Bankless · 572

Bankless Joint Innovation: Oil prices may be difficult to return to the high level in the first phase of the US-Iran conflict, but it is still not conducive to inflation

Comparing news, Bankless co-founder David Hoffman wrote that during the second phase of the US-Iran conflict, oil prices may fluctuate in the range of 75 to 95 US dollars per barrel and will not rise to the high level of the first phase of the conflict. However, even if oil prices remain within the above range, it is still not conducive to the global inflation situation.

31d ago

Buy ETH, short gold: 7.6x contrarian trading opportunity

Source: Bankless Author: William M. Peaster Compiled and edited by: bitPushNews If you ask people to buy/sell/hold gold now, most people will answer buy or hold gold. Of course, gold did reach a record high of 5,589 US dollars in January 2026, largely because central banks bought in record numbers against the backdrop of heightened geopolitical tension, and diversification of reserves became popular. Gold is currently trading at around $4,000, so it has fallen quite a bit from its high point, but it has still risen 120% over the past 5 years. Even Bitcoin, or digital gold, rose 115% over the same period. Then there's Ethereum. ETH is currently trading at around $1,900, which is 5% lower than $2,000 in the same period in 2021. As a result, gold doubled and BTC doubled, yet this flagship programmable currency project (with native yield, most stablecoins, institutional tokenization experiments, etc.) did not perform well. Depending on your perspective, this trend is either fatal or one of the most interesting contrarian trading opportunities right now: going long on ETH and shorting gold. The ETH/gold ratio, or how many troy ounces of gold can be bought in 1 ETH, peaked at around 3.5 during the 2021 frenzy. Right now it's around 0.46. Just going back to the peak of the ratio in 2021 means that ETH will outperform gold by about 7.6 times from here on. So what are the arguments for buying ETH? First, ETH is not inert. Gold has no return, and storage costs are also required, while staked ETH natively provides medium to low single-digit returns. Bitmine, for example, earned $45.7 million in staking revenue last quarter. This kind of gain is the structural, ongoing appeal offered by Ethereum. There's also the issue of fundamental deviations, right? The ETH/XAU ratio has been declining, while large institutions like BlackRock and Visa have been using Ethereum, and AI agents, RWA (real world assets), and stablecoins are also booming in this chain. Considering everything Ethereum currently has, it's not a crazy idea to think that ETH is oversold. So are we going to see a mean regression here? ETH has had explosive relative performance before, and as its narrative and liquidity form a synergy, we may see a sharp rebound. Maybe this works, maybe it doesn't, but the setup does make for a fascinating deal. However, analysis and theory are the same thing. What if you really want to close this deal? If you're a die-hard fan of Ethereum, you're probably more willing to use Ethereum's native approach, then the Lighter exchange, or the top perpetual contract DEX built on top of Ethereum, is a good choice. This is because if you agree with the argument that “programmable money will beat inert metals”, Lighter allows you to express this bet in a stylized way on the programmable currency's own trajectory, that is, shorting an on-chain gold perpetual contract on an Ethereum ZK rollup, and the reason this gold contract exists in its current form is entirely due to Ethereum. In addition to the zero-fee deal (which is great), Lighter also has a two-legged variety of this deal. It offers ETH perpetual contracts with up to 50x leverage, and XAU perpetual contracts that track the spot price of gold, with up to 25x leverage. Another particularly useful feature here is Lighter's support for full margin, which allows you to use the same margin balance to support multiple positions. Under this model, you can effectively connect your ETH bulls to your gold bears, and let the two legs buffer each other. In other words, when one side falls, the other side's earnings can act as a buffer. Additionally, you can consider opening a position on an equivalent scale. For example, if you go long on ETH at $500, go short on XAU at $500, so you're only exposed to relative performance. In other words, by doing this, you're making a ratio bet, not just a simple market bet (like just buying ETH). The actual process is simple, like this: deposit USDC into your Lighter account (you can bridge from Ethereum, Arbitrum, or Base). Open the ETH perpetual contract market, click the “full position” button, select the size of your position, and open a long position by confirming the transaction. Open the XAU perpetual contract market and set it to &q...

