Jeff Albus

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



This report has been retracted for falling short of Blockworks&#8217; editorial standards.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



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RETRACTION: Article about Marinade

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



— Doc Brown
</blockquote>



<a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/3fs6Zdaudo5imtc03z0zfE?si=ecd1e486993b4fe1">Capitalism is time travel</a>



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



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



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



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



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



But not just that.



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



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



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



This is to everyone’s benefit: “We want to find more and more people to exchange with,” Munger explains, “not because it makes them wealthier, but because it makes us wealthier.&#8221;



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



It’s a surprisingly intuitive thought.



You might, for example, have an idea for a product that you’re sure people will want to buy; but you probably don’t have the money required to build a factory to start making it for them.&nbsp;



“What capitalism does is solve that problem through time travel,” Munger explains. “We’re going to travel forward into the future to a time when this factory is operating and is producing substantial profits. I’m going to take some of those profits and get in my time machine and go back in time and invest it in the resources that create the capital that now allows me to [build the factory].”



Selling equity is the time machine that empowers you to do that.



Buying equity, by that logic, is what enables all new things to come into the world.&nbsp;



To recap, the three functions of markets are exchange (things go where they’re most wanted), specialization (the production of things increases) and time travel (all new things are created).



People tend to think of markets primarily as a place to make money, but that is their real purpose — and their benefits are limited only by their size. “The division of labor,” Adam Smith wrote, “is limited by the extent of the market.”



Crypto did not get a mention in the podcast, but I think it offers a good way to look at it: The highest purpose of permissionless crypto markets, open to everyone, is to make markets better by making them bigger.



<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/475ca245-bd04-4a56-b848-b88ea3b4ef13">Crypto treasury companies are anti-capitalism</a>



The CEO of Metaplanet has an interesting explanation for why it chose to become a bitcoin treasury company: “We’ll get cash that we can use to buy profitable businesses, cash-flowing businesses,” he told the FT.



This is a departure from competitors like MicroStrategy, whose stated purpose is simply to stack crypto as fast as it can.



I think it’s a telling departure, because holding a non-productive asset now so that you can buy productive assets later is the opposite of how capitalism is supposed to work.



Per Mike Munger, capitalism is meant to pull investment out of the future and into the present.



Metaplanet is doing the opposite, hoovering up investment capital now so that it can do something productive with it later.



This is anti-capitalism.



Surprisingly, the capitalist stock market seems happy with this: Metaplanet trades at nearly <a href="https://metaplanet.jp/en/analytics">11x</a> the value of its bitcoin holdings.



<a href="https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2025/07/07/copyleft.html">Vitalik says Ethereum is important to the world</a>



Listening to Vitalik is always a welcome reminder that crypto can be more than memecoins and treasury companies — it could help make the future a good one, even.&nbsp;



“The Ethereum ecosystem going well is a very important thing to particular parts of the world going in the right direction,” he told Epicenter this week.



Specifically, the Ethereum co-founder cites finance, identity and governance as areas that can benefit from the “neutral layers” only crypto can create.



For that to happen, though, he thinks the industry needs to be more mission-driven: “The thing we need to shift gears on is from saying something is by default worth building because it uses blockchains.”



Instead, he says, the industry should be “properties first,” not &#8220;technology first.”



I’d offer the <a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/701272/jack-dorsey-bitchat-bluetooth-messaging-app">bluetooth messaging app</a> that Jack Dorsey announced this week as a prime example — it hasn’t gotten a lot of attention because there’s no crypto involved, but it embodies crypto’s original cypherpunk values.



Vitalik noted that the Ethereum Foundation has shifted its focus toward applications in order to better promote crypto’s original intentions: “We think that building is a much healthier way of achieving those goals than just complaining.”



Some of that complaining has been about ether’s underperformance vs. Solana’s and he seems to have heard it: “If Ethereum gets sucked into directly playing the HFT game as an L1, to me, that will just fundamentally destroy Ethereum’s soul.” Ethereum’s competitors, he implies, are over-optimizing for the wrong things (like speed of execution), and to illustrate the risk that entails, he asked a rhetorical question: “Should we destroy humanity in exchange for a 1% chance of giving really good lives to 500 trillion shrimp?”



Only a correctly optimized Ethereum can prevent it.



<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/pump-revenue-sharing-token-holders">The pump.fun token launches on Saturday</a>



This weekend, the memecoin launchpad pump.fun will pull $1.3 billion of its future profits into the present with an initial coin offering.



You might, like me, be thinking that the present has quite enough memecoins as is. But pump.fun <a href="https://x.com/pumpdotfun/status/1942947267436056740">says</a> it’s not just about that: “Anyone can use pump to build whatever they want. It’s more than memes.”



What pump says it is building is “a global network of instant money &amp; attention” that will disrupt the big social media platforms: “Our plan is to Kill Facebook, TikTok, and Twitch.”



That is a worthy goal, I guess, although I shudder to think what pump will replace them with.



Whatever the odds of that happening may be, the ICO at $0.004 per token does not appear to be pricing it in.&nbsp;



In a <a href="https://x.com/_ryanrconnor/status/1943348190381543769">note</a> for Blockworks Research, Ryan Connor says the token’s $4 billion valuation is “very reasonable,” based strictly on the outlook for memecoins. “With Pump.fun annualizing at $750m revenue for 2025, and 25% going back to the token, this puts the token valuation at ~5x 2025 annualized revenue and ~20x 2025 annualized token buybacks.”&nbsp;



Valuation is a bit less reasonable in <a href="https://app.hyperliquid.xyz/trade/PUMP">pre-market trading</a> on Hyperliquid, where the token was already changing hands 30% above the ICO price this afternoon.



(It’s also traded an incredible $130 million of volume over the last 24 hours, which might go a long way in explaining the giant valuation of Hyperliquid.)



Connor cites several risks to the investment case, including the risk that it’s not a traditional investment: “Buyers should keep in mind that the equity entity ultimately governs this project’s value flows today.”



Translation: Token holders will just have to hope that pump will choose to share its future profits with them.



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The Breakdown Newsletter

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

Jack Kubinec

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



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



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



This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.



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



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



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



So that in and of itself has been incredibly successful. But the fact that we have a “<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-bills-in-congress">Crypto Week</a>” in Washington next week … it looks like we’re on track to get a stablecoin regulatory framework actually <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/genius-stablecoin-act-passes-senate-vote">signed into law</a> by President Trump. I think it’s evidence that we’ve come incredibly far in turning around from where we were even just a short six months ago.



Jack: Looking forward into the future, what’s on your wish list on the Solana side of things <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-policy-institute-ceos-political">as you advocate</a> for that ecosystem?



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



And we’ve gone in to see the SEC and have been submitting some comments on something <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/project-open-sec-proposal-solana">we’re dubbing as “Project Open,”</a> and basically encouraging [the SEC] to issue statements and guidance and potentially exemptive relief, and consider a time-limited sandbox so that we can get more equities issued onchain.



Jack: Solana is very diverse, and there’s a lot of different visions of what people should build. I know that you guys did a DePIN summit and that’s an exciting, kind of tangential thing. What sector of Solana are you spending most of your time on? Or has the most to gain or lose through engagement with policymakers?



Kristin Smith: It’s a little bit of all the above. The issues around tokenized securities are probably where I’m spending the bulk of my time, but when it comes to basic education of Congress…I would say out of all the use cases, the DePIN use cases are the ones that resonate the most.



It depends on the policymaker we’re trying to find the connection with, but I do think that from a policy perspective, I think the work that we’re doing with Project Open and the SEC, and trying to find the best way to help make the internet capital markets a reality, from a regulatory perspective, is probably one of the more meaningful things we could do.



But you know, that’s not a message that really resonates with your rank-and-file member of Congress who’s just trying to understand what a blockchain is. Something like DePIN is better in that context.



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Kristin Smith

Solana Policy Institute wants to see more equities issued onchain

Katherine Ross

Pump.fun announced its first acquisition on Thursday.&nbsp;



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



<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">we’re excited to announce that pump fun has acquired <a href="https://twitter.com/kolscan?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@kolscan</a> Kolscan is a wallet tracker that monitors the activities of top onchain traders. it provides realtime transactions, token PnL, and a leaderboard ranking their performance our integration will not only enable better… <a href="https://t.co/V4VDcOwVeG">pic.twitter.com/V4VDcOwVeG</a>&mdash; pump.fun (@pumpdotfun) <a href="https://twitter.com/pumpdotfun/status/1943399910189207851?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 10, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



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



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



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/pumpdotfun-token-sale">Pump.fun plans $1B token sale at $4B valuation: Sources</a>



“For those reasons, we believe that products that provide social insights/tools and gamify the trading experience are key to growing our ecosystem,” pump.fun co-founder Alon Cohen <a href="https://x.com/a1lon9/status/1943400267669467231">said</a> in a post. He previously teased a pump.fun acquisition.&nbsp;



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



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



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



Blockworks <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/pump-revenue-sharing-token-holders">previously reported</a> that it plans a 25% revenue share with token holders, according to sources.



This is a developing story.



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Pump.fun

Pump.fun acquires wallet tracker Kolscan

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



With the “Big Beautiful Bill” now <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-bills-in-congress">signed and passed</a>, the Trump administration’s gaze is now shifting back toward tariffs.&nbsp;



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



That said, based on actual freight container volume transactions, we can approximate a current effective tariff rate of 21% on US imports — down from 54% at the peak of Liberation Day.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="624" height="351" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcYX6aPxcEwJgLdVnzIpwrqy-TVv7zJciBgRd_9aMmJAtMETcZq0-6-7LAwWvMwZc914lBrlCrzfQiDQpgNxZQ4rHoh4X9IIVktk2SjI5LHroOmjPcLQnuDZyv2eh2IFR8f-0qZ?key=u07awB4k3PM-z9ro_PmiBg">



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



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdFOMR-7e5vDbR3jxfU4Ts-wmlrXXP92v1F7LKd9GMP12kGAGS9ytUKJj2xPm-nZFvR5SUeuOqb2YPkeMJ4NoaQ24rf0GWfLEB-FqnNtm12OIuFGcmAqbegBA9cq6O4mrOn7zHlEQ?key=u07awB4k3PM-z9ro_PmiBg" alt=""/></figure>



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



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



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe4Uk9WghVSBVsEmoIVvusdLjnWVQlWNJxRCMmTRcupeLfOu4pkBJJYuzlef49nLem8BNSV4sQltSWwLrG5wxVJQrjnp0c1K-6GLIPnenZi8Xzfnu1_NjKQM0MkpK3_q9UcEzWbFg?key=u07awB4k3PM-z9ro_PmiBg" alt=""/></figure>



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



The broad consensus is that these dynamics will continue to drive the dollar meaningfully lower, and that this could become turbocharged once it becomes evident who will replace Jerome Powell <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/fomc-june-powell-term-end">as the chair</a> of the Federal Reserve. 



