Adam Efrima is the SSV Core team Co-founder. He has been active in the crypto industry since 2013. Over eight years living in China working in the financial industry and fintech space, Adam has worked in CITIC Bank covering outbound investments for Chinese SOEs, he was also in charge of setting up the eToro Shanghai operation. Since then, Adam has been deeply involved in Ethereum staking, co-founding top performing staking project Bloxstaking as well as co-founding SSV Network, a decentralized validator infrastructure for ETH staking.

Adam Simmons is Chief Strategy Officer at RDX Works, a key contributor to the Radix public ledger. He has over 13 years of experience in building &amp; growing businesses in a range of industries including online video, blockchain &amp; digital marketing. With experience in both senior leadership &amp; hands-on roles, he has repeatedly recruited, managed, and trained highly successful teams within marketing, customer success and operations functions. Adam is also a previous member of the UK Paralympic Sprint Kayaking Team and has competed in multiple World and European Championships.


Adam Swick is the Chief Growth Officer at Marathon Digital Holdings. Prior to joining Marathon, he served as a principal at Refinery Ventures, where he was responsible for identifying and recommending business strategies to accelerate the growth of all companies in Refinery’s portfolio. Before Refinery, Swick was the director of strategic finance at Kraken Digital Asset Exchange, where he managed the company’s balance sheet, debt program, investor relations, and all forecasting activities. Prior to Kraken, he founded Swick Capital, a crypto-asset hedge fund, worked at Pritzker Group Venture Capital, and was a consultant at Boston Consulting Group. Swick holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a BS in finance from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

Adrian Brink is the co-founder of Namada and Anoma, where he focuses on building privacy-preserving systems that are resilient to global crises. Previously, he was a core developer at Tendermint (Cosmos) and worked at the Web3 Foundation. He also co-founded Cryptium Labs, which was later sold to Chorus One, and Metastate, where he contributed to major upgrades to the Tezos protocol​.

Adrien Stern is the founder &amp; CEO of Reveel, the omnichain payments infrastructure that enables one-click cross-chain payments to connect people across borders and networks. Before founding Reveel, Adrien led digital transformation efforts at BNP Paribas CIB. He was also previously a venture builder, and owns Bridge Music, a record label and recording studio. Adrien has a Bachelor’s degree in Sciences of Management from The University of Lausanne and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Esade. 

Alex Hoffman is Head of Ecosystem at Superposition Finance. Superposition is revolutionizing DeFi by addressing its core challenges through robust risk management powered by Concordia’s best-in-class risk engine, omnichain functionality, and transparency.

Alexei Zamyatin is a co-founder of BOB, a first-of-its-kind hybrid Layer-2 powered by Bitcoin and Ethereum. He has been a Bitcoin and interoperability research contributor since 2015 and is most known for his work on trustless cross-chain bridges and L2s. Alexei holds a PhD in computer science from Imperial College London.


Alison Haire is the CEO and founder of Lilypad, a serverless, decentralized compute network that democratizes access to computational power by providing scalable infrastructure for AI, machine learning and other high-demand processes. Before founding Lilypad, she held roles at companies such as Filecoin, IBM and Accenture. Under her leadership, Lilypad leverages idle GPU capacity worldwide to fuel an open AI economy, providing cost-effective and scalable compute resources. Her work focuses on making high-performance computing accessible to more developers and researchers, while challenging the dominance of large centralized cloud providers​​.

With over 20 years of experience leading and designing games and tech companies, Alun is well-versed in creating innovative products that tackle experiential and developer challenges. In addition to his stewardship of LAOS Network, he is CEO and co-founder of the company building LAOS, Freeverse, which focuses on building scalable blockchain infrastructure. His history as the co-creator of ‘Barcelona World Race - THE GAME,’ a cutting-edge video game enabling virtual participation in real-world events, and his wider passion for gaming, have fed into his vision for LAOS Network as a solution for the intersection of Web3 tech with both gaming and real-world applications. Alun also led Shar3d.io, a pioneering company enabling collaborative 3D web applications, and served as CTO of Bodypal.com, a virtual garment services company. He holds a Ph.D. in Medical Physics from University College London.



Amanda Cassatt is the founder and CEO of Serotonin. Amanda previously served as Chief Marketing Officer of ConsenSys from 2016 through 2019. Joining one year after the launch of Ethereum, Amanda played a crucial role in defining, creating, and growing the narrative for ConsenSys, Ethereum, and blockchain overall.

Amanda stewarded the ConsenSys brand through its global expansion across enterprises, governments, developers, and consumers. She created and scaled the marketing team to over 50 people, serving both the ConsenSys brand and 50+ portfolio companies such as MetaMask, Infura, Truffle, and Gitcoin; managing teams in product marketing, growth, design, content, community, events, email, analytics and SEO. Amanda’s contributions to some of the most successful product launches, token sales and fundraises landed her on Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2016. Amanda is the author of the world's first web3 marketing book, Web3 Marketing: A Handbook for the Next Internet Revolution.

Amanda Keleher currently serves as Chief People Officer at Consensys, one of the largest and fastest-growing companies in the blockchain technology space. A well-rounded business leader with an over 25-year career in the technology space, Amanda is the driving force behind the human element of Consensys where she is responsible for overseeing all of the aspects of people, from building and maintaining the company culture to harnessing human capital as a key driver of business. 

Before joining ConsenSys, Amanda served as the Head of People at ThoughtWorks, a global technology consultancy company, for nearly ten years, where she led the global scale expansion by opening offices around the world and recruiting a diverse workforce at a time when the DevOps movement had just been born and a new skill set were yet to be developed. After her time at ThoughWorks, she served as the Executive Vice President, People &amp; Culture of Index Exchange, one of the world’s premier ad tech organizations; and as VP of People at Little Bits and Intent Media where she excelled in designing effective and creative strategies to attract and retain world-class talent in hyper competitive environments

Andrea Berry is a seasoned online video strategist with 15+ years of experience in transformative media partnerships. 

Her early successes include helping to launch Qello Concerts, the first direct-to-consumer live-music OTT service, later transforming it into Qello Media Services and Vimeo’s OTT channels offering across various industries as their first strategic sales director for their enterprise.

Currently, as the Head of Business Development at Theta Labs, Andrea leverages her expertise in online video and blockchain to drive strategic partnerships and growth opportunities for the company. She helps enterprises take advantage and lean into the opportunities Web3 presents. 

Andrew Redden is the CEO and CTO of Last Network, a blockchain platform focused on sustainable cash flow and reinvestment. Previously, he worked at Gitcoin and has contributed to numerous DeFi and Web3 projects. Redden's career reflects a commitment to developing technologies that prioritize long-term viability and community engagement​.

Andrew Thurman is a Data Editor based in Washington, DC. He previously wrote for CoinDesk and Cointelegraph, and worked in various roles for Chainlink and Nansen. His analysis has been quoted in The Financial Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Forbes, Fortune, Reuters, The BBC, CNBC, and elsewhere. Contact Andrew at andrew@blockworks.co.

Andrey Sergeenkov writes educational articles as a freelancer. His works have been published in Coindesk, Cointelegraph, Entrepreneur and CoinMarketCap. He believes that transforming society towards lifelong learning, combined with decentralization in government and business, will lead to exponential social development.

Andy Bromberg is CEO of Beam and Contributor to the Eco Protocol. Eco has raised more than $90 million from an array of leading investors, including a16z Crypto, L Catterton, Activant Capital, Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, and others. Prior to Eco, Andy was Co-founder and President of CoinList. Andy is also a founding board member at FreeWorld, a non-profit seeking to end institutionalized poverty in the United States by providing access to living-wage jobs for people with criminal histories. He studied Mathematics and Computer Science at Stanford University and co-founded the Stanford Bitcoin Group.

An established and versatile Financial Executive with over two decades of experience running multiple trading businesses across top-level banks such as HSBC, Barclays, and UBS. After running the top Agency and SSA business for both UBS and Barclays, he took over Emerging Markets macro trading for Barclays. In 2018, wanting to go deeper into Emerging Markets he took a role as Head of Latam local markets trading where he was responsible for trading activities across Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and Chile. In 2021 DeMartino moved into Crypto when he became CEO and founder of Coinbase Risk Strategies focused on DeFi and Derivatives trading. More recently he started Trident Digital Group, a crypto-native solutions firm that is focused on lending and safe yield generation and stablecoin adoption.


Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio.

Prior to founding SkyBridge in 2005, Scaramucci co-founded investment partnership Oscar Capital Management, which was sold to Neuberger Berman in 2001. Earlier, he worked in Private Wealth Management at Goldman Sachs &amp; Co.

In 2022, Scaramucci was ranked #47 in Cointelegraph’s Top 100 Influencers in Crypto and Blockchain. In 2016, he was ranked #85 in Worth Magazine’s Power 100: The 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance. In 2011, he received Ernst &amp; Young’s New York Financial Services “Entrepreneur of the Year” Award.  Anthony is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and a board member of the Federal Enforcement Homeland Security Foundation. He is the author of five books.

Scaramucci served on President Donald J. Trump’s 16-person Presidential Transition Team Executive Committee, and in 2017 briefly served as Chief Strategy Officer of the Export-Import (EXIM) Bank and White House Communications Director.

Scaramucci, a native of Long Island, New York, holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Tufts University and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School.

Antoni is a co-founder of Aleph Zero Foundation (Switzerland), an organization overseeing the development of the Aleph Zero blockchain, and a Managing Partner of Cardinal Cryptography (Poland), firm focused on core development of the Aleph Zero ecosystem.

Ari Juels is the Weill Family Foundation and Joan and Sanford I. Weill Professor in the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech and the Technion and a Computer Science faculty member at Cornell University. He is a Co-Director of the Initiative for CryptoCurrencies and Contracts (IC3). He is also Chief Scientist at Chainlink Labs. He is the author of crypto thriller novel The Oracle (Talos Press), which was released on 20 February 2024.

Austin Alexander is co-founder of LayerTwo Labs, a company focused on advancing the Bitcoin ecosystem through innovative solutions and specializing in the development of Drivechain, a specific type of blockchain sidechain designed to foster creativity and scalability within Bitcoin.

Austin Campbell is the founder and managing partner of Zero Knowledge Consulting and an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School. Previously, he has run portfolio management at Paxos for the stablecoins as well as being the chief risk officer of Paxos National Trust, has managed fixed income trading desks at JP Morgan and Citi, and has been a portfolio manager and structurer at Stone Ridge, the parent of NYDIG. He holds a BS in Mathematics from CSU Chico and a MBA from NYU Stern.

Ben Mills is the co-founder of Meso, a payments platform connecting banks and blockchains. Prior to Meso, Ben spent a decade building payments products as an early team member at Braintree (acquired by PayPal), as Head of Product at Venmo, and working on Solana Pay at Solana Labs.

Ben Rubin is the CEO and co-founder of Towns, a decentralized messaging platform dedicated to redefining online communication. Rubin has a rich background and a decade of experience in creating digital spaces that build trust and foster human connection. Prior to founding Here Not There Labs, the developer of Towns, Ben founded two venture-backed startups, Meerkat and Houseparty, both of which reimagined how people interact digitally. He scaled his communication products to hundreds of millions of users and raised over $70M in funding from Sequoia Capital and Greylock. After Houseparty was acquired by Epic Games in 2019, Ben went on to found Here Not There Labs, a venture-backed startup with over $30M in funding from a16z crypto and Benchmark Capital.

Ben Strack is a senior reporter covering macro and crypto-native funds, financial advisors, structured products, and the integration of digital assets and DeFi into traditional finance. Prior to joining Blockworks, he covered the asset management industry for Fund Intelligence and was a reporter and editor for various local newspapers on Long Island. He graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in journalism.

Contact Ben via email at ben@blockworks.co

Bessie is a Brooklyn-based reporter covering DeFi and technology. Bessie worked as a tech journalist for The Org prior to joining Blockworks and was a management consultant for KPMG in another life. She is originally from Melbourne, Australia and holds an MA from New York University. She is also the mother of a bratty cat named Mochi. You can reach Bessie at bessie@blockworks.co

Bezalel Eithan Raviv, an ex-member of IDF Cyber Unit 8200, is a seasoned entrepreneur with deep expertise in technology and innovation. He now leads Lionsgate Network, a blockchain analysis firm specializing in professional money recovery services for digital asset investors in the +$2.5 trillion market. Prior to this role, Bezalel founded an investment banking firm supporting AI startups and developed Halleluiah, a pioneering web3 migration pattern for global music copyrights.

Billy Luedtke is the CEO and founder of Intuition, an information protocol powering a more trustful internet. Billy previously served as senior technology advisor at EY, a leading global professional services organization providing assurance, tax, audit, strategy and transactions. At EY, Billy created the company’s blockchain consulting practice, leading the technical development of blockchain-enabled distributed systems. Billy later became a senior token engineer at Consensys, a leading Ethereum developer (MetaMask, Infura, Linea). Billy continues to serve as an advisor at Consensys and MetaMask.

Billy Sebell is the Executive Director of the XDC Foundation and an early contributor to the XDC Network. Since early 2018, Billy has worked to develop the XDC community, focused on ecosystem and network growth and implementing use cases in trade finance. Billy previously spent more than 25 years in manufacturing and consumer products, dealing with the challenges businesses face in capital markets and international trade.

Bob Bodily is the Provo, Utah-based CEO and Co-Founder of Bioniq, a BTC Ordinals wallet and marketplace. He has a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience and a Ph.D. in educational/instructional technology from Brigham Young University, with 25 articles and 1K citations. He is a data engineer with 100K+ lines of production Python code, and he has two previous software startups, including an EdTech SaaS that sold in 2021.


Bogdan is the Co-Founder and CTO of Tenderly, the full-stack infrastructure solutions provider powering Web3 developer teams with the essential tools and services throughout their development journeys. 

Prior to co-founding Tenderly, Bogdan worked as a software engineer for major software platforms such as MVP Workshop and Go Daddy where he was responsible for constructing and managing the development of distributed cloud systems before realizing the lack of infrastructural support for Web3 developers. With his vast experience in constructing, expanding, and overseeing extensive distributed cloud systems, he is well-versed in the intricacies of blockchain technologies and their practical applications. 

Brandon Truong is lead product contributor for ZetaChain. He previously co-founded social platform Yada (which was acquired in 2020) and spent time building products for BuzzFeed and Udacity. 


 Brian Pak is CEO &amp; Co-Founder of ChainLight, an award-winning blockchain security firm that specializes in smart contract audits and on-chain monitoring. He is also a co-founder of Theori, an established US-based offensive cybersecurity company, since 2016, which he still leads today, having now amassed trusted partners including Microsoft, Google and Samsung. Brian’s early career started when he co-founded and developed Kaprica Security, inventing and patenting the Skorpion Charger, an Android mobile charger that can detect malicious software with no user action required. He has worked on research and development projects with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the US. Brian is also a founder of the team PPP (Plaid Parliament of Pwning) which won DEF CON CTF, one of the most prestigious hacker competitions held in Las Vegas, in 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2022 and 2023. Brian graduated with a Masters Degree in Software Security Research from Carnegie Mellon University.

