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Today's News Recap
Full Steam Ahead - Metaplanet expands Bitcoin holdings by 150 BTC, totaling 3,350 BTC, aiming for 10,000 BTC by year-end, and adds $12.6M worth of Bitcoin after appointing Eric Trump to advisory board.
Fidelity Filing - Fidelity files for Ethereum-based US Treasury fund ‘OnChain’.
Win-Win - Tokenized US gold could ultimately benefit Bitcoin: NYDIG.
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In Messari News
New Research Podcast
In this episode, the Messari Enterprise team sits down for a candid roundtable, where they unpack the current state of the crypto market cycle. They explore how the market has become increasingly self-aware and extractive, and what that shift means for future participation and capital formation.
The discussion covers the underperformance of ETH and altcoins despite strong BTC ETF flows, the evolving role of Bitcoin as either a risk asset or digital gold, and why some narratives may be nearing exhaustion. We also look at the migration of trading activity from memecoins to perpetuals, ETF skepticism, and whether institutional adoption is actually expanding the crypto investment base. To wrap it up, the team shares what still makes them bullish—from DPIN and Hyperliquid to product-led chains and the long-term case for self-custody.
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Messari Quarterly Reports
Messari's protocol reports give you a deep dive on the foundation and state of top crypto protocols, including key metrics and notable events. See the complete list of protocol reports here and get a preview of our latest report below.
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Two Bits
The Game Theory of Internet Reinvention.
By: Whynonah
A couple of months ago I yammered about DoubleZero, the protocol reinventing the internet by repurposing underused fiber cables, and discussed its potential impact on AI development.
As a reminder, today's internet runs not only on satellites in space, but on fiber optic cables beneath oceans and continents. Despite this technology being the backbone of our digital world, it's optimized for cost, not performance — which creates bottlenecks for applications that depend on speed and reliability. DoubleZero removes these bottlenecks by redesigning the physical network layer itself, all while making it publicly accessible; in contrast to private corpos who have built similar solutions for their exclusive benefit.
Here's a quick update since writing:
(i) The team raised a $28M token round led by DragonFly and Multicoin Capital, (ii) completely refreshed their website (s/o the person who called it questionable on my first post), and (iii) released a breakdown of their economic system. Specifically, here’s how cable contributors will be incentivised moving forward:
Contributors will receive Shapley value-based rewards measuring actual network impact, rewarding quality connections (i.e., benchmarked against regular internet speeds) and redundancy (i.e., the value provided by having alternative routes when one cable faces congestion or failures), rather than naive metrics such as raw data transmission.
A dynamic burn mechanism calculates rates that would make any artificial traffic unprofitable in hindsight, preventing gaming by cable providers (e.g., sending traffic over the network to collect rewards greater than the costs).
Inflation is managed through a targeted staking model that adjusts based on participation rates, with inflation ultimately bounded by historical token burn to maintain long-term supply balance.
A dual staking architecture requires contributors to stake only enough capital to cover potential penalties (i.e., slashing), unlike validators who follow traditional models (i.e., stake proportionally for rewards).
Ultimately, isolating cable contributors’ incentives toward long-term network improvement, rather than short-term profit maximization. Or in simpler terms: forcing them to build a better internet.
For the nerds, here’s the in-depth documentation and whiteboard series.