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



This framework all makes fundamental sense. The issue: This is the consensus view in markets right now, as we head into summer doldrums that often test positioning as volatility compresses.&nbsp;



Looking at current CFTC data, dollar positioning is the most bearish it’s been in years:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeGRs4AC78BU87jv3Rk-xpIgVpTE5k63_BH4-J-8oWRbTFfor5AvEhHKdKxMe2Dy6wQFHPu9bOdcrrjq7uE1cjVUwkv9Rn0WYsqaNp412uzhX_KHAjQZV2ENLIf-XBZh7YbA7JfdA?key=u07awB4k3PM-z9ro_PmiBg" alt=""/></figure>



So, despite fundamentals pointing toward meaningful dollar devaluation continuing, I have a feeling the thesis will be tested over the summer, given it being such a crowded trade.



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Dollar

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

Donovan Choy

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



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



A recent <a href="https://institutional.fidelity.com/app/proxy/content?literatureURL=/9919383.PDF">report</a> by Fidelity Investments proposes valuing blockchains on the basis of GDP:



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“&#8230; it is more appropriate to compare decentralized blockchains to sovereign nations and their economies rather than web2 companies or products because of the embedded currency.”
</blockquote>



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



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



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



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>C = What users are spending as gas, to use Uniswap or mint an NFT.</li>



<li>I = The quantity of staked assets or capital in liquidity pools.</li>



<li>G = Ethereum Foundation expenditure, issued ETH to validators.</li>



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



You can see the entire table here:



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfyTJf0piPqpmVIcMBsyMfofyMbY6wWS1zKLD6mgrA-h-svRVRnh5hRnSEJYXVFUim1lp0NZkQ-GjoXtZ2i7ij_vDcgkBpCB-Wg5hxDGE9_5Z7HI58hmVhh6vA2YDeRMNakHG-Dkw?key=H7PIMkWaKDi-W3xgFCjV2w" alt="" style="width:691px;height:auto"/></figure>



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



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



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



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



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



<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">Fidelity’s buildout of blockchain GDP in its recent report is interesting, certainly the most robust I’ve seen I think the biggest challenge id net exports. This category is heavily impacted by CEX cold wallet rebalancing, and it’s very unclear how impactful this truly is on… <a href="https://t.co/k5IV0FS0hE">pic.twitter.com/k5IV0FS0hE</a>&mdash; Dan Smith (@smyyguy) <a href="https://twitter.com/smyyguy/status/1942942668079652922?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 9, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Explicit in Fidelity’s valuation model is also the claim that L1 tokens should be valued on the basis of “money,” or more specifically: a medium of exchange and store of value.



Fidelity argues: “Ether is the dominant trading pair on exchanges and serves as a primary asset to borrow against.”



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcDt-cXfhDnuFXFxkEUEn7ADy2AVyXIjhEdaXOGPyVctA3Lmk7tMmSPwie4EQIP8iDAZ6Sfj8t6SKgMCyaUqBfu2_afJrpShwMKAAthpPRtEWuQf4wjsvLsLvqiJon8fuf4v5G1cA?key=H7PIMkWaKDi-W3xgFCjV2w" alt=""/></figure>



I think that at best justifies the “medium of exchange” aspect of money, but is silent on the “unit of account” aspect.



Early crypto investors have questioned the ability of L1 tokens to serve as a unit of account. As John Pfeffer <a href="https://hostingfilesonline.co.uk/An%20Investor%27s%20Take%20on%20Cryptoassets%20v6.pdf">wrote</a> back in 2017:



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“It is thus overly simplistic to assume that people will hoard that which they use to make payments as opposed to converting their store of value via the payment rail at the time of payment in the exact amount needed and for as little time as possible.”
</blockquote>



Account abstraction (ERC-4337) even formalizes this reality, since it enables paying gas fees in any ERC-20 token. That vastly improves the user experience but it removes the need to hoard ETH, thereby undermining the “monetary premium” of the L1 token.



<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">wow, we&#39;re really peddling the eth = digital oil narrative at a time when account abstraction is taking off and ETH is being disintermediated by stablecoins as payment and trading asset practically everywhere?&mdash; Hasu⚡️🤖 (@hasufl) <a href="https://twitter.com/hasufl/status/1942928343495508027?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 9, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



The final aspect of why I think the GDP analogy is somewhat strained looks to accounting for staked ETH under the “Investment” bucket of GDP.



Staking locks up existing assets, but no new productive capacity is created.



In economist jargon, it doesn’t push the “production possibilities frontier” in the same way investment does in the real economy.



So the “I” in blockchain GDP loses its predictive link to future growth.



Even worse: LP deposits can migrate and earn purely extractive airdrops or MEV.



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0xResearch Newsletter

Fidelity is valuing ETH as money

Kate Irwin

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



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



Remix, which began under the name Farcade, has closed a seed funding round led by Archetype bringing its total funding thus far to $6.75 million, Blockworks has exclusively learned.&nbsp;



Variant, Coinbase Ventures, Lemniscap, and Zynga cofounder Justin Waldron also participated in the $5 million seed round.&nbsp;



Remix is part vibe-coding gaming tool, part consumer-facing game platform. The mini app has seen over 570,000 players so far across 800 live <a href="https://x.com/NeonCrypto8/status/1939206160898498702">games</a> that have been played over 17 million times, the team says.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



Farcade began about eight months ago when its cofounders initially thought they wanted to build a Mario Party-style experience.&nbsp;



“We built this tool internally to help us build games. And we ended up building about five or six games in the first day,” Remix cofounder Charlie, who prefers not to share his last name publicly, told me in an interview.



“The craziest part was, like, how little hand-holding we needed to do. The AI basically wrote all of the code. And so there was basically this, like, epiphany moment where we just thought that was gonna be the future of gaming,” he said.&nbsp;



“That really inspired this idea of building a social network for games, or a TikTok for games, where instead of scrolling a feed of videos, you&#8217;re scrolling a feed of games, and you can just instantly play those games as they come into your feed.”



Last week, the startup officially <a href="https://x.com/RemixGG_/status/1940136705086132259">rebranded</a> to Remix in part because the platform itself has expanded beyond just Farcaster (and isn’t affiliated with the Farcaster team).&nbsp;



Game creators using <a href="https://remix.gg/">Remix</a> can type in their own prompts or, ultimately, “remix” others’ games by combining elements together or making modifications to “ship” a new version. Charlie described the process as a bit like a game of telephone.



This turns mobile game development into something fast and fun, not to mention virtually free, for creators. Of course, the final products are AI-reliant and could have bugs or might feel repetitive for players if they encounter many in a row that are the same style.&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">last week we hosted our first game jam with @farcade_ai and the results are in: &#8211; 110+ games submitted &#8211; 150,000 sessions in &lt;1 week &#8211; 2,700+ hours played Doodles is everywhere. new formats = new ways to experience the Doodleverse. grab the 🍿 &amp; get ready for what’s next. <a href="https://t.co/5KSBDEUn8a">pic.twitter.com/5KSBDEUn8a</a>&mdash; doodles (@doodles) <a href="https://twitter.com/doodles/status/1932129588911460648?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 9, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



But Remix is tapping into the current vibe-coding trend that’s gained attention across crypto and AI.



Remix plans to eventually monetize by taking a cut from ads and in-app purchases in the games it hosts.&nbsp;



On the creator side, game makers will be given the ability to sell in-game items and pay to boost the discoverability of their games in the Remix feed.&nbsp;



“When anyone can build apps,” Charlie said, “we think the demand for eyeballs is really just going to go exponential from here. And that demand for eyeballs is already extremely high. And so if you can have a platform that solves that for people — or if you&#8217;ve created a game and Remix is the best place for you to get your first 100 gamers or 1,000 gamers — we think there&#8217;s a lot of opportunity to monetize it from that side.”



<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">Imagine if Remix was 1,000 apps Today we’re launching Snap Apps, individual apps for our best games It&#39;s a new way for creators on Remix to release their games across many platforms like World, Farcaster, Base, and more. <a href="https://t.co/N2gtFR9rEb">pic.twitter.com/N2gtFR9rEb</a>&mdash; Remix (formerly Farcade) (@RemixGG_) <a href="https://twitter.com/RemixGG_/status/1942632356508229977?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 8, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Currently, Remix’s main onchain element is that users can connect their Farcaster and World identities to the mini app. But their onchain monetization toolkit is slated to launch in a few weeks.&nbsp;



Remix is available on Telegram (using TON) and the EVM-powered World app as well. It will also launch on Coinbase’s new wallet app, right now referred to as TBA, when that goes live.&nbsp;



Based on the upcoming Coinbase event next week on July 16, it’s likely the Coinbase Wallet overhaul will be unveiled then. This bit supports what we’ve heard and seen about the new Coinbase Wallet so far — that it goes far beyond just trading tokens and has social and gaming elements.



“Remix comes at a pivotal moment at the intersection of rocket-speed AI capability, endless digital distribution, and robust token mechanisms that allows users to totally own the ways they engage,” said Archetype Principal Katie Chiou.



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Gaming

Exclusive: Remix raises $5M in seed funding to become ‘TikTok for games’

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">
“I wish upon you ample doses of pain and suffering.”



— Jensen Huang, on building resiliency
</blockquote>



The history of the world’s most valuable company is a study in how improbable its survival was, let alone its success.



