Adam Efrima is the SSV Core team Co-founder. He has been active in the crypto industry since 2013. Over eight years living in China working in the financial industry and fintech space, Adam has worked in CITIC Bank covering outbound investments for Chinese SOEs, he was also in charge of setting up the eToro Shanghai operation. Since then, Adam has been deeply involved in Ethereum staking, co-founding top performing staking project Bloxstaking as well as co-founding SSV Network, a decentralized validator infrastructure for ETH staking.

Adam Simmons is Chief Strategy Officer at RDX Works, a key contributor to the Radix public ledger. He has over 13 years of experience in building &amp; growing businesses in a range of industries including online video, blockchain &amp; digital marketing. With experience in both senior leadership &amp; hands-on roles, he has repeatedly recruited, managed, and trained highly successful teams within marketing, customer success and operations functions. Adam is also a previous member of the UK Paralympic Sprint Kayaking Team and has competed in multiple World and European Championships.


Adam Swick is the Chief Growth Officer at Marathon Digital Holdings. Prior to joining Marathon, he served as a principal at Refinery Ventures, where he was responsible for identifying and recommending business strategies to accelerate the growth of all companies in Refinery’s portfolio. Before Refinery, Swick was the director of strategic finance at Kraken Digital Asset Exchange, where he managed the company’s balance sheet, debt program, investor relations, and all forecasting activities. Prior to Kraken, he founded Swick Capital, a crypto-asset hedge fund, worked at Pritzker Group Venture Capital, and was a consultant at Boston Consulting Group. Swick holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a BS in finance from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

Adrian Brink is the co-founder of Namada and Anoma, where he focuses on building privacy-preserving systems that are resilient to global crises. Previously, he was a core developer at Tendermint (Cosmos) and worked at the Web3 Foundation. He also co-founded Cryptium Labs, which was later sold to Chorus One, and Metastate, where he contributed to major upgrades to the Tezos protocol​.

Adrien Stern is the founder &amp; CEO of Reveel, the omnichain payments infrastructure that enables one-click cross-chain payments to connect people across borders and networks. Before founding Reveel, Adrien led digital transformation efforts at BNP Paribas CIB. He was also previously a venture builder, and owns Bridge Music, a record label and recording studio. Adrien has a Bachelor’s degree in Sciences of Management from The University of Lausanne and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Esade. 

Alex Hoffman is Head of Ecosystem at Superposition Finance. Superposition is revolutionizing DeFi by addressing its core challenges through robust risk management powered by Concordia’s best-in-class risk engine, omnichain functionality, and transparency.

Alexei Zamyatin is a co-founder of BOB, a first-of-its-kind hybrid Layer-2 powered by Bitcoin and Ethereum. He has been a Bitcoin and interoperability research contributor since 2015 and is most known for his work on trustless cross-chain bridges and L2s. Alexei holds a PhD in computer science from Imperial College London.


Alison Haire is the CEO and founder of Lilypad, a serverless, decentralized compute network that democratizes access to computational power by providing scalable infrastructure for AI, machine learning and other high-demand processes. Before founding Lilypad, she held roles at companies such as Filecoin, IBM and Accenture. Under her leadership, Lilypad leverages idle GPU capacity worldwide to fuel an open AI economy, providing cost-effective and scalable compute resources. Her work focuses on making high-performance computing accessible to more developers and researchers, while challenging the dominance of large centralized cloud providers​​.

With over 20 years of experience leading and designing games and tech companies, Alun is well-versed in creating innovative products that tackle experiential and developer challenges. In addition to his stewardship of LAOS Network, he is CEO and co-founder of the company building LAOS, Freeverse, which focuses on building scalable blockchain infrastructure. His history as the co-creator of ‘Barcelona World Race - THE GAME,’ a cutting-edge video game enabling virtual participation in real-world events, and his wider passion for gaming, have fed into his vision for LAOS Network as a solution for the intersection of Web3 tech with both gaming and real-world applications. Alun also led Shar3d.io, a pioneering company enabling collaborative 3D web applications, and served as CTO of Bodypal.com, a virtual garment services company. He holds a Ph.D. in Medical Physics from University College London.



Amanda Cassatt is the founder and CEO of Serotonin. Amanda previously served as Chief Marketing Officer of ConsenSys from 2016 through 2019. Joining one year after the launch of Ethereum, Amanda played a crucial role in defining, creating, and growing the narrative for ConsenSys, Ethereum, and blockchain overall.

Amanda stewarded the ConsenSys brand through its global expansion across enterprises, governments, developers, and consumers. She created and scaled the marketing team to over 50 people, serving both the ConsenSys brand and 50+ portfolio companies such as MetaMask, Infura, Truffle, and Gitcoin; managing teams in product marketing, growth, design, content, community, events, email, analytics and SEO. Amanda’s contributions to some of the most successful product launches, token sales and fundraises landed her on Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2016. Amanda is the author of the world's first web3 marketing book, Web3 Marketing: A Handbook for the Next Internet Revolution.

Amanda Keleher currently serves as Chief People Officer at Consensys, one of the largest and fastest-growing companies in the blockchain technology space. A well-rounded business leader with an over 25-year career in the technology space, Amanda is the driving force behind the human element of Consensys where she is responsible for overseeing all of the aspects of people, from building and maintaining the company culture to harnessing human capital as a key driver of business. 

Before joining ConsenSys, Amanda served as the Head of People at ThoughtWorks, a global technology consultancy company, for nearly ten years, where she led the global scale expansion by opening offices around the world and recruiting a diverse workforce at a time when the DevOps movement had just been born and a new skill set were yet to be developed. After her time at ThoughWorks, she served as the Executive Vice President, People &amp; Culture of Index Exchange, one of the world’s premier ad tech organizations; and as VP of People at Little Bits and Intent Media where she excelled in designing effective and creative strategies to attract and retain world-class talent in hyper competitive environments

Andrea Berry is a seasoned online video strategist with 15+ years of experience in transformative media partnerships. 

Her early successes include helping to launch Qello Concerts, the first direct-to-consumer live-music OTT service, later transforming it into Qello Media Services and Vimeo’s OTT channels offering across various industries as their first strategic sales director for their enterprise.

Currently, as the Head of Business Development at Theta Labs, Andrea leverages her expertise in online video and blockchain to drive strategic partnerships and growth opportunities for the company. She helps enterprises take advantage and lean into the opportunities Web3 presents. 

Andrew Redden is the CEO and CTO of Last Network, a blockchain platform focused on sustainable cash flow and reinvestment. Previously, he worked at Gitcoin and has contributed to numerous DeFi and Web3 projects. Redden's career reflects a commitment to developing technologies that prioritize long-term viability and community engagement​.

Andrew Thurman is a Data Editor based in Washington, DC. He previously wrote for CoinDesk and Cointelegraph, and worked in various roles for Chainlink and Nansen. His analysis has been quoted in The Financial Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Forbes, Fortune, Reuters, The BBC, CNBC, and elsewhere. Contact Andrew at andrew@blockworks.co.

Andrey Sergeenkov writes educational articles as a freelancer. His works have been published in Coindesk, Cointelegraph, Entrepreneur and CoinMarketCap. He believes that transforming society towards lifelong learning, combined with decentralization in government and business, will lead to exponential social development.

Andy Bromberg is CEO of Beam and Contributor to the Eco Protocol. Eco has raised more than $90 million from an array of leading investors, including a16z Crypto, L Catterton, Activant Capital, Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, and others. Prior to Eco, Andy was Co-founder and President of CoinList. Andy is also a founding board member at FreeWorld, a non-profit seeking to end institutionalized poverty in the United States by providing access to living-wage jobs for people with criminal histories. He studied Mathematics and Computer Science at Stanford University and co-founded the Stanford Bitcoin Group.

An established and versatile Financial Executive with over two decades of experience running multiple trading businesses across top-level banks such as HSBC, Barclays, and UBS. After running the top Agency and SSA business for both UBS and Barclays, he took over Emerging Markets macro trading for Barclays. In 2018, wanting to go deeper into Emerging Markets he took a role as Head of Latam local markets trading where he was responsible for trading activities across Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and Chile. In 2021 DeMartino moved into Crypto when he became CEO and founder of Coinbase Risk Strategies focused on DeFi and Derivatives trading. More recently he started Trident Digital Group, a crypto-native solutions firm that is focused on lending and safe yield generation and stablecoin adoption.


Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio.

Prior to founding SkyBridge in 2005, Scaramucci co-founded investment partnership Oscar Capital Management, which was sold to Neuberger Berman in 2001. Earlier, he worked in Private Wealth Management at Goldman Sachs &amp; Co.

In 2022, Scaramucci was ranked #47 in Cointelegraph’s Top 100 Influencers in Crypto and Blockchain. In 2016, he was ranked #85 in Worth Magazine’s Power 100: The 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance. In 2011, he received Ernst &amp; Young’s New York Financial Services “Entrepreneur of the Year” Award.  Anthony is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and a board member of the Federal Enforcement Homeland Security Foundation. He is the author of five books.

Scaramucci served on President Donald J. Trump’s 16-person Presidential Transition Team Executive Committee, and in 2017 briefly served as Chief Strategy Officer of the Export-Import (EXIM) Bank and White House Communications Director.

Scaramucci, a native of Long Island, New York, holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Tufts University and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School.

Antoni is a co-founder of Aleph Zero Foundation (Switzerland), an organization overseeing the development of the Aleph Zero blockchain, and a Managing Partner of Cardinal Cryptography (Poland), firm focused on core development of the Aleph Zero ecosystem.

Ari Juels is the Weill Family Foundation and Joan and Sanford I. Weill Professor in the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech and the Technion and a Computer Science faculty member at Cornell University. He is a Co-Director of the Initiative for CryptoCurrencies and Contracts (IC3). He is also Chief Scientist at Chainlink Labs. He is the author of crypto thriller novel The Oracle (Talos Press), which was released on 20 February 2024.

Austin Alexander is co-founder of LayerTwo Labs, a company focused on advancing the Bitcoin ecosystem through innovative solutions and specializing in the development of Drivechain, a specific type of blockchain sidechain designed to foster creativity and scalability within Bitcoin.

Austin Campbell is the founder and managing partner of Zero Knowledge Consulting and an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School. Previously, he has run portfolio management at Paxos for the stablecoins as well as being the chief risk officer of Paxos National Trust, has managed fixed income trading desks at JP Morgan and Citi, and has been a portfolio manager and structurer at Stone Ridge, the parent of NYDIG. He holds a BS in Mathematics from CSU Chico and a MBA from NYU Stern.

Ben Mills is the co-founder of Meso, a payments platform connecting banks and blockchains. Prior to Meso, Ben spent a decade building payments products as an early team member at Braintree (acquired by PayPal), as Head of Product at Venmo, and working on Solana Pay at Solana Labs.

Ben Rubin is the CEO and co-founder of Towns, a decentralized messaging platform dedicated to redefining online communication. Rubin has a rich background and a decade of experience in creating digital spaces that build trust and foster human connection. Prior to founding Here Not There Labs, the developer of Towns, Ben founded two venture-backed startups, Meerkat and Houseparty, both of which reimagined how people interact digitally. He scaled his communication products to hundreds of millions of users and raised over $70M in funding from Sequoia Capital and Greylock. After Houseparty was acquired by Epic Games in 2019, Ben went on to found Here Not There Labs, a venture-backed startup with over $30M in funding from a16z crypto and Benchmark Capital.

Ben Strack is a senior reporter covering macro and crypto-native funds, financial advisors, structured products, and the integration of digital assets and DeFi into traditional finance. Prior to joining Blockworks, he covered the asset management industry for Fund Intelligence and was a reporter and editor for various local newspapers on Long Island. He graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in journalism.

