Empire

Jason Yanowitz × Santiago Roel Santos

Druckenmiller’s tweet about TradeXYZ and ICE’s involvement could make onchain markets useful first as institutional price data, before large trades can be absorbed.Anthropic’s $17 million open interest, with less than $4 million hedgeable, shows the gap between pricing and execution.ICE may widen Hyperliquid’s U.S. reach, but KYC, separate order books and incumbent resistance leave access and liquidity unresolved.

Jason Yanowitz × Santiago Roel Santos × Haseeb × Zaki

GPT-56’s exploit for a PHP flaw known since 2004 shows AI making neglected vulnerabilities economic targets; Cloudflare reportedly saw attacks climb from hundreds hourly to millions.Haseeb sees model economics favoring DeepSeek’s cheap volume or Anthropic’s superior intelligence; OpenAI’s routing of Kimi K3 and GLM 5.3 could make it an enterprise control panel but may weaken OpenAI’s model-building incentive.

Michael Dempsey

AI vendors growing 6x in a market expanding 10x may be losing ground, while stack convergence could put $30 billion businesses at risk of displacement within nine months.Compound’s roughly 23-company portfolio includes 16 biotech businesses and only three AI investments, reflecting Dempsey’s preference for scientific ventures that control a route from discovery to commercialization.

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.

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

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.

Jason Yanowitz × Santiago Roel Santos

After eight months across 20-plus sectors, Santos says Inversion’s crypto-embedding thesis failed to clear the return hurdle, shifting focus to quality, cash-flowing businesses.On-chain B2B borrowing costs 8–12%, while crypto FX quotes sit 20–50 basis points above mid-market; Robinhood Chain’s more than $500 million in Uniswap volume and roughly 150,000 new active wallets show verticalization, though P&L value remains disputed.

Jason Yanowitz × Santiago Roel Santos

Crypto venture is splitting into a weak early-stage market and improving later-stage payments, stablecoin, tokenized-asset and M&A activity.Stablecoin transfer volume remains distorted by bots, but adjusted metrics, card swipes and about 30 public-company implementations offer stronger adoption evidence.Kalshi’s reported $40B raise remains unconfirmed as fee compression looms, while institutional clearing and block trades could expand prediction markets.