In <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+nvidia+way&amp;crid=N16XBIMZV1DG&amp;sprefix=the+nvidia+way%2Caps%2C179&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1">The Nvidia Way</a>, Tae Kim tells the story of how Nvidia, founded in 1993, emerged from the small and volatile market for graphics chips — an industry in which everyone was always &#8220;thirty days from going out of business,&#8221; as Jensen Huang constantly reminded his employees.



That was more or less true for much of Nvidia’s existence, not only because money was tight for most of its existence, but because graphics chips were so interchangeable that one poorly designed product could sink the company.



After Nvidia’s first two chips were poorly designed, the company really was just weeks away from insolvency.



“We were just bad at our jobs,” Jensen told Kim, who refers to Huang by his adopted first name throughout.



(Born in Taiwan, Jen-Hsun Huang anglicized his first name because his parents sent him to a reform school for juvenile delinquents in Kentucky under the mistaken impression it was a boarding school for high achievers.)



Nvidia’s third chip only happened because Jensen took what little venture capital the company had left and gambled it all on an accelerated production process to get it done while he could still make payroll.



It was a hit and the company survived another cycle.



No one was more surprised than the industry leader at the time, 3dfx, which was forming plans to buy Nvidia out of bankruptcy.&nbsp;



But shortly thereafter, Nvidia was the industry leader and 3dfx was bankrupt.&nbsp;



(Nvidia bought 3dfx’s patents out of bankruptcy and hired 100 of their engineers.)



Nvidia would continue to &#8220;oscillate between near-death experiences and market-defining success,” Kim writes, which does much to explain the company’s culture — the world’s largest company still operates as if it’s 30 days from going out of business.



Much of that is a reflection of Jensen’s personality.



As Kim documents, the billionaire tech founder spends nearly all of his waking hours working, including weekends and holidays.



“Work is how I relax,” he explained to employees who asked why he was bombarding them with emails from a beach.&nbsp;&nbsp;



He expected his employees to do the same and they mostly did: Local competitors took notice that the employee parking lot at Nvidia’s Santa Clara headquarters was typically full on nights and weekends.



Even so, Jensen was tough on them.



His method of managing people, in his own words, was to &#8220;torture them into greatness.&#8221;



That wasn’t always appreciated.



Jensen used to save his most scathing performance reviews for all-company meetings, believing that a public dressing-down was an opportunity for everyone to learn from someone’s mistake.



(“Feedback is learning. For what reason should you be the only person to learn from this?”)



Many talented engineers left the company because of that kind of treatment: “It was the most embarrassing, humiliating thing I’ve ever seen,” an executive told Kim of one such incident.&nbsp;



But Jensen was equally hard on himself: &#8220;I look in the mirror every morning and say, ‘You suck.’&#8221;



Nvidia adopted that harsh personality — the “Nvidia way” of Kim’s title is essentially the mindmeld between Jensen and the company he co-founded with two friends.



(One co-founder quit the company in 2000 and sold his entire stake for about $30 million. His 3.5% of the company would be worth about $140 billion today.)



That may have made Nvidia the most unpleasant place to work in Silicon Valley, but it’s made it a survivor.



Even when Nvidia had survived long enough to IPO in 1999, people doubted its chances of holding on much longer.



“Why would we invest in a graphics company?” one investor asked. “You would be the 40th we’ve backed, and all the others have gone out of business. Why would we do this?” The reason, Kim’s story makes clear, was Jensen.



His maniacal work habits, adopted by the whole company, kept Nvidia alive in the early years, and his uncanny ability to see around corners kept Nvidia at the cutting edge of technology.



Jensen was among the first to recognize that PC gaming would be a bigger market for graphics chips than business workstations.



He was among the first to recognize that graphics chips, like CPUs, could become programmable “general processing units” by running software, which Nvidia went on to invent.



(Nvidia contracted Mythbusters to create a <a href="https://youtu.be/Ge-g3xZ5bb8?si=SPTyEY68TD6unfYd">fun explainer</a> on the difference between GPUs and CPUs.)



Most importantly, he was among the first to recognize that GPUs would become the enabling technology of AI.



The same GPUs that Nvidia had optimized to do the math behind the arc of an arrow in Zelda turned out to be uncannily well-suited for the matrix math that powers today’s AI models.



From afar, it seems like Nvidia lucked into it: GPUs just happened to be good for AI and Nvidia just happened to make them.



But Kim&#8217;s account shows that Jensen spotted the breakthrough progress in deep-learning AI while it was still an academic curiosity.



It’s hard to imagine any other CEO being that early to such a deeply technical trend — and impossible to imagine any of them betting their company on it.



“Deep learning is going to be really big,” he told Nvidia executives in 2013, nine years before the release of ChatGPT. “We should go all in.”



Only with hindsight was that an obvious thing to do.



At the time, Nvidia sales were stagnant, its market capitalization was just $8 billion and its shares traded on 10x P/E, net of cash.



Nvidia’s own investors were so low on the company’s prospects that they badgered Jensen into spending $1 billion of the company’s cash buying back shares; they thought there was nothing else to do with it.&nbsp;



Fortunately, Jensen was simultaneously investing billions in getting Nvidia ready for the AI moment that hardly anyone else saw coming.



In many ways, Jensen created that moment.



Without the billions that Nvidia invested in optimizing its chips and software for AI (years before they could show investors any return on it), the ChatGPT phenomenon would not have happened how and when it did.



Nvidia’s GPUs made large-scale deep learning feasible and they wouldn’t have made them with any other CEO.



“Jensen Huang is surely the only person who could have gotten Nvidia to where it is today,” Kim concludes.



There was a lot of pain and suffering along the way.



But there’s no other way a graphics chip startup becomes the world’s most valuable company.



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The first $4T company

Pump.fun plans to share 25% of platform revenue with holders of its token, four sources familiar tell Blockworks. 



The team allegedly told insiders about the arrangement leading up to its public announcement, multiple people said.



Earlier Wednesday, pump.fun said that the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/pump-fun-token-ico-date">initial coin offering for its PUMP token</a> would go live on Saturday, July 12.&nbsp;



Dragonfly Capital’s Haseeb Qureshi posted on X regarding the PUMP revenues, noting that it’ll be “one of the highest gross revenue tokens in crypto.”&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">Wow, this video&#8230;<a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24PUMP&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$PUMP</a> is going to be getting 25% of Pump revenues, so beyond one of the largest ICOs ever, this will be one of the highest gross revenue tokens in crypto. (not an investor) <a href="https://t.co/MYS0NlUxiY">https://t.co/MYS0NlUxiY</a>&mdash; Haseeb ＞|＜ (@hosseeb) <a href="https://twitter.com/hosseeb/status/1942948311545307303?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 9, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



In June, 6th Man Ventures’ Mike Dudas <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozFYpCovPdY">told</a> Blockworks’ Lightspeed podcast: “So I would imagine there&#8217;s going to be some element of putting revenue to work on behalf of token holders. I won&#8217;t get too specific about that and that there&#8217;s also going to be some component of a token that rewards folks who use the platform.”



6MV is an <a href="https://x.com/mdudas/status/1942951510742016109">investor</a> in pump.fun.



Pump.fun didn’t immediately return a request for comment.



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



Of that 33%, an initial 18% goes to institutional purchasers, with 15% going to a public sale.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/gate-publishes-removes-pump-fun-token">Gate publishes then removes pump.fun token sale page</a>



“Both private sale and public sale purchasers are on the exact same terms,” the team said. Doing some napkin <a href="https://x.com/whosknave/status/1942956245331370390">math</a>, that works out to be $720 million from private investors at the $4 billion FDV.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true"><a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24PUMP&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$PUMP</a> will have a maximum supply of 1,000,000,000,000 and will be distributed as follows: 33% will be sold in the Initial Coin Offering 24% reserved for community and ecosystem initiatives 20% to the team 2.4% to the ecosystem fund 2% for the foundation 13% to existing investors… <a href="https://t.co/0SmmEK16O9">pic.twitter.com/0SmmEK16O9</a>&mdash; pump.fun (@pumpdotfun) <a href="https://twitter.com/pumpdotfun/status/1942947291083493495?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 9, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



“While the token will be fully functional at launch, we’re giving thorough consideration to utility mechanisms like fee rebates, token buybacks, or other incentives and promotions,” the pump.fun team said in the announcement on X.&nbsp;



US and UK investors will not be able to participate in the ICO, the team added.



Blockworks <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/pumpdotfun-token-sale">previously reported</a> that pump.fun planned a $1 billion token sale at the $4 billion valuation.&nbsp;



Jack Kubinec contributed reporting.



Updated Wednesday, July 9 at 4:13 pm ET: Added additional source confirmation.



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Pump.fun plans 25% revenue share with token holders: Sources

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>.



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It’s July 9. The 90-day pause on most of President Trump’s reciprocal tariffs was supposed to end today, but the start date has once again been pushed back. Color me surprised.&nbsp;



The White House now says most countries have until August 1 to secure trade agreements, or else the new levies go into effect. For real this time.&nbsp;



Investors seem decently optimistic that deals will materialize. Markets were modestly in the green this afternoon, with the S&amp;P 500 and Nasdaq Composite up 0.3% and 0.6%, respectively, at 2 p.m. ET. Similarly, BTC was flat, up 0.1% at that time.&nbsp;



To recap the current tariff situation: Trump posted copies of letters he sent to 14 countries — including Japan and South Korea — on Monday. He said that seven more letters should go out today.&nbsp;



During yesterday’s cabinet meeting, Trump also revealed a new tariff on copper of 50%. The president did not specify when, exactly, this rate will go into effect.&nbsp;



US copper prices had already been on the rise on expectations of higher levies, but Tuesday’s announcement sent premiums to new highs. The US price premium over the global benchmark reached 138% yesterday.&nbsp;



US copper prices closed Tuesday 13% higher, the largest single-day increase in decades.&nbsp;



We <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tariff-changes-market-volatility">wrote about copper</a> in the lead-up to Liberation Day as analysts speculated about what new tariffs could mean for metal markets.&nbsp;



As a reminder: The US currently produces about half the amount of copper it consumes annually — meaning around 1 million metric tons are imported, according to the US Geological Survey. Copper is in virtually everything: wiring, plumbing, motors, medical devices, personal electronics, you name it.&nbsp;



The tariffs have so far had a limited impact on inflation, and there are a few theories as to why. First, companies were expecting tariffs, so it’s likely they increased inventories to prepare (in which case they have not had to raise prices for consumers yet). Many sectors have also experienced lower demand, making price increases less likely.&nbsp;



That said, I think we could see a bigger impact on consumer prices from these copper tariffs. Domestic copper production has remained relatively steady over the past few years. Glencore, a top international producer, expects global demand for the metal to rise going forward.



