEC approval of spot Solana ETFs, with the original seven prospective issuers filing amended S-1s in recent days and a newcomer (aka CoinShares) entering the race.&nbsp;



Notably, every filing included language around staking, which, as <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-etf-sec-forms">we previously reported</a>, the SEC asked issuers to include.



As the industry prepares for a third crypto asset to possibly get the SEC’s go-ahead on ETFs, here are the eight firms that have filed to issue Solana ETFs, in order of when they first filed:



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">VanEck</h2>



VanEck was <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/vaneck-files-for-solana-etf">first to file</a> for a Solana ETF, almost a year ago this month. At the time, some likened the filing — despite the SEC’s insistence that Solana was a security — to a call option on a Trump victory in the November election.&nbsp;



That bet paid off, but it may be something of a pyrrhic victory if the SEC follows its precedent of approving bitcoin and ether ETFs all at once rather than in order of the issuers filing first.



To that end, VanEck has been <a href="https://x.com/vaneck_us/status/1931038867785744836">advocating</a> for the SEC to take a “first-to-file” approach, arguing it is better for innovation and competition.&nbsp;&nbsp;



<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/vaneck-begins-sol-staking">VanEck uses Kiln</a> to power Solana staking for its European ETP.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">21Shares</h2>



21Shares placed the Trump election call option shortly after VanEck did, and it also wants the SEC to follow a first-to-file approach.&nbsp;



Coinbase is listed as 21Shares’ staking provider in a base <a href="https://cdn.21shares.com/uploads/current-documents/products/prospectus/Base_Prospectus(EU).pdf">prospectus</a> filed in Europe. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHjEou1MMUs">Here’s a conversation</a> I had with the firm’s head of strategy Eliezer Ndinga on the topic of Solana ETFs last year.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Canary Capital</h2>



<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/canary-capital-sol-etf-filing">Canary Capital filed</a> for a SOL ETF days before the election.



A smaller fund than some on this list, Canary Capital has made its name lately by filing for <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/canary-capital-litecoin-etf">altcoin ETFs</a>. It has filings out for ETFs including SUI, SEI, INJ, TRX, PENGU, HBAR, LTC and XRP.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Bitwise</h2>



Bitwise first filed for an ETF shortly after Trump’s election. In an <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitwise-ceo-solana-ncredible-emerging-asset">interview with me</a>, the firm’s CEO, Hunter Horsley, called Solana an “incredible emerging asset and story.”



Bitwise also <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitwise-launches-solana-staking-etp-europe">launched a solana staking ETP</a> in December with Marinade as the staking provider — which may bode well for Marinade should staking ETFs gain approval in the US.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Grayscale</h2>



Grayscale is looking to convert its SOL Trust into a spot ETF, similar to what it did with its bitcoin and ether trusts. The GSOL trust currently <a href="https://www.grayscale.com/funds/grayscale-solana-trust">trades</a> at a premium to its NAV, meaning investors are willing to pay more for the product than what the underlying SOL is worth.



Last month, the SEC<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-grayscale-solana-etf"> delayed a decision</a> on Grayscale’s ETF, saying it hadn’t “reached any conclusions” on the 19b-4 filing to list the proposed spot SOL ETF.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Franklin Templeton</h2>



Franklin Templeton offers bitcoin and ether ETFs, and it has filings out for SOL and XRP ETFs.&nbsp;



The $1.5 trillion <a href="https://investors.franklinresources.com/news-center/press-releases/press-release-details/2025/Franklin-Resources-Inc--Announces-Preliminary-Month-End-Assets-Under-Management-19be41576/default.aspx">fund</a> has a number of other crypto initiatives, and its Digital Assets Core SMA has a small <a href="https://www.franklintempleton.com/investments/options/separately-managed-accounts/products/COFDASCORE/NA/franklin-templeton-digital-assets-core-sma">allocation</a> to SOL. Its tokenized money market fund also <a href="https://solanafloor.com/news/solanas-rwa-scene-welcomes-franklin-templeton-fobxx">added</a> Solana support earlier this year.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Fidelity</h2>