Contact Ben via email at ben@blockworks.co

Bessie is a Brooklyn-based reporter covering DeFi and technology. Bessie worked as a tech journalist for The Org prior to joining Blockworks and was a management consultant for KPMG in another life. She is originally from Melbourne, Australia and holds an MA from New York University. She is also the mother of a bratty cat named Mochi. You can reach Bessie at bessie@blockworks.co

Bezalel Eithan Raviv, an ex-member of IDF Cyber Unit 8200, is a seasoned entrepreneur with deep expertise in technology and innovation. He now leads Lionsgate Network, a blockchain analysis firm specializing in professional money recovery services for digital asset investors in the +$2.5 trillion market. Prior to this role, Bezalel founded an investment banking firm supporting AI startups and developed Halleluiah, a pioneering web3 migration pattern for global music copyrights.

Billy Luedtke is the CEO and founder of Intuition, an information protocol powering a more trustful internet. Billy previously served as senior technology advisor at EY, a leading global professional services organization providing assurance, tax, audit, strategy and transactions. At EY, Billy created the company’s blockchain consulting practice, leading the technical development of blockchain-enabled distributed systems. Billy later became a senior token engineer at Consensys, a leading Ethereum developer (MetaMask, Infura, Linea). Billy continues to serve as an advisor at Consensys and MetaMask.

Billy Sebell is the Executive Director of the XDC Foundation and an early contributor to the XDC Network. Since early 2018, Billy has worked to develop the XDC community, focused on ecosystem and network growth and implementing use cases in trade finance. Billy previously spent more than 25 years in manufacturing and consumer products, dealing with the challenges businesses face in capital markets and international trade.

Bob Bodily is the Provo, Utah-based CEO and Co-Founder of Bioniq, a BTC Ordinals wallet and marketplace. He has a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience and a Ph.D. in educational/instructional technology from Brigham Young University, with 25 articles and 1K citations. He is a data engineer with 100K+ lines of production Python code, and he has two previous software startups, including an EdTech SaaS that sold in 2021.


Bogdan is the Co-Founder and CTO of Tenderly, the full-stack infrastructure solutions provider powering Web3 developer teams with the essential tools and services throughout their development journeys. 

Prior to co-founding Tenderly, Bogdan worked as a software engineer for major software platforms such as MVP Workshop and Go Daddy where he was responsible for constructing and managing the development of distributed cloud systems before realizing the lack of infrastructural support for Web3 developers. With his vast experience in constructing, expanding, and overseeing extensive distributed cloud systems, he is well-versed in the intricacies of blockchain technologies and their practical applications. 

Brandon Truong is lead product contributor for ZetaChain. He previously co-founded social platform Yada (which was acquired in 2020) and spent time building products for BuzzFeed and Udacity. 


 Brian Pak is CEO &amp; Co-Founder of ChainLight, an award-winning blockchain security firm that specializes in smart contract audits and on-chain monitoring. He is also a co-founder of Theori, an established US-based offensive cybersecurity company, since 2016, which he still leads today, having now amassed trusted partners including Microsoft, Google and Samsung. Brian’s early career started when he co-founded and developed Kaprica Security, inventing and patenting the Skorpion Charger, an Android mobile charger that can detect malicious software with no user action required. He has worked on research and development projects with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the US. Brian is also a founder of the team PPP (Plaid Parliament of Pwning) which won DEF CON CTF, one of the most prestigious hacker competitions held in Las Vegas, in 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2022 and 2023. Brian graduated with a Masters Degree in Software Security Research from Carnegie Mellon University.

Three years ago, his act of burning a physical Banksy ignited global discourse on NFTs and Web3, exposing the industry's flaws. Now, through XION, founder Burnt Banksy leads a mission to democratize Web3 to the masses, making ownership accessible to all by removing unnecessary barriers and complications through chain abstraction. To date: XION has raised over $36M in funding with the goal of "making crypto disappear." Ultimately, Burnt Banksy wants to provide the benefits of crypto to people without requiring them to know anything about crypto.

Byron Donalds grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and he is also the proud son of a hardworking and loving single mother. His mother dedicated her time instilling in him that greatness requires sacrifice, which drives him as a devoted family man and United States Congressman.  

Byron is a graduate of Florida State University and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in finance and marketing. Byron's career led him to Southwest Florida, where he worked in the banking, finance, and insurance industries. Elected to the Florida House of Representatives in 2016, Byron represented Hendry County and east Collier County in the State Capitol. During his tenure in the Florida House, Byron served as the PreK-12 Quality Subcommittee Chair during the 2018-2019 Legislative Session and served as the Insurance &amp; Banking Subcommittee's Chairman 2019-2020 Legislative Session. While serving in the Florida House, primarily focused on elder affairs, criminal justice reform, and ensuring that each child has access to a world-class education. 

Byron is committed to serving and giving back to the community that gave him so much. He has served Southwest Florida in many ways, including previously serving on the Board of Trustees for Florida Southwestern State College after being appointed by then-Governor Rick Scott. Byron continues to volunteer in his church as a youth leader and a mentor. He also enjoys volunteering as a coach in youth football and basketball leagues.

Congressman Byron Donalds lives in Naples, Florida, with his wife, Erika, and their three sons: Damon, Darin, and Mason. Byron has spent his entire adult life serving others, whether it be through volunteering, business, or leadership. He is committed to representing Florida's 19th Congressional District's conservative values in Washington DC to ensure a stronger Florida and a stronger nation.

Cameron B. Pick is a partner and patent attorney at the Chicago-based intellectual property boutique law firm Marshall, Gerstein &amp; Borun. He prosecutes patents for emerging technologies, including blockchain and crypto, among other innovative areas. He may be reached at cpick@marshallip.com. 

Candace Kelly is the Chief Legal and Policy Officer for the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), a non-profit organization that supports the development and growth of Stellar, an open-source network that connects the world's financial infrastructure. She leads the team responsible for SDF’s legal affairs and the policy team that is focused on bridging the gap between the public and private sectors. Previously, Candace worked for Uber Technologies, Inc., where she helped navigate the company’s response to regulatory investigations and advised on safety, security, privacy, consumer protection, and law enforcement response. Prior to that she served for 17 years at the United States Department of Justice.

Carlos Mercado is a data scientist at Flipside Crypto, specializing in the convergence of data science, cryptocurrency, economics, and open-source research. His expertise spans the Ethereum ecosystem and over 20 other blockchains, where he leverages SQL, R, Python, and Solidity to develop innovative data models and analytics tools. Carlos's notable contributions include the creation of the True Freeze DeFi primitive and leading the production of the 2023 Crypto Users Report, generating significant industry impact. Prior to Flipside, he applied his skills in AI strategy and product development at Guidehouse and offered data science consulting services.


​​Casey Wagner is a Senior Reporter based in New York. Casey covers crypto regulation, markets and central banks. Prior to joining Blockworks, she reported on macroeconomics at Bloomberg News. She graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in Media Studies. Contact Casey via email at casey@blockworks.co

Charles Hoskinson is a Colorado-based technology entrepreneur and mathematician. He attended Metropolitan State University of Denver and University of Colorado Boulder to study analytic number theory before moving into cryptography through industry exposure.

His professional experience includes founding three cryptocurrency-related start-ups – Invictus Innovations, Ethereum and IOHK – and he has held a variety of posts in both the public and private sectors. He was the founding chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation’s education committee and established the Cryptocurrency Research Group in 2013.

His current projects focus on educating people about cryptocurrency, being an evangelist for decentralization and making cryptographic tools easier to use for the mainstream. This includes leading the research, design and development of Cardano, a third-generation cryptocurrency that launched in September 2017.

Chris Barrett serves as the Director of Communications at Chainlink Labs and has been involved with Chainlink since 2017. Chainlink is the only on-chain data and cross-chain platform that enables financial institutions to develop customized, flexible, compliant, and future-proof blockchain applications and tokenized assets. Before this role, he founded a leading PR agency for technology startups, where he worked with over 1,000 innovative companies. Chris is also an avid runner, having maintained a streak of running for over five consecutive years. 

Chris Brooks founded CryptoAssetRecovery.com in 2017 to help digital asset owners recover lost assets. Chris was a programmer at Fidelity Investments, VP of Technology at venture-backed Carescout (which sold to GenWorth, a spinoff of General Electric) and has founded and sold three bootstrapped internet companies. 

Chris Swenor is a seasoned entrepreneur and blockchain pioneer with a 20-year career that kicked off as a self-taught programmer at age 13. He swiftly moved from corporate roles into startups, leading several to successful acquisitions. Chris started venturing into blockchain and cryptocurrency in 2013, founding Reach in 2019, a platform that has since attracted over $13M in funding and onboarded more than 8,000 developers.

In recent years, Chris founded Humble, a decentralized exchange on Algorand, and Alloy, a blockchain gaming platform acquired in 2023. He is currently working on Voi Network, a layer 1 blockchain empowering its community with user-centric governance and economics. 

Christopher Perkins is President of CoinFund, a web3 focused Registered Investment Advisor.  He is also a member of the CFTC’s Global Markets Advisory Committee and its Digital Asset Markets Subcommittee.

Ciarán Murray is a seasoned veteran of the blockchain industry. Aside from advising on numerous blockchain projects over the years, and releasing a synthetics assets proof-of-concept last year, Ciarán previously worked in the media industry for British Sky Broadcasting. He is not only well placed to understand the issues facing the media industry but also how to apply blockchain and other distributed technologies to remedy them.

Da Hongfei is the founder of Neo, an open-source, community-driven blockchain platform designed to welcome developers into the Smart Economy. Hongfei operates as CEO of Neo Global Development (NGD), the executive arm of the Neo Foundation that is committed to developing the Neo protocol and its supporting ecosystem. He is seen as a luminary in the Web3 space and as a blockchain pioneer in Asia. Hongfei received his education at the South China University of Technology, receiving degrees in technology and English.

Damian Alvarez is a communications professional helping Web3 clients get their stories heard. He is currently the Head of Communications at Aori, an omni-chain logic layer that leverages off-chain data storage to enable high-frequency on-chain trading. He has worked at agencies such as Edelman and YAP Global to assist a variety of emerging and established clients to engage in industry-wide narratives surrounding technology. He may be contacted at damian@aori.io.

Dan Keeler is Editor-in-Chief at Blockworks. Prior to joining Blockworks, he was Frontier Markets Editor at the Wall Street Journal where he managed the Journal’s coverage of smaller emerging markets as well as created a number of high-profile events and a highly regarded newsletter. Before joining the WSJ, he was the Editor of Global Finance magazine. He is also the founder of New York’s FM Network, a group that hosts gatherings of finance professionals focused on smaller emerging markets.

Contact Dan via email at dan@blockworks.co

Dan Smith is a Senior Research Analyst based in the United States covering Curve, Convex, Aave, and Compound. Daniel previously worked in tax and valuation at EY and Bennett Thrasher. He is focused on using data visualization tools to better understand the health and profitability of various DeFi protocols. Contact Dan at daniel@blockworks.co

Daniel Batten is a ClimateTech investor, Bitcoin environmental impact analyst, CEO advisor and author. He is most widely known for his data-driven approach to Bitcoin mining research.


Daniel Cawrey has been involved full-time in the crypto space since 2013, including as an editor at CoinDesk. He is author of 2020’s “Mastering Blockchain” and 2023’s “Understanding Crypto” books, both available on Amazon.

Daranee Ganesh is a publishing and production manager based in Washington, DC. She holds an LLB with a focus on emerging technologies. Prior to Blockworks, Daranee worked on several legal and non-profit projects aimed at integrating decentralized solutions in the social justice framework, specifically within immigration and environmental law. Contact Daranee at daranee@blockworks.co.

