Who is actually accruing the value created in crypto? This started as a conversation on the @Blockworks TG group with @santiagoroel and a few others. Venture in crypto has shrunk a lot! and imo the main reason is that on-chain revenue pools have been far smaller than anticipated. From Blockworks data, total on-chain revenue was roughly $8B in 2025, so I wanted to see how much off-chain/Centralized companies are capturing from this industry by comparison. So consider the off-chain pool: public companies like coinbase, Gemini, BitGo, Bullish, plus crypto revenue from Robinhood, Galaxy etc and private players like Binance, Tether, FalconX, Anchorage, etc. The result surprised me: off-chain companies generate ~$70B roughly, consider roughly a range between 60B to 100B, 8.5x more than on-chain protocols and L1s. To put that $8B in perspective: even if you give on-chain protocols generous 70% EBITDA margins and a 30x multiple, the entire addressable market cap today is ~$168B ($8B × 70% = $5.6B EBITDA × 30x). That's the whole on-chain pie, less than a single mega-cap tech company. Do the same for centralized companies at a more realistic 40% EBITDA margin: $70B × 40% = $28B EBITDA × 30x = ~$840B of justified market cap. Even with lower margins, that's 5x the entire on-chain ecosystem. And to put even that in perspective: the entire centralized crypto industry, all of it combined, is basically worth one OpenAI or Anthropic. The breakdowns are telling too. On-chain, L1/L2 chains take almost half the pool (~49%), with launchpads/trading apps and DEXs/perps splitting most of the rest. Off-chain, it's exchanges and brokers dominating at ~66%, with stablecoin issuers second at ~19%, everything else (market making, payments, infra, asset mgmt) is single digits. Both worlds are extremely concentrated at the top of the same funnel: trading and the rails to do it. From a venture perspective, you were often better off investing early in L1s and traditional exchanges than in most tokens. It was a bit simpler than we thought. To me the common denominator: off-chain companies sit much closer to the end user than protocols and L1s. They own that relationship and monetize it well. They abstract away crypto's complexity: trade, stake, store, manage without ever touching a coldcard or metamask app and people pay up BIG for that. On-chain is clearly in a bear market, but the lesson for protocols, L1s, and on-chain primitives is to build and verticalize more. Get closer to the end user. One caveat: this is an approximation, done with Claude's help. Many of these companies don't have public earnings, so the private side (Binance, Tether, and especially "other private") is mostly an educated guess. Directionally though, the gap is hard to argue with.

While at RareEvo I met with a company working on this very solution. In an increasing digital world, physical commodities are now the scarce resource. Digital twins provide the authenticity. Blockchains, transparency. And yes, we geeked out on all the new applications this brings

CT missed the most important earnings call of the week. It wasn't a crypto company. It was @Cloudflare Everyone caught the wallet announcement. The real alpha was in the call itself. Today Cloudflare monetizes the internet through subscriptions: security services, AI platform spend, pools of funds. A mix of SaaS and IaaS economics. The CEO was explicit that AI agents are about to break that model. Cloudflare sits in front of roughly 20% of internet traffic. Here's what that traffic looks like from the call: - AI agent requests up 1,700% YoY - Agents crossed 50% of total network traffic this quarter. First time in history non-human traffic is the majority. Management admitted it happened faster than their own models - Their projection: if trends hold, non-human traffic outnumbers human traffic 1000x within 5 years The monetization shift is the key part. The ad-supported internet doesn't work when the visitor is an agent. Cloudflare's CEO answer: block malicious bots for free, charge good agents a tiny fee per request. Fractions of a penny. They want to be the ones defining that layer. Now the throughput math here: - Cloudflare handles ~500M requests per second - They estimate 1 to 10% is monetizable via micro/nanotransactions - That means 10M TPS on day one, scaling to 100M TPS Visa peaks at ~20k TPS The CEO's framing: "we're building this while others compete with Visa." Three to four orders of magnitude beyond card rails. No existing payment network can settle this. It has to be something new. Two conclusions I keep coming back to: - Being short L1 throughput is being short agentic workflows. If agent traffic gets monetized per request, the settlement layer needs to scale orders of magnitude beyond anything live today. - The fee math for L1s flips. Base fees have collapsed across ETH, SOL, everywhere. MEV is getting internalized by apps. Hard to build a base fee revenue case at human scale. But at 10M TPS and $0.001 per transaction, you're looking at ~$315B a year in base fees alone. At 100M TPS the number gets silly. Stablecoins and crypto are the end-game here for Agentic finance @jerallaire @circle

I’m looking forward to attending RareEvo for the 4th year in a row. The team always puts on a stellar. this is hands down one of the best annual industry conferences in the U.S. Major kudos to the team for once again raising the bar, and executing in this dynamic market!

