Roberto Benitez PODAX

Two dark spots (scams) on the sun's surface (market). Linked. Still cooling.

[Crypto Rover @cryptorover]

Stocks are dumping.
Gold is dumping.
Silver is dumping.
Crypto is dumping.
Bonds are dumping.
Even oil is dumping.

If every asset is getting sold, where is all that money actually going?

[Ripple @Ripple]

The demand for modern, always-on settlement infrastructure continues to grow.

@Mastercard’s support for $RLUSD and the XRP Ledger reflects growing demand for trusted digital assets and blockchain infrastructure that can power faster, more flexible settlement.

[Alex Krüger @krugermacro]

I largely think of "crypto" as a failed asset class at this point.

I've written about the causes multiple times. Mainly, most crypto assets are worthless, or have dreadful value accrual, and most founders have abused the lack of guardrails and dumped on people indiscriminately, or are outright scammers.

On top of that we had the Memecoins SuperBullshitCycle, a trend that brought the worst out of people, and sucked everyone's souls & pockets dry. And then came the never-ending wave of DeFi hacks, which has dramatically increased since last April.

This can seem contradictory, as adoption of "crypto" is surging:

> Stablecoin adoption continues growing fast
> Politicians in the US are openly pro crypto
> Tradfi is looking at tokenizing everything
> Usage of equities & commodities perps is exploding in offshore and DeFi exchanges
> The US is in the early stages of adopting perps
> Prediction markets are becoming part of everyone's daily lives

These are more "blockchain" than "crypto", although there are some exceptions with a token in those fields, most of which have been performing very well in recent months. A few among those exceptions even distribute most revenue to holders via buybacks (Hyperliquid in particular), which is what every investor actually wants to see to be invested in a good business rather than a fleeting narrative.

We also have the privacy category. The one old school crypto category that is not liquid diarrhea. The world needs private non-custodial stores of value.

Crime in particular needs privacy, as proven by the DoJ confiscation of $15 billion in Bitcoin from Cambodia's pig butchering farms, legal filing for which was submitted on October 8, 2025 (coincidentally right before 10/10). Of course, everyone needs privacy, not just criminals, but crime flows are real, and large.

The asset attracting the most flows in this niche is Zcash. Zcash's recent performance has been fascinating, as it has been trending higher with bitcoin trending lower, a sign of real reallocation among bitcoiners.

Another crypto category that is not dead is the "AI" category, full of high flying, fundamentally lacking, narrative driven tokens. The standout exception is Venice, a private AI platform with growing users and revenue, whose tokens are directly backed by the business rather than a narrative.

So one could say old "crypto" is a failed asset class, but from the ashes come new beginnings, and the new face of crypto is one heavily dominated by the needs of Tradfi, prediction markets, AI, and privacy.

Crypto sucks. Long live crypto.

[Watcher.Guru @WatcherGuru]

JUST IN: 🇺🇸 Former President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, says "fiat is a sham, the banking class is corrupt."

"Decentralized digital currency and the blockchain are the inevitable future."

[Watcher.Guru @WatcherGuru]

JUST IN: 🇺🇸 SEC delays plan to allow blockchain-based tokenized stocks.

[RYAN SΞAN ADAMS - rsa.eth 🦄 @RyanSAdams]

The Ethereum not ETH stuff is the mental fallacy that triggered me into writing and podcasting in the first place.

There is no strong Ethereum without an ETH worth trillions. Without ETH as a global store of value, Ethereum is a failed project. Full stop.

ETH is economic bandwidth for DeFi. It is the only asset maximized for CROPs, fail at high value ETH, fail at CROPs, fail at Ethereum.

Saying you’re bullish Ethereum not ETH is like saying you’re bullish America not the American economy. They are one and the same - economic engines.

Better to admit Ethereum is a failed project than “Ethereum not ETH”.

So spew that weak blockchain not crypto stuff out of your mouth, it doesn’t make sense for BTC, ZEC, ETH, or any truly crypto native project.

