Dan Tapiero

Pinning the link to the @RaoulGMI @DTAPCAP Interview youtu.be/jYsWwqTdvNQ

@0xSammy Great timeline.

> the internet launches in 1991 > Tim Berners-Lee reserves HTTP 402 ‘Payment Required’ as a native payment primitive > no digital cash exists; no settlement layer can handle sub-cent transactions > the web defaults to advertising and credit card checkout flows for 30 years > x402 activates the dormant status code; payment as native to the web as loading an image > Coinbase builds it; Cloudflare co-founds the Foundation > 165M+ transactions processed in 10 months > Stripe goes live on x402 in February today, Stripe and Paradigm launch > Tempo mainnet and MPP; the Machine Payments Protocol > Visa extends MPP to card payments; Lightspark extends it to Bitcoin Lightning > design partners include OpenAI, Anthropic, Mastercard, Shopify, DoorDash, Revolut, Standard Chartered AWS publishes an enterprise integration blog > Google integrates x402 into Agent-to-Agent > two parallel standards are emerging: > TradFi rails for agents inside corporate trust boundaries; MPP, Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol, Ramp’s Agent Cards > crypto rails for agents transacting across boundaries where no shared authority exists; x402, onchain identity, stablecoin settlement > the retail narrative is approaching its peak; ecosystem maps everywhere, every protocol announcing compatibility > the institutional adoption curve is on a different trajectory entirely; Stripe, Visa, and AWS are not reacting to CT hype, they are shipping production infrastructure > aggregate x402 ecosystem market cap for tokens with genuine protocol connection is under $700M > Visa and Stripe process $14T and $1.9T annually > that is less than 0.05% of the terminal addressable market > you are watching the payment layer the internet was supposed to have from day one, finally being built our report covers the full stack

@aleabitoreddit Well done.

$CRCL is now up 148.15% in 1 month. If people are wondering why my YTD is ~500%? It’s because I look at fundamentals, not scribbles on a chart. The comment section back here aged like 2021 monkey JPEG prices.

@_The_Prophet__ @TFTC21 @GreenMonsterah Any way to investigate probability?

@DTAPCAP @TFTC21 @GreenMonsterah Good question.

BlockFills just filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. $50-100 million in assets against $100-500 million in liabilities. BlockFills was a Chicago-based institutional crypto trading and lending firm backed by Susquehanna, CME Ventures, and Nexo. They processed over $60 billion in trading volume in 2025 and served around 2,000 institutional clients including hedge funds, asset managers, and mining companies. Here's the timeline of how it unraveled: February 11 - BlockFills halts all customer withdrawals and deposits, citing "market and financial conditions." Late February - CoinDesk reports the firm lost approximately $75 million. CEO and co-founder Nicholas Hammer steps down. Early March - Dominion Capital sues, alleging BlockFills misappropriated customer crypto assets, commingled client funds with operational funds, and concealed significant losses. A federal judge issues an emergency order freezing BlockFills' bitcoin holdings. March 15 - Chapter 11 filed in Delaware. Reliz Ltd. and three affiliated entities enter bankruptcy. The pattern is identical to every crypto lending blowup we've seen. Aggressive leverage in derivatives, counterparty risk exposure to other struggling firms, client funds not properly segregated, and losses hidden until they couldn't be hidden anymore. This is what happens when you hand your bitcoin to a third party and trust them to manage the risk. Not your keys, not your coins isn't a meme. It's a risk management framework. The firm's own backers include some of the biggest names in traditional finance. Susquehanna and CME Ventures did their due diligence and still got it wrong. If they can't assess counterparty risk in this market, what chance does a retail investor have? The answer is simple. Stop trusting intermediaries with your bitcoin.

@fintechfrank 💯

Hyperliquid profiled by Fortune, WSJ, and Bloomberg in the same week. Polymarket weekly volumes topping $2B. Stablecoin supply cracked $300bn. Crypto prices may be down, but parts of the industry are capturing the zeitgeist in a way they didn’t in previous bear markets.