The problem with bringing production onshore is that it’s a slow process. It takes, on average, about 18 years for a copper mine to move from discovery to production, according to S&amp;P Global Market Intelligence. That’s assuming rich deposits are found in the first place.&nbsp;



We’ll be keeping an eye on metal markets and how they’re impacting equities and crypto assets.&nbsp;



Stay tuned.



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Donald Trump

Tariff deadline comes and goes, copper feels the pressure

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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Story, an IP-focused EVM L1 blockchain, is adding Tools for Humanity’s World ID tech in a move to increase transparency around who’s human on its <a href="https://portal.story.foundation/">IP Portal</a> licensing database currently in open beta.



“We’re just coming out of an age where the big AI companies, right, basically scraped the whole internet, and rather than ask for permission, they’re just asking for forgiveness,” Story Foundation President Andrea Muttoni told me in an interview.&nbsp;



“We haven&#8217;t really fully understood the magnitude of it. You know, the whole concept of like, the dead internet theory, right? It&#8217;s going to be so challenging in the future — the better the AI models get, the more content is being produced by AI models — to distinguish what is human and what is not,” he added.



The upcoming integration means users can connect their World IDs to verify their crypto wallets when they engage with the platform. They can then register a piece of content and set it up for fee-based or royalty-based licensing, including by adding a legally-binding Programmable IP License (<a href="https://docs.story.foundation/concepts/programmable-ip-license/overview">PIL</a>).



The goal is that the World ID tie-in can add an extra layer of verification and trust that creators are who they say they are on Story. World currently has 13 million verified humans, meaning people with accounts who got their irises scanned at an Orb.



<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">In a world where AI can generate content at scale, Story is building the infrastructure to prove who created what with <a href="https://twitter.com/worldcoin?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@worldcoin</a> . Authorship matters more than ever—and Story is where verified human identity meets programmable IP. Proud to partner with <a href="https://twitter.com/worldcoin?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@worldcoin</a> to bring… <a href="https://t.co/7exkzJulTD">https://t.co/7exkzJulTD</a>&mdash; S.Y. Lee (꧁IP꧂) (@storysylee) <a href="https://twitter.com/storysylee/status/1942965345100443759?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 9, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Muttoni sees Story as a place not only for licensing all types of art, but also for real-world assets and data for AI training and even individual people, too.



“We&#8217;re definitely going to see humans scaling themselves,” he said. “Anyone who has a name, image, and likeness that might want to be licensed, I think, is a huge untapped IP angle.”



Tools for Humanity is the primary for-profit builder working on the World blockchain, which was cofounded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, while the World Foundation is behind the WLD token.&nbsp;



Ajay Patel, Head of World ID at TFH, told me that he met the founders of Story about six or eight months ago and saw a potential for collaboration.&nbsp;



“It’s really this underlying primitive of the internet,” Patel said of World ID.



World ID’s profit mechanism is still in development at the moment, with plans to roll out a fee system at some point next year.&nbsp;



“The key problem to solve there is tying utility to the economics. And so what’s going to happen is that any relying party to World ID, based on their usage of World ID, will end up paying back into the protocol. And so that’s kind of how the system would work,” Patel told me.



“That entire kind of infrastructure for how that would work is something that we&#8217;re actively working on right now,” he added.



When asked, he said TFH did not receive any kind of grant from Story in exchange for the integration.&nbsp;



TFH has increasingly ramped up its blockchain-powered software push this year, from updates to its World app to adding World ID to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/world-id-verification-gaming">Razer accounts</a> to unveiling the “<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sam-altman-worldcoin-orb-mini-eye-scan">Mini Orb</a>” and a US launch.



The integration with World ID is slated to go live at some point this fall.&nbsp;



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The Drop newsletter

Story Protocol, World prepare for AI-saturated ‘dead internet theory’ future

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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Phantom wallet announced yesterday that it was integrating Hyperliquid perps right into its wallet interface.



<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">Introducing: Phantom Perps 👻 ♾️ Go long or short in just a few taps. 100+ markets. Up to 40x leverage. All in your pocket. Powered by <a href="https://twitter.com/HyperliquidX?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@HyperliquidX</a> <a href="https://t.co/YDKjUGBdEn">pic.twitter.com/YDKjUGBdEn</a>&mdash; Phantom (@phantom) <a href="https://twitter.com/phantom/status/1942628993636917311?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 8, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



This is <a href="https://x.com/hyperliquidbull/status/1942630523408351446">surprising</a>, mainly because Phantom is Solana’s marquee wallet and far ahead of competing wallets like Solflare or Backpack, with 15 million monthly active users (MAUs).



If Phantom wanted a cut of the perps market, I suppose one would’ve naively expected it to partner up first with a native Solana perps DEX like Drift or <a href="https://x.com/DefiSolar/status/1942657673994068081">Jupiter</a>.



But though Drift or Jupiter might be hometown favorites, Hyperliquid is where the money already is.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcFE4l4Km4H4mpQpTG8JLhnqumZMyAFqEgNLpMaiAKAF0towGfMZANz_aUCNsS6FI74YF77MmZLj-O3C7wY6vq8uxf-plujUo1HLgHr7uG85vviI-iyDQgiyYoxiFVFNDBrA03dvg?key=D8S8VRimuiNq_D7bNzCT1w" alt=""/></figure>



Source: <a href="https://dune.com/uwusanauwu/perps">Dune</a>



So the wallet that onboarded millions to Solana is now shepherding flow to a rival venue, which doesn’t boost Solana fees or TVL at all.



Just this morning, Kraken and Backed announced that xStocks would also be launching on BNB Chain.



<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">Welcome Kraken, Backed and xStocks to the <a href="https://twitter.com/BNBCHAIN?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BNBChain</a> ecosystem. 🤝<a href="https://t.co/gg2k8SEsgE">https://t.co/gg2k8SEsgE</a>&mdash; CZ 🔶 BNB (@cz_binance) <a href="https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1942933592541110398?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 9, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Soon, eligible Kraken customers will be able to deposit and withdraw those BEP-20 stock tokens straight from the exchange.



xStocks is Kraken and Backed’s tokenized stock product that debuted on Solana less than two weeks ago (I wrote about it <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tokenized-stocks-good-bad">last week</a>).



Tokenized stocks may have been Solana-first, but they will be fiercely multichain. <a href="https://x.com/Bybit_Official/status/1939626244728840498">Bybit</a> is also integrating xStocks.



xStocks’ move to BNB Chain is no surprise, given Backed co-founder Adam Levi’s <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250522493630/en/Kraken-Partners-with-Backed-to-Launch-xStocks-on-Solana-Bringing-Tokenized-Equities-to-the-Masses">stated goal</a> for the product to “be a neutral, public good asset class” and eventually “expanding xStocks to other exchanges and chains.”



What investor mental model do these pieces of news affirm?



The Phantom x Hyperliquid news seems to simultaneously affirm both the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/battle-for-wallet-supremacy">Fat Wallet</a> thesis and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-infrastructure-bloat">Fat App</a> thesis.



<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">This Phantom x Hyperliquid integration is: • Bullish for Phantom (validation of fat wallet/super app thesis) • Bullish for Hyperliquid (validation of fat protocol thesis) • Bearish for Solana (they have no good perp dex, distribution moat is much smaller than perceived)&mdash; Uma Roy (@pumatheuma) <a href="https://twitter.com/pumatheuma/status/1942669033771536640?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 8, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Build a great wallet like Phantom, because wallets, not apps, own the users.



Or build a great app like Hyperliquid, because users follow the app, not the underlying chain.



But if you can, you should most definitely build a Fat Exchange like Robinhood or Kraken, because then you can take your users to whichever chain you want.



Kraken is a Fat Exchange, but it’s not quite as Fat as Robinhood’s 14 million MAUs.&nbsp;



That may explain Kraken’s decision to go multichain fast and cement its position on each respective blockchain.



There was never really a reason to believe that wallets, apps or CEXs would be loyal to any particular chain to begin with.



Time to totally disabuse that notion.



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The winners and losers of Phantom’s Hyperliquid integration

Ben Strack

An overhaul of financial market infrastructure is set to occur, according to Franklin Templeton innovation head Sandy Kaul&nbsp; — and likely faster than many people expect.&nbsp;



“I think our entire product suite will be onchain at some point in the future,” she told me. “It is simply [about], ‘What is the migration path to getting there?’”



Financial institutions, central banks and corporations using account-based infrastructure are set to move to wallet-based systems on top of blockchains for efficiency and other benefits, Kaul argued.&nbsp;



Estimates that the roughly $240 billion stablecoin market could increase by 10 times over the next several years might be conservative, Kaul argued. But she made clear that it won’t be the crypto-native players driving this growth.



“I think banks are going to realize their future is going to be wallet-based, and they’ll begin to issue their own stablecoins and different versions of tokenized cash in an effort to remain competitive,” she said. “That is where trillions and trillions of dollars of deposits sit, so I think it will grow very, very quickly.”&nbsp;



As stablecoins (checking account equivalents, as Kaul labeled them) become “a foundational piece of financial infrastructure,” she explained, tokenized money market funds — acting like savings accounts — will take off in tandem.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tokenized-yield-funds-complement-stablecoins">Tokenized yield funds, stablecoins a “powerful” combo</a>



Franklin Templeton launched its OnChain US Government Money Fund in 2021. Its assets under management were $740 million as of June 30.



Illiquid, difficult-to-process assets — like <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/janus-henderson-clo-token-1b">CLOs</a> and private credit — are heading onchain to create operational efficiencies, Kaul said. More <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stablecoins-iceberg-rwas-mature-ondo">public equities and ETFs</a> will be tokenized too — and in a less convoluted way than some of the “wrapped workarounds” currently available, she added. 



