Winter Arc

Katherine Ross

Jack Kubinec

Some employees at Bitget’s new blockchain, Morph, initially thought of the L2 network as a potential future rival to Coinbase’s Base.&nbsp;



But sources familiar with the project tell Blockworks that Morph has been stymied by internal dysfunction. Sources claim that since a $20 million <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/morph-announces-20mm-fundraise-in-seed-and-angel-investment-302094646.html">seed raise</a> in March of last year, team conflicts, flashy spending and a mysterious “shadow CEO” have led to layoffs, delays and a loss of direction.&nbsp;



Blockworks spoke with a dozen current and former employees who were granted anonymity to share candid details of what went wrong inside one of Bitget’s most public bets.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Morph’s beginnings</h2>



Exchanges are crypto’s largest apps. One way these digital asset titans capitalize on their popularity is by launching their own blockchains.&nbsp;



Binance first <a href="https://www.binance.com/en/blog/all/bnb-smart-chain-launches-today-421499824684900933?hl=en">launched</a> the BNB Chain in 2020. Coinbase launched an Ethereum layer-2 named Base in 2023. Kraken, OKX, and Gate.io have all built or are building blockchains.&nbsp;



These chains can be lucrative. Base generated $76 million in gross profit in 2024, per Blockworks Research.



It was in this context that an L2 named Morph became a hot ticket after being incubated by Bitget, the 10th largest exchange by <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/research/publications/largest-centralized-crypto-exchanges#which-exchanges-have-lost-market-share-since-2020">spot volume</a>. But instead of following a more classic startup model where two co-founders come together with a single idea, Morph saw two co-founders who didn’t know each other become paired together.&nbsp;



The team behind Morph brought in Azeem Khan — who lives in the US and was previously head of impact at Gitcoin — and Cecilia Hsueh, who is based in Singapore, according to her LinkedIn. Hsueh was formerly chief marketing officer and, briefly, the CEO of the crypto exchange Phemex. She was tapped as CEO of Morph, while Khan became chief operating officer.



Things looked bright at first. As crypto fundraising began to recover, Morph raised $20 million in seed funding from US-based venture firm Dragonfly. Other investors included Pantera, MEXC Group, Bitget’s venture arm Foresight Ventures, and Spartan Group.



Bitget and Foresight didn’t return multiple requests for comment on Morph. Dragonfly and Pantera declined to comment when reached.



Morph’s mainnet went <a href="https://decrypt.co/289113/morph-announces-mainnet-launch-on-ethereum-paving-the-way-for-consumer-blockchain-adoption">live</a> in late October of last year. According to Morph’s <a href="https://morphl2.socialscan.io/">block explorer</a>, the L2 had roughly 16,000 transactions on Monday, May 12. To put those numbers in perspective, Base averages several million daily transactions, per a Blockworks Research dashboard.



The launch was only half the battle. The other big goal was to launch a token, former employees recounted, but this has yet to materialize.&nbsp;



Last month, Morph <a href="https://morph.ghost.io/morph-platinum-nft-sale-is-live/">teased</a> that folks who mint so-called Platinum NFTs would be “securing their position in the ecosystem at a $500 million FDV valuation, with 50% token unlock at TGE.”&nbsp;



The seed round had put Morph at a $125 million valuation in March 2024, according to a person familiar.



Since the raise, however, Bitget’s layer-2 has experienced a turbulent year.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">‘Ghost founder’</h2>



As Morph staffed up and tried to bring a working blockchain to market, cracks emerged among its leadership.



People familiar described tension between Hsueh and Khan, who did not know each other before being tapped as co-founders.



Khan declined to comment when reached by Blockworks.



Bitget, which is not available in the US, has seen strong growth the past few years in Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia, <a href="https://www.bitget.com/blog/articles/bitget-2024-year-in-review">according</a> to company data. Morph initially aimed to reach users in the Global South who are not being served by other exchange blockchains, as co-founder Azeem Khan explained in a CoinDesk <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2j7oh5lfCpU">interview</a> last year.



Strategically, Khan and Hsueh were not always aligned, per several sources. While Khan talked about emerging markets in press appearances, those initiatives were slow to materialize internally, former employees recounted. A team that spent months planning out activations in those markets was told they wouldn’t receive a budget, a source said.



Stranger still, employees who spoke to Blockworks sensed that neither Khan nor CEO Hsueh seemed to always have the final say on things.



One employee described Khan as being more like a “ghost founder” than an actual co-founder, and noted they’d never seen anything like it throughout their crypto career.



A lot of decision-making power seemed to rest with Forest Bai, a co-founder and partner of Foresight Ventures (Bitget’s venture arm and an investor in Morph) as well as chair of The Block. Multiple people confirmed that Bai was like a “shadow CEO.” Sources noted that he had oversight on things like spending and company strategy.



Khan announced that he was leaving Morph in March, noting in an X post that stepping down was “the best path forward for me.” He’s since <a href="https://polygon.technology/blog/miden-raises-25m-from-a16z-crypto-1kx-and-hackvc-to-build-the-edge-blockchain">emerged</a> as a co-founder of a different blockchain named Miden.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">After careful consideration, I’ve chosen to step down from my position as co-founder &amp; COO of <a href="https://twitter.com/MorphLayer?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@MorphLayer</a> . This was not a decision I took lightly, but ultimately after thinking it over, this is the best path forward for me. I’d like to take a moment to thank all my…&mdash; azeem (@azeemk_) <a href="https://twitter.com/azeemk_/status/1902933187296190593?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 21, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



The lack of alignment and independent decision-making power contributed to Khan’s departure, according to multiple people familiar.



Hsueh has stayed on as CEO — although her power internally has allegedly waned further in recent months, three people told Blockworks.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Who’s really in charge?</h2>



Nearly everyone Blockworks spoke to described Hsueh as having a limited understanding of the technical ins and outs of blockchain. While it’s not a prerequisite for an executive to be crypto-native, sources claimed that Hsueh was out of touch with blockchain users and didn’t show an interest in learning about the technology, creating a feeling that Morph lacked clear strategic direction.



Instead, Hsueh was preoccupied with growing her online presence, sources said. Three ex-employees recounted being asked to engage with her posts. Others added that Hsueh would prioritize <a href="https://x.com/cecilia_hsueh/status/1851610014697361890">announcements</a> about Morph on her personal account over the official account.&nbsp;



At one point, Hsueh took to posting pictures of her feet on X.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">ran into some crypto folks and it went like this. guy: hey, aren’t you the founder who posts all those feet pics? me: yeah, i’m just really down to earth like that. <a href="https://t.co/A1ljUcNC6A">pic.twitter.com/A1ljUcNC6A</a>&mdash; Cecilia Hsueh 🐨 (@cecilia_hsueh) <a href="https://twitter.com/cecilia_hsueh/status/1846201866981642571?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 15, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



It’s unclear how much power Hsueh still holds, though an ex-employee described her as being “teflon.”



While she’s listed as the CEO in company documents, Foresight Ventures co-founder Forest Bai’s name appears next to hers on an internal organization chart shared with Blockworks.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd4a58UnMCtLHzaM-MMfwbiwnjBL1mMhIjaPApqsLYcWGP9p2P5s1pva4ovdBcd1led3MeMi50_8LybdDutbTnIwzGWzJBvRGGTZUQxTgmKWgM2JmvJ3Y7AVy-HmLB4aJ2twHzL?key=3cJcF7ftMvN2nPy8lwbXgJZM" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">An edited screenshot from Morph’s organizational chart showing Bai and Hsueh’s roles</figcaption></figure>



Neither Hsueh nor Bai returned emails or messages requesting comments.&nbsp;



While Bai has taken more control in recent months — having been officially added to the company Slack, per three sources familiar — others noted that he held sway over both Khan and Hsueh before Khan’s departure. Officially, Bai is listed as a consultant in internal Slack messages seen by Blockworks.



Another internal Slack message shared with Blockworks requested Bai’s presence in ecosystem and marketing team meetings.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Deal or no deal?</h2>



In 2024, Morph was a big spender, four people said. Granted, the company had just finalized a $20 million raise.&nbsp;



But the spending included events with K-pop band tripleS, where Morph allegedly covered the group’s travel and accommodations, one source told Blockworks. An invite on Lu.ma, a popular website utilized by projects planning post-conference events, teased a “special performance” by tripleS in April of last year. The <a href="https://lu.ma/KpopParty">event</a> was hosted by Zircuit, Bitget, Morph, Foresight Ventures and Quantstamp.



Multiple sources discussed Morph spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on events at crypto conferences. At Token2049 in Singapore, Morph hosted an all-day side event at Singapore’s ArtScience Museum, sources noted. A Lu.ma <a href="https://lu.ma/yb8ouaam">invite</a> shows that the event was attended by the likes of Vitalik Buterin, Avara’s Stani Kulechov and Aptos’ Mo Shaikh, with popular South Korean performer DJ SODA as the main act at the afterparty.



The large event spending didn’t align with the return on investment or bottom line, another source noted. And, while events seemed to get money, Hsueh seemed reluctant to greenlight actual business deals, people familiar told Blockworks.



