SYNTHR

Byron Gilliam

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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“A great challenge of life: Knowing enough to think you are right, but not knowing enough to know you are wrong.”&nbsp;



— Neil deGrass Tyson
</blockquote>



“Ideas are so fragile,” Sir James Dyson reflected in a <a href="https://pca.st/episode/d300cd05-42e6-4aab-aa3e-01bd51c8071f?t=3075">recent interview</a>.



He would know, given the extraordinary determination it took to protect the very fragile idea he spent a lifetime pursuing: a bagless vacuum cleaner.&nbsp;



Dyson originally found it so difficult to raise money for his idea that he still owns 100% of Dyson Limited, his maker of “cyclonic” vacuum cleaners (which really are so, so much better than the ones with bags).



Because such ideas are “so easily knocked away” by people who know how unlikely they are to succeed, Dyson warns prospective inventors and entrepreneurs that “experts are dangerous.”



Experience, he argues, doesn’t just add knowledge — it adds reasons to 1) not try things and 2) stop trying hard things.



This is why he hires students as young as 17 to work at Dyson.&nbsp;



“If you’re experienced, you know why not to do something or how not to do something,” he explains. “Whereas if you’re naive and you’re a young engineer&#8230;you don’t have that negativity.”



Having endured such expert negativity himself, Dyson now values the naivety he needed to ignore it.



“I love naivety,” he says, “because it creates a different way of doing things, and we’ve got to find different ways of doing things all the time.”



Similarly, Henry Ford was universally told that his different way of doing things wasn’t worth pursuing: An internal combustion engine could never compete with steam engines.



Ford persisted, of course, and steam engines were soon on the road to extinction.



“That is the way with wise people,” he wrote in his <a href="https://www.amazon.com/My-Life-Work-Autobiography-Henry/dp/149428300X">autobiography</a>. “They are so wise and practical they always know to a dot just why something can’t be done. They always know the limitations.”



Like Dyson, Ford therefore preferred employees with “a state of mind in which nothing is impossible.”



“The moment one gets into the &#8216;expert&#8217; state of mind,” he <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/306037-none-of-our-men-are-experts-we-have-most-unfortunately">warned</a>, “a great number of things become impossible.”



Most of the time, those things really are impossible.&nbsp;



But the opportunity cost of not pursuing the impossible is high: Dyson is now a $20 billion company and the Ford Motor Company is still making four million cars a year.



Such unlikely success stories are evidence that, in business, naivety and ignorance can be competitive advantages.



“If I ever wanted to kill opposition by unfair means, I would endow the opposition with experts,” Ford quipped. “They would have so much good advice that I would be sure they would do very little work.”



Startup investor Paul Graham makes a similar argument, valuing youthful naivety over expert experience.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“One reason the young sometimes succeed where the old fail,” he <a href="https://paulgraham.com/determination.html">says</a>, “is that they don&#8217;t realize how incompetent they are.”&nbsp;



This lack of insight allows youthful entrepreneurs to profit from a form of deficit spending — borrowing confidence from assumed future success: “When they first start working on something, they overrate their achievements,” Graham explains. “But that gives them confidence to keep working, and their performance improves.”



Dyson, for example, so overrated his ability as an engineer he believed it would take him just one year to build a commercially viable cyclonic vacuum cleaner.&nbsp;



It took him 14.



Had he foreseen that, it’s unlikely he ever would have gotten started — so it’s good that he naively didn’t.



“Someone clearer-eyed,” Graham adds, “would see their initial incompetence for what it was, and perhaps be discouraged from continuing.&#8221;



Dyson never got discouraged.&nbsp;



&#8220;I&#8217;d get up excited every morning,&#8221; he later recounted of his time spent building 5,127 non-working prototypes. &#8220;Even though I knew it probably wouldn&#8217;t work, there was always that chance it might.&#8221;&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Never change, crypto</h2>



Crypto ideas are often easily — and often rightly — dismissed: Luna, memecoins, NFTs.



But I admire the industry’s enthusiasm, against all expert advice, in repeatedly pursuing them.&nbsp;



Because the enthusiasm, however naive, does occasionally pay off: Bitcoin, Ethereum, stablecoins.



Sometimes it’s an old idea that crypto reinvigorates with seemingly no knowledge of past failures, as with prediction markets.



Sometimes it’s an idea that people naively refuse to give up on — like Zcash.



On the whole, it’s been a disappointing year for crypto, but the recent success of things like prediction markets and Zcash is evidence that the industry’s youth, inexperience, disregard of experts and unrealistic persistence are all competitive advantages.



Crypto in 2025 is not as youthful as it was when, say, Jai Bhavnani co-founded Rari Capital at the age of 18 in 2020.



And the industry is getting ever more populated with experts coming over from traditional finance.&nbsp;



So it might be losing some of the naive edge that Dyson, Ford, and Graham so value.&nbsp;



But maybe there’s a happy medium to be found?



Dyson was encouraged when people kept telling him his idea for a new kind of vacuum cleaner would never work: “The more it was turned down, the more I realized I had something,” he said, “because they never really gave a good reason.”



In 2026, crypto will continue to be told by many experts it won’t work — often for good reasons.



Its success might be a function of which ones it judiciously ignores.



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History

The competitive advantage of not knowing you’re wrong

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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“There was no lightbulb moment in the story of the lightbulb.” — Steven Johnson, How We Got to Now
</blockquote>



The lightbulb has come to be associated with serendipitous flashes of inspiration — the moment when a fully formed idea pops into an inventor&#8217;s head, prompting a shout of “Eureka!”



That’s not how the lightbulb itself was invented, however.&nbsp;



Popularly credited to Thomas Edison, the lightbulb was in fact the product of a century of trial and error by dozens of inventors around the world.



Electric light was first demonstrated by Humphry Davy in 1802.



The enclosed bulb mechanism was developed by Warren de la Rue in 1840.



Thomas Edison was born in 1847.



Many more contributed both before and after 1847 — the historian Arthur Bright <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227393062_The_Electric-Lamp_Industry_Technological_Change_and_Economic_Development_from_1800_to_1947_By_Arthur_A_Bright_Jr_Massachusetts_Institute_of_Technology_Studies_of_Innovation_New_York_The_Macmillan_Comp">lists</a> about two dozen individuals as co-inventors of the lightbulb, with Edison&#8217;s work representing its culmination, not its origin.&nbsp;



“The Edison lightbulb was not so much a single invention as a bricolage of small improvements,” Steven Johnson writes in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/How-We-Got-Now-Innovations/dp/1594633932">How We Got to Now</a>.



Edison’s primary contribution to that bricolage was the late-1870s invention of the carbonized bamboo filament that ultimately made lightbulbs longer-lasting, safe for indoor use, and commercially viable.



But even then, Edison was forced by the patent courts to share credit with Sir Joseph Wilson Swan, whose version of the lightbulb was notable for being the first to light both a private home (his own) and a public building (the Savoy Theatre).&nbsp;



Hence the portmanteau naming of the “Ediswan incandescent lamp” that consumers were offered from about 1880.



This joint custody of the lightbulb takes nothing away from Edison’s achievements as an inventor.&nbsp;



Just the opposite — because Edison did something even bigger than bring artificial lighting to the masses: He industrialized the act of inventing.



“Edison didn’t just invent technology,” Johnson explains, “he invented an entire system for inventing, a system that would come to dominate 20th-century industry.”



That system inspired a proliferation of corporate R&amp;D labs: teams of diverse specialists collaborating on problems, sharing financial upside, absorbing outside ideas, and freely building on each other&#8217;s work — a kind of “networked innovation” that’s infinitely more powerful than the popular image of the solitary genius inventor.



That, Johnson says, is the true lesson to learn from the story of the lightbulb:&nbsp;



“If we think that innovation comes from a lone genius inventing a new technology from scratch, that model naturally steers us toward certain policy decisions, like stronger patent protection. But if we think that innovation comes out of collaborative networks, then we want to support different policies and organizational forms: less-rigid patent laws, open standards, employee participation in stock plans, cross-disciplinary connections.”



And maybe crypto, too?



Crypto is first and foremost a way to incentivize the kind of open, composable innovation that builds powerful networks.



Edison proved that collaboration beats isolation, but his corporate model still relied on patents to retain proprietary control.



