Why Extended is pursuing a regulated path in Europe TLDR: European retail already trades inside licensed apps, and regulated platforms typically need regulated venues they can integrate. Extended is building one. Builder codes let partners plug Extended into their own product: through the existing venue for self-custody users where available, and through the regulated venue for regulated clients once live. Europe has close to 10,000 fintech companies, and hundreds of licensed investment firms and credit institutions. Most are exploring new ways to engage their retail user base, and perps are consistently near the top of the list. All of them are potential clients for a regulated exchange. That market opportunity drove our decision to build a regulated venue in Europe: 1. Retail is the user base we are building the regulated offering for. We have said before that sustainable growth is built on product quality, distribution and community rather than financial incentives. For a trading product, the largest pool of users is retail, and reaching it is a distribution problem. 2. Perp DEXs processed roughly $600 billion in volume over the past 30 days. CFD brokers alone show the size of the addressable market: around $30 trillion a month, with a large share of it in Europe. The largest platforms already earn most of their volume outside FX, in equities, indices, commodities and crypto. On-chain perps is a market we know well and intend to keep serving, but the larger opportunity sits next to it: tens of millions of retail traders already active on regulated platforms, many of whom have no access to perps today. 3. There are three retail markets at the scale that matters: the US, Europe and Asia. The US is the most contested, with many major exchanges and brokers competing for the same users and a long licensing path. Asia has high perps penetration but regulatory approaches vary by jurisdiction. Europe is where we are starting, and we will look at other regulated markets as and when it makes sense. 4. Regulated crypto derivatives in Europe have only recently expanded. Kraken, Coinbase and Bitstamp (owned by Robinhood) launched futures for EU clients over the past 18 months, each using regulatory infrastructure obtained through an acquisition of a licensed investment firm or exchange. That route is open to a handful of firms with the balance sheet for it, but for the far larger group of fintechs and brokers with users and no perps infrastructure, it is not. Our model is to offer builder codes on both venues: a way for partners to plug perps into their own apps, route users’ orders to the venue and earn a share of the fees. Self-custody wallets can integrate with the existing venue where available. Regulated brokers and fintechs will be able to use the regulated venue once it is live. 5. A regulated perps setup takes significant time and resources to build from scratch, and many fintechs lack the product and market expertise to run it well, starting with established market-maker relationships. For smaller players the economics may not work. For larger ones, regulated builder codes cut time to market, especially inside slow-moving large organisations, and deliver a quality product from day one. 6. The demand is clear. We are already in conversations with wallets, CFD brokers and fintechs across Europe, and we repeatedly hear the same request: a regulated venue with a broad range of crypto and RWA markets they can integrate. Importantly, this does not change our DeFi offering or our commitment to the early community. The existing venue stays for crypto-native users where it is available. The regulated venue adds a new distribution channel and a new user base. Europe is the first step. Over time, we expect to replicate the same model in other markets, including the US. Our plan is subject to the relevant regulatory authorisations, and we will share specifics as they are confirmed. At a high level, we have an initial route to market, followed by a transition to our own licences. Disclaimer: This post is for informational purposes only and is not an offer, solicitation or recommendation. It contains forward-looking statements that are subject to change and to regulatory approval. Perpetual derivative contracts do not provide ownership of, or shareholder or other rights in, the underlying assets or companies. Trading involves leverage and significant risk, including possible total loss. Availability is subject to eligibility and jurisdictional restrictions.

