💸 Take my money

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A couple of days ago, I suggested not to look at the charts. 

If I’m honest, I doubt anyone listened. For better or worse, we are all cursed with an innate drive to monitor the situation at all times; otherwise, you probably wouldn’t be here. 

Let us share our watch together. Happy weekend!

🤩 The CZ effect

Whether CZ is “officially” back at Binance is besides the point. His influence has already shown up in the charts.

BNB continued its rally to set a new all-time high at the start of this week, reaching close to $1,100 for the first time ever to bounce off a $150-billion market cap.

And if you compare its chart to BTC, ETH and SOL, it’s clear that BNB has kept up momentum where others have stalled.

For sure, two well-timed announcements for BNB treasury companies had something to do with that. But just one actually active right now, BNB Treasury Company, and it’s so far accumulated BNB currently worth a little over $420 million per Blockworks Research data. 

No doubt that’s a solid stack but it’s still only a fraction of a percent of BNB’s circulating supply. 

Is that really why BNB is up?

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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).

A second DAT, B Strategy, which is also funded by CZ’s family office YZi Labs, is pushing to raise $1 billion to fund its own BNB buys — double the capital already earmarked for BNB Treasury.

Meanwhile, ASTER, the token tied to the perps DEX of the same name and backed by YZi Labs, rocketed to its own price record almost simultaneously with BNB. 

ASTER then followed through with an even higher one a few days later when it skirted a $3.9 billion market cap.

“ I mean, it sounds like CZ at one point woke up — he’s back at the helm of Binance, and obviously, you poke a bear enough and he wakes up,” Santiago Roel Santos told Yano on today’s Empire podcast.

“And obviously a lot of teams, probably Binance exchanges, but also crypto native teams like Solana’s, saw Hyperliquid and what they did and they want to do something about it. CZ, being the phenomenal builder that he is, has launched Aster in competition to capture that opportunity.”

So far, so good: Aster looks like the number one perps DEX by volume over the past seven days, according to DeFiLlama, posting $101.7 billion compared to Hyperliquid’s $64.6 billion.

Not bad for CZ, who in only February had never before used a decentralized exchange, automated market maker or liquidity pool.

“Dex is so much harder to use... 😂 … 27 minutes to do a test buy... Still haven't figured out how to add to the liquidity pool. And you have to do this while they are all watching on the blockchain. 😆,” he tweeted.

Of course, CZ can be forgiven for not trading on the BNB Chain before this year. He builds teams and ships products — that’s his thing, something Yano alluded to with his potential explanation for why Aster is so hot right now.

“ I think, basically, it's a CZ trade, right? I think that's it. I actually think this as I'm looking at these things, like it has nothing to do with perps or Aster or whatever,” Yano told Santi. 

“It's like, ‘How do you bet on CZ?’ It's like, ‘Elon [is] starting a new company, just take my money, I’m going to put a blindfold on, just take my money.’ It's like, ‘CZ is starting a new thing, just take my money.’”

And now you know. 

Catch the full roundup episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and  X.

2025 is the year of the corporate chain launches. Institutions are coming onchain, but does that mean crypto as a whole wins?

See your favorite Empire roundup guests break it down live at DAS.

Get your ticket today with promo code: EMPIRENL.  

📅 October 13-15 | London

Last poll, we asked: “What corner of crypto are you watching for signs about where we’re headed?”

36% of you said “Digital Asset Treasury companies,” and a similar amount said “stablecoins.” Probably fair.

This week, we’re wondering: