roguetortoise

Strategy @ Argo Blockchain | BTC Mining | Crypto | DeFi

[Jeff Park @dgt10011]

I don’t think Bitcoin is selling off because of MSTR

I think it’s being tapped to fund the market’s upcoming hot ball of money trades: SpaceX, Anthropic, whatever else everyone suddenly “has to own”

This means in the future, the correlation breakdown will itself become the fuel

[DCinvestor @DCinvestor]

crypto is not “over”

this happens every 4 years. the difference this time is stocks are ripping while most of crypto is not. OK

but capitulation takes time and will test your patience and resolve

there’s no point in understating it or overstating it

it will eventually end, quality assets will be marked down too far, and there will be a generational buying opportunity which some will take advantage of once there are no sellers left

and their buys will create the reflexivity for the next bull market

patience

[Blockspace @blockspace]

.@mikealfred laid out his investment strategy to trade AI stocks on the latest Blockspace Live, explaining the rationale behind Alpine Fox hedge fund's positions in $IREN and $CIFR.

When we asked him about sleeper opportunities in the AI stock market, he didn't mince words: being a first mover does not guarantee success.

In fact, these AI deals are getting better as time goes on, and the best deals could be yet to come from companies with MWs that are currently unmonetized.

"There's been this rush to see who can sign the best deal. And I remember being told two years ago in spaces that no one would ever sign a better deal than $CORZ.

"But what's happened over time is we've seen a lot of other deals and the pricing has just gone up.

"So actually the pricing is accelerating to the upside. The demands actually accelerated the episode. So the folks who have the most capacity in the future may see better monetization opportunities along the curve."

[Ethan Vera @ethan_vera]

Excited to announce the launch of our Whatsminer firmware. At the same time we are receiving a strategic investment from MicroBT. And we are signed for a new purchase order for $100mm of Whatsminer equipment.

https://t.co/iP6ouof5cc

[Stani @StaniKulechov]

The past few days have been intense, but I wanted to give some updates as we continue to work on this. Our priority is our users, and every decision we are making is aimed at an orderly return to normal market conditions and the best possible outcome for everyone involved.

Working around the clock, the team has made progress on multiple paths forward with several partners. The Arbitrum Security Council also recovered $70 million in ETH, which could meaningfully reduce the potential exposure, and multiple discussions and solutions are being considered. I am confident we will move towards a strong resolution.

Reviewing what happened and learning from it matters. But pointing fingers is not something that gets us to the other side of this.

Every bit of my energy right now is focused on the outcome for Aave users and the protocol. Aave has been my life's work, and this is an important moment for DeFi as much as it is for Aave. I am deeply grateful for the support and collaboration we have received from builders and partners across the industry.

We’ll get through this together and we’ll continue to publish updates on @aave as they happen.

[Jameson Lopp @lopp]

Finding Satoshi is one of the most well-produced Bitcoin documentaries I've had the pleasure of watching.

I learned a few things and so will you... it's available today at https://t.co/9lamPbLc4b

[Haseeb ＞|＜ @hosseeb]

DeFi learns through failures. Whether it's from the collapse of Terra, broken auctions during Black Friday in 2020, or the stETH depeg in 2022, it has failed over and over again--but with every failure, it improves.

People talk all sorts of shit about this, but it's no different from how TradFi learned from banking crises, lending contagion (2008), or fraud (savings and loans crises in late 80s).

The important thing is that these failures are not fatal. The heart of DeFi is risk-averse and robust. AAVE might take on some bad debt, but it has the equity to pay it.

DeFi isn't going away. And seeing the vigorous debate around how to improve it is exactly the process by which it keeps getting better.

Bullish DeFi, and bullish this community.

[monetsupply.eth @MonetSupply]

with stablecoin markets beginning to become illiquid, the situation is now entering a more dangerous stage imo

to break down the driving factors:

the ETH market is ~16.5% backed by rsETH, and rsETH backed loans could see up to 10-15% haircut in emode if losses are socialized equally on mainnet & external chains, leaving 2-3% residual haircut for ETH suppliers after wiping out umbrella

ETH suppliers are naturally incentivized to get out ASAP to avoid this, so utilization is pinned at 100%, and borrow rates are not high enough to incentivized repayment of unrelated LST loops (wstETH, weETH) to free up liquidity

because it is impossible to withdraw ETH, users borrowing stables like USDT against ETH collateral cant unwind their position even when the rates for stablecoin borrowing start to spike, which severs the typical incentives scheme keeping these markets healthy

now we have 2 unhealthy incentives based on the markets becoming locked at 100% utilization