By contrast, the most transformative networks in history — Roman roads, standardized shipping containers, the internet, GPS — worked differently: They were open, permissionless infrastructure that anyone could build upon.



Christian Catalini makes the case for crypto by <a href="https://x.com/ccatalini/status/1983588222921023552">recounting the history</a> of these open-source networks: “Money,” he says, “is the last closed network.”&nbsp;



And crypto is the way to open it up, to everyone’s benefit: “Permissionless innovation will always create exponentially more value than a closed system,” he concludes.



At the end of a disappointing year for open-source crypto, it’s worth remembering just how powerful these networks can be.&nbsp;



There was no lightbulb moment in the story of the lightbulb — and there may be no single moment when crypto &#8220;arrives&#8221; either.&nbsp;



Both are products of networked innovation that only realize their full potential when they become networks themselves — the lightbulb was merely a glass ornament until it was plugged into an electrical grid.



Crypto is building that grid for the digital economy — open, permissionless infrastructure waiting for the next great idea to plug in and light up.



Let’s hope it happens in 2026.



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DePIN

The network is the innovation

Luke Leasure

Carlos

0xResearch Newsletter

Another week, another MetaDAO advertisement

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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
&#8220;The house of every one is to him as his castle and fortress.&#8221;



— Sir Edward Coke, the Attorney General of England, 1604
</blockquote>



In 1604, the Court of King&#8217;s Bench decided what’s now known as Semayne&#8217;s Case in favor of the defendant, Richard Gresham. Gresham had refused to open his door for a sheriff seeking to seize goods in Gresham’s possession to cover a debt.



Establishing what would become a foundational privacy principle — the home as a protected sanctuary — Sir Edward Coke reported that &#8220;the house of every one is to him as his castle and fortress.&#8221;&nbsp;



But even as Coke established those castle walls, he left open a gate for the King&#8217;s men to breach them: The court held that officers of the law, if in pursuit of criminal matters, were permitted to break down doors if they had to (but only after announcing themselves first).



421 years later, that’s still about where things stand.



Semayne’s Case is the ancestral reason why American law enforcement is today required to knock on your door and announce their presence when they have some business there — and also why they can, in some circumstances, knock the door down.



The Fourth Amendment protects against the search of your castle and seizure of your goods, but only if it’s unreasonable.



That is approximately the current state of financial privacy, too: Your banking transactions are private in the sense that your bank keeps them behind closed doors for only you to see.&nbsp;



But if law enforcement comes knocking, they have to open the door for them.



In the world of crypto finance, however, &#8220;privacy&#8221; has taken on a different, more absolute meaning.&nbsp;



To many in the industry, a “private” transaction is one that cryptography makes invisible to anyone but the user — a true financial castle with no backdoor gate for the King&#8217;s men to saunter through at will.



This is a return to crypto’s cypherpunk roots: absolute financial privacy, guaranteed by code.



But how cypherpunk are things really going to get?&nbsp;



Sometimes, it seems the answer is very — like when SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce self-identifies as a &#8220;freedom maximalist.”&nbsp;&nbsp;



As such, Peirce <a href="https://x.com/therollupco/status/1994472062862463026?t=sDJyWea3YKXDwP-GrB1eAw&amp;s=19">applauds</a> the new emphasis on privacy: “We have to recast the narrative around privacy mechanisms, because it’s become the presumption that if you want to keep your transactions private, you’re doing something wrong.”



That is a remarkably cypherpunk-sounding statement for a government regulator to make.



But what, exactly, does she mean by “private”?



“People in this country,” Peirce continues, “have a right to keep their financial transactions private absent suspicion they’re engaged in some illegal activity.” 



And if there is a suspicion of illegal activity?



 “There are ways for governments to get access to information to bring a case.”



In other words, nothing’s really changed since 1604: “Privacy” is the ability to keep your information private from everyone other than a government that thinks it has a good reason to see it.



Perhaps surprisingly, lots of crypto people seem to agree — including some crypto-privacy people.&nbsp;



Here, for example, is how Eli Ben-Sasson concisely defined privacy on a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWEN0Kki3PE">recent episode</a> of Empire: “People who shouldn’t see your stuff don’t get to see it.”



That seems to imply that some people should see it — like a representative of law enforcement in possession of a warrant, maybe?&nbsp;



Ben-Sasson was the founding scientist of Zcash, crypto’s most cypherpunk project, so his privacy credentials are unimpeachable.&nbsp;



But his definition of privacy is not particularly radical: It’s “just like your everyday definition of privacy,” he said on Empire.



Notably, that would seem to include our everyday use of banks: “Everyone’s familiar with privacy in financial applications.”



So, is that all this renewed enthusiasm for crypto-enabled privacy is doing then? Recreating the degree of privacy we already have with banks?



Maybe not.



Shaul Kfir’s definition of privacy, also shared on Empire, implies something more than that: “Privacy,” he says, “is I get to choose who sees my stuff.”



So, not like banks then!&nbsp;



You can&#8217;t choose whether or not law enforcement sees your bank stuff, of course. The bank won’t even tell you when they do.



Kfir, who led development of the privacy protocol <a href="https://www.canton.network/connect?utm_source=google&amp;utm_medium=paid-search&amp;utm_campaign=brand+-+canton+network&amp;gad_source=1&amp;gad_campaignid=22410462610&amp;gbraid=0AAAAA9p5wM8MnXTho9ZQqxF1p11Vi_Gpj&amp;gclid=Cj0KCQiAgP_JBhD-ARIsANpEMxyY7ai_DDDo8KqU-n_sdq4g0BC2P1iYh-IkfGZBduydlzHqxomlCgMaAsGqEALw_wcB">Canton Network</a>, says that privacy, however defined, is both a “human right” and a “business need.”



I’m sure Ben-Sasson would agree.&nbsp;



I’m also pretty sure he would agree with Kfir’s stricter definition of privacy, even though it differs from his own — because Kfir’s is a better description of what Zcash does: Zcash empowers users to pick and choose who sees their stuff.&nbsp;



The service Canton Network offers, by contrast, does not appear to meet Kfir’s definition of privacy: “We did not try to solve for, like, ‘Hey, I can move money in my Chase bank account without Chase seeing it.’”



Nor does he think there&#8217;s much need for that: “It’s not a real problem [for our users],” Kfir says. “It’s an imagined problem.”



That implies that Canton Network fits our everyday banking definition of privacy, where the stakeholders who “should” see your transactions, can.



In other words — perhaps ironically — Kfir’s definition of privacy better fits what Ben-Sasson has built and Ben-Sasson’s definition better fits what Kfir has built — a fitting illustration of the confusion around what “privacy” really is.



Ben-Sasson told Empire that “it’s somewhat of a mystery [as to] why this is an issue in crypto.”&nbsp;



But is a blockchain only “private” if disclosure is strictly voluntary, as with Zcash?&nbsp;



Or does Canton Network’s more institutionally compliant model also qualify?



Either way, the old question of privacy has given the crypto industry a renewed sense of purpose.



Now we just have to decide what it means.



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The Breakdown Newsletter

A man’s blockchain is his castle

Marc Arjoon

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As dispersion continues, this week has pointed to concrete shifts rather than narrative noise. Aerodrome’s net income moved toward breakeven as emissions fell in line with revenue, while USDai’s TVL showed stepwise growth. At the same time, tokenized assets continued to scale across credit, Treasurys and commodities, while new trading infrastructure, from ultra-low latency chains (Fogo) to equity perpetuals, pushed closer to traditional market benchmarks.