“And if you move an ETF onchain, in essence you almost eliminate the need for the ETF wrapper over time,” Kaul noted. “Because the smart contract does all the work that the ETF wrapper does today.”



Keep reading for more excerpts from Blockworks’ interview with Kaul.



Blockworks: So you expect Franklin Templeton’s whole product suite will end up onchain. How far into the future could that be? 



Kaul: I think within a decade. I don’t think this is decades away.&nbsp;



One of the really amazing attributes of technology innovation in the last 20 years has been how rapidly it is speeding up. If you think about the fact that Ethereum is just 10 years old, I think things will happen much more quickly than people anticipate. Our CEO is on record saying [she thinks] we will see more transformation in the financial market infrastructure in the next five years than we’ve seen in the last 50. People are going to be surprised, because I think a lot of people are skeptical that it’s going to happen at all.



Blockworks: What is it like to be at a traditional financial company that is also leaning into a disruptive technology like blockchain?&nbsp;



Kaul: We’re very fortunate in that we have a CEO, an executive team and a board who are highly supportive and enthusiastic about the opportunities that we’ve uncovered, the infrastructure we’ve built and the opportunity they see ahead of them.



Now that we’ve reached the point of maturity in the infrastructure we’ve built — where we can issue and program our own tokens, where we have our own transfer agent on blockchain, where we can administer our shareholder records and offer brand new functionality like intra-day yield and peer-to-peer transfers — we’re identifying the spots where we’re integrating it into our own ecosystem.



We’re talking with our vendor management group and our treasury group about ways that we can start to experiment and show the use cases around tokenized money market funds. We’re looking at ways that we can work with our fund boards to see if we can’t introduce new innovations into the way they manage their cash in our traditional mutual funds.&nbsp;



It may take us 10 years to move onto these new rails, but we will do it one step at a time, one set of products at a time, one set of use cases at a time. But that infrastructure that we need to compete in the future, I think we’re one of the first asset managers to really have that in place.



Blockworks: What do you view as the biggest hurdle to overcome in ensuring continued progress in this segment?&nbsp;&nbsp;



Kaul: There’s been a very long, established way of doing know-your-customer and anti-money laundering screening of clients. That is at such foundational conflict with this whole idea of a permissionless ecosystem, and I think the final answer is going to sit somewhere in between. It’s not going to be the same rigidity with which we have to do and maintain and affirm KYC and AML today in the traditional world, where every firm has to do it itself and maintain their own. But I don’t think it’s going to be permissionless either.&nbsp;



“What is the right blend of protection required to ensure that this new financial ecosystem works in a way that protects consumers and discourages bad actors?” is the piece that I don’t see people doing enough work and thinking on.



Blockworks: You were a speaker at a May SEC <a href="https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/meetings-events/tokenization-moving-assets-onchain-where-tradfi-defi-meet">roundtable</a> focused on tokenization. What was your <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/van-eck-crypto-tokenization-sec">takeaway from that event</a> and from broader conversations with the SEC?



Kaul: There’s a much more receptive environment for the many, many people within the SEC who have been trying to drive responsible, effective policy for these crypto ecosystems for years. But they weren’t getting the support organizationally to bring all that great thinking and recommendations to the forefront. What we’re most excited about is really defining the regulatory pathway to being able to intermix both securities and tokens. I think that’s where the distribution really opens up. There still has not been the regulatory clarity that’s going to allow someone to just distribute an ETF or just distribute a mutual fund on a blockchain set of rails.



Blockworks: When you mention mixing securities and tokens, what exactly are you envisioning?



Kaul: Why wouldn’t I have Apple stock…and Ethereum in the same portfolio? They’re basically providing very similar, kind of competitive services — and if I was a relative-value trader I might want to trade Ethereum versus Apple.&nbsp;



Right now, I couldn’t put a portfolio together like that unless I got the exposure to Apple in a very convoluted way. But all I need is some regulatory clarity from the SEC and I would be able to do that.



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Franklin Templeton

All Franklin Templeton products will one day be onchain, exec says

David Canellis

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



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Adoption does not follow a straight line.



At least, not at the local level. But definitely, if you <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ict-adoption">amalgamate</a> the world’s adoption rate for mobile phone subscriptions and the internet, the line will indeed go straight up.&nbsp;



Zoom into individual countries, though, and you’ll soon see that the road to widespread usage can be rocky — but the result is still the same.



Greece in July 2015 was in the midst of an all-out banking crisis.



The European Central Bank had declined to further prop up Greek banks with emergency debt. By this point, Greece was only just <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/greece-meets-imf-payment-deadline/a-18371436">scraping</a> together repayments for a 1.6 billion euro ($1.9 billion) loan from the IMF which had fallen into arrears at the end of June.



Greece’s government scrambled to secure alternative financing but failed. Having judged the terms of the ECB’s deal as politically <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31055069">toxic</a>, the then-prime minister instead called a snap referendum over whether to accept.



Initial deal <a href="https://content.fortune.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/draft16h.pdf">terms</a> ranged from indefinite austerity to further cuts to pensions to forced pre-approval of domestic laws to the placing of 50 billion euro ($58.5 billion) in national assets into a fund supervised by EU representatives.



Greeks <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/third-greek-atms-empty-saturday-tsipras-declares-referendum">rushed</a> to ATMs to withdraw cash as soon as the referendum was called, resulting in an <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33305019">emergency</a> bank holiday and capital controls. Withdrawals were restricted to just 60 euros ($70) per day, international transfers were mostly barred and the local stock exchange was closed.



Three days later, Greece became the first developed country to ever default on an IMF loan obligation. This effectively isolated Greece financially until votes were counted.



<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">Greece almost left the euro at 6am this morning <a href="http://t.co/xDCYXouFaZ">http://t.co/xDCYXouFaZ</a> <a href="http://t.co/BiQsArYs1d">pic.twitter.com/BiQsArYs1d</a>&mdash; Matt O&#39;Brien (@ObsoleteDogma) <a href="https://twitter.com/ObsoleteDogma/status/620565071039627264?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 13, 2015</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Citizens <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/05/greek-referendum-no-vote-signals-huge-challenge-to-eurozone-leaders">voted</a> against the deal (61.3%), plunging the Eurozone into another two weeks of deliberations, which almost resulted in Greece leaving the eurozone altogether, as shown above. The government eventually approved austerity measures later in July. The situation would continue to play out for the rest of the year.



When we talk of Bitcoin’s true value proposition — the one underneath the price talk and financial tinkering — it’s hard to find one better than this precise example: Banks and the stock market have effectively locked you out of your value, and even when they can access it, you can only ever get less than $100 cash at a time.



Bitcoin obviously fixes this. If Satoshi had launched Bitcoin in 2015 instead of 2009, perhaps they would’ve buried a headline about the Greek debt crisis in the genesis block instead of one about the UK.



And certainly, people in Greece did turn to Bitcoin. One exchange <a href="https://www.ekathimerini.com/news/198934/fearing-return-to-drachma-some-greeks-use-bitcoin-to-dodge-capital-controls/#:~:text=New%20customers%20depositing%20at%20least,quadrupled%20to%20around%20700%20euros">reported</a> thousands of new users and locals shared tips on how to buy bitcoin on Reddit and the Greek-language <a href="https://bravenewcoin.com/insights/bitcoin-in-greece#:~:text=Nevertheless%2C%20signs%20of%20Bitcoin%20adoption,lately%2C%20coinciding%20with%20recent%20events">version</a> of Bitcointalk.&nbsp;



Their efforts were frustratingly hamstrung by capital controls — banks blocked most transfers, including potential deposits to crypto exchanges for buying bitcoin.



<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">Nothing like capital controls to focus the mind! First Bitcoin Meetup in Greece <a href="https://t.co/fFiYKxpFtR">https://t.co/fFiYKxpFtR</a> v/<a href="https://twitter.com/RedditBTC?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@RedditBTC</a> <a href="http://t.co/ly3aRQJfnX">pic.twitter.com/ly3aRQJfnX</a>&mdash; Jon Matonis (@jonmatonis) <a href="https://twitter.com/jonmatonis/status/621346504280829952?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 15, 2015</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



“If Greeks already have cash in hand, bitcoin is unnecessary. If they don’t, then bitcoin is unattainable. It’s a bank liquidity crisis,” Andreas Antonopoulos <a href="https://x.com/aantonop/status/615571506630905856">tweeted</a> as local banks were closing.



Still, the price of bitcoin did rise somewhat during the ordeal, but it would only really start to take off toward the end of the year, when the worst of it was over.



The Greek debt crisis showed the world what happens when the fiat system fails a population. But when push comes to shove, it’s clear that Bitcoin as a safety net works best when you’ve planned ahead.



After all, it’s tough to build a doomsday bunker on the day after doomsday.



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Euro

What the Greek debt crisis taught us about Bitcoin, 10 years on

Pump.fun’s initial coin offering is set to take place on Saturday, July 12.&nbsp;



While there’s been speculation and reporting around a potential PUMP token, the announcement Wednesday is the first official communication from the team. Blockworks <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/pumpdotfun-token-sale">previously reported</a> that pump.fun planned to raise $1 billion through a token sale, which would put the valuation at $4 billion.&nbsp;



The PUMP ICO will not be made available to US or UK investors, the platform said.



The tokens will be sold for $0.004 apiece. With a maximum supply of one trillion tokens, that means the public sale will happen at a $4 billion fully diluted valuation. Only 49 tokens currently hold that high of an FDV, per CoinGecko.



Large tranches of the token are also set to be allocated to pump.fun’s team, investors and community. While the account promised that an airdrop is “coming soon,” it was not immediately clear when it would take place. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd9y21ShFLmbNNO9RLZgV8cj2EKE-qeE4mzO-JV9zYP9CcbwunGvwl1vV1fs6qYQU7Fa2uIpG7RNjp-ItgFKP6FL-YfnUu5kfKFR3cpo7WUl4bGbzZmGsZ-J-lRFlDr1V6pbWPpSw?key=i6UIN611kc9XH_9PAND4Ng" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: Pump.fun’s X account&nbsp;</figcaption></figure>



According to the announcement, Kraken, Kucoin, Bybit, Bitget, Gate and MEXC are all launch partners.