Three years ago, his act of burning a physical Banksy ignited global discourse on NFTs and Web3, exposing the industry's flaws. Now, through XION, founder Burnt Banksy leads a mission to democratize Web3 to the masses, making ownership accessible to all by removing unnecessary barriers and complications through chain abstraction. To date: XION has raised over $36M in funding with the goal of "making crypto disappear." Ultimately, Burnt Banksy wants to provide the benefits of crypto to people without requiring them to know anything about crypto.

Byron Donalds grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and he is also the proud son of a hardworking and loving single mother. His mother dedicated her time instilling in him that greatness requires sacrifice, which drives him as a devoted family man and United States Congressman.  

Byron is a graduate of Florida State University and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in finance and marketing. Byron's career led him to Southwest Florida, where he worked in the banking, finance, and insurance industries. Elected to the Florida House of Representatives in 2016, Byron represented Hendry County and east Collier County in the State Capitol. During his tenure in the Florida House, Byron served as the PreK-12 Quality Subcommittee Chair during the 2018-2019 Legislative Session and served as the Insurance &amp; Banking Subcommittee's Chairman 2019-2020 Legislative Session. While serving in the Florida House, primarily focused on elder affairs, criminal justice reform, and ensuring that each child has access to a world-class education. 

Byron is committed to serving and giving back to the community that gave him so much. He has served Southwest Florida in many ways, including previously serving on the Board of Trustees for Florida Southwestern State College after being appointed by then-Governor Rick Scott. Byron continues to volunteer in his church as a youth leader and a mentor. He also enjoys volunteering as a coach in youth football and basketball leagues.

Congressman Byron Donalds lives in Naples, Florida, with his wife, Erika, and their three sons: Damon, Darin, and Mason. Byron has spent his entire adult life serving others, whether it be through volunteering, business, or leadership. He is committed to representing Florida's 19th Congressional District's conservative values in Washington DC to ensure a stronger Florida and a stronger nation.

Byron Gilliam writes the Blockworks Daily newsletter, in which he tries to explain crypto markets to traditional investors and traditional markets to crypto investors (while trying to explain both to himself). Before joining Blockworks, Byron spent 25 years trading international equities for banks and brokers in Frankfurt, London, Paris and New York. He holds a bachelor's degree in History from Binghamton University. Contact Byron at byron@blockworks.co.

Cameron B. Pick is a partner and patent attorney at the Chicago-based intellectual property boutique law firm Marshall, Gerstein &amp; Borun. He prosecutes patents for emerging technologies, including blockchain and crypto, among other innovative areas. He may be reached at cpick@marshallip.com. 

Candace Kelly is the Chief Legal and Policy Officer for the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), a non-profit organization that supports the development and growth of Stellar, an open-source network that connects the world's financial infrastructure. She leads the team responsible for SDF’s legal affairs and the policy team that is focused on bridging the gap between the public and private sectors. Previously, Candace worked for Uber Technologies, Inc., where she helped navigate the company’s response to regulatory investigations and advised on safety, security, privacy, consumer protection, and law enforcement response. Prior to that she served for 17 years at the United States Department of Justice.

Carlos Mercado is a data scientist at Flipside Crypto, specializing in the convergence of data science, cryptocurrency, economics, and open-source research. His expertise spans the Ethereum ecosystem and over 20 other blockchains, where he leverages SQL, R, Python, and Solidity to develop innovative data models and analytics tools. Carlos's notable contributions include the creation of the True Freeze DeFi primitive and leading the production of the 2023 Crypto Users Report, generating significant industry impact. Prior to Flipside, he applied his skills in AI strategy and product development at Guidehouse and offered data science consulting services.


​​Casey Wagner is a Senior Reporter based in New York. Casey covers crypto regulation, markets and central banks. Prior to joining Blockworks, she reported on macroeconomics at Bloomberg News. She graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in Media Studies. Contact Casey via email at casey@blockworks.co

Charles Hoskinson is a Colorado-based technology entrepreneur and mathematician. He attended Metropolitan State University of Denver and University of Colorado Boulder to study analytic number theory before moving into cryptography through industry exposure.

His professional experience includes founding three cryptocurrency-related start-ups – Invictus Innovations, Ethereum and IOHK – and he has held a variety of posts in both the public and private sectors. He was the founding chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation’s education committee and established the Cryptocurrency Research Group in 2013.

His current projects focus on educating people about cryptocurrency, being an evangelist for decentralization and making cryptographic tools easier to use for the mainstream. This includes leading the research, design and development of Cardano, a third-generation cryptocurrency that launched in September 2017.

Chris Barrett serves as the Director of Communications at Chainlink Labs and has been involved with Chainlink since 2017. Chainlink is the only on-chain data and cross-chain platform that enables financial institutions to develop customized, flexible, compliant, and future-proof blockchain applications and tokenized assets. Before this role, he founded a leading PR agency for technology startups, where he worked with over 1,000 innovative companies. Chris is also an avid runner, having maintained a streak of running for over five consecutive years. 

Chris Brooks founded CryptoAssetRecovery.com in 2017 to help digital asset owners recover lost assets. Chris was a programmer at Fidelity Investments, VP of Technology at venture-backed Carescout (which sold to GenWorth, a spinoff of General Electric) and has founded and sold three bootstrapped internet companies. 

Chris Swenor is a seasoned entrepreneur and blockchain pioneer with a 20-year career that kicked off as a self-taught programmer at age 13. He swiftly moved from corporate roles into startups, leading several to successful acquisitions. Chris started venturing into blockchain and cryptocurrency in 2013, founding Reach in 2019, a platform that has since attracted over $13M in funding and onboarded more than 8,000 developers.

In recent years, Chris founded Humble, a decentralized exchange on Algorand, and Alloy, a blockchain gaming platform acquired in 2023. He is currently working on Voi Network, a layer 1 blockchain empowering its community with user-centric governance and economics. 

Christopher Perkins is President of CoinFund, a web3 focused Registered Investment Advisor.  He is also a member of the CFTC’s Global Markets Advisory Committee and its Digital Asset Markets Subcommittee.

Ciarán Murray is a seasoned veteran of the blockchain industry. Aside from advising on numerous blockchain projects over the years, and releasing a synthetics assets proof-of-concept last year, Ciarán previously worked in the media industry for British Sky Broadcasting. He is not only well placed to understand the issues facing the media industry but also how to apply blockchain and other distributed technologies to remedy them.

Da Hongfei is the founder of Neo, an open-source, community-driven blockchain platform designed to welcome developers into the Smart Economy. Hongfei operates as CEO of Neo Global Development (NGD), the executive arm of the Neo Foundation that is committed to developing the Neo protocol and its supporting ecosystem. He is seen as a luminary in the Web3 space and as a blockchain pioneer in Asia. Hongfei received his education at the South China University of Technology, receiving degrees in technology and English.

Damian Alvarez is a communications professional helping Web3 clients get their stories heard. He is currently the Head of Communications at Aori, an omni-chain logic layer that leverages off-chain data storage to enable high-frequency on-chain trading. He has worked at agencies such as Edelman and YAP Global to assist a variety of emerging and established clients to engage in industry-wide narratives surrounding technology. He may be contacted at damian@aori.io.

Dan Keeler is Editor-in-Chief at Blockworks. Prior to joining Blockworks, he was Frontier Markets Editor at the Wall Street Journal where he managed the Journal’s coverage of smaller emerging markets as well as created a number of high-profile events and a highly regarded newsletter. Before joining the WSJ, he was the Editor of Global Finance magazine. He is also the founder of New York’s FM Network, a group that hosts gatherings of finance professionals focused on smaller emerging markets.

Contact Dan via email at dan@blockworks.co

Dan Smith is a Senior Research Analyst based in the United States covering Curve, Convex, Aave, and Compound. Daniel previously worked in tax and valuation at EY and Bennett Thrasher. He is focused on using data visualization tools to better understand the health and profitability of various DeFi protocols. Contact Dan at daniel@blockworks.co

Daniel Batten is a ClimateTech investor, Bitcoin environmental impact analyst, CEO advisor and author. He is most widely known for his data-driven approach to Bitcoin mining research.


Daniel Cawrey has been involved full-time in the crypto space since 2013, including as an editor at CoinDesk. He is author of 2020’s “Mastering Blockchain” and 2023’s “Understanding Crypto” books, both available on Amazon.

Daranee Ganesh is a publishing and production manager based in Washington, DC. She holds an LLB with a focus on emerging technologies. Prior to Blockworks, Daranee worked on several legal and non-profit projects aimed at integrating decentralized solutions in the social justice framework, specifically within immigration and environmental law. Contact Daranee at daranee@blockworks.co.

Darren Kleine is an Alberta-based reporter covering podcast content at Blockworks. Previously reporting for Cointelegraph, he wrote feature content and a weekly series focused on the personal stories of influential figures in the Web3 space. He has been an active participant in the NFT art scene since 2020, creating works on curated platforms including SuperRare and KnownOrigin and hosting an NFT art-focused podcast called NFP with DKleine. Contact Darren Kleine at darren@blockworks.co.

David is an Editor based in the Netherlands focused on data-driven journalism. Previously, he wrote for TheNextWeb's crypto vertical before launching Protos in 2021. He's a reformed hardline Bitcoiner passionate about permissionless and decentralized networks. Contact David at david@blockworks.co

David Schwed serves as the Chief Operating Officer at Halborn, an elite blockchain security firm. Prior to Halborn, he was the Global Head of Digital Assets Technology at BNY Mellon, the world's biggest custodian bank, where he integrated the IT strategy for the company's digital asset services. David was also CISO for Galaxy Digital, where he led the development of information security and IT infrastructure, and served as a risk committee advisor, evaluating emerging threats in financial services. He also founded the Cybersecurity Master's Program at Yeshiva University’s Katz School of Science and Health, sharing his expertise as a practitioner-in-residence.


Delphine Forma is the policy lead for Europe &amp; UK at Solidus Labs, a leading market compliance and market integrity firm in digital assets. With a career spanning roles in major banks and blockchain ventures, she brings extensive experience in compliance and legal across sectors. She is the founder of the crypto compliance and legal TG group with 1,400 members. A Sciences Po Lyon alumna, Delphine also holds advanced degrees in European Criminal Business Law and anti-money laundering.

Denelle Dixon is the CEO and Executive Director of the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), a non-profit organization focused on working with and supporting changemakers to create equitable access to the global financial system through blockchain technology. She leads the teams that help maintain Stellar's codebase, support the communities around Stellar, and advocate on behalf of the network with international stakeholders. Before joining Stellar, Dixon served as COO of Mozilla, one of the most successful mission-driven open-source organizations.. During her tenure at Mozilla, she led the organization’s business, revenue and policy teams including the ongoing fight for net neutrality and the global effort to ensure that people can control their personal data.

Dermot O’Riordan serves as a Director at the POKT Network Foundation where he helps steer product development and strategy. From Ireland to Silicon Valley, Dermot’s career ranged from advising tech companies and VC firms to leading marquee industry events. His interest in Web3 was sparked in 2016 with the rise of DAOs, leading him to dive deeper into the blockchain space, where he served as an advisor to projects like Radix and Dusk, and later, spearheading growth at Eden Block.

Donovan is a reporter based in Singapore. He previously worked in editorial at Bankless and is a huge fan of spaghetti Westerns and the Wu-Tang Clan. Contact Donovan at donovan@blockworks.co.

Elena leads product marketing at Hiro Systems, a developer tooling company bringing smart contracts to Bitcoin. She has spent the past six years working in blockchain and cryptocurrency startups. Elena co-founded Blockchain Latinx, an online community that explores what blockchain means for Latinos and for Latin America. She has an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business.

Eli Cohen is a corporate lawyer with 25+ years of experience in commercial transactions, financial services and regulatory matters and has worked in Asia, Europe and the United States. He is the General Counsel for Centrifuge, a real-world asset (RWA) tokenization and securitization platform and Chief Compliance Officer for Anemoy Capital SPC Limited a British Virgin Islands fund company issuer of the tokenized Anemoy Liquid Treasury Fund 1. He is a graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center, has a Masters in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Eli Zeger writes about democracy and its relationship with technology. His work has been published in the Boston Review, Noema Magazine, Strange Matters, Zora Zine, among numerous other publications.

Elliot is the Head of Climate Strategy at Sustainable Bitcoin Protocol, where he is helping unlock Bitcoin's clean energy potential by bridging sustainable miners and climate-conscious investors. In his role at Sustainable Bitcoin Protocol, Elliot educates policymakers and NGOs on Bitcoin’s relationship with the energy system. He is a climatetech operator focused on alleviating energy poverty, bridging the digital divide, and promoting financial inclusion through technologies such as Bitcoin. Elliot was previously a Schwarzman Scholar and has served in the military, US Department of Energy, Clinton Foundation, and more. 

Evan Thomas is General Counsel for Alluvial, a software development company supporting the Liquid Collective liquid staking protocol. He was previously at Wealthsimple, Canada’s largest consumer fintech, where he was Head of Legal for Wealthsimple’s crypto trading platform. While at Wealthsimple, Evan helped launch Canada’s first regulated staking product. Before Wealthsimple, Evan was a litigator at Osler, Hoskin &amp; Harcourt LLP for nearly 15 years. Among other notable cases, Evan was hearing counsel to 3iQ Corp. in its appeal securing regulatory approval for Canada’s first publicly traded bitcoin fund in 2019.

Felix Jauvin is the host of the On the Margin podcast. Based in British Columbia, Canada, he lives and breathes where crypto and macroeconomics intersect.

Felix Xu, crypto geek, early adopter, and NFT collector. Felix graduated from NYU Stern and founded two crypto projects, ARPA and Bella Protocol, among the global top 500 by market cap. Felix previously worked at Fosun Investment, Sackler family office, and Vertical Research in New York and Beijing. Felix loves sailing, kitesurfing and was featured in the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times for his NFT collection.

Frank has a diverse career that spans creative writing, day trading, and a 12-year stint in financial planning. After experimenting with blockchain and being an early adapter to the Solana ecosystem, Mathis co-founded GenesysGo in 2021 to create a faster, more reliable and more secure decentralized data storage protocol. Their flagship product, shdwDrive is built on Solana and aims to bridge the gap between blockchain technology and traditional business infrastructure. GenesysGo is powered by a new type of decentralized data storage consensus mechanism, built from the ground up by the GenesysGo team.

Fraser is co-founder &amp; CTO of Cubist and an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. She is an expert in software correctness: her research focuses on systems security, automated bug finding, and formal verification, from verifying (parts of) production systems like browser JITs, to finding exploitable bugs in real codebases. Her tools have found many zero-day bountied bugs and CVEs in the Chrome and Firefox browsers and multiple operating systems. Fraser received her BA in English and her MS and PhD in Computer Science from Stanford.


Garrett Harper is the producer for the Empire podcast. Garrett worked in private equity and product management before jumping into crypto full-time in 2021. His favorite thing about crypto? It conflates art, gaming, finance, software, and psychology into one hyper-growth industry.