[MR. BROWN @mrbrown_nft]

if you honestly need $1,000 just like this post

[Ripple @Ripple]

$RLUSD is institutional-grade infrastructure for payments and tokenization.

Through @wormhole’s Native Token Transfers (NTT), $RLUSD can now move natively across multiple blockchain ecosystems, supporting cross-border payments, institutional on/off-ramps, and tokenization use cases.

For developers and institutions building onchain, that expands access to compliant, USD-backed liquidity across supported networks.

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

NEW: SEC names digital assets & blockchain technology a “core focus” in its 2026–2030 strategic plan.

[King.sol 🇶🇦 @teddi_speaks]

If crypto doesnt work out what’s your plan B

[Watcher.Guru @WatcherGuru]

JUST IN: JPMorgan, Citi and major US banks to launch new tokenized deposit system to compete with crypto.

[Watcher.Guru @WatcherGuru]

JUST IN: 🇺🇸 President Trump orders US government to update regulations to integrate crypto into traditional finance and payment systems.

[vitalik.eth @VitalikButerin]

I was recently at Real World Crypto (that's crypto as in cryptography) and the associated side events, and one thing that struck me was that it was a clarifying experience in terms of understanding *what blockchains are for*.

We blockchain people (myself included) often have a tendency to start off from the perspective that we are Ethereum, and therefore we need to go around and find use cases for Ethereum - and generate arguments for why sticking Ethereum into all kinds of places is beneficial.

But recently I have been thinking from a different perspective. For a moment, let us forget that we are "the Ethereum community". Rather, we are maintainers of the Ethereum tool, and members of the {CROPS (censorship-resistant, open-source, private, secure) tech | sanctuary tech | non-corposlop tech | d/acc | ...} community. Going in with zero attachment to Ethereum specifically, and entering a context (like RWC) where there are people with in-principle aligned values but no blockchain baggage, can we re-derive from zero in what places Ethereum adds the most value?

From attending the events, the first answer that comes up is actually not what you think. It's not smart contracts, it's not even payments. It's what cryptographers call a "public bulletin board".

See, lots of cryptographic protocols - including secure online voting, secure software and website version control, certificate revocation... - all require some publicly writable and readable place where people can post blobs of data. This does not require any computation functionality. In fact, it does not directly require money - though it does _indirectly_ require money, because if you want permissionless anti-spam it has to be economic. The only thing it _fundamentally_ requires is data availability.

And it just so happened that Ethereum recently did an upgrade (PeerDAS) to increase the amount of data availability it provides by 2.3x, with a path to going another 10-100x higher!

Next, payments. Many protocols require payments for many reasons. Some things need to be charged for to reduce spam. Other things because they are services provided by someone who expends resources and needs to be compensated. If you want a permissionless API that does not get spammed to death, you need payments. And Ethereum + ZK payment channels (eg. https://t.co/1Q2Hqg0DZg ) is one of the best payment systems for APIs you can come up with.

If you are making a private and secure application (eg. a messenger, or many other things), and you do not want to let people to spam the system by creating a million accounts and then uploading a gigabyte-sized video on each one, you need sybil resistance, and if you care about security and privacy, you really should care about permissionless participation (ie. don't have mandatory phone number dependency). ETH payment as anti-sybil tool is a natural backstop in such use cases.

Finally, smart contracts. One major use case is _security deposits_: ETH put into lockboxes that provably get destroyed if a proof is submitted that the owner violated some protocol rule. Another is actually implementing things like ZK payment channels. A third is making it easy to have pointers to "digital objects" that represent some socially defined external entity (not necessarily an RWA!), and for those pointers to interact with each other.

*Technically*, for every use case other than use cases handling ETH itself, the smart contracts are "just a convenience": you could just use the chain as a bulletin board, and use ZK-SNARKs to provide the results of any computations over it. But in practice, standardizing such things is hard, and you get the most interoperability if you just take the same mechanism that enables programs to control ETH, and let other digital objects use it too.

And from here, we start getting into a huge number of potential applications, including all of the things happening in defi.

---

So yes, Ethereum has a lot of value, that you can see from first principles if you take a step back and see it purely as a technical tool: global shared memory.

