The bear case on $LIT was that Robinhood picked Bitstamp over Lighter for US perps @Lighter_xyz responded by announcing it plans to file for its own CFTC derivatives license in November, aiming to be the first CFTC-approved on-chain perp DEX @citrini gave it a 10% weight in their portfolio. I was late getting into position on $LIT, but I still beat them to it. Let's unpack the bear FUD first. At @RobinhoodApp's Sept 29th summit, it said US perps would run through Bitstamp, and LIT fell 14-20% I, personally, lost several trillion imaginary dollars in the great nothing-burger panic that day. Then came Lighter's Q3 gigachad investor call on Oct 21st. The team said it plans to submit the application in November. The CFTC should respond within 180 days. When I had Lighter's Head of Growth, Trevor King @trevor_flipper on @MilkRoadDaily in September, he told me the team was "spending a lot of time with the CFTC trying to get US licensing." Founder Vladimir Novakovski says the team has been talking with regulators for about 11 months. (Translation: they've hashed things out) LIT jumped about 19% after the investor call, to $3.94 I, personally, made several trillion imaginary dollars that day of days. The license matters because of how Lighter makes money. Retail trades for ZERO fees, and Lighter earns from premium tiers sold to market makers and API traders King's pitch: "Zero fees makes us a really good dance partner because we can share economics really well." A US license lets Lighter pitch that to US brokers directly Robinhood already took the deal outside the US. Lighter runs the perps in Robinhood's wallet on a 50/50 revenue split Lighter buys $LIT with that revenue and burns it: 15.64M on Jul 10 and 2.45M on Oct 11, over 7% of circulating supply Across both instances, Lighter now carries about $1.6B of open interest and did about $2.9B of volume in the last 24 hours (from whenever I last checked before writing all this at two in the morning) The product keeps shipping too, and this, to me, is the huge thing everyone is overlooking. Lighter isn't going after just perps. They are coming for every trading market they can reach. - BTC and ETH binary options went live this week (prediction markets) - Lighter Core passed 1M accounts - King told me a full options suite is coming by the end of the year - all your trade are belong to us Alright, now a dose of reality. They still don't have the actual license yet, and King told me the CFTC gets a 180-day window to answer an application. So it could be a bit. The team and investor cliff also ends Dec 27 per Tokenomist, and @m0xt_ estimates about $50M of tokens a month could unlock from January against about $3M a month of buybacks Lighter's Founder and CEO @vnovakovski addressed these concerns in the Q3 gigachad investor call as well, but the concerns remain for the time being. Supply of LIT and demand for all of its products are going to battle it out on the charts for a while, perhaps, but ultimately, this market is huge, and Lighter is extremely well positioned. They have an amazing team, bold strategy, and proven results. I think it's pretty $LIT CoinGecko lists Lighter's Robinhood Chain instance alone at about $421M of open interest. I am also openly interested. Disclosure: I hold $LIT in my Milk Road PRO portfolio. We were early to $UNI (+54.8%), $AERO (+93.7%), and $SOL (+39.1%) Try Milk Road PRO for $1 for 7 days, link in bio: @BitcoinJesusETH

Lighter told investors on its Q3 call it plans to file for a CFTC derivatives license in November, and $LIT jumped 19% The goal: the first CFTC-approved onchain perp DEX If approved, it opens the US market to Lighter Full disclosure: $LIT is in my Milk Road PRO portfolio Fuller disclosure: You're not bullish enough, and everyone is talking about it when you're not around Writing a longer update. It's gonna be LIT. Moar soon.

Three of the biggest names in finance just made BIG moves toward $ETH - @CharlesSchwab opened $BTC and $ETH trading to eligible clients - @DeutscheBank is about to custody $BTC and $ETH - @jpmorgan Coin is live on Ethereum mainnet Ethereum's strategy of going after institutional capital has paid off. All of these are small wins in an ongoing effort that is still only just beginning. Ethereum spent years courting institutional capital while incumbents kept their distance and fought it. Now they're beginning to come to Ethereum. Understand what this means. Charles Schwab has 40.3M brokerage accounts and $13.33T in client assets, and every eligible U.S. retail client can now buy $BTC and $ETH right next to their stocks Deutsche Bank says its custody service for institutional clients launches in Germany this year (reportedly within weeks). Initial support: $BTC, $ETH, USDC, EURC and EURAU Then JPMorgan. JPM Coin is a dollar deposit token, one token for one dollar held at the bank. It's been running on Base, Coinbase's Ethereum L2, since last November. On Monday, it went live on Ethereum mainnet Kinexys, JPMorgan's internal blockchain unit, pointed to Ethereum's "established depth of onchain liquidity and tokenized assets" For context, JPMorgan moves about $12T in payments a day, per Bloomberg. Kinexys averages about $7B a day. That's a lot of capital and a lot of volume coming to Ethereum and to $ETH. I said on @MilkRoadDaily this week that the market is going blind to these wins. All of these announcements came out, and nobody really noticed. But regardless of anyone paying attention or not, all of global finance is quietly choosing to come to Ethereum. When @fundstrat Tom Lee came on @MilkRoadDaily, he told me a financial institution adopts something when "it's a 10x improvement over what they do today" Three of the biggest financial institutions in the world just voted with their feet $BTC and $ETH benefit first. I think $ETH benefits the most. Here's why. Institutional capital moves onchain. Then the products follow: - JPMorgan has already launched two tokenized money market funds on Ethereum - Deutsche Bank plans tokenized deposits and digital bond issuance for clients - @BlackRock has launched multiple new onchain products in the last couple of months When a bank builds on Ethereum, it's leaning on Ethereum's security, and that security runs on ETH. Every JPM Coin transfer on mainnet pays gas in ETH and is secured by validators staking ETH At TOKEN2049 this month, Tom Lee said $ETH could top $5,000 by year-end. That's about 2x from $2,435 I don't know if that will happen by the end of 2026, but if Ethereum becomes the root of global finance, then even Tom is too low Nobody is bullish enough Believe in somETHing WARTIME ETHEREUM Full disclosure: $ETH and $BTC are positions in my Milk Road PRO portfolio. Our PRO team was early to $UNI (+54.8%), $AERO (+93.7%), and $SKY (+42.6%) Try Milk Road PRO for $1 for 7 days, link in bio: @BitcoinJesusETH