The bright side of the company’s spending, per a source familiar, was that Morph initially compensated its employees competitively.



Outside of events, there were discussions for a physical office in New York City that culminated in a space on One World Trade Center’s 77th floor, three sources told Blockworks.&nbsp;



The office is also shared with Foresight and The Block, though it’s unclear who’s on the lease.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Such a pleasant view from the <a href="https://twitter.com/MorphL2?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@MorphL2</a> office <a href="https://t.co/6dZLnKR8QJ">pic.twitter.com/6dZLnKR8QJ</a>&mdash; azeem (@azeemk_) <a href="https://twitter.com/azeemk_/status/1861501600277090391?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 26, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



On the developer side, Morph once paid a team of developers over $200,000 to build a fork of Uniswap v2, according to multiple sources. Since Uniswap’s code is open source, one ex-employee felt that the project overpaid for the DEX, which became known as BulbaSwap. BulbaSwap currently holds around $93 million in total value locked, according to DeFiLlama, making it around the 200th-largest DEX by that metric.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The ‘dark arts’</h2>



Morph’s burn rate may have been offset by a planned Series A fundraise, but a fresh funding round is yet to materialize.&nbsp;



“We are looking for our next round,” Hsueh said in an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMatGF85v0M">interview</a> with Web3TV in September, noting that “running a chain is very expensive,” and the company was looking to grow its headcount.



However, people familiar noted that there were tensions around a Series A prior to Khan’s departure. Bai, two people familiar said, pushed for Morph to raise another round.&nbsp;



Blockworks was unable to determine the current status of the Series A.



Even without the raise, a source familiar told Blockworks that Morph isn’t out of money yet, and it’s still backed by Bitget.



Morph didn’t return multiple requests for comment.



Meanwhile, Morph has had some trouble retaining talent. One ex-employee said it’s faced a “crazy amount” of turnover, from departures to layoffs. Some employees have also taken salary cuts, others noted.



Multiple employees said they didn’t receive token contracts. According to one source, Morph attempted to force some employees who did receive contracts to sign new ones in May of last year which would have changed their vesting periods.



Another source told Blockworks that the departures have left some teams depleted, and some Slack channels have little to no activity. Despite the hardships, Morph still plans to launch its token by the end of this year, a person familiar said.



For investors, Morph’s saving grace may be its connection to Bitget, which may yet be keen to list Morph’s forthcoming token at launch.



Bitget understands the “dark arts” of facilitating trading around tokens that may have questionable value, said an ex-employee.



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



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



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Bitget

Morph, Bitget’s L2, is stymied by founder disputes, lavish spending and power struggles: Sources

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



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



A new perps DEX is entering the chat.&nbsp;



The team exclusively told me that Perpl, a decentralized perpetual futures exchange, raised $9.25 million from Dragonfly to build on Monad.&nbsp;



Other participants in the round include Ergonia, Brevan Howard, Breed, L1D and CMS.&nbsp;



I had a chance to speak with co-founder PB, who told me that he and his cofounder — both Americans — left the US to build Perpl in London. They’ve since hired a London-based team. Surprise, surprise, the decision came due to the lack of regulatory clarity in the US.&nbsp;



PB isn’t writing off the US entirely, though, noting that if the laws change, Perpl would consider opening up to the market — it’s just not currently in the cards.&nbsp;



Perpetual futures, or perps, are becoming more of a popular product, especially in crypto. Just last week, Coinbase <a href="https://www.coinbase.com/blog/24-7-futures-trading-has-arrived">teased</a> that 24/7 perps were “coming soon” after announcing 24/7 futures trading.&nbsp;



“I think the thing with perps, specifically, is how simple it is. With options, there&#8217;s just a lot of complexity. There are expirations, there&#8217;s just a lot more math for users to be aware of. But perps, it&#8217;s very simple, never expires,” PB explained.&nbsp;



“You just have to keep track of liquidations. And then that also helps with getting all the liquidity in one place. With options, since you have expirations, you have liquidity each month, but with perps, all liquidity for the assets is in the same place. More liquidity, better trading experience.”



What PB noticed is that crypto traders like the ease of access that perps offer. There’s also the added benefit that a project like Perpl can move faster on a token listing than, say, a Coinbase.&nbsp;



“With perps, you just need an oracle price and USDC, and you can start immediately taking a position. If you were to rewind back to maybe a couple of years ago, you needed a Binance or one of these central exchanges to actually list perps, but with DEXs, they&#8217;re able to list these tokens faster,” he explained.&nbsp;



Perps DEXs are “broken in a very interesting way,” PB told me. Basically, there are infrastructure and engineering issues and then the DEXs make some trade-offs to account for them, but Perpl claims to be different.&nbsp;



“What Hyperliquid has done with a cloud-based perp DEX has shown that the market appetite is there for something that has a deep liquidity. What we&#8217;re really excited for is to see how the composability angle plays out with that,” he added.&nbsp;



Perpl plans to utilize the EVM architecture from Monad to build its onchain central limit order book. But the downside is that, since it’s on Monad, it won’t be able to launch mainnet until Monad itself goes live. It does, however, plan to launch testnet by the end of the year.&nbsp;



“We&#8217;ve raised enough money to help us sustain ourselves if testnet or mainnet takes longer, but we want to get it onto testnet by the end of this year, just because we want people to try it,” he said. “There are going to be bugs that they&#8217;re going to be able to find. No matter how much we test internally, [nothing beats] user testing, so we want them to be able to get their hands on it.”



But PB and the team aren’t too worried if Monad’s mainnet takes longer than anticipated; they’ll just be building up the features on Perpl in the meantime.



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



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



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

Exclusive: Perpl raises $9.25M from Dragonfly to build on Monad

Byron Gilliam

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



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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“Leaders get killed from below.&#8221;



— Clay Christensen
</blockquote>



In <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Technologies-Management-Innovation/dp/142219602X?tag=googhydr-20&amp;hvsb=Media_d&amp;hvcampaign=dsadesk">The Innovator’s Dilemma</a>, Clay Christensen introduced the concept of disruptive innovation — when a product that initially looks like a cheap knockoff ends up rewriting the rules of an entire industry.



These products typically get their start in either low-end or entirely new markets that incumbents have ignored because they were either not profitable enough to serve or didn’t seem strategically important.



But that turns out to be a good starting point: “A disruptive technology is initially embraced by the least profitable customers in a market,” Christensen explained.



These customers are often eager to adopt a product that is initially inferior in terms of traditional performance metrics, but cheaper, simpler and more accessible to them.



Christensen cites the example of Toyota, which got its start in the US market by targeting budget-conscious customers that the Big Three US automakers had overlooked.



The incumbents’ focus on bigger, faster, more feature-rich cars had created “a vacuum underneath them,” in Christensen’s telling, and Toyota filled that vacuum with the slower, smaller, no-frills Corona, which cost just $2,000 when it was introduced in 1965.



Today, Toyota is the second-largest automaker in the US — and its Lexus LX 600 Luxury SUV starts at $115,850.



Toyota used the Corona to wedge its way into the US market and then steadily climbed the value chain, proving Christensen’s thesis that the best way to the top is to start from the bottom.



Stablecoins may be on a similar trajectory.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Disruption is coming</h2>



Christensen’s disruptors started in niche markets — and stablecoins started in emerging ones.



For people in the United States with access to bank deposits, stablecoins are essentially an inferior kind of dollar — not FDIC insured, not properly audited, not integrated into ACH or SWIFT and (despite the name) not always exchangeable for $1.&nbsp;



For people outside of the United States, however, they are a better kind of dollar — unlike $100 bills, you don’t have to hide them, they won’t get torn or defaced, and you don’t have to meet someone face-to-face to exchange them.



This has made US dollar stablecoins wildly popular in countries like Argentina — one-fifth of Argentines are <a href="https://cryptoforinnovation.org/will-argentina-become-the-first-crypto-economy/">said</a> to use them daily — even as few people in the US could tell you what they are.



Argentina is not the only place stablecoins are used, of course — stables are popular with DeFi traders, anyone who can’t pass a KYC check, emigrants sending remittances home, employers paying cross-border freelancers and savers escaping their local hyperinflating currency.



None of these are profitable enough as customers for incumbent banks to bother with, so it didn’t matter that stablecoins started out as inferior to bank-issued money.



For a while, people were so desperate for digital dollars that they didn’t even seem to care whether Tether’s USDT was fully backed.



They are much improved since: Circle offers a regulated alternative to USDT, Tether itself appears to be playing it by the book too, and some stablecoins even offer yield.&nbsp;



But is this innovation truly disruptive?



The <a href="https://www.christenseninstitute.org/theory/disruptive-innovation/#:~:text=Disruptive%20Innovations%20are%20NOT%20breakthrough,make%20products%20and%20services%20more">Christensen Institute</a> has a six-part test to determine whether an innovation qualifies as disruptive:



Does it target non-consumers or people who are overserved by an incumbent’s existing offering in a market?



Yes — DeFi traders and emerging market savers don’t need FDIC-backed US bank deposits (they’d be “overserved” by a full US bank account), but they do want digital dollars.



Is the offering not as good as an incumbent’s existing offering as judged by historical measures of performance?



