The Late Night Brief
Where Builders Get Seen.
Welcome back to this week’s edition of The Late Night Brief by Late Night Onchain.
Before we get into this week’s biggest stories, I want to give a shoutout to the sponsors that help make this show possible.
🤝 Sponsors
BV7X
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BuilDefi
A big shoutout to BuilDefi, one of the newest launchpads on Robinhood Chain and Ethereum.
They’re coming to Base very soon and are taking a different approach to launches.
Fair mint phase so everyone gets in at the same launch price.
No bonding curve.
Locked Uniswap liquidity at launch.
Builders earn ETH from trading fees instead of token allocations.
Albemarle City
Albemarle City is building the first tokenized city on Solana. Their vision is to tokenize land ownership while creating an entirely new onchain community around real-world development. Definitely worth checking out.
BNKR
BNKR continues building the tooling that powers agentic commerce on Base. They’re also expanding into tokenized stocks, helping bridge traditional finance with onchain markets.
Huge thanks to all of our sponsors for supporting independent builder-focused media.
🧠 Stories of the Week
This week kicked off with Coinbase dominating the timeline once again.
Between Brian Armstrong changing his profile picture and the backlash surrounding Base, it felt like everyone had an opinion.
Instead of guessing, I wanted answers.
Jesse Pollak agreed to come on the show, and we dove into everything.
We talked about the recent controversy, what Base has been doing wrong over the past couple of years, where things can improve, how he views the competition, and where he sees the ecosystem heading.
Like him or hate him, no questions were off limits. Jesse answered the questions that pretty much everyone on the timeline had been asking all week.
If you missed it, you can watch the full interview here:
Robinhood Is Still Running The Show
Outside of Jesse’s interview, this week was once again dominated by the Robinhood trenches.
Pretty much all the activity continues flowing into Robinhood.
That said, I don’t think we’re early anymore.
If anything, it feels like we’re getting into the later innings of this current run. Vlad’s account getting hacked only added more chaos to an already crazy week.
What really stands out to me is how violent the rotations have become.
People are constantly jumping from project to project chasing the next shiny object.
One minute everyone is talking about one token, the next minute they’ve completely moved on.
To me, it just reinforces one of crypto’s biggest problems.
We’ve completely lost holding culture.
It’s something that’s plagued this industry for years.
Everyone wants instant gratification, and when projects don’t immediately perform, they become bagholders that end up hating the team, the community, or the ecosystem.
Personally, my advice has always been the same.
Buy projects you’re actually willing to hold for a few months.
It’s a lot less stressful, and honestly, you’ll probably enjoy crypto a lot more.
Vamping
New metas emerging every day
Coins dying after 12 hours
This is starting to become worse then Solana
🎙 This Week on Late Night
We had another packed week of builders join the show.
Jesse Pollak came on for one of the biggest interviews we’ve done, answering tough questions about Base, Coinbase, competition, and where the ecosystem goes from here.
Alex from SushiSwap joined us to talk about Sushi’s expansion toward Robinhood Chain, why they’re making that push, and what success looks like over the next three years.
We were also joined by Ozzy from Pons, the number one launchpad on Robinhood that’s generating millions in revenue while becoming the go-to place for projects launching on the chain.
Brett from 1Confirmation came on to discuss digital collectibles, why the firm continues to invest in the space, and what makes Grail such an interesting product.
KaizenNomad talked tokenized Treasury bills and his journey building DeFi products on Robinhood.
Ryne from Eco joined us to discuss stablecoins, why they’ve become one of the hottest conversations in crypto, and why that trend is only getting bigger.
Jake from Hoodie talked about the shift in sentiment between Base and Robinhood and why he’s chosen to build where he is today.
Jon from Albemarle City explained what makes their lore different, why community comes first, and what it takes to build a true cult following.
Finally, the BuilDefi team joined us to share their vision for building one of the leading launchpads and why they believe they’re uniquely positioned to capture market share
One of my favorite moments from this week's interview with Jesse Pollak came when we started talking about Bankr.
Jesse called Bankr Bot one of Base's best investments ever and made it clear that Base wants to back builders who consistently ship products people actually use.
He specifically pointed to Deployer as one of the best builders in the game and exactly the type of team Base wants to see succeed.
To me, that's an important reminder that while timelines get caught up in the daily drama, the long-term winners are usually the teams quietly building every single day.
🎥 Watch the clip below.
There are a few things I'm paying close attention to heading into next week.
First is the continued momentum around Robinhood. Whether you love it or hate it, it's where the attention is right now, and attention is the most valuable currency in crypto.
The second is stablecoins. Almost every founder I talk to lately has an opinion on them. It feels like we've reached the point where everyone understands they're going to play a major role in bringing more people onchain.
But the thing I'm most excited about is tokenized stocks.
Honestly, I think this is one of the most innovative narratives we've had in years.
For the first time, we're taking one of the largest financial markets in the world and making it programmable. Imagine owning stocks that trade 24/7, can be used as collateral in DeFi, integrated directly into AI agents, or moved around the world in seconds instead of days.
It feels like one of those ideas that sounds obvious once you see it, but has the potential to completely change how people interact with financial markets.
I still think we're incredibly early, and I'm excited to watch this space evolve over the coming months.
Closing Signal
One thing never changes in this industry.
Crypto moves fast.
Really fast.
Narratives change overnight.
Capital rotates overnight.
Attention rotates overnight.
If there’s one piece of advice I’d leave you with this week, it’s this:
Don’t overtrade.
The fastest way to get wrecked is constantly chasing the next shiny object.
Have conviction, manage your risk, and remember why you bought something in the first place.
We’ll see what next week brings.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring Late Night Onchain, we have a limited number of partnership spots available for next month.
Shoot me a message on X or send me an email.
See you next week.
— Bill the Bull