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



Markets leaned risk-off over the past week, with dispersion widening across both traditional and digital assets. BTC slipped (-2.3%) while the Nasdaq 100 (-2.1%) and S&amp;P 500 (-0.7%) also closed lower, reflecting a softening risk backdrop. Gold (+2.3%) stood out as one of the few macro hedge bids, suggesting incremental rotation toward defensives as positioning reset into year-end.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-109.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110460" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-109.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-109.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-109.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-109.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-109.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-109.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-109.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-109.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-109.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Crypto sector indices told a sharper story. On the upside, Memecoins (+16.0%) and L2s (+9.7%) dominated weekly gains, pointing to short-term speculative flows and demonstrating renewed optimism around scaling narratives and higher beta players. AI (+1.3%), Lending (+1.0%), and Ethereum Ecosystem (+0.9%) also managed modest green prints. In contrast, weakness was pronounced across Solana Ecosystem (-10.5%), DePIN (-7.1%), RWAs (-7.0%), and Crypto Miners (-5.4%), underscoring pressure on structurally levered or capex-heavy themes. Launchpads (-2.3%) and DEXs (-2.8%) also lagged as volumes cooled.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-102.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110453" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-102.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-102.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-102.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-102.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-102.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-102.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-102.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-102.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-102.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



While the L2 sector outperformed this week, under the hood, dispersion was notable. <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/merl">MERL</a> was the standout, ripping higher into the week’s close and finishing well north of its peers. <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/mnt">MNT</a> also saw strong relative strength, grinding steadily higher and holding gains even as the rest of the complex chopped sideways. OP and ARB tracked closer to the index average, posting modest gains but failing to show the same upside convexity. On the lagging end, BLAST remained the clear underperformer, trending lower throughout the week.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-104.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110454" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-104.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-104.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-104.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-104.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-104.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-104.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-104.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-104.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-104.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Charts for The Week</h2>



Aerodrome’s weekly net income (protocol revenue minus token emissions) is <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/flashnotes/aero-merger-update-metadex03-and-cross-chain-expansion">transitioning</a> from a prolonged period of heavy losses to near breakeven and occasional profitability. Throughout most of 2024, emissions materially exceeded revenue, with weekly net losses reaching as much as ~$20 million at the trough, reflecting aggressive liquidity incentives. However, starting in early 2025, losses narrowed sharply as emissions declined and revenue stabilized, with recent weeks oscillating around zero and turning modestly positive at times. This inflection supports the view that Aerodrome’s unit economics are improving, with protocol revenue now broadly keeping pace with emissions for the first sustained period since launch.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-106.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110457" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-106.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-106.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-106.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-106.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-106.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-106.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-106.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-106.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-106.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



USDai’s TVL trajectory reflects a classic step-function adoption curve consistent with institutional balance sheet deployment rather than organic retail inflows. TVL accelerated sharply in September as several large capital allocations entered the system. The discrete jumps suggest tranche-based deployments tied to predefined mandates. The plateauing of TVL above ~$550 million into November implies capital stickiness and low redemption pressure, reinforcing the view that USDai is functioning as a balance sheet instrument rather than a pure trading vehicle.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-107.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110458" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-107.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-107.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-107.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-107.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-107.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-107.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-107.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-107.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-107.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Tokenization has evolved from a niche experiment to a strategic priority for global financial institutions. Today’s tokenized asset market is composed of $300 billion in stablecoins, $17.4 billion in private credit, $8.2 billion in US government debt, $2.3 billion in commodities, and $1.4 billion in public equities. Estimates underscore the scale of this shift. A report by BCG and ADDX projects that up to $16 trillion of real-world assets could be tokenized by 2030, spanning public equities, private markets, real estate and debt instruments. Similarly, Citi forecasts $4-5 trillion in tokenized digital securities and an additional $5 trillion in tokenized trade finance volume over the same period.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-108.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110459" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-108.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-108.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-108.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-108.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-108.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-108.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-108.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-108.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-108.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



<a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/research/fogo-testnet-traction-and-mainnet-readiness">Fogo</a> stands out with industry-leading 40ms block times and ~1-second finality, delivering materially faster execution than Solana’s 400ms blocks and far superior responsiveness compared to Ethereum’s multi-minute finality. While Hyperliquid and Solana post higher peak TPS figures on paper, Fogo’s combination of ultra-low latency and sub-second finality positions it closer to traditional financial market infrastructure, reinforcing its thesis as an institutional-grade trading chain rather than a broad consumer L1.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-103.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110455" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-103.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-103.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-103.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-103.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-103.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-103.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-103.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-103.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-103.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Outside of Root, the top nine subnets currently hold ~44% of all <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/research/bittensor-positioning-for-the-post-halving-repricing">TAO staked</a> across subnets and receive 37.4% of TAO emissions. This concentration has been steadily declining from a high of ~52% in May 2025 as more TAO flows into smaller or emerging subnets. The trend suggests a gradual broadening of participation and a healthier distribution of stake over time.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-105.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110456" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-105.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-105.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-105.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-105.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-105.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-105.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-105.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-105.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-105.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



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Capital gets selective

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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“By 2026, Google’s main product will not be search but AI.”



— Kevin Kelly, 2016
</blockquote>



When Kevin Kelly met Larry Page at a party in 2002, he asked why anyone would invest in a company that offers its product for free: “I still don’t get it. There are so many search companies. Web search, for free? Where does that get you?”



Page’s response was both memorable and prophetic: “Oh, we’re really making an AI.”



That was two years before Facebook, three years before YouTube, five years before the iPhone and 20 years before ChatGPT.



For Kelly, it was an &#8220;aha&#8221; moment.



“Rather than use AI to make its search better,” he <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Inevitable-Understanding-Technological-Forces-Future-ebook/dp/B016JPTOUG/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.X73Zxh6EG6ZxXXRXYGrGPVI7xazRLJ2ncHB4DdyMBAW0kI4awqHgRbbhUZhFJ7Ug_j1nZHXCVsWRsiAH1AMOIEwWv7KB5egRyTON_kFeshv5fnK6C7weu8Epwm_I9D6Sm0SyI3TVepKzzuiogfjqiZgios3xxICdh4XthN3B9XBt2UHw4H9-f78GYORxLf0rqqvvtBWWxZ1wZgG_VsQLruPw7i9u18tSGmV5RJWBufk.SHrSP8fM-i9UEORTlGCtt34CVamxjGXTVyx792s2-uE&amp;qid=1765547592&amp;sr=8-1">wrote</a> in 2016, “Google is using search to make its AI better. Every time you type a query, click on a search-generated link, or create a link on the web, you are training the Google AI.”&nbsp;



Kelly was right about search engines — training AI would prove far more consequential than serving ads.&nbsp;



But from the perspective of 2025, we can make an even bigger claim: The true purpose of the entire internet was to train AI.



That, at least, is the view of Alex Tabarrok, who recently told Tyler Cowen that history will remember the internet primarily as the “agar culture for the growth of the AI” — i.e., the nutrient-rich petri dish whence it sprang.



“That’s why the internet’s important,” Cowen agreed. “We’re just beginning to realize this, right?”



“When we look back,” Tabarrok added, “we’ll think about… &#8216;What was the internet?&#8217; Putting everything online was for the AI. It wasn’t for us. I don’t think anyone thought about that.”



Except Larry Page!



And maybe Page’s dad, a pioneer in AI research.



And also Page’s co-founder, Sergey Brin, the machine-learning expert so well-versed in AI that he’s contributed code to Google’s large language model, Gemini.



None of those three made the cover of <a href="https://time.com/7339685/person-of-the-year-2025-ai-architects/">Time Magazine</a> as an &#8220;architect of AI” this week.



But they probably should have, because Google’s search engine did exactly what they intended it to.



“The ultimate search engine would understand everything on the web,” Page <a href="https://youtu.be/tldZ3lhsXEE?si=bLHftU0Um1UCXnqA&amp;t=224">explained</a> way back in 2000. “It would understand exactly what you wanted and give you the right thing and that’s obviously artificial intelligence; to be able to answer any question, because almost everything’s on the web.”



Who put it there? You did, of course.



“When you type ‘Easter Bunny’ into the image search bar,” Kelly wrote in 2016, “and then click on the most Easter Bunny-looking image, you are teaching the AI what an Easter Bunny looks like. Each of the three billion queries that Google conducts each day tutors the deep learning AI over and over again.”



We’re now up to 16 billion Google queries per day!



So, really you should be on the cover of Time Magazine this week — for the many years of important Googling you’ve done.



Thank you for your service.



Let’s check the charts.



More power, please:



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="830" height="656" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-96.png" alt="" class="wp-image-110438" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-96.png?w=830 830w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-96.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-96.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-96.png?w=325 325w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-96.png?w=330 330w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-96.png?w=277 277w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-96.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 830px) 100vw, 830px" /></figure>



<a href="https://www.a16z.news/p/charts-of-the-week-if-you-cant-join">Per a16z</a>, forecasts for data center power consumption have risen by 36% since just April. AI-related stocks were down today in part because they can’t get enough power to run all the data centers they need (or think they need).



