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“The importation of gold and silver is not the principal, much less the sole benefit which a nation derives from its foreign trade.” 



— Adam Smith




Capitalism, it is sometimes said, is how we take care of people we don’t know.



People you don’t know grow the food you eat, build the house you live in and sew the clothes you wear.



For Americans, many of those people live in Vietnam, although we don’t seem very thankful for them — this week, the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, Stephen Miran, said a new trade deal with Vietnam is “fantastic” because it's “extremely one-sided.”



This is a Hunger Games worldview that I wish I could talk him out of.



Dear Mr. Miran: Vietnam doesn't have to suffer for Americans to prosper!



Just the opposite, in fact.The entire point of free-market capitalism is that exchanging goods and services is a positive-sum activity.



We learned this from Adam Smith, who explained that every voluntary exchange makes both parties better off — or it wouldn’t happen.



People have an innate “propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another,” he wrote, and the more we do it, the wealthier we all are.



Extracting “extremely one-sided” trade deals, by contrast, makes both sides poorer.



The deal Miran touted is so one-sided that it literally has one side; Vietnam hasn’t even agreed to it, Bloomberg reports.



The president imposed similarly one-sided deals on Japan and Brazil this week, in letters that revive the 18th-century practice of capitalizing random nouns:  “We invite you to participate in the extraordinary Economy of the United States, the Number One Market in the World, by far.”



The letter to Japan complained that the relationship between the two countries has been “far from Reciprocal" (again with the capitalization!), because the US sends more money

Friday charts: The rise of zero-sum thinking

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When Anza’s lead economist Max Resnick came on Lightspeed recently, I asked him a question that frequently gets brought up in conversations about Solana’s economics: What should be done about the sandwich attack problem?



His answer surprised me. “The sandwiching rate [is] way down,” Resnick said. 



Solana’s speed makes it an ideal venue for timing games at the expense of unsophisticated users. A sandwich attack happens when a toxic market participant both frontruns and backruns a trade to profit at the expense of the trader.



Sandwiching has historically been a big concern for Solana and its developers. In early 2024, Solana infrastructure shop Jito shut down its mempool over sandwiching concerns. A couple months later, the Solana Foundation cut suspected sandwichers from its stake delegation program. Jito’s DAO also voted to blacklist malicious validators from its stake pool. 



None of these fixes turned out to be panaceas, however, and the sandwich attacks continued. 



But the story Resnick tells is that sandwich attacking was blunted not by blacklisting bad actors — who may be able to re-emerge with a different online identity — but by improving Solana’s code.



Basically, sandwich attacks are numbers games for the attackers.



In 2024, when landing transactions on Solana was much more difficult, transactions were sprayed widely to validators in hopes of getting user transactions to the blockchain. This meant toxic validators saw a lot of transactions and had more chances to frontrun them. As Solana’s transaction “targeting” has improved, fewer validators see each transaction on average, so sandwichers have fewer opportunities to mess with transactions, Resnick said.



Now, “a 10% stake that’s sandwiching is able to see only 10% of the transactions, which is what it should be,” Resnick added.



The data seems to bear this point

Solana sandwich attacks ‘way down’: Anza’s Max Resnick

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Just 11 days into the year’s second half and we’ve already seen bitcoin hit several new all-time highs — most recently eclipsing $118,000.



With a new bitcoin ATH marked on the 2025 second-half crypto bingo card, what more could we see over the next six months?



Before moving on from BTC price, the surge comes as corporate bitcoin buying has swelled and segment observers expect more institutional platforms to allow access to the asset.



Remember how Ledn CIO John Glover tries to predict bitcoin moves? Well, he’s still eyeing the $136,000 mark, but now thinks it will come quicker than originally thought (this year). 



Source: TradingView



From there, Glover said he expects a subsequent correction to between $91,000 and $109,000 over time before ultimately moving higher again. 