Yes — stablecoins have deviated from their $1 peg, gone to zero (Luna/UST), can be expensive to on- and off-ramp, and can be frozen without recourse.



Is the innovation simpler to use, more convenient or more affordable than the incumbent’s existing offering?



Yes — sending stablecoins is easier than sending bank deposits, are more convenient for many, and more affordable for some.



Does the offering have a technological enabler that can carry it upmarket and allow it to improve?



Yes — blockchains!



Is the technology paired with a business model innovation that allows it to be sustainable?



Maybe? Tether may be the most profitable company in history on a per-employee basis, but if US regulators allow stablecoins to pay interest, issuing them might not provide any profits at all.&nbsp;



Are existing providers motivated to ignore the new innovation and are not threatened at the outset? No. Incumbents seem alert to the threat and aware of the opportunity. “Almost always, when low-end disruptions emerge, it creates a situation where the leaders in the industry actually are motivated to flee rather than fight you,” Christensen <a href="https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/low-end-disruption">writes</a>. “That’s why low-end disruption is such an important tool to create new growth businesses: The competitors don’t want to compete against you; they just walk away.”



Stablecoins may be a rare exception: Instead of walking away from the low-cost innovation of stablecoins, incumbents appear to be racing toward it.



The payment incumbents Visa, Mastercard and Stripe have all announced new stablecoin offerings in recent weeks; BlackRock’s BUIDL fund (which looks like a yield-paying stablecoin) is rapidly attracting assets; the CEO of Bank of America says it’s likely to issue a stablecoin as soon as regulators allow it.&nbsp;&nbsp;



That might be because finance executives have all read The Innovator’s Dilemma.



Or it might be because stablecoins are so easy to issue.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Christensen frames disruptive innovation as company driven — where startups use low-end beachheads to claw their way into the mainstream before incumbents take them seriously.&nbsp;



And that might be how it works out for stablecoins, too: The <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250421041939/en/Circle-Announces-Payments-Network-to-Transform-Global-Money-Movement">Circle Payments Network</a> may be to Circle what Lexus was to Toyota.&nbsp;&nbsp;



But Circle’s competition isn’t as sleepy and slow moving as Toyota’s, so it’s entirely possible that stablecoins&#8217; early innovators will, in an inverse of Christensen’s theory, be killed from above.



The end result could be the same either way: A recent Citi report predicted that stablecoin AUM could hit $3.7 trillion by 2030, largely because of institutional adoption.



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The Breakdown Newsletter

Stablecoins are disruptive, but who will be the disruptors?

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



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Blockchains store a ton of data, and the bloat is only growing bigger.



A little over a year ago, Nirvana Labs <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/nirvana-alternative-to-google-cloud-aws">released its cloud offering</a>. It promised a crypto-tailored computing service that could undercut Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud — the industry computing incumbents — on price.



Now, Nirvana has raised an additional $6 million in seed extension funding co-led by Jump Crypto and Crucible Capital, Lightspeed has learned exclusively. RW3 Ventures, Castle Island and Hash3 VC all also participated in the round, which brought Nirvana Labs’ total funding to $11.8 million.



Some blockchain node operators use cloud providers like AWS and Google Cloud because the services make it possible to use servers and storage without housing their own physical hardware. This reliance on the internet giants for computing resources creates some centralization <a href="https://www.dlnews.com/articles/defi/ethereum-decentralisation-threatened-by-reliance-on-amazon/">risks</a>, however, and it can also prove costly for crypto operators — especially on a high-throughput chain like Solana.



“[A] single Solana Archive Node is 700TB — that&#8217;s an insane amount of storage,” Crucible Capital founder and general partner Meltem Demirors said in a text message. “AWS and Google Cloud own 80%+ of this market today, which makes no sense because one month of NVME storage on AWS costs almost as much as just buying the hardware outright.”



Nirvana makes use of bare metal infrastructure where each server houses a single client, as opposed to traditional cloud providers which pool computing resources. Nirvana also boasts CPUs optimized for demanding workloads — like those faced by blockchain operators — and data center diversity that could make blockchains more resilient against things like outages.



The crypto cloud service can also be much cheaper than AWS or Google Cloud because Nirvana leases hardware directly from data centers and co-locates storage, which removes middlemen, Demirors said.



Demand for Nirvana’s services tends to come from infrastructure and tooling providers like BitGo and Fireblocks, as well as protocol foundations like Avalanche and Berachain, Demirors told me. Nirvana is also planning to work as a frontend to help organizations deploy on the internet filtering startup DoubleZero.&nbsp;



In a press release, Nirvana Labs said its revenue has grown by 26x since January 2024, and the cloud service now handles more than 2,000 terabytes of blockchain data.&nbsp;



Following the round, Demirors will join Nirvana Labs’ board, where she will be joined by Nirvana’s CEO and chief technology officer, a representative from RW3 Ventures, and a final “independent,” likely to be an industry executive, Demirors said.



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



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

Lightspeed Newsletter

Cloud startup Nirvana Labs raises $6M seed extension led by Jump Crypto, Crucible Capital

Kate Irwin

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



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



The 2021-era Ethereum NFT collection Doodles, which some have long considered to be a “blue chip” collection, launched its <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/doodles-solana-token-criticisms">anticipated DOOD token</a> on Solana this past Friday.



DOOD launched, briefly had a market cap of over $100 million, and then abruptly fell to a market cap of roughly $52 million. The token has since held around that point, and sits at a <a href="https://www.geckoterminal.com/solana/pools/5KXE8RMF7iW9Ptn665AHfzsMFjYb4LV2Ta8eZEtsTwWC">$54 million</a> market cap across about <a href="https://solscan.io/token/DvjbEsdca43oQcw2h3HW1CT7N3x5vRcr3QrvTUHnXvgV#holders">159,000 wallets</a> as of this morning.



Doodles head of strategy and business development Austin Hurwitz told me in a message that the sudden price drop after launch was “expected” because the airdrop that occurred created “sell pressure on day 1.”



“We expect those tokens to rotate into the hands of people who want to hold for the long run. Would not judge the performance of the token based on launch. Every NFT launch that was given to the community at TGE has faced similar hurdles but we’d do it all over again to put our community first. Now that it’s out we can continue [to] focus on building for the future,” Hurwitz told me.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdygxEPEnnU26RCxhANy1TwC1-hTnaa0-cJkIn3R4hx0EPxLox6z9jlF-RV_k4Tir9LwN5flBEYrfroLQcuyxTiTQHse8zM1L4KrRK3u-RNyibaJGIaUc8ahXoeZGhxdtskBApZ?key=Dx9jj8VE76MnKTTzxHXLFQ" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Image: DOOD’s market cap since launch.</figcaption></figure>



Here’s the thing: The Doodles team doesn’t want you to see DOOD as just a memecoin. Still, Hurwitz said the token is “memetic.”



In a post, he <a href="https://x.com/austin_hurwitz/status/1921674592487182672?s=46">explained</a> that DOOD is “the first universe token” of <a href="https://dreamnet.doodles.app/what-is-dreamnet">DreamNet</a>. DreamNet is a content-focused protocol from Doodles that uses Coinbase’s Base chain. The Doodles team has plans to make DOOD usable across “collectibles, gaming, DeFi and beyond.”



The token is expected to become a usable currency in the Doodles shop in <a href="https://x.com/austin_hurwitz/status/1921704059335065788">a few days</a>.



Doodles’ broader brand vision these days sounds a lot like that of Pudgy Penguins, perhaps its most obvious comparison. The Penguins also have cutesy avatars and the goal of becoming a mainstream character brand (and have gained some traction with <a href="https://www.instagram.com/pudgypenguins/?hl=en">social media</a> posts and <a href="https://www.walmart.com/search?q=pudgy+penguins">Walmart toys</a>).&nbsp;



Doodles, like Pudgy Penguins, is planning content, “shorts, brand collabs and merch drops,” but also wants to be powering a “decentralized storytelling movement.”



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



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



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



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

Doodles

Doodles’ DOOD token falls on launch, but team is planning its future

Donovan Choy

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



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The following is part one of a multi-part series on the state of crypto liquid markets, based on several conversations with liquid funds.



It’s an open secret that most crypto liquid funds are underperforming.



Liquid funds work similarly to traditional hedge funds: Pick a market direction, deploy capital and outperform a benchmark.



Unlike hedge funds, however, the yardstick to beat is not a composite benchmark like the S&amp;P 500. Crypto liquid funds are in the game to beat bitcoin.



For example, bitcoin appreciated ~110% in 2024. Any liquid fund performing below that benchmark is underperforming, or considered average at best.



Unfortunately, the rise of orange coin means liquid funds have a much harder job.



Bitcoin has generally held steady on a year-to-date basis while the rest of the altcoin market has plunged <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/altcoin-season-over-memecoins-value">into oblivion</a>.



