🌒 Dark side of the hype

Happy Friday!

I’m out relaxing on a beach today, but I would never leave you high and dry. 

Instead, my friends at Daily Crypto News are coming in clutch with a fun Friday read. 

Enjoy, and I’ll see you all next week.

🔊 Hype ≠ value

If you're listening to the hype, Bitcoin should already be at $250,000. If you're watching the charts, you know we're not there yet. Hype isn't the market. And behind all the noise about price action and ETF flows, there's a deeper fight happening: one over who controls the future of money.

Let’s get something straight: Hype isn’t inherently bad. It gets attention, drives momentum, and brings new people into the space. But when hype outpaces fundamentals, you get empty speculation, bad actors, and a cycle of disillusionment. We’ve seen it over and over again in crypto: ICO mania, NFT bubbles, meme coin pumps. The same people chasing green candles on Twitter are the ones screaming for regulation when the bottom drops out.

Bitcoin, however, doesn’t run on hype. It runs on energy. On math. On decentralization. It has no marketing department, no CEO, and no quarterly earnings call. That's why it’s still here.

So when people ask me where Bitcoin is going next, price-wise, my honest take is this: We’ll hit $150K–200K eventually. But not on hype alone. It’ll come from real-world integration, political and financial instability, and most importantly, the increasing irrelevance of trust-based systems.

🏛️ The stablecoin power grab

This brings me to the Clarity and GENIUS Acts — the legislation that everyone in D.C. is pretending is pro-crypto. In reality, it’s pro-corporate. It’s about privatizing the dollar without calling it that.

Let’s not sugarcoat it: These bills give power to private companies to issue stablecoins backed by U.S. Treasuries. That means if you’re Circle, you now have a business model where you collect customer deposits, earn yield from government debt, and don’t have to deal with the Federal Reserve directly. It's a dream for VCs and legacy finance — not for the average person who wants sovereignty over their money.

And what do retail investors get in return? A “regulated” stablecoin that looks and acts like a CBDC — just without the scary government acronym. These stablecoins are not immune to depegs based on government overreach as well. Just look at what happened to USDC after the bank run on Silicon Valley Bank in 2023. AND! The stablecoin is a product with terms of service agreements that can act in the best interest of the company and not your constitutional rights.

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🧠 What we’re really seeing

This is the playbook:

• Use the hype to push pro-corporate legislation.

• Call it innovation.

• Discredit Bitcoin as slow, outdated, or anti-environmental.

• Promote stablecoins that give financial institutions complete oversight of your transactions.

• Pretend that’s freedom while having terms of service that subvert your constitutional rights.

Stablecoins aren't bad — but who controls them matters. Also, it matters if Congress is enacting rules that protect consumers, privacy, and the ability to transact. A decentralized stablecoin with no backdoor or central issuer is a tool. A corporate-issued, Treasury-backed token with KYC and freezing powers? That’s just fiat with better branding.

We’re watching the slow rollout of a permissioned financial future and most people won’t realize it until it’s too late. Please take full stock in that word “permissioned.” Congress isn’t acting in the benefit of the US people or privacy. Stablecoins are the Trojan Horse of surveillance, censorship, and even more unfettered money printing.

🛡️ “A moat, a moat, my kingdom for a moat!”

Finally, we come to moats. So many folks are thinking about moats across the crypto landscape this week. The key question is how to develop a protective layer — through killer DApps and/or PMF — tailored to a specific project or chain.

HyperLiquid is the network to follow signals here. Their play into perpetuals has turned heads and reinvented the airdrop and launch meta. But what they are also spinning heads around is the importance of consumer DApps with hype and strong product-market fit for traders. Pear Protocol — recently launched on HyperLiquid behind a $4.1 million strategic funding round led by Castle Island Ventures — is the leading pair-trading platform in DeFi. This is just another killer dapp into the trading suite, a part of HyperLiquid’s efforts to build a moat as the best trading chain around.

In a tweet from Aug. 5, Jon Charbonneau agrees:

It doesn’t take a village, either. James Hunsaker, CTO of Monad, once said that all it takes for a chain to take off and sustain itself is one really killer app that the retail will use and rally behind. Polymarket on Polygon is a classic example.

Will there be a killer dapp coming on Monad?

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Institutional interest in Ethereum is running hot. ETF flows are gaining momentum, new token acquisition vehicles are forming every week, and ecosystem morale is nearing ATHs. 

The only question left: Where will $ETH be when DAS London kicks off this October?

Get your ticket today with promo code: EMPIRENL

📅 October 13-15 | London

Last week, I asked: Are you over DATs? 

This one was a tough one! 

Roughly half of you said you just don’t buy them, while the other half said they’re so bullish. 

This week, I’m wondering…