Benchmark’s Mark Palmer sees the most significant upcoming catalyst for the broader crypto ecosystem as the CLARITY Act — a framework to determine whether crypto tokens are commodities or securities — becoming law. Casey told us about “Crypto Week” approaching.  



“With the possibility of a huge regulatory rug-pull removed, institutional investors would have a green light to invest in the space in earnest,” Palmer told me. 



When it comes to M&A in the space, an Architect Partners report highlights that the 78 crypto M&A transactions in Q2 was by far a record. You might recall us writing about Ripple’s buy of Hidden Road being one of a growing number of crypto-TradFi intersections. A big crypto-crypto deal was Coinbase acquiring derivatives giant Deribit.



Source: Architect Partners



Architect Partners founder Eric Risley believes we’re at the beginning of a long-term uptrend in crypto M&A as the value prop for crypto/blockchain has gained broader acceptance.



“Certainly quarter to quarter will fluctuate, but the fundamental strategic drivers of M&A

More crypto milestones expected in 2025 after new BTC high

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Truth Arts, the company behind the Goblintown NFTs, has plans to continue its gaming push and launched a Solana memecoin this week. 



“Memecoins are clearly broken...so we built a new token design in attempt to fix them and make them more healthy + sustainable,” Truth CEO and cofounder Alexander Taub wrote in a post.



“We spent 6+ months analyzing what made coins succeed and fail. We studied every failure and flaw in memecoins we could possibly find, broke down the root causes, and added mechanisms that are attempting to fix them,” Taub said.



The team says they put measures in place to prevent “snipers, MEV bots, misaligned incentives between team and token holders, investor allocation dumps, pump-and-dumps, whale dumps, unchecked supply, lack of reinvestment — you name it.”



The token’s being slowly unlocked over time and allocated to Goblintown NFT holders as well as owners of Illuminati, The187, Big Inc, and Grumpl NFTs. 



They’ve also implemented a “token tax” of 2.5% on every GOB transaction.



Source: CoinGecko.



Despite this, GOB is down roughly 60% in the past two days since its launch and has lost about 18% in the past 24 hours, with its market cap falling from a $30 million high to about $7 million as of Friday morning.



But it’s not over yet — and only about 10% of the total token supply is in circulation, according to the project’s “greenpaper.”



“It hasn’t even been 72 hours but that feels like a lifetime in Web3/crypto. Two thoughts about the future,” Taub told me in a DM. “The first is one thing I’ve heard from a few people is that we are trying to be too smart about all this stuff for our own good and should just get back to the goblin vibes. The second is we released a TikTok filter in conjunction with $gob and it feels like it has REAL mainstream potential.”



Regardless of what GOB’s price is doing,

Goblintown launches hotline to complain about its memecoin

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The race to make Bitcoin programmable without a soft fork has turned into one of the most creative arms races in crypto. 



At the center is BitVM, a framework for proving off-chain computation on Bitcoin via fraud proofs. Its first iteration, now known as BitVM1, used a multi-round interactive protocol. BitVM2 simplified this to a single-round fault proof using a split SNARK verifier, and is already proving practical for early adopters like Build on Bitcoin (BOB), Citrea and Bitlayer.



Now, BitVM3 proposes to go even further by cutting onchain fraud proof costs by ~1000x. But there's a catch: It’s still in the research phase, with critical security, complexity and data availability challenges to solve before becoming production-ready.



“The overall design of the BitVM bridge between BitVM2 and BitVM3 remains the same,” BOB co-founder Alexei Zamyatin told Blockworks. “The key difference is swapping the SNARK verifier (BitVM2) with a garbled circuit (BitVM3), he said, adding “we are exploring incorporating elements of the latest BitVM design in our customised hybrid BitVM bridge.”



Garbled circuits are a term for cryptographic gadgets that allow one party to pre-commit to a computation that another can verify without learning the private inputs. In theory, this reduces Bitcoin’s onchain burden to tiny commitments per logic gate. While it holds great promise, it’s far from proven at scale and research is ongoing to address shortcomings before deployment.