Power to the people:



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1230" height="689" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-94.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110437" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-94.png?w=1230 1230w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-94.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-94.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-94.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-94.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-94.png?w=466 466w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-94.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-94.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1230px) 100vw, 1230px" /></figure>



China’s big advantage in the race to AGI is that soon, it will be generating 3x as much power than the US is.



Investing role reversal:



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="893" height="509" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-99.png" alt="" class="wp-image-110440" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-99.png?w=893 893w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-99.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-99.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-99.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-99.png?w=458 458w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-99.png?w=384 384w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-99.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 893px) 100vw, 893px" /></figure>



Paul Kedrosky notes that as a percentage of sales, Microsoft (a traditionally asset-light business) is now spending more than double on capex compared to what Exxon (a traditionally asset-heavy business) does.



Not investing advice:



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1376" height="642" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-100.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110443" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-100.png?w=1376 1376w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-100.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-100.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-100.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-100.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-100.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-100.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-100.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1376px) 100vw, 1376px" /></figure>



A Finra survey finds that 61% of investors under the age of 35 use YouTube for investing advice. To me, this suggests that Australia got it the wrong way around when it banned under-16s from social media this week. They should have banned over-30s instead.



The non-crisis of grocery prices:



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="824" height="590" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-97.png" alt="" class="wp-image-110441" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-97.png?w=824 824w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-97.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-97.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-97.png?w=359 359w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-97.png?w=365 365w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-97.png?w=306 306w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-97.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 824px) 100vw, 824px" /></figure>



Contrary to what social media would have you believe, there is no crisis of grocery store prices: As a percentage of disposable income, food at home (in blue) has gotten cheaper. In total (red), our food budget has remained unchanged, but only because we’re getting lazier (yellow).



The stock market isn’t only about AI:



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="1059" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-95.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110442" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-95.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-95.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-95.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-95.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-95.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-95.png?w=388 388w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-95.png?w=394 394w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-95.png?w=331 331w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-95.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



The equal-weight S&amp;P 500 hit an all-time high this week.



A demographic time bomb:



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1154" height="882" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-101.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110444" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-101.png?w=1154 1154w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-101.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-101.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-101.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-101.png?w=336 336w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-101.png?w=341 341w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-101.png?w=287 287w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-101.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1154px) 100vw, 1154px" /></figure>



Sam Bowman <a href="https://x.com/s8mb/status/1998775841459708175?s=20">shares</a> an incredible stat: “Every 100 South Koreans today will have only 6 great-grandchildren between them.” Not six each — six in total. Thankfully, AI should be doing most of the jobs by then.



All the persons of the year:



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="790" height="564" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-98.png" alt="" class="wp-image-110439" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-98.png?w=790 790w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-98.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-98.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-98.png?w=360 360w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-98.png?w=366 366w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-98.png?w=307 307w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-98.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 790px) 100vw, 790px" /></figure>



Note that The Computer was Time Magazine’s&nbsp; “person” of the year in 1982. Not labelled in the above is the 2006 winner: you. The 2006 award recognized the individual content creators populating the w<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web">orld wide web</a> with YouTube videos, blog posts, Instagram photos and Reddit comments.&nbsp;



This year, “you” should rightfully have joined nine US presidents as a repeat winner, because if we hadn’t populated the web with our content, the &#8220;architects of AI” would’ve had nothing to work with.



Your training session is now complete. Please proceed outdoors.



Have a great weekend, readers of the year.



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Friday charts: The many, many architects of AI

Kunal Doshi

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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Performance across major assets diverged yesterday. Gold, BTC, and the S&amp;P 500 posted gains of 0.95%, 0.55%, and 0.39%, respectively, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq slipped -0.12%.



The divergence was driven largely by Oracle, whose shares fell -11% after disappointing quarterly revenues and higher spending guidance. That miss reignited <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/10/stock-market-today-live-updates.html">concerns</a> around the durability of the AI trade and sparked a rotation out of tech and into lagging parts of the market, pushing the Dow Jones Industrial Average to fresh highs.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="846" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-93.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110431" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-93.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-93.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-93.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-93.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-93.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-93.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-93.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-93.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-93.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Crypto sector performance echoed the uneven tape. Despite renewed skepticism around AI, Crypto Miners were the standout performers, rising 4.5% on the day. IREN, which makes up 24% of the index, gained 4.4% and helped lead the move. DeFi followed with a 1.93% gain, driven by strength in AAVE, ENA, and HYPE, which together account for 44% of the index and all closed higher.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="841" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-92.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110430" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-92.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-92.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-92.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-92.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-92.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-92.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-92.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-92.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-92.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



On the downside, DePIN continued to struggle, falling -3.2%. The sector was dragged lower by FIL and GRASS, which dropped -6.2% and -7.2%, respectively. L1s were another surprise laggard, down -2.5% on the day. Even with BTC in the green, most L1 constituents finished lower, with SEI and BERA both posting losses of -9%.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1221" height="555" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-91.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110429" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-91.png?w=1221 1221w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-91.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-91.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-91.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-91.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-91.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-91.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-91.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1221px) 100vw, 1221px" /></figure>



Flows remain a headwind. After a strong $346.2 million day of ETF inflows on Dec. 9, momentum faded again with both BTC and ETH ETFs seeing outflows of -$154.2 million and -$42.3 million, respectively, yesterday. The lone bright spot continues to be SOL ETFs, which are still attracting low single- to low double-digit millions in daily inflows.



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BTC is up and L1s are down as flows turn messy again

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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“Trading is a hard way to make easy money.” — Wall Street aphorism
</blockquote>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="https://open.substack.com/pub/zeneca33/p/letter-89-the-golden-age-of-crypto?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=android&amp;r=3qcul">The golden age of crypto is over</a></h2>



The newsletter writer Zeneca uses his perspective as a former poker player to declare that crypto’s golden era of easy money is over: “It’s only going to get tougher from here on out,” he warns.



When Zeneca started playing poker for money in 2003, he says “the average level of skill was extremely low,” and as a result, “basic strategies worked” to make money.



From there, however, the game progressively professionalized, and by 2010 making money in poker required learning math, statistics and game theory.&nbsp;



Today, the game is so efficient that, to have any chance of being profitable, you have to learn to play theoretically perfect poker from AI solvers. (Which really takes the fun out of it.)



This newsletter writer, using his perspective as a former equities player, can relate.



In the 1990s, you could make money in equities just by being a little quicker or paying a little closer attention than your human competitors.&nbsp;



If, say, you saw a positive headline about a company on the Reuters ticker, you had a few seconds to buy some stock that you could probably sell a few minutes later for a profit. It wasn’t that hard.



Better yet, investor flows were often bigger than traders could collectively accommodate.&nbsp;



This created easy money for anyone who cared to take it, sometimes by doing something as obvious as shorting stocks that were scheduled to drop out of an index and buying the ones being added, for example.&nbsp;



But equities professionalized on about the same timeframe as poker.&nbsp;



Starting in about 2000, quantitative and algorithmic trading made markets increasingly efficient at the same time that more and more people were trying to trade them.



By about 2005 there were too many traders trading against not enough investors — you could still make money trading, but it was increasingly hard work.



Now, though? Fuhgeddaboudit. Equity markets are so efficient you need a doctoral degree in a quantitative science to have any hope of trading them.



The crypto market seems to be progressing along the same path.&nbsp;



Zeneca likens crypto now to poker in 2012: “It’s still possible for many people to make it with a bit of work. But it’s no longer like shooting fish in a barrel.”



As with poker and equities, that’s partly because you’re now often competing with algorithms — sniper bots being one example.



Mostly, though, I think it’s what happened to equities by 2005: There are too many traders in crypto relative to the amount of investors in crypto.&nbsp;



Zeneca warns that traders waiting for a new wave of retail enthusiasm to make trading crypto easy again will be disappointed: “Just about anyone that has ever had any interest in speculating on crypto would have done so by now.”



I agree: Trading crypto won’t get any easier until there are more investors to trade against.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="https://blockworks.co/news/blockworks-solana-investor-relations-platform">Blockworks launches investor relations platform</a></h2>



Blockworks is doing its part to attract the new investors crypto needs now with a platform offering “high-fidelity” data, institutional research, “ecosystem intelligence,” and investor relations workflows for Solana-based projects — in short, all the things that professional investors have long taken for granted in equities.