“[P]ump fun invented a completely new way to launch tokens, owned this crypto cycle, and became one of the most successful startups ever. now, we’re aiming to kill legacy social media platforms,” pump.fun’s pseudonymous co-founder alon wrote on X. “$PUMP will fuel our domination of crypto and social media.”



This is a developing story.



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<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>

Pump.fun formally announces token, sets ICO date

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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The Monad Foundation has acquired Portal, a stablecoin infrastructure provider, the team exclusively told me.&nbsp;



Portal will continue to operate as an independent entity, though it’ll be able to leverage Monad’s technology to serve customers. Portal’s founder, Raj Parekh, will transition to become the Head of Payments and Stablecoins at the Monad Foundation.&nbsp;



The team declined to give financial terms about the acquisition, but Monad Foundation co-founder Keone Hon told me that they’ve “been thinking about how to grow the onchain economy for quite some time.”



The two noted that they have natural synergies and will leverage them to collaborate on things such as bridges and stablecoin wallets.&nbsp;



“When we at the Monad Foundation thought about this acquisition, we were excited both about the opportunity to partner really closely with [Parekh] and the team that he built, as well as to really grow the adoption of this product, and, more generally, to utilize the product to grow the adoption of crypto,” he continued.&nbsp;



The goal for Monad — which is still in testnet, though Hon told me that the team is preparing to launch mainnet “very soon” (he unfortunately wouldn’t give me more than that) — is to become the “blockchain of choice” for stablecoin transactions.



“There&#8217;s obviously maturity from a volume standpoint, circulating supply standpoint. The infrastructure at the developer tooling side is improved with things like what Portals built. Newer architectures like Monad now actually allow some of the sharp edge of the blockchain that existed before to now be removed as well. So I think it was a natural maturation phase of the infrastructure layer,” Parekh said.&nbsp;



All of this is aided by the fact that the regulatory shift is supporting stablecoins and the interest in them as well, such that stablecoins have come out on top as the defining narrative this year.&nbsp;



“Now I think folks are starting to see real volume, and use cases like banking…Some of the more boring use cases that you see in payments are starting to proliferate with stablecoins,” Parekh noted.



But for Monad and Portal, it’s about utilizing the groundwork that’s been built to “push the limits of what’s possible in terms of money moving globally,” Parekh said.



If you pay attention to headlines as much as I do, then you’ll know stablecoins aren’t the only trend we’re seeing pick up in the space. M&amp;A activity is on the rise, as you can see in the chart below from Blockworks Research.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdxfNm_vb4atMlrSYS8Y-9EeUCY15vyu-nhqV0RCfjYx9S890nCvYjQOX03Z84VX0WrB9xdBJ1_FHjW_49PhJRSf3Z6-AyPunivNQz3Zzuym2d1_BgUedF2qFEplUJDndNMDnQInA?key=YXcSYbpdce2AIX5nwHJgww" alt="" style="width:588px;height:auto"/></figure>



Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of the deals were for projects in the financial sector of crypto.



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXc1ZrNCkTDVGNRXxPbpDfOPRkpGmZFCLSOitssegwJGDic1lidtjSqGzImxRPLmop9vqOf4tdry85RwbLPc8tyzqP0gvytkLsM5PZzUZ7Nt8ThKPKlhkFX4Y6Dc6G9Dac1tld5eUA?key=YXcSYbpdce2AIX5nwHJgww" alt="" style="width:591px;height:auto"/></figure>



But consumer has also seen a pick-up in activity. Take OpenSea’s acquisition of Rally yesterday, for example. Thesis, Worldcoin and Stripe also made consumer-focused acquisitions.&nbsp;



Not to mention that Coinbase made yet another acquisition just last week when it announced it was buying LiquiFi for an undisclosed amount.



Consolidation is a good sign in this space, and shows just how much various sectors are heating up.&nbsp;



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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>

Empire Newsletter

Exclusive: Monad Foundation acquires stablecoin infrastructure project Portal

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">
“Since health, well-being, and security are proper concerns of Government, scientific progress is, and must be, of vital interest to Government.”



— Vannevar Bush, godfather of government research spending
</blockquote>



Should the US government spend money on scientific research? It’s a fair question to ask: Critics worry that government-funded R&amp;D may crowd out private-sector investment and that we’ll never truly know to what extent because the government, unrestrained by profit-and-loss statements, is not accountable for its results.



So let’s look at some results.



A 2015 <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w20889/w20889.pdf">study</a> of NIH grants found that virtually every new drug the FDA approved between 2010 and 2016 benefited either directly or indirectly from NIH support — and that every $10 million of NIH funding resulted in a net increase of two to three private-sector patents.



You might not care about drug patents, sure.&nbsp;



Maybe you think <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/09/04/1034364/altos-labs-silicon-valleys-jeff-bezos-milner-bet-living-forever/">Jeff Bezos</a> or <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/24/retro-biosciences-backed-by-sam-altman-is-raising-1-billion-to-extend-human-lifespan/">Sam Altman</a> will single-handedly solve longevity for all of us, or that AI will do <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/91363911/googles-ai-drug-company-says-human-trials-are-very-close">drug discovery</a> now.



Those are reasonable opinions to have.



But what if I told you the government earns a high and quantifiable return on those grants?



A congressional committee <a href="https://www.ott.nih.gov/sites/default/files/documents/policy/wydenrpt.pdf">report</a> once estimated that the government earns an annual rate of return of 25% to 40% on the money it spends on NIH grants, because they reduce the economic cost of illness in the US.



It’s not just about being healthier, though. It’s about being wealthier, too.



A recent <a href="https://www.dallasfed.org/%7E/media/documents/research/papers/2023/wp2305r2.pdf">study</a> published by the Dallas Fed found that non-defense government R&amp;D spending has accounted for at least one-fifth of business-sector productivity growth since 1945.



Productivity is the most important driver of long-term economic growth, so that’s a significant return on investment.



Another <a href="https://www.dallasfed.org/~/media/documents/research/papers/2025/wp2519.pdf">Fed study</a> found that the R&amp;D increases authorized under the CHIPS Act, if fully appropriated, would raise US productivity by as much as 0.4%.



That seems underappreciated because even the proponents of the CHIPS Act pitched it mostly for the investments it would make in physical infrastructure.&nbsp;



But the innovation policy expert Heidi Williams <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/d5fe0bfb-4c3f-4aa2-b57f-51295f4a30e2?utm_source=chatgpt.com">cites studies</a> estimating that the return on government R&amp;D spending (in terms of economic growth) is 20x greater than the return on infrastructure spending.



Pretty much everyone is in favor of infrastructure spending, so why wouldn’t they be in favor of research spending too?



In Williams’ own <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257%2Fjep.33.3.163&amp;utm_source=chatgpt.com">study</a>, she finds that R&amp;D is probably the most impactful policy the government has to raise both innovation and productivity in the US economy.&nbsp;



Still, you might be a de-growther, and unmoved by the prospect of the US government growing its deficit problem.&nbsp;



Or uninterested in people living longer, wealthier lives.



But what if I told you that government research grants helped develop something really important? Like Bitcoin.



Cryptocurrency didn’t spring fully formed from Satoshi’s white paper; instead, it built on decades of academic work in cryptography and distributed systems, much of which was funded by the US government.



Foundational things like public-key cryptography, cryptographic hash trees and tamper-proof time-stamping were developed at university research labs with funding from government agencies like the National Science Foundation and DARPA.



If that sounds like ancient history to you and therefore irrelevant, I get it — now that we have crypto, what else could we possibly need from the government?&nbsp;



But consider that a government agency — the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) — is leading a multi-agency effort to encourage the development of the quantum-resistant algorithms that will soon be necessary to protect Bitcoin from a quantum-enabled hacker.



It’s not an immediate risk: Dr. Michele Mosca, CEO of the quantum software security firm <a href="https://www.evolutionq.com/company/about">evolution q</a>, assured me in a call that quantum computers are currently too small and error-prone to break Bitcoin’s cryptographic defenses.



But a <a href="https://globalriskinstitute.org/publication/2024-quantum-threat-timeline-report/">survey</a> Dr. Mosca conducted among fellow cryptographers found they estimate a 10% chance that quantum computers will be powerful enough to threaten Bitcoin within five years, rising to a 27% chance within 10 years and an 85% chance within 30.



Fortunately, the NIST is on the job — evaluating, vetting and standardizing the quantum-proof algorithms that will hopefully make Bitcoin quantum-resistant.



(Not to mention the global financial system, everyone’s emails and all of our login passwords.) Unfortunately, the NIST is facing a <a href="https://fedscoop.com/quantum-industry-leaders-voice-support-for-nist-other-science-agencies-following-trumps-requested-budget-cuts/">$325 million</a> cut to its annual budget.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



The cuts, part of the president’s <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Fiscal-Year-2026-Discretionary-Budget-Request.pdf">proposals</a> for discretionary spending, haven’t been passed by Congress just yet, so perhaps the White House will be dissuaded — possibly by its many Bitcoiner friends.



Or maybe the NIST’s quantum efforts will be spared (the White House <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Fiscal-Year-2026-Discretionary-Budget-Request.pdf">says</a> the cuts are punishment for the NIST pursuing “a radical climate agenda”).



But I’m not sure why we’re risking it because government research appears to pay for itself.&nbsp;



Especially for a government that’s long bitcoin.



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



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



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock">Supply Shock</a>: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.</li>
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The Bitcoiner’s case for government R&D

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Ryan Connor

Head of Research

PUMP’s TGE & Launchpad Wars: It’s All About The Front-End

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Speakers

Dan founded Pantera Capital Management in 2003, managing over $1 billion of institutional investor assets in its global macro strategy. He previously served as Head of Macro Trading and CFO at Tiger Management with Julian Robertson. Dan began his career at Goldman Sachs as their first Asset-Backed Securities trader. Dan graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University with a B.S. in Civil Engineering and received the Carmichael Prize for his thesis.

Dan Morehead

Chris Rayner-Cook, CIO, leads Brevan Howard’s Digital investment team. Over a 20+ career, Chris has held senior roles including at Coinbase, where he was Global Head of Trading and Financing, managed capital at large hedge funds including Brevan Howard, Citadel and Millennium, and founded and successfully sold a tokenisation business. Chris started his career at Merrill Lynch in 2000. He obtained his BSc in Pharmacology from the University of Bristol in June 2000.

Chris Rayner-Cook

Daniel is the Chairman, Founder and largest shareholder in CoinShares International Limited, Europe’s largest digital asset manager with $6 Billion USD under management. He serves on the Board of the Tezos Foundation, StableMint, GTSA, Satohshi pay, and a number of CoinShares' affiliates. Since engaging initially in 2012 in crypto he has made numerous investments across the infrastructure powering crypto from data to blockchains to wallets, defi, mining, custody and crypto banks. He was formerly the global head of energy trading at JP Morgan and ran two successful commodity hedge funds. He holds three degrees: Physics, Management Science, and Applied Statistics.

Danny Masters

Tony Ashraf, Managing Director, is globally responsible for Digital Asset Transformation at BlackRock. In this role, he partners both internally and across the industry to leverage blockchain to disrupt traditional operating models, with a focus on partnerships, scale creation and product innovation. His work includes the firms efforts around DLT to redefine market infrastructure, tokenisation and our efforts to develop institutional grade cryptoassets solutions.



Tony’s experience spans across both the buy &amp; sell side, having worked in various Operational, Technology, Project Management, Business Management &amp; Client Service roles in the UK, Japan, China, Singapore &amp; Hungary.

Tony Ashraf

Ray Hindi is the co-founded L1D and currently acts as the CEO/CIO. Ray has an investment background in venture, hedge funds and interest rate trading. Ray holds a BEng from UCL and an MSc in Finance from Imperial College. He previously acted as the CIO of Bellegarde Capital AG an independent investment group with activities focused in fintech, blockchain and other alternative investments. Also previously at Swiss Capital (StepStone Group) responsible for the firm’s macro outlook, macro hedge funds and event driven coverage. From 2005 to 2011 Ray was part of Harcourt Investment Consulting AG, a USD 6 bn fund of hedge funds firm in Zurich, and responsible for USD 2 bn of investments (rates, macro and distressed). He started his career at Bloomberg LP in London and subsequently left the firm to trade interest rates for a London based proprietary group. Ray holds a BEng from University College London (UCL) and an MSc in Finance from Imperial College.

Ray Hindi

Mike Higgins is an early Partner and acting, International CEO and Global Head of Corporate Development at Hidden Road. An experienced Director with two decades of active engagement within financial markets, Mike possesses expertise in market structure across the full spectrum of Global Financial Markets, including Digital Assets, FICC and Synthetic Swaps. A strong emphasis on electronic trading technologies, methodologies and workflows. His specific skills in E-Commerce, APIs, GUI, price generation algorithms, risk management and hedging strategies to a diverse group of market participants prove invaluable as Hidden Road network continues to expand. Prior to joining Hidden Road, Mike successfully built, managed and commercialised a number of businesses within financial markets which included solutions in technology, trading and brokerage. Having started his career in New York on Wall Street, Mike moved with his family to London in 2009. Mike earned a bachelors degree in economics and statistics from Fordham University in New York.

Michael Higgins

Ben founded ParaFi in 2018 as one of the earliest investment firms focused on the blockchain and digital asset ecosystem. Prior to founding ParaFi, Ben spent the first 10 years of his career in institutional investing roles at leading asset managers including KKR and TPG. While at KKR, Ben served as a Director in the credit business, investing across a wide array of industry sectors and parts of the capital structure, including distressed special situations, private credit, and opportunistic and liquid credit. Ben also led KKR's blockchain research as part of the firm's Innovation and Disruption Council beginning in 2016. Prior to KKR, Ben served as a Vice President with TPG’s former credit business, Sixth Street Partners. As one of the first investment professionals to join the platform, Ben helped scale its private credit vehicle, TPG Specialty Lending, which went public in 2014. Earlier in his career, Ben was a member of the private equity team at Littlejohn &amp; Company and investment banking team at Rothschild &amp; Co. Ben has a passion for capital markets, behavioral economics and game theory, all of which drew him to the blockchain space. He grew up playing chess competitively and continues to play actively to this day (peak ELO 1871). He graduated with a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, magna cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania.

Ben Forman

Melvin Deng is the Chief Executive Officer of QCP, one of the first digital asset trading firms in Singapore and global market maker in digital asset derivatives. As the CEO, Melvin leads the company’s rapid growth and expansion towards its vision to partner the next generation of investors to unlock institutional opportunities in digital assets. Under his leadership, he has built the company’s institutional-grade experience, research and infrastructure into a compelling proposition for clients, in addition to overseeing all operations and risk management. He is a believer in the immense growth potential of digital asset derivatives, to unlock future adoption by traditional and institutional players. Inspired by the opportunity to disrupt financial services through digital assets and blockchain technology, he left a more than 15 year career in banking to join QCP in 2021. He was previously the Head of Treasury for a global bank, where he was a member of the Singapore management team, responsible for business and balance sheet strategy. In addition to oversight of all the bank’s Treasury-related activities, he also led balance sheet optimisation initiatives, and launched the first SORA bond in Singapore, deepening the local financial market. Melvin holds a Bachelor of Engineering with honours from the National University of Singapore, and speaks four languages.

Melvin Deng

Nathan Allman is the founder and CEO of Ondo Finance, a blockchain technology company building platforms, assets, and infrastructure to bring financial markets onchain. Prior to founding Ondo Finance, he previously worked at Goldman Sachs on the Digital Assets team, and has a background in private credit investing at Prospect Capital Management.

Nathan Allman

Sandy Kaul is senior vice president, Franklin Templeton, providing advisory consulting for the firm and thought leadership as part of the Franklin Templeton Institute. She delivers actionable intelligence and insights on the future of the investment and wealth management industry for the firm and its clients. Ms. Kaul has cultivated deeply informed insights and has an extensive background in driving market leading research, thought leadership and predictive models centered on the evolution of the investment and wealth management industry. She identifies and champions opportunities to address industry advancements and drive transformation, with a focus on innovative distribution trends and digital disruption. She delivers strategic insights to inform the firm's decision-making on partnerships and investments, including within Franklin Templeton's growing digital asset business. Ms. Kaul has over 25 years of well-rounded industry experience and is a frequent speaker at industry events and a widely published author. She combines her unique blend of sell-side, buy-side and consulting insights to drive her research and thought leadership around what constitutes best practices and where innovation is occurring. Ms. Kaul joined Franklin Templeton in 2022 from Citi, where she served as Managing Director and Global Head of Business Advisory Services, and launched and built out the Citi's Business Advisory Services practice, a market leading provider of industry thought leadership spanning Citi's Markets and Global Wealth organizations. Ms. Kaul rejoined Citi in 2009, after originally starting her career there in 1985 as a Futures Research Analyst covering the soft commodities markets with Citi's predecessor firm, Shearson Lehman Brothers. She joined Commodities Corporation/Goldman Sachs Asset Management in 1995 as a Commodity Trading Advisor (CTA) and Portfolio Manager. After managing money for nearly six years, Ms. Kaul shifted her attention to consulting where she led the strategy practice within the Financial Services division of the renowned dot.com firm, Scient, and then went on to become a Partner at the capital markets niche management consulting firm m.a.partners/Detica. Ms. Kaul holds a bachelor's degree in history and political science from Colgate University.

Sandy Kaul

Nikita is a Managing Partner and Head of Fasanara Digital, the crypto division of Fasanara Capital, a $5 billion hedge fund based in London. He oversees the investment strategies and strategic direction of Fasanara Digital. He originally started The Quant Group from his dorm room, building quant strategies for digital assets. In 2018, the team joined Fasanara Capital and became Fasanara Digital, which has since grown into one of the leading and best-performing digital asset funds in the space.



Additionally, Nikita is the founder of The Digital Asset Conference, an annual event aimed at advancing industry adoption, and hosts the Speaking to Legends podcast. He’s a regular speaker at major crypto conferences and has been recognised by Forbes 30 Under 30 and Financial News’ Rising Stars in Finance. Nikita is also a Young Leader Circle (YLC) at the Milken Institute, and holds a BSc in Mathematics from the University of St Andrews.

Nikita Fadeev

William joined Marshall Wace in May 2022 to oversee Fintech and Digital Assets investments for MW Digital Finance Fund.



Prior to joining Marshall Wace, William worked at Candy Capital, a family office where he was responsible for various investments across the technology sector. Prior to Candy Capital, William worked for HSBC and Greyspark Partners, were he was heading Fintech Investment Advisory. William is also an active seed investor across digital assets and fintech.

William Benattar

Amy is the head of emerging markets equity, a member of the Morgan Stanley Investment Management Operating Committee, the Morgan Stanley Investment Management Equity Technology Council, the Morgan Stanley Innovation Council and the Morgan Stanley Arts and Culture Committee. She manages digital asset initiatives at MSIM and has held roles in equity and FX trading, portfolio management support, product development and strategy. Prior to joining Morgan Stanley in 2001, Amy managed business development at Arc Worldwide. She has over 25 years of financial services experience.

Amy Oldenburg

Michael Howell is CEO of CrossBorder Capital, a London-based FCA registered, independent research and investment company that he founded in 1996. The firm provides asset allocation and capital markets advice to institutional investors, and manages US$1 billion of assets. Michael is involved with educational charities and currently advises a major educational foundation on its investment strategy. He brings 40 years finance experience and is a regular international conference speaker, and a media and social media commentator. He has also advised the World Bank on capital flows, co-authoring their publication Opportunities in Emerging Markets (World Bank, 1995), served as board director of a listed Japanese investment trust and recently authored the book Capital Wars (Macmillan, 2020). Previously he was Head of Research for Baring Securities and board member, where he focussed on Emerging Markets, and Research Director of Salomon Brothers Inc, the US investment bank. Before entering finance, Michael worked as Group Economist for Blue Circle Industries plc. He holds a Phd. in financial economics from London University, specialising in Fixed Income, and is a SEC-qualified US Supervisory Analyst. Michael lives in Oxford, England, and is married with four children.