Darren Kleine is an Alberta-based reporter covering podcast content at Blockworks. Previously reporting for Cointelegraph, he wrote feature content and a weekly series focused on the personal stories of influential figures in the Web3 space. He has been an active participant in the NFT art scene since 2020, creating works on curated platforms including SuperRare and KnownOrigin and hosting an NFT art-focused podcast called NFP with DKleine. Contact Darren Kleine at darren@blockworks.co.

David is an Editor based in the Netherlands focused on data-driven journalism. Previously, he wrote for TheNextWeb's crypto vertical before launching Protos in 2021. He's a reformed hardline Bitcoiner passionate about permissionless and decentralized networks. Contact David at david@blockworks.co

David Schwed serves as the Chief Operating Officer at Halborn, an elite blockchain security firm. Prior to Halborn, he was the Global Head of Digital Assets Technology at BNY Mellon, the world's biggest custodian bank, where he integrated the IT strategy for the company's digital asset services. David was also CISO for Galaxy Digital, where he led the development of information security and IT infrastructure, and served as a risk committee advisor, evaluating emerging threats in financial services. He also founded the Cybersecurity Master's Program at Yeshiva University’s Katz School of Science and Health, sharing his expertise as a practitioner-in-residence.


Delphine Forma is the policy lead for Europe &amp; UK at Solidus Labs, a leading market compliance and market integrity firm in digital assets. With a career spanning roles in major banks and blockchain ventures, she brings extensive experience in compliance and legal across sectors. She is the founder of the crypto compliance and legal TG group with 1,400 members. A Sciences Po Lyon alumna, Delphine also holds advanced degrees in European Criminal Business Law and anti-money laundering.

Denelle Dixon is the CEO and Executive Director of the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), a non-profit organization focused on working with and supporting changemakers to create equitable access to the global financial system through blockchain technology. She leads the teams that help maintain Stellar's codebase, support the communities around Stellar, and advocate on behalf of the network with international stakeholders. Before joining Stellar, Dixon served as COO of Mozilla, one of the most successful mission-driven open-source organizations.. During her tenure at Mozilla, she led the organization’s business, revenue and policy teams including the ongoing fight for net neutrality and the global effort to ensure that people can control their personal data.

Dermot O’Riordan serves as a Director at the POKT Network Foundation where he helps steer product development and strategy. From Ireland to Silicon Valley, Dermot’s career ranged from advising tech companies and VC firms to leading marquee industry events. His interest in Web3 was sparked in 2016 with the rise of DAOs, leading him to dive deeper into the blockchain space, where he served as an advisor to projects like Radix and Dusk, and later, spearheading growth at Eden Block.

Donovan is a reporter based in Singapore. He previously worked in editorial at Bankless and is a huge fan of spaghetti Westerns and the Wu-Tang Clan. Contact Donovan at donovan@blockworks.co.

Elena leads product marketing at Hiro Systems, a developer tooling company bringing smart contracts to Bitcoin. She has spent the past six years working in blockchain and cryptocurrency startups. Elena co-founded Blockchain Latinx, an online community that explores what blockchain means for Latinos and for Latin America. She has an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business.

Eli Cohen is a corporate lawyer with 25+ years of experience in commercial transactions, financial services and regulatory matters and has worked in Asia, Europe and the United States. He is the General Counsel for Centrifuge, a real-world asset (RWA) tokenization and securitization platform and Chief Compliance Officer for Anemoy Capital SPC Limited a British Virgin Islands fund company issuer of the tokenized Anemoy Liquid Treasury Fund 1. He is a graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center, has a Masters in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Eli Zeger writes about democracy and its relationship with technology. His work has been published in the Boston Review, Noema Magazine, Strange Matters, Zora Zine, among numerous other publications.

Elliot is the Head of Climate Strategy at Sustainable Bitcoin Protocol, where he is helping unlock Bitcoin's clean energy potential by bridging sustainable miners and climate-conscious investors. In his role at Sustainable Bitcoin Protocol, Elliot educates policymakers and NGOs on Bitcoin’s relationship with the energy system. He is a climatetech operator focused on alleviating energy poverty, bridging the digital divide, and promoting financial inclusion through technologies such as Bitcoin. Elliot was previously a Schwarzman Scholar and has served in the military, US Department of Energy, Clinton Foundation, and more. 

Evan Thomas is General Counsel for Alluvial, a software development company supporting the Liquid Collective liquid staking protocol. He was previously at Wealthsimple, Canada’s largest consumer fintech, where he was Head of Legal for Wealthsimple’s crypto trading platform. While at Wealthsimple, Evan helped launch Canada’s first regulated staking product. Before Wealthsimple, Evan was a litigator at Osler, Hoskin &amp; Harcourt LLP for nearly 15 years. Among other notable cases, Evan was hearing counsel to 3iQ Corp. in its appeal securing regulatory approval for Canada’s first publicly traded bitcoin fund in 2019.

Felix Jauvin is the host of the On the Margin podcast. Based in British Columbia, Canada, he lives and breathes where crypto and macroeconomics intersect.

Felix Xu, crypto geek, early adopter, and NFT collector. Felix graduated from NYU Stern and founded two crypto projects, ARPA and Bella Protocol, among the global top 500 by market cap. Felix previously worked at Fosun Investment, Sackler family office, and Vertical Research in New York and Beijing. Felix loves sailing, kitesurfing and was featured in the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times for his NFT collection.

Frank has a diverse career that spans creative writing, day trading, and a 12-year stint in financial planning. After experimenting with blockchain and being an early adapter to the Solana ecosystem, Mathis co-founded GenesysGo in 2021 to create a faster, more reliable and more secure decentralized data storage protocol. Their flagship product, shdwDrive is built on Solana and aims to bridge the gap between blockchain technology and traditional business infrastructure. GenesysGo is powered by a new type of decentralized data storage consensus mechanism, built from the ground up by the GenesysGo team.

Fraser is co-founder &amp; CTO of Cubist and an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. She is an expert in software correctness: her research focuses on systems security, automated bug finding, and formal verification, from verifying (parts of) production systems like browser JITs, to finding exploitable bugs in real codebases. Her tools have found many zero-day bountied bugs and CVEs in the Chrome and Firefox browsers and multiple operating systems. Fraser received her BA in English and her MS and PhD in Computer Science from Stanford.


Garrett Harper is the producer for the Empire podcast. Garrett worked in private equity and product management before jumping into crypto full-time in 2021. His favorite thing about crypto? It conflates art, gaming, finance, software, and psychology into one hyper-growth industry.

Gijs op de Weegh is the CEO and Founder of StablR, where he leads the strategy, business operations, and investor relations. He founded StablR out of his passion for implementing blockchain technology in the financial industry and exploring its possibilities. Before founding StablR, Gijs co-founded Payvision, an e-commerce payment service provider, in 2002. Under his leadership, Payvision grew to over 300 employees and achieved a turnover exceeding €4 billion.

Gísli Kristjánsson is co-founder and CTO of Monerium, the first company to issue fiat onchain. He fell in love with programming at the age of 13. After working as a bonds broker, Gísli saw the inefficiencies of securities settlements firsthand and recognized the potential of Bitcoin. Prior to co-founding Monerium in 2015, Gísli founded and sold a platform to give users access to geo-blocked content. Fun fact: Gísli’s Ethereum address is among the 1% of the oldest addresses.

Haden Patrick is Director of Business Operations of Cordial Systems, a provider of institutional-grade self custody software using a Zero Trust security model.  Haden has executive experience in team leadership, engineering and education originating from his 24 year career as a Naval Officer. After co-founding SoloKeys, the first open-source security key company, he went on to manage projects connecting web3 to traditional finance at a cryptocurrency trading firm before joining Cordial Systems.

Hadley Stern, Advisor to MPCH, has extensive experience in leadership roles within TradFi and digital asset industries. As Global Head of Custody at the Bank of New York Mellon (BNYM) from 2021 to 2023, Hadley spearheaded the creation of the industry’s first bank-grade crypto-custody platform. Hadley also previously served as Chief Operating Officer at Bloq where he was responsible for the P&amp;L, product roadmap, and general operations. Hadley was Founding President of Fidelity Digital Asset Services where he led Fidelity's Blockchain Incubator and Digital Currency group and was pivotal in early product launches, including activating Bitcoin donations to Fidelity Charitable and building and running Fidelity first Bitcoin mining Operation.



Hannah Finnerty is Blockworks' editorial operations manager and is based in the US. Hannah previously worked in podcast production for The National in Abu Dhabi. She graduated from Bowling Green State University with a degree in multiplatform journalism and Middle Eastern politics. Contact Hannah at hannah@blockworks.co.

Hatu Sheikh is the co-founder and CMO of DAO Maker, the largest on-chain funding platform with 1.5M+ users. The platform's contracts have distributed over $600M, with a cumulative return of around 10x. Hatu has a strong background in marketing and strategy and has played a pivotal role in driving the success of various blockchain-based projects and tokens, crafting effective marketing strategies, and forging powerful synergies within the industry.

Harry Duckworth, a law graduate, embarked on a unique journey that led him to become the youngest trader at global commodities giant Trafigura. He then went on to set up desks for several hedge funds worldwide, accumulating over a decade of experience in trading, hedge funds, and emergent technologies. 

Through his work, he became fascinated by the revolutionary power of blockchain tech soon after the inception of Bitcoin. Years later he founded AgriDex International, to provide digital marketplaces and supply chain information for all participants in the global food chain. 

Hind Kurhan is a Co-Founder of Thesis Defense, a decentralized technology security auditing company whose mission is the facilitation of broad adoption of decentralized technology by improving security and audit consistency throughout the blockchain sphere.


Ian Rogers is the Chief Experience Officer at Ledger, leading the consumer-facing business delivering the world’s #1 way to buy and secure cryptocurrency.  Prior, Ian was the Chief Digital Officer at LVMH for five transformative years, working with a portfolio of nearly one hundred brands across luxury including Louis Vuitton, Dior, Sephora, and Hennessy.  Ian also sits on the boards of Dr Marten’s and Lyst.

Ian spent twenty years bringing digital music to the mainstream, first with Winamp then Yahoo!, Beats, and Apple.  Ian contributed to the 2015 launch of Apple Music including Beats 1, their digital streaming channel. Ian graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science (with honors, Phi Beta Kappa) from Indiana University in 1994.  Ian built some of the earliest music-related Web sites in the early 90s and has been working with Beastie Boys since 1993.

Igor Telyatnikov is the CEO and co-founder of the blockchain and financial services technology company AlphaPoint. Headquartered in New York, AlphaPoint supports over 10 million users, powering marketplaces and wallets in over 35 countries. With 15 years of experience in tech and innovation, Igor has empowered over 150 clients, including CME Group and Scotiabank. In 2022, he partnered with the Government of El Salvador to upgrade its Chivo Wallet into a national Bitcoin and dollar wallet, creating the first nationalized crypto ecosystem. Igor previously held roles at Cvetlo, LiftDNA, and Ingersoll Rand/Allegion, and has a Bachelor’s degree in Business Marketing from Penn State University. He is a frequent speaker at industry events.

Ishan is a University of Texas McCombs School of Business graduate with a BBA in Finance &amp; Marketing. He founded and managed a Private Equity Fund that reached an eight-figure Assets Under Management (AUM) and has also gained experience with many top 200 projects of crypto market cap. In 2022, he helped found SCRIB3, a Web3 Marketing and PR venture. He was notably among the first to raise an alert about potential deceptive and unethical business practices by FTX. Ishan contributes as a DeFi analyst, an active angel investor, and an advisor in projects like Polygon Technologies.

Jack Kubinec is a Solana ecosystem reporter based in Brooklyn, New York. Jack previously interned at Blockworks before joining full-time. He graduated summa cum laude from Cornell University with a degree in sociology. Contact Jack at jack.kubinec@blockworks.co.

