Empire

Jason Yanowitz × Santiago Roel Santos

AI’s narrative dominance masks a possible crypto bull market, as Yano reports revived interest after 18 barren months and tokens that have increased 50 times.Anthropic’s reported $1 of revenue per $60 of compute, possible ARR stabilization, and customer switching leave frontier-model economics unresolved, while 1 gigawatt of AI capacity costs $50–60 billion.Falling inference costs could strand capacity or trigger Jevons’ paradox, as LPs seek crypto’s growth-stage fintech opportunity as a countercyclical alternative to crowded AI.

SEC and CFTC signals have helped the rally outrun expected legislative clarity, but a 10-year yield approaching about 7% and revived old coins raise macro and froth risks.BTC, SOL, HYPE, Venice and Zcash show why consensus can beat costly rotation, while fund size can make attractive token trades structurally uninvestable.Meta’s Manus thesis is an App Store escape route, while tokenization’s value capture remains unresolved across exchanges, DeFi and infrastructure.

Stablecoin proliferation is shifting toward corporate treasury, as banks and multinationals may issue white-label coins to capture float.CLARITY’s 49–50 failure hit Coinbase roughly 10% and Circle 12%, while the SEC’s five-year exemption may accelerate tokenized-securities innovation but remains reversible.Arc’s more than 190 partners showed Circle’s reach, but its memecoin-heavy debut obscured a payments strategy designed to offset lower rates.

Yan Liberman

Yan sees Bitcoin reaching the high $90,000s before materially easier liquidity, with only 10–15 investable tokens.His six-token book favors uncrowded productive assets: Grass has roughly $70 million expected revenue and $40 million indicated operating profit against about $330 million FDV.Grass’s October unlocks and AERO’s second-half-of-September expansion are catalysts, but demand, emissions and cross-asset opportunity cost remain unresolved.

Jason Yanowitz × Santiago Roel Santos

Memecoin–stock-token pools are forcing tokenized equities to confront real liquidity and infrastructure constraints.In the BONER/HIMS pool, roughly 60,000 HIMS tokens and limited weekend minting drove the wrapper to an implied $132, or three-to-four-times Friday’s close, without squeezing HIMS itself.The experiment could accelerate 24/7 markets, but custody, backing, redemption, and token-holder rights remain unresolved.

Robinhood Chain activity is turning distribution into measurable fees, with $4.7M in one day and a stock repricing near a $100B valuation, though the 90% margin extrapolation is disputed.Tokenized-stock memecoins expose weekend inventory risk because authorized participants cannot mint shares off-hours; Robinhood’s expected 24/5 rollout within nine months and unresolved manipulation, KYC/AML, and Ethereum fee-capture questions are the catalysts to watch.

Hyperliquid’s move to roughly $82 followed Trump’s/CFTC compliance comments, while revenue fell from roughly $300M in Q3 2025 to $156M in Q2 2026.U.S. institutional access and a larger TAM support the upside case, but HIP-3’s 60–65% volume share at 10% of crypto-market fees and falling fees remain key tensions.

The SEC’s 402-page proposal offers $5 million and $75 million token exemptions plus a safe harbor for exiting securities treatment.Rob sees a fit-for-purpose federal framework enabling Delaware entities and buybacks, while Santi says reversibility and unresolved cash-flow linkage make it “a nothing burger.”After a 60-day comment period, a full rule is probably not until ’27; CLARITY Act odds sit near 18–20%, making a September vote the nearer catalyst.

Jason Yanowitz × Santiago Roel Santos

Blockworks logged more sales calls than in any recent period, while inbound leads rose as fintechs and brokerages rolled out crypto.CLARITY remains uncertain; SEC and CFTC rulemaking could catalyze innovation, but unclear token value accrual and falling CEX volume leave institutional adoption unresolved.

Crypto funds moving into robotics and hardware may be an adverse-selection trap as LPs question mandate creep and post-2021 returns converge with regular venture.Cloudflare’s guardrailed, chain-agnostic wallets could make identity and authorization a value layer, while Circle’s 7% revenue growth, falling USDC supply, 62% distribution share, and November’s Western Union bet leave monetization unresolved.