David Han

Crypto stands at the crossroads of two compelling narratives: its role as a novel form of money and decentralized asset, and its identity as a rapidly evolving technological platform. This dichotomy presents a fascinating, often under appreciated, balancing act. The former requires diverse social consensus, well-tested and planned upgrades, and slowly tends towards protocol ossification of some sort (or at least slower releases as the protocol increases in complexity). In large part, that's because the worst existential crisis for "mission-critical" networks is a protocol-level bug, fork, or exploit that threatens its legitimacy. The latter requires rapid engineering progress and innovation, with time-to-market tradeoffs and the ever present threat of disruptors who can build from a clean slate. This can lead to more centralization and network instability as a result of the need to ship and aligns more closely with the traditional Silicon Valley "build fast and break things" mantra. That said, this latter camp eventually trends towards the former with more diverse clients and stakeholders as the network matures and priorities shift. The first value proposition of crypto as money has already been solidified with Bitcoin and its ETF approvals and also with Ethereum's continued L1 activity despite its exorbitantly high transaction fees. That said, Tron's huge stablecoin volume (and Solana's recent rise as well), show continued demand for highly performant crypto layers. IMO we're still in the early innings of crypto as a scalable technology with various low fee, fast confirmation competitors across L2s, app chains, and high performance integrated chains. The winners in this space will be determined by the best apps and UX that drive a flywheel of adoption, though there are huge first mover and network advantages. These are some questions I consider important – What chains are investing in developer talent and improved developer tooling? How does the primary UX (i.e. wallets) compare on different chains? Where on the spectrum of innovative technology to stable money is a chain on? What can be built on one chain that can't be built on others? Are there any first mover or network effect advantages? Crypto is a big world and this is just the tip of the iceberg with a huge number of additional use cases & varying tokenomics covering oracles, defi, gaming, and more – all with different fundamental questions to consider. We're still early, and I am immensely excited for what's to come.

@BennoSawitzki @cryptopunk7213 He's likely referring to Cloudflare's release of an out of the box deployment for Clawdbot on the cloud – thus eliminating the need to go out and purchase a Mac Mini for hosting. Impressive that a $60B company shipped this so fast x.com/Cloudflare/sta…

@cryptopunk7213 did I miss this anthropic version of clawdbot?

so just to recap this week (so far) - musk industries is real (spacex, tesla, xai merger) - clawdbot explosion leading to a bankrun on mac minis but then anthropic released their own version - tesla dropped the bomb they’re halting production on model s and x to scale 1M optimus humanoid robots this year instead - china dropped the mother of all open source models kimi k2.5 that turn video into production-ready apps but then google dropped a gemini update ON THE SAME DAY that does the same thing gg - google said fuck it and also launched the worlds greatest world model genie and switched on gemini for 3.8B chrome browser users AND released alpha genome model that one-shots 1M dna base pairs for 3000 researchers across 160 countries AND teased new veo model - microsoft crushed earnings, launched a new ai chip but stock still tanked 10% because they *only* grew rev 39% - anthropic round 2X oversubbed raised to 20B 🏌️ - openai raising another $100B, 750B val 🏌️ - intel leaked they’re gonna help produce nvidias next gen feynman gpus - hello americas tsmc - a robot (built by figure) washed the dishes with zero human interaction - apple acquired stealth startup for $2B that can lip read - integrating their tech for new ai consumer airpods with cameras and mics - demis confirms google glass 2.0 coming this summer fckin hell

@EthereumDenver you scheduled the 2026 conference to start on Lunar New Year🧧??? Anyone remotely aware of East Asian cultures knows this is the equivalent of hosting a work conference on Christmas. Massive oversight. "ETHDenver is a global community of builders." Hard to take that seriously when the chosen dates exclude a huge part of the Asia ecosystem. Many will hit Consensus HK Feb 10-12, then go home for CNY the week after. People are focused on Devconnect next week and then Breakpoint in December. Real pushback won’t hit until mid-January, but changing dates then will be harder. Strong suggestion: move it back a week while there’s still time.

@AvgJoesCrypto @Collector_Crypt Yes, but in this case why should you own $CARDS vs owning the business equity? Very little available about their tokenomics (unless I'm missing something), and it seems all platform fees are in USDC (I don't use it though, so could be wrong) coingecko.com/learn/what-is-…

$CARDS is perhaps the clearest example of the market's fixation on buybacks swinging too far. @Collector_Crypt has built a fantastic business, on pace for $77.4 million in annualized revenue. Yet CARDS is down 65% from its ATHs, trading at just 3.4x P/S, one of the lowest multiples among top revenue-generating tokens.