Consider bitcoin dominance (BTC.D), which has steadily climbed over the past year to 63% today against a total crypto market cap of $3.3 trillion.&nbsp;



Contrast that to last cycle’s market cap peak in November 2021 when BTC.D hovered at the 40-45% range.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdN5m_JQVSW8M6fpEY1bwSynL1z9hrVQhB7ji2cmsb09W1xCDRmf0GwD7FSWDUjUCu0tpF61yaI3tKq8EnDTIxmPXM75QUd7O3nkPRG-xlt1k5lDQcHBZseXjS8mlrdliNZcYHq?key=_-mt5O6Y3hKcCIFMy0XEtw" alt=""/></figure>



VCs such as DBA’s Jon Charbonneau even question BTC as a benchmark. The appropriate benchmark may be a weighted-average basket of alts like ETH, SOL and BNB, <a href="https://youtu.be/dMSHYjk3b8U">Charbonneau said</a> on the 0xResearch podcast.



This likely explains the noticeably bearish vibes in the Crypto Twitter echo chamber despite bitcoin hovering close to its all time-highs. Many higher risk-seeking investors are positioned on the thesis that altcoins would surge harder than bitcoin, and therefore have been “sidelined” from BTC’s rally.



Pantera’s Cosmo Jiang told me: “It’s not great right now. Most directional liquid funds are probably negative against BTC. For the market-neutral liquid funds, industry averages are irrelevant. Yet they too are having a bad year, but that means they’re generally flat on performance, not positive.”



Practically every liquid fund I’ve spoken to agrees that bitcoin has situated itself as an institutional/macro asset, or as “digital gold.”&nbsp;



“We’re at an interesting point in the S-curve of bitcoin’s adoption where you see penetration rising quickly because of ETFs and the US government’s strategic reserve. Bitcoin inflows exceeded Nasdaq’s QQQ inflows last year, which is crazy,” Jiang said. “Most players still don’t appreciate the nuance that BTC performance is vastly different from the rest of the crypto market.”



It’s not just all about orange coin either, which is incidentally up 11% on the week.



The faltering performance of most liquid funds is impacted by a dark, looming cloud hovering over the altcoin market. The glut of L1/L2, DeFi, DePIN, AI and memecoins that already exist and are soon to be unlocked spells a bleak outlook, Defiance Capital’s Arthur Cheong told me.



“The unlock schedule for all alts, excluding ETH, is estimated to be $1 billion every month for the next two years. There simply isn’t that much demand for altcoins. The total capital by all crypto liquid funds comes up to ~$10-15 billion of capital,” Cheong said.



These structural dynamics, too, affect liquid funds specialized in market-neutral strategies.



“Even when projects try to sell their locked tokens over the counter (OTC) at 30-40% discounts, it’s hard to find a buyer. There’s a broad expectation by markets that altcoins will plunge,” Presto research analyst Min Jung said.



$60 billion in buying pressure would be needed to sustain the prices of the top 10 largest tokens (STRK, ENA, JUP, ONDO, etc.) launched in 2024, Presto <a href="https://www.prestolabs.io/research/is-fdv-a-meme">wrote</a> last year.



This mismatch in demand and supply means that liquid funds must work harder to pick the “right” winners.&nbsp;



The “rising tide (BTC) lifts all boats (altcoins)” phenomenon of past cycles is no more.



In the second part of this series, we’ll look at:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>How are liquid funds are grappling onto fundamentals to adapt?</li>



<li>What crypto sectors are liquid funds looking at?</li>



<li>Is the four-year cycle dead? </li>



<li>Is the L1 valuation premium dead? </li>
</ul>



Keep your eyes peeled for Part Two later this week in the 0xResearch newsletter.



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0xResearch Newsletter

Why is it so hard for crypto liquid funds to beat bitcoin this cycle?

David Canellis

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



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Bitcoin bull runs are pre-programmed. Act accordingly.



Contrarians have instinctively challenged that notion. But the idea that bitcoin’s price moves like clockwork is becoming less absurd over time, even to the most pragmatic thinkers.



Last month, on the one-year anniversary of Bitcoin’s fourth halving, we checked on bitcoin miners to gauge their production cost for each coin.



This past weekend, meanwhile, has put us at five years since the 2020 halving.



Strangely, post-halving price action this time around has trended almost exactly opposite to how it tracked following the third halving. Let’s take a look at how it all stacks up.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Living History</h2>



First of all, it’s no secret that Bitcoin halvings tend to overlap with bull market cycles.



What’s iffy, at least for bears and the perma-sidelined, is whether halvings inherently cause major rallies.



Since Supply Shock is literally the name of this (very educational, non-financial-advice) newsletter, it’s clearly not up for debate.



Bitcoin’s inflation rate is periodically cut in half, doubling the cost of production and leading to a series of supply crunches over the next few years as sell-side liquidity dries up, each one reflected in a new all-time high.



The chart below plots bitcoin price movements around halvings. The lines start six months prior to each halving and extend until the next one, in total covering around four and a half years. As you can see, halvings two and three generally followed a similar trajectory, even if the purple line is much less volatile.



Not shown: the price of bitcoin after the first halving in 2012, which went 240x in less than a year. Check out this interactive chart to toggle lines yourself.



We already know that bitcoin returns have diminished every four-year cycle. The pattern is shown here — bitcoin’s rally topped out at more than 4,200% in the 2016-2020 cycle but “only” managed about 700% between 2020 and 2024.



Bitcoin has otherwise risen by as much as 260% or so since last April’s halving, although we’re technically only about 27% of the way to the next one. That’s a lot of room to move!



The bitcoin market is also vastly different in 2025 than it was in 2017. So, it makes much more sense to only compare this cycle to the one directly prior.



Notice that for the six months leading up to each halving — purple in 2020 and pink in 2024 — their respective lines are inversely correlated. When bitcoin was going down in the weeks before the 2020 halving, bitcoin was going up in the equivalent period in 2024 amid buzz for bitcoin ETFs.



The same effect can be seen starting just over 200 days on from the halving. The pink line starts to go down as the purple line keeps going up to its May 2021 peak.



There are plenty of price targets out there for those wondering just how far bitcoin might have left to run in this cycle.



With bitcoin still 5% below its most recent all-time high set in January, we’re all just waiting for the pink line to meet the purple line and never look back, for once this cycle.



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



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Bitcoin

Bitcoin is proving the link between halvings and price

Casey Wagner

US equities and cryptocurrencies rallied Monday, following news that Chinese and American officials agreed to temporarily slash tariffs while details of a comprehensive deal are ironed out.&nbsp;



The S&amp;P 500 and Nasdaq Composite indexes are both now trading above their April 2 levels, reversing the “Liberation Day” selloff that plagued markets for weeks.&nbsp;



Bitcoin surpassed $105,000 early Monday morning, hitting its highest price since January when the crypto reached a new all time high above $109,000. Ether also rallied Monday, gaining as much as 4.6% in the early hours of the morning.&nbsp;



After meeting in Geneva over the weekend, China and the US announced in a joint statement that tariffs on Chinese imports to the US will fall from 145% to 30%. China will lower levies on US imports from 125% to 10%. These changes will be in effect for 90 days.&nbsp;



Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday during an <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/12/bessent-sees-tariff-agreement-as-progress-in-strategic-decoupling-with-china.html">interview</a> with CNBC that the goal for the US is to decouple from China when it comes to “strategic necessities.”&nbsp;



“We do not want a generalized decoupling from China,” he said.&nbsp;



The outcome is positive, especially after reports over the weekend that the two days of meetings were especially tense. But it’s important to note that this is a ceasefire, not a deal, Noelle Acheson, author of the Crypto is Macro Now newsletter, said in a note Monday.&nbsp;



That being said, analysts warn that until a long-term agreement is in place, volatility is likely to remain.&nbsp;



“I do believe this could be a hollow rebound, as it is based on sentiment and the political moves of a single man,” James Toledano, chief operating officer at Unity Wallet said of the rally in cryptocurrencies.&nbsp;



“Anyone who is serious about crypto would prefer that fundamentals are the driving force,” he added.&nbsp;



The next breakout for crypto will not come until regulatory clarity is reached in the US, Toledano said, and for now, policy remains in political limbo.



Senators last week failed to advance the GENIUS Act, a stablecoin bill that once touted robust bipartisan support, during a key procedural vote. While the bill could still pass, several Democrats, including two of the bill’s original co-sponsors, have said the legislation needs more work.



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



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



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

Bitcoin approaches all-time high on tariff news, but headwinds remain

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



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



If the first version of real-world assets was akin to NFTs, the second version’s more like memecoins (just because of liquidity), Gauntlet’s Tarun Chitra explained on this morning’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/podcast/empire/46930c4e-2d11-11f0-84b2-8f724b6699b4">Empire podcast.&nbsp;</a>



 ”It&#8217;s a lot easier to deal with composability-wise, and you don&#8217;t have to build a whole separate stack. NFTs had to build their own total separate stack, and then once people stopped using them, that stack also kind of fell. And so I think being able to have this kind of liquidity aspect to RWAs was just not there,” Chitra said.&nbsp;



The episode focuses — as you might be able to tell from the above quote and the recent <a href="https://securitize.io/learn/press/securitize-and-gauntlet-launch-levered-rwa-strategy-on-apollo-diversified-credit-securitize-fund">announcements</a> from these three — on the tokenization of private credit with Securitize’s Carlos Domingo and Apollo’s Christine Moy.



