Daily Edition · Page 6

THE DAILY INDEX

Technology, AI, software, security, crypto and business

MARKETS & BUSINESS

TLDR Crypto

THE NEXT DECADE IN PRIVACY

Privacy-preserving tech is moving from academic research to real-world use as profit-driven narratives and mainstream concerns like bots and AI fraud create market demand. Enterprise deployments now include Google Wallet's ZK-based age verification, Cloudflare's privacy-preserving web attestation, and Digg's exploration of xkTLS for identity authentication. In crypto, foundational systems like Zcash and Monero are complemented by applications like Worldcoin's proof-of-personhood network.

SIMPLIFYING THE L1

Ethereum's long-term resilience and scalability depend not only on throughput and cryptographic soundness but also on dramatically simplifying the protocol itself. Vitalik Buterin has proposed a vision to reduce consensus-critical complexity through initiatives like 3-slot finality (a ~200-line consensus redesign), replacing the EVM with a minimal virtual machine such as RISC-V to enable a potential 100x prover speedup, and unifying core components like serialization, Merkle trees, and erasure coding. The ultimate goal is to move legacy complexity outside the consensus path, allowing Ethereum to evolve into a more robust and comprehensible protocol—on par with Bitcoin—while retaining its expressiveness.

WHAT IS CIRCLE WORTH: A VALUATION ANALYSIS

Circle's public valuation is closely tied to its future earnings potential, driven by stablecoin market growth, sustainable take rates, and operating leverage. A simplified model projects its 2030 valuation between $1.3B (bear case) and $75B (bull case), based on assumptions around global stablecoin adoption, USDC's market share (15–25%), and net margins (3–19%). Key factors include post-distribution yield capture (20–60 bps), cost scalability, and macroeconomic interest rates. With a current IPO valuation near $5B and a 2024 net income of $156M, investor upside will ultimately depend on Circle's long-term execution and market positioning.

TLDR IndexPage 6