Aldous

[Raoul Pal @RaoulGMI]

Crypto wasn’t invented for the age we came from.

When Satoshi launched Bitcoin, we thought we were building a hedge against banks. Digital gold, permissionless money for humans who couldn't access banks.

All true. But the humans found it hard. Keys, custody, UX... none of it felt natural.

Turns out we were building the base layer for something else entirely.

Agents don't struggle with keys, and smart contracts are native to machines. Every UX problem we've spent years trying to solve was a problem because the users hadn't arrived yet.

Now they have. The agentic economy needs money that moves at its speed, and crypto is the only system that does.

Had the greatest time sitting down with @ErikVoorhees a few weeks ago to dig into where crypto fits in the agentic world. As ever, please enjoy!

[Dear Self. @Dearme2_]

You're a Man.

[Aldous @Mycelium_Mind]

@alifarhat79

[Anthony Pompliano 🌪 @APompliano]

This is the most badass shit ever.

h/t @Geiger_Capital

[Barry Butler Photography @barrybutler9]

By Dawn's Early Light. This morning in Chicago on Independence Day, America 250.

[ol’ stocky ⛳️ @oldstocky]

Maturing is realizing that nothing is that serious and society is 99% retarded

[McNeil @REFLOG18]

That level in Super Mario 3 where the sun is trying to kill you is just every day now.

[Echoes of War @EchoesofWarYT]

250 years ago today, on June 29, 1776, New Yorkers looked out at the water and saw a nightmare on the horizon. The British fleet had arrived, and so many ships filled the bay that witnesses said the masts looked like "a forest of pine trees" growing out of the sea. The timing could not have been more brutal.

This was the empire's answer to the rebellion, and it was overwhelming. The first wave of around 45 warships and transports dropped anchor off Sandy Hook and Staten Island carrying General William Howe and roughly 10,000 troops. Within days it kept growing. Then his brother Admiral Richard Howe arrived with more. It would eventually swell into one of the largest seaborne invasion forces of the entire 18th century, hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of professional soldiers and German mercenaries, aimed at one city.

Now sit with the timing. While that forest of masts was filling the harbor, delegates down in Philadelphia were in the final days of debating whether to declare independence. They voted for it on July 2 and signed off on the wording on July 4. So at the exact moment America was being born on paper, the most powerful military on earth was already anchored off its coast, getting ready to strangle it in the cradle.

The people of New York understood exactly what they were seeing. Alarm bells rang, panic spread through the streets, and soldiers sprinted to their posts to stare at a force they had almost no hope of matching. Washington's army was outnumbered, outgunned, and about to get badly beaten in the battles for New York that followed.

That's the part that gets lost in the fireworks every Fourth of July. Independence wasn't declared from a position of strength. It was declared with an enemy armada already sitting on the doorstep, knowing full well what was coming. They signed their names anyway.

[The Conservative Alternative @OldeWorldOrder]

ALEXANDER HAMILTON: "The influx of foreigners must, therefore, tend to change & corrupt the national spirit.

To admit foreigners indiscriminately is to invite a Trojan horse into the citadel of our liberty & sovereignty."

[Ted Logan @TedLogan1010]

Every day of my life!

[Zunaira Ai @ZunairaAi]

STOP STARTING YOUR EMAILS WITH:

“I HOPE YOU’RE DOING WELL.”

IT’S CORRECT. IT’S POLITE. AND IT’S ALSO ONE OF THE MOST FORGETTABLE OPENINGS THERE IS.

IF YOU WANT SOMEONE TO REPLY, DON’T START LIKE EVERYONE ELSE.

START WITH INTENTION.

HERE ARE 10 ALTERNATIVES: 👇

[Pro America Politics @proamericapol]

Six years ago, Bernie Sanders warned we had ~6 years left before climate catastrophe wiped us out unless we passed his $30T communist Green New Deal.

It was always a scam. The goal the entire time was to force through the green new deal.

[C3 @C_3C_3]

OMG! Can you believe the Democrats are actually just Communists!?