Michael Howell

Jeff Park is the Head of Alpha Strategies and Portfolio Manager at Bitwise Asset Management, one of the world’s largest crypto-specialist asset managers. Bitwise provides a range of investment solutions, along with industry-leading research and a nationwide team of relationship managers, to help clients navigate the opportunities in crypto. Prior to Bitwise, he was a Partner at Corbin Capital Partners, a multi-billion alternative asset management firm that specializes in multi-strategy hedge fund and opportunistic credit investing, where he led the firm’s digital asset investing efforts. Before Corbin, Jeff was a Senior Associate at the Harvard Management Company focused on US Corporate Credit, and before that, was an Exotic Equity Derivatives trader at Morgan Stanley in New York. He is a graduate of Stanford University with a B.A. in Economics and International Relations, and is a CFA charterholder since 2013.

Jeff Park

Dan Tapiero is a renowned macro-focused investor with over 25 years of investing and entrepreneurial experience. He is the Founder, CEO and CIO of 1Roundtable Partners (1RT) and 10T Holdings (10T), which collectively manage over $1.4 billion of investments in 24 active companies across the Digital Asset Ecosystem (DAE). 1RT is a growth equity fund focused on mid-to-late stage companies in the DAE. Dan serves on several boards including Ledger, LEDN, Futureverse, and Quicknode. Before founding 1RT and 10T, Dan was Managing Partner of DTAP Capital Advisors, a global macro investment fund that he founded in 2003. He is Co-Founder of Gold Bullion International (GBI), a physical precious metals platform for the wealth management industry. GBI expanded into the cryptocurrency business through its integration with Uphold (fka Bitreserve) in 2014. Prior to GBI, he was formerly Co-Founder of the Agricultural Company of America (AGCoA), one of the largest farmland REITs in the U.S. at the time of its sale to the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) in 2013. Previously, from 1992-2012, Dan was a macro-focused portfolio manager and analyst at Duquesne Capital Management, SAC Capital Advisors, Tiger Management and Steinhardt Management Co. Dan graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Brown University, where he earned his B.A.'90 and M.A.'91 in European History. Dan has been on the Board of Trustees of the Lawrenceville School for the past 15 years and currently leads the Investment Committee for its endowment.

Dan Tapiero

Jonah Van Bourg is a professional crude oil and cryptocurrency trader with 18 years of experience managing trading teams and running risk in volatile markets. Most recently, he was Global Head of Crypto and Precious Metals Trading at DRW. Prior to this, Jonah spent 7 years as a partner and oil trader at Vitol. In his early career, he ran the global oil trading desk at Goldman Sachs. Jonah graduated with a BA in Economics and Statistics from Columbia University.

Jonah Van Bourg

Avi Felman is a Principal and Head of Digital Assets Trading at&nbsp;GoldenTree&nbsp;Asset Management. Mr. Felman is also a General Partner of&nbsp;GoldenChain, a wholly owned subsidiary of&nbsp;GoldenTree&nbsp;that manages the Firm’s funds focused on digital assets. Mr. Felman is one of the longest tenured traders in digital assets and has held several prominent positions, including most recently as Co-Portfolio Manager and Head of Trading for&nbsp;BlockTower&nbsp;Capital where he grew the flagship fund portfolio from $40mm at time of joining to over $800mm. Previously, Mr. Felman was Lead Trader at Wave Financial where he co- led the development of the first SEC-regulated Bitcoin fund and he also was responsible for the derivatives strategy and trading execution. Prior to joining Wave Financial, Mr. Felman founded Ledger Capital, a firm focused on cryptocurrency trading and investments. Mr. Felman received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering&nbsp;from&nbsp;Washington University.

Avi Felman

Santiago Roel Santos (CryptoPunk #9159) is an investor focusing at the intersection of DeFi and the Web3 metaverse (NFTs/gaming). Most recently was a Partner at ParaFi Capital, one of the largest crypto funds specializing in DeFi. Prior to that, he was at Sageview Capital investing in Internet and software and, before that, at JP Morgan investment banking. Santiago began investing in crypto in 2012.

Santiago Roel Santos

Nicolas is a Founding Partner of Numeus, a global digital asset investment and trading firm founded by a team of finance, blockchain and technology professionals. Nicolas leads the firm's asset management division, Forteus, that is backed by Schroders and offers institutional funds for investors seeking exposure to the digital asset ecosystem. Nicolas brings over twenty years of professional experience in a career spanning crypto, traditional finance and consulting industries. Before co-founding Numeus, Nicolas was a founding partner of Argentière Capital, a volatility-focused multi-strategy hedge fund where he was a Senior Portfolio Manager focusing on volatility strategies across equities and FX. He was a member of the firm’s Risk Management Committee and was instrumental in building many of the tools and processes employed by the firm across investment and risk management functions.



Prior to launching Argentière, Nicolas was a Portfolio Manager in JPMorgan Chase’s Equity Proprietary Trading Group in London. He previously spent nine years at Bain &amp; Company, where he was a Manager running consulting projects in the areas of corporate strategy, M&amp;A, private equity and operational improvements for clients in Europe, US and Japan.



Nicolas obtained his BA / MA in Mathematics from the Ecole Polytechnique of Lausanne in Switzerland.

Nicolas Vanhoutteghem 

Matt Hougan is one of the world’s leading experts on crypto, ETFs, and financial technology. He is Chief Investment Officer for Bitwise Asset Management, a pioneer in cryptoasset index funds with more than $1.2 billion in assets under management. He was previously CEO of ETF.com, where he helped build the world’s first ETF data and analytics system, the leading ETF media site, and the world’s largest ETF conference, Inside ETFs. Hougan is co-author of both "A Comprehensive Guide to Exchange-Traded Funds" and "Cryptoassets: The Guide to Bitcoin, Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies for Professional Investors" from the CFA Institute’s Research Foundation. He is a crypto columnist for Forbes, and a three-time member of the Barron’s ETF Roundtable.

Matt Hougan

Head of Capital Strategy at Room 40

Jonathan Cheesman

Sid Powell is the CEO &amp; Co-Founder of Maple Finance and with his Co-Founder Joe Flanagan founded Maple in 2019. Sid comes from a background in debt capital markets and institutional banking. During his career in traditional finance, he participated in $3BN+ of corporate bond issuance,and served as Treasurer for a commercial lending company in Australia. Maple has originated more than $5b in institutional lending since inception and currently holds over $550m in assets on the platform. We aim to be the global leader in tokenized private credit and first choice for institutional borrowers.

Sid Powell

Michael Bucella is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Neoclassic Capital, a digital asset investment firm with a strong focus on Asia. Prior to Neoclassic, Michael served as General Partner with BlockTower Capital from 2017 to 2022, growing the firm near inception to managing in excess of $1B in AUM across hedge fund, venture, and credit strategies. Previous to BlockTower, Michael spent nearly a decade with Goldman Sachs in New York across both the Asset Management (GSAM) and Securities Division.

Michael Bucella

James is General Partner – Fund Manager &amp; GP at Republic. Prior to this, James worked in a wide variety of investing, business building and operating roles across the Alan Howard ecosystem. Originally hired into Brevan Howard, his focus was Principal Investing across Crypto, Web3, Fintech &amp; Frontier Technologies. James was also one of the founding team at WebN Group, the well-known incubator for Fintech &amp; Web3 innovation, where over 18 months significant equity value was created. Twinstake, TruFin, Libre, Geometry and Soter are a few of those companies. Due to James’s extensive experience, he additionally spent 6 months restructuring, realigning and putting into place operational policies and scaling procedures at Elwood, a market leading EMS &amp; PMS provider backed by Goldman Sachs, Citi Bank, and Barclays. Having been heavily involved in Web3 &amp; Digital Assets Markets for over 8 years, James started his career with ~15 years of investment banking experience across multi-asset trading, derivative, sales and structuring desks at top tier banks. His deep understanding of the intersection between digital assets, financial technologies and traditional finance has been crucial to creating robust investment thesis’s, venture builds and implementing operational policies, scalable processes and go-to-market strategies in portfolio companies. Outside of work, James is an advisor to various companies, including Saltford FC and has published numerous quantitative, financial and regulatory papers across both traditional and digital markets, most recently for the Digital Economic Initiative. As a qualified Chartered Financial Analyst®, James holds a Masters in Finance (Distinction) &amp; graduated with an Honours Degree in Economics from Durham University.

James Newman

Lekker Capital is a global macro hedge fund with a particular focus on the emerging digital asset industry. Prior to founding Lekker, Quinn served as the Head of Capital Markets for two institutional lending businesses in the digital asset ecosystem, most recently at Maple Finance. Quinn spent five years in fixed income and capital markets at Guggenheim Partners in New York before his full-time foray into crypto.

Quinn Thompson

Jason Yanowitz

Michael Ippolito is a co-founder at Blockworks in charge of content and finance.&nbsp; Previously to co-founding Blockworks, Michael was a consultant where he advised mid-market manufacturing-focused companies on operational and capital efficiency as well as M&amp;A strategy.

Michael Ippolito

Hear from the world's most sophisticated investors about how liquidity, interest rates and economic drivers are shaping their digital asset portfolios.

Macro Case for Digital Assets

Institutional investment will continue to drive this crypto cycle. At DAS you'll hear from investors on strategy, portfolio allocation, and more.

ETFs & Institutional Investment

Hear allocator's perspectives from the top funds in the world on how they are navigating the expanding public & private digital asset markets.

Allocator's Perspective

This year's programming will explore the evolution of global standards and regulatory frameworks that policy makers are crafting for the maturing digital asset ecosystem.

US & Global Digital Asset Policy

The largest financial institutions like Blackrock & JPMorgan are moving onchain to settle treasuries, collateral, and other securities. At DAS, these partnerships and innovations will be at the forefront of conversations.

Tokenization & Real World Assets

DAS will delve into the evolving landscape of stablecoins and digital asset payments. Consumers and institutions alike will gain from their insight into these payments innovations.