The platform will even provide quarterly reports, Dan Smith <a href="https://www.youtube.com/live/uju9vU4lfzo?si=lnLpCqY1kjlm_SIp&amp;t=18983">promises</a> — in a form that I’m guessing will make equity investors feel more at home in crypto.



Crypto builders looking to attract those kinds of investors can sign up <a href="https://lightspeed.vip/get-access">here</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="https://obviously.substack.com/p/why-your-coin-isnt-pumping">Why your coin isn’t pumping</a>&nbsp;</h2>



The crypto-native investor Santiago Roel Santos thinks it’s no mystery why tokens have been going down: “We valued casino flow like recurring software revenue.”



Token investors began paying attention to revenue this cycle and protocols began to prioritize, with notable success: An all-time high of <a href="https://1kx.network/writing/2025-onchain-revenue-report">$1.9 billion of value</a> was distributed to token holders in Q3.&nbsp;



But, perhaps disappointingly, these payouts have not helped token prices much.



Santos says that’s primarily because the quality of the revenue is so low: “You don’t give a Shopify multiple to a business that only makes money when the casino is full every three to four years.”



Critics responded to Santos by calling this a boomer take: Protocols are not businesses, they argue, they’re networks, so traditional metrics don’t apply.



Santos responded in turn with a <a href="https://obviously.substack.com/p/crypto-is-priced-for-network-effects">follow-up post</a> arguing that valuing crypto on its network effects leads him to the same conclusion: Tokens are egregiously overpriced.



“Crypto is valued at 5x–50x more market cap per user than Meta,” Santos says, “without having any of the economics that justify it.”



That’s kind of surprising, in a way: The purpose of crypto is to disintermediate businesses like Meta by creating peer-to-peer networks controlled by users who can come and go as they please.



Surely a user in that kind of network will be less valuable than a user trapped in a network like Facebook? Alternatively, it might be that crypto investors are paying up for tokens in anticipation of the imminent tokenization of everything — in which case, a huge influx of users will justify today’s valuations even if the open nature of blockchains makes it hard to monetize them.&nbsp;



Santos thinks the influx of users is possible, but doesn’t want to pay for it: “Right now,” he concludes, “too much future is priced in upfront.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/understanding-perpetual-futures/">Will crypto successfully export perps?</a></h2>



Patrick McKenzie thinks perpetual futures are unlikely to catch on with equities speculators, mostly because “liquidations are not the business model of traditional brokerages.”



“Liquidations” is a good business: Binance, McKenzie notes, charges a 0.5% liquidation fee on the notional value of the perps trades it liquidates.&nbsp;



On a trade leveraged 20x, that’s a 10% fee!



(This might explain why Binance’s BNB token is valued at $122 billion.)&nbsp;



McKenzie doesn’t think TradFi customers will pay those kinds of fees — especially as “learning on a day when markets are down 20% that you might be hedged or you might be bankrupt is not a prospect that fills traditional finance professionals with the warm and fuzzies.”



In other words, TradFi professionals are unlikely to accept the perps market practice of auto deleveraging (ADL).



McKenzie concisely defines ADL from the perspective of the broker: “You can either force the customer to enter a closing trade or you can assign their position to someone willing to bear their risk in return for a discount.”



Those are the only two options because perpetual futures are a “closed system” in which winning traders can only win as much as losing traders are willing to lose.



ADL is the clever mechanism by which trading venues ensure there are always enough losers to pay the winners. But it’s a messy process: By <a href="https://x.com/tarunchitra/status/1998451762232177041?s=20">one estimate</a>, perps venues liquidated winners 28x more than necessary during the Oct. 10 crash.&nbsp;



This estimate is <a href="https://x.com/chameleon_jeff/status/1998567869848891699?s=20">highly disputed</a>, but whatever the real ADL numbers are, margining practices are much friendlier in equities.



So it’s hard to argue with McKenzie’s conclusion that the crypto industry is unlikely to “export” its perpetual futures to traditional markets.&nbsp;



On the other hand, using perps to import retail speculators in search of easy money might still work.



People love to trade.



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crypto traders

Links: Trading, valuations, and the end of crypto’s ‘golden age’

Shaunda Devens

Fixing crypto’s broken investor relations

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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
&#8220;The dollar is always going to be the reserve currency. Anyway, for a long time.&#8221;&nbsp;



— Jerome Powell
</blockquote>



When the price of oil suddenly quadrupled in 1973, Saudi Arabia was wholly unprepared for the billions of dollars that started flooding in.



Strictly speaking, the money never actually made it “into” the Kingdom: Global buyers of Saudi oil sent their payments to accounts at Citibank and JPMorgan in New York — where the money sat idle because Saudi finance officials barely knew how to move it, let alone invest it.



With billions piling up in non-interest bearing accounts, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) reluctantly asked an American banker, David Mulford, to manage it for them.



Mulford and a small team moved to the underdeveloped port town of Jeddah where they scrambled to secure accommodation in houses newly-built in a part of the desert with no roads (to get there, you simply drove over the sand).



The houses lacked telephones, televisions, mail delivery and even trash removal (the bankers left their trash in the sand for Bedouins’ goats to feed on).



The office they commuted to six days a week was even worse.



They were assigned a single room in a “decrepit” building, furnished with only chairs and desks — no computers or telephones.



“Across the hall from our room a simple toilet was set in a long, deep room with an open drain behind it,” Mulford wrote in his <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Packing-India-DAVID-MULFORD-ebook/dp/B00NU62U36/ref=sr_1_3?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.LOBUN5zB9XV0oSGK2tFiXyc1UhA-SVwKAJG3H-rIy99eO7oIlMLcXWcgl9PADmuEt9Hy5s6wE3QoN9rE02IQC7zz1VkT34SDz96Fs0ogcn-bAkQralgtN-7sViJC32oW-vO3BPg-oitFRYSLCnH6M6Np266erYCcdqKUlerTOuHbSV-S8O6TbMGy5BTH3QTF1KsrZmuzjZHUvaQAGLysjbso_Us7htB-mbFGYhXrLzY.QIz7Ev6QkEqIZ1X--TazBzBNkN2BkOtqT8I2pULHYIY&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;qid=1765389659&amp;refinements=p_27%3ADAVID+MULFORD&amp;s=digital-text&amp;sr=1-3&amp;text=DAVID+MULFORD">autobiography</a>. “This was used by our section of the building and flushed once a day at three in the afternoon.”



Investment deals were negotiated, agreed and processed via the building’s single telex machine (a kind of hybrid typewriter/telegraph) that was constantly in use — a single deal required dozens of telex messages and weeks to complete.



And yet, as Mulford recalls, “we had to invest money at the rate of approximately $500 million per day just to prevent ourselves from falling behind.”



Mulford’s account of his nine years at SAMA debunks the persistent conspiracy theory that the Saudis invested their oil money in US Treasurys as a quid pro quo for a security guarantee.



Instead, the Saudis invested in US Treasurys because they had to: No other market in the world could absorb the $20 billion a month the Saudis had to invest.



And none was so safe and easy to invest in — important factors when investing by telex.



SAMA actually tasked Mulford with moving 30% of their investment funds out of the US market. But he struggled to do it.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



“In most markets outside the US in those days, a currency trade of $5-10 million was enough to move markets,” he explains, “so there were practical limitations on the amount of currency diversification that we could achieve.”



This, I think, challenges the idea that dollar dominance can be engineered through either coercion or clever policy: The Saudis chose Treasurys because of what America was, not what it promised or demanded.&nbsp;



Even in the 1970s economy — plagued with both recession and inflation and a president that resigned in disgrace — US financial markets retained the depth (quantities of high-quality assets), liquidity (easy tradability of those assets) and safety (rule of law) that made it the best option for the world’s largest investor.



Today, the US has all the best companies, too: Non-US investors own roughly <a href="https://www.apolloacademy.com/foreign-ownership-of-us-equities-treasuries-and-us-credit/">$19 trillion</a> of US equities (more than double what they own in Treasurys).



It also has a central bank that&#8217;s retained its inflation-fighting credentials despite political pressure to finance ever-bigger fiscal deficits.



The current head of that central bank, Jerome Powell, fundamentally <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/powell-says-expects-dollar-remain-173200618.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com">attributes</a> the dollar dominance to “democratic institutions” and “the rule of law.”



That institutional foundation is central to its appeal.



“I think the dollar will remain the reserve currency as long as those things are in place,” he added.