Jag is the CEO and co-founder of re.al, an L2 build to facilitate deep onchain liquidity for tokenized RWAs. re.al seeks to redefine how RWAs are integrated into DeFi, using yield-generating real-world assets as novel building blocks in existing DeFi primitives.

James Cirrone is a breaking news reporter based in New York. Prior to joining Blockworks, James was a reporter and newsletter writer at Bloomberg News. He graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in journalism. He also played trumpet in the university’s marching band. Contact James via email at james.cirrone@blockworks.co.

Jason Allegrante is the Chief Legal and Compliance Officer at Fireblocks. He is an experienced Counsel with a demonstrated history of working in the financial services industry with both large, traditional financial institutions as well as early stage fintech startups.



Jason Dehni is the co-founder and group CEO of Credbull, a leading DeFi platform offering structured high fixed yield solutions in SME private credit. Jason has over 25 years of senior management experience in asset management, private banking, SME lending, insurance, risk management, and crypto across North America, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East. His background includes serving as group COO &amp; MENA CEO of a publicly traded crypto asset management company, co-founder &amp; CEO of an SME trade finance platform, and senior leadership roles in asset management, wealth management,  insurance, and management consulting. Jason holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and an Honours BA in Economics &amp; Political Science from the University of Toronto. 

Jean-Marie Mognetti is Chief Executive Officer of CoinShares, a publicly listed investment firm that manages over five billion in digital assets on behalf of a global investor base, and an experienced commodities trader with a background in quantitative strategies. A veteran of the Global Advisors group of companies since 2011, Jean-Marie has served in various leadership roles throughout his tenure, most recently as CEO of Global Advisors (Jersey) Limited and director of GABI, the world’s first regulated Bitcoin fund. In addition to his management responsibilities as CEO, Jean-Marie oversees the firm’s proprietary trading arm, capital markets portfolio, and risk management practices – areas in which he has developed unique expertise over his career. Prior to joining Global Advisors, Jean-Marie was a quantitative strategist with Hermes Commodities Fund Managers, and an Energy Trader Assistant at Lehman Brothers. He holds Master of Science degrees in Mathematical Trading and Finance from Sir John Cass Business School in London, and Bank-Finance-Insurance from Université Paris Dauphine in Paris, in addition to a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics and Finance from Université Paris Dauphine.

Jeff is an editor at Blockworks, based in the United States. He has been a part of the blockchain space for over a decade, most recently working as US news editor at Cointelegraph. His areas of focus include empowering artists and creators through technology, using proof-of-participation methods to reward self-improvement, reducing the effectiveness of Sybil attacks, seeking transparent equity for disadvantaged communities, and exploring fairer models of world governance. Contact Jeff at Jeffrey@blockworks.co.

Jesper Johansen is the founder and CEO of NORTHSTAKE, a regulated custodial staking company specialized in building regulatory compliant crypto staking products for institutional investors and financial institutions. The team holds backgrounds from financial institutions, pension funds, large investment companies to consulting, technology and audit firms, such as Accenture, Deloitte, PwC as well as blockchain and crypto projects e.g. DAI Foundation (MakerDao), Ethereum and L1/L2s. 

Prior to NORTHSTAKE, Jesper held leadership positions with Accenture Strategy and Deloitte Consulting advising clients in heavily regulated industries to implement new technologies and drive business transformation. He holds a MBA from Copenhagen Business School and a B.Sc. in International Business. 

Jess Sun is an independent writer and content strategist. She loves bringing good ideas to light, helping the people behind them shine, and bridging gaps in understanding. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn. Go to her website to learn about working with her.

Jesse Knutson is the head of operations at Bitfinex Securities, where he is responsible for expanding the platform’s issuance pipeline, overseeing distribution and building its user base while ensuring compliance with regulatory standards. Prior to this role, Knutson served as vice president of financial products at Blockstream, and held roles at prominent investment banks including Macquarie Group and Barclays.

Jim Myers is an engineer, early-stage investor, and the CTO &amp; Co-Founder of Flipside Crypto, a leading blockchain data analytics and business intelligence platform. Prior to co-founding Flipside, Jim developed the core technology that took products from 0 to 1 at companies such as Mylestone, Pluralsight, and Smarterer. Jim’s journey into the crypto industry began in 2015, eventually co-founding Flipside Crypto in 2017 to help empower crypto communities to create and share data-driven insights on the projects they care most about. Jim's passion for building extends to the broader startup community via his developer event series, Stack Dive, and as an angel investor to several local Boston-area startups, including AdHawk and LinkSquares. In a previous life, Jim developed advanced models to quantify risk and abnormal returns in the market for Financial Transmission Rights, a type of energy derivative.

JJ is an advisor, mentor and co-founder working across Bitcoin, mining and web3. He currently mentors for Outlier Ventures new Bitcoin Base Camp program and has co-founded a new protocol operating in stealth mode.

Joey is ranked by Chambers and Partners as one of the top 12 lawyers in the world, advising many of the largest platforms around the globe in the space. He co-chaired the Gibraltar Government’s working group on Blockchain for 3 years, which was established to develop the infrastructure to accommodate a DLT regulatory framework. Joey is also a specialist consultant to the United Nations and trains and assesses authorities primarily around South East Asia in virtual asset developments, DeFi and regulation. He is a member of several think tanks including the prestigious global ‘Wharton Reg@Tech’ initiative, the Blockchain Industry Parliamentary Roundtable on Blockchain Technologies at Parliament in the UK, and also contributed to the UK Law Society on the Blockchain Legal and Regulatory Guidance publication. He was the Xapo Representative on the Libra/Diem Association and has also contributed to various stablecoin and CBDC developments. 

Joeyz Yu is an entrepreneur with over 18 years of experience in product design and development. He co-founded Sending Labs to revolutionize communication protocols and social applications for Web3, leading the development of their flagship products SendingMe and SendingNetwork. Previously, Joeyz co-founded MoboTab, where he created the Dolphin Browser, used by over 200 million users and later acquired by ChangYou. Joeyz's passion for empowering users and building exceptional teams drives his mission to shape the future of the internet. 

John is the Editor of Evergreen Content at Blockworks. Before Blockworks, he was the producer and founder of an explainer studio called Best Explained. As Evergreen Editor, he manages the production of explainers, guides and all educational content for anything crypto related. He is passionate about making digital asset education more accessible for degens and fence-sitters alike. Contact John at john@blockworks.co

John Woods is the CTO of the Algorand Foundation, which supports Algorand’s rapidly growing ecosystem by providing a best-in-class developer environment, supporting key infrastructure and setting technical standards, offering comprehensive support to builders and entrepreneurs, and providing the framework for decentralized governance.

Prior to joining the leadership team at Algorand, John worked as Chief Architect of Cardano at IOHK. He has held roles leading software architecture and applied cryptography at a number of firms including Informatica, ConsenSys and Central Bank of Ireland.

Casey Wagner

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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US equities slipped early in today’s session on February’s disappointing Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (<a href="https://www.bls.gov/jlt/">JOLTS</a>) report. 



The release shows that job openings continued to drop, while quits also declined. Hiring and firing rates were mostly unchanged. Layoffs, however, were on the rise. 



The S&amp;P 500 and Nasdaq Composite indexes fell as much as 0.7% and 0.8%, respectively, after the report was published.&nbsp;



Job openings came in at 7.56 million — a four-year low — compared with a projected 7.63 million. Additional DOGE-related layoffs and slowdowns in federal hiring are likely not included in February’s figures.&nbsp;



Odds of a May interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve ticked up slightly on the report. Those odds now sit at 15.2%, per data from CME Group.&nbsp;



Friday’s March employment report will give markets, and central bankers, a better look at current labor market conditions. If inflation continues to inch higher and the employment situation deteriorates further, the current pause may not last much longer.



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Empire</a>: Start your morning with the top news and analysis to inform your day in crypto.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">Forward Guidance</a>: Reporting and analysis on the growing intersection of crypto and macroeconomics, policy and finance.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch">0xResearch</a>: Alpha directly in your inbox. Market highlights, data, degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: Built for Solana investors, developers and community members. The latest from one of crypto&#8217;s hottest networks.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">The Drop</a>: For crypto collectors and traders, covering apps, games, memes and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock">Supply Shock</a>: Tracking Bitcoin’s rise from internet plaything worth less than a penny to global phenomenon disrupting money as we know it.</li>
</ul>

US equities slip after job openings disappointment

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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The countdown to President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” is on, and the White House remains tight-lipped about what will be in his tariff announcement tomorrow.&nbsp;



Bulls are optimistic Trump will put an end to the back-and-forth trade policies that have <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tariff-trade-overshadows-earnings-season">unnerved markets</a> since he took office. The logic goes: No matter what the levies actually are, at least the policies will be set in stone.



I’m less certain tomorrow will bring, well, certainty. Trump yesterday hinted that he would be open to negotiations with foreign nations, so the pattern — in which harsh and sweeping policies are announced, then either <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/us-revokes-colombia-tariff-threat">quickly walked back</a> or delayed — may continue after all.&nbsp;



Most of the conversation around tariffs has been about how higher levies will impact consumer prices (i.e. inflation and Fed policy). But the bigger impact of tariffs is arguably that doing business with the US is going to get more expensive, which in turn is bad for growth.&nbsp;



Trump and his team maintain that short-term pain is to be expected, and they say it’s a small price to pay for bringing manufacturing back to the US.&nbsp;



Tomorrow’s announcement will likely focus on global reciprocal tariffs, which we’ll be watching. But personally, I’m most interested in seeing if the administration targets copper imports.&nbsp;



The US currently produces about half the amount of copper it consumes annually, meaning roughly 1 million metric tons are imported. Copper is virtually in everything: wiring, plumbing, motors, medical devices, personal electronics — you get the picture.&nbsp;



“Dr. Copper” may be a dated economic indicator, but expect to see the metal dominating headlines should tariffs come down the line.



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Empire</a>: Start your morning with the top news and analysis to inform your day in crypto.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">Forward Guidance</a>: Reporting and analysis on the growing intersection of crypto and macroeconomics, policy and finance.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch">0xResearch</a>: Alpha directly in your inbox. Market highlights, data, degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: Built for Solana investors, developers and community members. The latest from one of crypto&#8217;s hottest networks.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">The Drop</a>: For crypto collectors and traders, covering apps, games, memes and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock">Supply Shock</a>: Tracking Bitcoin’s rise from internet plaything worth less than a penny to global phenomenon disrupting money as we know it.</li>
</ul>

What ‘Liberation Day’ could mean for US equities, growth

Katherine Ross

Ben Strack

Stablecoin issuer Circle has taken a step toward going public.



Circle plans to list its stock on the New York Stock Exchange pending SEC approval, a Tuesday filing shows. It would trade under the ticker CRCL.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“We think that we can create a new defining internet platform company that is built on the internet financial system,” Circle wrote in its S-1 — a form used to register securities offerings with the SEC. “And we believe that we are still in the very early stages in the development of this new financial system.”&nbsp;



Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said that the stablecoin firm’s journey is complex, having to navigate an “evolving ecosystem where innovative technology and highly regulated, legacy financial services are intersecting in ways that will give rise to challenges and uncertainties.”&nbsp;



Allaire added: “Building a new internet financial system, creating major new infrastructure for money and economic activity, shaping and responding to policy, and operating this infrastructure in a complex global macro environment — well, it’s hard.”



The filing represents the first time Circle’s finances are available for public review.



