what if we kissed at 100k

good morrow,

bitcoin hit 100k. i like to think its because the girls held a seance. and burned some sage while the first snowflakes of winter danced around us. it was poetic really the flurries falling as gently as the tears of bears getting liquidated.

but you can say other macro indicators are at play, Tomato, tomahto. (i would never say that)

i still didn’t feel anything but maybe that says more about me than the orange coin

anyway, enjoy some rumblings below

xx c

Bitcoin surpassed the $100,000 mark for the first time, reaching a peak of $104,000. This surge coincides with Trump's nomination of Paul Atkins, a known crypto degen, to head the SEC. Hyperliquid brought an onchain wealth event to the tune of $1.5B, the biggest airdrop in crypto history and has been dominating the derivatives market ever since. Noise, a platform for trading trends, just came out of stealth. Higher is open-sourcing the higherrrrrrr protocol, an implementation for a new standard of evolutionary tokens, which are meant to bring price-aware dynamic metadata to trading.

You can now buy crypto with Apple Pay on Coinbase. Bankr is the first AI agent on Farcaster built to buy Base coins for you. Derek Brown launched $NATIVE and is building a new kind of Farcaster client. CoinDesk teamed up with Dimo Network to curate this guide to all things crypto hardware, including Chipped nails. Nike shut down RTFKT, the NFT project they acquired in 2021. Meanwhile, XRP's over here having the mother of all glow-ups, becoming the world's third-largest crypto, flipping USDT all while the ripple defi and memcoin ecosystem are surging. And lastly Grayscale Filed for Solana ETF.

Explore Ethereum with Interface

Interface is having a moment. They're building a social layer directly onchain. It's a social app with a feed where you can see what tokens people are trading. The real game-changer has been the copy trading feature - people can see what others are trading and instantly copy those swaps. It's like they've created this discovery primitive that builds a social graph of relationships between user addresses and contracts.

What's fascinating is how they've bootstrapped this social graph. You can follow one person, see who they're copying or trading with, and suddenly you're plugged into this whole network of traders and tokens. It's a really organic way to build connections and discover new opportunities.

But what's really impressive is how they've stuck to their vision for almost three years now. The team has been incredibly patient and persistent. They were hovering around 100-300 daily active users for like two years, just iterating and building. But now things are clicking, and they're seeing crazy growth. It's a testament to having a strong thesis and sticking to it, even when the market doesn't get it yet.

One thing that really stands out is how they're thinking about reputation and identity onchain. They're betting on the idea that people will want to build long-term reputations tied to their main accounts rather than just using anon accounts for quick pump and dumps. It's like they're trying to create this ecosystem where your onchain actions have real, lasting consequences - both positive and negative.

Looking ahead, they're focusing on scaling and improving the user experience. They're launching a web version and building a wallet into the app to make transactions smoother. But the big vision is to become the interface for the entire onchain ecosystem, abstracting away all the complexity of different chains and protocols.

It's really cool to see a project that's stayed true to its core insight - that Ethereum itself is the social network, and all they're doing is providing a more user-friendly view into that activity. They're well-positioned to capitalize on whatever the next meta in crypto turns out to be, because they're building this fundamental layer for discovery and interaction. We're excited to see where they go from here. It feels like they're just getting started, and there's so much potential for what this could become as more people start to realize the power of onchain social.

Capital Formation in the Reputation Era

RM dropped a piece last week called "Capital Formation in the Reputation Era," exploring how we’ve shifted from traditional capital gatekeepers to a wild west where anyone with an internet connection can influence value. On the surface, this removal of old barriers seems empowering, but there’s a catch: unprepared users, without access to critical information, are losing out. Reputation, in this context, is emerging as the linchpin—what stands between innovation and chaos.

Consider what’s happening on token launchpads today: projects are essentially yeeting tokens into the void, hoping they’ll stick. The process usually feels like buying a lottery ticket, with little to no thought given to long-term sustainability or meaningful contributions to growing networks or communities.

There’s also this undeniable sense of unfairness in crypto. Early participants always seem to have the upper hand—access to opportunities that are hidden in back rooms or locked within cabals. This obsession with alpha isn’t going away, but we can’t leave it like this.

It's clear the current system favors traders over builders. Speculation thrives while builders struggle to deliver meaningful, lasting contributions. It's clear we need new capital formation models that prioritize long-term, possibility-driven projects capable of sustaining attention, credibility, and funding. At its core, people are looking for projects with vision—something they can believe in long-term. That’s where real wealth is created. Remember when ETH was 35 cents? The people who saw its potential weren’t just early; they believed in its long-term impact. That’s the shift we need: from pure attention-grabbing to deeper, belief-driven capital formation.

The challenge is to drag these opportunities out of the trenches, making them accessible. That’s where reputation games come in—systems that reward public participation and meaningful contributions to networks. It's becoming the cornerstone of value creation in a decentralized world, shaping who gets access, funding, and trust. Unlike static systems, reputation is dynamic, influenced by interactions, data, it's inherently social.

So how do we build systems that evolve to reward the right behaviors over time? It’s messy. It’s complicated. And let’s be honest, we probably won’t get it perfect. But crypto doesn’t need perfect systems; it needs systems that can adapt, grow, and continuously improve. This isn’t just about being early—it’s about persistence, reinvention, and creating opportunities for everyone to participate and contribute meaningfully. That’s the game we’re playing here.

Live & online Fridays at 10am PT / 1pm ET.

Cheryl Douglass

@cherdougie

ive created a monster @base

Gaby Goldberg

@gaby_goldberg

Imagine how powerful it feels to crop Jeff Bezos out of your Instagram carousel.

poof

@poof_eth

Say hello to DX Research Group, a new AI studio focused on innovative onchain experiences

Our first experiment DX01: SINGULARITY begins this Thursday on Base

Follow @DXRGai and read below to learn more

Darren Lau

@Darrenlautf

your "ecosystem":
- 47 forks of uniswap
- 23 "innovative" lending protocols
- 69 yield optimizers
- 420 nft marketplaces
- 6 actual users

hyperliquid:
- best perp dex in crypto
- never down during market chaos
- survived every volatility spike
- working when cexs broke
- 100k…

jesse.base.eth

@jessepollak

one of ethereum, base, and the EVM's greatest strengths is that everything is open source, open standards, & open markets

@clankeronbase + @farcaster_xyz is a great example of this — builders building on other builders, leading to faster innovation and more fun