👻 Crypto isn’t real

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At the start of the year, I subjected Empire readers to the idea that there are too many damn wolves in crypto.

Just like the two warring wolves inside all of us, crypto is filled with a dozen or more different genres that express its wide-ranging use cases. Oftentimes, they’re contradictory: memecoin casinos and public goods funding projects exist in the same space, for example, and in many cases on the same network. 

The same goes for privacy payments tech like Tornado Cash and regulated stablecoins like USDC — an odd couple under the Ethereum roof.

Except I got it wrong. There are no wolves in crypto. Because there is no “crypto.” Not anymore.

🦕 Bigger is better

Yesterday, the New York Times published a deep investigation into apparent conflicts of interest surrounding the Trump administration, World Liberty Financial, and G42, the dedicated AI startup of the UAE sovereign wealth fund.

And while I’ll leave it to you to read the piece for the specifics, it’s understandable that at some point you might wonder how this might paint the crypto space to the outside world.

Except that particular thought is a recipe for purity tests, which are terribly subjective. A crypto skeptic might believe that whatever sliminess surrounds World Liberty Financial is indicative of the rest of crypto.

Others would disagree and suggest that the crypto projects that they are into don’t come loaded with all that backroom baggage. #NotAllCrypto.

Here’s a much more convenient (and honest) explanation for how all of this can co-exist. “Crypto” isn’t real.

The use of “crypto” as a term is mostly tribal. The Biden-Gensler era hijinks forced the industry’s hand by pushing all sorts of strange bedfellows together as one political force, but it would be incredibly difficult for anyone to properly define what exactly “crypto” is.

We’re all “in” crypto insofar as we either work for, invest in, study or otherwise are fascinated by the power of decentralized finance and information security. But ask someone working in the Bitcoin Extended Universe whether they’re “in crypto” and there’s a high chance they would scoff. 

At the same time, anyone on the outside looking in would consider bitcoin is as much “crypto” as NFTs, memecoins, tokenized Zora posts, and even ransomware hackers or pig butchering scammers.

The blending of the blockchain ecosystem and what we call “traditional finance” has consequences. Among the most encouraging effects is that it will soon become obvious that the greatest use-case for the crypto economy is coordination. 

Crypto is a financial coordination layer, one that has the potential to be more accessible and open than other financial coordination layers, even the regulated stock market ecosystem. 

(BTW: “Ethereum is decentralized Kickstarter” is still one of its most compelling elevator pitches.)

Do the mess of penny-stock scams and low-quality micro-cap equities reflect poorly on the concept of the stock market? Or does whatever associated stigma start and stop with the bad actors who perpetrate or otherwise profit from them? 

After all, it’s not like the reality of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crimes ever truly caused lasting damage for Solana. 

Whatever gravitational wobble World Liberty Financial creates will be felt only by those closest to it. Crypto’s own mass is now finally too great to be knocked off course.

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Katana was built by answering a core question: What if a chain contributed revenue back into the ecosystem to drive growth and yield?

We direct revenue back to DeFi participants for consistently higher yields.

Katana is pioneering concepts like Productive TVL (the portion of assets are actually doing work), Chain Owned Liquidity (permanent liquidity owned by Katana to maintain stability), and VaultBridge (putting bridged assets to work generating extra yield for active participants).

• Citi has forecasted the price of ETH to sit at $4,300 by the end of the year. Current price: $4,500.

• Gemini and the SEC have settled a January 2023 lawsuit over allegedly failing to register its yield-generating product Earn.

• ICYMI: Base founder Jesse Pollak has teased plans to roll out a native token for the network.

It’s the summer of DATs and the party is going strong. 

But when October rolls around, everyone will be looking to DAS: London to hear from these meta-defining voices on where things stand and where they’re headed.

Get your ticket today with promo code: EMPIRENL

📅 October 13-15 | London