Ok, enough time has passed since the US elections for us to gently move beyond the liberal self-congratulatory burlesque, and deal in some harsh, cold truths. Here is my version of where we stand right now (which I may or may not share in a few months as an 'I told you'): 1. The US elections is a sideshow to the war in Iran and the turmoil in Europe. The empire has not been canceled, the Pentagon has not been dissolved and no one was fired at the CIA or any other shadowy agency. The progressive achievement symbolizes good general trends, but it is strictly a symbol. Actual power has not been transferred or qualified in any way. 2. The Democratic Party has 3 principal commitment: A. Israel B. The Democratic Party apparatus C. The two-party system (aka the status quo) First, the Democratic Party is Israel. It is run by Zionists at every level, everywhere in the US. To maintain their control, these Zionists now need to - Separate Zionism from 'the Israeli government' - Co-opt the Palestinian cause and make it about 'the two-state solution' and 'settler violence' once again. This will give Israel enough time to ethnically cleanse Palestine completely till Republicans win power again. To support Israel in the current atmosphere they need to pretend to embrace some of the criticism ('it is sad when Palestinians suffer and die') while denying and nullifying its essence (Zionism is a great evil that must be eradicated in the name of humanity). Zionists own and operate the Democratic Party. They will continue to support Israel. And, while we're at it, what they are most likely to do is finance and expand a war that the Republicans started. After many soldiers die and West Asia becomes destabilized, the war will be about the future of the world and the region, and Democrats will be used to fake a wider (fake reluctant) American consensus for it. A big painful false flag or two will definitely help. - The Democratic Party apparatus does not want to become too popular: it is too much responsibility. So they will aim for losing, compromising and failing while having a fake robust debate. This is how they keep the apparatus strong and sheltered from both expectations criticism. This is also how they prevent the possibility of serious action against Israel. Additionally, by making the Republicans look stronger than they really are, they paint their uselessness in heroic hues. Which leads us to the next part. - In the two-party system, the two sides are always needed to maintain the false impression of a healthy and natural pendulum swing. So the Democrats will do their best to look stupid and disconnected on a couple of key issues to keep the Republican brand alive and Americans caught in the grasp of the system, which is mainly done by always giving one segment of society the false hope of change through the system in the future (forever alternating between Democrats and Republicans for just enough people so that no one side is actually ever responsible or accountable for anything). The fake promise is the heart of the American political system (and the American experiment in general). - The Democrats exist to maintain the status quo on all issues. The main tools in its disposal are deceit and manipulation (cooptation, pretend solidarity, feigned ignorance, fake empathy, flattery, playing both sides, distraction, obfuscation, misrepresentation and so on). Expect a ton of those, as the radical tones of election day give way to fake sobriety and the intricate needs of the process and the standards and traditions (yada yada). 3. Democrats will continue to serve the long-term interests of the empire, corporate America and Israel - all wrapped in just enough partisan lingo to keep liberals the right mix of deluded, angry and afraid to do or demand nothing concrete while remaining committed to the party. This is all they need to do to maintain their power, and all they care about. And this is what Israel and their corporate owners push them to do as well. 4. For Trump, this is an ideal scenario: he was at once removed from all responsibility for the state of the USA. Whatever gets fucked from now on will be blamed of the Democrats (a game they willfully participate in to keep the two-party deceit going). Now he is free to do what he enjoys: play bully and victim, and create noise and distractions by constantly fighting with everyone and using his platform to insult them and deflect from his failures, all while enjoying the generous attention and coverage the Democrat-controlled media space will continue to afford him as part of the big deception. The coming economic crises will be blamed on the Democrats and their obstructionism: many supposed liberal pundits will support this view - again, to keep the lie going. Trump has two main goals for the rest of his term: A. Create a big mess the Democrats will not be able to solve, which will make the Republicans looking good in a couple of years. A war with Iran could be just that (and if that sounds absurd, remember Trump himself ran on ending wars that another Republican president started, and Democrats continued: the same could happen again in 6 years with another Trump after Democrats, shockingly (!) choose to continue the war/s). B. Amass enough money for himself and his kids to never be bothered again by anyone. And also have fun making a mockery of everything and everyone - which the Democrats will help him with, for reasons I already explained. - Real life is about to bring this fuzzy phase to an abrupt and likely violent end. After that, we'll have the same old, only dumber and faker. Nothing happened but an indication of a trend. Power-wise, this means absolutely nada. Liberals are hopeful, but not even as hopeful as they were when Obama was elected. We all know what happened next. - Only Iran can save the US, and that's by handing it a catastrophic, traumatic defeat. Everything else is cosmetics: easily nippable buds. Nothing has changed yet.