1) ETH holders cannot unwind their positions to maintain healthy LTVs, and liquidators cant withdraw/sell collateral to close positions atomically, meaning that ETHUSD price drop could potentially cause bad debt

2) users supplying USDT have a perverse incentive to max-borrow other stablecoins as a way of exiting, the position has positive carry (for now) so the optionality has low cost, while if conditions worsen they can get at least 75% of their position value out of the market

bottom line is, for these pooled/rehypothecated lending markets to function properly, liquidity must be preserved AT ALL COSTS. recent slope2 changes nerfing Aave's max borrow rates are having a negative effect and significantly increasing the risk of cascading market failure

[Bitcoin Magazine @BitcoinMagazine]

BREAKING: $12 trillion Charles Schwab to launch direct Bitcoin trading — CNBC 🚀

[Bitcoin Archive @BitcoinArchive]

JUST IN: The SEC says crypto wallets and trading apps do NOT need to register as broker-dealers — as long as they act as neutral tools, not intermediaries.

5-year safe harbor. Effective today.

The regulatory walls are coming down.

[Bitcoin Archive @BitcoinArchive]

NEW: BlackRock is launching its Bitcoin Income ETF — ticker $BITA.

It sells call options on its $50B+ IBIT fund to generate yield from Bitcoin’s volatility.

Existing BTC income ETFs pay 27–41% annually. Launch expected in weeks.

[Stani @StaniKulechov]

Aave Will Win, the most important proposal in Aave's history just passed with a landslide.

Here's the master plan going forward:

General Direction

- Aave becomes fully token-centric: one asset, one model: $AAVE

- To date, protocol revenue per AIP-1 has accumulated to the Aave DAO: $140M in 2025, with 2026 on track to match that despite the market downturn being limited to protocol-only revenue

- The AWW proposal introduces a new revenue stream: application and product revenue generated outside the Aave Protocol, now directed to the DAO as additive revenue

- This covers Aave Pro, https://t.co/V3TzmYrmSG, Aave App, Horizon (RWAs), and Aave Kit, all flowing back to the DAO treasury

- Swaps on https://t.co/V3TzmYrmSG and Aave Pro are already generating $10–20M in new revenue on top of existing protocol revenue

- Aave V4's reinvestment feature ensures that float capital in pools generates yield, creating additional revenue streams, similar to how Aave V4 Spokes open up new revenue opportunities

- AWW gives Aave exposure to the full vertical stack. Owning that stack is increasingly critical in a competitive landscape where protocols get commoditized

- AWW also establishes a community-protected vehicle to independently govern Aave's brand assets and IP on behalf of token holders

- Aave Labs commits to working exclusively on Aave-related products, fully locked in

- If you own $AAVE, you own not just the economic rights of the protocol, but the brand, the users, and the integrations

In other words: everything belongs to one asset, the $AAVE token

- We believe tokens are the greatest opportunity of our time to build collectively governed protocols, but a single, unified vision is essential for execution

- That vision is provided by Aave Labs, working alongside all Aave service providers to grow Aave from a $40B protocol to $1T and beyond

Product Layer & Distribution

- Aave App will onboard millions of users with a simple, fintech-like experience while ensuring users retain full control over their funds, backed by $1M account protection per user. A card will also launch later, generating additional fees for the Aave treasury

- Aave Pro will be the premier destination for power users: sophisticated features, simple on-ramping, and the best of DeFi in one place

- Aave Labs has the best designers and design engineers in the space, committed to delivering a high-fidelity experience for every user

- Aave Kit will provide SOC2-compliant, enterprise-grade integration for fintechs and partners

- Horizon will expand with Aave V4 support and more flexible asset onboarding to scale RWAs on Aave

- New Aave V4 Spokes will unlock additional collateral and address the demand side of DeFi liquidity

- Together, these products aim to bring DeFi to everyone and position Aave as the base credit and repo market for the entire $400T+ TradFi asset base

Engineering & Tech

- Aave Labs has the best engineers in DeFi. We built V1 through V3, GHO, and most recently V4, and this is just the surface of what we're building next

- Aave V4 paves the way for next-generation lending, and Aave V3 will remain fully supported and maintained by Aave Labs for years to come

- We are security-first. Smart contract security, application security, and ICT security are non-negotiable, and our recent SOC2 compliance reflects that. Institutions expect it, and we deliver it

- We will invest in agentic AI, opening up new opportunities for developers building with Aave

Marketing

- Aave has historically led crypto in brand, events, content, and partnership marketing. We're doubling down on our brand recognition and the strong foundation we've built

- Going forward, we'll expand into new audiences and channels to bring Aave mainstream, building net-new, stickier userbases among people who are new to DeFi

