Rome handed out free grain to 40,000 citizens in 73 BC. By 46 BC, Julius Caesar found 320,000 people lining up for their monthly ration. That eight-fold expansion happened in under three decades, and it shows you how welfare states actually grow. No Roman senator stood up and announced a plan to addict a third of the city to government bread. It happened incrementally, through political competition. Each magistrate who wanted votes expanded eligibility. Each expansion normalized the next one. The citizen who once considered the dole shameful eventually expected it, then demanded it, then organized politically to protect it. This is the core mechanism free market thinkers have identified across every era: once you create a transfer program, you create a constituency for that program. Recipients vote. Administrators build careers. Grain merchants who supply the state develop a stake in keeping the contracts flowing. The political economy locks in. Caesar, to his credit, actually cut the rolls back to 150,000 through verification audits. It was one of his more economically coherent moves, though the Senate still murdered him. His successors quietly let the numbers climb again. What did the dole require? Massive grain imports from Sicily, Sardinia, and Egypt, organized through state logistics at state expense, funded by taxation and conquest. When the conquest revenue dried up, the obligation remained. Rome had written a check against future military success, and future military success eventually failed to arrive. The lesson is not complicated. Distribute a benefit and you distribute dependency. Distribute dependency and you distribute political power to whoever controls the distribution. The grain dole didn't weaken Rome overnight, but it made every subsequent reform politically impossible.

Ro, “in your scenario, the founder could sell to pay a one time 5 percent tax or the state could sell it if he defaults on the loan” Ro, this is the biggest fuck you in the history of entrepreneurship. Ever. Creating jobs but don’t have cash. Fuck you Can’t sell shares, we will sell it for you, to whoever. Fuck you. Creating jobs. Paying great wages instead of taking cash out yourself. Fuck you Reinvesting into your company and community. Fuck You. Don’t you know that Jensen, and Lisa Su, and people who have vast amounts of liquidity already have no problem with it. Fuck You There is a huge difference between someone with liquidity , running a huge public company, and someone who has dedicated every minute of who knows how many years, to building a company, to finally have a dream financing come true , only to be insulted by a politician. “We will sell your shares for you “ GTFO

JUST IN: @BitGo is set to replace LayerZero with Chainlink CCIP as the exclusive cross-chain provider for $7.3 billion of WBTC.

JUST IN: @The_DTCC executes live production trades of tokenized assets together with @chainlink and 30+ major institutions Notably, Chainlink powered a transaction where @jpmorgan posted DTC-tokenized assets as collateral to satisfy margin requirements with @CMEGroup This milestone builds upon Chainlink's integration into the DTCC Collateral AppChain (a Hyperledger Besu private chain) to unlock 24/7 collateral management workflows DTCC is the world’s largest securities depository and the primary infrastructure in the United States for clearing, settlement, and asset servicing They settle $4.7 quadrillion in securities transactions per year and custody over $114 trillion in assets, making them by far the highest financial value processor and custodian in the world Today's milestone sets the stage for the official launch of the DTCC Collateral AppChain in Q4 of this year, which will unlock the floodgates for the tokenization of the entire U.S. capital markets Chainlink 🤝 DTCC

I bought $RDDT and $SHOP. Reddit has been a name that’s always been on my watchlist, first real deep dive I did was at $230 and I stayed away because of valuation. I think valuation concerns are more than resolved given the company has continued to grow and the stock has continued to go down. Shopify has a more expensive valuation but I do not think the street is accurately pricing in their role in agentic commerce and really it’s quite laughable how aggressively the street is ignoring the quarter they just put up. Both are absolutely massive compounders with accelerating growth that are down 40% YTD because they aren’t semiconductors. Hoping they fall another 20% to add more. Sold puts on $SHOP one month out for $90 and $RDDT at $130. Entry price on $RDDT is $142.57 and on $SHOP is $103.85. I also love that both businesses are still run by their founders. Looking to actually hold these names over the coming years so dips are likely and if the SaaS selloff or broader rotation out of anything semis gets worse than I would gladly welcome better prices.