Meanwhile, existing bridges are moving ahead on BitVM2. BOB recently launched its latest BitVM2-based bridge testnet with major DeFi partners to enable Bitcoin-backed assets on other chains. BitVM2 is being audited and is expected to be ready for mainnet soon.



“Garbled circuits are an exciting development but they still need quite a bit more research before they could be considered practical to

BitVM3 promises cheaper Bitcoin bridges — but not yet

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If you won the lottery, how would you spend it?



A new house, maybe, or a car. A warm summer holiday to a sunny beach, at least.



I’d bet good money, however, that using it to attack Bitcoin would be low on the list.



Well, ten years ago, someone burned good money doing just that.



On This Day: 2015



You would already know that the debate over transaction filtering has been going on for years. More than a decade, even.



It was around this time in 2015 that a mysterious user, or group of users, decided to take matters into their own hands.



An entity going by CoinWallet.eu had begun executing what it described as the “Ultimate Bitcoin Stress Test.” They were going to systematically spam the chain with dust transactions and fill each block to the brim, driving fees sky high in the process while drastically increasing wait times for legitimate users.



CoinWallet.eu hoped to demonstrate that Bitcoin’s 1MB block size limit was too small, and ultimately convince the community to raise it. After all, if spammers could cheaply overload Bitcoin’s blocks as they were, then so could anyone else at any time.



The campaign caused havoc for the network, with the line showing the number of unconfirmed transactions. (Source)



In a recent blog post, BitMEX Research wrote:



“The logic was that at a fixed fee rate, filling up an 8MB block with spam would cost a lot more than filling up a 1MB block. The small blocker retort to this argument was that the larger blockers had it backwards, if there is spam, letting it all go onchain quickly and cheaply wasn’t stopping the spammer, but letting the spammer win.”



“Besides, if the blocksize limit was increased, fees would decline, making the spam cheaper. However, a key metric to the large blockers was how much money it would cost in fees to fill a block. This number was considered far too low for Bitcoin to

How Bitcoin survived a DoS attack now worth $24M

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Coinbase has made its sixth acquisition of the year, we’ve exclusively learned. 



This time, the publicly-traded company made an acqui-hire, meaning that they’re specifically acquiring Opyn CEO Andrew Leone and its Head of Research, Joe Clark. 



“The Opyn team has been building in DeFi since the early days; they were the first DeFi options protocol, the inventors of Power Perpetuals, and the team behind Squeeth. The team brings a rare combination of deep onchain technical expertise, strong understanding of traditional market structure, and hands-on experience building decentralized products from the ground up,” Coinbase said in a blog post. 



Opyn was one of the DeFi projects charged by the CFTC in 2023 for allegedly operating an unregistered trading platform. The two settled. 



A Coinbase spokesperson explained that they made the talent-only acquisition because the company operates with “a build/buy/partner/invest framework. Each path depends on where we see the most leverage — whether that’s through technology, market presence, or talent. In this case, we were especially impressed by [Leone] and [Clark’s] deep experience building in DeFi and their vision for the future of onchain markets. This is something we’re really excited about and putting a lot of energy towards – and that means having the best talent in every seat working on these efforts. Andrew and Joe bring that talent.”



Leone and Clark will now join the Onchain Markets team, which operates in Coinbase’s institutional organization, to concentrate on Verified pools and other development initiatives focused on the onchain markets offerings.



"From the start, our vision has been to connect the fundamental forces of financial markets. We do this because connected and efficient markets improve the real world by allowing individuals to hedge out things they don’t care about and focus on

Exclusive: Coinbase acquires Opyn's leadership team

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“Your future is whatever you make it. So make it a good one.”



— Doc Brown




Capitalism is time travel



In the latest EconTalk podcast, Russ Roberts and Mike Munger ask some basic questions — What are markets? What is capitalism? Why do they matter? — with some surprising results.



