The Final Cut: Will the Rate-Cycle End in Another Bitcoin Crash?
A 25-bp Gift from the Fed The FOMC just trimmed rates by 25 basis points—historic only in the sense that it may turbo-charge a bull run that is already on borrowed time. With the 2024 halving now 17 months behind us, history says a cyclical top is due around December 2025. Chair Powell’s cut—and the hint of two more before year-end—gives the ≈ US-$ 7.4 trn parked in money-market funds a powerful incentive to reach for yield. Spot-Bitcoin ETFs, BTC-treasury companies and zero-friction broker a...
Robinhood vs. Coinbase: A $160-Billion Duel
Baihua Blockchain • August 11, 2025 Author: Thejaswini MA | Translated & edited by Baihua --- A Quiet War in Your Pocket A silent battle is unfolding on your phone screen, and most people still haven’t noticed. America’s two flagship finance apps—Robinhood and Coinbase—are running diametrically opposed experiments on millions of users. Robinhood sits at No. 14 in the App Store’s Finance category; Coinbase is at No. 20. Both are worth roughly $80 billion. Both chase the same young investors, y...
$500 Million Bet on Anthropic: SBF Almost Made the Most Successful Investment in AI History
In 2021, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, invested $500 million in AI company Anthropic through his hedge fund Alameda Research, acquiring approximately 8% equity. At that time, the AI boom had not yet begun, and this investment was regarded as a highly forward-looking high-stakes bet. However, in 2022, SBF’s empire collapsed due to the FTX crisis, and his assets were liquidated. FTX eventually sold its Anthropic stake in two installments, reclaiming approx...
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The Final Cut: Will the Rate-Cycle End in Another Bitcoin Crash?
A 25-bp Gift from the Fed The FOMC just trimmed rates by 25 basis points—historic only in the sense that it may turbo-charge a bull run that is already on borrowed time. With the 2024 halving now 17 months behind us, history says a cyclical top is due around December 2025. Chair Powell’s cut—and the hint of two more before year-end—gives the ≈ US-$ 7.4 trn parked in money-market funds a powerful incentive to reach for yield. Spot-Bitcoin ETFs, BTC-treasury companies and zero-friction broker a...
Robinhood vs. Coinbase: A $160-Billion Duel
Baihua Blockchain • August 11, 2025 Author: Thejaswini MA | Translated & edited by Baihua --- A Quiet War in Your Pocket A silent battle is unfolding on your phone screen, and most people still haven’t noticed. America’s two flagship finance apps—Robinhood and Coinbase—are running diametrically opposed experiments on millions of users. Robinhood sits at No. 14 in the App Store’s Finance category; Coinbase is at No. 20. Both are worth roughly $80 billion. Both chase the same young investors, y...
$500 Million Bet on Anthropic: SBF Almost Made the Most Successful Investment in AI History
In 2021, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, invested $500 million in AI company Anthropic through his hedge fund Alameda Research, acquiring approximately 8% equity. At that time, the AI boom had not yet begun, and this investment was regarded as a highly forward-looking high-stakes bet. However, in 2022, SBF’s empire collapsed due to the FTX crisis, and his assets were liquidated. FTX eventually sold its Anthropic stake in two installments, reclaiming approx...
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A New Vision for the Ecosystem
On July 10, the Ethereum Foundation unveiled “The Future of Ecosystem Development,” kicking off a sweeping overhaul of its own structure. The move is designed to tackle long-standing headaches: uneven project support, fragmented ecosystem operations, and an opaque treasury.
The Foundation’s new vision statement sets two overriding goals:
Maximize the number of people who use Ethereum—directly or indirectly—and who benefit from its underlying values.
Maximize the resilience of Ethereum’s technical and social infrastructure.
To get there, the Foundation is recasting its role inside the ecosystem. Four strategic pillars—Accelerate, Amplify, Support, and Long-Term Unblocking—are joined by a fresh governance framework and a re-engineered capital-management playbook, all aimed at boosting scalability, resilience, and decentralization.
Accelerating the Ecosystem
Critics have long accused the Foundation of “governing by inaction,” a stance that fueled schisms and diluted Ethereum’s narrative. With corporations now racing to build crypto treasuries, a clear reserve strategy has become mission-critical.
To accelerate adoption, the Foundation is spinning up four focused modules:
Enterprise Relations: Helping corporations onboard to Ethereum, with a spotlight on finance and supply-chain verticals and the on-chain tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) like real estate and bonds.
Developer Growth: Recruiting and mentoring the next wave of builders. Gitcoin research lead Austin Griffith will steer this unit.
Application Support: Fast-tracking user-facing, high-impact apps.
Founder Support: Non-financial guidance for early teams, led by ex-ConsenSys front-end tech lead Adrian Li.
The “Amplify” layer supercharges these efforts through:
Digital Studio (the ethereum.org team): Ethereum’s narrative engine, producing rich content, videos, publications, and data visualizations that showcase the network’s potential.
Strategic Events: Designing and executing targeted campaigns.
Ethereum Everywhere: A squad devoted to scaling local communities and hubs for app developers.
EcoDev Automation: AI-driven tools and internal automations that let teams hit targets faster.