Fidelity is the giant in the race so far. Its <a href="https://www.blockworks.com/analytics/bitcoin-etf/tracker">Bitcoin ETF</a> is second only to BlackRock in AUM, and its <a href="https://www.blockworks.com/analytics/ethereum-etf/tracker">Ethereum ETF</a> trails BlackRock and Grayscale’s converted trust.&nbsp;



Fidelity is a major provider of brokerage, trust and IRA accounts, and it could be a major driver of inflows to approved SOL ETFs.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">CoinShares</h2>



CoinShares is the latest entrant in the Solana ETF race, throwing its hat in the ring at the same time that existing issuers were racing to submit amended S-1 forms.&nbsp;



The crypto-focused European asset manager has existing ETPs for BTC, ETH and a range of altcoins — Tezos ETP, anyone?



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ETFs

Here are the 8 firms vying to list Solana ETFs

Felix Jauvin

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



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



To no one’s surprise, the Fed held rates steady in the June FOMC meeting.&nbsp;



As is the case in this modern age of monetary policy, the actual rate decision was well-telegraphed and wasn’t what moved markets.&nbsp;



In terms of what did move markets…the FOMC statement saw minor changes to wording but, generally, there was very little for market participants to glean.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXf3RnMcc7yVQr7cDQmXZW-PMJsLzvEnXoki6unSI8FLtLcMEveQYoDrx6vjRcCkfZ51fZ7STwhjyLNAW57SnBhpa6E22Ljg5tBAkIEbPYLEuDUwUKZBbGq7mHyVCTwj56vI2h6HYA?key=2A0LOa6-dzsI7z05o7-NJw" alt=""/></figure>



More notably, the updated Summary of Economic Projections was substantial compared to the last update in March.&nbsp;



Considering how much has changed since March (Liberation Day and an <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stocks-lower-oil-iran-israel">emerging war</a> with Iran, to name a few things), it&#8217;s no surprise to see a significant change in the ways FOMC members see the economy evolving.&nbsp;



&nbsp;Based on the table below, we can surmise that:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>The FOMC sees growth slowing more than what committee members expected in March.</li>



<li>The FOMC expects the unemployment rate to tick up marginally but they’re still not concerned about the labor market.</li>



<li>The committee further ratcheted up their inflation forecast for 2025 from 2.7% to 3%, noting the risk of tariffs being larger than what they expected.</li>
</ul>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfA2x8Xhd-8qzAqHOHI9Xfp8Ju4708N-Qao33T6g9auwNtIvE0pccBjD4X3AzM2r_kYJxJrGjeS0ikITd7XxRy8zMMpKEjPA8FAPeEVrbx7MbzF17We7bdTvokV2QHKqTCY0Jmy?key=2A0LOa6-dzsI7z05o7-NJw" alt=""/></figure>



Interestingly, the one thing the FOMC did not change is how many rate cuts they expect to enact this year.&nbsp;



The number remained at two by year-end. However, beneath the surface, we actually saw more FOMC members move toward no cuts for this year — just enough to move the market on the median projection:&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdzqiiQdR15C99JyuGDcbB9qVMlFsek-pq9-OPBogM4kyS6KS4zwg-shtUbDc57v56i4834ViuFK0epb_DIZyk8KaSbhp8aeqcc-ntWIf_tEmtGUsLhOgQrV3tnHKO08Hc_hF2Amg?key=2A0LOa6-dzsI7z05o7-NJw" alt=""/></figure>



Overall, the theme of the June meeting was a Fed truly committed to doing as little as possible.&nbsp;



With a five-year monetary policy framework review underway, a Fed chair’s term ending in 2026, uncertainty around tariffs, a potential oil shock from the Middle East and a US president demanding the Fed cut rates by at least 200 basis points, it appears Powell’s main goal is just to get to the end of his term in one piece.



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