@0xfazio @the_smart_ape You added an additional space. Here you go. hypurrscan.io/address/0x6f90… hyperdash.info/trader/0x6f90d…

This is huge. Something I've been thinking deeply about is whether the crypto fundraising model is going to substantially change into one of straight equity where a portion of float is allocated to onchain issuance. Alternatively, the equity entity could turn into a DAT.

Hard thing about perps is the funding rate mechanism designed to keep prices pegged. For nearly all existing crypto perps today, longs pay 10.95% annualized assuming spot and perps are price matched (i.e. base funding rate). That’s not tenable for long durations trades, especially given the uncertainty around IPO timelines. It’s likely these markets will be limited in use until the weeks leading up to the IPO. A second problem is the absence of corresponding spot markets for trading firms to run funding arb trades when funding gets out of line in one direction or another. Without this, it becomes a PVP market where sophisticated firms can go stop loss hunting since there’s no one counter trading in size to close any arbs. The last challenge here is addressable market sizing. Pre-launch futures markets in crypto today, for example, tend to be extremely illiquid outside of a few hyped launches. I wonder how many crypto natives can list more than 5 pre-IPO companies they would want to trade. All that said, this could be a super interesting space depending on the way it’s implemented and if the above problems can be solved. More importantly, the above problems exist when bringing perps to any illiquid market - if they can be solved, there’s no reason to limit utility to pre-IPO markets only.

I recently joined Ventuals as an advisor to help bring Pre-IPO Perps to life. My hot take is that PERPS, not tokenized spot, is the real gateway to bringing RWAs onchain. Here's why: 🧵

@anildelphi Down to cohost & mix networks

Going to be hosting some Delphi dinners and events this summer in New York. Some intimate. Some big. Down to cohost too to mix networks. If you’re around, reply and I’ll come back to this thread to send invites.

Pretty important statement from the SEC today that could potentially green light staking in ETFs. sec.gov/newsroom/speec…

@hosseeb @tokenterminal That's not too surprising. A more useful metric would be to filter for addresses that have a non-zero EOD balance. Zero balance addresses can suggest botting / wash trading activity. As an example, see the proportion of wallets with 0 SOL balance in the attached image in green.

Total active addresses seem to be down a lot since December. Solana -37% Base -19% BNB Chain -56% Tron interestingly flat? Data from @tokenterminal

@Fiskantes @QwQiao Microsoft does own the app layer for enterprise. Meanwhile, cloud infra is fairly unique because it has huge moats around developer lock-in and economies of scale that aren't as easily disrupted (vs launching another EVM network for example)

@QwQiao How would you reason about Microsoft and Amazon/AWS?

where i see the puck is going with both ai and crypto: ultimately more value is captured on the app layer vs the model (in the case of ai) and the chain (in the case of crypto) layer. this would be consistent with the history of tech too.

@QwQiao Why not math/stats or biology along with an english/history/philosophy/economics minor? Math sets you up to do anything in finance or STEM, while biology is great premed. The minor gives breadth to education and sets up groundwork for law school. Maximize exit opps.

ive been asking myself the question of what i would encourage my kids to study and what career to prepare for if they were to go to college next year? i still don’t have a good answer. seems to me every junior white collar job will get replaced by ai in soon, and most blue collar jobs some time after. fortunately i still have time to think about this more, but for parents with older kids, this is becoming existential.

@litest Why exclude ETHE and ETH though?

⚡️BREAKING: BLACKROCK'S ETH SPOT ETF HOLDINGS HAVE SURGED BY 124% IN THE PAST THREE MONTHS. INSTITUTIONS ARE ACCUMULATING ETH

@WillPeets @dcfgod The baseline funding rate for perps is 0.01%/8hr, not only for hyperliquid but also for most CEXs. See hyperliquid docs for the formula #technical-details" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">hyperliquid.gitbook.io/hyperliquid-do… or this primer on perps I wrote (section "Making sense of Funding Rates") coinbase.com/institutional/…

@dcfgod Seems odd that everyone is short yet funding rate is highly positive

@0xAllen_ @0xBreadguy 7 of the top 25 crypto project by revenue have some sort of Telegram interface. Many of which are pulling in $500K-$1M per day in revenue with teams of <10 people. See more here defillama.com/fees

@0xBreadguy I don't disagree but can you explain the Telegram bot angle? You mean like Unibot?

