Above The Wick

Crypto markets, macro & flows.
Reading price, positioning and liquidity without the noise.

[Above The Wick @abovethewick]

Crypto often asks the market to price a network before the network has proved it works.
Azeem Khan compares that to a startup IPO before PMF or revenue. @0xMiden’s decision to delay its token asks a harder question: should liquidity come after validation?

[Above The Wick @abovethewick]

The unusual part of @0xMiden’s mainnet plan is what comes later: the token.
Crypto often runs testnet→points → TGE → incentives → liquidity → sell pressure.
Miden is closer to mainnet→users → apps → demand → PMF → token design.
Could this be a healthier L1 launch model?

[Above The Wick @abovethewick]

7/ That is still Miden’s design thesis, not evidence of institutional adoption. Architecture can reduce technical trade-offs; it does not prove liquidity, distribution or usage will follow.
Can onchain markets add privacy without splitting liquidity into new financial silos?

[Above The Wick @abovethewick]

1/ Privacy has a market-structure problem beyond hiding data: liquidity.
Public DeFi concentrates liquidity and composability, but exposes activity. Fully private systems can improve confidentiality, but may turn markets into isolated pools.
That trade-off matters.

[Above The Wick @abovethewick]

6/ From a market perspective, the question is whether privacy can sit at the participant and state layer while price discovery, liquidity and shared infrastructure remain common.
If it can, confidentiality does not automatically require a separate market.

[Above The Wick @abovethewick]

7/ Infrastructure markets can look competitive for years while procurement decisions quietly narrow the field underneath them.
If financial institutions are choosing their onchain rails now, how much of the next decade’s market structure is being locked in today?

[Above The Wick @abovethewick]

1/ The institutional blockchain race may be decided before the market realizes a winner has emerged.
Igor Mandrigin’s point is that institutions are already exploring stablecoins, tokenized assets and fintech products built onchain. The infrastructure choices come next.

[Above The Wick @abovethewick]

6/ @0xMiden is one infrastructure bet in that race, built around programmable privacy and connected settlement through Agglayer.
The question is not whether Miden wins. It is whether privacy and interoperability become requirements before institutional architecture hardens.

[Above The Wick @abovethewick]

7/7
If cheap blockspace is everywhere, what actually makes one network economically useful?
Probably not capacity by itself. The harder moat may be distribution, applications and reasons for real financial activity to keep coming back.

[Above The Wick @abovethewick]

1/7
If blockspace becomes a commodity, reasons to use blockspace become the scarce asset.
Crypto spent years competing on TPS, cheaper execution and more capacity. If execution keeps getting cheaper, capacity alone becomes a weaker moat.

[Above The Wick @abovethewick]

6/7
Miden’s thesis and Miden adoption are two different things.
Its site and ecosystem show private-finance use cases and projects being built. That is evidence of direction, not yet evidence that these applications have reached material recurring usage.