Circle reports minting roughly $504 billion of USDC and redeeming about $464 billion of USDC from Jan. 1, 2021 to Dec. 31, 2024 — “redemptions that have always been one-for-one with the US dollar,” the company wrote.&nbsp;



Adjusted earnings before income tax, depreciation or amortization (EBITDA) for 2024 came out to $284 million, per the filing.&nbsp;&nbsp;



In the risk factors section of the filing, Circle warned that it operates in a “rapidly changing and highly competitive industry, and our results of operations and future prospects depend in part on the continued growth of the Circle stablecoin network, our ability to monetize the Circle stablecoin network, and our ability to innovate and create successful new products and services and improve existing products and services.”



Risk factor sections are normal in these types of SEC filings.&nbsp; Circle’s filing comes about a week after trading platform eToro filed for an IPO.



10T Holdings CEO Dan Tapiero said at last month’s Digital Asset Summit that he’s expecting “a crypto IPO, M&amp;A, SPAC boom” <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-ipo-boom-etoro-kraken">in the coming months</a>.&nbsp;



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">Forward Guidance</a>: Reporting and analysis on the growing intersection of crypto and macroeconomics, policy and finance.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch">0xResearch</a>: Alpha directly in your inbox. Market highlights, data, degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: Built for Solana investors, developers and community members. The latest from one of crypto&#8217;s hottest networks.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">The Drop</a>: For crypto collectors and traders, covering apps, games, memes and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock">Supply Shock</a>: Tracking Bitcoin’s rise from internet plaything worth less than a penny to global phenomenon disrupting money as we know it.</li>
</ul>

Circle files S-1 ahead of long-awaited IPO

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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You’ve heard again and again about the crypto industry “maturing.” More M&amp;A deals are likely to be an ongoing byproduct.



The quarterly number of M&amp;As in crypto is building, reaching a record level during the first three months of 2025. While momentum could snowball from here, the economy’s stability remains a wild card.&nbsp;



There were 62 crypto M&amp;A transactions in Q1, according to advisory firm Architect Partners — up from 59 deals in the final quarter of 2024.&nbsp;



Each of those totals is nearly double that of Q3 2024 (33 deals). The end of 2024, of course, had lots of crypto optimism: Donald Trump’s election <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/donald-trump-declared-president-2024-election">win</a>, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/new-sec-crypto-task-force">regulatory</a> progress/promises, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-actions-timeline">a softening SEC</a>, and rising crypto prices.



“I see larger financial players stepping in to add crypto platforms, markets and custodians to their already-diversified financial services offerings, now that the risk of negative outcomes is greatly reduced,” Baker Botts partner Samuel Dibble told me.



During Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit last month, 10T Holdings CEO Dan Tapiero alluded to an M&amp;A boom coming alongside <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-ipo-boom-etoro-kraken">an expected pick-up</a> in crypto IPOs.&nbsp;



The Q1 crypto M&amp;A activity was unprecedented in more ways than one, noted Architect Partners founder Eric Risley. Aside from the record deal count, there were seven transactions over $100 million and the largest in crypto history: Kraken&#8217;s $1.5 billion acquisition of NinjaTrader.&nbsp;&nbsp;



So-called “bridge transactions” — made between crypto and non-crypto companies — will remain a theme going forward, Risley said. The Kraken buy was a bit atypical, given it was a crypto exchange that acquired a traditional foreign exchange and futures business.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The Kraken-NinjaTrader deal also touches on another trend likely to continue — companies seeking out regulatory compliance and licensing.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“NinjaTrader is registered with the CFTC and has a lot of regulatory ‘stamps of approval’ that acquirers see as a fast track to expanding — or simply bolting on — crypto capabilities to their existing businesses,” Dibble noted.



Related to that, Dibble said he expects more non-US companies swooping in to acquire US-licensed operators to quicken business plans in what is now a more attractive market.&nbsp;



“We will see what ultimately unfolds, but I think it has all the signs of being a feeding frenzy,” Dibble noted.



Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz said on the company’s earnings call last week that a lot of private crypto firms probably want to sell.



“They see [TradFi] companies coming in with big balance sheets,” he noted. “And most crypto businesses, fortunately or unfortunately, are tied to the overall index of crypto prices.”



Indeed, economic uncertainty is the counter to a pro-crypto Trump administration, Risley argued. Crypto price performance has proven to be highly correlated with traditional assets, which have taken a hit given tariff unknowns and even the possibility of a recession.&nbsp;“The state of the global economy matters, and crypto will be buffeted by economic weakness if it develops,” Risley said. “Economically stressed market participants simply withdraw or take less risk.”



He added: “Skew toward optimism. But perhaps not as strongly, as the economic and foreign policy uncertainties have emerged.”



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Empire</a>: Start your morning with the top news and analysis to inform your day in crypto.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">Forward Guidance</a>: Reporting and analysis on the growing intersection of crypto and macroeconomics, policy and finance.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch">0xResearch</a>: Alpha directly in your inbox. Market highlights, data, degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: Built for Solana investors, developers and community members. The latest from one of crypto&#8217;s hottest networks.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">The Drop</a>: For crypto collectors and traders, covering apps, games, memes and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock">Supply Shock</a>: Tracking Bitcoin’s rise from internet plaything worth less than a penny to global phenomenon disrupting money as we know it.</li>
</ul>

‘Feeding frenzy’ possible as crypto M&A picks up

Kate Irwin

This is a segment from The Drop newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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The shooter game Off The Grid has faced some disapproval — and some praise — over a purported confidential letter.



The letter in question was reportedly emailed to Gunzilla Games’ private investors in regard to its GUN token that became tradeable on Binance this week. GUN launched on Monday and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/gunzilla-games-gun-token-launch">hit a $68 million</a> market cap within hours of launch, but that number has since fallen to $40 million.&nbsp;



The <a href="https://x.com/pixiekate13/status/1906777971005829541">letter</a> references a SAFT, or a Simple Agreement for Future Tokens, that means investors gave the company money upfront for tokens at a later, future date.&nbsp;



The copy-pasted text of the letter was posted on X yesterday by a crypto trader and got over 115,000 views in less than a day. The larger post also included the trader’s scathing criticism of the decision. We don’t know more about the specifics of the SAFT yet, though.&nbsp;



The supposed text of that email also references a change to GUN’s vesting tokenomics — and offers investors a chance for a refund if they don’t want to agree to the new terms.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeRnExDMneGra87-nxiF_LMsC_Rqwi-NJsDLFab0L7gsGEMhBxWcl4X8UOhP55BLz7hCXmV2XUrt7RsViNNND1emY-lX02ZBLAH-Yfmy8zvJZcxTLBVe7y470pA8LDZwY9Up6OyUw?key=eiHP8XU0o4ADlGCoXjX4cQe7" alt=""/></figure>



What exactly might these changes be? The trader who leaked the purported letter, Grail.eth, <a href="https://x.com/graildoteth/status/1906737689191473480">claims</a> seed round investors were supposed to get 5% of their GUN tokens unlocked on launch day, while strategic round investors were supposed to see 2% of their tokens unlock on launch.&nbsp;



According to the public GUN whitepaper, the strategic round is seeing 0% of tokens unlocked on launch. The Private A and B rounds have been granted the same. This means these groups’ tokens won’t be unlocked for at least a year because their tokens have a 12-month cliff, with 18 months of vesting.



Some traders on Twitter speculate that the changes may be in order to fund the token’s listing on Binance, though this has not been confirmed by Gunzilla or Binance.&nbsp;



&#8220;We do not charge listing fees to projects listing on Binance,” a Binance spokesperson tells Blockworks. “Regardless, deposits from project teams are refundable and designed to help protect users by ensuring that projects are serious about building their projects, keeping them alive and continuing to build after listing on Binance. The deposit also serves to help protect users in situations where projects harm them by failing to deliver on their commitments.”



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfy0oO4-u2jb-Gae6lELR0Rmlgzr6ycjF5jtd-DhwFlZ0tnU50XGDHoi7LWhAA_AuNfm7aku0Da3TTDeYBxB0h4P_qwa-JXtnkxtrN8qAWS710KnGqEZ1-BdX_Og3SHF0rB4KYmlw?key=eiHP8XU0o4ADlGCoXjX4cQe7" alt=""/></figure>



Others have <a href="https://x.com/0xAkina_/status/1906731320849641653">criticized</a> GUN’s tokenomics for allotting a significant amount to investors in the first place.&nbsp;



But not everyone’s seeing these tokenomics in a negative light.&nbsp;



I’m personally a fan of any project that makes investors wait longer to unlock their tokens. The “dump on retail” price action isn’t fun for anyone, and it can kill excitement around a new project fast if it happens shortly after a token launches.&nbsp;



“A rare instance where the project chooses its users over VCs,” <a href="https://x.com/avery_bartlett/status/1906738335428587882">wrote</a> Ava Labs Marketing Lead Avery Bartlett in response to the post with the letter, while also admitting he understood the criticism around it (Gunzilla is using its own Avalanche L1).



In a DM, Bartlett told Blockworks: “The people I know didn’t get [a letter]. I got nodes on secondary and didn’t get it,” suggesting validator investors did not see a change to their tokenomics.



Theodore Agranat, Gunzilla’s Director of Web3, told Blockworks he was “not sure” when asked about the letter’s legitimacy.



“I do know that whatever letter was sent out had [a] confidentiality clause attached to it. So not sure,” he said, adding that he would speak with his team.



Agranat’s response indicates a letter was sent confidentially — we just don’t know with 100% certainty if this copy-pasted text matches it.



When Blockworks reached out a day later to follow up regarding the letter, Agranat did not respond by time of publication.&nbsp;



Blockworks has reached out to Gunzilla for additional comment.



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Off The Grid confidential letter sparks speculation around tokenomics

Donovan Choy

This is a segment from the 0xResearch newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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If you ask the average person in crypto what problems the industry faces today, “too many chains, not enough apps” quickly comes up as a common gripe.



This complaint has a striking parallel to the days of the early internet.



During the dot-com boom of the late 90s and early 2000s, skeptics similarly criticized the perceived overinvestment in excessive infrastructure, particularly fiber optics.



Telecom companies (Global Crossing, WorldCom, AT&amp;T) spent billions laying undersea cables and long-haul fiber networks based on the belief that internet traffic would grow exponentially.



Even internet pioneer Bob Metcalfe criticized this perceived overinvestment, arguing that there simply wouldn’t be enough demand.



With the luxury of hindsight, we now know that Metcalfe was wrong (Metcalfe <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1d1xg1/til_robert_metcalfe_predicted_in_1995_that_the/">literally ate</a> his words in 2006 after he conceded his error).



The explosive surplus of bandwidth is what makes amazing products like YouTube, cloud computing, and Netflix possible today.



Netflix, for instance, was a mail-based DVD rental business for years until it slowly began its transition to streaming in 2007 — thanks to the foundations of bandwidth infrastructure that had been laid prior.



In short, the bet that “if we build it, demand will come” eventually proved true for the internet, though it took a decade and the bankruptcy of internet infrastructure companies like Global Crossing.



Ethereum is (kind of) placing its chips on a similar bet today.



Per its <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-scaling-interop-sequencing">rollup-centric roadmap</a>, the Ethereum L1 today in effect gives up execution fees to L2s.



But Ethereum plans to eventually reap the profits in data availability (DA) fees through its upcoming upgrades to scale the supply of DA. The idea is that Ethereum DA will eventually be so abundantly plentiful that it would induce eventual user demand.



Just like the early internet builders, Ethereum researcher Justin Drake <a href="https://youtu.be/yvP39-EOADU">believes</a> that “if we build it, demand will come.”



Drake’s moonshot math looks like this: At 10 million TPS, with each transaction paying $0.001 in DA fees to Ethereum, that comes up to ~$1 billion per day of revenue for Ethereum.



(This assumes L2s use the Ethereum L1 for DA, as opposed to an alternative DA layer like Celestia or EigenLayer. But Drake believes the benefits of synchronous composability will make it so.)



