Empire

They recap the current market with Bitcoin near $70k and geopolitics shaping flows. They explore 24/7 markets, tokenized assets, and which classes might tokenize first. A deep look at alleged insider trading on prediction markets and the enforcement, KYC, and moral questions around it. They also discuss recent big VC fundraises and what fund size means for deployment.

A market snapshot on Bitcoin and risk-on breadth across alts and equities. A deep dive into how AI and crypto are converging, including token mechanics like Venice. Discussion of positioning for an AI trade and where crypto-AI product market fit might emerge. Notes on public market AI bets, miners and macro allocations, and societal disruption risks from rapid AI adoption.

Michael Mark Antonio, Head of DeFi at Galaxy Digital, builds DeFi for institutions. Matt Hogan, CIO at Bitwise, runs large crypto ETF efforts. David Lawant, Head of Research at Anchorage Digital, focuses on institutional crypto infrastructure. They discuss TradFi and crypto converging, the ETF watershed moment, institutional moves into DeFi, market structure shifts like 24/7 trading and derivatives, and evolving credit, yield, and onchain finance.

Pranav Kanade, an asset manager with a macro allocator view, and Tushar Jain, a venture investor in crypto and Web3, join to debate market cycle timing and 2026 allocation. They compare token vs public equity decisioning, value frameworks for top tokens and top-200 asymmetries. They argue apps vs L1s, discuss sustainable cash flows, DeFi, stablecoin rails, and positioning for AI and uncertainty.

A heated legal clash over alleged on-chain insider trading involving Terra and a major trading firm. A look at Circle’s strong quarter, payment network traction, and the Stripe vs Circle ownership debate. Robinhood’s new vehicle to give retail access to private companies gets explained. Tether’s big investment in a creator marketplace and stablecoin adoption among marketplaces are unpacked.

Raz Zarick, CTO and ZK expert who built Zero’s technical architecture. Bryan Pellegrino, CEO and cross-chain builder leading LayerZero’s move to an L1. They discuss Zero’s origin, why its architecture claims a 100x breakthrough, separating execution from verification, achieving massive TPS, and the roadmap and product zones for 2026.

Rob Hadick, Partner at Dragonfly who led the firm’s $650M raise, walks through the fundraising mechanics and LP decision-making. Short, sharp takes on crypto VC dynamics. He covers token investability in 2026, whether Base might launch a token, and how allocators evaluate crypto managers.

They unpack sideways market chop and why crypto keeps struggling after a big drawdown. They debate whether we are finally bottoming and how short squeezes and order-book risks play a role. They discuss AI’s influence on markets, agents and crypto-native monetization. They cover Aave’s proposed value accrual, protocol pivots like Base and Zora, and pair trades and derivatives as tactical plays.

Yuval Rooz (Canton Network), a privacy-and-interoperability strategist; Mathew McDermott, Goldman Sachs’ digital assets lead; Nick Shalek, Ribbit Capital investor in tokenization. They discuss why institutional adoption stalled, how privacy, governance, and interoperability unlock banks, the rise of tokenized, machine-readable assets, and why permissioned and permissionless rails must interoperate.

Brett DiNovi, investor and co-founder focused on ecosystem strategy, and Lei Yang, CTO designing high-performance L2 architecture, discuss MegaETH's 2026 roadmap. They explore why L2s matter, performance vs security trade-offs, latency-driven apps like gaming and HFT, censorship escape hatches, value capture mechanisms, and how to build a self-contained, composable ecosystem with priority access and pricing models.