Sam

Unfortunately, my team got cut in the layoffs. A disappointing outcome to an otherwise fantastic experience. I’m very grateful to have been a Messari Research Analyst. What I can confidently say is that quality thought-leadership is presently the most undervalued resource in crypto. The mediocrity of AI-driven writing and reasoning has convinced many that it is a suitable replacement for a research analyst. I promise you - it isn’t. Frontier technologies today (crypto, AI, robotics, quantum) are hyper-ideological and incredibly contentious. We’re entering a new era that demands human judgement and debate. LLMs will tell you what’s consensus. Ask any LLM today if an intelligent person should pivot from crypto to AI; they all say yes. We need thought-leaders willing to play 4D chess in public and get a couple moves wrong before they win the match. Humanity is incredibly undervalued in the 21st century. Lastly, the talent density at Messari was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Any crypto companies hiring should reach out to myself, Diran, or any of the Messari folks directly to get in contact if you’re looking to hire.

@veH0rny Are u trying to say an auction and a bribe are equal crimes?

Binance bad for taking protocols money to be listed. Hyperliq good for asking 500k hype

@jacqmelinek @ahbeaudry @TokenRelations my pleasure

@0xCryptoSam @ahbeaudry @TokenRelations sry no referral fee this time 😔🤝 but ty for the layup

I'm excited to announce that I’ve joined the team over at @TokenRelations as an Institutional Crypto Researcher! When I got laid off from Messari back in March, I was bummed not only because I was now unemployed, but because I really liked research. I had a passion for writing about developing markets, stablecoin and crypto adoption abroad, and learning how firms were using tokenization in their products. The team at Token Relations is incredible and feels very much like a young Messari; everyone is smart, driven, and hungry to make a name for themselves. I want to also give a shoutout to the new Commander in Chief @jacqmelinek for her tireless energy, clear vision on how to run a team, and constant support for new ideas and innovative research. If anyone is looking for top tier reporting or wants to partner on putting out commissioned research, my DM’s are always open :)

Took a sec to think before responding to this. A few things. - Majority of the capital in crypto has only ever existed to gamble on token prices. Hence why we have a bunch of multi-billion dollar L1s that produce nothing. This was especially true in 2021. If our benchmark for success is just prev cycle ATHs, we’re setting ourselves up for failure. - Saw kyle mention this above, but the post dot-com bubble comparison makes a lot of sense. Max apathy in price action pushes talent and funding out, starting the cycle of attrition that ultimately ends in better infrastructure, better products, and more conviction. Same thing every cycle - we end up with more mainstream products each time. - Quite specific, but L1s and app valuations need to converge. Apps earn majority of crypto fees, yet are worth a much smaller % of total crypto mc. Idrc that much about figuring out how to value blockspace bc if every successful app wants to build its own L1, then blockchain as a form of distribution doesn’t work. Solana hasn’t really “owned users” for a long time; pumpfun did. Really nothings changed. We can (and should) complain about the grifters and we can lament the lost dollars to DPRK hacks, but the truth is this is what natural selection looks like. Painful, but crypto will look much safer and more dependable afterwards.

I keep seeing people say man everyone is apathetic we gonna run the bull back so hard time to lock in. Are none of you concerned eth / sol barely eclipsed prev cycle aths, btc clearly demonstrating diminishing returns cycle over cycle with saylor holding inordinate amount, quantum threat, only interesting narratives exist in tradfi etc etc Could go on, same reasons i spoke about when derisking last year. Serious question, does none of this concern you when you’re blindly parroting that the next cycle is gonna make ppl “so fkn rich”. Sure there’s always asymmetric opps that come up to make money on but holding spot majors hasnt felt worthwhile for a long ass time. Curious on thoughts from people still bullish the space going forward

@hosseeb Graceful shutdown = path for tokenholders to claw back $$$?

Let me be clear what I am saying and not saying: I am NOT saying: let's forcibly shut down protocols (we can't), or let's only use the largest ones, or that teams shouldn't build new protocols. I AM saying: there are a lot of zombie protocols out there with basically the front doors unlocked and no one inside anymore. These are like blighted homes and we need to get rid of them, or the whole neighborhood will suffer. The way we change that is by CHANGING THE NORMS around shutdowns and giving these founders a graceful way to exit. Right now there is no playbook on how to wind down a DeFi protocol, and we need to make one, ASAP.

