A lesson from the $ 80m+ of liquidations on SKHYNIX perps today: Keep @selenagomez on your mind when you go to trade these RWA Perps. Perpetual users aren't in the underlying market, betting in the official "casino". They're the people standing around the blackjack table, betting with each other on what might happen at the table. TradeXYZ and other Perp venues go up to them, and offer to referee PvP bets.. for a fee of course. And as referees they can decide separately from the casino on different rules for the bets, and how to handle all the edge cases. If they want people to keep betting with them, these fee charging referees have to try and handle them gracefully otherwise people will find a different place to bet. So while edge cases get ironed out and Perp specifications of each contract shows itself over time to be Lindy, it is the Wild West and liquidation wicks like today will happen. As with prediction markets, there can be a difference between being right and getting paid. "Did Zelensky wear a suit?" ..."Was the SK Hynix pre-open a real price?" The key part of Perps design is how liquidations are handled. Even if Longs are collateralized 1:1, shorts will always have a liquidation point so there is no way to avoid this part of the puzzle. Over time, refinements happen. Today's SKHYNIX event will make tomorrow's contract better. Long Term, RWA perps are some of the most exciting instruments in Finance, and as they get refined they will eventually have the robustness needed to drive global price discovery. Short term... Whenever you're about to trade a new RWA Perp, remember you aren't Selena Gomez at the blackjack table. You're in the crowd. And if the Perp specifications have only been recently implemented, and the underlying is more exotic than a simple MAG7 stock.. well you are actually standing wayyy the hell back in the crowd.

Diesel is at a record in America because two governments are arguing over who gets to charge the toll. Read Article 5 of the deal the US and Iran signed in June. Ships could pass through the Strait of Hormuz "with no charge, for 60 days only." After that, Iran and Oman would define the strait's "maritime services." A maritime service is a fee. The 60 days ran out in August, and the strait has been a shooting gallery since. This week Iran went further. Any ship entering its new exclusion zone goes on Iran's sanctions list. Iran's. So one of the most sanctioned countries on the planet has decided to wield that weapon itself. The US Secretary of State answered in tankers. Five destroyed overnight. Brent is above $100. In seven days the Fed meets to fight inflation. This inflation was made by drones over Saudi refineries and strikes off Kharg Island, and the tool they will use on it is the interest rate on your mortgage. Every currency in this story has a 'strait' attached to it. Somebody can close it, toll it, or blockade the ships that carry it. Bitcoin's supply has no strait. There are no ships. It was the same size the morning the refineries burned as it was the night before, and it will be the same size the day the Fed meets.

Exclusive: Brighton have agreed a deal to sign Femi Azeez from Millwall. The clubs have agreed a deal worth an initial £12.5m with a total package in excess of £15m. Azeez joined Millwall from Reading in August 2024 for a fee in the region of £1m. More from @David_Ornstein 🔗

Circle just lost a fifth of its value in a single day, and the blow came from its own inner circle. Its stock fell 17 percent after a new stablecoin launched, which is normal. What is not normal is who built it…. the asset manager that runs roughly 80 percent of Circle's reserves, the exchange that co-founded USDC and is paid nearly a billion a year to distribute it, and the bank that holds the money. BlackRock, Coinbase, and BNY Mellon all backed a rival to the coin they help operate. The story is not really about a competitor. Circle makes money one way, and it explains the whole reaction. $USDC is a digital dollar. For every one in circulation, Circle holds a real dollar in cash and short-term Treasuries, roughly 74 billion dollars of reserves, and the interest those reserves earn is almost the entire business. About 80 percent of that pile sits in one fund, the Circle Reserve Fund, managed by BlackRock and custodied by BNY Mellon. To get USDC into the world, Circle pays distributors. In one recent year it paid Coinbase alone 908 million dollars. On June 30th more than 140 companies launched a competitor called Open USD, and it inverts the one thing Circle relied on. Instead of the issuer keeping the reserve interest, Open USD shares almost all of it with the businesses that use and distribute the coin. Free to mint, free to redeem, no caps. For any firm that had been helping Circle earn that interest for a fee, the math flips: stop collecting a fee to build someone else's yield, and collect the yield yourself. The names that signed on are the core of Circle's own machine. The exchange that co-created USDC and earns close to a billion a year distributing it is not only backing Open USD, it is launching it on Base, the blockchain that exchange itself owns. The manager of roughly 80 percent of USDC's reserves is backing it too, and so is the custodian bank. The firms paid to run the reserves, sell the coin, and hold the assets are helping stand up an alternative. This was clearly written into the incentives from the start. Coinbase earning 908 million to distribute Circle's product is Coinbase working for Circle. Coinbase owning a share of a rival that runs on its own chain is Coinbase working for itself. Once a distributor can own the economics instead of renting them, loyalty to the issuer means leaving money on the table. And the Coinbase deal is up for renewal in August, so Circle now renegotiates with a partner that just helped launch the alternative. That does not make the outcome certain. It changes who holds the leverage. The deeper pattern reaches far past Circle if you look carefully. It is the risk in any business whose profit comes from sitting in the middle of other people's money. Circle's role was to be the middleman on the digital dollar, holding the reserves and keeping the interest while everyone else moved the coin. That works until the parties on both sides decide they can route around you and split what you kept. The reserve manager, the distributor, and the custodian do not structurally need the issuer to capture that yield, and Open USD is the first serious attempt to prove it. None of this means Circle is doomed, and the fair reading matters. This is also just rational diversification. BlackRock earns fees across every rail it can touch, backing a new one does not require abandoning the old one, and Open USD does not launch until later this year. USDC is still trusted, deeply liquid, and regulated, and Circle's CEO argues the market is big enough for many winners, which may well be true. But the message in the stock is hard to miss. A company whose whole moat was owning the middle just watched the firms on either side of it agree to build a road around it. The most dangerous rival is rarely the stranger. It is the partner who already knows exactly how you get paid.

🚨 𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐒𝐅𝐄𝐑𝐒: Brighton have rejected a £50m bid from Liverpool for Yankuba Minteh. The 22-year-old is keen on the move if the clubs can agree a fee, despite currently recovering from surgery on a right leg injury. Minteh is one of several wingers Liverpool are tracking. [@David_Ornstein]

$NEAR is one of the few projects with a fee engine that is actually turning on. - Intents volume compounding - confidential TVL crossing real size - private perps live - buybacks running @NEARProtocol is becoming a product that is starting to get paid.

$OURO | @OuroLayer w/@thisistheshawn Ouro Layer is a fee generation protocol on Robinhood Chain Highlights include: 00:56 – Shawn's background 02:03 – Co-founder's background 02:58 – What Ouro Layer is 04:00 – Tax mechanics explained 06:00 – Fees earning mechanics 07:50 – Rewards system explained 12:52 – Vaults explained 13:20 – Managing the LP positions 14:30 – What's the current state 20:53 – Token Flywheel explained 22:46 – Partnerships approach 23:53 – Closing thoughts