Munger defines markets as “a set of institutions for reducing the transactions cost of impersonal exchange.”



To help us understand why that matters, Munger starts with the most basic possible example: If I have a banana and you have an apple, but I like apples better than bananas and you like bananas better than apples, we trade.



This leaves the amount of apples and bananas unchanged, but makes us both better off. 



Every voluntary exchange, therefore, makes the world a better place — and markets enable more voluntary exchanges.



But not just that.



The next step in people becoming better off is the division of labor: Instead of everyone trying to grow the food they want, everyone grows only what they’re best at and then trades for everything else.



This “puts the production process on steroids,” creating more apples, bananas and everything else. 



The only limit to that process is how many people are involved, and that is why we need markets. The “impersonal exchange” of markets allows people who don’t know each other to participate in the division and specialization of labor.



This is to everyone’s benefit: “We want to find more and more people to exchange with,” Munger explains, “not because it makes them wealthier, but because it makes us wealthier."



This first-principles explainer sets up Munger’s unconventional definition of capitalism: “A set of market institutions that allow time travel.”



It’s a surprisingly intuitive thought.



You might, for example, have an idea for a product that you’re sure people will want

Thursday links: Time travel, anti-capitalism, ETH, pump.fun

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Former Blockchain Association CEO Kristin Smith has spent nearly two months as president of the newly-formed Solana Policy Institute. I caught up with her to get the latest on the Solana and policy front in Washington.



This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.







Jack: Give the US regulatory outlook a report card grade.



Kristin Smith: I would give it an “A” on the report card. If you look at the past six months, there’s been tremendous progress in undoing the bad policies of the last administration. We’ve seen a turnaround on debanking of crypto companies, we’ve seen the end to the litigation, we’ve seen a pullback on different regulations, like SAB-121, that were preventing new entrants into the crypto space.



So that in and of itself has been incredibly successful. But the fact that we have a “Crypto Week” in Washington next week … it looks like we’re on track to get a stablecoin regulatory framework actually signed into law by President Trump. I think it’s evidence that we’ve come incredibly far in turning around from where we were even just a short six months ago.



Jack: Looking forward into the future, what’s on your wish list on the Solana side of things as you advocate for that ecosystem?



Kristin Smith: One of the things we’ve been doing a lot of thinking on is what changes need to be made, if any, at the regulatory level to ensure that Solana or any other public blockchain can become the home of internet capital markets.



And we’ve gone in to see the SEC and have been submitting some comments on something we’re dubbing as “Project Open,” and basically encouraging [the SEC] to issue statements and guidance and potentially exemptive relief, and consider a time-limited sandbox so that we can get more equities issued onchain.



Jack: Solana is very diverse, and there’s a lot of different visions of

Solana Policy Institute wants to see more equities issued onchain

Pump.fun announced its first acquisition on Thursday. 



It acquired Kolscan, a wallet tracker that “monitors the activities of top onchain traders. it provides realtime transactions, token PnL, and a leaderboard ranking their performance,” according to a post on X.




we’re excited to announce that pump fun has acquired @kolscanKolscan is a wallet tracker that monitors the activities of top onchain traders. it provides realtime transactions, token PnL, and a leaderboard ranking their performanceour integration will not only enable better… pic.twitter.com/V4VDcOwVeG— pump.fun (@pumpdotfun) July 10, 2025




Kolscan said that the two will be “able to deliver a better experience and work on totally new projects at the intersection of social media and onchain trading.”



Pump.fun said in its ICO announcement that it plans to “kill Facebook, TikTok and Twitch.”



Read more: Pump.fun plans $1B token sale at $4B valuation: Sources



“For those reasons, we believe that products that provide social insights/tools and gamify the trading experience are key to growing our ecosystem,” pump.fun co-founder Alon Cohen said in a post. He previously teased a pump.fun acquisition. 