The non-Pump winners of this cycle: DeFi • AerodromeFi • Fluid • Ethena DevX • Privy Consumer • Bubblemaps • Kaito • Every telegram trading bot

@NickPullmanEsq Curious – you say "today", the press release you linked to is from Feb 4. The only announcement from today (Feb 20) I see is the creation of a unit to protect retail investors. Am I misinterpreting something? sec.gov/newsroom/press…

1/ 🚨 HUGE NEWS for crypto out of the SEC today. Commissioner Hester Peirce is pushing for a sandbox for non-securities, breaking free from the rigid ATS & custody rules. This is a direct opening for permissionless innovation. Let’s break it down 🧵👇

@0xBreadguy @arixoneth It's more complex than that. Hyperliquid makes key optimizations around their block building process such as order sorting by type. That's a separate issue from throughput @hyperliquid/latency-and-transaction-ordering-on-hyperliquid-cf28df3648eb" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">medium.com/@hyperliquid/l… That's not something that's supportable on a DEX on a general purpose L1 or L2.

@arixoneth Bingo. Going L1, unless async, just adds consensus overhead and means they have to limit themselves for the network to keep up

can someone convince me hyperliquid is better than a CEX and not just regulatory arb? afaik they have two products: the exchange and the EVM chain, just like most CEXs. the exchange is fully closed source, and while the validator set is permissionless now, it’ll likely stay that way—otherwise validators will start extracting MEV and degrading the trading experience from a safety perspective, it’s definetly worse. USDC is held in a 3/4 multisig, and bridged BTC in a 2/3 MPC multisig. these funds are also in hot storage for quick access, while CEXs usually keep most funds in cold storage with third party custodians so what's the big differentiator besides letting anyone trade without KYC/AML checks?

@NickolasTweet @singularity7x The chart depicts CFTC CME fixed term futures. Ethena does the basis trade via offshore perp exchanges, which is separate from this data.

@singularity7x Is this partly due to Ethena though? Ethena(and other carry trades) should show up as net 0 but when you’re only looking at shorts it’s hard to isolate the data.

This is why ETH got pounded this week. Shorts increased to highest on record.

@sjdedic @blockworks @cburniske @RyanWatkins_ @andyyy @nickwh8te @MikeIppolito_ @alexhevans @divine_economy @jon_charb Curious, why Celestia over EigenDA? Or both? Which Celestia based rollups are you most bullish on? Eclipse? Movement? IIRC these two constitute most of the DA published to Celestia at the moment.

Bought more $TIA here below $3 to make it one of my biggest liquid bags alongside $ETH and $SOL. I think most people are underestimating just how critical data availability will become, and Celestia is already eating into Ethereum's market share. On top of that, the modular ecosystem keeps expanding - and the more rollups emerge, the greater the market share $TIA can capture. Even for the all the Ethereum haters out there, Celestia plans to extend support to Solana and Bitcoin L2s, further solidifying its market presence. Eventually, why couldn’t $TIA fit into the same money thesis that's driving value for $ETH and $SOL? With an FDV below $3bn, this might just offer one of the best risk-reward opportunities out there right now. This could turn out to be the smartest contrarian move you could do right now - or I might be dead wrong and end up massively underperforming the market. Either way, it’s now or never, and my conviction is strong 🦣

@StrategicHash @__lostin__ I am here explaining how we have approached this report and what we plan going forward. We do include onchain data and are only going to include more of it going forward. And I do need to defend my research integrity when level accusations like this. x.com/StrategicHash/…

@0xdavidhan @__lostin__ I hope you take my comments/questions as a way to improve rather than feel the need to be defensive about it. You're in a big position of privilege right now, let's try to get it right.

Going through reports from Coinbase Institutional Research. It’s so incredibly biased. - New 50 page Guide to Crypto Markets Q1 2025 barely mentions Solana - Throughout 2024, I can find just 1 short Solana research report. Half of which focuses on a. failed transaction rates b. how Solana transaction formats create problems for their analysts

But it's not "obviously the bigger face in crypto," particularly for institutions and non crypto native firms. Liquidity, regulatory overhangs (which are improving!), capital access, derivative instruments, etc. are still meaningfully lagging behind. For example, BTC and ETH have $64B and $24B in open interest respectively. SOL has $6B and XRP has $4B. From a volumes perspective, BTC and ETH had $190B and $158B in 24h volume. SOL had $30B and XRP had $50B. For most institutions, those above numbers matter far more something than app revenue (even though I personally think revenue & fees are also critically important, and I've been pushing for more onchain metrics internally). Half of the current report is about market metrics like those I listed above, and from that perspective SOL hasn't reached a comparable level yet. To be clear, Solana has already started to be explicitly included in the report (as the only native token outside of BTC and ETH). We think Solana is important and are actively covering more of it, but we're also stepping up coverage gradually in line with its marketshare. Our next steps are to get more partner focus charts on Solana and also further incorporate it into the market overview section. If you're unfamiliar with the report structure you can read it here. coinbase.com/institutional/…

@0xdavidhan @__lostin__ The question isn't "why wasn't Solana included". The question is "why wasn't Solana included when it's obviously the bigger face in crypto today compared to Ethereum"