It’s a bold thesis, considering DA consumption today; Ethereum’s blob gas fees came up to about a mere $272k in March.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcwR4OD-izr37fe2tJxfQPEgMPmGLChD4Lq9RPqgXfte5MCKTMg5C8Ad-_O40CKd9H1PDqa2tmA4ZWZITRVDEW9CsUuqtwI4UaxsFcgSRSecsLbRkl63O1TG98sLgEXNpZnZqt_YA?key=kRoqvm_ZUgyHO1lsNH38B_Eu" alt=""/></figure>



Maybe Ethereum bulls believe Web3 will play out similarly to the history of Web2, but Ethereum doesn’t exist in a silo, and it faces stiff competition from other chains.



We also still have so few guesses as to the kinds of onchain applications that will dominate blockchain usage. Will the world need that much data availability?



But I digress. The claim that there are “too many chains” may eventually be true. But it’s too early to tell, as it was in the early days of the internet.



If true, markets are serving to curb further wasteful spending. Case in point: The L1 premium has been rapidly compressing.



The days of $300-$500 million dollar raises for an L1 are over. L1/L2 blockchain raises in 2024 ranged from as low as $14 million (<a href="https://x.com/initia/status/1838929323954200974">Initia</a>) to as high as $100 million (<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/evm-compatible-layer-1-blockchain-vc-interest">Berachain</a>) and $225 million (<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/evm-compatible-layer-1-blockchain-vc-interest">Monad</a>).



The high costs of running an L1 and a lack of value capture sends a feedback signal to markets to stop funding these things.



In comparison, L2s are much cheaper to launch, about $5-$15 million, per <a href="https://x.com/JasonYanowitz/status/1846936073382809626">estimates</a> by Blockworks’ Jason Yanowitz.



That may explain the Celo L1’s recent transition into an L2, or what Kydo, EigenLayer’s head of special projects, <a href="https://x.com/0xkydo/status/1906050837186584983">calls</a> Ethereum’s “inevitable gravity toward efficiency.”



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Can Ethereum win big with data availability?

David Canellis

Pete Rizzo

This is a segment from the Supply Shock newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Few things are built to stand the test of time. Bitcoin is.



Engineers design bridges to last only around 100 years. Modern-day dams might be built that only make it to half that. 



Perhaps regular maintenance could stretch those numbers by a few decades. They would still crumble much sooner than Bitcoin was ever intended to.



Today is the 11th anniversary of a testament to exactly that: BIP-42, the clutch proposal that averted a potential supply crisis 240 years from now.



Bitcoin Core contributor <a href="https://x.com/pete_rizzo_/status/1880616287363059980">Pieter Wuille</a> submitted BIP-42 on April Fool’s Day, 2014, years after Satoshi Nakamoto’s last post. BIP-42 was based on a solution proposed by <a href="https://x.com/pete_rizzo_/status/1878079505052413965">Gregory Maxwell</a>. Fittingly, it was both very serious and deeply unserious at the same time.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcxexSwe6D6Dhm0k2ObNvIs8ip8LXwulYlpFsHj7RnslBpy5T5ITyr6oDzmLEi3sbexIIAONmCO811Ta6XOTdTHKQs3rrpRmcZefPRMGtkb3l6KGj_7NtHThZ5Bcf8c6oqRP_j-Mg?key=OWOEEWME-Gq6nfqaq74dza6b" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">BIP-42 doubled as a roast of Satoshi Nakamoto (<a href="https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0042.mediawiki">source</a>).</figcaption></figure>



As it turns out, Satoshi had made a grave but obscure error when coding the logic for bitcoin halvings.&nbsp;



The block reward had been correctly set to halve every 210,000 blocks, all the way down to an unspendable fraction of a sat by the year 2140 or so. This is what makes the BTC supply predictably and provably finite.



But the code was written in such a way that it determines the mining reward using the current block height. And when the block height gets too high — much higher than it is today — Satoshi would’ve had to write special rules informing the software how to process such a calculation safely.



The exact impact of the bug isn’t really knowable, but the largest of unintended consequences would have been that the block reward reverted to its original state of 50 BTC. BTC’s supply issuance curve would be rebooted to 2009.



Left unchecked, the bug would return again and again every two and a half centuries, making for potentially infinite bitcoins over the millennia.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdjMI40BjNZZ0vsmV8py9UXnvBjp6ClH_kHUnIPe0yIFLdhoOvkQZAYWKbJSYMnUuzBWoQ5kxzAVX8e3-lUPN-agTUHcKfVj9BLdg38Y-zX1f0AgKB8PJlh3SUh8rzlbmSEk_-Riw?key=OWOEEWME-Gq6nfqaq74dza6b" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Bitcoin’s circulating supply would hit 126 million in the year 3417, without fixing the supply bug.</figcaption></figure>



“Although it is widely believed that Satoshi was an inflation-hating goldbug, he never said this, and in fact programmed Bitcoin&#8217;s money supply to grow indefinitely, forever,” Wuille wrote.



What’s humbling is that BIP-42 aborted a cataclysmic event that would’ve occurred 10 generations from now — in the approximate year 2265, when the block height should reach 13.44 million (today, it’s under 890,000). That’s over a century after the last slice of spendable bitcoin is expected to be mined, in 2140.&nbsp;



So, I suppose our great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandchildren will have Wuille and Maxwell to thank for making sure that’s so.



— David



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Rizzo’s view, as the Bitcoin Historian</h2>



It’s nice that David can have a laugh over BIP-42. It is one of the more objectively quirky events in Bitcoin development history. That said, a more sober assessment raises thorny questions about the management of the Bitcoin software.&nbsp; One that I always linger on is the natural tension over what defines a “bug” in Bitcoin. Should we consider BIP-42 through the lens of jurisprudence, it helped enshrine two interesting views.&nbsp;



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>First is the assertion that the code which BIP-42 patches is indeed a “bug” because it contradicts what Satoshi wrote, namely, that Bitcoin would have a fixed supply. </li>



<li>Second is the view that the code is a “bug” because it contradicts what he told users to expect (creating a kind of social contract). </li>
</ul>



There’s a truth to both assertions, but it seems to get more problematic when compared to how other code debates were handled. Take the infamous “block size,” for instance. In this case, Satoshi said it would be raised over time, and it’s also what most (if not all early users) expected.



Ergo, the unchanged block size checks similar boxes as BIP-42. Yet no action was ever taken to change it. How to square this circle? Perhaps there’s the issue of safety. It’s true that eliminating the block size could lead to DDOS attacks, block withholding attacks, and potentially contribute to Bitcoin’s ultimate centralization. Equally, it could be said that rebooting the Bitcoin supply would constitute economic attacks. So, perhaps this was what swayed the decision.



I talked to Luke Jr. about this, and here’s what he had to say: “It was the behaviour everyone expected. And also there was no guarantee future CPUs would have the previous behavior for the existing code either.” Unfortunately, due to the tone of the patch, however, we might never know what all the participants had to say.



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126 million BTC? How Bitcoin’s absolute scarcity was saved

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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There’s no denying that North Korea’s Lazarus Group is a threat, especially as crypto works overtime to be seen as a safe and acceptable industry (sorry degens, there are still corners for you).&nbsp;



Paradigm’s samczsun <a href="https://www.paradigm.xyz/2025/03/demystifying-the-north-korean-threat">highlighted</a> the good, the bad, and the ugly, a month after the Lazarus Group pulled off the biggest digital heist in history. Oof, that hurt to write.&nbsp;



The upside is that only one bad actor (which, I guess on the downside, is North Korea) has been so successful in stealing funds.&nbsp;



But “there’s more to the DPRK than just the Lazarus Group,” he warned.



Unfortunately, the team would later find out that the group had managed to compromise SafeWallet’s own infrastructure, deploying “a malicious payload specifically targeting Bybit. This was a level of sophistication that no one had considered or been prepared for, and it was a major update to many of our threat models.”



But there are ways to stay safe, samczsun noted. He urges caution across the board for individual folks like us. And organizations should “install Mobile Device Management (MDM) and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) software” on work devices for security prior to any hack and to ensure visibility afterwards.&nbsp;



Samczsun’s tune was slightly more optimistic than Paradigm advisor ZachXBT, who earlier this month said the effort to try to freeze funds tracked to the Bybit attack had been an “eye-opening” experience.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXet4pzhRcDbBuh26UAGIlTfK496-5aWkZP-pf6T7Co25HZfgKVz4kLRHLtch_p3Gc5YKjdRtaQNedw7fmsNMUeVj-1mDgM_yQfYjAWiz3t9a4u9wPRIn1otLodLOr-hOdc4O1VmYw?key=Uyw_GkgyI-NUIl5ahE5nEq4m" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">From ZachXBT’s Telegram group.</figcaption></figure>



“The industry is unbelievably cooked when it comes to exploits/hacks,” he wrote.&nbsp;



Samczsun’s holding out hope that the FBI’s unit dedicated to both tracking and preventing DPRK attacks is strong, an encouraging sign given his recent work with them.



Whether or not the FBI paired with super sleuths such as ZachXBT and samczsun — alongside members of Seal 911 — remains to be seen.



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Paradigm’s Samczsun warns there’s ‘more to the DPRK than just the Lazarus Group’

Bill Barhydt, the CEO of Abra and an early Bitcoin adopter who famously bought bitcoin when it was <a href="https://x.com/pete_rizzo_/status/1763544742862762180">trading below $5</a>, has sharply criticized Michael Saylor&#8217;s plan to render his substantial personal bitcoin holdings inaccessible to anyone else forever. In a new interview on the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mastercard-building-venmo-crypto-blockchain-digital-assets-2025-3">Supply Shock podcast</a> with <a href="https://x.com/pete_rizzo_">Pete Rizzo</a>, Barhydt expressed his frustration, stating Saylor&#8217;s strategy &#8220;makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.



Saylor, known for his bullish stance on Bitcoin and his company Strategy&#8217;s substantial bitcoin investments, recently hinted <a href="https://x.com/pete_rizzo_/status/1904555177077514482">in a CoinDesk interview</a> that he might send his personal stash of over 17,000 BTC to an &#8220;unsendable wallet&#8221; for eternity.



Barhydt acknowledged Saylor&#8217;s perspective that this move would benefit the Bitcoin community by reducing the total supply (and potentially increasing the value of remaining coins) but offered a spirited rebuttal.&nbsp;



&#8220;His perspective is that this is a gift to the Bitcoin community because if you lower the denominator and the numerator, it helps everybody else in terms of the purchasing power. My take is, the Bitcoin community does not need that gift,” he asserted.



<iframe loading="lazy" width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/496uF9L7LOg?si=AnlW8s4OALbq0xfd" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>







Before founding Abra, a global cryptocurrency wealth management platform, Barhydt held roles at companies like Goldman Sachs and Netscape. He gave the first-ever Bitcoin TED Talk when the price of Bitcoin was just $5.



Instead, Barhydt suggested Saylor could use his bitcoin to fund educational services for low-income individuals, establish bitcoin-based banking operations in developing markets, or develop bitcoin-based remittance services.&nbsp;



He emphasized that these initiatives would provide long-term benefits in terms of increasing the total number of the technology’s users.&nbsp;



Barhydt drew a comparison to the early days of Bitcoin, when enthusiasts like himself gave away bitcoin to promote its use and understanding. &#8220;When we were giving away bitcoin, it wasn&#8217;t like we were telling people, ‘Here, go build your financial fortune.’ It was like, no, you need to understand how this decentralized system allows you to move value between two parties without some trusted third party in the middle,&#8221; Barhydt explained.



