Parse notes
US spot Ethereum ETFs saw ~$796M in outflows last week, their worst since launch in July 2024, as ETH briefly dipped below $4,000 before rebounding. BlackRock's ETHA lost ~$200M, while Fidelity's FETH shed ~$362M, marking the steepest two-day span of redemptions since mid-August. Spot Bitcoin ETFs also posted ~$903M in outflows, with BlackRock's IBIT holding up better than Fidelity's FBTC.
NYDIG's Global Head of Research, Greg Cipolaro, argues that the commonly used mNAV metric for valuing Digital Asset Treasury companies should be eliminated from industry reporting, calling it "misleading" at best and "disingenuous" at worst, following Strive's acquisition of Semler Scientific in the first-ever DAT merger. The firm criticizes mNAV for failing to account for operating businesses or other assets that DATs typically own, noting that most major bitcoin treasury firms operate value-adding businesses beyond their crypto holdings, while the metric often uses "assumed shares outstanding" that may include unconverted debt obligations. NYDIG warns that convertible debt holders would demand cash rather than shares for their debt, creating more onerous liabilities than simple share issuance, while convertible debt structures incentivize DATs to maximize equity volatility since converts function as debt plus call options.
Eliza Labs is migrating the ai16z token to elizaOS to support version 2's cross-chain operations through Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol and agent-native workflows that learn over time, evolving from the original ai16z proof-of-concept that demonstrated agents could capture attention and catalyze culture into a production framework. elizaOS v2 features 200+ plugins connecting to various interfaces and cross-chain cognition capabilities, allowing agents to observe signals on one chain, plan on another, and settle on a third while maintaining context through CCIP's secure token transfers and arbitrary data messaging. The framework enables "generative economies" where tokens behave like programs, treasuries function as adaptive engines, and strategies improve through experience, with agents capable of deploying liquidity, allocating reserves to productive strategies, and routing value efficiently while sharing learnings across the network.
Share combines three traditionally separate companies into one native iOS app: a social network where transactions become content and wallets become creators, a real-time block explorer indexing every transaction from onchain apps into human-readable events, and a wallet for research, trading, and portfolio tracking across Solana, Base, and Ethereum. Share addresses the observation that many users screenshot transactions to share on Twitter, Telegram, and Discord despite broken UX. The platform implements "Info Finance" principles by allowing wallets to contextualize onchain transactions with media in exchange for social capital and market influence, creating a real-time feed of financial market activity as every asset becomes tokenized from stocks to memes to predictions.
a16z crypto's newsletter features a deep-dive on prediction markets with economics professors Alex Tabarrok and Scott Kominers, exploring how these markets work, their design principles, and intersection with AI and futarchy trends, while addressing what prediction markets are good for and where blockchain technology fits into the ecosystem. The edition also includes fundraising advice for founders to abandon the "not-raising-raise" playbook popular during 2020-2021's zero-interest-rate environment, instead returning to structured, intentional venture capital pitching processes rather than hoping for preemption from opportunistic VC meetings. Industry updates highlight Morgan Stanley's partnership with Zerohash to offer crypto trading on ETrade in 2026, Coinbase and CloudFlare's x402 protocol foundation for AI-driven payments enabling direct web transactions without accounts or API keys, and CloudFlare's new dollar-backed stablecoin for "instant and secure" agentic web transactions.
Stablecoin giants Tether and Circle are "printing money" by keeping yields from US Treasuries backing their tokens while holders receive no returns, with Tether reporting $4.9 billion in net profit in Q2 and reaching a $500 billion valuation in new funding. New platforms like M^0 and Agora are emerging to address this issue by allowing stablecoin infrastructure to route yield directly to applications or end users rather than issuers capturing all profits, as elevated interest rates create pressure for yield-sharing models. Tether defended its approach by stating USDT serves as "a digital dollar, not an investment product" for hundreds of millions in emerging markets facing dramatic inflation rates of 50-90% annually, arguing that yield-bearing stablecoins target different audiences and carry additional regulatory risks.
Payments aren't inherently “crypto”, they're just an action made possible by crypto's trustless settlement. The real breakthrough is trustware, programmable trust primitives where identity, commitments, and fairness inherit the same finality and neutrality as onchain settlement. This creates digital interactions that can't be faked, revoked, or manipulated by boardrooms or governments. However, if trustware is built on half-decentralized, corporate rails, it mutates into a dystopia of permanent surveillance and programmable coercion. To prevent capture, the rails must be credibly neutral, auditable, and decentralized from the start, aligning even with the incentives of those in power, since neutrality protects them from political capture.
Credible neutrality means anyone, Democrat, Republican, anarchist, EU bureaucrat, or even a dictator, can trust that their code executes and property rights are respected without censorship or control. It's the guarantee of a global, common platform secured by thousands of independent validators, where you can store a billion dollars digitally and know it won't be seized. In this framing, Ethereum is the only Turing-complete platform that won't interfere with your money, code, or life. That's why, in 20 years, the entire planet will run on Ethereum, not out of preference, but because it's the only neutral substrate left.
The past weeks have seen an unprecedented wave of stablecoin activity.
Wall Street giants are accelerating their crypto integrations.
Plasma has shown strong execution from launch to partnerships to mainnet to TGE (token generation event), while comps like Monad and MegaETH have arguably lost momentum.
Self Protocol allows users to prove information about their identity without revealing sensitive information.