32d agoWendy#Lighter #Ethereum #gold

Digital asset financial infrastructure service provider Cordant closes $8 million seed round

In comparison, stablecoin and digital asset financial infrastructure service provider Cordant announced the completion of a $8 million seed round, with Bankless VC, FJ Labs, SignalFire, Quona, Next Stage, Selah Ventures, Flatironx, Nascent Ventures, Silvercircle Ventures, and Generative Ventures participating. The new funding will support the introduction of new payment networks and AI automation tools. Cordant is collaborating with financial institutions on product co-construction, covering banking, payments, embedded finance, cross-border transactions, stablecoins, and digital assets. Among them, the Latin American digital asset and payment platform Bitso and blockchain infrastructure company Paxos all participated in the investment and acted as design partners. This article is sponsored by GENG, Build Your Fortune on GENG (https://geng.one)

32d agoburnking#financing

Bankless Co-Creation: Bitcoin may have entered a phase of sideways trading, and the bottom has basically appeared

Comparing the news, Bankless co-founder David Hoffman wrote that Bitcoin's current trend faces two possible paths: bottoming out sideways, or a final round of panic selling. He believes that Bitcoin is more likely to enter a phase of sideways bottoming out, and the bottom has basically already appeared.

37d ago

Strategy's accounting trick: the upper limit of coin sales is far more than $1.25 billion

Author: Bankless Compiled by: Azuma Original title: Strategy's Accounting Trick: The maximum selling price is far more than $1.25 billion Strategy revealed on July 7 that the company has sold 3,588 BTC between June 29 and July 5, worth about $216 million. The funds were used to pay STRC's dividends and supplement the USD Reserve (USD Reserve) previously used to pay dividends. Despite completing this sale, Strategy said its full $1.25 billion reserve-building capacity (reserve-building capacity) is still in effect. Daily note: In the “Self-Rescue Plan” announced last week, Strategy stated that it has authorized the company to sell BTC and build up a reserve of up to $1.25 billion. In other words, the $216 million BTC sold by Strategy to replenish reserves did not count against previously disclosed reserve construction amounts. Strictly speaking, there is a technical difference between the two: one is “replenishing reserves” (replenishing reserves) and the other is “building” (building). However, in reality, both types of sales will eventually flow into the same reserve pool for the same purpose, but are classified as different uses. Looking at it another way, the “BTC Monetization Program” (BTC Monetization Program) previously disclosed by BTC never limited Strategy to sell a total of $1.25 billion in Bitcoin; it limited only one pool of funds — that is, “building” dollar reserves by selling BTC. The plan also allows Strategy to sell BTC for other purposes, and this is exactly what we're seeing right now. Three funding pools On June 29, after weeks of pressure from MSTR and STRC, Strategy launched the BTC “monetization plan” as part of its larger “Digital Credit Capital Framework” (Digital Credit Capital Framework). The plan allows Strategy to sell Bitcoin, and actually mentions three main uses: one is to build the reserve (Build the reserve), which can sell up to $1.25 billion in BTC to establish a USD Reserve (USD Reserve); the other is to pay the cost of preferred shares and debt (Cover the preferreds), that is, selling BTC to pay Strategy's fixed dividends and interest obligations on its preferred shares and debts. If management believes “selling BTC is more profitable than issuing common shares,” it can also supplement reserves previously used to pay for these obligations by selling BTC. The third is fund buybacks (fund buybacks), that is, selling BTC to buy back up to $1 billion of preferred shares (preferred shares) and up to $1 billion of MSTR common stock (common stock). Additionally, the proceeds from the sale of BTC may also be used to cover related taxes, processing fees, and other charges. At the time, discussions across the market focused on the first pool of funds of $1.25 billion, but that was far from the case. Looking at the third pool alone, the sales amount was actually increased by an additional 2 billion US dollars. Therefore, when calculating only the portion with a clear upper limit, the BTC coin sales scale currently designed by Strategy has exceeded 3 billion US dollars, and this does not include the pool used to pay dividends, interest, and supplementary reserves — this section does not currently disclose any clear upper limit. This is where building (building) and supplementing (replenishing) is really delicate. The purpose of the USD Reserve (USD Reserve) is to pay dividends and debt interest obligations on these preferred shares. Under the current policy framework, it cannot be used for share repurchases. As of June 28, Strategy's dollar reserves were US$2.55 billion, which is sufficient to cover the company's annual debt and preferred share payment obligations of approximately US$1.76 billion, which is equivalent to a 17-month guarantee period. Strategy's board of directors set the minimum...