He contrasted this with Saylor&#8217;s plan, which he sees as primarily focused on increasing the value of existing bitcoin holdings. &#8220;[Using the money] is a very different perspective than saying, ‘I&#8217;m gonna help the value of your bags by burning my bags,’&#8221; Barhydt stated.



Elsewhere Barhydt questioned Saylor&#8217;s comparison between his own actions and those of Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, arguing that Michael Saylor doesn’t need to make a benevolent exit from the software project in quite the same way.&nbsp;



&#8220;Saylor is not perceived to be a benevolent dictator of Bitcoin,&#8221; Barhydt said, arguing that Saylor&#8217;s decision carries different implications for the network.



Listen to the full interview on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=496uF9L7LOg">YouTube</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/supply-shock/id1558223079">Apple Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/2yFL2nSsQucf1rzdEKbFZY">Spotify</a>.&nbsp;



Editor’s note: This article was produced with the assistance of AI tooling.



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Investor who bought bitcoin at $5 says Saylor is making a $1.5B mistake

Jeff Albus

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Following Hyperliquid&#8217;s $13 million <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/hyperliquid-jelly-short-blockworks-research">brush with disaster</a>, some in Solana&#8217;s orbit are wondering: Could Jupiter&#8217;s JLP vault — a similar product to Hyperliquid’s vulnerable vault — face a similar exploit?



Nope.



That&#8217;s my short but genuinely confident answer. Let&#8217;s unpack why.



To recap briefly: Last week, some unknown trader thought they&#8217;d get cute by manipulating the price of thinly-traded Jelly-my-Jelly (JELLY) memecoin on decentralized perp exchange Hyperliquid. The presumed goal was to mobilize a massive short squeeze, allowing them to profit from leveraged long positions while forcing the protocol to absorb the loss from their short.&nbsp;



The attacker’s leveraged long positions quickly created over $13 million in unrealized losses to Hyperliquid’s HLP risk vault and an emergency shutdown that forcibly closed all JELLY positions at a price favorable to Hyperliquid&#8217;s balance sheet.



Now, we can argue <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/hyperliquid-decentralization-validator-put">whether it was a bailout</a>, anathema to a decentralized ethos, or just pragmatic damage control another time. The point is, it worked.



By forcibly settling all JELLY positions at the exploiter’s short entry of $0.0095, the protocol basically reversed the attack. Which is to say that Hyperliquid actually, hilariously, ended up posting a profit of around $700,000 while the attacker walked away with less than they deposited. The Hyperliquid team promptly assured users they would be made whole through the Hyper Foundation, and everyone lived happily ever after.



Hooray.



But if perps DEXs can be attacked, that raises questions about Jupiter, Solana&#8217;s biggest DEX aggregator and perps exchange. Like Hyperliquid, Jupiter&#8217;s platform is powered by a vault that acts as the counterparty to all trades. This would be the very creatively named (/s) Jupiter Liquidity Provider pool, or JLP. The JLP collects trading fees and earns big when traders lose but takes a hit when they win.



HLP. JLP. It sounds pretty same-same. So with that in mind, could this vault be squeezed in a similar way? In theory, yes. Anything&#8217;s possible. I&#8217;m not going to call the Titanic unsinkable. But Jupiter&#8217;s architecture makes it an improbable outcome in practice.



First, consider its asset list. No offense to JELLY, but the token had very little liquidity, making price manipulation easier. Hyperliquid listed it because it prioritized volume, novelty, and a wide-open asset strategy to attract degens.&nbsp;



Jupiter doesn&#8217;t do that. Its perpetuals are limited to major assets like SOL, ETH, and wrapped BTC. That decision alone eliminates the kind of thin-market vulnerability that made JELLY so exploitable. A Jupiter representative said the platform’s maximum order size is much smaller than Hyperliquid’s as well.



Second, price execution. Hyperliquid relies on its internal orderbook to match traders directly against each other. Users submit their own limit orders, giving them more flexible, dynamic pricing. However, that also leads to a plethora of exploitable scenarios. A motivated attacker can influence the price displayed on the platform, setting up artificial moves that trigger cascading liquidations and/or dislocations. No bueno, compadres.



Jupiter&#8217;s perp markets operate in a totally different way, choosing instead to execute at oracle prices from external sources like Pyth. Even if a trader tried to pump the spot price of SOL on another exchange, they&#8217;d still be trading against the median on-chain price, not a manipulated in-platform quote.



Frankly, it&#8217;s just harder to game the house when the pricing comes from outside the casino.



Third, Jupiter handles risk with guardrails, not emergency exits. JLP is always the counterparty. If a trade gets liquidated, the levers for that would pull automatically at the set Oracle price. As far as we know, there&#8217;s no handoff to a second vault, no delay that a bad actor can game, and no pause for a team call or validator vote. Losses go straight to the pool.



Again, one could argue this makes the system blunt or unforgiving, but it&#8217;s something LPs accept as part and parcel (and the reasons why should now be pretty clear).



That&#8217;s not to say that JLP is immune to risk, because it&#8217;s not. It regularly takes losses in the case of a one-sided market where most traders win, for instance. But Jupiter bakes in defenses for that, too. Traders pay borrow fees to open leveraged positions, which go straight to the pool. If everyone piles into longs, funding rates rise to balance the associated risks.&nbsp;



Could some unforeseen scenario force Jupiter to intervene someday in a way that its users find questionable? Yes. Every protocol has an edge case. But in this specific scenario, Jupiter seems to have designed JLP to absorb such hazards. While Hyperliquid had to delist a token to save its vault, Jupiter has taken the opposite approach: limit risk at the door.



So, with that in mind — rest easy, Lightspeeders.&nbsp;



Jupiter isn’t playing the same game Hyperliquid nearly lost.



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Jupiter’s risk vault unlikely to face Hyperliquid-style attack

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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There’s a new institutional-grade DeFi yield platform in town, we’ve exclusively learned.&nbsp;



Upshift, which aims to give retail access to yield opportunities typically available for hedge funds, is being spun out of prime brokerage firm August and is coming out of stealth.&nbsp;



The platform already has around $250 million in deposits, the team told me.



“If you look at the value prop today, DeFi’s super complicated,” Upshift CEO and August co-founder Alexandre Elkrief explained to me.&nbsp;



“It&#8217;s across three main axes: It&#8217;s fragmented, it&#8217;s hard to access, and it&#8217;s a lot more complex to manage fragments, obviously, because we&#8217;ve gone from one chain to a gazillion chains. It&#8217;s clear that it&#8217;s not gonna stop today. [August supports] 15 chains, right? And so the retail user is not gonna rebalance their position across that many different opportunities, and it&#8217;s becoming a full-time job,” Elkrief continued.



Elkrief and fellow co-founder and CEO of August, Aya Kantorovich, are no strangers to this space. Kantorovich was part of the founding team for brokerage firm FalconX, and Elkrief spent some time running the books for a DeFi hedge fund. The two initially started working on Fractal, later rebranded as August, and began fundraising right before the FTX collapse and closed the deal “the week that FTX collapsed,” Kantorovich told me.



She admitted both founders felt like they lost a couple of years off their lives after that, but it also solidified their belief in the need for both an August and an Upshift in crypto.



And so far, their work has paid off. August <a href="https://fortune.com/crypto/2025/03/06/crypto-prime-brokerage-august-raises-10-million-dragonfly-ventures/">raised</a> $10 million in a round led by Dragonfly earlier this month. It focuses on giving institutions DeFi access by connecting them to networks like Aave or Uniswap, and facilitates roughly $7 billion in monthly volume.&nbsp;



Upshift, which has been in beta since last September, is focused on the retail side of things. That was a focal point for me given that we haven’t seen retail activity levels return just yet.



“Our hypothesis is that it’s a question of complexity,” Elkrief said. Retail’s really been forced to focus on things like memecoins, which are obviously out of style now.&nbsp;



And this market is focused on “rewarding simple products,” Kantorovich noted.



“If you just zoom out for a second, the value proposition of yield is generally the onboarding mechanism for all types of new financial products. Crypto aside, Marcus by Goldman Sachs started attracting users by having a 4% savings account, right? … We&#8217;re giving every asset issuer the opportunity to augment their product with a yield-bearing option.”



Essentially, asset issuers can then partner with hedge funds or managers to curate and package the product to offer yield. Hopefully, on the flip side, also driving onboarding to said product.&nbsp;



While the August roadmap is about integrating a custodian, Elkrief said, Upshift’s going to become a product by itself. The team is “working through” the motions to split the August and Upshift teams apart currently, with Elkrief taking the helm.&nbsp;



Thanks to the lack of regulation currently, Upshift isn’t something that can be offered to US users, though both Kantorovich and Elkrief are eager for the day that path opens up.



But for now, Upshift’s focused on “making some noise” and getting to $1 billion in deposits. Then, in the next 18 months, the plan is to hit $2 billion or $3 billion.&nbsp;



Easy peasy.



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Exclusive: DeFi yield platform Upshift exits stealth

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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The word “bitcoin” appeared once in BlackRock CEO Larry Fink’s 2024 letter to investors.&nbsp;



The asset (and tokenization too) got a bigger shoutout this time around.



Fink’s sole mention of BTC last March came when bringing up BlackRock’s recent bitcoin ETF launch. That was part of a broader effort to “bring better liquidity and price discovery to more opaque markets,” he wrote.



The CEO’s 2025 letter, published today, included seven “bitcoin” references. He again addressed the aforementioned IBIT product, which has notched net inflows of $40 billion to date.



More than half of that demand has been from retail investors, Fink noted, with three-quarters of those investors never owning an iShares product before.



But more interestingly, Fink wrote there’s no guarantee that the dollar will forever serve as the world’s reserve currency.  



“If the US doesn’t get its debt under control, if deficits keep ballooning, America risks losing that position to digital assets like bitcoin,” he explained.



He added: “Decentralized finance is an extraordinary innovation. It makes markets faster, cheaper and more transparent. Yet that same innovation could undermine America&#8217;s economic advantage if investors begin seeing bitcoin as a safer bet than the dollar.”



Fink gives this warning while clarifying that he’s “obviously not anti-digital assets.” He has, after all, called <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/blackrock-tokenization-investment">tokenized securities</a> “the next generation for markets.” And we’ve reported on BlackRock’s tokenized money market fund, which earlier this month <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tokenized-yield-funds-complement-stablecoins">hit $1 billion in AUM</a>.



Fink reaffirmed this sentiment, arguing that <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stablecoins-tokenization-blackrock-galaxy-das">tokenizing</a> every stock, bond and fund would “revolutionize” investing.



“Markets wouldn&#8217;t need to close,” Fink wrote. “Transactions that currently take days would clear in seconds. And billions of dollars currently immobilized by settlement delays could be reinvested immediately back into the economy, generating more growth.”



Solving for digital verification will be critical if tokenized funds are to become as familiar to investors as ETFs, he added. A TradFi giant like BlackRock continuing to focus on these categories should no doubt make such a thing possible.&nbsp;



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Could USD lose to BTC? BlackRock’s Fink says it’s possible

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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In a fitting end to a rocky first quarter, US stocks fell back into correction territory Monday.&nbsp;



The S&amp;P 500 was trading 0.2% lower at 2 pm ET, putting it around 4.8% in the red since the start of 2025. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite is slated to close out Q1 almost 12% lower.&nbsp;



It’s the worst first quarter performance for the Nasdaq Composite since 2020.&nbsp;



One silver lining in Q1: gold. The precious metal is about to notch its best-performing quarter since 1986. Analysts attribute the rally to the Trump tariff-induced trade war. (More on that later.)&nbsp;



Digital gold, though, is a different story. Bitcoin is slated to close out its worst Q1 since 2018. The narrative of bitcoin as a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/investors-bitcoin-narrative-confusion">safe-haven asset</a>, apparently, has not taken.