Gijs op de Weegh is the CEO and Founder of StablR, where he leads the strategy, business operations, and investor relations. He founded StablR out of his passion for implementing blockchain technology in the financial industry and exploring its possibilities. Before founding StablR, Gijs co-founded Payvision, an e-commerce payment service provider, in 2002. Under his leadership, Payvision grew to over 300 employees and achieved a turnover exceeding €4 billion.

Gísli Kristjánsson is co-founder and CTO of Monerium, the first company to issue fiat onchain. He fell in love with programming at the age of 13. After working as a bonds broker, Gísli saw the inefficiencies of securities settlements firsthand and recognized the potential of Bitcoin. Prior to co-founding Monerium in 2015, Gísli founded and sold a platform to give users access to geo-blocked content. Fun fact: Gísli’s Ethereum address is among the 1% of the oldest addresses.

Haden Patrick is Director of Business Operations of Cordial Systems, a provider of institutional-grade self custody software using a Zero Trust security model.  Haden has executive experience in team leadership, engineering and education originating from his 24 year career as a Naval Officer. After co-founding SoloKeys, the first open-source security key company, he went on to manage projects connecting web3 to traditional finance at a cryptocurrency trading firm before joining Cordial Systems.

Hadley Stern, Advisor to MPCH, has extensive experience in leadership roles within TradFi and digital asset industries. As Global Head of Custody at the Bank of New York Mellon (BNYM) from 2021 to 2023, Hadley spearheaded the creation of the industry’s first bank-grade crypto-custody platform. Hadley also previously served as Chief Operating Officer at Bloq where he was responsible for the P&amp;L, product roadmap, and general operations. Hadley was Founding President of Fidelity Digital Asset Services where he led Fidelity's Blockchain Incubator and Digital Currency group and was pivotal in early product launches, including activating Bitcoin donations to Fidelity Charitable and building and running Fidelity first Bitcoin mining Operation.



Hannah Finnerty is Blockworks' editorial operations manager and is based in the US. Hannah previously worked in podcast production for The National in Abu Dhabi. She graduated from Bowling Green State University with a degree in multiplatform journalism and Middle Eastern politics. Contact Hannah at hannah@blockworks.co.

Hatu Sheikh is the co-founder and CMO of DAO Maker, the largest on-chain funding platform with 1.5M+ users. The platform's contracts have distributed over $600M, with a cumulative return of around 10x. Hatu has a strong background in marketing and strategy and has played a pivotal role in driving the success of various blockchain-based projects and tokens, crafting effective marketing strategies, and forging powerful synergies within the industry.

Harry Duckworth, a law graduate, embarked on a unique journey that led him to become the youngest trader at global commodities giant Trafigura. He then went on to set up desks for several hedge funds worldwide, accumulating over a decade of experience in trading, hedge funds, and emergent technologies. 

Through his work, he became fascinated by the revolutionary power of blockchain tech soon after the inception of Bitcoin. Years later he founded AgriDex International, to provide digital marketplaces and supply chain information for all participants in the global food chain. 

Hind Kurhan is a Co-Founder of Thesis Defense, a decentralized technology security auditing company whose mission is the facilitation of broad adoption of decentralized technology by improving security and audit consistency throughout the blockchain sphere.


Ian Rogers is the Chief Experience Officer at Ledger, leading the consumer-facing business delivering the world’s #1 way to buy and secure cryptocurrency.  Prior, Ian was the Chief Digital Officer at LVMH for five transformative years, working with a portfolio of nearly one hundred brands across luxury including Louis Vuitton, Dior, Sephora, and Hennessy.  Ian also sits on the boards of Dr Marten’s and Lyst.

Ian spent twenty years bringing digital music to the mainstream, first with Winamp then Yahoo!, Beats, and Apple.  Ian contributed to the 2015 launch of Apple Music including Beats 1, their digital streaming channel. Ian graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science (with honors, Phi Beta Kappa) from Indiana University in 1994.  Ian built some of the earliest music-related Web sites in the early 90s and has been working with Beastie Boys since 1993.

Igor Telyatnikov is the CEO and co-founder of the blockchain and financial services technology company AlphaPoint. Headquartered in New York, AlphaPoint supports over 10 million users, powering marketplaces and wallets in over 35 countries. With 15 years of experience in tech and innovation, Igor has empowered over 150 clients, including CME Group and Scotiabank. In 2022, he partnered with the Government of El Salvador to upgrade its Chivo Wallet into a national Bitcoin and dollar wallet, creating the first nationalized crypto ecosystem. Igor previously held roles at Cvetlo, LiftDNA, and Ingersoll Rand/Allegion, and has a Bachelor’s degree in Business Marketing from Penn State University. He is a frequent speaker at industry events.

Ishan is a University of Texas McCombs School of Business graduate with a BBA in Finance &amp; Marketing. He founded and managed a Private Equity Fund that reached an eight-figure Assets Under Management (AUM) and has also gained experience with many top 200 projects of crypto market cap. In 2022, he helped found SCRIB3, a Web3 Marketing and PR venture. He was notably among the first to raise an alert about potential deceptive and unethical business practices by FTX. Ishan contributes as a DeFi analyst, an active angel investor, and an advisor in projects like Polygon Technologies.

Jack Kubinec is a Solana ecosystem reporter based in Brooklyn, New York. Jack previously interned at Blockworks before joining full-time. He graduated summa cum laude from Cornell University with a degree in sociology. Contact Jack at jack.kubinec@blockworks.co.

Jag is the CEO and co-founder of re.al, an L2 build to facilitate deep onchain liquidity for tokenized RWAs. re.al seeks to redefine how RWAs are integrated into DeFi, using yield-generating real-world assets as novel building blocks in existing DeFi primitives.

James Cirrone is a breaking news reporter based in New York. Prior to joining Blockworks, James was a reporter and newsletter writer at Bloomberg News. He graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in journalism. He also played trumpet in the university’s marching band. Contact James via email at james.cirrone@blockworks.co.

Jason Allegrante is the Chief Legal and Compliance Officer at Fireblocks. He is an experienced Counsel with a demonstrated history of working in the financial services industry with both large, traditional financial institutions as well as early stage fintech startups.



Jason Dehni is the co-founder and group CEO of Credbull, a leading DeFi platform offering structured high fixed yield solutions in SME private credit. Jason has over 25 years of senior management experience in asset management, private banking, SME lending, insurance, risk management, and crypto across North America, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East. His background includes serving as group COO &amp; MENA CEO of a publicly traded crypto asset management company, co-founder &amp; CEO of an SME trade finance platform, and senior leadership roles in asset management, wealth management,  insurance, and management consulting. Jason holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and an Honours BA in Economics &amp; Political Science from the University of Toronto. 

Jean-Marie Mognetti is Chief Executive Officer of CoinShares, a publicly listed investment firm that manages over five billion in digital assets on behalf of a global investor base, and an experienced commodities trader with a background in quantitative strategies. A veteran of the Global Advisors group of companies since 2011, Jean-Marie has served in various leadership roles throughout his tenure, most recently as CEO of Global Advisors (Jersey) Limited and director of GABI, the world’s first regulated Bitcoin fund. In addition to his management responsibilities as CEO, Jean-Marie oversees the firm’s proprietary trading arm, capital markets portfolio, and risk management practices – areas in which he has developed unique expertise over his career. Prior to joining Global Advisors, Jean-Marie was a quantitative strategist with Hermes Commodities Fund Managers, and an Energy Trader Assistant at Lehman Brothers. He holds Master of Science degrees in Mathematical Trading and Finance from Sir John Cass Business School in London, and Bank-Finance-Insurance from Université Paris Dauphine in Paris, in addition to a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics and Finance from Université Paris Dauphine.

Jeff is an editor at Blockworks, based in the United States. He has been a part of the blockchain space for over a decade, most recently working as US news editor at Cointelegraph. His areas of focus include empowering artists and creators through technology, using proof-of-participation methods to reward self-improvement, reducing the effectiveness of Sybil attacks, seeking transparent equity for disadvantaged communities, and exploring fairer models of world governance. Contact Jeff at Jeffrey@blockworks.co.

Jesper Johansen is the founder and CEO of NORTHSTAKE, a regulated custodial staking company specialized in building regulatory compliant crypto staking products for institutional investors and financial institutions. The team holds backgrounds from financial institutions, pension funds, large investment companies to consulting, technology and audit firms, such as Accenture, Deloitte, PwC as well as blockchain and crypto projects e.g. DAI Foundation (MakerDao), Ethereum and L1/L2s. 

Prior to NORTHSTAKE, Jesper held leadership positions with Accenture Strategy and Deloitte Consulting advising clients in heavily regulated industries to implement new technologies and drive business transformation. He holds a MBA from Copenhagen Business School and a B.Sc. in International Business. 

Jess is the CEO of Reown, the onchain UX platform and builders of the WalletConnect Network. Previously she led Crypto at Checkout.com, a global fintech company. Jess was also a member of the Bank of England CBDC Engagement Forum and a member of UK Finance New Digital Money Steering Group, Innovate Finance Fintech Strategy Group and Department for International Trade Fintech Group.

Jess Sun is an independent writer and content strategist. She loves bringing good ideas to light, helping the people behind them shine, and bridging gaps in understanding. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn. Go to her website to learn about working with her.

Jesse Knutson is the head of operations at Bitfinex Securities, where he is responsible for expanding the platform’s issuance pipeline, overseeing distribution and building its user base while ensuring compliance with regulatory standards. Prior to this role, Knutson served as vice president of financial products at Blockstream, and held roles at prominent investment banks including Macquarie Group and Barclays.

Jim Myers is an engineer, early-stage investor, and the CTO &amp; Co-Founder of Flipside Crypto, a leading blockchain data analytics and business intelligence platform. Prior to co-founding Flipside, Jim developed the core technology that took products from 0 to 1 at companies such as Mylestone, Pluralsight, and Smarterer. Jim’s journey into the crypto industry began in 2015, eventually co-founding Flipside Crypto in 2017 to help empower crypto communities to create and share data-driven insights on the projects they care most about. Jim's passion for building extends to the broader startup community via his developer event series, Stack Dive, and as an angel investor to several local Boston-area startups, including AdHawk and LinkSquares. In a previous life, Jim developed advanced models to quantify risk and abnormal returns in the market for Financial Transmission Rights, a type of energy derivative.

JJ is an advisor, mentor and co-founder working across Bitcoin, mining and web3. He currently mentors for Outlier Ventures new Bitcoin Base Camp program and has co-founded a new protocol operating in stealth mode.

Joey is ranked by Chambers and Partners as one of the top 12 lawyers in the world, advising many of the largest platforms around the globe in the space. He co-chaired the Gibraltar Government’s working group on Blockchain for 3 years, which was established to develop the infrastructure to accommodate a DLT regulatory framework. Joey is also a specialist consultant to the United Nations and trains and assesses authorities primarily around South East Asia in virtual asset developments, DeFi and regulation. He is a member of several think tanks including the prestigious global ‘Wharton Reg@Tech’ initiative, the Blockchain Industry Parliamentary Roundtable on Blockchain Technologies at Parliament in the UK, and also contributed to the UK Law Society on the Blockchain Legal and Regulatory Guidance publication. He was the Xapo Representative on the Libra/Diem Association and has also contributed to various stablecoin and CBDC developments. 

Joeyz Yu is an entrepreneur with over 18 years of experience in product design and development. He co-founded Sending Labs to revolutionize communication protocols and social applications for Web3, leading the development of their flagship products SendingMe and SendingNetwork. Previously, Joeyz co-founded MoboTab, where he created the Dolphin Browser, used by over 200 million users and later acquired by ChangYou. Joeyz's passion for empowering users and building exceptional teams drives his mission to shape the future of the internet. 

Byron Gilliam

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



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



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“I don&#8217;t know what&#8217;s going to happen tomorrow and I can&#8217;t relive yesterday, but I live in the moment if I can.”&nbsp;



— Ozzy Osbourne
</blockquote>



Stock markets made new highs again this week, but the mood is hardly celebratory — possibly because it feels like investing is about to get much harder.



How do you invest for the long term when 1) AI might change everything and 2) the US government is $38 trillion in debt (and counting)?



This week, Jim Cramer said the ballooning national debt made him “worried for his kids” — so much so that he took the unthinkable step of recommending bitcoin as a hedge against monetary debasement.



Quite the reversal for someone who said as recently as 2022 that he “would not touch crypto in a million years.”



(Note: 2022 was three years ago.)



I get it, though.



Watching yesterday’s <a href="https://x.com/JustinWolfers/status/1948519156661583974">surreal exchange</a> between President Trump and Fed Chair Powell, both in hard hats, made me despair for the long-term health of my investment portfolio.&nbsp;



What investments can you rest easy with when the world’s only risk-free asset — US Treasurys — no longer seem free of risk?



You could buy gold, of course, and that has been working lately: The original inflation hedge is up 40% over the past year.



But an inflation hedge is all gold usually is: Over the last 2,000 years, its real, inflation-adjusted return is approximately 0%.



That will maintain your purchasing power, which is nice, but it won’t help you retire.



Also, you don’t want to be hiding in gold when they start mining it <a href="https://www.astroforge.com">from asteroids</a> or creating it in <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/06f91e0d-3007-40bd-b785-86fef4890809">fusion reactors</a>.



Is bitcoin a better hiding place then?



That, too, has been working: The newest inflation hedge is up 80% over the past year, cementing its reputation as digital gold.



But it’s hard to have a 50-year view on such a new asset.



On that kind of timeline, people as smart as Cliff Asness and Matt Levine can <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhCL4R3JFOc">think</a> that “most of the probability” for bitcoin is “zero.”



Finding investments where most of the probability is not zero is not as easy as it used to be.



Land has been a reliable safe haven over the centuries — they’re not making more of it, as they say.



But in an age of demographic collapse, we might need less of it.



It’s <a href="https://www.2oceansvibe.com/2025/06/18/japan-now-has-over-9-million-empty-homes-due-to-declining-population/">estimated</a> that by the year 2038, one-third of the homes in Japan will be abandoned for lack of anyone to live in them.



I’m not sure land will hold its value when the entire developed world looks like Japan a decade or two from now.



Still, if we’re headed toward monetary debasement in this decade, a portfolio of gold, bitcoin and land is probably a good bet.



But what if this decade turns out to be surprisingly good?



If the real story over the next 10 years or so turns out to be an AI-driven boom in productivity, a portfolio of gold, bitcoin and land might doom you to decades of underperformance (and declining purchasing power).



That is what the researchers at Epoch AI expect: They <a href="https://epoch.ai/gradient-updates/ai-and-explosive-growth-redux">estimate</a> that “even when AIs have only automated 30% of all economically useful tasks, economic growth rates may exceed 20%.”



20%!!!



It’s hard to fathom a world of 20% GDP growth — the US government might even manage to balance its budget in that scenario.&nbsp;



But even that unthinkable outcome may be understating the upside.



The Economist <a href="https://www.economist.com/briefing/2025/07/24/what-if-ai-made-the-worlds-economic-growth-explode">noted</a> this week that growth theorists who attempt to model the progress of technology “have long posited that if ideas beget more ideas with sufficient velocity, growth should increase without limit.” (Emphasis added.)