<iframe loading="lazy" width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0FsiR_qjtE0?si=AFCJv78JYps6zXWJ" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>







For Securitize and Apollo, this represents another step in a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/apollo-securitize-partnership-institutional-adoption">partnership</a> that began earlier this year. But to Chitra’s earlier point, RWAs have come a long way.&nbsp;



“ The fact that we are making traditional assets interoperable with open architecture is the key point,” Moy explained. In the earlier versions, Moy’s work was focused on “bespoke systems that were behind walled gardens.”



We all know that one of the downsides of the so-called traditional way of doing things at big financial institutions is that everything innovative takes time to develop. Part of it is just the process. The other, compliance.&nbsp;



But as Moy said,  ”the velocity of innovation in the crypto space is significant, because what you have is open source code, open architecture, that&#8217;s well understood. You have smart contract libraries that have already been audited, and are composable.”



In the late <a href="https://securitize.io/learn/press/securitize-and-gauntlet-launch-levered-rwa-strategy-on-apollo-diversified-credit-securitize-fund">April announcement</a>, Domingo said its RWA strategy is an example of “institutional-grade DeFi we’ve been working to build: making tokenized securities not only accessible, but compelling to crypto-native investors seeking strategies that objectively outpace their traditional counterparts.”



To put it simply, the door is now open for institutional investors to earn some “enhanced yields” that were previously off the table.&nbsp;



According to Domingo, the buyers right now are pretty crypto-native.&nbsp;



“I think for today, we&#8217;re focusing all the products. All the customers we have today for ACRED…for anything…are all crypto native people.” These native customers are accessing the “products as a better way, [a] safer way of generating returns, as opposed to some much higher-risk strategies that they can still do in crypto that involve dealing with other types of assets,” Domingo explained. 



It may not be wholly accurate to compare this market to memecoins. But, I think they do have something in common: They’re here to stay and could take even more market share as they mature (if memecoins even can mature).&nbsp;



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



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Empire Newsletter

How RWAs have matured this cycle

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



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



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“You don’t need to be a rocket scientist. Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with 130 IQ.”&nbsp;



— Warren Buffett
</blockquote>



Warren Buffett is the most quoted person in the history of this newsletter — a crowning achievement of his seven-decade career that must fill him with pride.



I’ve quoted him so often because he has a lot to say about investing and markets, of course, but also because he expresses himself in folksy, quippy, metaphorical sound bites that are universally accessible.



He’s not dumbing it down for us, though.



As best I can tell, that’s genuinely how he thinks about investing — and there’s a lesson in that: The greatest investor of all time invests mostly by common sense.



Investing is so common sense to him that he believes that anyone can do it: “It’s not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.”



&#8220;If you can detach yourself….from the crowd, you&#8217;ll get very rich. You don&#8217;t have to be very bright.&#8221;&nbsp;



&#8220;It doesn&#8217;t take brains. It takes temperament.&#8221;



This all doubles as excellent life advice, as so many of his investing maxims do:



&#8220;It&#8217;s good to learn from your mistakes. It&#8217;s better to learn from other people&#8217;s mistakes.&#8221;



“What pond you jump in is more important than how well you swim.”&nbsp;



“You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.”



Buffett attributes his astounding investment returns to only about a dozen “truly good decisions” that he’s made — about one every five years, on average.



And he lived his life the same way: The sixth-richest man in the world still resides in the house he bought for $31,500 in 1958.



Conversely, his investing process was as simple as the life he led: He doesn’t build financial models, for example, he just reads a lot.



“I probably read five to six hours a day…I read five daily newspapers. I read a fair number of magazines. I read 10-Ks. I read annual reports.”



The compounding knowledge earned from all that reading, he’s explained, allowed him to pounce when an unusual opportunity came along.&nbsp;



“If somebody calls me about an investment…I usually know in two or three minutes whether I have an interest.”&nbsp;



In 2003, for example, he bought the homebuilder Clayton Homes (not just the stock, the whole company) for $1.7 billion after reading its SEC filings and talking to management on the phone (he didn’t visit the company until after he owned it).



In 2008, he turned down a request to rescue Lehman Brothers simply because its financial statements were too complex (a giant red flag for him).



At the height of the subsequent financial crisis, he poured $5 billion into Goldman Sachs after one phone call with its CEO and just a few hours of negotiating terms.



The results, of course, speak for themselves: From 1965 to 2024, Berkshire Hathaway shares rose by more than 5,500,000% — a gravity-defying annual return of almost 20% over 59 years.



By comparison, the total return of the S&amp;P 500 index over that period was “just” 39,000%.



“Buffett’s returns appear to be neither luck nor magic,” an <a href="https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/05/buffetts-alpha.html">academic study</a> found, “but, rather, reward for the use of leverage combined with a focus on cheap, safe, quality stocks.”



Lately, however, Buffett hasn’t found many stocks that are cheap, safe and quality enough to leverage into — for the first time in two decades, Berkshire Hathaway holds more cash than it does listed equities.



That’s not because Buffett is worried about what politics or tariffs might mean for the stock market: “I never try to profit from the stock market,” he’s said.&nbsp;



But his failure to find good businesses at reasonable prices probably does tell us something about his view of the market as a whole.



Buffett acolyte Chris Bloomstran <a href="https://www.semperaugustus.com/clientletter">estimates</a> that with valuations and profit margins currently elevated, investors in the S&amp;P 500 should expect returns of “no higher than 1.1% per year for the next decade.”



If so, going into retirement with a record amount of cash may go down in history as the thirteenth “truly good decision” that Warren Buffett has made — and an instructive one, at that.



&#8220;Investing is the greatest business in the world because you never have to swing,” Buffett explains in typical Buffett fashion. “All day you wait for the pitch you like; then, when the fielders are asleep, you step up and hit it.&#8221;



With the market rebound over the past month, it looks like he probably won’t see any more fat pitches before he retires at the end of the year — despite all the seemingly bad news on tariffs.&nbsp;



But I’m sure he’d tell younger investors that there will be plenty to look forward to: “Over the long term, the stock market news will be good.”



Let’s check the charts.



Stocks are up, but estimates are down:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXejjPkEcNflxiLEkJ1-0zu81cCofcDvLbkPYxbIYO9aEgjxq1KfYJKA4u-Ytf0zJS8lGkBALWSoubKSwC_MqEqyhWBP6ds7rWR4Ijsjf9oDP1vg0PYUgwDGU7ZIIESC9aAUy9c9Pw?key=u_gKGWHqMqXmT5Wah45p9sCL" alt=""/></figure>



It’s reassuring that stocks are back to where they were before “Liberation Day,” but that doesn’t mean nothing’s happened. Per Torsten Slok, earnings estimates are significantly lower, which means stocks are significantly more expensive.&nbsp;



Stock market vs. betting market:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcK0SgSc5rIOt7tcIChqHukRK9ZC2fv6dKsF6T7gpJvRzUAaJ6NwAFm_ebHefDS_-rvFIlvP4ie_oB5uTCjuwd4baEadc-o42MuUNAQczoXb5nyi6JGsgeMnTfquwlm-L7v7ISFKA?key=u_gKGWHqMqXmT5Wah45p9sCL" alt=""/></figure>



Polymarket <a href="https://polymarket.com/event/us-recession-in-2025?tid=1746814142831">odds</a> suggest a US recession is still slightly more likely than not, but BCA Research estimates that the stock market is pricing in just a 25% probability now.



Economists are pricing in stagflation:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd3YstTe2wHXmUA_3HekQwIMWRNiTVP78wjP9edQ9ZpE8grphekJYSKg4AvDf4qkqzrAgWNvOF-JddwNTThJKg51ch2Bhc3CDVhOwyk6G-W2CSYwZiMf8pU_kd38TZ7Yem_dP-Y3A?key=u_gKGWHqMqXmT5Wah45p9sCL" alt=""/></figure>



Torsten Slok <a href="https://www.apolloacademy.com/stagflation-coming/?utm_medium=email&amp;utm_source=pardot&amp;utm_id=701Dp00000017sOIAQ&amp;utm_campaign=EXT_Daily+Spark">notes</a> that rising inflation and falling GDP estimates indicate that stagflation is coming. At the FOMC <a href="https://marketspm.cmail19.com/t/d-l-shyllil-dtudkukduk-h/">presser</a> this week, Fed Chair Jerome Powell seemed to agree: “If the large increases in tariffs that have been announced are sustained, they’re likely to generate a rise in inflation, a slowdown in economic growth and an increase in unemployment.”



It might get worse than that:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcPxcTtPAHrgZhnj_fSFZZGBHRJbUBkRwVyxtYb4sfNDDCveyV1o8Zoa2lfwyp5OI_3bYlqU5vV77NNQVnZuW97WjnQJ7OwuTs66fLbCxbZ7gbf3t0SoefYqZuufydghV5n8_AIxA?key=u_gKGWHqMqXmT5Wah45p9sCL" alt=""/></figure>



Analysts at Goldman Sachs estimate that tariffs will raise inflation by a whopping 2.25%.