Looking ahead, things could get worse before they get better.&nbsp;



Tariffs are set to remain a dominant market narrative in Q2. President Trump is slated to announce his global tariff plans on Wednesday, which he’s dubbed “Liberation Day.”&nbsp;



To Team Trump, April 2 will mark a turning point for domestic manufacturing. To some analysts, “Liberation Day” could also bring salvation to US equity prices (at least in the short term).&nbsp;



The logic goes: If Trump announces a comprehensive reciprocal tariff regime, investors will gain clarity. Hopefully the daily headlines will slow down and markets can stop wondering whether a levy will be delayed or amended. Concrete answers on the tariff front would leave investors free to focus on impacts of other Trump administration economic policies, like tax cuts.&nbsp;



In the long term, I’m less optimistic. Even Trump’s closest Cabinet members <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/29/trump-aides-tariffs-liberation-day-fears-00259081">reportedly</a> aren’t fully up-to-speed on what the president will say on Wednesday, so I’d imagine markets will also be shocked. If the announcements lead to a significant escalation in the trade war, any “clarity” bump will quickly be reversed.



I’d also argue that these reciprocal tariffs are not priced-in, so expect some short-term volatility later in the week as investors digest the announcements from the White House.&nbsp;



OK, I’m putting the crystal ball down now. Keep an eye on your inbox later this week to see how my predictions hold up.



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Investors hope for clarity on tariffs after Q1 downturns

This is a segment from The Drop newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Gunzilla Games’ GUN token — for its Off The Grid game and Avalanche subnet Gunz — is now live.&nbsp;



GUN climbed up 12% since its launch early Monday morning, but has since fallen slightly. As of 11:30 am ET Monday, its price was $0.09. The token had a market cap of roughly $60 million at that time, with 604 million GUN in circulation out of a possible 10 billion.&nbsp;



GUN already has a trading volume of $126 million just a few hours after launch, per CoinGecko data.



The Gunz chain has already seen over 487 million transactions across 14.5 million wallets, according to Avascan <a href="https://testnet.avascan.info/blockchain/gunz/home">data</a> and Gunzilla’s Director of Web3 Theodore Agranat.



“Unlike most Web3 projects, we&#8217;ve spent five years now building everything first and testing it in testnet for over a year,” Agranat said in an interview with Blockworks, noting that the team chose to launch the token on Binance because it’s the biggest crypto exchange.



Agranat says he’s seen crypto exchanges engaging with gaming projects less over the past year — but says those projects that did launch have largely missed the mark.



Off The Grid is free to play on PC and console — and doesn’t require a wallet or any crypto. The game is largely a skill-based shooter, though some characters’ “cyberlimbs” grant special abilities. Items can also be bought and used in the game.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeEE9mf7TDDXNwtDpxGWAaM8DzbkoDP8gzkb1e2W7RrG35rkx26w_ebsyrJltaAU0AH-FujHnIV_FwgGhzc1nryOqcSRwotQyKpazi6FBop8RHhH_0JdUQUA8kMgNpiBX71Tqqx?key=85KaLESEJlio0CfvG8yaPPXA" alt=""/></figure>



Those wishing to pour money into the game can pay for Off The Grid’s Pro membership ($12 a month) to use the game’s marketplace, which uses blockchain on the backend. But even if you’re playing for free, you’ll slowly earn GUN as you go.&nbsp;



If you’ve already been playing the game, though, those GUN token numbers you’re seeing won’t be turned into actual GUN tokens, Gunzilla has confirmed.&nbsp;



“Their main benefits are the rare items that they earned or received with OTG Pro — many of which no one will ever be able to access in the future,” Agranat explained on the benefits for early players in a message.



“Hexes” and other items earned early on will transfer over, though. And though it’s challenging, extracting hexes while playing the game will get you more loot (each hex can be decoded to reveal an item). Agranat noted during our interview that over 380,000 hexes had been extracted in just one day last week.&nbsp;



I’ve sunk some hours into the game so far, and I like both solo mode and trios mode. This game is fast — more like Call of Duty: Warzone than Apex Legends in terms of time-to-kill and overall speed. But even without its crypto elements, Off The Grid brings something unique to the extraction battle royale shooter genre with its cyberlimbs and gritty, futuristic aesthetic.&nbsp;



A little scoop: Tomorrow, on April 1, expect a “very, very fun new skin activation,” Agranat shared. There’ll be a new skin coming out — could it be April Fool’s-themed?



Bigger picture, Off The Grid is just the beginning for Gunzilla.



“It is just the first of many games that we will launch in our ecosystem,” Agranat said.



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Gunzilla Games’ GUN token hits $68M market cap within hours of launch

Macauley Peterson

This is a segment from the 0xResearch newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



In the realm of macro risks, this week is stacked with market-moving events — particularly relevant to risk assets.&nbsp;



“Liberation Day” on Wednesday could trigger sweeping tariffs and exacerbate trade war fears, while Friday’s US jobs report will test the resilience of the labor market and offer clues into future Fed policy moves. Throw in Eurozone CPI, Fed Chair Powell’s post-jobs-report remarks, and a Congressional hearing on the future of stablecoins, and you have a volatile mix of economic, political and regulatory items converging at once.



Oh, and don’t overlook Japan, where a new fiscal year on April 1 <a href="https://x.com/acrossthespread/status/1906591368765681835">could trigger</a> large-scale capital redeployment, notwithstanding headline-driven US tariff chatter. I’m tired, boss!



DeFi, on the other hand, has its own set of risks to worry about. Navigating the part of the crypto game where risks are too often opaque and inconsistent leads the degens among us to simply ignore them. Yet, as protocols like Morpho scale into multi-billion dollar platforms, that problem compounds. The risks aren’t just about smart contracts anymore; they span asset types, market design and human factors like governance and custody.



But things are improving. The latest tool in the toolbox is Credora’s <a href="https://x.com/CredoraNetwork/status/1905614429183791337">recent launch</a> of risk ratings for Morpho vaults. These aren’t merely marketing labels — they’re probabilistic, institutional-grade assessments that break down risk at the collateral, market and vault level.



A vault rated A+ should be more than a vibe; it should be a signal derived from a consensus process involving crypto-native and traditional credit experts that simulate real-world defaults and loss probabilities.



This move towards pushing risk transparency forward reminds me of other standout projects:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Bluechip.org is one <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/liquity-v2-staked-ether">source</a> for stablecoin analysis, providing transparent and curated risk profiles for fiat-backed and decentralized assets alike. Its community-first model prioritizes credibility over hype — though it’s hard to keep up with all the new launches these days.</li>
</ul>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Serenity Research <a href="https://serenityresearch.substack.com/">brings</a> a similar rigor to stablecoin yield hunters. Its risk-adjusted yield rankings aim to standardize a discount rate for constructing risk-reward profiles.</li>
</ul>



Risk curators like Gauntlet and Chaos Labs have spent years advising protocol governance on risk parameters using agent-based simulations. It’s critical work but advice that often stays inside governance forums or within core teams.



What’s new here is the shift toward user-facing, accessible risk signals. A Credora score is an accessible way to help users understand and trade-offs. That opens the door to something bigger: risk-aware capital flows. Firms can build structured products with embedded risk scores. Wallets can surface safer options by default. Insurance markets can price policies with real inputs.



Risk, in other words, becomes composable. DeFi players have spent years optimizing for yield. The next phase is about risk-adjusted yield — and how to verify it. By translating complexity into standardized, transparent metrics, we can set the stage for more intelligent capital allocation.



The dream isn’t risk-free DeFi. It’s know-your-risk DeFi.



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From vibes to value: DeFi risk gets a new rating system

This is a segment from the Supply Shock newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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In this week&#8217;s roundup, David Canellis looks at a 13-year-old job post that transformed crypto, a Kenyan startup combining crypto mining with hydroelectric power, and Gamestop&#8217;s bitcoin buying spree.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Opportunity knocks</h2>



The year is 2012. Skrillex’s &#8220;Bangarang&#8221; is playing somewhere in the background, and you’re debating whether to see The Hunger Games or 21 Jump Street at the cinema.



You decide to scroll Hacker News instead. A new <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/1jka50f/job_post_for_the_role_of_coinbase_cofounder/">post</a> catches your eye — “Apply with me to YC [Y Combinator] in the next 3 days and change the world.”



Brian Armstrong, pre-Coinbase, wrote this 13 years ago. “I’m throwing a hail mary here &#8211; because desperate times call for desperate measures.”



Armstrong had a prototype, “PayPal for bitcoin,” an open-source Android wallet called Bitbank that let users send bitcoin via email addresses. Y Combinator showed interest, Armstrong said, but he’d deferred the meeting until he’d found a ride-or-die co-founder.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdgW-seq22agzzS2DCIZX_InpnCZnHQYgEhFfx5O_f9eo_oRuFepMH4jLvLB_BuWCQJ0sqq2ZI-OPBXUWFBQ9wsgcdTj7tlNOolG-vxN0c7IfjPZ3pCDg_STJLZi8LQkZOwjatKSA?key=bBulffZfSB5fG7bmsTZGRzxR" alt=""/></figure>



“The killer app will be in disrupting transaction fees that are a tax on every transaction in our economy,” Armstrong wrote. “This is going to be super fucking hard, but the payoff is that we have a non-zero chance of really changing the world in big way. This isn&#8217;t another photo-sharing app.”



He wasn’t wrong. While Armstrong didn’t find co-founder Fred Ehrsam until after he’d graduated from Y Combinator, Bitbank did eventually become Coinbase, which is today a $48-billion stock trading on the Nasdaq.&nbsp;



Conviction clearly pays.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Remote work</h2>



Legendary Bitcoiners have famously gone to great lengths in pursuit of the network.



Kenya-based startup Gridless is no different: It’s been busy in northwest Zambia, hauling a shipping container full of 120 mining rigs “across bumpy narrow roads 14 hours from the nearest major city,” <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly4xe373p4o">reported</a> the BBC last week.



The goal was to hook those rigs — which are each making around $5 per day — directly to a hydroelectric power plant harnessing the might of the Zambezi river.&nbsp;



Bitcoin mining now makes up about 30% of the plant’s revenue, and a revenue-sharing agreement with the company that built the plant means cheap power for the machines and cheaper electricity for locals. 



<iframe loading="lazy" width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wfwLy8MWbe4?si=9yt8C9iPCpxX3Z_2" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>







Increased revenue for the plant has also led to more reliable power for the people that live there — living proof that proof-of-work can turn stranded energy into real-world progress.



&#8220;Every day we were wasting over half of the energy we could generate, which also meant we [weren’t] earning from that to meet our operating expenses. We needed a major user of power in the area, and that&#8217;s where the game-changing partnership with Gridless came in,&#8221; plant operator Daniel Rea told the BBC.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Game-Start</h2>



GameStop gearing up to run the Strategy playbook is a turning point.



Ignore the mixed market reaction. The original meme stock will be the second large-scale firm to attempt an extreme bitcoin buying spree (mirroring Strategy), after Japanese holding company MetaPlanet.



And that includes issuing 0% convertible notes to the tune of $1.3 billion — cash it will use to buy bitcoin — the exact same move that Strategy has perfected over the past five years or so.&nbsp;



All while GameStop will continue closing its physical stores en masse.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">An announcement regarding Bitcoin <a href="https://t.co/gG8JRarIok">pic.twitter.com/gG8JRarIok</a>&mdash; GameStop (@gamestop) <a href="https://twitter.com/gamestop/status/1904628096705454308?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 25, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



GME initially jumped by about 10% after it announced its bitcoin plan, but then dropped 25% on details of the financing.



All noise. The stock might be a very different beast to Strategy and MetaPlanet, but the three will soon share one common denominator.&nbsp;



Forget Denzel — Bitcoin is the real equalizer.



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