Sam Altman seems to think that’s where we’re headed: He <a href="https://blog.samaltman.com/the-gentle-singularity">believes</a> AIs will be capable of begetting ideas as soon as next year, and that “2027 may see the arrival of robots that can do tasks in the real world.”



That would put markets on a crazy train to who knows where.



If investors sense that labor will soon be automated out of existence, there will be a mad scramble to secure the largest possible share of the post-labor economy.



“What should you do if you think an explosion in economic growth is coming?” <a href="https://www.economist.com/briefing/2025/07/24/what-if-ai-made-the-worlds-economic-growth-explode">The Economist asks</a>. “The advice that leaps out from the models is simple: own capital, the returns to which are going to skyrocket.”



But not just any capital.



20% growth would likely mean 20% interest rates too, which would destroy the value of your gold, bitcoin, land and any stocks not directly involved in the AI productivity boom.



You’ll have to choose carefully, and maybe sooner than you’d expect.



It’s exhausting to think about. And maybe we shouldn’t.



This week, Anthropic <a href="https://www.perplexity.ai/page/anthropic-research-reveals-ai-nTyemJTvTTGRYTnTHxe4EQ">publicized</a> its findings that AI models suffer from “inverse scaling” — which is to say an AI model that’s given more time to think tends to produce worse results.



AIs think pretty much like humans do, so we too probably suffer from inverse scaling.



If so, now may be the time to follow Ozzy’s advice — in investing and everything else — and try our best to live in the moment.



Let’s check the charts.



AI automation and GDP growth:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfH2qmLItgtT8ZklT3rIsjlFdp35eVT0O-lkzSSMYBS2I7XrU4uTxV8sPpUUuZNgDIgDJNxnUip3IE-MnAdq2g1nK_h20xr0fcaUhPw5eLdT2UirXj80i3-fjufzZOTkJNt1UR4?key=SJg8csv72Yn-2Se_zRC_RA" alt=""/></figure>



Pick your level of AI automation (the X-axis) and this chart from Epoch AI will tell you what level of GDP growth to expect. The TL;DR is that “the fraction of labor tasks automated by AI doesn’t need to be very high to yield very large growth impacts.” Per the chart, if only 20% of tasks are automated, they expect GDP to grow at an unfathomable 10% per year.



Revenge of the dorks:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfGzs_Ic4PfCblfwVv2SLk3uV4cIPaGGE4ei6wziu9zZK_SjTVmQghVjyiKh_4TtgAj8wtybkg6d6g0eRjYztldPjxYH-2d8iIwcYJ6Vith216yVykjVubWuskRh99xhwXiuQAYzQ?key=SJg8csv72Yn-2Se_zRC_RA" alt=""/></figure>



The Reddit gang is back and this time they’re betting on Dunkin Donuts, Opendoor, Rocket Companies and Kohl’s. Why those four? I doubt even an all-knowing AI could make sense of it. But if you think AI is about to take all the jobs, rolling the dice one last time in memestocks may be less irrational than it seems.



There’s a lot of dice rolling right now:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdWzt4H0_qOfRJGkr6CkkdJDnJfWvm2cRInRL9AtvyPArZMWC47l4zFZo1aFxKjJGhPvXrMqXz7AnbOMLYregsxhDQ6tJcWmY1uZG5VQ9456Tl1TXyCIlW3AGzuY9W88VimZ8yf6w?key=SJg8csv72Yn-2Se_zRC_RA" alt=""/></figure>



Data from Goldman Sachs shows that, as a percentage of overall activity, trading volumes in the most speculative stocks have rarely been higher than now. As an <a href="https://x.com/MikeZaccardi/status/1948765446322172298">indicator</a>, that is generally bullish before it’s bearish.



Tariffs have not slowed China’s export boom:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdLvt7-Iqe_f0v83nFvtwV-HwUJ1R2BWhUY5HqMe-W74jliMvScOVBs_wja66Iz2l05DBNcc4mFYuV9ZvzCbQF7StYPmSDXf_-Y5qW7VqkN937GceeQcZI5PApLhILS4Mjh5pPa8g?key=SJg8csv72Yn-2Se_zRC_RA" alt=""/></figure>



The more obvious reason for equities being at all-time highs is that the Liberation Day tariffs were not nearly as disruptive to the global economy as generally feared. China’s exports, for example, continue to boom. That show of strength may be why President Trump is <a href="https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/trump-china-trade-dealmaking-995d7717?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=ASWzDAhRbI_gSMPUJ4LK_077KY05Ndu0WoHsiR_tr4kaKml2BGZmEvt5uTk7io0POT0%3D&amp;gaa_ts=6883d7f6&amp;gaa_sig=8VwkSZsudBXfFLAQLPJkSajI1AzfeEKgEBriqIeolX2rtJOToF1-2UxGGazaL6AtHTMFNkzVFDXK3T7B5Mg6Ug%3D%3D">reportedly</a> more willing to make concessions to get a deal done.



China is flooding the world with cars:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdKA_ht_E1oXcF8sMBRoxpOuezEYJWo0ygYhbC_E9C6-2sy-NDo3uQsHVZH4c3EJP6AvEMbkXbIg1uBzSSPk7v4K8DAMd3y3T1cbFxkux2OMgIPNfxAVh-LfAJfDkZN_KcP8jjZ5w?key=SJg8csv72Yn-2Se_zRC_RA" alt=""/></figure>



I’m glad we still have an auto industry in the US, but if I could buy a high quality EV for <a href="https://insideevs.com/features/761423/byd-seagull-drive-in-china/">$8,000</a>, I would.



Humans remain in demand:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcBRV7lZ8T_Sg7JLVy_rIQtdcxKSXk_Ce5TVIWNxHjdyKGMgHHKy7bhLHQnrbilY8L1MYXpKVvP3_oJaGoll43kMGwB8Fg-dDUyVQtUqDdT_KXQLxkuxf52lZdBv3BJnmOR4SON?key=SJg8csv72Yn-2Se_zRC_RA" alt=""/></figure>



The Atlanta Fed’s wage tracker shows US wages growing at 4.2% — still well in excess of inflation (however measured).



Robots are not taking the jobs yet:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeqxst8YNwHavnhnns88ZaE7j4y2lz08bCbio_WyK3p0Ul9nu93_IHZHMY01g3T7aM0-Fw13veA1DdQk0X8l-NelrPFL_RwaoIpdSxUebApwneEnGDojrSPiVXNRNZCegmG8in-gw?key=SJg8csv72Yn-2Se_zRC_RA" alt=""/></figure>



Against the popular narrative, the FT’s data analysts find that “US jobs at high risk from generative AI have not been more likely to shed young workers since ChatGPT launched.” (So far.)



False alarm:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcUqoOL8gQ7qgbUVpI1AMTmH7P9Vw4JMxAtbh5obXms-ErqsHFiSinS0ow3wciQ3FRO-O1M5pyAWRIC5HFswa-1NkpIoFjJSqhzGcQEMcXSvCjuL96b7eZYNjc9B7dr2FRE0en_Ug?key=SJg8csv72Yn-2Se_zRC_RA" alt=""/></figure>



<a href="https://polymarket.com/event/us-recession-in-2025?tid=1753471341405">Polymarket</a> bettors believe that the odds of the US going into recession this year are down to just 18%.



Comfortably familiar:&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfHu7g8HZ3b3lZYDVnKEp7ddjh17Gyolke0O8x0TVaNaatyqFlR7eB1y0qBGuO47g2RBPcrnpSkEvzgkLDN9nVi0VUE4rLuS0ZsDuZWvvC9diO1lOZ2gyth_BvD4BaTlWw_Wm-RTQ?key=SJg8csv72Yn-2Se_zRC_RA" alt=""/></figure>



The US economy is on pace to grow 2.4% in Q3.&nbsp;



Could we soon be growing at 10x that?



It’s thinkable — but a long way from predictable.



Have a great weekend, productive readers.



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



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The Breakdown Newsletter

Friday charts: Crazy train investing

Ben Strack

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



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



Given the recent GENIUS Act signing and certain firms soon reporting Q2 earnings, it’s as good a time as any for a crypto stock update.&nbsp;



After the stablecoin-focused bill became law, Compass Point analysts downgraded Circle stock from neutral to sell.



Their CRCL price target declined from $205 to $130, according to a Monday note.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Analysts Ed Engel and Abdullah Dilawar anticipated the rally leading up to the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/genius-act-passes-house">GENIUS Act signing</a>, but predicted the “sell-the-news” drop that came. Shares of CRCL were trading around $195 at 1:30 p.m. ET — down 14% in the last five days.



Competing stablecoins products from traditional banks and fintechs will also put pressure on CRCL’s premium valuation, they argued.&nbsp;



While CRCL&#8217;s $53 billion market cap (when the note was published) implied long-term expectations of ~25% market share and ~30% EBITDA margins, the $130 price target assumes 15% longer-term market share and 20% EBITDA margins.



Circle is set to report its second quarter earnings during an Aug. 12 webcast.



Moving on, Jefferies kicked off its coverage of Galaxy Digital on Tuesday with a buy rating and a $35 price target. I missed this while in court at the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/roman-storm-government-may-rest-case">Roman Storm trial</a>.



GLXY’s stock price was just above $30 at 1:30 p.m. ET — up about 12% this week.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Being a “comprehensive provider for institutions seeking digital asset exposure” gives Galaxy an edge over more specialized peers like prime brokerage FalconX, liquidity provider Cumberland, market maker Wintermute and bitcoin-focused firm NYDIG, Jefferies analysts argue.&nbsp;



The GENIUS Act could open up new stablecoin-related business opportunities (like custody or issuance partnerships), they added. <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/us-house-passes-clarity-act">The CLARITY Act</a> would likely contribute to “incremental” revenue opps as institutional players enter the segment.



Beyond that, roughly two-thirds of Galaxy’s enterprise value stems from its data center business, according to Jefferies. The company bought Argo Blockchain’s Helios mining facility in 2022 and is hosting CoreWeave AI and HPC operations there.



We’ll be listening to what Mike Novogratz has to say during Galaxy’s Aug. 5 earnings call.&nbsp;



Before Circle and Galaxy report their earnings next month, Coinbase will share its Q2 results on July 31.&nbsp;



Compass Point analysts, in a July 16 note, increased their Coinbase price target from $195 to $330 (COIN shares traded for ~$395 this afternoon). But it reiterated its neutral rating, rather than opting for “buy.”



Headwinds for the crypto exchange include US trading activity moving toward US ETFs, CME futures and decentralized exchanges. Monthly data from competitors like Robinhood and Exodus affirms weak Q2 trends to that end. 



<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="624" height="321" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdFahGeN_g-af1h7aDPB_19dbDWe4Q0Y8_jK2pMIbNrIcSHdgL7qLbLLhRPpdk6CudaYGu26OGYr9Cdruyy-5G6LEOL6r6f1xVtKCc0HI2psZCas-B2-02kh4isBcqbXTN1r8CzwA?key=MFFChMm_9dlxyWTwVrYrqw">



Compass Point analysts estimate that Coinbase’s transaction revenue decreased 45% quarter over quarter.



“We&#8217;re hesitant toward shorting COIN during a crypto bull market and potential for Fed rate cuts — either from Powell or his successor,” Engel and Dilawar wrote. “However, if rate cuts and CLARITY act are postponed beyond 3Q25, this could pressure COIN&#8217;s valuation amid deteriorating fundamentals.”



Before you go enjoy your weekend (after reading the rest of this newsletter, of course), I’ll mention one other crypto-linked stock that just turned heads with its latest hire.&nbsp;



Nasdaq-listed SharpLink Gaming today <a href="https://x.com/ethereumJoseph/status/1948720039370092831">named</a> Joseph Chalom, BlackRock’s former head of digital asset strategy, as its co-CEO.&nbsp;



You might recognize the SharpLink name. It’s that <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-treasury-strategies-sharplink-eth">Joe Lubin-led company</a> that all of a sudden got really into Ethereum. It held 360,807 ETH, as of July 20. (For more on crypto treasury strategies, consider reading <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/companies-holding-crypto-phase-one">this</a>).&nbsp;&nbsp;



Sharplink’s stock is up about 110% from a month ago, but has dropped roughly 30% in the last week. Crypto equities remain a segment we’ll be watching closely.&nbsp;



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Circle

Crypto stock outlooks fluctuate after GENIUS, ahead of Q2 reports

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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From BOB’s breakthrough hybrid rollup design to VeChain’s TradFi-powered comeback, this week brought a wave of architectural pivots and regulatory advances.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">1. BOB rules</h2>



BOB (Build on Bitcoin) just <a href="https://bob.build/blog/hybrid-zk-rollup">deployed</a> a first-of-its-kind rollup that uses zero-knowledge proofs for fraud resolution within an optimistic rollup framework.&nbsp;



Built with <a href="https://risczero.com/blog/RISC-Zero-OP-Kailua">OP Kailua</a>, a new OP Stack extension by RISC Zero and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/risc-zero-launches-boundless-testnet-base">Boundless</a>, the system enables cheaper, faster fraud challenges — finalized in minutes rather than days.



This novel approach could catapult BOB to Stage 1 and Stage 2 status on <a href="https://l2beat.com/scaling/summary">L2Beat</a>, setting a new bar for trust-minimized <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/unlocking-bitcoin-defi-potential">Bitcoin DeFi</a>. Anyone can challenge a transaction with just 0.5 ETH, drastically lowering the entry point for rollup participation. It’s a breakthrough that combines zk finality with the accessibility of optimistic design.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">2. Summer Optimism</h2>



Optimism’s Upgrade 16 just went live — and not a moment too soon.&nbsp;



L2Beat is <a href="https://x.com/l2beat/status/1935615549809054043">preparing</a> to downgrade any rollup lacking robust fraud-proof governance back to Stage 0 status. The <a href="https://gov.optimism.io/t/successful-upgrade-superchain-upgrade-16-optimism-mainnet/8673">upgrade</a> enables native cross-chain messaging and new bridge contracts, plus a higher gas ceiling (from 200m to 500m) to accommodate rising demand. With chains like <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/base">Base</a> and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/kraken-ethereum-layer-2-superchain">Ink</a> relying on the OP Stack, preserving Stage 1 classification is critical.&nbsp;



If Superchain wants to lead, decentralization can’t remain theoretical. It has to get real.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">3. Much OS, very zk</h2>



In truly-the-funniest-outcome news, Dogecoin devs are <a href="https://github.com/dogecoin/dogecoin/discussions/3869">floating</a> a radical idea: integrate zero-knowledge cryptography directly into the base chain via a system dubbed DogeOS. The goal is to make Dogecoin more than a meme by enabling verifiable computation and smart contract-style capabilities.&nbsp;



If adopted, DogeOS would be one of the first native zk enhancements on a major proof-of-work chain, bringing new utility to a network historically known more for vibes than engineering prowess.



The proposal’s still in early stages, but it marks a notable shift toward tech seriousness in the Doge ecosystem.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">4. Stablecoin alliance</h2>



<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/anchorage-digital">Anchorage Digital</a> and <a href="https://blockworks.co/podcast/0xresearch/ea8714c8-1c84-11f0-b77f-a3c6884d9409">Ethena Labs</a> are <a href="https://www.anchorage.com/blog/anchorage-digital-partners-with-ethena-labs">teaming up</a> to launch the first stablecoin built specifically for the US under the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/genius-act-passes-house">new GENIUS Act</a>. USDtb, currently issued offshore, will now be minted by Anchorage’s federally chartered crypto bank.