43d agoburnking#Strategy #Bitcoin

EF declines, new organizations rise, Ethereum governance moves into an era of diversification

Author: Wenser Original title: The Ethereum Foundation is dead. The Ethereum Diversification Organization came into being last night. The Ethereum Foundation Agreement Support Team officially announced that the team had officially been dissolved. Earlier, Wang Xiaowei, co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, who is regarded as “one of the representatives of EF's organizational reform,” has also officially resigned. As of now, at least 8 senior members of the Ethereum Foundation have left their jobs during the year. The other side of organizational and personnel changes is that non-profit independent institutions such as ETHLabs and Ethereum Institutional have replaced the Ethereum Foundation's organization's distribution and function; it is also the recent technical progress of the Ethereum Foundation's security team using AI agents Red Team to test the ETH network and discover real vulnerabilities. At a time when the price of ETH is facing wave after wave of industry torture, what is facing the Ethereum Foundation is the more complex and diverse contradictions and tests after internal reforms. Related to this is the fragmentation that the Ethereum leadership is facing. The Ethereum Foundation has entered an era of decline: Strong players have joined forces, brain drain, and AI changes. The Ethereum Foundation (EF) (hereinafter referred to as EF, the Etheruem Foundation) has been criticized for its rigid system, minority decisions, organizational values, and sell-offs that affect market sentiment. EF has also been particularly criticized within the Ethereum community. Recently, Bankless founder David Hoffman even expressed his dissatisfaction with EF by “selling off the last ETH position” and called on the Ethereum community to build the ecosystem in its own way. Now, the official dissolution of the EF agreement support team has completely exposed the crisis of conflict and division within the EF organization to everyone like a thunder. Notably, this round of organizational changes is particularly different from last year's organizational changes initiated by Ethereum founder Vitalik — it was a complete staff cleanup, and is also regarded as “the biggest round of layoffs since EF was founded,” rather than some previous leadership changes. When the leaders of the Ethereum ecosystem chose to survive at the end of the game: the EF layoffs and everything, let's start with EF's official announcement of the “EF New Architecture” official announcement on June 23. In this article spilling over thousands of words, EF distinguished the new organizational structure by protocol layer, access layer, user layer, community level, and organization level, and then explained “54 people were laid off in this organizational structure adjustment, accounting for 20% of EF's membership.” Even more chilling, the announcement began with the statement: “Through this process, we have obtained the structure, activities, and personnel needed to carry out the critical tasks we are about to face.” In other words, the personnel and departments that have been laid off are all eliminated, unnecessary, and worthless. I have to say that EF, which has always been a research organization, an ecological leader, and has a very academic temperament, showed a ruthless side of its organizational management for the first time. Schematic diagram of EF's new architecture The dissolution of the EF protocol support department is an important sign of the EF organizational split. It is worth mentioning that the work content of the EF protocol support department is biased towards infrastructure construction and is mainly responsible for coordinating the Ethereum protocol development process, including organizing and coordinating core developer meetings, tracking Ethereum network upgrades, supporting EIP promotion, and operation of the Ethereum protocol. Its main functions are now divided into the protocol layer portion of EF. On the same day EF announced the launch of the new architecture, Ethlabs, a non-profit research and development lab co-founded by five former EF researchers, was officially announced. The organization aims to promote Ethereum as a settlement layer in the global economy, and has received support from a range of investment institutions, Ethereum ecosystem projects, independent individuals, and EF Foundation members such as Joe Lubin (Chairman of Sharplink and founder of Consensys), ETH treasury company BitMine (Tom Lee's Ethereum treasury company), Sharplink, and crypto investment agency SNZ. ETHLabs Community Participant List (Source: Official Account) On July 1, Ethereum Institutional, co-founded by former EF members David Walsh, Marius Smith, and Matthew Dawson, was officially unveiled. The organization's main concept is “Ethereum's finance...