Trade policy is less uncertain, I guess:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfu6-TXdBifjYdyzKvxQzyC9AdW252a4VH_EnH23AuCDxvvNOWPspzC0XJupr1aDCWNXokIwSiDeH5iuFnVmeeD-pSDdeXwB6GwjiE1BJFURnKlLQ9tys-tVMQyXT9zCak9uCFFKg?key=u_gKGWHqMqXmT5Wah45p9sCL" alt=""/></figure>



Markets are said to hate uncertainty, and despite all the contradictory headlines, the <a href="https://www.matteoiacoviello.com/tpu.htm">Trade Policy Uncertainty index</a> is down — so maybe that’s why stocks are up?



Actual trade is down, too:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcxiPgV_NNT40_Lwe0Vagc5V2v0tWCOsjZLRDtYG03kLvrA2dGjF1JBz20e7AmLAdNpbIj6hjxOu-ip8yXAs_ME9H5dhMxszXN8C_52VsNK0P8VM84NcHzSHB2GoxwTCiCwx5DQwg?key=u_gKGWHqMqXmT5Wah45p9sCL" alt=""/></figure>



Container bookings from China to the US are down 49% year over year. President Trump <a href="https://x.com/ABC/status/1920505719419211815">said</a> that’s a good thing because no trading means “we lose less money.” But he appears to want some level of trade with China — he <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114477628854583525">posted</a> this morning that the current 145% tariff rate could fall to 80% and suggested that he’s leaving it up to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to negotiate a deal when he meets with China this weekend in Switzerland.



Trading with China has been good for us:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeZW11s17t3hmBjL-LlWdYpyd9znwgZ79vrdNmyIKuBejFfMv7Gjam_0u669UvHsmnX0vAb8W1f78yX3WMKzxzNevrU2PDMKYHkddR8v2oM8IvTPe4kxM3zkRm1JynKr0I0Lbmq5g?key=u_gKGWHqMqXmT5Wah45p9sCL" alt=""/></figure>



Jason Furman <a href="https://x.com/jasonfurman/status/1920161566818800112?t=OdKPjYv-UJlj0Ocb0gSSbQ&amp;s=19">notes</a> that US wages grew faster in the 24 years after China joined the WTO (the orange bars) than in the 24 years before (the blue lines). Most surprisingly, wage growth has been far more equitable in those two decades of globalization than they were before.



Trading with China has been good for us (2):



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXc2hbVHEJJKyzOVmIm6KQvlsltaXTOyDMzLvsSuhDeReAgMgEHrx_MB85cmaPA_lSB10stb-Ic60osyGZWnx-gc3HTY3g-EGOOsEYssytdictOMzmqGiW8dEwYu1vX5SMb28lZo?key=u_gKGWHqMqXmT5Wah45p9sCL" alt=""/></figure>



<a href="https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2025/05/07/the-middle-working-class-has-not-been-hollowed-out/">Jeremy Horpedahl</a> digs a little deeper and finds that the real (i.e., inflation adjusted) earnings for high school graduates without a college degree are higher than they have been in at least 50 years (and I’m guessing probably ever, but the Fed data doesn’t go back any further than that). It seems to be getting even better, too: The Wall Street Journal this week <a href="https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/skilled-trades-high-school-recruitment-fd9f8257?mod=trending_now_news_1">reported</a> about a high school junior who’s received an annual $70,000 job offer because his school offers welding classes.



Companies are still buying:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcYUhDhgzuKPqlGvxd6s7uPUK-W4c-JLPNFHKUzPaVvgINAZ0PsYUtTzw1cnLC601z4BpJQxAH_pieldHa6ZUWuDrE3e3AFvzsjl9gCUkoOlKvhbC9wGdf5rFn7SNgiHCSyswCjdA?key=u_gKGWHqMqXmT5Wah45p9sCL" alt=""/></figure>



The FT <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/8361835c-6955-4ee3-80a1-8e7e19127e6c">reports</a> that US companies are on track to buy over $1 trillion of their own stocks this year.



Retail investors are still buying:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe4cIR7RpGUaxxtsVWetn1fETF55TngeYhqpFlv80Dz5VfEuU3RhY0TXDj2wkVFgTMvGNMRbplR9DB-HHQbxTetqQ-wDE2OhyeTTQGv7u_3Yi75zFzVrLcsYt5c0cN-lalbLMVUng?key=u_gKGWHqMqXmT5Wah45p9sCL" alt=""/></figure>



Data from Bank of America shows that its private clients enthusiastically bought the tariff dip in equities.&nbsp;



Warren Buffett would applaud their long-term optimism, if not their short-term timing.&nbsp;



Have a great weekend, long-term readers.



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Friday Charts: Investing doesn’t have to be rocket science

Jeff Albus

Managing Editor&#8217;s Note (May 9, 2025 at 6:30 pm ET): 



This report has been retracted for falling short of Blockworks&#8217; editorial standards. The headline and body have been updated to reflect this retraction.



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RETRACTION: Article about Marinade

Ben Strack

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



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Coinbase had an eventful Thursday — revealing its intent to buy crypto options giant Deribit before detailing its Q1 earnings after the market closed.&nbsp;



As the dust settled, analysts gave a mixed bag of outlooks for the company.



The crypto exchange’s total first quarter revenue was $2 billion — down 10% from the prior quarter. While trading revenue was down 19% quarter over quarter (nearly $1.3 billion), subscription and services revenue rose 9% over that span (to ~$700 million).&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfKqu3hqHzR9TR8FgcxGYkkHMcfIOPDgK63w7AhraZF1HTCwZRKgGq-jq_Ya47KmUq0VFDeRBQlDPjlb3GZjCjcBTrGWc5ARu6h7pQ4FO8rwSwCKUBcgdDnbORU-Xlo56RuaaNyeg?key=x_C1LikFatz1Sl7HKZBR9ObY" alt=""/></figure>



That subscription and services figure includes stablecoin revenue derived from its arrangement with Circle (Coinbase earns reserve income on the USDC it holds).



USDC’s market cap reached a high around $60 billion in Q1, and average USDC held in Coinbase products grew 49% QoQ to $12.3 billion.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe_uGo6Rna-Ei0fZiS3_Pzr6xJKiTYV1qOSIvT3Qk-sAoq_ZN9QSxeCTyJphkmlMSzRysG0CBS_qwGYTqftD7OPPoFmZaZ5vgxcqsKgLW67EDYuUFAGKfZer0iJ8Pw41-Toi7mqfg?key=x_C1LikFatz1Sl7HKZBR9ObY" alt=""/></figure>



Speaking of stablecoins, the Senate’s cloture vote yesterday on the GENIUS Act failed, 48-49. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said he wasn’t discouraged.



“It’s all part of the negotiation,” he noted on yesterday’s earnings call. “We think there’ll be another vote next week on stablecoins so we’re very excited about that progress.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Deribit deal, more M&amp;A?</h2>



Analysts of course asked about the pending $2.9 billion deal to acquire Deribit revealed earlier in the day.



Benchmark analyst Mark Palmer <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-deribit-deal-focus-derivatives/">said yesterday</a> that the purchase would give Coinbase “an immediate and dominant foothold in the high-growth derivatives space” as more institutions adopt crypto. Architect Partners’ Michael Klena told me he expects competitors to respond via their own acquisitions.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



In terms of financial impact, Coinbase CFO Alesia Haas said: “Deribit has a history of positive adjusted EBITDA, and we believe it will be adjusted EBITDA positive on an accretion basis.”



Oppenheimer &amp; Co. analyst Owen Lau said he believes this deal will make COIN a “legitimate challenger” to Binance, Bybit and OKX when it comes to derivatives.&nbsp;



“Importantly, crypto options are less cyclical, with steady demand during both up and down markets,” Lau explained.



But Compass Point analysts Ed Engel and Joe Flynn pointed out Deribit’s focus on institutional customers. That doesn’t help Coinbase grow its retail-driven perpetuals trading volumes, which they called “a necessary precursor to growing market share.”



When asked about whether the crypto exchange would remain active on the M&amp;A front, Coinbase president Emilie Choi noted the cash on its balance sheet ($8.5 billion, by Lau’s count) means it can make “bigger bets.”



Choi added: “We also think <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-crypto-round-table-execs">regulatory clarity</a> is going to enable us to take larger swings with greater confidence, unlocking new products, utility cases and geographies.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Mixed outlook</h2>



Despite general optimism around the Coinbase-Deribit deal, Morningstar analyst Michael Miller told me he doesn’t think the acquisition drastically changes his overall view of, or outlook for, the exchange (his fair value estimate for COIN is $170).



After all, he said, it’s an extension of existing efforts and doesn’t reduce Coinbase’s crypto market exposure, which contributes volatility to quarterly results.



Though Coinbase has had “considerable success” in growing stablecoin revenue, Miller noted, execs expect that to be more than offset in Q2 by a decline in blockchain rewards revenue. The company projects its Q2 subscription and services revenue to fall to somewhere between $600 million and $680 million.&nbsp;



Coinbase’s $240 million of total transaction revenue in April puts it on pace to end Q2 at $720 million. That would be down 34% from Q1.&nbsp;



Engel and Flynn downgraded COIN to a sell rating last week — reiterating in a note yesterday that COIN&#8217;s addressable market for retail trading is already deeply penetrated in the US.