Growth

- Aave will deepen relationships across the DeFi ecosystem and build new bridges with fintechs, banks and asset managers

- At its best, Aave isn't a bank. It's a financial network that any fintech, bank or an asset managers can plug into, and providing the best integration tools will be key
BD efforts will rely on tight collaboration between service providers such as Token Logic and our partner networks

- We honor our long-term partnerships and commitments, including @chainlink

- We recognize the value Aave represents today and expect partners to approach us with the same respect

Governance

- We support a multi-contributor model for Aave and will continue to embrace it

- We will oppose any vendor lock-ins or service providers that build products for themselves at the expense of token holders

- We require full transparency from the SPs and no tolerance for relationship gating as all value needs to drive to Aave

- Zero value leakage: everything built with Aave's funds must benefit Aave and be owned by Aave

- SPs who align with these principles and commit to what's best for token holders will have our support on budgets, as long as they are reasonable

- The DAO is taking a zero-bureaucracy approach: execution and skin-in-the-game are what matter. We are competing with some of the world's most efficient and well-funded organizations, and there is zero room for friction

- Every SP will have real, measurable goals. Payments for posting governance proposals are over. We've already consolidated SPs to focus resources

- Governance process improvements are coming in the months ahead: more efficiency, less politics

Risk Management

- We will continue to support a multi-layered risk management process encompassing both an economics risk layer and a technical risk assessment layer conducted by Aave Labs

- Aave's risk management will include external risk managers such as Llama Risk and Token Logic for commercial and economic assessment. Aave Labs will also establish a permanent internal risk management function to coordinate and support external risk managers, making the overall system more resilient

Building a Regulatory Moat

- Aave Labs has spent years building a regulatory moat around Aave's products and deepening vertical integration

- Aave is one of the only DeFi ecosystems operating at scale with regulated entities, including Push Virtual Assets Ireland, which is authorised as a CASP under MiCA, alongside a UK EMI-licensed entity

- We are actively pursuing additional licenses globally to enable seamless, 1:1 fiat-to-Aave onboarding for mainstream users, a prerequisite for mass adoption

- We go where the bar is high

Policy

- Aave Labs' policy team is world-class. We've participated in every major policy consultation over the years and will continue to fight for DeFi, protecting it from harmful regulation and ensuring legal certainty for users and integrators

- The next few years will be pivotal for DeFi policy. We are fully committed

Our Principles

- Security-first above all else. This is non-negotiable
Everything we build is truly DeFi, with self-custodial access at its core

- Innovation-driven, we will move the space forward by innovating and building something new

- For DeFi to scale, we need new audiences. That means growing the pie by building better experiences and infrastructure for users to access DeFi

- Friendly by default: anyone should be able to work with Aave if the merits support it

- Build and operate in public. Everything we do will be done openly, with the highest standard of accountability

This is the direction we are committing to, a multi-year journey. The foundation is set. Now it's time to build.

Aave will win.

[Alex Thorn @intangiblecoins]

spent the last month building a personal AI research infrastructure on a mac mini. no cloud. no saas. here's what’s running

full bitcoin node. bitcoin core v29, 944k+ blocks, full txindex. powered by @umbrel home. also running a local @mempool instance, @mononautical's bitfeed, and @w_s_bitcoin's quantum exposure dashboard to track P2PK address exposure

bitcoin analytics DB. postgresql ingesting every block in real time. per-block fee rate percentiles, hash rate, segwit %, inscription counts, miner IDs, transaction pattern classification, and address type breakdown (P2PK through P2TR). daily aggregates: puell multiple, mayer multiple, NVT, supply issuance, MVRV, SOPR, URPD, and many more. 5,700 days of price history and blockchain data. a lot of what i'm building is directly credited to or expands on work by @checkmatey, @TXMCtrades , @nic_carter, @willywoo, @w_s_bitcoin, and many others. will share more about what these look like in the future

OFAC sanctions and known criminal address monitor. 518 sanctioned BTC addresses from treasury's SDN list, data from open source attribution sets, scanning every block and unconfirmed mempool tx. instant telegram alert the moment a sanctioned address moves

large PnL alerts. monitors inputs ≥10 BTC for realized gain/loss vs. cost basis. fires when >40% move and >$1M. "address bc1q...xyz moved 847 BTC at +$62M profit"

obsidian vault, 2,200+ documents. full bitcoin optech archive, delvingbitcoin posts, bitcoin-dev threads, every satoshi email and forum post, galaxy research and podcast transcripts, SEC/CFTC/fed filings, GENIUS and CLARITY act text, other congressional legislation and press releases. all also ingested into the kuzu graph. morning digest to telegram daily at 8am

