According to Stand With Crypto’s election tracker, 226 pro-crypto candidates have been elected to the House and 19 to the Senate. That’s 245 pro-crypto candidates elected across both chambers. higher.

Just wrapped a podcast recording with @jacqmelinek, founder of StrataMedia, at @StellarOrg Meridian in Lisbon. We covered: - The rebrand from Token Relations to StrataMedia - How she's working with major asset managers to gatecrash crypto media zeitgeist - Building distribution, and the tricks of the trade that actually work - When institutionalization can feel inauthentic - Going from journalist to startup founder Episode coming soon.

CME listed bitcoin futures in December 2017. The spot ETF came in January 2024. Ether futures came in 2021, and the spot ETF three years later. This week CME listed Uniswap futures, its first DeFi token, next to Bitcoin, Ether, Solana and Chainlink. The regulated market usually builds the hedge years before the wrapper.

Pulled two conversations out of the archives for The Crypto Tape. I sat down with two of @GSR_io's leading minds earlier this year: Alex Taaffe, our US chief revenue officer, and Andy Baehr (@baehr), head of our asset management. Alex covers why token launches have slowed, what a project needs before it launches a token, and why perps are one of crypto’s best inventions. Plus his playbook for selling in crypto. Andy explains why volatility is a good thing, the signals he looks for in a proper rally, and why DeFi needs a proper fixed income market. If you want to hear how top execs inside a trading firm are thinking about the market, listen. Episode drops tomorrow.

New @coinbase + @TheBlockCo report is a banger. Stablecoins move $400M+ every hour, 24/7. That adds up to $891B in Q3 2026 (adjusted for bots, exchanges and DeFi), up 4x+ from $216B in Q1 2023. Keep that pace and volume hits ~$1.5T a quarter by end of 2027. Addresses also on the risk with 293M addresses - more than Amex and Discover’s combined card base.

MAYBE I WAS WRONG ABOUT BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY I wrote about how I always used to make fun of the guys who said things like "Bitcoin is speculative, but the underlying blockchain technology is interesting." And now I think maybe they kinda had a point.

“The platform’s gonna do what’s best for the platform, not what’s best for the consumer.” In episode 5 of The Desk, we sit down with Anna Kazlauskas (@annakaz), co-founder of Vana and CEO of OpenDataLabs. We cover what happens when public internet data hits a ceiling, what stays scarce once models know everything, and what changes when agents start shopping for us. Watch the full discussion here:

J.P. Morgan Asset Management added a bitcoin forecast to its Long-Term Capital Market Assumptions for the first time. This is the 31st edition of the annual report. Its 10-year base case for BTC is a 10% compounded return with 55% volatility. That is 2.5 points above its 7.5% estimate for US large caps and 4.5 points above its 5.5% estimate for gold. JPM still does not treat BTC as a portfolio diversifier. It points to unstable correlations and high volatility, and its bear case is -11.2% a year.

NEW: @GSR_io and @FalconXGlobal executed the first block trade in CME Group’s new Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Uniswap (UNI) futures. Institutional demand is moving beyond the largest assets toward the long tail of tokens with distinct use cases, and regulated, capital-efficient venues like CME give institutions the hedging tools they’ve asked for. “Providing liquidity in crypto derivatives has long been a cornerstone of GSR’s business, making it a natural fit for us to support CME Group’s new Bitcoin Cash and Uniswap futures from day one,” said @xinsong86, CEO of GSR. “We have long believed that expanding institutional-grade derivatives will supercharge institutional adoption of digital assets, and CME Group plays a central role in making that vision a reality.”

This is super telling. Across five major trading venues, total perpetual futures open interest has fallen 17% over the past year, from $81B to $67B. Yet open interest in RWA perpetuals has surged from virtually zero to $9B, now accounting for 14% of the market. Even as speculative activity in crypto-native assets contracts, traders are increasingly using crypto infrastructure to gain exposure to traditional financial assets.

Really enjoyed this conversation on “The New Shape of Market Structure” at Definition 2026 during Token2049 Singapore, with three legends of crypto market structure: David Lawant at Anchorage, Stef Wynendaele at Keyrock and Joshua Lim at FalconX. We covered: - Why everyone wants to be a prime broker, and why the term still means something different in crypto than in TradFi - Why institutions seem focused on tokenization and RWAs, and not buying the long tail of crypto assets (hedge funds can already hold tokens but risk-adjusted return versus equities doesn't necessarily seem worth) - How credit is coming back in secured form, with tokenized equities as collateral a major tailwind - Why crypto market makers are better off focusing on what they know, like tokenized and DeFi-issued assets, than trying to out-trade established TradFi market makers in large-cap equities

Very cool research from the Grayscale team: Bitcoin’s one-year realized volatility is 43%, down from a 10-year average of 64% and 81% five years ago. That’s now lower than 19% of S&P 500 constituents.

bk twitter: wow. finally a movie exploring truth and representation... sf twitter: chilling investigation of a sociopath (amanda seyfried) ... abbott and costello twitter: anyone know why they showed the (inferior imho) '58 version and not the longer '45 performance?

“The platform’s gonna do what’s best for the platform, not what’s best for the consumer.” In episode 5 of The Desk, we sit down with Anna Kazlauskas (@annakaz), co-founder of Vana and CEO of OpenDataLabs. We cover what happens when public internet data hits a ceiling, what stays scarce once models know everything, and what changes when agents start shopping for us. Watch the full discussion here:

JPMorgan is launching JPM Coin on Ethereum. The largest bank in the US is bringing tokenized dollar deposits to a public blockchain, allowing institutional clients to move money 24/7 and settle in seconds. Wall Street’s migration onchain continues

Wells Fargo continues to expand crypto footprint according to Q3 earnings call: - Launched tokenized deposits on its own blockchain for corporate clients - Forming a new company with 20 other banks to issue stablecoins starting H1 2027 - Tokenized deposits will let clients move funds 24/7 across accounts and borders "Last month, we launched tokenized deposits on our proprietary blockchain platform, providing corporate and commercial clients with a new way to move money more efficiently. As we expand the platform, clients will be able to move funds 24 hours a day, seven days a week, across accounts and borders, without changing how they bank with us." — Charlie Scharf, CEO, Wells Fargo

Goldman CEO David Solomon says tokenization/DeFi presents exciting opportunity and creates "broader distribution channels" when asked if it threatens their markets business during Q3 earnings call: "We continue to invest and closely monitor the developments, both for opportunities, but also for risks. The developments are obviously creating more products, greater activity, potentially new clients, broader distribution channels. And naturally, when you look at these things, they expand the TAM for our business, and that's one of the things that's interesting and exciting."