“We believe institutional segments represent a larger growth opportunity; however, these are both lower margin and more competitive businesses than COIN&#8217;s legacy retail footprint,” they explained.



The Compass Point analysts’ stock price target for COIN is $180. The company’s shares were trading for ~$202 at 2 p.m. ET — down 2% on the day.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Lau is more bullish, giving COIN a 12- to 18-month price target of $269. He lowered that from $279, though, noting tariff-fueled macro uncertainty’s effect on volumes.



We’ll see how legislative updates and trade war developments impact COIN going forward.



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Coinbase

Analysts update COIN outlooks after Q1 results, Deribit deal

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



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Boop.fun, a new token launch platform, is telling users to start their own “cults” around their tokens.



If this sounds like they’re saying the quiet part out loud, I agree. But we might already be too oversaturated with memecoins and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/base-coinbase-content-coin-crash-pump-memecoin">“content” coins</a>, if you ask me.



If this also sounds like another Pump.fun clone, you’re not wrong. Tokens have to “graduate” for rewards to kick in, and they’re using Solana (and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/raydium-launching-pumpfun-version">Raydium</a>, which Pump.fun previously used before it migrated to PumpSwap).



Boop has its own namesake token that’s being given out to “cult” members and token makers. Staking 100 BOOP awards stakers 60% of trading fees from graduated tokens and a 5% airdrop of every graduated token’s supply, according to a website pop-up that claims Boop will give users money “for doing nothing.”



On Thursday, Boop <a href="https://x.com/boopdotfun/status/1920551132218146887">said its X airdrop</a> has been “a bit controversial” and changed its token allocation so that 50% of the BOOP goes to token creators and 50% of it goes to token buyers (“cult members”).&nbsp;



X airdrop amounts will vary because Boop <a href="https://x.com/boopdotfun/status/1917944856909066730">said</a> it used Kaito to rank accounts. Users will also have to create a coin (“cult”) to be eligible.



Boop’s marketing and site copy is openly degen, though some might argue it’s just being honest about what many memecoins are: cash grabs and/or jokes created with zero effort because the creators were bored.



“Just create a cult, shill the shit out of it, and cash innnnn,” a pop-up on the site reads.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdbiIO9tbjF4VR0zU2do0rILfBDtAgNVKAgE3j8_J4zvxr6CBa8QFJKhPJj6DZckh8RbCikrQVc0462ikaaIfV7ZXzYtq7B-Jw1EZHufGomSkFPVqSbSAwf53dRg5NEqeyEjojQjA?key=pgTXN9_1MM3FOsVv1SmVgA" alt=""/></figure>



Boop.fun is also promising 50% of its BOOP supply to “the real ones in the trenches,” which apparently means “memecoin bagholders” and “hot X account holders.”



One of the pages on the site declares: “VCs and insiders can go fuck themselves.”



Ironically, Su Zhu, who is a VC and cofounded the now-bankrupt Three Arrows Capital, launched a ZHU token which has a market cap of about $75,000 via Boop.fun as of mid-day Friday.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdlQ0DTvCxXmp3aPTFH4DNu3hpGl4KlUJk4j-ZfFZhgJ5X9CESPMsQnXtoMttpnw6BRxvLyQ9XQHGB72UxXEt0hkiIXrpbs8nYwhweA8qTSdc8FxWmF_n9mc3oVPxAff8MWQFmK3w?key=pgTXN9_1MM3FOsVv1SmVgA" alt=""/></figure>



Cole “ColeThereum” Villemain, creator of the Pudgy Penguins NFTs who left the project years ago, also launched a token via Boop, dubbed “gf,” which has a $400,000 market cap as of Friday.



Other crypto influencers, like Irene Zhao, Orangie, Deez, Nick “ChooseRich” O’Neill and KookCapital, also dropped their own “cult” tokens on Boop.



Three tokens on Boop have market caps of over $1 million: Boopa (a dog coin), Kuma and Beevo (a beaver coin). A number of Boop tokens explicitly tell users not to buy them, with creators warning buyers: “Farming airdrop do not buy” in all-caps.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXc_RqKK4_vDBVDxSDHrwiE7ro0s3rbZ0FZfbmXHcse_j8mHAzoCK-6bYLFph8f1OKBkiUiE6d6dFTYABPqDQXm5HvyjznFhCorJEInb4s0T8TOOLo-5rote3Saaq4PMWSvV0QnLOQ?key=pgTXN9_1MM3FOsVv1SmVgA" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The project’s official FAQ section includes cursing and a slur.</figcaption></figure>



But Boop’s frequent use of F-bombs and offensive language in its public-facing copy will be off-putting for some. It feels to me like they are trying very hard to be edgy.



Then, there’s the speculation around the real-world identity of Boop’s creator, who goes by “Dingaling” on X.&nbsp;



While he claims in his X bio to have held high-level roles at Binance and PancakeSwap, those claims have been called into question and no concrete proof of a “Dingaling” serving in either role has surfaced. Dingaling’s bio states he was an “ex-Binance CRO.”



Earlier this week, a cryptic tweet from Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao triggered further speculation about Boop’s creator, though they weren’t named directly in CZ’s tweet or the one to which he replied.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">也有因为老鼠仓被币安开除的前员工，几年后说是什么什么创始人，CXO的。币安除了CEO, CTO, CMO, CCO, CFO, COO之外就没有过其他的C什么O的。 以上故事纯属虚构，请勿对号入座。&mdash; CZ 🔶 BNB (@cz_binance) <a href="https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1919379383950692752?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 5, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



While Boop’s creator’s identity remains in question, I’d broadly conclude with this: Boop does feel like a Pump.fun clone. It&#8217;s interesting that platforms like Boop, Pump and Zora are incentivizing users to make tokens for little to no reason. They’re making it as easy as just sending a tweet (yes, you can tweet at the <a href="https://x.com/beeponboop">Boop bot</a> and it’ll create a token for you).



TL;DR: Is Boop.fun moving crypto forward? Not really.



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

meme coins

Memecoin platform Boop.fun claims ‘cults are in’

Macauley Peterson

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



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Over the past 48 hours, crypto markets have impulsed higher. The action was led by BTC breaking the $100k barrier for the first time since the start of February.



BTC is now in an uptrend, after two weeks of consolidation above the prior critical $91k breakdown level. On April 24, <a href="https://blockworks-research.beehiiv.com/p/will-appchains-work-this-time">I wrote</a> “the trend looks primed to resume — if it doesn’t break down soon.” Other than a test just below $93k a few days later, we saw a steady grind higher.



The ETH rally hasn’t gone unnoticed, either. ETH saw strong upside momentum, with spot up about 30% since Wednesday amid surging trading volumes — a good sign.



Some argue Ethereum’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-pectra-fork-live?utm_source=mail.blockworks.com&amp;utm_medium=newsletter&amp;utm_campaign=wednesday-may-7">recent Pectra upgrade</a> is one reason. “It introduces long-awaited improvements that will boost Ethereum’s efficiency and scalability,” said BOB co-founder Dom Harz.



Meanwhile, a pivotal institutional story unfolded with <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-deribit-deal-focus-derivatives">Coinbase’s acquisition of Deribit</a>, the leading off-chain venue for crypto options. “Global derivatives trading is a key driver of growth for Coinbase,” said Fractal Bitcoin’s Spencer Yang, the ex-product head for Coinbase Wallet. “A cash [and] stock deal is a great bargain for Coinbase shareholders since it helps them expand globally.”



And speaking of derivatives, what do they tell us about the longevity of this price action? This move was driven by heavy call spread activity and optimism around trade developments, according to Wintermute analyst Jake O.



Traders are chasing frontend volatility, creating a positive spot-vol correlation through mid-May. However, implied volatility (IV) softens past June, suggesting the rally isn’t being aggressively pursued further out.



That’s confirmed by Nick Forster, founder of onchain options platform Derive.xyz. He sees trader sentiment as “overwhelmingly bullish, with 59% of all ETH premiums and 67.3% of BTC premiums being used to buy calls.”



The expectation is for further short-term upside. “The chance of ETH settling above $2,500 by the end of the month has surged from 2% to 15%, and the chance of BTC hitting over $115K by month’s end has increased from 3% to 13%,” according to Forster.



The broader crypto market landscape is even more telling: ETH is playing catch-up with a 25% rally in the ETH/BTC ratio. And beyond the majors, there’s also strength. We’re witnessing signs of life in the long tail of crypto assets. TradingView’s OTHERS index is up 16%, while stablecoin dominance is dropping — a sign that sidelined capital is flooding back into risk assets.



The US-UK “trade deal” announced yesterday is credited by some with boosting market risk appetite, though it’s largely symbolic. While still more of a framework than a deal, it will have no meaningful impact on US exports and will keep 10% tariffs on most UK imports, making them more expensive for American consumers. As economist Justin Wolfers noted: The Brits “already charge average tariffs of only 1%,” so this turn of events is “a photo op with little macroeconomic significance.”



Even optics can move markets, of course.