I suspect that a big bottleneck to seeing more of this kind of usage is that the world has not yet updated to the fact that we are no longer in 2020-22, fees are now extremely low, and we have a much stronger scaling roadmap to make sure that they will continue to stay low, even if much higher levels of usage return. Infrastructure for not exposing fee volatility to users is much more mature (eg. one way to do this for many use cases is to just operate a blob publisher).

Ethereum blobs as a bulletin board, ETH as an asset and universal-backup means of payment, and Ethereum smart contracts as a shared programming layer, all make total sense as part of a decentralized, private and secure open source software stack. But we should continue to improve the Ethereum protocol and infrastructure so that it's actually effective in all of these situations.

[alon @a1lon9]

X Communities are about to be deprecated, which leaves a huge void in the crypto ecosystem - and an even bigger opportunity for the future good of the space.

While it’s a big loss, it also presents a huge opportunity to completely redefine what a crypto community experience looks like from scratch.

And we’re doing it with all the platforms you know and love.

[Monad @monad]

drop your Monad address below within the next 24 hours to receive your soulbound NFT

[Michael Saylor @saylor]

Capital markets are funding the AI buildout at historic scale: ~$400B over 6 months. Bitcoin ETFs have seen ~$4B of outflows since May 14, pressuring $BTC. This is a capital rotation, not a Bitcoin impairment. Volatility creates opportunity.

[Michael Saylor @saylor]

Why does the world need #Bitcoin?

GPT-4: While it's a matter of perspective whether the world "needs" Bitcoin, there are several reasons why Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have gained popularity and are seen as valuable by many people:

1. Decentralization: Bitcoin operates on a decentralized network, meaning that no single entity, such as a government or financial institution, can control it. This decentralization can provide more freedom, autonomy, and resistance to censorship or manipulation.

2. Financial inclusion: Bitcoin can provide access to financial services for individuals who are unbanked or underbanked, particularly in regions where traditional banking infrastructure is limited or unavailable. With a smartphone and internet access, anyone can use Bitcoin for transactions, remittances, and storing value.

3. Lower transaction fees: Bitcoin transactions can have lower fees compared to traditional financial services, especially for cross-border transactions. This can benefit both consumers and businesses by reducing costs associated with international transfers.

4. Transparency and security: Bitcoin transactions are recorded on a public, tamper-resistant ledger called the blockchain. This provides transparency and security, as transactions can be easily verified and traced, reducing the risk of fraud and corruption.

5. Limited supply and inflation resistance: Bitcoin has a capped supply of 21 million coins, making it a deflationary currency. This limit reduces the risk of inflation, which can erode the purchasing power of traditional currencies over time.

6. Privacy: While not fully anonymous, Bitcoin offers a greater degree of privacy compared to traditional financial transactions, as transactions are only linked to a public address rather than personal information.

7. Investment and diversification: Many people view Bitcoin as a valuable investment and a way to diversify their financial portfolios. As a digital asset, Bitcoin has shown the potential for significant growth in value over time, although it's essential to note that it also carries risks and volatility.

8. Programmable money: Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies enable programmable money through smart contracts, which can automate and streamline various financial processes and transactions, leading to increased efficiency and new business models.

It's important to note that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies also have their drawbacks, such as volatility, scalability issues, and energy consumption. The perceived need for Bitcoin can vary depending on individual perspectives, financial situations, and regional circumstances.

[Roberto Benitez PODAX @sunspot_pair]

@DrPostALotHere Congratulations...you're the goat

[Roberto Benitez PODAX @sunspot_pair]

Best social media manager there is

[Dr Post A Lot est 2006 @DrPostALotHere]

2026 marks 20yrs being active on these socials!!

I helped a bunch of cool brands make millions that's without ai or paid boosts.

#StillHere like the #Watcher

[Roberto Benitez PODAX @sunspot_pair]

Check out @neda_sefati if you're serious about work and networking

[Neda Sefati 🪶 @neda_sefati]

please help me spread the word for this initiative