@DougieDeLuca @RavaMoney @DanielxKilleen

margin is a key missing primitive in on-chain credit. there's a real borrower base that DeFi's otherwise uniquely positioned to serve that the existence of margin will help unlock. I believe that margin can exist as a native on-chain primitive with cure mechanics, transparent triggers, and committed stress liquidity that doesn't put lenders / protocols at risk

This all seems like a house of cards. Liquidity is already stretched thin on tokenized private credit funds and haircuts are brutal in size. Every time they’re traded, it creates a new price indicator for the next investor - so NAV price just completely detaches from the underlying. DeFi users historically run for the door in a bear market. Why would patient capital want to put up with that? At what haircut can Symbiotic/Midas handle 10% redemption requests? 20%? Any stress tests been done? @MidasRWA @symbioticfi

One of the biggest frustrations with tokenized RWAs today is the false promise of liquidity You buy a high quality tokenized fund something like mGLOBAL or mF-ONE, and it feels like real onchain exposure to realworld yields. But the moment you want your capital back, reality hits and you realize that you need 60 to 180 days of redemption wait time The asset is liquid in name only, but your money is effectively locked What @symbioticfi is building with @MidasRWA changes that equation in a smart and capital efficient way Instead of forcing market makers to tie up idle USDC in a pool (earning nothing while they wait for redemptions), Symbiotic lets that capital stay productive. Through Capital Facilities, the same committed capital can be actively deployed in protocols like Morpho or Euler, generating yield right up until the exact moment the redemption is needed So, when a request comes in, the capital is automatically recalled, still fully enforceable as collateral The redemption itself happens instantly and atomically via an onchain RFQ system: 🔸 You request to redeem 🔸 Qualified market makers bid 🔸 Best bid wins in one transaction 🔸You send your tokenized asset, receive USDC immediately The market maker then holds the RWA which continues earning its underlying yield while they handle the longer redemption with the issuer, becomes a win-win for everyone This establishment is a fundamentally better architecture for tokenized assets, one that removes the traditional trade-off between capital efficiency and real liquidity When high quality RWAs can finally be treated as truly liquid without sacrificing yield or security, the entire onchain investment landscape levels up Big move here for anyone holding or building tokenized products Would you put more capital into tokenized RWAs if you could actually redeem them instantly?let me know your thoughts in the comments!

can't wait to "get lucky" again buying crypto assets while everyone leans out of the space and gets rinsed trying to scope creep so many of my recent interactions have been with people who seem to think it's my job to convince them to stay in crypto brother i dgaf what you do

@koolkrypto223 Agreed, looks v interesting here

$AERO is one of the few tokens I think stands a decent chance to outperform (risk adjusted) $HYPE over the next 3-6 months. Their Aero update is so multifaceted and esoteric that I genuinely question if it can even be accurately priced in before the implications and hypotheticals turn into live results. If nothing else, this makes it very attractive to deeply research and trade (long or short) due to the possible informational asymmetry. @DefiLlama LlamaAI is incredibly useful to model and forecast the implications of the update. If you give it some pretty mundane, base case assumptions, it starts making it seem like 1:1 price parity with $UNI might not be as far-fetched as it initially sounds. One of my gripes is that @AerodromeFi aren't expanding to @Hyperliquid HyperEVM. Conversely, this definitely leaves the door open for a $HYPE aligned metaDEX to succeed on the HyperEVM. Would be especially interesting if it were trading sub 1m mcap 👀 Was this an $AERO, $HYPE, LlamaAI, or @NestExchange bull post? Yes.

@StaniKulechov This sounds like propaganda tbh. What has Aave done to reduce further systemic risk, and why should DeFi unite behind a bailout of Aave instead of better model (isolated lending)?

defiunited.eth is now open for contributions. All contributions are going towards DeFi United relief efforts to restore rsETH and safe DeFi. defiunited.world

@deedydas what's hyperliquid?