43d agoburnking#The Ethereum Foundation

Ethereum's third ultimate form is beginning to take shape

Source: Bankless Author: William M. Peaster Compiled and edited by: BitPushNews Original title: Ethereum's Third and Ultimate Form Is Taking Shape Ethereum's research field is in full swing recently. From July 4 to today, Vitalik Buterin successively gave a fresh overview of the long-term direction of Ethereum, published a new “Extremely Lean Chain” (Extremely Lean Chain) research article, and highlighted a proposal to introduce Bitcoin-style UTXO to Ethereum. These topics are all appealing in themselves, but when put together, they give us a clear picture of what the future of Ethereum looks like. The background here is a “draft map” — a document that the Ethereum Foundation calls itself the “L1 upgrade draft roadmap,” covering the upgrade plan up to the end of this decade. The map was just updated at the end of June. Then on July 4, Vitalik shared his views on this change: “'Lean Ethereum' (Lean Ethereum) is not a one-time upgrade, but a collection of improvements that will launch the Ethernet network over the next three to four years. But it goes without saying that this is the third major iteration of Ethereum, just as The Merge (The Merge) was the second.” He went on to say that in this evolution, almost every major component of the network will be replaced, from how blocks are verified, to how consensus is reached, and even the meaning of “state” itself will change. So, what exactly are the changes? Of course, the “draft map” is not a single plan, but from several of its contexts and Vitalik's comments, we can summarize a few macro-themes. For example: Verification will replace reexecution — currently, every Ethereum node reruns every transaction to check the calculation results on the chain. In the “lean” era, nodes will instead check cryptographic proofs, or recursive STARK. This change will make proof of correctness cheaper, further expanding execution capabilities, reducing hardware requirements, and providing more benefits. The state of Ethereum “losing weight” is imminent — a multi-level state system is taking shape in front of us. Today's flexible but heavy “dynamic” state will continue, but there will only be limited room for further growth. By contrast, the new, cheaper, but slightly less flexible state types will be expanded more drastically (Vitalik assumes that Ethereum may have about 2TB of the former and about 100TB of the latter in 2030). Moving to these new states isn't mandatory, but financial incentives can be persuasive — because they will provide projects and users with drastically reduced costs. Privacy and quantum-resistance are the pillars of design — while most current chains are 1) completely transparent, and 2) procrastinating on anti-quantum plans, Ethereum researchers have elevated privacy UX and anti-quantum defense to core design pillars, requiring all designs to consider and build around them. For example, as Vitalik pointed out: “When designing new content for Frames, mempools, and state trees, we clearly asked this question: 'OK, how can quantum-secure, unintermediated privacy protocol transactions go through this system? What's the cost? '” These advancements will not be achieved through a single upgrade like mergers, but will require 6 to 7 forks between now and 2029 to be implemented gradually. However, the reason the “draft map” is called a “draft” is because the Ethereum Foundation has made it clear that this roadmap and timeline are only a rough guide to coordination efforts, not a fixed plan. What is exciting, however, is that now almost every day new proposals for relevant mechanisms are being proposed. As an example? This morning, Vitalik published “The Extremely Lean Chain” (The Extremely Lean Chain), a design proposal aimed at reducing the Ethereum consensus layer to almost nothing. (Link in the picture: https://t.co/Gdee7tE53R在当前以太坊范式中，信标链（Beacon Chain) holds a large record for each validator, and the balance calculation is updated for all validators every epoch. In the evolutionary scheme proposed by Vitalik, each validator on the chain only needs to store about 6 bytes, which is less than the current situation of about 121 bytes...

46d ago章鱼烧#UTXO #Ethereum #Minimalist chain

Bankless founder: Regrets not buying more LIT

Compared to Twitter, Bankless founder David Hoffman wrote on X saying he regrets not buying more Lighter (LIT). Hoffman explains that the logic of investing in Lighter is simple: 1. Exchanges have always been the best business model for the crypto industry; 2. Perpetual contracts are still a brand new racetrack, far from mature; 3. Building an exchange based on zKL2 is currently the best structural solution, with high security, low operating costs, and high profit margins; 4. The product itself is also the strongest in the market, with the lowest delay, the lowest execution cost, and complete transparency; 5. The engineering team is strong and has overcome all technical problems; 6. The company is headquartered in the US and operates in compliance, yet this market is still a blue ocean that has not been fully occupied; 7. It is also an option that bets on “tokenization of compliant assets” (Tokenization); 8. Founder Vlad is in the right circle, knows the right people, and has ambitions to do big things.