LLM wiki. a modified version of @nvk's implementation of @karpathy's llm-wiki pattern. the AI doesn't just index documents, it reads and maintains a persistent cross-linked knowledge base. new source in, wiki updates. contradictions flagged. knowledge compounds. extremely useful already

kuzu knowledge graph. thousands of documents cross-referenced by entity, topic, and source. semantic search in seconds

lightning network. using my node, LND, and LNbits to give clem (my AI assistant) full lightning capabilities. he can create and pay invoices on my behalf. not sure what i'll use this for yet but it's live. maybe just to easily send and receive upon my instruction and later to help manage an expanded lightning node

what's next: bitcoin transaction tracing, address clustering, entity attribution and behavioral pattern matching (chainalysis-style tooling, self-hosted). macro and fed data ingestion. a scientific research library. and eventually the same on-chain stack extended to ethereum and solana (hardware permitting), primarily to track defi and stablecoin flows

all of this on a mac mini M4, 48GB RAM, 2TB SSD. clem coordinates everything on signal 24/7, routing to my local models as needed and appropriate (mostly gemma4 26B and deepseak R1 32B). zero access to my icloud, email, contacts, or personal data of any kind. operates entirely within a sandboxed research workspace

~$100/mo total: $20 in claude and chatGPT subscriptions, ~$60 in anthropic API fees.. about $100/mo. hardware was one-time purchase

everything else: self-hosted, open-source, mine

what else should i build? this year has been the most exciting time for me building personal technology in years

if you aren’t building with AI, what are you even doing?

[Alex Thorn @intangiblecoins]

quantum computing may threaten classical cryptography, including the crypto that powers bitcoin transactions

if there’s even a chance that’s true, the bitcoin community should work to prepare and mitigate

the good news is that bitcoin devs are indeed working on it

[Alex Thorn @intangiblecoins]

the SEC spent 2017-2024 arguing in court that tokens are securities

today it published a 65-page interpretation saying most of them aren't

the gensler era is formally over ✨

[Matt Hougan @Matt_Hougan]

The conspiracy theories are wild. First it was Binance and then it was Wintermute and then it was an unknown offshore macro hedge fund and then it was paper bitcoin and. today it is Jane Street and next week it will be someone else.

The real reason bitcoin is down is that a bunch of people who were long Bitcoin sold their Bitcoin exposure. They sold it via spot, they sold it by unwinding leveraged positions, and they sold it be writing calls against their bitcoin.

They sold because of the four year cycle and because of quantum fears and because they wanted to invest in AI start ups and for other reasons.

They are mostly done selling and we are in the process of bottoming. We will set new all time highs in the future.

This is a classic crypto winter and there will be a classic crypto spring. People want someone to blame — I get it — but the reality is far more boring than that.

[Mippo 🟪 @MikeIppolito_]

The seeds of the next bull cycle in crypto are becoming clearer.

If I had to guess, here's the sequence of events:

1. AI sucks all the air out of the room for 6+ months
2. CAPEX fears become pronounced going into summer
3. CLARITY quietly passes, GENIUS gets implemented
4. AI fears lead to lower rates, while stables explode
5. Persistently lower rates from AI deflation lead to vol
6. Trading of crypto assets take off
7. Weak coins left for dead, fewer winners emerge
8. Enterprises onchain become enormous trend

We are most likely ~9 months out from this becoming consensus.

[Eric Balchunas @EricBalchunas]

Nice look at bitcoin's returns over the past ten years, showing just how volatile and four-year cycle-ish and how no reasonable person could claim it a store of value.. Oh wait, hang on, I'm being told this is actually gold's returns from 50 years ago 😬 via @Matt_Hougan

[Anthony Scaramucci @Scaramucci]

The strongest version of the bull case for Bitcoin, and the one I think is most intellectually defensible, is this: Bitcoin is a bet that the 21st century will need a neutral, non-sovereign, digitally native store of value — and that nothing else credibly fills that role. Given the macro trajectory of debt, money printing, AI disruption, and geopolitical fragmentation, that bet looks more reasonable with each passing year, not less.

[Eric Balchunas @EricBalchunas]

Seeing this a lot. My two cents: the novel value of bitcoin is that it is user-run money that is both censorship and debasement-resistant. Far as I can tell nothing has changed about that. However bc the current admin is so on board with it, the censorship part may seem less valuable, but just wait a few yrs, that could come in handy (it already does in many emerging/frontier mkt countries).. and debasement is alive and well, even dogs know that aint ever stopping. I just think it's youth makes it volatile and price tends to govern narrative and value way too much for ppl (same goes for stocks and bonds at times). Gotta see through all that. Price is a smoke screen that the most successful investors have learned to see through/ignore.