which is comforting, in a way. because if you’re out here coining content and tokenizing the world, you’re not the most deranged person online. not even close.

anyway, enjoy some mostly accurate reporting below.

xx, c

Privy raised $15M from Ribbit Capital, bringing their total onboarded accounts to 50 million across 800 live products (a number so suspiciously round). Rainbow Wallet launched a token launchpad. Streetwear icon Bobby Hundreds has somehow parlayed his nft enthusiasm into a VP role at Disney. Solana released an ad so controversial it caused CT to experience a rare moment of unity through collective outrage. Pump rolled out their AMM, doubling down on the "fat app thesis" and Pudgy Penguins' filed for an ETF in what appears to be more marketing stunt than serious application. Farcaster launches Snapchain data layer. Fidelity plans to launch its own stablecoin. Polymarket launches on Solana. Tornado Cash soars as U.S. lifts OFAC sanctions.

Meanwhile, OpenAI launched GPT-4o with image generation capabilities, meaning your ai assistant can now not only hallucinate facts but also create convincing visual evidence to support those hallucinations. Nick Dobos helpfully exposed that the future of AI can generate shirtless men with well defined abs , but clutches its digital pearls at the mere suggestion of a woman being "sexy." Sam Altman—who is running his Twitter with the same exacting oversight he applies to AI safety—responded with the PR equivalent of "oopsie thats a bug will fix" before immediately undermining his own professional gravitas with "hot guy though!"

And lastly, Nikita Bier, best known for creating apps that make teenagers feel inadequate about their appearance, has joined Solana as an advisor so now he can make men in their 30s who trade shitcoins also feel inadequate but on mobile!

six months ago, we were asking if another narrative would emerge. now we’re asking where to even look—because there’s too much happening at once. on Internet Explorers, max from privy explained how the company, now powering 800 live products and over 50 million accounts, just secured $15M to make onboarding into crypto actually tolerable.

the big shift? traditional fintechs are no longer laughing crypto out of the room. “a year ago, if i pitched crypto at brex, i’d get laughed out the door. now every company that looks like brex, mercury, or ramp is doing stuff in crypto,” max shared.

real use cases are what’s driving this: take dolarapp—a latin american neobank running entirely on crypto rails. users convert argentine pesos into stablecoins and spend in dollars. elegant, tangible, working.

but the biggest challenge remains: getting assets into wallets without making users feel like they’re defusing a bomb. seamless sign-ins, asset loading via apple pay, and one-click transactions are still not the norm. that’s why things like earning on farcaster or rodeo are promising—they offer alternative on-ramps that bypass the “buy-usdc-first” bottleneck.

privy’s vision for cross-app wallet experiences is also materializing. farcaster wallets now travel across apps. abstract wallets work by default across abstract’s ecosystem. and with 70k funded wallets, abstract is already well past the “best case scenario.”

meanwhile, token models are under the microscope. if your best holders should’ve dumped on day one, are you actually setting yourself up to win long-term?

a growing chorus is calling out the flaws—liquidity mining, farmable airdrops, and inflated vanity metrics. crypto’s often a mile wide and an inch deep.

and it’s not just performance—it’s fundamentals. too many tokens lack revenue sharing or value accrual. projects born in the gensler era are now waking up to a new challenge: escaping both regulatory caution and the bad tokenomics they inherited.

the convo is shifting to first principles: what is the token for? who should hold it? how does it capture value? teams like zora—with strong brands and crypto-native DNA—are leading the charge toward more resilient designs.

the hope? a novel token model that breaks the current mold. something people want to buy, not just farm and forget. the appetite for new design space is real. people are bored of the same tired drops.

and maybe, just maybe, crypto can do what the nyse claims to: “offer every individual the chance to benefit from success.” except this time, with fewer middlemen, and more upside for actual participants. abundance over access. substance over hype.

let’s see if we get there.

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