Empire 🟪
@theempirepod
Peek behind the curtain of crypto's biggest decisions.
Hosts: @jasonyanowitz @santiagoroel @HadickM
DMs only come from names in bio ^
93 Following 13.7K Followers
"I just actually bought a bunch of $META this week"
While other AI leaders debate slowing down, Zuck is accelerating.
NEW ROUNDUP
We Cover:
– Regulators move w/o CLARITY
– Many stablecoin debate
– $CRCL launching Arc
– Why Yano bought $META
– Polymarket’s hiring spree & more!
@JasonYanowitz @HadickM
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Intro
03:50 Corporate Stablecoin Debate
13:03 Why The CLARITY Act Failed
16:58 The SEC Opens Tokenized Markets
22:43 Who Wins Tokenized Markets?
29:06 S&P Moves Deeper Into Crypto
37:40 Can Circle Make Arc Work?
46:14 Can AI Startups Survive Meta?
51:26 Polymarket’s War For Talent
57:15 Content Of The Week
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NEW ROUNDUP
We Cover:
– How $BONER squeezed $HIMS
– Losing money on fomo
– How Santi's playing this cycle
– Will $CRCL win stablecoins?
@JasonYanowitz @santiagoroel
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Intro
01:57 Crypto’s Animal Spirits Return
06:20 Can Memecoins Unlock Tokenized Stocks?
12:42 Ads (TOKEN2049, Avalanche)
14:22 How $BONER Squeezed Tokenized $HIMS
19:21 Robinhood Faces Meme-Equity Backlash
22:21 Are Onchain Equities Crypto’s Future?
28:34 Do Most Fomo Traders Lose Money?
32:01 You Must Enter The Trenches
33:53 How Santi Is Playing This Cycle
36:56 Is Solana Still Years Ahead?
39:29 Will Stablecoins Become An Oligopoly?
42:41 Content Of The Week
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DAS Asia + TOKEN2049 + Formula 1 Weekend
5 WEEKS UNTIL DAS ASIA
>Agenda dropping this week
>More big speakers on the way
>Ticket prices at standard rates until Sep 25th
It's DAS season
Beezie was once rejected by an investor because its margins were too low.
“It’s a user acquisition strategy, and at the end of the day, it’s how we compete.”
@AndreaMYellie wants users to feel like they’re winning instead of extracting as much as possible from every transaction.
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“For better or for worse, people in crypto are nerds.”
Traditional graded cards are dominated by sports, but onchain collectors skew toward anime, gaming and Pokémon.
@TuomHolmberg thinks that's evidence that genuine collector behavior is emerging onchain.
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Why does Hyperliquid’s story resonate more than Pump’s?
Because Hyperliquid points toward a much bigger future of stocks, bonds, currencies, and commodities all trading onchain.
If Hyperliquid becomes the venue for that, the opportunity is 1,000x bigger than crypto today.
Pump may have a great business, but it doesn't have a great story.
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“Value investing is a way to lose money”
@HadickM says markets are increasingly rewarding flows, storytelling, and venture-style upside over cash flows and traditional valuation.
Buy the winners. Price growth. Ignore value.
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During a delay in Jackson Hole, @JasonYanowitz texted Instinct and it:
- Booked five different flights
- Refunded the four he didn’t take
- Had a car waiting when he landed at 5 AM
He didn’t open an app or touch anything else.
We're dangerously close to the “personal assistant in your pocket” AI promised.
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Ethena just made a huge push to align tokenholders, investors, and the protocol.
• Bought out early investors who sold $ENA
• Shifted protocol IP + value accrual exclusively to the Foundation
• Proposed using net revenue to programmatically buy back ENA
• Eliminated monthly VC unlock overhang
• Kept team tokens on their original vesting schedules
• Joined the Blockworks TTF
This is exactly what crypto teams should be doing.
@Ethena is cleaning up incentives, directing value toward tokenholders, and materially improving transparency.
For a team this important to the industry, the hope is others take note.
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Crypto was supposed to start looking more like traditional finance.
Instead, traditional finance started looking more like crypto.
All markets are increasingly driven by stories and main character energy, not DCFs and revenue.
Pump built a killer business.
Its problem is that it’s telling the market a bad story.
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NEW POD
We Cover:
– Narrative vs valuation
– Is Santi still bearish?
– Hyperliquid’s $1T TAM
– Pump’s story problem
– $ENA’s new tokenomics
:: @JasonYanowitz @santiagoroel @HadickM
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Intro
01:07 Is Crypto Risk Worth It?
08:07 Are AI Assistants Overhyped?
13:40 Is Crypto Undervalued Again?
22:06 Why Pump Trails Hyperliquid
30:14 Ads (TOKEN2049, Avalanche Summit)
34:12 Ethena Fixes Its Tokenomics
42:33 How Does Ethena Keep Growing?
49:30 Can FOMO Onboard Normies?
56:10 Content Of The Week
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“Four-year cycle would say that October of this year would be the bottom.”
We also have Saylor capitulating, miners pivoting to AI, and new regulation coming from the SEC.
Is it time to nibble?
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Every crypto cycle seems to have one institutional moment that unlocks the next wave of flows.
In 2020, Paul Tudor Jones called Bitcoin the fastest horse.
Now, Druckenmiller is buying $HYPE via $PURR.
Maybe this is one of those moments.
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Disclosures are coming.
Staying quiet and operating in the gray zone in crypto will be a huge risk.
"There will be teams that will get hurt from this, and those are the teams that should get hurt from this."
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The TLDR on the SEC's new token framework:
Projects could raise up to $5M under a startup exemption or up to $75M under a fundraising exemption.
Both require disclosures around the token and investment contract. The larger tier adds financial statements and ongoing reporting.
And once a team completes its promised managerial work, there’s a path for the token to exit securities treatment entirely.
Overall, clearer rules for raising capital and stronger disclosure standards to protect investors.
Onwards.
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A trillion dollars of value can be created before retail is even allowed to buy.
@haydenzadams argues tokens offer a fundamentally different model from the current broken IPO model.
Use Tokens to distribute value to the users who actually make platforms successful.
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Two companies account for roughly 40% of equities trading.
@haydenzadams says the opportunity for DeFi isn’t eliminating market makers, it’s dramatically lowering the barrier to becoming one.
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Robinhood Chain has become one of Uniswap’s highest-volume deployments.
@haydenzadams says the strategy is to meet users wherever they are without trying to pick chain winners
Robinhood shows what that can unlock: new onchain users, new revenue, and Uniswap as the liquidity layer underneath it.
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What if your cost of capital was actually negative?
Everyone wants to be delta neutral, but that may be the wrong way to think about capital efficiency.
@haydenzadams breaks down why LPs holding long-tail assets can generate yield on capital they wanted exposure to anyway.
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