56d ago

Bankless: MSTR's Darkest Hour

Source: Bankless Author: David Christopher Compiled and collated: BitPushNewsStrategy's structure relies on Bitcoin, MSTR common stock, and STRC preferred stock, and right now, all three are weakening at the same time. Today, the most prominent dark red color on the market appears at Michael Saylor's Strategy Company. Its STRC preferred stock has dropped to around $80, which is nearly 20% off the face value of $100, setting a record. MSTR fell below $100 for the first time since March 2024, and Bitcoin has slipped below $60,000. This situation has worsened since late May, when Strategy bought back debt, sold a small amount of bitcoins to pay preferred dividends, then continued to buy more bitcoins even when STRC's confidence was damaged, and now all of these warning signs are converging at the same time. The three parts of the machine Strategy's structure relies on three mutually supporting parts: Bitcoin, MSTR common stock, and STRC preferred stock. Bitcoin is a reserve asset and the third-largest reserve asset on the planet, and its selling point is that it will only grow. However, it doesn't generate anything, no dividends, no interest, and no revenue. Strategy can hold it forever, but the preferred stock dividend is paid in cash, so something is needed to cover this gap. This is the mismatch that is currently being tested. MSTR is the engine. When the stock is trading higher than the value of the Bitcoin behind it, Strategy sells the stock to buy more bitcoins, and this premium makes the purchase act have an added value effect. When MSTR falls, engines become expensive. It would take 1 million shares to raise $500 million at a price of $500 million. At $50, it would require 10 million shares. That same cash, diluted tenfold, weakens the rationale for holding MSTR. STRC is a credit, a type of preferred stock with a face value of $100 that pays an 11.5% cash dividend. Strategy can raise interest rates to attract buyers when prices fall. But this only works if investors believe dividends will continue to be paid, and this operating space is shrinking. Prices close to $80 suggest that the market needs a higher yield before considering STRC as equivalent to face value. Each part supports the others, so when all three weaken at the same time, the question shifts from how much Bitcoin Strategy owns to whether it has enough dollars to deliver on its promises. The current dilemma Strategy is losing trust and fluidity at the same time, and the two complement each other. As Bitcoin fell, MSTR fell even harder as the market saw it as a leveraged Bitcoin. As MSTR fell, selling shares to raise cash became more unsightly, shifting the pressure onto reserves. According to reports, STRC's dividend bill has climbed from around $300 million a year in January to around $1.2 billion now, while cash is dwindling due to debt buybacks and BTC purchases. The operating space for these payments has been reduced from over seven years to around 14 months. This is a trap, and although there are exit paths, each one has its price: buying more bitcoins weakens cash reserves and erodes confidence in STRC. Issuing MSTR means more severe dilution, which means there are fewer reasons for people to hold MSTR. More preferred shares have increased dividend obligations, and higher STRC interest rates have exacerbated cash loss. Payments can't be stopped because that would destroy trust and the entire system. The entire structure depends on it, so in reality we're only left to sell Bitcoin. Why selling bitcoins is a double-edged sword. Selling bitcoins can quickly replenish reserves. This strategy can fund dividends, or even buy back company shares (STRC) at less than face value, that is, write off $100 of the claim at around $82. Judging from the books, this is reasonable. Analytical firm CryptoQuant estimates that to restore the 24-month coverage period, it would take about $2.8 billion...

59d agoWendy#Michael Saylor #Strategy #Strategy topics #STRC #Bitcoin

Bankless founder who has cleared ETH stated that he will support Ethlabs, saying the latter “represents the brightest future for Ethereum”

Comparing news, David Hoffman, founder of Bankless, who has previously cleared ETH, said in an article on X about the newly established Ethlabs: “The Ethereum Foundation (EF) has deliberately left a power vacuum so that the new organizational structure can come forward and influence the direction of Ethereum's development. I think the direction Ethlabs is leading represents the brightest future for Ethereum. I am delighted and will continue to support them as they move forward.” Earlier, David Hoffman publicly stated in late May that he had cleared all ETH. Yesterday evening, a number of former Ethereum Foundation researchers announced the establishment of the non-profit organization Ethlabs to push Ethereum into the next phase of growth. Bitmine, SharpLink, and Joe Lubin have all expressed their support.

60d ago