Brian Rudick

Chief Strategy Officer @UpexiTreasury. Formerly Head of Research @gsr_io, hedge funds @Citadel, Balyasny, Millennium. Opinions are my own & NFA

[Brian Rudick @thetinyant]

I’m excited to share that I have joined @UpexiTreasury - the leading @Solana treasury company - as Chief Strategy Officer responsible for the cryptocurrency strategy and public visibility efforts 🏎️ 🏎️ 🏎️

[Brian Rudick @thetinyant]

Not too surprised by the US election results and the blue wave. I suspect we'll continue to see oscillation between both sides of the aisle, as Americans periodically look to change the status quo and try something new...

[Brian Rudick @thetinyant]

~99.5% of the ~$15b in stablecoins on @Solana are pegged to the US dollar.

Safirum's new Swiss franc stablecoin, CHF-S, just launched on Solana, with 1:1 reserves held at Berner Kantonalbank and Banque Richelieu.

Over time, stablecoins should follow the same pattern as traditional money: the USD dominates globally, but local-currency stablecoins will emerge wherever people and businesses need to transact, save and settle in their own currency.

The opportunity to bring the world's currencies onchain is enormous.

[Brian Rudick @thetinyant]

Pretty cool!

[Tokenized Stonks @tokenizedstonk]

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[Brian Rudick @thetinyant]

"Uptober" got stomped out by the macro. November returns have been volatile and the sample size is small, but on average, Nov has been a good month for @Solana $SOL

[Brian Rudick @thetinyant]

Ex macro, I see three main items that can kickstart a crypto bull market over the next year:

• a megacap tech company enabling crypto services to a massive customer base
• large-scale government BTC buying
• the AI Agent / L1 platform narrative taking off

What did I miss?

[Brian Rudick @thetinyant]

Quite the inflection up since late-August!

[Brian Rudick @thetinyant]

Leading decentralized compute marketplace @Akashnet has selected @Solana as its next home, and will migrate from its own Cosmos-based chain. 🔥

@helium, @rendernetwork, and @ZetaChain made similar moves. Solana's growing DePIN ecosystem, low fees, and reduced infrastructure overhead are proving hard to ignore.

#Solana

[Brian Rudick @thetinyant]

Payments made up ~18% of @Solana's adjusted stablecoin volume in Sept, up from ~6.5% a year earlier, per @Visa.

@McKinsey estimates global payments flows at ~$2.1 quadrillion annually. Obviously, not all of that moves onchain, but the opportunity is massive.

[Brian Rudick @thetinyant]

.@Mastercard reports Q3 results this morning. USDC, PYUSD, USDG & SoFiUSD, four of the six stablecoins Mastercard named for card settlement in June, have ~$8.3b of combined supply on @Solana.

Mastercard named Cross River, Lead Bank & Nuvei among the firms expected to be first to settle in stablecoins.

I suspect Mastercard's stablecoin settlement will run mostly on open, permissionless networks like Solana.

[Brian Rudick @thetinyant]

.@Visa reports fiscal Q4 results after the close today. Visa's onchain analytics dashboard shows ~$8.4b of stablecoin payments on @Solana in the Jul-Sep quarter, ~3.4x a year earlier.

Visa said in September that stablecoin settlement had already passed a $20b annualized run rate, up from ~$7b in April. Solana is among its supported settlement networks.

Hopefully Visa puts that run rate higher tonight.

[Brian Rudick @thetinyant]

@fannwtshnv @solana @anza_xyz @galaxyhq Alpenglow is designed to stay safe with up to 20% malicious stake while tolerating another 20% offline. Classic BFT designs tolerate more malicious stake but can stall if more than a third of stake goes offline.

[Brian Rudick @thetinyant]

.@Solana’s Alpenglow consensus upgrade is now live on mainnet, targeting ~150ms finality vs. ~12.8 seconds under the previous protocol, per @anza_xyz.

@GalaxyHQ’s engineers call Alpenglow the largest change to Solana’s core protocol since launch.

Here are the 4 things I think matter most.

[Brian Rudick @thetinyant]

@splattsweb3 @solana @anza_xyz @galaxyhq Alpenglow follows the account cost reduction in Agave 4.2, which shows how much core protocol work is shipping in a short window.

[Brian Rudick @thetinyant]

@Muracammi @solana @anza_xyz @galaxyhq Exchanges and market makers still need to update their deposit policies and risk limits to take advantage of faster finality, which may take some time.

[Brian Rudick @thetinyant]

@leorekts @solana @anza_xyz @galaxyhq agree that consumer apps may benefit most. Games and payment apps have often built workarounds to show a transaction as done before full finality.

[Brian Rudick @thetinyant]

@Brownstone_X @solana @USOCC @aave I'd expect bank-issued stablecoins to compete on settlement speed and trust, with lending rates set by whichever venue the holder chooses.

[Brian Rudick @thetinyant]

Stablecoins issued by OCC-chartered banks total ~$1.6b on @Solana, led by USDGO at ~$1.3b & SoFiUSD at ~$250m.

The @USOCC finalized its rule implementing the GENIUS Act on Oct 21. The rule takes effect Jan 18, 2027.

My bet is OCC-chartered banks have more than $5b of stablecoins on Solana by the end of 2027.

[Brian Rudick @thetinyant]

@SOLitifyed @solana @USOCC Bank issuers already hold the customer relationships. My sense is their stablecoin growth depends more on product rollouts than on attracting new users.

[Brian Rudick @thetinyant]

@solana @anza_xyz @galaxyhq @Helius 5/5

Exchanges crediting deposits, market makers hedging across venues & payment companies releasing funds to merchants all need reliable finality.

Alpenglow makes Solana transactions final far sooner, giving these businesses less reason to wait before acting.

[Brian Rudick @thetinyant]

4/5

Alpenglow replaces onchain validator vote transactions—and their fees—with a flat 0.8 SOL admission ticket per epoch, which is burned.

Under the legacy model, validators had been paying ~2 SOL/day in voting fees. The new ticket costs 0.8 SOL per ~24-hour epoch.

All else equal, lower voting costs should help smaller validators' economics, though lost vote-fee income for block-producing validators offsets some savings.