Anchorage’s stablecoin platform is designed for institutional-grade compliance and programmability, and Ethena’s USDe has already become the <a href="https://defillama.com/stablecoins">third-largest</a> stablecoin in DeFi by TVL. With this move, USDtb becomes a vehicle for mainstream financial integration, in addition to its DeFi-native appeal.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">5. Expanding the polycule</h2>



Polymarket acquired <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/polymarket-qcex-acquisition">QCEX</a>, a CFTC-registered exchange, effectively clearing a regulatory path into the US market. For longtime observers, this was inevitable.&nbsp;



“Prediction markets are gradually reshaping how people engage with real-world events,” Chiliz’ Max Rabinovitch told Blockworks.&nbsp;



Sports betting is a huge opportunity for the onchain prediction market, particularly after <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6481190/2025/07/10/sports-betting-trump-bill-tax/">provisions</a> in the giant <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-bills-in-congress">spending bill</a> nicknamed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” stand to neuter professional sports gambling. As regulatory clarity improves, Polymarket and others could bridge traditional markets with decentralized prediction infrastructure.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">6. The cross-chain&nbsp;spin cycle</h2>



Centrifuge just <a href="https://centrifuge.io/blog/centrifuge-v3-multichain-launch">launched</a> v3 across six chains (Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Plume and BNB Chain), creating the most interoperable RWA infrastructure to date. Powered by <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/wormhole">Wormhole</a>, this version enables fund managers, DAOs and fintechs to launch fully customizable onchain products with native chain abstraction. The platform has already <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/janus-henderson-clo-token-1b">secured</a> a $1b allocation from Janus Henderson via Grove. With v3, Centrifuge is bridging DeFi-native capital and institutional-grade financial products in one unified stack.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">7. Might as well Jump</h2>



<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-chain-running-pure-firedancer">A new L1</a> from ex-Citadel and Jump traders has gone live with a 40ms block time and a fully integrated trading stack.&nbsp;



Built on SVM with enshrined dapps like Ambient and Fluxbeam, Fogo positions itself as a performance-maximized, Hyperliquid-style platform — but ostensibly without sacrificing decentralization.&nbsp;



While the tech stack is fresh, the competitive field is anything but empty. Newcomers like Lighter, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ostium-dex-points-rwa-arbitrum">Ostium</a>, Reya and Main.Exchange all want a piece of the perps pie. Fogo’s bet? That TradFi-grade latency and native infra will pull top traders into its orbit.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">8. VeChain staking program </h2>



2017-era ICO darling VeChain is reintroducing itself to the world with a $15m <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/vechain-launches-15m-stargate-staking-program-following-sec-crypto-guidance-302186226.html">staking program</a> and a suite of TradFi partnerships. <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/bitgo">BitGo</a> is onboard for custody, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/franklin-templeton">Franklin Templeton</a> is <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/franklin-templeton-benji-vechain-enterprise-payments">integrating</a> BENJI and validator management now includes <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/keyrock-launches-us-entity">Keyrock</a>.&nbsp;



The newly launched StarGate staking system uses NFTs to simplify compliance and reward participation — right as the SEC is pondering staking clarity. It’s all part of VeChain’s “Renaissance” <a href="https://x.com/vechainofficial/status/1877403277564014950?lang=en">upgrade</a> aimed at modernizing tokenomics, improving developer UX and getting institutions back onchain.&nbsp;



Can a legacy L1 regain relevance in the age of limitless appchains and well-funded competitors? Watch this space.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">9. Going Ape</h2>



GameSquare (Nasdaq: $GAME) has <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/gamesquare-acquires-iconic-cowboy-ape-cryptopunk-from-defi-pioneer-robert-leshner-302513150.html">acquired</a> CryptoPunk #5577 — <a href="https://cryptopunks.app/cryptopunks/details/5577">the “Cowboy Ape”</a> — from Robert Leshner in a $5.15 million equity deal. It’s the first NFT-for-equity treasury play by a public company, and part of GameSquare’s larger strategy is to integrate digital assets across brand, treasury and yield products.&nbsp;



Leshner, meanwhile, has recently attempted a contested takeover of Liquor House (LQR), which <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/liqour-house-adopts-poison-pill-defend-against-robert-leshner-bid-2025-06-14/">stalled</a> after a poison pill defense.&nbsp;



With this move, he exits one of the most iconic Punks and joins GameSquare’s cap table instead.



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</ul>

0xResearch Newsletter

ZK breakthroughs, onchain comebacks and stablecoin shakeups

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>.



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



Bitcoin news (and crypto news more broadly) has clearly defined tropes. But they aren’t static.&nbsp;



Tropey headlines tend to play on our base instincts. Fraud stories were historically a go-to for legacy and mainstream outlets looking for a quick hit about crypto — “Bitcoin Thief Allegedly Bought Royalty Rights to Rap Songs, Has Middling Taste” from <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/bitcoin-thief-allegedly-bought-royalty-rights-to-rap-songs-has-middling-taste/">VICE</a> in 2019 is a prime example.&nbsp;



That story, and others like it, had <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-fraud-financial-scam">less to do with Bitcoin</a> and more to do with crime, but the crime itself wasn’t particularly interesting. Bitcoin brought the novelty factor to an otherwise-dull low-level crime. Consider your click harvested!



Over time, those types of stories have given way to a trope more relevant to bitcoin holders: “Old whale moves coins for the first time in ages.”



The most recent iteration has played out this month. Across two weeks, an address dormant since 2011 transferred a total of 80,009 BTC ($9.3 billion) to Galaxy Digital.&nbsp;



Come this morning, Galaxy had directed more than 10,000 BTC ($1.2 billion) to a number of exchanges across an eight-hour period.&nbsp;



The price of bitcoin slid nearly 2.5%, from about $118,000 to under $115,300, before recovering slightly.



<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">Update:<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/GalaxyDigital?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#GalaxyDigital</a> has transferred nearly 30,000 <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24BTC&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$BTC</a>($3.5B) out today, most of which went directly to exchanges and were sold. Then <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/GalaxyDigital?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#GalaxyDigital</a> withdrew 1.15B <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24USDT&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$USDT</a> from exchanges.<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/GalaxyDigital?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#GalaxyDigital</a> still holds 18,504 <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24BTC&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$BTC</a>($2.14B).<a href="https://t.co/bVtNwP2iXI">https://t.co/bVtNwP2iXI</a> <a href="https://t.co/Wv1cD3aHbf">pic.twitter.com/Wv1cD3aHbf</a>&mdash; Lookonchain (@lookonchain) <a href="https://twitter.com/lookonchain/status/1948665986573631687?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 25, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Around the same time, a separate whale awoke to <a href="https://news.bitcoin.com/2011-bitcoin-whale-wakes-after-14-years-moves-470m-but-why-now/">move</a> almost 3,963 BTC ($462.5 million) between addresses, although at this point it doesn’t appear to have made it to any exchanges.



We don’t usually get any closure when these types of transfers happen. In the past five years or so, there have been at least a dozen other instances of dormant Bitcoiners awakening to shuffle coins amounting to over 195,400 BTC ($22.8 billion) when combined, by my very quick count.



Of that dozen, only three are believed to have led to coins actually being sold on exchanges, including this morning’s situation with Galaxy. The possibility does exist that each of the others were peer-to-peer, over-the-counter sales, but we’ll never know for sure.



Still, the “dormant whale moves bitcoin” trope is the perfect blend of feel-good and abject terror.&nbsp;



We’ve all heard the horror stories about <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74zel3ng1vo">lost private keys</a> to bitcoin fortunes, and maybe even lived a few of them ourselves. Hearing about old coins being accessed for the first time in a&nbsp; decade is the great antidote.



Meanwhile, the notion that the 30% of all coins which haven’t <a href="https://cryptoquant.com/asset/btc/chart/network-indicator/utxo-age-bands-percent?window=DAY&amp;priceScale=log&amp;metricScale=linear">moved</a> in at least five years — almost six million BTC, worth $696 billion — might one day be suddenly sold is a little scary, depending on how heavy one’s bags are.



Which makes for perfect clickbait, no matter how scant the details.



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

Bitcoin

Bitcoin whales are waking up — it’s perfect clickbait

Katherine Ross

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



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



“Animal spirits are definitely back in the market,” Empire co-host Jason Yanowitz told Dragonfly’s Rob Hadick on <a href="https://blockworks.co/podcast/empire/7900066a-68de-11f0-80af-3b985c1e852b">this week’s Round Up</a>.&nbsp;



If you’re not super familiar with the term, it’s basically saying that human emotions and behaviors are driving the market action rather than fundamentals or technicals.&nbsp;



Hadick noted that the rise of animal spirits is interesting given that retail “hasn’t been back in a long time.” And folks are eager to invest.&nbsp;



But it looks like, to Hadick’s eye, that the frothiness is coming down, and he wouldn’t necessarily be surprised to see either a bottom or less volatility happen in the next few weeks. He also noted that, seasonally, August is not great for markets, which could have an impact on crypto.&nbsp;



Now let’s take a look at pump.fun after, well, not such a fun week for the token.&nbsp;



Hadick noted that there was concern about liquid fund demand even before this week, because he’d heard that the team “had told people they were going to raise $250 million from the liquid funds and then the rest was going to be to retail. And then when they released the tokens, it looked like it was more like $770 million to liquid funds.”



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Don’t Overtrade The Retail Cycle | Weekly Roundup" width="1024" height="576" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ATnR23lHUzA?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div></figure>



“That alone had raised people&#8217;s concern that there just wasn&#8217;t liquid fund demand anymore. Everybody had gotten filled on the demand they had. And so when it launched, there was an expectation that frankly [with] everybody there, there was no buyer left who had real size. And I think we&#8217;ve seen that play out pretty significantly,” he said.



And then there’s the fact that pump.fun founder Alon Cohen said that the airdrop wasn’t coming anytime soon in an <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/threadguy">interview</a> with Thread Guy earlier this week.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXehh3wDomdeGnrAw1sQ7pS2znQjYUBExU8TMO1kivOxhLSFT5udJVivsoihggBpO0DMmsPfnBN8Wd9zvJWPUhgVLLj7hkXOPIyFaSa3yo99hS0wmbMZnkXsqUdMVnKC6YFQYv95iw?key=KW6dZVYy0C2VEe-QoFiT_A" alt="" style="width:619px;height:auto"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A look at the price action of Pump’s token, courtesy of Blockworks Research</figcaption></figure>



And, as folks recalibrate their expectations, Hadick noted that there seems to be more interest in pump.fun competitors like Bonk than in the OG launchpad. It doesn’t help that there could be a Bonk airdrop, Hadick believes.



“ Bonk is sharing more revenue with the creators. And so there is more demand…or there&#8217;s more incentive from the creators themselves,” Hadick noted.



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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

Animal spirits are ‘back in the market:’ Empire

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



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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
&#8220;I woke up and realized life is great and people are awesome and life is worth living.&#8221;&nbsp;



— Hulk Hogan
</blockquote>



<a href="https://x.com/iampaulgrewal/status/1947394411119448175">Blockchain common stock</a>



In its recent S-1 filing, Figma disclosed that it authorized the issuance of “blockchain common stock,” which it describes as “shares of our capital stock in the form of blockchain tokens.”



Figma is a SaaS company that has no vested interest in crypto, so it seems significant that it’s seriously considering issuing equity in the form of tokens.



That deliberate phrasing matters because equity in the form of tokens is fundamentally different from the “tokenized equity” that people have recently gotten excited about.



The tokenized stocks offered by Robinhood and others are less than they seem: just an onchain receipt for something that remains resolutely off-chain.



Blockchain common stock, however, is issued natively onchain: The token is the equity.



This removes counterparty risk and off-chain dependencies; enables composability (for use in DeFi), programmability (governance or compliance, say, via smart contracts); and potentially broadens access to anyone with a digital wallet.



All of which together should lower the cost of capital formation.



Tokenized stocks are a new form of recordkeeping, but blockchain stocks are a new form of capital markets.



<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/07/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-signs-genius-act-into-law/?utm_source=chatgpt.com">BSA applies to stablecoins (sort of)</a>



Under the heading “Combating Criminal Activity,” a White House statement declares: “The GENIUS Act explicitly subjects stablecoin issuers to the Bank Secrecy Act, thereby clearly obligating them to establish effective anti‑money laundering and sanctions compliance programs with risk assessments, sanctions list verification, and customer identification.&#8221;



It’s overselling it. The Bank Secrecy Act will only apply to the institutions that mint and redeem stablecoins with the issuer — once the tokens are in circulation, they won’t be any more subject to compliance checks than they are now. (Which is not at all, basically.)



It’s like a bar that lets everyone drink as long as the person buying has an ID: KYC one, serve all.



It’s unlikely North Korea was planning to mint USDC with Circle, so applying the Bank Secrecy Act to stablecoins doesn’t make them as compliant as bank deposits.



This is part of what makes stablecoin payments so much cheaper than bank transfers: far fewer compliance people to pay.



<a href="https://www.wsj.com/finance/regulation/banks-pig-butchering-fight-fraud-92c06642?st=XMuwiC">You can sue your bank for doing what you told them to</a>



The Wall Street Journal’s heartbreaking story of an elderly couple losing their entire life savings — over $5 million — to a crypto investment scam is a reminder of why bank transfers are so expensive.



The victim had to switch banks multiple times before he finally found one that would allow him to make transfers as large as $300,000. “It’s his money,” the bank reasoned.&nbsp;



At one of his previous banks, a compliance officer froze his account over a $1,000 transfer because “the name on the Zelle account where he was trying to send money didn’t match the name in the email address he was given.”



The victims are now suing the bank that allowed the transfers, arguing that it should have recognized their customer was being defrauded.



The story suggests most banks probably would have saved the victims from themselves, but that level of compliance is expensive.



<a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.01963">Memecoins are even scammier than you thought</a>



A recent academic study reports that 82.6% of the 34,000 memecoins examined showed evidence of “extensive use of artificial growth strategies designed to create a misleading appearance of market interest.”



Strategies include wash trading, rug pulls, pump-and-dump schemes and the newly discovered “Liquidity Pool-Based Price Inflation” (or LPI).&nbsp;



LPI is where manipulators exploit the constant product formula (x*y=k) of low-liquidity pools on decentralized exchanges to send tokens higher with a shockingly small amount of money: The study finds that, on average, it takes just $54 to send a memecoin 500% higher.



It works for big ones too, because the liquidity in these pools are so low: 88.1% of coins with market caps above $1 billion had just 0.1% of their reported market cap in the pools.



“These findings reveal that manipulations are widespread among high-performing memecoins and suggest that their dramatic gains are often likely driven by coordinated efforts rather than natural market dynamics.”



If you’ve made money in memecoins then, it’s probably because you just happened to be on the right side of the manipulation.