Blockchain is converging on Las Vegas. 80+ Speakers. 60+ Exhibitors. 1000's of Attendees. 1 Unforgettable Event. It's all about the numbers. Rare Evo 2026 is 2 WEEKS AWAY!

Treasury proposals need to add a social credit score for the teams doing the work. Cash and the @AnvilDevAgency team is a rare 11/10 for commitment, loyalty, and perseverance. Adoption based proposals are risky, Cardano needs people like this for its best chance at success.

I genuinely believe Cardano NEEDS this. Deep collaboration, innovative tech, transparent on-chain Bitcoin infrastructure + liquidity. Let's change the game! 🔵🤝🟠 Encourage your Drep to vote YES for Alchemy and to build the growth infrastructure Bitcoin needs here on Cardano

Even oil can go to zero, but not for long. The current panic and market capitulation = a great buying opportunity.

Circle just raised $222m for Arc. Canton's parent company, Digital Asset, is raising $300M right now. a16z just raised $2.2B for their Fund V. Haun raised $1B for their second fund. Kraken's parent company, Payward, is raising at a $20B valuation. Tether in talks to raise at $500B valuation. Rain raised $250M at a $2B valuation. Dozens of smaller raises have been announced as of late. The best founders and deals I've seen lately have been reasonably valued with extremely good business models in their decks. I'm starting to think crypto early-stage investing is back...

One element about AI is how this serves as both a cost-efficient synthetic resource and an engine for “human transformation.” We all need to consider the next 9-18 months and how integral AI tooling provide a huge boost to productivity, output, and skill development.

We can't handle high traffic. That's why CF wants to market to low traffic but consistent transaction enterprise adoption. It's what we can handle. Anytime we brought in hype, it was brutally murdered by our current technical capabilities. We take a black eye every time. Cardano is not ready. We cannot reach sustainable revenue with the current capabilities. The network costs more than it makes. The tree cannot bear fruit if the trunk dies. We're too focused on short term prices and bad feelings to understand that we cannot win if we don't fix these problems. It doesn't matter what anyone thinks about prior spending. That's done. Gone. Over. We need to collectively stop trying to wag fingers and be right and start working. Price is down for everyone. Capabilities keep moving forward. If we want to win, we need to spend and complete the roadmap. The arguments against this are based on emotional pain and not assessment of our capacity and how to improve it until we can fill the bucket where transaction fees cover the rewards output. We cannot handle a huge influx of transactions with an acceptable user experience. We need to fix this. We *must* be ready for the next surge, or the treasury will be worth zero anyway.

To all the people in Switzerland lets go to Spar and pay with ADA

In honor of Valentine's Day, CARDANO and midnight. They were meant to be together. Love at first sight. @Cardano_CF @midnightfdn

Hi Cardano Community, There are lots of events happening in Hong Kong during @consensus_hk week. This time, SIDAN Lab is co-hosting an event with @Cardano_CF and @awscloud : Cardano Venture Hub Presents: Web3 Founders Night. In addition to Cardano project presentations, we’ve invited special guests to share their perspectives on Web3 startups and where the space is heading. Can’t make it in person? No worries — we’ll be livestreaming the event on both the @Cardano and @sidan_lab X accounts. Date/Time: Thursday, Feb 12 6:00–8:00 PM (UTC+8) You’ll also be able to vote online for your favorite presentation — don’t miss it. See you there! luma.com/qq1ycris

If you're in Hong Kong for Consensus, join us tomorrow, 12 February, for the Web3 Founders Night. 🇭🇰 Startup pitches, investor insights, and networking with teams building across Web3. Co-hosted with @awscloud and @sidan_lab. Learn more and register: luma.com/qq1ycris