“[W]ith these deals, there is hope for more such concessions, and with more deals and concessions will come more certainty and better market conditions,” said Galxe co-founder Charles Wayn. “The bull market may revive yet, and alt season could still be <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/altcoin-season-over-memecoins-value">on the horizon</a>.”



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock">Supply Shock</a>: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.</li>
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Rally mode: BTC hits $100K, ETH catches a bid

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



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Who is Bitcoin for?



That depends on who you ask. A BlackRock analyst would say that Bitcoin is a key portfolio differentiator. The volatility is the use case, best utilized by those who want to capitalize on it.



Someone living in countries suffering from rampant inflation would share a different view. Bitcoin would be a potential route toward capital preservation, shielding them from sudden currency devaluation due to central bank policy, and so on.



For activists living under totalitarian regimes, like <a href="https://x.com/pete_rizzo_/status/1903439181705335253">Farida Nabourema</a>, the robust decentralization and pseudonymity of Bitcoin make it additionally suited to fight back against hostile states.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Bitcoin Legends — Farida Nabourema</h2>



Farida Nabourema was born in 1990 and grew up in Togo, a former French colony that gained independence in 1960.



From early childhood, Farida learned to exist and thrive in the face of authoritarians. Togo’s then-president, Gnassingbé Eyadéma, was a military leader who’d taken power in a violent 1967 coup.&nbsp;



Eyadéma was known for human rights <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/afr570131993en.pdf">abuses</a>, economic mismanagement and cult-of-personality stunts, including <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO5Ixk8N7yA">reports</a> of entourages of 1,000 dancing women singing his praises.



“Every day…people had to queue from the military camp, where he lived, to the presidential palace to clap for him in the morning, the afternoon, and the evening,” Nabourema <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/13/africa/farida-nabourema-togo-activist">said</a> in 2018.



Standing up to power is in Nabourema’s blood. In 2003, Togo authorities arrested and held her father, Bemba, for three days after he participated in a meeting that opposed Eyadéma’s rule. He’d also been arrested in 1977 and severely <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/farida-nabourema-daughter-of-togo/">tortured</a> in 1985 over his political dissent.



After Eyadéma&#8217;s son, Faure, had assumed leadership in a closely-contested election following his father’s death, Farida protested at just 15 years old. She joined the Union of Force for Change (UFC), the same political party of her own father.&nbsp;



Farida fought even after moving to the US to study in 2008, where she founded a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OAfd9odSSs">movement</a> called “Faure Must Go” and kept up the grassroots pressure.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXc6xmCilVNLF1wUxzwMVKUHHvpWkK1oY5i13nXAkG47qoFygcp1G-FvQnofAINfrrL2jcMbqOUOOlC3CpBkx2AqL884m0LkHgkoCImE6yciwXCEalCqo97Ww0Qbw32wrUmcrBla?key=o8YAJrztsWVz3PKlec-a3A" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Farida <a href="https://youtu.be/1OAfd9odSSs">presented</a> the movement at the Oslo Freedom Forum in 2018.</figcaption></figure>



The need for Bitcoin quickly became apparent once Farida caught the attention of the corrupt government. “In 2014, I published the personal contact numbers for all members of Togo’s Parliament. I asked my compatriots to call the members and ask why they had voted against a bill to reinstate presidential term limits. I called the majority leader, who insulted me, then abruptly hung up the phone,” Farida was <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/13/africa/farida-nabourema-togo-activist">quoted</a> as saying to CNN.



“I shared a recording of that call on social media and it soon went viral. A few days later, Parliament held a session in which they complained about not being able to sleep because they were harassed by hundreds of phone calls.”



Farida struggled with personal attacks and smear campaigns, but her following only grew. However, she now faced exile. Her family was threatened after attempting a return to Togo in 2016, leading Farida to instead base herself in nearby countries. By 2018, she was moving between them every few weeks.



The situation was just as sensitive for other local dissidents. Still, resistance movements need funding. Farida <a href="https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/togolese-activist-farida-nabourema-finds-freedom-in-bitcoin">told</a> Bitcoin Magazine: “When the government started arresting people for donating money to the movement…we needed a safe way to send and receive funds for resistance activities.&#8221;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Bitcoin?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Bitcoin</a> is private money, not anonymous. Cash rather is anonymous as you can’t tell all who held it before you. Corrupt politicians are afraid of Bitcoin because it stores every single transaction on the blockchain for ever and can never be altered. FIAT enables corruption.&mdash; Farida Bemba Nabourema (@Farida_N) <a href="https://twitter.com/Farida_N/status/1607298949236260867?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 26, 2022</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Farida elaborated in a recent Human Rights Foundation <a href="https://www.facebook.com/humanrightsfoundation/videos/is-bitcoin-a-lifeline-for-africa-hrfs-dissidents-dictators/1303208041133352/">interview</a>: “Sending money became difficult because we had to do it without exposing those who were back home. Linking them to us is going to be costly for their lives.



“Without money, without financial resources, it’s difficult to fight any oppressive system in place. And the regime in Togo has managed to maintain itself in power by doing something very simple: suffocating the movement and the opposition.”



Bitcoin is built for many purposes, and this is clearly one of them. As of last year, Farida was “very frequently” sending bitcoin to Togo without any paper trail. The recipient doesn’t need to go to a bank or public institution to withdraw the funds — a huge plus.



Parallel to these efforts, Farida has organized the Africa Bitcoin Conference (ABC) for three years running in both Ghana and Nairobi, attracting the likes of Lightning Labs CEO Elizabeth Stark and Block founder Jack Dorsey. 



Farida’s conference even operates a “Bitcoin For Youngsters” program that has trained over 3,000 students in all things Bitcoin, and helped Ghanaian high school students celebrate Bitcoin Pizza Day, complete with pizza.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfSxqoJBFFcUZeyimedcCNyTtoqZKpiICDVIh9X7SFDiv5eGboI76zc1uQpldc5LUJF_uWbvGV5auk5_eLx3o_IUrDMhkO4il6OLzeT_yBgs-ldmifEE73J-KZT7-jjCKsMUq-1?key=o8YAJrztsWVz3PKlec-a3A" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><a href="https://x.com/AfroBitcoinOrg/status/1660657649736724483#m">Image source</a></figcaption></figure>



A fourth ABC <a href="https://afrobitcoin.org/">conference</a> in Mauritius is set for December this year, despite a <a href="https://x.com/Farida_N/status/1870367175338324291">series</a> of <a href="https://x.com/Farida_N/status/1870375685082005780">setbacks</a> that led to financial losses and burnout.&nbsp;



Many of us may go our whole lives and never need Bitcoin in quite the same way as Farida and the rest of Togo, a nation of more than nine million, not to mention the wider global population living in analogous circumstances.



Bitcoin is for everyone. At times, uncomfortably so, as there’s nothing technically stopping those in power from taking advantage of its trajectory for their own gain.



Luckily there are those, like Farida, “<a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/farida-nabourema-daughter-of-togo/">Daughter of Togo</a>,” who understand that Bitcoin is first and foremost <a href="https://aier.org/article/bitcoin-is-resistance-money/">resistance money</a>. A critical tool for freedom and self-sovereignty. Farida is a bonafide Bitcoin Legend.



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Why Bitcoin is key for resistance movements in Togo

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



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Almost a month ago, OKX announced an expansion into the US.&nbsp;



To lead the expansion, OKX tapped Roshan Robert, who’s held a number of TradFi-crypto roles throughout his career — having worked at both Hidden Road and Barclays.&nbsp;



On paper, the expansion makes sense: OKX wants a piece of the American pie, which is now more intriguing and, well, friendlier.&nbsp;



However, Robert told me he actually joined OKX back in September, before the path forward became more clear and when it looked like SEC chair Gary Gensler would still be in charge.&nbsp;



“I joined [OKX] before we had any idea of how the elections were going to turn out. Over the past many years, I have had a belief that public blockchains are the future of finance,” he said.&nbsp;



It was a “no brainer” to build out a US position, he told me. The team then plotted out next steps, which would later turn out to include a California headquarters.&nbsp;



“A lot has evolved since I&#8217;ve joined, including some long-awaited regulatory clarity in the US, and it&#8217;s a more stable environment to properly expand in the US,” he continued.&nbsp;



OKX has the opportunity to expand with a “strong compliance and risk management focus,” with the goal of delivering seamless onramps and low fees to users. The team also aims to ensure that between the risk management and the liquidity, it’s bringing in institutional clients.&nbsp;



But no doubt it’s a crowded arena right now, and from the looks of things, both Kraken and Coinbase are making billion-dollar acquisitions to differentiate their offering.



OKX picked San Jose to embed itself in Silicon Valley’s “innovation engine.” Right now, it’s available in 46 states (and Washington, DC). The focus is not only to keep building, but securing the proper licenses before looking at other areas to expand its presence.&nbsp;



It may be early days for OKX in comparison to some of the other giants operating in the US right now, but I also have to point out that OKX is kind of doing the opposite of Coinbase and Kraken. The two US-based companies are looking to expand internationally, whereas OKX has an international presence and is doing the exact opposite — expanding to the US.&nbsp;



I’m curious to see how OKX can go toe-to-toe with the other big exchanges once it&#8217;s had some time to mature in the market.&nbsp;



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