<a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/gamesquare-acquires-iconic-cowboy-ape-cryptopunk-from-defi-pioneer-robert-leshner-302513150.html?tc=eml_cleartime">The first NFT treasury company?</a>



GameSquare, which has a $141 million market cap, has issued $5 million of stock in return for a CryptoPunk NFT as part of “a differentiated treasury management strategy.”



Pretty smart: Crypto is undermining traditional finance from the inside.



<a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/economy/cantor-fitzgerald-offers-to-buy-the-rights-in-potential-refunds-from-companies-that-have-paid-trump-s-tariffs/ar-AA1J1A4I">There’s at least a 30% chance tariffs will be repealed and refunded&nbsp;</a>



Wired reports that Cantor Fitzgerald is paying 20% to 30% for the right to collect a refund on the new tariffs that a US importer has paid since April 2.&nbsp;



Cantor has reportedly told customers they have “the capacity to trade up to several hundred million of these.”



By “trade,” I imagine it means “buy,” so the 20% to 30% it’s offering is one indication that the president’s post-Liberation Day tariffs will be repealed and refunded.



Cantor’s offer probably understates the odds, since it has to add in something for the time value of money, collection risk and its own risk-adjusted return.



Either way, Cantor is in a good position to judge because it’s run by the two sons of the pro-tariff Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.



(Lutnick&#8217;s sons, Kyle and Brandon, are both in their 20s, so it’s fair to suspect he still keeps tabs on the company.)



That is an obvious conflict of interest, but maybe a useful one: Market prices are more informative when insiders are allowed to trade.



<a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/xrp">XRP hits an all-time high</a>



Ripple’s XRP token now has a fully diluted value of over $300 billion.



This seems like a lot given the still <a href="https://messari.io/report/state-of-xrp-ledger-q1-2025">modest amount of activity</a> on the XRP Ledger more than a decade after its launch.



A decade seems like plenty of time to execute on any business plan, and Ripple has so far failed to replace SWIFT as the settlement layer for cross-border payments.



Maybe it was just early and now is the time. (You can do a lot with a $300 billion market valuation.)



In other asset classes, however, “early” is almost always synonymous with “wrong.”



I take the new highs in XRP as evidence that in crypto, you can be wrong for an unusually long time.



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Thursday links: Blockchain stocks, barroom compliance and NFT treasuries

Jack Kubinec

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



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Solana is $200! Wait, no it’s not. Wait, yes it is. Wait, no it’s not.



We’re more than halfway into what may prove to be Solana’s most memorable year to date. And my, how fast the year is going by! 



Before it slips away altogether, here are my five biggest Solana moments of 2025 thus far:



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">5. Raydium spins up its own launchpad</h2>



In February, news slowly trickled out that the Solana memecoin cash cow pump.fun was going to be ending its unofficial partnership with Raydium and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/pumpdotfun-ditching-raydium-rumor">launching an AMM</a> of its own.



This closed what had been a very lucrative pairing for Raydium, which had made tens of millions of dollars from pump.fun tokens to that point.



So, Raydium swung back and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/raydium-launching-pumpfun-version">created a memecoin launchpad</a> of its own. After a slow start, the gambit seems to be working: Raydium-supported letsbonk.fun <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/solana/?dashboard=339">raced</a> to over 50% of launchpad market share two weeks ago.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">4. Pump.fun announces a token</h2>



When I started hearing pump.fun wanted to raise $1 billion by selling a token, first I went “What?”, and then I went, “Huh?”



Sure enough, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/pumpdotfun-token-sale">we first reported</a> that the ICO would be carried out at a $4 billion valuation. Many complained that the action was extractive from a business that has already generated nearly a billion dollars in trading fees.&nbsp;



But the market didn’t mind too much: pump.fun exceeded $1 billion in private and public sales for PUMP when all was said and done.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">3. SIMD-228 defeated</h2>



In January, Multicoin Capital’s Tushar Jain <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oyb7I-Ptayw">came on Lightspeed</a> to pitch SIMD-0228, a proposal to cut Solana’s token inflation rate and introduce a market-based inflation mechanism.&nbsp;



This was the most voted-on Solana proposal ever, and a number of smaller validators were concerned about tighter margins stemming from fewer inflation rewards. Others expressed worries about uncertain outcomes the proposal may have created.



In the end, somewhat surprisingly, the proposal — which had support from several key figures in Solana — <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/what-simd-0228-failing-means-for-solana">failed to pass</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">2. Trump launches a memecoin</h2>



It’s tough to top this one. On Friday night before his inauguration, the incoming POTUS <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/trump-memecoins-rock-solana">launched a memecoin</a> on Solana.



Solana experienced severe congestion as traders raced to buy the coin, and SOL climbed to an all-time high. The token had interesting downstream effects, like <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-stablecoin-supply-soars">suddenly spiking</a> Solana’s USDC supply.&nbsp;



Solana folks generally take pride in the fact that although many of us wish he had not launched a memecoin at all, at least Donald Trump launched his memecoin on Solana.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">1. Alpenglow</h2>



At the Solana Accelerate conference in May, Anza announced Solana’s biggest upgrade ever: Alpenglow.



Interestingly, this project <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN5Novxjybs">got started</a> when researchers wrote a paper exploring some problems with Solana consensus, and Anza hired them to come fix it.



The end result <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-alpenglow-next-gen-consensus-layer-speed">claims to be</a> a 100x <a href="https://www.helius.dev/blog/alpenglow">reduction</a> in block finality and the end of <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-proof-of-history">proof-of-history</a> as we know it. It could be live as soon as December, making Solana run ever faster. 



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History

5 biggest Solana moments of 2025 (so far)

Felix Jauvin

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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This morning, I had the good fortune of interviewing Jens Nordvig.



The interview will be <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@ForwardGuidanceBW/videos">out tomorrow</a>, but I wanted to give a teaser around something incredibly important: Fed independence.



Nordvig is the founder of Exante Data and was previously managing director at Goldman Sachs, senior investment associate at Bridgewater, and head of fixed income research at Nomura.&nbsp;



At this point, everyone knows that President Trump <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/trump-criticizes-fed-chair-powell">doesn’t like</a> Jerome Powell very much and thinks interest rates should be <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/inflation-data-trump-tariffs-july">meaningfully lower</a>.&nbsp;



Specifically, the lens of criticism has shifted from the traditional dual mandate of the Fed — stable prices and maximum employment — toward what fiscal authorities view as a more relevant mandate, managing the debt load of the US government. One of the key arguments being made is that the Fed should lower interest rates so that interest payments on US debt come lower, thereby lowering the fiscal deficit.&nbsp;



This subordination of monetary policy to fiscal priorities of debt load management is what I view as the more correct definition of fiscal dominance.&nbsp;



Fiscal authorities set policy, and monetary authorities are there simply to make it the least painful. Nothing more, nothing less.



The last time that this happened was in the 1940s, when the Fed formally employed yield-curve control to cap rates at certain levels and its primary purpose was to buy US debt and manage the debt load. This regime ended in earnest with the Fed Treasury accord of 1951, which reinstilled Fed independence. Ever since those accords, we’ve been in an era of monetary dominance.&nbsp;



We are now in the early innings of this transition.



The primary risk associated with <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/fed-independence-in-question">dwindling Fed independence</a> is the potential for inflation expectations to become unanchored. In simple words, this looks like inflation concerns being instilled in society and a common realization that the Fed cannot get a meaningful handle on those inflation expectations.&nbsp;



In practice, the traditional goal of central banks having a 2% target for inflation serves as a codified intention to prevent inflation expectations becoming unanchored.



Unfortunately, this slow but steady erosion of Fed independence by the Trump administration is already beginning to percolate into inflation expectations, and the risk of these becoming unanchored is increasing meaningfully.&nbsp;



Jens brought a fascinating chart to our discussion that highlights this emerging dynamic.&nbsp;



The chart below shows the cumulative and predicted changes in five-year US breakeven rates, both as predicted by changes in oil and independent variables:



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXesmf-ygloOZuq3KuyehPt-4RyrujDC5xiAuKLpbd7cc5KU_Yebh1W4kEuk_RE2hMaUKRDzCZNLA58f2O0_P-Re2LvB-W_tAj_LII3UBcJj3aQN9_pFghBpfC1sMR3UkbzquQcZ?key=b5MFdWxy17gqX0PVMAkv4g" alt="" style="width:649px;height:auto"/></figure>



Typically, breakevens track the price of oil since it’s the largest driver of inflation. What’s concerning right now is that breakevens are surging while oil is hardly moving and, if anything, is declining.&nbsp;



In Jens’ view, this is a distillation of the market beginning to price-in, and become concerned with, inflation expectations becoming unanchored as Fed independence erodes. 



With <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/fomc-june-powell-term-end">Powell’s term ending</a> in the winter of 2026, keep an eye on this market and whether this concern accelerates. The bedrock of the financial system depends on these expectations remaining well-anchored.



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Federal Reserve

How inflation breakevens signal eroding Fed independence

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



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Ethereum’s validator exit queue surged past 475,000 validators this week, pushing the unstaking wait time to nine days — the second-longest in Ethereum’s post-Merge history. Galaxy Digital Research <a href="https://www.galaxy.com/insights/research/why-eth-unstaking-queue-swelled">attributes</a> the spike to a cascading unwind in liquid staking token (LST) leverage. Its report traces the stress to one trader’s large capital rotation: “This volatility was driven by a sharp reduction in ETH supply on Aave, initiated by large withdrawals from the platform by a wallet tagged to the HTX exchange [formerly Huobi].”



That liquidity removal sent Aave’s ETH borrow rates <a href="https://x.com/JackMandin/status/1947799861308625353">soaring</a> from ~3% to over 18%. The result? Negative carry for stETH loopers — users who recursively borrow ETH to buy more stETH.



Galaxy notes that when rates jumped over 10%, leveraged positions became unprofitable, prompting a mass unwind.



This unwind played out through two channels. Some loopers sold stETH on AMMs, pushing the peg down by 30-60 basis points. Others opted for validator redemption, leading to the massive queue buildup. Although May’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-pectra-fork-live">Pectra upgrade</a> lifted the fixed churn cap — raising today’s allowance to roughly 12 exits per epoch — the wave of withdrawal requests still overwhelmed that higher limit, pushing the queue out to more than nine days.



That delay created a feedback loop: With redemption time rising, arbitrageurs now require higher yields to justify holding depegged stETH. As Cork Protocol’s Robdog.eth <a href="https://x.com/robdogeth/status/1948033585404878957">explained</a>, “the annualized yield of [buying stETH at a discount and redeeming] with a nine-day delay is 25%, which…is fairly profitable. If the queue becomes 18 days instead of nine, the arbitrage take rate becomes 100-110 bps.”



Importantly, the unwind hasn’t tanked ETH itself. ETH spot ETF flows <a href="https://farside.co.uk/eth/">remained strong</a>, with $300 to $600 million in daily inflows over the past week. That demand absorbed much of the selling pressure.&nbsp;



“Investor appetite for the two biggest blockchains is undeniable,” Dom Harz, co-founder of hybrid L2 BOB, told Blockworks. “ETH is outperforming the original blockchain so far this month.”



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfivuARuM424RwyJgUamU2U68uPF9STzHaJ57yzzDRZdc389VL40PgeyvrNmRhqrZRNmM8eOFkCnG4Jilgb8jRV-FLgNl2SBk58QSTENvX1O8Q8C_O9tOIgO4tpCkD9m_KqtjDOYQ?key=B-5jFzKQMHOXbOEGFSWq6A" alt=""/></figure>



Source: <a href="https://blockworks.co/analytics/crypto-etfs">Blockworks Research</a>



Some traders have speculated that the depeg may also reflect spot ETH scarcity at OTC desks as institutional <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/year-old-us-ether-etfs">demand via ETFs intensifies</a>. Wintermute’s CEO <a href="https://x.com/EvgenyGaevoy/status/1945596541193818187">noted</a> a week ago that its books were “virtually out of ETH,” prompting concerns that funds are sourcing ETH by dumping stETH. While plausible at the margin, onchain flows and redemption patterns suggest leveraged stETH loop unwinds remain the dominant driver, with OTC demand playing, at most, a secondary role.



Still, the event underscores a chronic weak point in Ethereum’s liquid staking stack. The <a href="https://dune.com/oasisapp/steth-eth-peg-history">stETH/ETH peg</a> remains around 0.995, while onchain AMM liquidity for stETH dropped from $280 million to $180 million. Most major lending protocols (like Aave and Maker) use stETH’s redemption oracle, not market price — shielding users from immediate liquidations. But if the queue stretches further, slow-burning interest accrual could start forcing more severe deleveraging.



Galaxy Research frames this episode as a warning shot. “[T]his episode highlights the continued fragility of the ETH liquid staking and restaking ecosystem,” the report notes. It calls for design improvements like peer-to-peer exit markets, rate smoothing and fixed-term vaults to reduce reliance on redemption queues.



The loopers, meanwhile, are caught in what one analyst called a “trilemma”: Accept a 5-6% loss by selling at a discount, wait nine-plus days while paying high interest, or hold and pray rates fall.&nbsp;



Said Robdog.eth: “These guys thought the stETH looping trade was free money and now they are stuck between a rock and a hard place.”



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Ethereum stakers face 9-day wait as stETH loops fall into the red

The US government expects to rest its case against Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm on Thursday following yesterday’s anticipated testimony from an expert witness.



The defense is set to counter the prosecution’s efforts to show Storm could have better guarded against “bad actors” using Tornado Cash — the crypto mixer used for transaction privacy around which this case centers.



IRS Criminal Investigation special agent Stephan George took the stand to share findings that appeared to link a portion of the funds stolen from Hanfeng Lin to Tornado Cash.&nbsp;



Lin testified last week that a fraud recovery service told her to contact Tornado Cash about retrieving her funds. The defense was <a href="https://www.therage.co/tornado-cash-mistrial-hangfeng-lin/">reportedly</a> considering a mistrial motion after a subsequent witness, FBI Special Agent Joel DeCapua, didn’t link Lin’s funds to Tornado Cash — putting the relevance of Lin’s testimony in question.



But George said Wednesday he used public blockchain data — along with Chainalysis Reactor and TRM Labs — to find that a portion of Lin’s stolen funds that left Crypto.com ultimately went to Tornado Cash in November of 2021. 



He used an accounting method known as Last In, First Out (LIFO) — which assumes the disposal of crypto acquired most recently. When defense attorney Keri Axel challenged LIFO during cross-examination, George defended the method as a generally accepted accounting principle that the IRS “respects.”



Axel’s cross-examination of George was set to continue Thursday morning.&nbsp;&nbsp;



While the possibility of a mistrial was briefly mentioned in court Tuesday, the defense did not immediately comment about whether that’s still being considered.&nbsp;



&#8220;It&#8217;s usually not the situation that a trial is declared a mistrial merely because a witness&#8217;s testimony is not entirely germane,” Patrick Gruhn, a former partner at Crypto Lawyers LLC and FTX’s ex-head of Europe, told Blockworks. “Courts generally expect a lot more — egregious misconduct or prejudicial facts against the jury — before they suspend a trial.”