Supporting the Ecosystem
Transparency has been another sore spot. The Ecosystem Support Program (ESP) used to reveal only project names—never grant sizes or follow-up progress. Early contributor @econoar’s exit only amplified complaints of “bureaucratic drag,” “time sinks,” and “leadership detached from the wider community.”
In 2025 the Foundation trimmed its operational-expense ratio from 15 % to 5 %—a figure closer to endowment-grade benchmarks—and began deploying assets on-chain to secure a 2.5-year cash runway.
The new ESP doubles down on targeted grants and non-financial help. Strategic co-funding will bankroll public-goods projects that serve the entire Ethereum stack. Launchpad, a new support layer, will help organizations tackle operational design, sustainable funding, governance, and other headaches. Funding for Launchpad may flow from the Foundation, grantees, or spin-ups like Protocol Guild.
Looking ahead, the Foundation will also:
Coordinate global crypto policy, monitoring worldwide issues tied to Ethereum and partnering with policy shops, governments, and NGOs.
Run an Academic Secretariat that links Ethereum with universities, professors, and students to push blockchain research forward.
Epilogue: Price Meets Promise
On July 11, ETH cracked $3,000. As the price climbs, the ecosystem reboot is gathering steam. The Foundation’s metamorphosis boils down to two imperatives: widen the user base and harden the infrastructure. Translation: the Foundation will now marshal resources, steer the narrative, heal community rifts, and—without compromising core values—drive scale in key verticals.
Rival L1s are closing the gap, but Ethereum’s architects are betting that systematic support and strategic direction can still uncover—and shape—the network’s next growth engine.
A New Vision for the Ecosystem
On July 10, the Ethereum Foundation unveiled “The Future of Ecosystem Development,” kicking off a sweeping overhaul of its own structure. The move is designed to tackle long-standing headaches: uneven project support, fragmented ecosystem operations, and an opaque treasury.
The Foundation’s new vision statement sets two overriding goals:
Maximize the number of people who use Ethereum—directly or indirectly—and who benefit from its underlying values.
Maximize the resilience of Ethereum’s technical and social infrastructure.
To get there, the Foundation is recasting its role inside the ecosystem. Four strategic pillars—Accelerate, Amplify, Support, and Long-Term Unblocking—are joined by a fresh governance framework and a re-engineered capital-management playbook, all aimed at boosting scalability, resilience, and decentralization.
Accelerating the Ecosystem
Critics have long accused the Foundation of “governing by inaction,” a stance that fueled schisms and diluted Ethereum’s narrative. With corporations now racing to build crypto treasuries, a clear reserve strategy has become mission-critical.
To accelerate adoption, the Foundation is spinning up four focused modules:
Enterprise Relations: Helping corporations onboard to Ethereum, with a spotlight on finance and supply-chain verticals and the on-chain tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) like real estate and bonds.
Developer Growth: Recruiting and mentoring the next wave of builders. Gitcoin research lead Austin Griffith will steer this unit.
Application Support: Fast-tracking user-facing, high-impact apps.
Founder Support: Non-financial guidance for early teams, led by ex-ConsenSys front-end tech lead Adrian Li.
The “Amplify” layer supercharges these efforts through:
Digital Studio (the ethereum.org team): Ethereum’s narrative engine, producing rich content, videos, publications, and data visualizations that showcase the network’s potential.
Strategic Events: Designing and executing targeted campaigns.
Ethereum Everywhere: A squad devoted to scaling local communities and hubs for app developers.
EcoDev Automation: AI-driven tools and internal automations that let teams hit targets faster.
Supporting the Ecosystem
Transparency has been another sore spot. The Ecosystem Support Program (ESP) used to reveal only project names—never grant sizes or follow-up progress. Early contributor @econoar’s exit only amplified complaints of “bureaucratic drag,” “time sinks,” and “leadership detached from the wider community.”
In 2025 the Foundation trimmed its operational-expense ratio from 15 % to 5 %—a figure closer to endowment-grade benchmarks—and began deploying assets on-chain to secure a 2.5-year cash runway.
The new ESP doubles down on targeted grants and non-financial help. Strategic co-funding will bankroll public-goods projects that serve the entire Ethereum stack. Launchpad, a new support layer, will help organizations tackle operational design, sustainable funding, governance, and other headaches. Funding for Launchpad may flow from the Foundation, grantees, or spin-ups like Protocol Guild.
Looking ahead, the Foundation will also:
Coordinate global crypto policy, monitoring worldwide issues tied to Ethereum and partnering with policy shops, governments, and NGOs.
Run an Academic Secretariat that links Ethereum with universities, professors, and students to push blockchain research forward.
Epilogue: Price Meets Promise
On July 11, ETH cracked $3,000. As the price climbs, the ecosystem reboot is gathering steam. The Foundation’s metamorphosis boils down to two imperatives: widen the user base and harden the infrastructure. Translation: the Foundation will now marshal resources, steer the narrative, heal community rifts, and—without compromising core values—drive scale in key verticals.
Rival L1s are closing the gap, but Ethereum’s architects are betting that systematic support and strategic direction can still uncover—and shape—the network’s next growth engine.
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