Well, then, what are we going to do when the thunderbolt has fallen~ alum of @robinhoodapp's media arm sherwood news, @unchained_pod, and @coindesk
he/HIM
Joined May 2013
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Will Los Angeles elect a democratic socialist mayor? I wrote a featured story for Kalshi's editorial newsletter on the closing stretch of the Los Angeles mayoral race between Karen Bass and Nithya Raman, with commentary from USC political science professor Christian Grose and CMC government professor John Pitney.
This matters for at least three reasons:
(1) Locally, Los Angeles voters across party lines are still weighing which candidate can better manage the city’s challenges, including wildfire crisis response, policing, and homelessness.
(2) The election has a national framing: a Democrat who is part of the legacy establishment against an up-and-coming democratic socialist. If Raman wins the election, Los Angeles would follow New York City, where a younger challenger endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America defeated an establishment Democrat 🗳️📬 .
(3) The race is drawing serious trading interest‼️ The market event has become the fourth-largest contract on Kalshi by volume at more than $102.7 million, trailing only markets on the 2028 Democratic presidential nominee, the National Football League champion, and the winner of Major League Baseball’s World Series🌐. Prediction market-implied odds of Raman winning the mayoral race stand at 53%, a six-percentage-point lead over Bass’ 46.9%, a reversal from Bass’ 23.6-percentage-point advantage one month ago.
Imagine interviewing hella people & receiving the results immediately. As a journalist and a person concerned in what real people have to say, I've been curious about doing a temperature check on the crypto ecosystem, especially in the industry's first drawdown in its institutional era.
I ended up writing this piece for an AI startup that centers on conversational ai-moderated interviews and surveys. My study had 56 participants who had exposure to crypto. Here's the findings:
(1) Participants placed influencers, memecoins, and scams at the top of the list of the worst things to happen to the crypto industry. (2) Customer taste has matured and is maturing as participants talked at length about how they’ve opted into ordinary finance.
Let me know, I can share the link without any trouble~ I swearrrrrr
$Bonk, the dog-inspired memecoin that arguably breathed life into solana after FTX, is officially in the deepest part of the gutter. We’ll have to see whether the token’s story is finished or not.
Let me reintroduce myself, my name is Sage D. Young, a technology journalist. I've spent my career covering crypto and most recently AI infrastructure at Robinhood's media arm Sherwood News, Unchained, and CoinDesk. I like taking complicated financial, technical stuff and making it make sense to people who don't follow this stuff for a living.
Today, I'm dipping my toes into the colosseum by writing more on this platform. The motivation is threefold: (1) chronicling each observation to exercise the brain as a muscle, (2) making the journey transparent should provide educational and entertainment value to those who follow along, and (3) ultimately, deepen my knowledge of emerging technologies. +EV comes from shelling out my personal brand with skin in the game.
The two primary tools I've been using has been @hypurrdash for desktop and @SplashOS for mobile. The former allows me to track whales, while the latter helps me look at price action when I'm inevitably away from my desk.
Current thoughts:
1. Global investors know about the demand constraints for compute thanks to Kimi K3. I'm on the side that the AI drawdown is a mid-cycle correction instead of a full cycle top.
2. Robinhood Chain... $Cashcat has rebounded off its lows. I'm also not the most hyped about another launchpad, but @ponsdotfamily is worth taking a look at, perhaps I should experiment. RH is definitely taking advantage of Base's mishaps. I remember BaseIsForEveryone... RIP. Writing now about Robinhood breaks my heart a bit, because I sincerely enjoyed reporting on crypto for their news publication Sherwood News. Again RIP
3. $SOL in the past seven days has been lagging behind $BTC, $ETH, and $XRP with $BONK at its lowest levels since 2023. The memecoin governance "drainer" has fully jeeted their holdings. I expect $BONK to bounce, though this is against consensus as traders from all cohorts remain bearish.
Let me reintroduce myself, my name is Sage D. Young, a technology journalist. I've spent my career covering crypto and most recently AI infrastructure at Robinhood's media arm Sherwood News, Unchained, and CoinDesk. I like taking complicated financial, technical stuff and making it make sense to people who don't follow this stuff for a living.
Today, I'm dipping my toes into the colosseum by writing more on this platform. The motivation is threefold: (1) chronicling each observation to exercise the brain as a muscle, (2) making the journey transparent should provide educational and entertainment value to those who follow along, and (3) ultimately, deepen my knowledge of emerging technologies. +EV comes from shelling out my personal brand with skin in the game.
The two primary tools I've been using has been @hypurrdash for desktop and @SplashOS for mobile. The former allows me to track whales, while the latter helps me look at price action when I'm inevitably away from my desk.
Current thoughts:
1. Global investors know about the demand constraints for compute thanks to Kimi K3. I'm on the side that the AI drawdown is a mid-cycle correction instead of a full cycle top.
2. Robinhood Chain... $Cashcat has rebounded off its lows. I'm also not the most hyped about another launchpad, but @ponsdotfamily is worth taking a look at, perhaps I should experiment. RH is definitely taking advantage of Base's mishaps. I remember BaseIsForEveryone... RIP. Writing now about Robinhood breaks my heart a bit, because I sincerely enjoyed reporting on crypto for their news publication Sherwood News. Again RIP
3. $SOL in the past seven days has been lagging behind $BTC, $ETH, and $XRP with $BONK at its lowest levels since 2023. The memecoin governance "drainer" has fully jeeted their holdings. I expect $BONK to bounce, though this is against consensus as traders from all cohorts remain bearish.
The person who started Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov more than seven months ago is an entirely different person who finished it on the Amtrak train from Boston in May.