Though George linking Lin’s funds to Tornado Cash was an attempt by prosecutors to clear up a point of contention that arose, the charges against Storm go well beyond that.&nbsp;



At the heart of this case is whether Storm essentially helped criminals — such as North Korean state-sponsored hackers, The Lazarus Group — hide stolen funds, as the government alleges. He is charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to commit sanctions violations, and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business.



Key questions of the case, as shared in opening statements last week, include whether Tornado Cash was immutable and if the developer is responsible for how software is used.



Defense attorney Keri Axel said in her opening statement: “It’s not a crime to make a useful thing that is misused.”



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/roman-storm-trial-opening-statements">‘He lied’: US government makes opening plea to jury in Roman Storm trial</a>



After the jury left the courtroom on Wednesday afternoon, the prosecution told Judge Katherine Polk Failla that it had two witnesses remaining and could wrap up by Thursday morning.&nbsp;



Though the defense had not finalized its slate of witnesses before the court let out on Wednesday, Storm’s attorneys said they could rest their case as soon as Monday. Storm has not yet decided whether he will take the stand, they added.



“I assume you don’t have a hacker testifying,” Failla quipped. “That would be interesting.”&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Hacker takes the stand</h2>



The prosecution did put a hacker on the stand on Tuesday. That was Shakeeb Ahmed, who is currently serving a three-year sentence after <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/former-security-engineer-sentenced-three-years-prison-hacking-two-decentralized">pleading</a> guilty to computer fraud last year. Ahmed, a former technical lead in Amazon’s bug-bounty program, detailed how he stole $12 million worth of crypto from exchanges Crema and Nirvana in 2022.



He put his own funds into a Tornado Cash pool to “anonymize” them before using a third party — known as a relayer — to withdraw them. He then went on to hack the Crema exchange. He did not use Tornado Cash at any point leading up to, or after, he hacked the Nirvana exchange.



The defense, during cross-examination, made clear to the jury that Ahmed never put stolen funds into Tornado Cash.&nbsp;



“You didn’t use Tornado Cash for the [hack] proceeds?” defense attorney David Patton asked.&nbsp;



“Correct,” Ahmed said.



Patton also asked whether Ahmed ever communicated with Storm and the other Tornado Cash founders, or conspired with them to commit crimes.



“I did not,” Ahmed noted.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Questioning Tornado Cash’s design choice</h2>



The prosecution sought to establish, through another witness, that Storm — along with Tornado Cash co-founders Roman Semenov and Alexey Pertsev — could have made changes to the protocol to guard against bad actors using it.&nbsp;



The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) deemed the Lazarus Group responsible for the $625 million Ronin Bridge hack in March 2022 and sanctioned the entity. Tornado Cash <a href="https://x.com/TornadoCash/status/1514904975037669386">said</a> the following month that it was using a Chainalysis oracle contract “to block OFAC-sanctioned addresses from accessing the dapp.”



Philip Werlau, an investigator at AnChain.AI, testified that — while that blocked sanctioned entities from using Tornado Cash’s web application — founders did not implement this control for deposits made via its Command Line Interface (CLI).&nbsp;



“If there are two doors to a building and you only close one, you’re not preventing access,” Werlau said.



Werlau also explained how Tornado Cash could have maintained an offchain registry with users’ personal info collected through a username-password system.



Anticipating this testimony, defense attorneys noted to the judge earlier that day that while Tornado Cash could have been designed differently, that doesn’t mean what Storm built was illegal.



This sentiment came out during the cross-examination, when defense attorney Brian Klein raised his voice — asking Werlau if one reason to make pools immutable would be to make them less subject to hacks. That could reduce the ways a pool could be attacked, Werlau acknowledged.&nbsp;



Klein then asked Werlau if he provides personal info when he uses the Ethereum blockchain.



As Werlau paused to think, Klein rephrased, almost shouting: “There’s nothing like the registry you proposed, is there?”&nbsp;



“That is correct.”



Werlau, seemingly uncomfortable with the confrontation, looked up at the clock. A break for lunch was not far off.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The scene and the stakes</h2>



This writer sat 20 or so feet from Storm over the last two days, even passing him during breaks en route to the bathroom and elsewhere. The Tornado Cash founder appears calm, but walks with pace.



Sitting next to Axel on the courtroom’s left side, Storm often gazes toward the judge, stand and jury, stone-faced, blinking infrequently behind his glasses. Occasionally, he will scribble something on a Post-It and hand it to a member of his defense team. This writer did not once see Storm roll his eyes or shake his head.&nbsp;



Trial attendance ranged from roughly a dozen to two dozen people on Tuesday and Wednesday — meaning there are plenty of empty seats.&nbsp;



While not as high-profile a case as the Sam Bankman-Fried trial, Blockchain Association legal head Marisa Coppel noted its outcome will shape how developers, regulators and policymakers navigate the future of crypto innovation.



“A conviction could set a dangerous precedent by criminalizing the act of writing and publishing open-source code, amplifying fears among US developers and pushing innovation offshore,” she told Blockworks. “An acquittal, by contrast, may reaffirm that software creation alone isn’t a crime and could help restore confidence in building decentralized tools.”



Keep an eye on Blockworks for more <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/roman-storm">Roman Storm trial updates</a>. 



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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>

Cybersecurity

Hacker, IRS agent take Storm trial stand as government winds down case

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



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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“Anything that won&#8217;t sell, I don&#8217;t want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility.”



— Thomas Edison
</blockquote>



The first idea that put Helium co-founders Amir Haleem and Shawn Fanning (of Napster fame) on the long road to building a decentralized, crypto-powered mobile network had nothing to do with decentralization, crypto or mobile networks.



Instead, they were looking for a way to keep track of the very expensive drones they kept losing over windy San Francisco.



It’s not surprising that it turned into something else — the tech industry has a rich history of unintended consequences resulting from such brainstorming.



YouTube was launched on Valentine’s Day, 2005, as a video-based dating site: “Tune in, hook up.”&nbsp;



Shopify began as a website selling snowboards.



Instagram was originally a location check-in app called Burbn.



This is why it’s commonplace for VCs to say that they invest in founders, not ideas.



They have no alternative, really.&nbsp;



“In the beginning of a startup,” Marc Andreessen notes, “you know a lot more about the team than you do the product, which hasn’t been built yet.”



The job of early-stage funding is to give founders room to wander their way to a product.



In the case of Helium, that wandering process was funded by crypto enthusiasts.



Founded way back in 2012, Helium has long been one of the few examples crypto enthusiasts could cite as evidence the industry might produce something other than yet more ways to trade crypto.



For most of that time, it remained an aspirational example.&nbsp;



Helium’s original business plan (inspired by those lost drones) was to use crypto tokens to crowdsource the buildout of a wireless network for sensors, trackers and other “internet of things” gadgets.



It succeeded: The network is up and running. 



But it hasn’t generated the kind of revenue that Thomas Edison would say proves its utility.&nbsp;



Also, the internet of things isn’t much of a topic anymore.



Helium’s pivot to mobile services, however, is becoming more and more of one — and recent sales are proof that the network which has been built has utility.



In a recent <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/flashnotes/helium-halving-tailwinds#forward-outlook">report</a> for Blockworks Research, <a href="https://x.com/0xMetaLight">Nick Carpinito</a> cites the “explosive growth in Data Credit (DC) burn” as a reason to be optimistic about both Helium and its token, HNT.



Data credits are how users pay to access the Helium network, so their “burn” is one measure of how useful they think the network is.



They appear to be finding it more and more useful: “The monthly DC burn rate attributed to mobile usage recently surged from ~$189,000 in early March 2025 to ~$361,000 in June 2025,” Carpinito wrote.



Most of that comes from carriers like AT&amp;T and T-Mobile which pay to route traffic through Helium hotspots when their customers lose signal indoors.



This is a cheaper, more effective way for the carriers to provide coverage in buildings that their cell towers struggle to penetrate. It’s a rare example of real-world companies paying to use something built with crypto-based incentives.



But it’s not just about token incentives.&nbsp;



When a customer of, say, AT&amp;T connects to the Helium network, a Solana-based smart contract keeps a record of how much data is transferred and then facilitates payment (in the HNT token), between two crypto wallets.



Sometimes this is facilitated by Nova Labs, the company that developed the Helium network, but the smart contracts are open to anyone who wants to integrate directly with the network, as I’m told Telefonica is now doing in Mexico.



This, I think, is crypto at its best: enabling all-new economic activity, incentivized with tokens, that’s managed on a blockchain and accessible to anyone.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">You can’t beat free</h2>



In his note for Blockworks, Carpinito focuses mostly on carrier offload as a source of growth for Helium.



But Frank Mong of Nova Labs, the company that developed the Helium network, seems more excited about the plans that Helium Mobile offers to individuals.



In a recent conversation, Mong (who also related the above drone anecdote to me) highlighted that Helium Mobile has recently been adding as many as 2,000 subscribers a day.



Importantly, the cost to Helium Mobile of acquiring these customers has been unusually low: just $10 to $15 per customer, according to Mong — vs. the $100+ that it costs its traditional competitors.



“There’s magic here,” Mong told me.



It’s not hard to figure out the trick, though: Helium offers a free mobile plan.



(It might even be less than free, after earning rewards for data sharing.)



I assume that’s a loss leader for Nova Labs, which runs Helium Mobile, but those are all customers who can be upsold on paid plans or monetized in other ways.



Mong’s near-term ambition is to get to a million such customers using the Helium-branded network, and also a million gateways providing the WiFi they connect to.



That would still be small, relative to telco giants like AT&amp;T and T-Mobile, but huge by crypto standards.



Mong is not measuring Helium as a crypto business, however.



“I think we can dominate the telco industry,” he told me.



And maybe other things too.



“Our aspirations are bigger than providing internet access,” Mong told me.



He wouldn’t be pressed on specifics, which is wise: The history of tech startups demonstrates that they rarely go where their founders expect them to.



Also, this is crypto: You can just build a network and see what people do with it.



Helium has invented something that sells (to paraphrase Edison), and that is much needed proof that crypto can have real utility.



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



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



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



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



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



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



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

How Helium demonstrates crypto’s utility

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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Ether ETFs <a href="http://v">launched in the US</a> one year ago today. Time flies.&nbsp;



While these products (unlike bitcoin ETFs) struggled to find consistent inflows out of the gate, this month has been a different story.&nbsp;



The ETH funds have attracted $3.6 billion of net capital from July 1 to July 22, Farside Investors <a href="https://farside.co.uk/ethereum-etf-flow-all-data/">data</a> shows.&nbsp;



The segment’s $2.1 billion of inflows last week was nearly double its previous record of $1.2 billion. As CoinShares’ James Butterfill pointed out in a Monday <a href="https://blog.coinshares.com/volume-243-digital-asset-fund-flows-weekly-report-391af81ba1ba">report</a>, the past 13 weeks of inflows represent 23% of the ETH products’ AUM.&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">2/ The daily flow data reveals sustained demand. The peak was reached on July 16 with a record $726.6 million single-day inflow. This momentum was maintained with multiple days exceeding $400M, showcasing consistent institutional accumulation throughout the month. <a href="https://t.co/lONtGlgrDh">pic.twitter.com/lONtGlgrDh</a>&mdash; Blockworks Research (@blockworksres) <a href="https://twitter.com/blockworksres/status/1947340860397596978?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 21, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Institutional demand — rather than just speculative trading — has helped fuel the latest inflows. Corporate treasuries have added more than 600,000 ETH to their balance sheets this month alone, according to Blockworks Research.



Perhaps you remember that Nasdaq-listed SharpLink Gaming in May revealed its <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-treasury-strategies-sharplink-eth">ether treasury strategy</a> (and named Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin its board chair). The company’s ether holdings were 360,807 ETH as of July 20 — up 29% from a week prior.&nbsp;



BitMine last week said it held roughly $1 billion of ether and has a goal of acquiring and staking 5% of the overall ETH supply.



Globe 3 Capital CIO Matt Lason previously told me that ETH’s combination of scarcity, deflation and yield makes it an ideal asset for a treasury strategy. SharpLink’s ETH staking rewards rose to 567 ETH since it launched the strategy on June 2.



Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan highlighted in a Tuesday <a href="https://experts.bitwiseinvestments.com/cio-memos/the-ethereum-demand-shock">memo</a> that ETPs and public companies have combined to buy 2.83 million ETH (worth ~$10 billion today) since mid-May. That’s 32x the increase in ETH’s supply over that span, he said.



So it’s not surprising that ETH’s price has jumped about 60% over the last month.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXevEo7hM-FXkZlPcC2j3WZ7m2Jiw0dvDGLxU-tlbIAjgMmuIp58kfBiqm1R2_bfPhf6d-sieoJJuxwlZJqEhi0kUgi_dHRzSYhIGmpwZ6ZtYBSa-1S3W7HiPMj2vpydkUfNwFqr4A?key=O5qHqyCJouBz0zEbfzJuRA" alt="" style="width:558px;height:auto"/></figure>



Because we mentioned staking before, we should note that various asset managers have filed with the SEC to allow their ether ETFs to stake a portion of the underlying holdings. BlackRock joined that movement last week, and the world’s largest asset manager typically gets what it wants from the SEC — perhaps because of clout, or knowing when the regulator is ready to approve its proposals. Maybe both.



SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/hester-peirce-on-sec-priorities">asked for patience</a> in the SEC greenlighting modifications such as staking and in-kind creations and redemptions. Still, a number of segment observers expect those approvals are imminent.



Investors remain underweight ether ETFs, Hougan wrote in his memo. While ETH has a market cap that’s roughly 20% of bitcoin’s, ETH ETPs have just 12% of the assets that BTC products do.&nbsp;



“With all the excitement surrounding stablecoins and tokenization — which are primarily built on Ethereum — we think that will change, and that we’ll see billions in flows in the next few months,” Hougan added.



As for the next crypto ETFs <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-etf-launch-timelines-sec">we expect to see</a>, there was movement yesterday. Sort of.&nbsp;



The SEC approved Bitwise’s crypto index fund proposal. But like it did with the Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund (GDLC), the order was stayed. This perhaps <a href="https://x.com/JSeyff/status/1947781219372175471">signals</a> the regulator will wait to roll out a comprehensive framework — about including digital assets in the ETF wrapper — before letting these convert to ETFs and list.



Oh, and also: 21Shares <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2061627/000121390025066691/ea0248711-s1_21shares.htm">filed</a> for an Ondo ETF yesterday. The Ondo name should ring a bell, as we’ve talked about them getting set to launch a tokenization platform (here’s my <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stablecoins-iceberg-rwas-mature-ondo">Q&amp;A</a> with Ondo CEO Nathan Allman from last month).



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



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/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>

ETFs

Now 1 year old, US ether ETFs hit their stride

Casey Wagner

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>.



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



With days to go before the new trade policy deadline takes effect, the US struck a deal with Japan.