There’s no guarantee they forever will be, of course — and many economists doubt they will be for much longer.



Ken Rogoff, for example, <a href="https://www.hoover.org/research/dollar-dominance?utm_source=chatgpt.com">warns</a> that the dollar is “fraying at the edges” as foreign investors worry about a “breakdown of our institutions,” unpredictable policy making (that may disadvantage foreign capital), and threats to central bank independence.



All of which is adding up to “a loss of confidence in investing in the United States.”



If so, efforts to manufacture demand for the dollar — through, say, promoting stablecoins — are unlikely to help much.



Stablecoins are in demand precisely because the dollar is in demand — a dynamic that’s unlikely to ever work in reverse.&nbsp;



If the US chooses to surrender the dollar’s structural advantages, no amount of manufactured demand will save it.



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Dollar

Dollar dominance can’t be manufactured

Jason Yanowitz

Michael Ippolito

The story of crypto is a story about adoption. In the beginning, crypto was purely a retail game. This was the bootstrap era.



Anonymous founders. White papers and dreams. Bitcointalk threads. Discords and Telegrams. If you wanted in, you had to live on Twitter/X and dig through governance forums and GitHub repos at 2 am.



Fun era. Important era. But from an institutional perspective, mostly uninvestable.



Then came the second phase: the scale-up era.



Exchanges professionalized. Custody got solved. DeFi protocols like Uniswap and Aave found product-market fit. Onchain businesses started to look less like toys and more like companies. Podcasts, newsletters, conferences and research gave the industry a real narrative layer.



That opened the door for the first serious capital.



Today, we are entering a new phase: the institutional era.



Stripe has a chain. Robinhood has a chain. Banks are issuing stablecoins. Prediction markets are integrating with major news outlets. Real revenue and cash flows are accruing onchain.



And the marginal buyer is changing.



For most of the last decade, flows came from two places: retail and crypto venture. Now, the next dollar is coming from liquid token funds, multi-asset hedge funds, asset managers, macro shops, family offices, and eventually, pensions and endowments.



The institutions want to buy our tokens.



We still make it way too hard for them.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">The Institutional Gap</h3>



If you sit inside a fund and try to build a serious Solana allocation, you run into the same problems again and again:



<ol class="wp-block-list">
<li>Everything is fragmented. Data, docs, dashboards, governance, research, Twitter threads. Fifteen tabs open. No canonical place to diligence an ecosystem or a token.</li>



<li>You do not trust the numbers. Public aggregators are often wrong or inconsistent. Labels change. Definitions change. One bad input flows into your model or IC memo and the idea dies.</li>



<li>Nothing is written in your language. Most materials are built for crypto natives. Not for investment committees that think in revenue, retention, unit economics, risk, users, cash flows and execution.</li>
</ol>



This is not a talent problem or an interest problem. It is an information problem.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Introducing Lightspeed IR</h3>



Today, Blockworks is partnering with the <a href="https://x.com/solana">Solana Foundation</a> to launch <a href="https://lightspeed.vip/get-access">Lightspeed IR</a>, an investor-relations platform built for professional investors and token issuers.



We are starting with Solana because they sit at the intersection of crypto nativity and institutional relevance. They have real users, real applications, real revenue, and a cracked founder ecosystem. The story is there — it just needs to be delivered in a way institutions can underwrite.



Lightspeed IR is a gated, professional environment for:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Liquid token funds</li>



<li>Institutional allocators and asset managers</li>



<li>Family offices</li>



<li>Solana ecosystem teams and large token holders</li>
</ul>



What you get in one place:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>High-fidelity onchain data&nbsp;on the Solana network and leading applications, powered by Blockworks’ data infrastructure</li>



<li>Institutional research&nbsp;that turns raw onchain activity into simple, fundamental frameworks and IC-ready memos</li>



<li>Ecosystem intelligence and IR workflows&nbsp;for roadmap updates, KPI packs, governance changes, token events and direct communication between teams and allocators</li>
</ul>



If you run a fund, Lightspeed IR becomes your Solana starting point.



If you build on Solana, it becomes your investor hub.



In a world of noise, Lightspeed IR is the signal.



We launch in Q1.



<a href="https://lightspeed.vip/get-access">Complete this form</a> to be the first to know when we go live.



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Blockworks

Blockworks launches investor relations platform with Solana

Boccaccio

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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Markets leaned cautiously risk-on, with crypto outperforming a mixed backdrop in traditional assets. ETF flows had their biggest one-day surge since October as CPI, Treasury auctions and a dense FOMC week could reset risk appetite. In addition, we discuss the new WET token, the native token of the HumidiFi prop AMM.



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



Markets leaned risk-on, with crypto leading and traditional assets mixed. BTC posted a modest gain (+2.3%), outperforming equities where the S&amp;P 500 (-0.3%) and Nasdaq 100 (-0.2%) softened, while Gold held nearly flat (+0.3%). The standout laggard was the Perp Index, which contracted by -5.1%.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-80.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110386" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-80.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-80.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-80.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-80.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-80.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-80.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-80.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-80.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-80.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Perps (-5.1%) were the day’s clear laggard, weighed down by a sharp intraday spike-and-fade across dYdX, GMX, and specifically HYPE. A midday squeeze briefly lifted the sector before momentum stalled and flows reversed into the close. JUP rose as much as 9% before retracing most of its gains. Meanwhile, HYPE has been struggling as of late, as builder codes create new frontend relationships with users, and the market anticipates a TGE from <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/lighter-opens-public-mainnet">rival Lighter</a>.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-79.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110378" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-79.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-79.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-79.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-79.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-79.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-79.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-79.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-79.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-79.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Looking ahead, markets will pivot toward this week’s CPI print and a slate of mid-week Treasury auctions, both of which could reset risk appetite. With implied volatility still suppressed across majors, any macro surprise risks producing outsized moves.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Market Update&nbsp;</h2>



Flows finally turned meaningfully positive. BTC ETFs drove the bulk of the move ($287 million), ETH had its best day since Oct. 28 ($142 million) and SOL contributed marginally ($16 million). This is the first clean signal of risk appetite returning after nearly a month of choppy to negative prints. The flow spike likely reflects short-term positioning ahead of catalysts such as FOMC, inflation data, and jobs. It can also be attributed to quarter-end optics, as allocators often re-express benchmark exposure into liquid wrappers during macro-heavy weeks.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1124" height="624" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-77.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110376" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-77.png?w=1124 1124w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-77.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-77.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-77.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-77.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-77.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-77.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-77.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1124px) 100vw, 1124px" /></figure>



Still, AUM-to-market-cap ratios tell a different story. BTC remains stuck near ~6.6–6.8%, ETH continues its multi-month slide from ~3.3% to ~2.8%, and SOL, while rising, sits just under 1%. This divergence implies that price appreciation, not sticky inflows, has been the dominant force maintaining ETF sizes.



Meanwhile, BTC’s inflow looks more like tactical re-risking than renewed conviction. Derivatives markets show elevated basis but falling perp OI, a sign that capital currently prefers directional spot exposure over leverage.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1124" height="624" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-75.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110375" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-75.png?w=1124 1124w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-75.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-75.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-75.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-75.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-75.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-75.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-75.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1124px) 100vw, 1124px" /></figure>



ETF flows are becoming increasingly important for BTC, because traditional “DATCO” buyers aren’t carrying the bid anymore. The latest treasury holdings data shows that, aside from Strategy (MSTR), corporate accumulation has been effectively flat for months. Names like NAKAMOTO, SMLR, SQNS, and the smaller treasury cohorts have added marginal amounts at best, contributing almost nothing to incremental demand. Even MSTR can’t continue to accumulate in the same way it did before.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1124" height="624" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-76.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110377" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-76.png?w=1124 1124w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-76.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-76.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-76.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-76.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-76.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-76.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-76.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1124px) 100vw, 1124px" /></figure>



This is especially true as the major BTC DATCOs have mNAVs below 1, removing the once BTC-accretive play of diluting shareholders. In other words, the corporate balance sheet bid that helped define the prior cycle and earlier in this cycle isn’t showing up any time soon for BTC.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1124" height="624" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-78.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110379" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-78.png?w=1124 1124w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-78.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-78.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-78.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-78.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-78.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-78.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-78.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1124px) 100vw, 1124px" /></figure>



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ETFs flash a bid, HumidiFi tokenizes

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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“Money has been reduced to a simulacrum of its former self, a mere obligation by a counterparty to perform bookkeeping functions.” — Stefano Gogioso, A Quantum Moneyfesto
</blockquote>



In Star Trek, it took only seconds to travel from the Starship Enterprise down to a nearby planet.