Heeaaaaaaaaated debate broke out in the ETHSecurity Community Telegram earlier today between LayerZero’s Bryan and security researchers. TLDR summary: - $3 billion+ of LZ OFTs were recently at risk of being compromised due to a default library contract that LZ Labs could upgrade instantly with no timelock to forge messages (like what happened with rsETH hack) -According to Banteg, major projects like Ethena and EtherFi were STILL using this default library contract as of a few weeks ago - There is still $178 million in value exposed to being compromised from projects using default library (look at quote tweet) - LZ Labs doesn’t need to be malicious for this be risk, they have history of poor opsec (in addition to being hacked by North Korea): - Onchain data shows LZ Labs multisig signers were engaging in non-multisig signing activity like trading memecoins, swapping on DEX, bridging. All major phishing risks as this mean production multisig keys were connected to websites, not just used for signing - LZ Labs handled private keys like a high schooler, trading memecoins on production multisig keys, no wonder they got targeted by North Korea, who knows what other poor opsec they have? THREAD BELOW

Some people in Puerto Rico are apparently upset because I identified as Puerto Rican, despite my having lived here for almost ten years and raised two of my children here. However, had I identified as a Puerto Rican woman, they would have had no problem with my gender identity.

$LINK is sitting at $8.96 with an accelerating 480M social engagements over the past year and 82% positive sentiment. Three things explain the moment: 1️⃣ Grayscale listed the first U.S. Chainlink ETF $GLNK on NYSE Arca, pulling $41M on day one. 2️⃣ Mastercard connected its 3.5 billion cards directly to DeFi via Chainlink. Now any cardholder can now swap into crypto on Uniswap through Swapper Finance. 3️⃣ Coinbase started routing its order book and perps data on-chain using Chainlink's DataLink. That's Wall Street access, mainstream consumer access, and exchange-grade data, all landing in the same cycle.

You are correct. Fun fact: Here’s some crazy math: micron has traded pretty close to 13x forward PE for the last 12 months so. Or at least that’s what we thought we were paying according to analyst estimates. If you now consider their new guidance of $18 EPS (I even picked the low end), and no growth for the next 12 months. That would be $72 EPS over the next 12 months. MU would have to trade at $936 a share just to trade at a 13x forward PE. That’s the same PE everyone thought they were paying this morning before they announced their earnings. Absolutely insane.

By owning XRP, you are funding a company that has openly stated it will prioritize its equity shareholders over you. Let me explain. Ripple has spent the past decade selling XRP to retail while promoting a narrative of inevitable institutional adoption. In reality, Ripple uses the proceeds from XRP sales to acquire real companies, develop products that don’t rely on XRP, and fund Ripple Labs’ stock buybacks. All of this benefits Ripple Labs’ shareholders, with little to no value created for the XRP token itself. But it gets worse. The idea that XRP is a special bridge currency doesn’t hold up. Any token can fulfill that role. Every Layer 1 gas token already does. Being a bridge currency simply means being the most liquid and widely used trading pair on a blockchain. There is nothing inherently unique about XRP in this regard. Ripple even admitted in court filings that XRP’s bridge currency use case is demand-neutral. It does not impact price. While XRP can act as a bridge currency on its own chain, the XRP Ledger has relatively low adoption among asset issuers. It’s not even in the top 40 by usage, with less than 1% market share in real-world assets and less than 0.01% in stablecoins. Ripple itself issued 90% of its $RLUSD stablecoin on Ethereum and other non-XRP Ledger chains. They don’t even rely on their own infrastructure. No single bridge currency on a siloed blockchain solves liquidity fragmentation, especially when the majority of global value exists outside the XRP Ledger. At this point, XRP’s role appears to be that of a bank-themed meme coin that Ripple sells to retail investors to finance corporate acquisitions and stock buybacks. It’s simple: Ripple externalizes costs to $XRP holders while internalizing value for its shareholders. This is clear to anyone who has spent time critically analyzing Ripple, exploring the counter-thesis, or examining the broader competitive landscape. The only people who don’t see it are those who remain in an echo chamber and never question their assumptions. It’s not too late to step back.