President Trump announced the deal — a 15% tariff rate on Japanese exports to the US — late last night via a Truth Social post. The rate is lower than the previously proposed 25% levy and also applies to cars and auto parts.&nbsp;



A <a href="https://x.com/Scavino47/status/1947838342285996172">photo</a> shared on X by Dan Scavino, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, suggests officials were making changes to the policy up until the last minute. The document in the picture had been edited by hand, with $400 billion crossed out and replaced with “500.”&nbsp;



The new figure appears in-line with the message both sides are touting: The agreement includes $550 billion in investments and loans from Japan to the US. Trump added in his Tuesday post that the deal will result in hundreds of thousands of jobs.&nbsp;



Domestic auto manufacturers may not be as happy with the deal, though.&nbsp;



With Japan auto exports now taxed at 15%, it’s more expensive for US makers like Ford and GM to import vehicles and parts from countries such as Mexico (25% levy) than it is for Japanese automakers to send vehicles to the US. Check out <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/automakers-impact-tariffs-july-2025">yesterday</a>’s edition for a recap on how tariffs are already hitting car makers’ bottom lines. 



The White House has not yet commented specifically on how the new Japanese deal will impact cars, nor has it shared any information about the status of other negotiations. We’ll be listening, though.



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



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



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



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



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



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

automakers

Japan, US strike trade deal that leaves US car makers out

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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Crypto comes in waves. And like surfing, it’s entirely possible to paddle too early and miss out altogether.



Some of the biggest phenomena in crypto have caught their respective waves with precision.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Markets change&#8230;</h2>



Yuga Labs rolled out Bored Apes in April 2021, as bitcoin and ether were headed to their first major peak of that bull market cycle.



More recently, pump.fun nailed it when it deployed in January 2024 — just as SOL was about to double in price in two months on the back of bitcoin ETFs.



Both companies are now case studies in capturing and monetizing the attention of mass-market crypto consumers, even if it’s difficult to say how many individuals were directly involved with either one.



Only around 5,500 addresses have ever <a href="https://opensea.io/collection/boredapeyachtclub">owned</a> a Bored Ape NFT, and less than 12,000 have <a href="https://opensea.io/collection/mutant-ape-yacht-club">held</a> the cheaper Mutant Apes. ApeCoin, the token meant to tie the room together, is found in many more wallets — more than 182,000 at current <a href="https://etherscan.io/token/0x4d224452801aced8b2f0aebe155379bb5d594381">count</a>, and that’s not including an untold number of exchange accounts containing APE.



Pump.fun’s active daily address count is nearly double that, ranging between 260,000 and about 500,000 trading addresses right now, per <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/pumpfun?dashboard=125">Blockworks Research data</a>. Although, again, it’s unlikely that individual users map one-to-one with active addresses, so the true number is likely smaller.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcmWB1sHXqcE5YosTVf1N4yqsPQBz9FrajJSm54XisaT9DNbG5Z1IFl7ca9_KRUOoMpODPex98nHq5ckFRwhBKFaZw_EHH5KfrC-SgInUJYpuR69Wnd-WEDvHaMlXy_NYxTCKqiPg?key=tCochVUj4dML2tZ1qIVRrA" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Pump.fun has, so far, made it through 15 months of bull market.</figcaption></figure>



In any case, this is about the maximum size of the playing field on which any consumer crypto app vies to compete, fielding around half a million active addresses per day at best. That’s excluding traditional crypto exchanges, whose active userbases stretch into the millions.&nbsp;



(Coinbase <a href="https://s27.q4cdn.com/397450999/files/doc_financials/2024/q4/Coinbase-Global-Inc-2024-10K-for-IR.pdf">reports</a> about 10 million active users per month, which averaged out over 30 days is actually quite similar to the lower end of pump.fun’s daily active address count, although the two aren’t directly comparable.)



Best case scenario: the playing field grows between the waves of the crypto market. It would be good news for the VCs and other investors who’ve bet that the world has enough blockchains and could now do with more useful apps running on top of them.



Until then, timing will be everything, and the ecosystem may be limited to serving niche communities of early crypto adopters. In such an environment, the consumer apps that make it will capture the attention of crypto’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMrlrbAACeM">hot ball of money</a> and maintain it long enough to make stake holders comfortable (and, perhaps more preferably, profitable). Will they persist between cycles? Has Bored Apes?



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">&#8230;but Blockchains are forever</h2>



Blockchains and cryptocurrency can do more. I’ve previously subjected you to <a href="https://thedrop.beehiiv.com/p/universal-based-income?utm_source=thedrop.beehiiv.com&amp;utm_medium=newsletter&amp;utm_campaign=universal-based-income&amp;_bhlid=34e159e0ef9c7077a65f0e9cef709023ba1b8826">some thoughts on tokenomics</a> within the context of World, and the role that well-designed, hyper-utilized token experiments could play in humanity’s future.



Zoom out. By their very nature, properly decentralized blockchain networks are intended to be immortal, lasting much longer than bull and bear markets.&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">Ubisoft CEO responds to the Stop Killing Games petition, stating the publisher is &#39;working on&#39; improving its approach to end-of-life support, but that &#39;nothing is eternal&#39; <a href="https://t.co/jJUzFQOnZB">https://t.co/jJUzFQOnZB</a>&mdash; PC Gamer (@pcgamer) <a href="https://twitter.com/pcgamer/status/1946946266484941205?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 20, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Nothing is eternal, maybe, but it can still be a goal.



Blockchains will be online for as long as there are people interested in running the machines that serve as validating nodes on the network, and the modern-day blockchain space is built on incentivizing those people to continue doing so with valuable tokens.



It could be that the current narrative bent towards consumer apps over infrastructure is missing the forest for the trees, particularly when it comes to gaming.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Potential gaming applications</h2>



<a href="https://www.stopkillinggames.com/">Stop Killing Games</a> is a consumer movement that hopes to sway studios and publishers from snuffing out games from their back catalogue, most of which tend to be online-only these days. Games are routinely made unavailable for good when the company responsible decides the overhead costs of the relevant server is, economically, not worth the squeeze.



Blockchain fixes this. While blockchains themselves are not exactly suitable to host online games in their entirety, there could be a future where gaming communities band together to operate servers on their own, paying for the upkeep through token rewards in the same way that Ethereum or Bitcoin validators are sustained by token emissions.



Of course, it’s debatable whether it’s possible in practice, especially when dealing with modest userbases. But in a world where crypto is still a universe of niche apps mostly populated with relatively small active communities, there are few other use-cases that make sense with longevity in mind.&nbsp;



Perhaps killer consumer crypto apps are already here — they just don’t know it yet.



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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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blockchain

The case for how crypto can Stop Killing Games

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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A few years back at Bitcoin Amsterdam, I <a href="https://www.youtube.com/live/SSVajSFE14Q?feature=shared&amp;t=14160">watched</a> Core contributor Sjors Provoost make a point about the right to financial privacy in today’s digital world.



“I go to the bathroom at the train station right now. If I pay with my debit card, these records are kept for at least a decade. So the bank can actually look up, 10 years from now, exactly at what time I went to the bathroom. I think that is ridiculous, and I think everybody would agree that&#8217;s ridiculous.



“I think we should change the financial system to [stop doing] that.”



The panel featuring Provoost was about how the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) threatens Bitcoin privacy.



Which, to be fair, is something the intergovernmental agency has absolutely done over the past decade or so. FATF’s anti-money-laundering policies directly influence how worldwide regulators treat Bitcoin mixers and other privacy protocols built around more trustless implementations like CoinJoin.&nbsp;



Surprise, they really don’t like them.



It was on this day in 2017 that BitMixer, then considered the largest Bitcoin mixer by volume, bowed out altogether amid rolling raids on darknet marketplaces across the world.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcmYMqecVq-gcQkiSW0YZahYx_Gt2YobG_RNx1M8va3ZzvqYnsdzXMR0ETxK9DYvZef7Tab2myFecHTrkx3me3Dv236R8mFAUZDh8-YQIMOWuAc0SjKkXgBMCnU44hZYBUtiRUP?key=5Mb2084A0KY4WJoOqHZcdQ" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">In the comments, the OP was adamant that they were not shutting down due to any interaction with authorities.</figcaption></figure>







BitMixer was the quintessential centralized mixing service. Users would enter some parameters onto a website and send bitcoin to an address, after which they would receive the same amount of coins back, minus a fee. The bitcoin received was made of entirely different UXTOs, which helped to break any blockchain analysis that might link them to the original sender.



All standard for most Bitcoin mixers, including its predecessor <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-fog-founder-convicted-by-jury">Bitcoin Fog</a>. Where BitMixer stood out was its reliability and speed, particularly for large orders, having accepted up to 2,000 BTC at a time ($5.4 million when it shut down and almost $236 million today), with operations backed by a larger liquidity pool than its competitors.&nbsp;



In November 2015, BitMixer had <a href="https://themerkle.com/interview-with-the-owner-of-bitmixer-io-a-high-volume-bitcoin-mixer/">reported</a> processing around 65,000 BTC in one month (around $44 million back then).



BitMixer’s owner also promised that the servers were out of reach of regulators. (“Our servers are located in a country where US authorities can’t get access to the server without a local court order. Bitcoin is not considered as money here, so we can’t be a money-laundering service.”)



They added that they use encrypted disks and delete all order data after 24 hours, including erasing used bitcoin addresses from the official wallet after mixed coins were distributed. “Even if the server is seized, they will find nothing,” the owner was <a href="https://themerkle.com/interview-with-the-owner-of-bitmixer-io-a-high-volume-bitcoin-mixer/">quoted</a> as saying.&nbsp;



Users could additionally generate a letter of guarantee signed by BitMixer’s PGP key that would represent an obligation to send the mixed coins, so that any shortchanging could be cryptographically verified.



It was no <a href="https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/46785.pdf#:~:text=five%20ransomware%20families%2C%20the%20top,given%20family%20Cerber%20CryptXXX%20CryptoDefense">secret</a> that BitMixer was relied upon by users of darknet marketplaces and ransomware hackers. And the service’s retirement post came only days after a multi-national sting on AlphaBay, which ran outgoing user transactions through unnamed tumbling and mixing services to provide users with privacy.



Over the following years and until today, a number of high-profile mixing services would either shut down voluntarily or be forced to close by authorities, including Helix (with the owner later indicted and sentenced), BitBlender, Bestmixer, Blender.io, ChipMixer, Sinbad.io and Bitcoin Fog. Darknet markets followed a similar trend.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdFRRPWqN6DfQvbvDE_IJZ3oErO-tgZLelSHnwTd88ZlRACW9Fu4HZKiwIB2PqKMAHoH2VW81EQ1c7wPkTcH1-vIodpW-GC4pZi8xPItocfq2EQYOOSBWn8uO-7QeElJIDeE2BpOw?key=5Mb2084A0KY4WJoOqHZcdQ" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A helpful explainer on the philosophy behind BitMixer was <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150314222329/https://bitmixer.io/why.html">posted</a> to its website. (NB: Take caution in interacting with any service using the same domain or name today.)</figcaption></figure>







Of course, regulators eventually came for decentralized alternatives through the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/samourai-wallet-matters-memecoins-privacy">case against Samourai Wallet</a>, which is still pending pre-trial motions set for later this year.&nbsp;



Meanwhile on Ethereum, smart contracts and their developers have been under fire via the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/roman-storm-trial-opening-statements">Tornado Cash case</a>, which has seen one co-founder given a 64-month prison sentence, now under appeal, while the other continues to face up to 45 years in prison.&nbsp;



So, where does that leave Sjors’ quest to keep our bathroom trips at European train stations private?&nbsp;



Frustrating as it may be, while these cases shake out, it might be safer to simply hold it until you get home.



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Why Bitcoin’s biggest mixer walked away from ‘huge profits’

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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84% of general partners and limited partners are feeling pretty good about crypto, a <a href="https://btlaw.com/en/investment-funds-outlook-report?utm_source=vuture&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=pfam%20report%202025">survey</a> from Barnes &amp; Thornburg found.&nbsp;



It’s also one of three areas highlighted by general and limited partners as being a part of the market that thrives in volatility.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfA_r_S1MUpklYhD5yWFkDDBTJc8842B2CNqW00Xsy80ON_GqGpp3UPSePGzJP5bzBX7QLmoByXLDCEW3gnazMzWpsrCpTzXs9OySYisJvZYm8W8rvykmP-d8-5WDCkKtx_ArbifA?key=TJg8wOJzl-lanIp5Wmso_Q" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: Barnes &amp; Thornburg</figcaption></figure>



In a similar vein, a whopping 85% of respondents said that they’re looking to invest in crypto this year, many of whom — 61% — noted that it’s thanks to the regulatory clarity. Woo-hoo!



But both the market growth and the innovative investment products offered are big draws for them as well.&nbsp;



Compared to this time last year, are you more or less likely to invest in cryptocurrency funds?



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1224" height="820" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-3.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-105458" style="width:648px;height:auto" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-3.png?w=1224 1224w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-3.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-3.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-3.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-3.png?w=384 384w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-3.png?w=390 390w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-3.png?w=327 327w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-3.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1224px) 100vw, 1224px" /></figure>



Here’s a chart comparing 2024&#8217;s responses to 2025&#8217;s, just in case you need to see the year-over-year change for yourself. I know we’ve become slightly desensitized to the growth that this industry’s experienced in the last year, but these numbers are pretty wild. 



[Asked to those who are more likely to invest in crypto funds] What level of importance do you place on the following when deciding whether to invest in a cryptocurrency fund?&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1368" height="1058" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-4.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-105459" style="width:704px;height:auto" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-4.png?w=1368 1368w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-4.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-4.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-4.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-4.png?w=332 332w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-4.png?w=337 337w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-4.png?w=283 283w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-4.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1368px) 100vw, 1368px" /></figure>



This gives you a better idea of what’s driving investments. Outside the top three motivators, institutional adoption is relatively high, which is understandable, given that general economic conditions are not as significant a driver.&nbsp;



Unfortunately, there’s not a clear reason given as to why investment professionals don’t see economic conditions as a big factor driving interest here. However, across the larger landscape, “nearly 75% of respondents say that the current economic outlook presents an investment opportunity.”



I’m going to put on my guessing hat here and say that I think this is probably tied to the fact that crypto has not proven that it’s a safe haven play in times of market uncertainty. If you need a solid example, take a look at the leg down bitcoin took in February after we started receiving the tariff headlines.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdzMvxyFs_urG2JvlSHRwiWojqiFg_mJwyJLg4KGgpSsy9EGhaDnAGQLkceAfrlh1zUMIAxWedl2H3iMiZqk8cowBUu-b_C-IXxKMGq4UI6Zofzvn-ooa2p1_2PJVpk8b-Hr18m?key=TJg8wOJzl-lanIp5Wmso_Q" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A look at the last six months, courtesy of Blockworks Research</figcaption></figure>



Mind you, that’s not to say that bitcoin hasn’t shown its resilience, especially since, according to Coinbase, it’s up 81% at the time I’m writing this newsletter.&nbsp;



If we zoom out, Barnes &amp; Thornburg noted that the survey finds “ample room for optimism” across a number of sectors — from crypto to hedge funds. All of this is based on survey data collected in April and March from investment professionals, including GPs and LPs.&nbsp;



All in all, I think the data shows a pretty decent appetite for crypto, especially since a lot of the momentum for the industry is tied to regulatory clarity and the overall crypto market growth. Those are both big positives for the space.



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