Crewmembers only had to step into the Transporter, which dematerialized them into a pattern of energy (accurate to the quantum level) and beamed them to a target location where the energy would be converted back into matter so the person could be reassembled.



But is the person who beams back up the same that beamed down?



The official, in-universe answer is that they’re one and the same. The consciousness of transported crewmembers remains continuous, they say, thanks to the perfection of the Transporter’s quantum-level scan and reconstruction.&nbsp;



As proof, they cite crewmembers claiming a memory of being in transit.



But we’ve since learned how quantum-level transportation works, and that’s not it.



In quantum teleportation, first <a href="https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.70.1895">discovered in 1993</a>, the only thing being teleported is information.



Teleporting, say, a qubit, requires that the original quantum state of that qubit be destroyed: By the laws of physics, collecting precise information on a quantum state collapses its superposition, thereby destroying it.&nbsp;



But the collected information can then be sent as classical data (ones and zeros) over a satellite or fiber optic cable and then, thanks to the physics-magic of entanglement, reassembled (from other particles) at its destination.



So the unsettling truth is that the Transporter on the Starship Enterprise can only have worked by killing its passengers — the crewmember who beamed down is not the one who beamed back up.



This has some sci-fi implications for the future of money.



In banking, the way money is &#8220;sent&#8221; from Bank A to Bank B is that Bank A subtracts a number in its spreadsheet and sends a message to Bank B instructing it to add the same number to theirs.



Only the message is sent, not the money — which is why we need banks: to send each other messages about our money.



With quantum money, however, the money sends its own messages.



Quantum money is the idea that value could be represented by the quantum state of a particle and exchanged via quantum teleportation.



“The most important thing to understand here is that quantum [money] behaves like a resource, not like data,” <a href="https://x.com/fabgenovese?s=20">Fabrizio Genovese</a> explained in an email.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Where a bank deposit is information about money and Bitcoin is a consensus record representing money, quantum money would be the money itself — an uncopyable atom, photon, or molecule that is money.



Not data about money but the physical resource of money.



This has utility because it would allow money to be secured and transported according to the unbreakable laws of superposition, entanglement and the no-cloning theorem.&nbsp;



In other words, physics might someday do what databases and distributed ledgers do now, but without the database or distributed ledger.



Quantum money would therefore have the self-custodial properties of physical cash: You could keep qubits of money in a hardware device the same way you keep cash in your pocket.



That would make exchanging money perfectly permissionless (no intermediary required) and perfectly private (there’s no ledger of transactions).



But quantum money would also have the transportable properties of digital money: Destroying the money on your device creates the sendable information required to recreate it on another device, however far away.



(There is a moment when the quantum state, in transit as classical data, does not exist — which proves that the Star Trek Transporter really is a suicide machine.)



Sending quantum money will be like sending physical cash in the mail. But better, because it arrives instantly.



Sending money over great distances created the need for banks, but solving that problem introduced the intermediaries that now control nearly all of our money.



Bitcoin, of course, is a way of making peer-to-peer transactions possible over great distances.&nbsp;



But quantum money would be the unstoppable way to do it.



“Blockchain transactions are not quite peer-to-peer,” Stefano Gogioso <a href="https://www.youtube.com/live/_ZoKdulXcVk?si=deNi9vnwICRAulOa">says</a>, “because there’s always going to be part of the mechanism that can stop your transaction from going through. For economical, political, or technological reasons.”



Nothing will stop a quantum transaction, for any reason.



There is one limitation, however: Unlike Star Trek, where Captain Kirk could beam down to a newly discovered planet, quantum money can only be transported to a hardware device prepared to receive it.



That device does not yet exist, so quantum money is not yet feasible — we’re three or four years away from the earliest iteration, Gogioso estimates.&nbsp;



When it arrives, though, it will be the safest conceivable way to send money.



Getting security from quantum states, Genovese says, is like getting energy from the Sun: “It’s what the universe gave us.”



As such, he expects all cybersecurity will eventually be done through quantum states — including money.



We&#8217;ll still have to give that money value, however, which might prove to be the hardest trick.&nbsp;



Building a transporter to teleport qubits is one thing; getting others to accept them as payment is another.



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Cybersecurity

Beam-me-up money

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Over the past several days, the exchange between Kamino and Jupiter has escalated from healthy competition to a clear public dispute. The events started on Nov. 27, when Jup Lend introduced a <a href="https://support.jup.ag/hc/en-us/articles/23407960232092-All-about-Refinance">refinancing tool</a> on its frontend to migrate looping positions from Kamino Multiply directly into Jup Lend with a single click. The refinance operation initiated an atomic transaction involving four steps:



<ol class="wp-block-list">
<li>Repay outstanding debt on Kamino.</li>



<li>Withdraw the associated collateral.</li>



<li>Transfer these assets to Jupiter Lend.</li>



<li>Recreate the position inside Jupiter Lend, maintaining the same loan amount and collateral ratio.</li>
</ol>



On Dec. 2, Kamino <a href="https://x.com/prady_v/status/1995756192988323845?s=20">updated</a> its smart contracts to block Jupiter’s program, preventing one-click refinancing. Both the Jupiter and Fluid teams (Jup Lend uses Fluid in the backend) framed the move as anti-competitive and against “open-finance principles.”



On Dec. 6, Kamino’s co-founder publicly <a href="https://x.com/y2kappa/status/1997333295474802777?s=20">explained</a> the rationale for blocking Jup Lend’s migration tool, noting that Jupiter had repeatedly suggested that borrowers’ collateral is isolated, implying it is neither rehypothecated nor exposed to cross-contamination risk. However, this claim was not true, with even Fluid’s co-founder <a href="https://x.com/smykjain/status/1997075350799736981?s=20">acknowledging</a> rehypothecation within Jup Lend.



​Notably, Kamino never prevented users from repaying their loans manually and withdrawing their capital to Jup Lend. Whether against open-finance principles or not, the move to block the refinancing program was fundamentally a business decision, much like Jup Lend’s decision not to open-source its code (though it has plans to do so). In this regard, it’s interesting to analyze the competitive dynamics between both money markets over the past few months.



Since its launch in late August, Jup Lend has grown to $1.6 billion in deposits and $610 million in borrows. The chart below shows that Kamino’s deposits and borrows have decreased by $1.3 billion (-28%) and $460 million (-26%), respectively, during the same period.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-74.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110353" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-74.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-74.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-74.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-74.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-74.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-74.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-74.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-74.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-74.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



The top five assets by deposit growth since Jup Lend’s launch are USDC ($485 million), JLP ($225 million), SOL ($206 million), syrupUSDC ($174 million), and jupSOL ($85 million). During the same period, Kamino has seen sizable outflows for all of these assets, except syrupUSDC. However, even for syrupUSDC, Jup Lend still attracted roughly 3x more inflows.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-73.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110352" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-73.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-73.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-73.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-73.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-73.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-73.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-73.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-73.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-73.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Kamino’s growth over the past few months has come from assets not yet supported by Jup Lend. In particular, stablecoin inflows in Q4 have been driven by PYUSD ($42 million) and Phantom’s CASH ($125 million). Kamino has also been proactive in onboarding DATCO LSTs; most notably dfdvSOL and more recently fwdSOL.



Kamino’s PRIME integration stands out as a catalyst that can bring net new inflows into the money market. PRIME gives users exposure to a regulated credit pool backed by US real estate loans originated and serviced through Figure. This integration effectively gives access to a source of yield uncorrelated from crypto markets that may attract more institutional borrowers.



Wrapping up, Kamino and Jup Lend are obviously competitors, and competition is healthy as it drives innovation and ultimately benefits users. That said, as Solana Foundation’s Lily Liu<a href="https://x.com/calilyliu/status/1997563223193849952?s=20"> noted</a>, instead of fighting with each other, Kamino and Jupiter should focus on growing the pie and capturing market share from other chains and TradFi thereafter. Combined, both money markets still account for less than 10% of Aave’s deposits, and without initiatives like the PRIME integration, it will be impossible to close this gap.