The new product could also cause more users to trade tokens on pump.fun’s frontend rather than going to third-party platforms to trade.



Kolscan is pump.fun’s first acquisition and comes just days before its planned ICO, which will take place on Saturday, July 12. 



According to the tokenomics, 33% of PUMP will be sold in the ICO, while 13% was allocated to existing investors. In total, the fully diluted value is around $4 billion. 



Blockworks previously reported that it plans a 25% revenue share with token holders, according to sources.







Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:




The Breakdown: Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily.



Empire: Crypto news and analysis to start your day.



Forward Guidance: The intersection of crypto,

Pump.fun acquires wallet tracker Kolscan

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We’re all navigating the crosscurrents of the next leg of the tariff war, dollar positioning, and rates.



With the “Big Beautiful Bill” now signed and passed, the Trump administration’s gaze is now shifting back toward tariffs. 



The true tariff rates are ever-changing these days, and the exact number keeps fluctuating. 



That said, based on actual freight container volume transactions, we can approximate a current effective tariff rate of 21% on US imports — down from 54% at the peak of Liberation Day.



This dynamic is further muddied by the delayed effect in place for the collection of these duties at the border. It takes time to fully ramp up and operationalize this kind of surge in collections, and so actual tariffs collected are approximately half of the stated rate right now.







It’s evident that some form of a tariff strategy is in place. But assuming they will go back to the pre-election rate of 5% is unrealistic.



Putting this all together, it’s time to think about how this crosscurrent situates itself alongside currencies and the path of monetary policy. As we can see below, the dollar is now down 10.7% year to date, one of the largest-ever drawdowns for the first half of the year.







Mechanically, it makes sense for the dollar to be the primary exhaust valve for the impact of tariffs since it aggregates interest rate differentials and the path of monetary policy. Those are driven by inflation expectations, as well as cross-border capital flows.



The broad consensus is that these dynamics will continue to drive the dollar meaningfully lower, and that this could become turbocharged once it becomes evident who will replace Jerome Powell as the chair of the Federal Reserve. 



If the new Fed Chair is someone committed to the 300-basis point cuts Trump is touting — and if that person can convince the committee to follow them

All signs are pointing to the dollar heading lower. Will it?

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A recent report by Fidelity Investments proposes valuing blockchains on the basis of GDP:




“... it is more appropriate to compare decentralized blockchains to sovereign nations and their economies rather than web2 companies or products because of the embedded currency.”




Here’s the GDP formula: C + I + G + (X-M)



C is consumption, I is business investment, G is government spending, X is exports and M is imports, so X-M is net exports.



Fidelity uses ETH as an example. So, when you transpose the GDP formula onto Ethereum blockchain metrics:




C = What users are spending as gas, to use Uniswap or mint an NFT.



I = The quantity of staked assets or capital in liquidity pools.



G = Ethereum Foundation expenditure, issued ETH to validators.



X-M = How much stablecoins are minted/burned, bridge flows to/from other chains and DePIN rewards.




You can see the entire table here:







It’s a comprehensive effort by Fidelity, but it provokes some questions.



GDP is a measure of domestic production. Think “the value of everything made here.” When a country exports, that’s domestic production. When it imports, that’s spending. That’s why we “net” imports for GDP.



But if millions of stablecoins are bridged onto (import) or off of (export) Ethereum, that bloats a blockchain’s “GDP” even though nothing productive occurs onchain.



Contrast that to when a stablecoin is minted onchain, or when a Helium miner is paid in tokens for providing a useful mobile cellular service. These are productive “imports” that would rightfully count toward a blockchain’s “GDP.”



So measuring “net exports” by bridge flows is conceptually sound, but it needs to account for CEX cold-wallet sweeps, as Blockworks’ Dan Smith aptly pointed out.




Fidelity’s buildout of blockchain GDP in its recent report is interesting, certainly the most