Trump Supporters:

[Trending Bitcoin @TrendingBitcoin]

"Bitcoin is dead"

Bitcoin:

[Serf @RoyalSerf]

Dr. Fauci give us vaccines

[End Wokeness @EndWokeness]

Still can't believe this video is real

[BuyTheDiplo @BuyTheDiplo]

Most people arguing against $ETH are arguing against the 2021 version of Ethereum.

NFT gas wars.
High fees.
Monkey pictures.
“Why not just use a database?”

That take is lazy now.

Under the hood, Ethereum is becoming a global settlement layer for digital money.

$ETH is not just “a coin.”

It is:

Money
Collateral
Yield
Gas
Security
Settlement
DeFi base layer
Stablecoin infrastructure
Tokenized asset infrastructure

Bitcoin is digital gold.

Ethereum is programmable finance.

Stablecoins are already one of crypto’s killer apps.

Digital dollars move 24/7 on-chain.

No bank hours.
No weekend delay.
No wire cutoff.
No “3 business days.”

Ethereum is one of the main places those dollars live and settle.

DeFi is the early version of:

Exchanges without brokers

Lending without banks

Collateral without paperwork

Settlement without clearinghouses

Markets without business hours

Tokenization is next.

Treasuries.
Funds.
Real estate.
Private credit.
Stocks.
Bonds.
Invoices.

All of this can become programmable, transferable, auditable, and globally settled.

That is the future of finance.

BlackRock did not tokenize a fund on Ethereum to join a meme.

It did it because public blockchains can make finance faster, cheaper, more transparent, and more composable.

Then you have staking.

ETH holders can help secure the network and earn rewards.

That makes ETH a productive settlement asset.

Then you have L2s.

Ethereum L1 is the high-value settlement layer.

Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, ZK rollups, and appchains are the cheaper execution layers.

Cheap activity happens above Ethereum.

Final settlement comes back to Ethereum.

That is the model.

Then comes privacy.

Real finance cannot run forever on fully public wallets where everyone can see payroll, trading books, treasuries, donations, positions, and counterparties.

Ethereum’s future includes private proofs:

Prove assets without exposing every wallet.

Prove eligibility without exposing identity.

Settle without leaking strategy.

That is not “criminal privacy.”

That is normal financial privacy.

Banks already have it.

Crypto needs it too.

And yes, neutral rails can be used for things people dislike:

Capital flight.
Gambling.
Sanctions evasion attempts.
Dark markets.
Unregulated leverage.
Speculation.

That does not make Ethereum useless.

It proves the rails are neutral.

The internet can educate or scam.

Cash can buy groceries or fund crime.

Roads move ambulances and criminals.

Neutral infrastructure gets used by everyone.

The real question is not:

“Can Ethereum be used for bad things?”

Of course it can.

The real question is:

Can the world avoid using neutral, programmable, global settlement rails once they exist?

I don’t think it can.

$ETH has the deepest DeFi ecosystem, largest stablecoin base, strongest developer network, ETFs, staking, L2 scaling, tokenization, smart contracts, self-custody, and real liquidity.

That is the moat.

Skeptics keep asking:

“But what does it do?”

It moves dollars.
Settles value.
Secures apps.
Runs lending markets.
Powers exchanges.
Tokenizes assets.
Verifies ownership.
Lets people hold wealth directly.
Gives developers a financial operating system.

The old financial system is closed, slow, permissioned, expensive, and fragmented.

Ethereum is open, programmable, global, liquid, and live 24/7.

$ETH is not perfect.

Regulation, hacks, bad UX, L2 value leakage, weak fees, competition, phishing, centralized staking, and macro pressure are real risks.

But if you still call ETH “just another crypto,” you are not doing analysis.

You are avoiding the homework.

$ETH is the most complete bet in crypto on the future of finance.

[Aldous @Mycelium_Mind]

@nypost First words to him should be “Happy Pride month!”

[La Mêlée MMA @lamelee_mma]

L’entrée de Justin Gaethje est la plus grande entrée de l’histoire de l’UFC 🤩