A few thoughts on the recent meme market This is not a paid promotion. —————————Meme Bull Case part1 1. GameStop was a "one-tap" event. Robinhood triggered the zero-commission war in 2019 and reduced options trading to a few taps. The real engine behind the GameStop squeeze was retail piling into cheap out-of-the-money calls → market makers hedging by buying shares → gamma squeeze. That only worked because options had become one-tap. Simplify access, and the event happens at that doorway. 2. fomo is standing in exactly that doorway for memecoins. In the cofounder's own words: "onboard, fund, and buy a token within 30 seconds." 68,000 people bought crypto for the first time through Apple Pay; 29% of users actually trade. Users went from 120K in November 2025 to 625K by June 2026 — 5x in seven months — with ~3,500 new signups a day. fomo captures 46% of Solana trading-platform spot volume. 3. It's infrastructure with capital and revenue behind it. $75M Series B at a $550M valuation (Index, USV, Benchmark). 140+ angels in the seed round including Solana, Coinbase, LayerZero, Wintermute, Pantera, and Dragonfly. A 17–20 person team hit a record $2.64M in weekly revenue and $16M for the month of August. Index partner: "We think there is a market shift there, and they have what it takes to capture this next wave." 4. It's already at the top of the US retail app charts. On August 21 it hit #3# in the US iPhone Finance category — behind only Capital One and PayPal, ahead of Cash App, Venmo, and Kalshi. It's not competing with crypto apps anymore; it's sitting next to banks and payment apps. Fifteen months after launch. 5. Robinhood is moving in the same direction. Robinhood Social (follow/copy trading) launched in March; Robinhood Chain launched in July. Vlad himself said it was "built for RWA, but it works great for memes too," and within nine days of launch a single token, CashCat, hit a $150M market cap on $500M of volume. The company that made GameStop possible just brought its own memecoin chain. 6. The team is preparing for the game to get bigger. A joint event with Pudgy Penguins during KBW, an official Korean channel, merch on the way — they're actively running community events and communication. Team feedback is fast and engaged. A model proven in the US is expanding into Asia, the densest retail market there is, and they look ready to absorb a surge when it comes. Axiom, Trojan, Photon, Moonshot — none of those teams ever did anything close to this kind of active offline community. fomo being this active is a good thing for those of us in the DEX trenches. Once again, for the record: fomo has not threatened me, and fomo has not paid me. 7. It's already visible in the data. From tracking fomo data: comments on new tokens are landing about 3x faster than before. The inflow isn't a forecast — it's happening now. 8. Life-changing headlines are already here. CashCat (Robinhood Chain): $85 → $2.5M (entered June 18, at a $142M market cap; $580K realized) CashCat + PONS: wallet 0x7e3ba, $220K in → $4.7M (reported September 1) Niu Lai / "cow head" (BNB): $120 → $205K, 822x (mid-August) ANSEM (Solana): +190,000% in 13 days, $260M market cap First $10M account on fomo (Bonk Guy, community-reported) Just as "I changed my life on Robinhood" stories pulled retail into GameStop, these headlines are doing the same job now. 9. The early call was right — and Ansem deserves real respect for it. Ansem has been saying "retail will come in through mobile apps" since the earliest days of the ANSEM token, long before fomo cracked the app-store top 3 or Robinhood shipped a chain. That's exactly what's playing out now. Calling the direction this early, and sticking to it while most people dismissed it as just another mobile app, is rare. I genuinely respect that, and if you're trying to read where this market goes next, he's someone you should be following. 10. All that's left is a trigger. The structure is in place — the doorway, the capital, the app-store rank, the chain, the team, the headlines. One Dogecoin-scale viral moment or one Bitcoin bull run is all it takes, and the snowball is already rolling. @RobinhoodCrypto @vladtenev @blknoiz06 @seyong @fomo

North Korea says it has tested a new high-speed torpedo that it plans to deploy early next year, extending a recent run of weapons tests ahead of President Donald Trump’s planned Asia trip next week

Closing a deal with a family-run Mexican conglomerate took @0xdirichlet at @sphere_labs over a year of relationship-building. "They might import raw goods from Southeast Asia and then process them here in Mexico and then ultimately ship them out to the United States or to Europe, and each leg within this involves a 30-plus year relationship vouch." "You can bring an incredible product to their face but it's no longer about is this thing 10x better than everything else on market, it's is this thing sufficiently better than what we use today such that even though I'm not a domain expert in this product category I now feel comfortable vouching for this company and for the people that I know at this company to my 30-plus year relationship."

Well, tomorrow's the day for solana:gf9VEb8NqCUgCNNo1sz47LT4gvUvsHJmhW6Q1ndpump - Asia's biggest IPO of 2026, priced at ¥8.66 (~$1.28) on Shanghai's STAR Market. @HyperliquidX has had it at $6-7 for two straight weeks. My call here is different from @SpaceX and @cerebras , so let me be precise. I expect it to open well above ¥8.66. I do NOT expect it to reach the Hyperliquid price - and I don't think it should. That gap isn't purely a valuation call. You need RMB 500k in a mainland account to buy a STAR Market IPO, and offshore money was shut out of the book entirely. HL isn't competing with a market global investors can access. It IS the access. So I expect a premium to persist after listing. That premium is the price of admission - what someone outside the mainland pays for exposure they otherwise cannot get at all. One thing changes tomorrow. Pre-IPO these contracts run a funding multiplier of 0.005 - basically free to hold a big premium. On conversion @tradexyz flips them to the standard 0.5 against the real Shanghai price. That's 100x the carry, overnight. So: sharp compression, but not to zero. Where it settles is the market's honest price on access. SK Hynix's ADR settled ~15%. China's A/H premium has run 20-50% for years. That's the number I'll be watching tomorrow. Not the pop. And zoom out - because in ten weeks Hyperliquid has taken on two of the biggest structural problems in capital markets of the last 50 years: 1. IPOs priced below clearing, moving value out of issuers and their existing shareholders and into the pockets of the buyside. 2. The world's second-largest equity market being effectively closed to everyone outside of it. Same venue. Same mechanism. Continuous price discovery, open to anyone. @HypeStrat $PURR #pricediscovery#

2026, day 239 Good morning from Asia. ‘CIA chief used Moscow visit to warn Russia against attacks on NATO allies, helping Iran’ (Politico); ‘Putin Moves to Escalate War in Ukraine as Talks at Dead End’ (BBG); ‘Poland Deploys 28 K2 Black Panther Tanks Near Russia as It Hardens Eastern Defenses’ (United24); ‘Ukraine needs changes to avoid losing war, ousted defence minister says’ (Reuters); ‘Italy to supply next-generation SAMP/T air defense systems, Aster 30 missiles to Ukraine in secret aid package, media reports’ (Kyiv Independent); ‘Russia's 2nd-largest gasoline producer suspends oil processing yet again after Ukrainian strike’ (Reuters); ‘Putin signs decree allowing state seizure of businesses hit by drone strikes’ (Euronews); ‘Russia to extend diesel export ban through September, sources say’ (Reuters); ‘US senator hopes 'sledgehammer' Russian sanctions will pass next month’ (Reuters); ‘America’s economic war on Iran has a China problem’ (FT) - “The US cannot fully isolate Tehran unless other trade partners co-operate”; ‘Labor Protests and Panic Buying Signal Growing Pressure in Iran’ (WSJ) - “Fearing supply shortages, Iranians rush to buy fuel and food as living standards deteriorate”; ‘Iran emphasises self-sufficiency in battle against US economic war’ (AJ); ‘Iran war approaching Ukraine-style stalemate, says shipping boss’ (FT); ‘Iran, Oman still negotiating Hormuz deal as Qatar joins mediation’ (Reuters); ‘Source to 'Post': Iran, Oman still have significant gaps regarding Strait of Hormuz’ (JPost) - “Omanis will not agree to imposing fees on ships, Iranians continue to insist this is a condition for passage.” ‘Iran says it views Persian-language media outlets abroad as military targets’ (ToI); ‘‘Point of no return’ if Israel-Hamas truce fails: US envoy to Gaza Board’ (AFP); ‘UN special rapporteurs are 'totally out of control,' Secretary-General Guterres admits in interview’ (JPost); ‘U.S. weapons shortage from Iran war alarms allies confronting China’ (WaPo); ‘US says Chinese hackers broke into Justice Department, NASA, Federal Reserve, Senate’ (Reuters); ‘Canada’s Carney to attend EU’s State of the Union’ (Politico); ‘Germany in talks to help fund Trident’ (Telegraph) - “Berlin could bolster Britain’s nuclear programme under plans to end Europe’s reliance on America for defence”; In geoeconomics, ‘U.S. and Canada Are Bracing for Prolonged Trade Dispute’ (WSJ); ‘Saskatchewan sets 50% tariff on US alcohol after new Trump tariffs on Canadian goods’ (Reuters); ‘Saskatchewan Premier rejects idea of export levies on oil, potash in U.S. trade war’ (Globe & Mail); ‘Alberta premier slams 'disastrous' proposals to leverage Canadian oil in U.S. trade war’ (National Post); ‘The trade war came too soon for Mark Carney’s middle powers alliance’ (Politico); ‘President Trump Declares a National Emergency to Secure America’s Bulk-Power System’ (White House); ‘US critical minerals proposals to Brazil go unanswered as China looms’ (SCMP); ‘Australian trade chief warns EU deal is not guaranteed’ (Euractiv); ‘EU says don't trust Trump's pharma numbers’ (Euractiv); ‘EU should stop moralizing on Arctic oil and let us get drilling, says Norway’ (Politico); ‘Liquidators can pursue PwC globally over Chinese property giant’s collapse, court rules’ (FT); ‘Mark Zuckerberg had a bold plan to replace Meta staff with AI. Here’s how it imploded’ (Reuters); ‘Nvidia forecasts 70% sales growth next year, signals AI spending boom has years left to run’ (Reuters); ‘Tech faces its ‘Big Tobacco’ moment as Meta settles addiction case’ (Telegraph); In politics, ‘Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rejoins DSA after membership lapse of seven years’ (Guardian); ‘Federal judge lifts nationwide block on mail-in voting restrictions’ (The Hill); In markets, ‘Fed’s Cook Says She Never Committed Fraud’ (WSJ); ‘Scott Bessent’s bond intervention puts US Treasury on collision course with Fed’ (FT)