anyways, for the liquid fund or altcoin players who are sidelined on-chain and waiting for the fabled alt season, here's my high conviction play firstly, imo there are two big risks w this thesis - first, the fact that on-chain has been very hot (hot ball of money is there) ; and secondly, that crypto x ai play has been left for dead due to many failures that have no pmf (only vvv works, and yes, this is a crypto x ai token) decentralized models - failed ; gpu renting - failed ; agents - failed; these risks cut both ways - one, you are pre-positioning for the "eventual puck" - but it may never come, and i may be stuck in this position that does nothing. But if it DOES come, then this is under-positioned and offer asymmetric upside and has good r/r. you can't have your cake and eat it two but the silver lining is - looking at VVV's success, we can conclude that market DOES have appetite, but for things that *work*. and alts HAVE just done a 2-4x since the bottom, and have just been chilling, so all things considered, odds are in your favour now for the thesis - n of 1 vertical, practically impossible to copy bc it's relationship driven biz in an atomized world (not bits) - right place, right time, jensen started gpu financing - was laughed at 1y+ ago but now it's starting to gain traction - also, in a vertical of crypto, like mentioned earlier, has been left for dead, yet has shown strong pmf in their metrics, and has the right tailwinds of bringing RWA yield on-chain, good tokenomics, in a secular high growth vertical (AI) - tvl up and to the right, closed sharon ai (leopold holding) + few other neos - overloaded with borrow demand, could write 10x loan TVL (3bn) in next three months. - top of funnel ~13bn in loan originations; constraint is not demand, but deposits ; aave + sky integration upcoming to provide material boost over the next few months - listed on every exchange - upbit, robinhood, binance, coinbase - expecting tokenomics update on value accrual in next few months. founder has shared public views on how he thinks about value accrual, expect this to be very positive. he takes lessons from HYPE / VVV ; - as an example, 65bn nasdaq listed tech company bought tokens three months ago - team just hired ex CRWV CFO as Senior Advisor - 80m MC with no unlocks till q1 27 - oh , and chart looks like this fucking send it

Honestly, the fact that Solana had tokenized stocks infrastructure way before Robinhood and fumbled the lead this massively is pretty disappointing I think most people view Solana as the "move fast break things" archetype of crypto, and last cycle they were truly S tier operators I think cracks are starting to form if you're a fundamental Solana bull - this is not the performance you want to see. Time will tell if they can fix it

Summary: Y1 Numbers - Crossed $1B gross revenue on Aug 13. Peak week of $21.5M in gacha (215k packs). - Gave away 141,724 free packs ($12.2M face value) vs. the $1M they'd promised. - Shipped 46,811 cards worth $23.5M insured to 84 countries. - Bought two Montana buildings (~100k sq ft) for vaulting, an LGS, and wholesale distribution; now building robotic intake and storage. - Raised ~$1.1M pre-seed + seed (mostly from their own users), then ~$3.5M via a Metaplex launch pool. They're a tech company welded to a warehouse Buybacks - four channels with on-chain verification: - Market-making bot since April 19: 3.48M solana:CARDSccUMFKoPRZxt5vt3ksUbxEFEcnZ3H2pd3dKxYjp, $616k USDC, avg $0.1772, zero sold - Buybacks from advisors and pre-seed VCs - Support buys during dumps: 6.01M solana:CARDSccUMFKoPRZxt5vt3ksUbxEFEcnZ3H2pd3dKxYjp, $226k, avg $0.0376 - Raydium LP fees: $1.34M USDC + 9.35M solana:CARDSccUMFKoPRZxt5vt3ksUbxEFEcnZ3H2pd3dKxYjp over 44 harvests Total ~22.5M tokens, ~5.4% of circulating supply pre-Aug 29 unlocks - now burned. They explicitly draw a line between this and burning foundation-wallet allocation (they hold 38%), calling the latter "deleting monopoly money" since no real capital was spent. Non-drop 5 next week at 0.75%, the last at that rate; the following four drop to 0.5%. Lastly, RIPMART This is the easiest, most comfy hold of my life. Thank you @TuomHolmberg @Collector_Crypt @JoeMunnsHK for building such a fantastic product, on crypto no less, creating such a asymmetric investment opportunity into one of the fastest growing verticals of the coming decade. Onward and Upward.

IMO the reason I like Forward Guidance as a pod is because they always come up with interesting non-consensus trade ideas, whereas other podcasts usually just cover what I already know / very consensus longs Props to the team!

> The KOSPI ended the day lower as the Korean govt has announced first time retail investors need a 5-day/5-hour simulated trading mandate starting August 19 on top of a ₩30M (~$21K) cash deposit rule effectively locks out the retail wave that drove single stock derivative volumes. >A 92%+ trading volume collapse—from $8.82B down to $667M in days…

I’m excited to share that I’ve left @DefianceCapital and joined @Defillama as a Senior Research Analyst. My time at Defiance was nothing short of exceptional. I’m incredibly grateful to @arthur0x for giving me the opportunity and teaching me so much about markets. I loved working with the team, and I’m proud to call many of them my good friends even after leaving. They were truly some of the best people to work with! And with that - a lot of people have asked why I’m staying in crypto, especially with AI seemingly taking over everything. The answer is that it has been a very intentional decision. Over the past year, I’ve spent a lot of time looking beyond crypto into AI, equities, robotics, and other industries. I came away with a simple conclusion: there is still no industry quite like crypto. For all its flaws - and I complain about them plenty - crypto remains the only place where I’ve consistently found an incredible mix of brilliant, ambitious, and genuinely fun people. Many of my closest friendships and people I admire professionally have come from this industry. I've yet to find another industry that attracts the same kind of people - crypto attracts a unique kind of builder and thinker. And although people have written this industry off, I believe in the opposite. While asymmetry in the crypto markets may not exist for the time being, as an industry, it is quite clear that we are entering a new era. As for why DeFiLlama: DeFiLlama has consistently remained committed to the principles that made crypto exciting in the first place - openness, credibility built through transparency and a commitment to the truth. They’ve earned enormous respect by sticking to their guns rather than chasing narratives, and I believe they’re one of the best stewards of the industry today. Few teams have shaped crypto more than DeFiLlama and @0xngmi. I'm excited to join the team and work with them to contribute to their mission - and of course, I will continue to write on my Substack, sharing my market thoughts, all the while.

This is amazing - we have Singapore's Minister of Foreign Affairs @VivianBala explaining how he uses a Nanoclaw on Raspberry PI This is a gem; He says the barriers to accessibility have collapsed - his setup was not created by him; and that memory is the next frontier (LOL)

this $CRCL PA - market initially thought Arc token would probably diminish liquidity to the stock / create problems since there'd be 2 vehicles to bet on it then it realised in this model, the equity wins and token loses.. this is pretty bad for tokens imo

fintwit will have no idea what hit them first they saw that we're trading oil on the weekends now they see that we're longing anthropic and openAI on perps on 3x leverage who do i tag to make this blow up? @vladtenev