Jane Street made ~$40B in 2025 with 3,500 employees, a ~2x from the year before. At ~65-70% profit margin, that's $8M profit / employee, the highest for a 1000+ ppl company. High-frequency trading continues to be the most efficient money making engine. I want to share an old story about my Jane Street interview in 2014. Jane Street was known for hiring a lot of math, physics and CS olympiad winners from top universities and putting them through many rounds - including, for trading roles, a gauntlet of mental math. It was my 6th interview and my final round and I recall being asked "What is the next day after today in DD/MM/YYYY where all the digits are unique?" They'd toy with you and say "You can use a pencil and paper, if you want" but you knew that was an instant no. Painstakingly and as quickly as I could, I came to an answer. "How confident are you that this is correct on a 0-1 probability scale?" the interviewer said. "0.95", I blurted out, not fully knowing how to answer that. "Are you sure?" After thinking harder for a few more seconds, I realized I could've flipped the digits around to get a closer date. I gave the interviewer my answer. It was correct. "0.95 huh?" he chuckled. That's when I knew I failed. Note: fwiw, other companies that come close in efficiency are - Tether ($90M+ profit/emp) - Hyperliquid ($80M+ profit/emp) and on revenue: - Valve ($50M/emp) - OnlyFans ($37M/emp) - Craigslist ($14M/emp) - Anthropic ($12M/emp, run rate) - OpenAI ($8M/emp, run rate) For comparison, Nvidia is very efficient at scale and is $4.4M/emp.

@0xkyle__ ggwp

gm thank u lip bu tan anyways on to the next one

@yacineMTB Sidelined?

Owning cryptocurrency is insane. Like are you some kind of criminal or something? There is 0 good legal reasons to own cryptocurrency. 100% of the good reasons are illegal. Like seriously illegal. Like hiring hitmen illegal

@SergeantSol_ why is the token so hard to track/buy? can't find it on cmc, coingecko, dexscreener...do i have to buy on the website?

Glow trading at 2x revenue is wild

@ezcontra The fact that ETH isn't down on the day after EF sells 10k eth to a DAT instead of contributing to Aave shows no one trading this token actually cares about Ethereum. Pure option value on BTC. Just my 2cents, gl on the trade

add under 20d inval 2400

@0xEgas im a buyer around $10b assuming they don't lose all their volume to HIP4 lol

@0xCryptoSam you think $POLY touches 20b fdv at launch? I think they launch Q3-Q4, current annualized rev of 300M+-, should hover around 10B initially i guess, with HIP4 menace coming

Some interesting (and a few contrarian) liquid ideas I haven't seen heavily discussed that could play out in 2026: - Long AERO Short UNI: aero adding mainnet (competing with UNI), i predict many LPs shift from Uniswap to Aero post-UNI fee switch. internalizing MEV capture is another tailwind. - Long Securitize SPAC: the face of tokenization, works with blackrock, apollo, and kkr, $1.2b is a digestible val to launch at. could see it getting a stronger bid bc easier to buy. - Long POLY: $20b prob gets sold off initially since VCs in crazy profit, everyone else thinks it's overvalued. but 10% of OI is in the US presidential election, 50% in politics. that probably grows into 2028. midterms also a tailwind + eventual fee expansion to politics. - Long CARDS: insanely cheap for how much revenue they generate (altho tokenomics weird), TCG is a bet on Gen Z + alpha consumerism increasing. - Long MAPLE: the best underwriter in tokenized private credit, short-duration loans, good team, proven demand. clear path to scaling via "earn" products on CEXs, neobanks, and lending protocols. tough to say it's super undervalued here, you're betting on growth from a proven operator.

this is what would be keeping me up at night if i were running a cex everyone talking about hyperliquid vs other perp DEXs when the lede is buried by global RWA perp marketshare percentage: hyperliquid (via tradexyz) - 48.7% (!) (~52% with all hip3s) binance - 13.8% bybit - 5.5% okx - 4.3% what happens when the cex listing pnd trade fully disappears, nobody wants to trade the latest DWF manipulation pump, and users no longer let you dump on them what then?

@AzFlin Okie send it

@0xCryptoSam $MEGA to 0.4

@0xCryptoSam 0.4