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Analyzing Jup Lend vs. Kamino

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While crypto prices have shown a modest recovery in the short term, negative breadth and relative underperformance to TradFi benchmarks on the monthly suggests a prevailing bearish environment. 



Zooming out, we look at the secular growth trends within stablecoins and lending as durable sectors for multi-year growth.



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



Crypto markets remain rangebound after November’s harsh selloff. The past week has shown a modest recovery, with BTC at $90,400 now being 12% off of its recent correction low of $80,700. Over the trailing 24 hours, the AI and Modular sectors were the top winners, with TAO (+6.4%)  and TIA (+6.2%) as notable contributors to this short-term strength. The Perp Index was the top loser, with DYDX (-3.1%) and HYPE (-0.6%) accounting for the sector’s weakness. 



<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="720" height="405" src="blob:https://cms.blockworks.co/b89f7e71-0662-4e87-a1ab-377c7de8b679">



Zooming out to the monthly, the picture remains unfavorable. TradFi benchmarks like Gold, Nasdaq and the S&amp;P 500 are all green over the past month, while every crypto index we track is measuring negative returns.



Breadth is decisively negative on the monthly for all crypto indices, with no safe haven provided. Notably, the Protocol Revenue index is the top performing among crypto sectors, suggesting relative strength in protocols with strong fundamental positioning.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1488" height="837" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-70.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110344" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-70.png?w=1488 1488w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-70.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-70.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-70.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-70.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-70.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-70.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-70.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1488px) 100vw, 1488px" /></figure>



Despite recent strength, it remains to be determined whether this rally is countertrend to a prolonged downtrend, or if the low is in for the rest of 2025.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Market Update</h2>



Amid the downtrend, don’t lose sight of the bigger picture, and take a moment to appreciate just how far we’ve come. At the bear market low, lending applications within DeFi accounted for just $5 billion in deposits, a rounding error within the larger financial system. In the years since, this figure has grown to $71 billion in deposits, having just previously tagged near $100 billion.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="900" height="500" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-69.png" alt="" class="wp-image-110342" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-69.png?w=900 900w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-69.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-69.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-69.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-69.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-69.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-69.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px" /></figure>



Similarly, loans outstanding on these applications amounted to $1.6 billion at the bear-market low. Since, active loans have risen to over $27 billion now, and recently passed $38 billion. These figures have grown to a scale worth paying attention to, not just for the crypto native. Variance can cut both ways, to the upside and to the downside, for both key metrics and spot prices. But 20x growth in topline metrics in just a few years suggests this sector is a long way off from its terminal growth rate.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="900" height="500" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-68.png" alt="" class="wp-image-110343" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-68.png?w=900 900w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-68.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-68.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-68.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-68.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-68.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-68.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px" /></figure>



Amid the drawdown in crypto prices, the aggregate stablecoin supply has retraced back up to its all-time high of $310 billion, after a brief period of -$10 billion in outflows.&nbsp;



The growth in stablecoins is a trend that I would not bet against. Onchain money markets stand as primary beneficiaries of the growing stablecoin supply, purporting to be the primary applications for utilization. Stablecoin lenders seek yield, while borrowers look for leverage. While spot assets will remain volatile, this secular trend should remain a persistent and durable tailwind for DeFi applications.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-72.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110346" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-72.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-72.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-72.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-72.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-72.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-72.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-72.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-72.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-72.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Notably, continued growth in the stablecoin supply comes amid very modest onchain yields. Benchmark supply rates on lending applications are reading 3.6%, a discount to SOFR at 3.9%. Growing depth in onchain stablecoin liquidity may continue to dampen the upside in supply rates, and absent a material risk premium to legacy rates, growth in stablecoin utilization on money markets may falter.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="900" height="500" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-71.png" alt="" class="wp-image-110345" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-71.png?w=900 900w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-71.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-71.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-71.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-71.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-71.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-71.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px" /></figure>



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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
&nbsp;“Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run it is almost everything.”



— Paul Krugman
</blockquote>



“Total factor productivity” (TFP) is how economists measure the contribution of technological innovation to economic growth — the sustained ability of an economy to produce more output with the same amount of inputs.



As such, it’s arguably economists’ most important measurement, because the continual process of producing more with less is how life gets better.



“A country’s ability to improve its standard of living over time depends almost entirely on its ability to raise its output per worker,” Paul Krugman explains.&nbsp;



Technology is what makes that happen and TFP is how it’s measured.



To get a more tangible sense of how important technology-generated productivity is, consider this: A <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c15154/c15154.pdf">recent paper</a> from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) estimates that an additional 0.5% of annual TFP growth would stabilize the US government&#8217;s finances at today’s level of debt-to-GDP.



0.5%! It doesn’t sound like a lot, but if sustained over the next 10 years, NBER estimates that would reduce the baseline forecast for US government debt by $2 trillion.



Over 30 years, a sustained 0.5% boost to TFP would make the US government’s debt-to-GDP ratio 42 percentage points lower than NBER’s baseline forecast (and 80 percentage points lower than its pessimistic one).



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="835" height="465" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-67.png" alt="" class="wp-image-110337" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-67.png?w=835 835w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-67.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-67.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-67.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-67.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-67.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-67.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 835px) 100vw, 835px" /></figure>



Given the seemingly hopeless state of government finances, maintaining today’s level of indebtedness is a dream scenario that seems too good to be true.



But researchers at Anthropic think we can do even better.



Anthropic conducted a study of 100,000 Claude.ai conversations to “estimate how long the tasks in these conversations would take with and without AI assistance, and study the productivity implications across the broader economy.”&nbsp;



Its conclusion? LLMs could raise total factor productivity by 1.1 percentage points.



1.1%!



If 0.5% would stabilize the US government’s finances for decades, what would 1.1% do? It would probably fix almost everything.&nbsp;



There are reasons to be skeptical of this optimistic forecast, of course.&nbsp;



The study finds, for example, that Claude saves teachers four hours of labor by creating curricula in just 11 minutes. But estimating how such time-savings might lead to higher economic output requires the kind of economic modelling that’s full of best-guess assumptions and false precision.



So, even if Anthropic is right about the time savings, it might be wrong about productivity: It might be that we use all the time AI saves us to do something economically unproductive, like watch more TikTok videos or read more newsletters.



In that case, AI would raise our welfare (more free time) but not our wealth (more economic output) — still great news for people, but no help to governments hoping for a silver bullet solution to their debt problem.



Conversely, there are reasons to think Anthropic’s model is being too pessimistic: “We don’t take into account the rate of adoption” it explains, “or the larger productivity effects that would come from much more capable AI systems.”



In other words, its study assumes we continue to use AI only as we do now and that we’re still using today’s language models, unimproved, for another 10 years.



Language models get noticeably better every few months and we’ve only just started learning how to use them — so Anthropic is right to say its estimate might represent an “approximate lower bound on the productivity effects of AI.”



If so — if 1.1% is the lower bound for AI-induced productivity — we might pay down government debt and have much more time for TikTok.



And that’s only taking into consideration AI’s impact on non-physical work — just wait until we get robots!&nbsp;



To dismiss such optimism entirely is to think the trillions of dollars that corporations are planning to spend on AI capex and R&amp;D will all be wasted.



Which it might be — technology revolutions don’t always arrive on schedule.



But the biggest reason for optimism is that Anthropic’s 1.1% estimate is based solely on AI “making existing tasks faster to complete” — &nbsp;its model does not account for AI’s potential to completely change the way we complete those tasks.



“Historically,” Anthropic notes, “transformative productivity improvements — from electrification, computing, or the internet — came not from speeding up old tasks, but from fundamentally reorganizing production.”



There’s no way to model these new ways of doing things, but it seems likely its impact will be bigger than the one Anthropic has tried to measure.



Anthropic’s researchers are careful to caveat their hopeful findings by enumerating the limitations of their methodology and documenting the many assumptions they’re making.&nbsp;



And even if all those assumptions work out and AI productivity solves the US government’s debt problem, lawmakers will probably spend their way right back into it.



But given the 100% probability everyone seems to put on looming fiscal disaster, even a small chance Anthropic’s estimates prove correct is a reason to update our priors: The US government’s finances are not as intractable as we think, and the US dollar is not as doomed as we think.



In the long run, productivity is almost everything — and AI might be on the verge of making us a lot more productive.



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