@thedefiedge !

Revenue is the only thing that puts a floor under a token's price. Everything else is just a story you tell yourself on the way down. Most people filter by narrative. "AI coins." "RWA play." "L2 season." But narratives don't give you a floor. When sentiment flips, there's nothing underneath the price. It's just vibes all the way down. Revenue is different. If a protocol generates real fees, someone is willingly paying to use the product. That creates baseline demand that doesn't evaporate when CT gets bearish. Pure speculation tokens? The bottom is wherever the last panic seller decides it is. Revenue-generating protocols? Usage creates a floor. In choppy markets, floors are everything. One tool I like is @sealaunch_'s revenue dashboard. There are revenue charts everywhere but I like how they lay it out visually. Derivatives are dominating at $112M in the last 30 days. DEXs at $38M. Launchpads at $37M. Everything else is significantly smaller. But the trend matters more than the snapshot. Total category revenue peaked mid-2025 (~$175M/month) and has been declining since. You want protocols that held their revenue through the drawdown, not the ones that spiked once. Start with revenue. Work backward to TVL, users, and fees. Revenue is the hardest metric to fake. Everything else can be gamed.

@Kurtsie134179 No guts no glory. The point is to have the right view before others not after.

@DTAPCAP Dan, I love nearly all ur posts, but here we 2 weeks in, early days… most important reality is that Iran survived sucker punch. Now race against time for US to clear Hormuz or see oil at 150 and a global recession and lose credibility. So far, oil isn’t headed down.

Is the most important thing about the Iran war that Russia and China did not come to Iran's aid? Unipoloar world confirmed. Global map gets redrawn. Cuba friendly takeover soon. The rogue government era around world is over. What could be more bullish for US?

@calilyliu @toly Nice Lily!

Blockchains are tech for finance. The moonshot that Bitcoin originally proposed, that many of us came to build, has gone by many characterizations over the last decade: open finance, decentralized finance, internet of money, tcp/ip for money to name a few. All point to the same thing: moving financial infrastructure from analog to digital and enabling all the 5.5B users of the internet to have default access to an always on, permissionless financial rails. This vision is inseparable from a commitment to self sovereignty. Where different ecosystems diverge is in articulating the path for blockchains to enable self sovereignty. My view is that the path is necessarily an economic one. Look around in history both ancient and modern, and there is not a single vision that has reached scale without an economic engine underwriting it. Every ancient empire, underwriting every major religion. And in more recent times, every outstandingly successful city state has focused on building its economy first, before projecting cultural, political influence beyond its borders. On chain economies should learn from this. The path to self sovereignty is based on a strong and differentiated economy. In our industry, our differentiated economy is defi. DeFi is not an application vertical. It is the core reason why any blockchain outside of Bitcoin has a reason to exist and grow, why blockchains can add value to not just some users but eventually, 5.5B users. To reach this scale, networks must be neutral, global, performant - and committed to open systems that pave the way to self sovereignty. On this last point, the greatest difference that has emerged in this industry is between corpo infra and open systems. Corpo infra benefits from huge day 1 distribution, but ultimately serve the same ownership structures and private interests that characterize finance today. These projects may have their role (and certainly creating value for their owners), but let us not confuse them as legitimate inheritors of the original ethos that brought blockchain into the world: self sovereignty, open access, radically equal opportunity served to the broadest set of humanity reachable in an instant - the 5.5B on the internet.

@PardonMyTake C'mon...they have 1/10th the population. They aren’t doing so poorly. No one likes a braggart.

@sjdedic 💯

Two types of investors in this market right now: One is down bad, angry, blaming macro, market makers, KOLs, CEXs etc, because they are continuing to chase memes, narrative plays and their quick flip playbook. The other is quietly loading fundamentally undervalued businesses at valuations that we‘ll laugh about in 12 months. Same market. One sees a graveyard. The other sees a candy store.

@rami_hashimi @Micro2Macr0 @grok is this true?

I'M IN DUBAI AND WHAT I'M SEEING WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE Yesterday I told you $USDC demand was going parabolic. Today I need to update you because it got crazier. $USDC supply jumped to $77 billion. Up $17 billion in weeks. OTC desks in Dubai still cannot fill orders. People are walking in with cash and being told "come back tomorrow." Bank wires above six figures? Taking 5-7 days now. Some getting rejected. But here's the part nobody is talking about: Dubai real estate just crashed 27% this month. War panic. Capital flight. Sellers are bleeding. So what are they doing? They're accepting Bitcoin. For the first time EVER, sellers are giving discounts for crypto payments. "Pay in BTC, get 5-10% off." I'm not making this up. I'm seeing the listings. This is the biggest crypto adoption moment happening right now, and the $BTC pump to $72,000 is a clear indicator of what’s happening. Don’t expect things to slow down.

@scottmelker Fed way behind curve needs to cut given dire employment situation (not properly captured in old time data)

Imagine you can afford a $2,000 monthly mortgage payment. At 8% interest, that payment might let you borrow roughly $275,000. Now imagine rates fall to 4%. The same $2,000 payment can suddenly support a loan of about $420,000. Your income didn’t change. But the amount the bank is willing to lend you did. Now imagine that happening to millions of buyers at the same time. Everyone suddenly has more borrowing power. And when buyers can borrow more, they bid more. So prices rise. Houses didn’t magically become twice as valuable. Credit became cheaper. And when credit gets cheaper, asset prices usually rise with it.

@D1678618D Oh please. They are hiding. Want no part of any direct support of Iran. Russian economy irrelevant on global scale despite chest puffing activity. China zero interest in any war ever. Disassembly of faux alliance vs US. No action means not in the arena.

@DTAPCAP They have come to their aid lol China and Russia have spy ships in the straight of Hormuz right now passing information directly to the Iranians about what’s happening

@patfscott Yup

Something big is happening in the world of finance and most of the world is ignoring it. Tokenized equities have had a legitimate 0-to-1 moment since the start of 2025, growing from less than $100M onchain to over $4B. Next watch for this growth to continue and for applications to be built that allow holders to borrow against and earn yield on those assets.

Markets. Ol guy feel. Given Iran war, oil spike, shots even on Dubai, Hormuz blockage, general world chaos feelings over these events, markets hold in extremely well. Hormuz closing was the fear for 30 years that was expected to cause collapse. No Russia/China. Bullish US.

@jerallaire @thinkingcrypto !!!

Circle’s USYC just became the world’s largest tokenized MMF. Tokenized treasuries and repo as collateral is a major emerging use case and we are proud of how quickly this has grown. What’s especially powerful about USYC is the ability to 24/7/365 create and redeem it using USDC and a smart contract teller. Real-time money and collateral is better.

@findingdefi That is true. We aren't an empire.

@DTAPCAP Empires die from hubris

@dudbusyes Vene was. Goodbye poof. Others inline. Cuba friendly takeover. All part of macro geopolitical 4d chess admin is playing.

@DTAPCAP Who's the rogue government in this instance?

@Orwellinius No direct confrontation. Game over for them on world stage. Unipolar.

@DTAPCAP Dan, I love a lot of your takes on the markets, but I don’t get this take on geo-politics. WE have become the rogue state. And as for Russia, China, they only care about themselves when the rubber hits the road. But I suspect they’ll be helping Iran quietly…

@PrinceOfYen They ain't confronting US. Game over.

Except for when China helped Iran block StarLink and put down the protests. Except when Russia shared Oreshnik tech to help Iran develop the Fatah 2 mach15 hypersonic missile. Except the targeting data provided by both China and Russia. Except for China restricting rare earths in the build up to this war that reduced the missile production capacity of the US.