THE BOOK IS SO GOOD. Very proud of myself for completing it in 2026. It's too easy to make Alyosha my favorite character, but still, he has become one of my best friends alongside Nao from @ozekiland Tale for the Time Being. Alyosha's speech to his boys at the end of the book made me excessively sentimental. When he was like however bad we may become in the future, God forbid, recall on the day when we buried our dear friend, the good, the brave, and the honest inside of us...
Mitya and Grushenka, however, are my favorite characters. As individuals and as a couple, they are brazyyy. Mitya fascinates me. How can someone embody chaos to the tee but be obsessed with honor? Everyone who has shared their take about the book online always points the scene between Alyosha and Mitya just before Mitya is to learn about the court's judgement. "Though I sit alone on a pillar—I exist! I see the sun, and if I don't see the sun, I know it's there. And there's a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there.” Dostoevsky is so freakinggggg good!!!!!
People can see the moment when $ORCL said it would issue tens of billions more in debt or equity to fund its AI infrastructure push. Market not super happy
Oil is the only green asset in Hyperliquid’s top open interest tickets — $BRENTOIL has increased 2.21% in the last 24 hours to trade at $93.13, while $WTIOIL has climbed 2.49% in the period to trade at $90.01 on Wednesday afternoon.
While Trump announced on Truth Social the US military secretly escorted 200 commercial ships and more than 100 million barrels of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, the war in Iran is mounting with both sides trading hostilities. CNBC reported two hours ago that Trump said the US will hit Iran “hard again today,” pressuring Iran to sign a deal.
Crypto sold off with bitcoin, ethereum, solana, and hype all sliding in the day~ equities as well with Big Tech and semiconductors closing lower amidst additional macro pressure from hawkish jobs and inflation data.
“Today's declines came after data showed consumer prices rising 4.2% on an annualized basis, their highest level in three years, reflecting the war-fueled surge in energy prices,” said the Wall Street Journal in a Wednesday report. “The report largely matched expectations, with investors saying it won’t put additional pressure on the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates.”
The closing bell rings at 4 p.m. EST to mark the end of the day’s trading session, though blockchains such as Hyperliquid remain open to execute transactions.
Shares of Oracle have dropped in after-hour trading after the firm reported fiscal fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday after the bell. The software company turned hyperscaler posted revenue and earnings that exceeded analyst expectations.
> Sales of $19.2 billion (estimate: $19.1 billion)
> Adjusted earnings per share of $2.11 (estimate: $1.96)
> RPO (remaining performance obligations, or backlog) of $638 billion (estimate: $601.1 billion)
> Oracle Cloud Infrastructure revenue of $5.8 billion, versus the Street’s $5.7 billion
> Capex of $55.7 billion, above the $50.9 billion analysts had expected for the year
$ORCL also said it would issue tens of billions more in debt or equity to fund its AI infrastructure push. Meanwhile, Reuters reported that Oracle was awarded a US contract to provide government-wide HR software, news that didn’t help lift the stock
Always, @SplashOS
A #NewProfilePic feels appropriate given the way things are. If given the opportunity to shout at the top of my lungs ~ whether at a graduation when your person is walking across the stage, when you make the game-winning point in pickup basketball, or when the industry you are still loyal to is looking quite catastrophically grim ~ I’ll take that opportunity to scream as loud as possible 10 out of 10 times.
Some sentences after a few hours of sleep:
> Go New York, Go New York, Go. Jalen Brunson is fantastically great, a worthy superstar to lead the Knicks
> Still writing for Sherwood News, the media arm for Robinhood. The website is incredible, because users won’t find any advertisements, only insightful writing
> @wowens’s piece on @Strategy selling bitcoin in May, while @Polymarket saying it didn’t is well-written. Prediction markets without resolution integrity sounds nasty
> Despite the price action on ZEC (nosedive for those living under a rock) after @zooko’s detailed post on the counterfeit vulnerability that has since been patched, the token will not die, but it’s up to the invisible hand and/or market whales to determine the bottom. Looking like $300 so far. The silver-lining comes from @tayvano_about how zcash has knowledgeable security researchers with access to models. The larger & more interesting story, to me, is about how Taylor Hornby (@DefuseSec) got in @AnthropicAI’s whitelist by simply having a history of public security research; the firm didn’t do any actual identity verification
> Crypto sentiment in the gutter, compared to artificial intelligence and quantum. I like @Matt_Hougan’s arg that crypto has become contrarian again, which is a healthy step for the space. The industry was always meant to be niche, not mainstream
> Every single user on @HyperliquidX that has been liquidated is not hiding their hope for another airdrop. “Jeff Jefe, please,” they say.
> @Tether’s USDT is inching extremely close to @ethereum’s market capitalization, perhaps uncomfortably close for ETH diehards
Happy Friday
On the celebrating your friends~
Friends are chosen family, sometimes a bond as strong or stronger than blood because of the decision to be in each other’s corner. To show up in the front row & cheer for your homie is especially profound in an age when loneliness is a deep problem. It’s not everyday someone achieves an accomplishment. Give them their flowers. Each of us have to do things alone, whether it’s studying in a library, finishing problem sets, or writing an essay. They did the hard work as an individual, but they still belong to a community. Give them their flowers, it’s wonderful
Will be attending bitcoin scaling conference @OPNEXT2026 from @Blockspace as reporter for @Sherwood_News, the media arm of Robinhood.
Last year, in an interview with Frank Holmes, executive chairman of HIVE Digital Technologies, I learned more about how miners were the stepping stone for AI. Most recently, I wrote about Google Research's new whitepaper on quantum computing and how it affects bitcoin.
The conference aims to answer any longtail risk questions about bitcoin... I'm looking forward to my return to the conference circuit. If you're also pulling up, let me know>>>
Come play basketball with me at the basketball court at Harrison Street in Tribeca… It’s next to the water & has lights
ETH flipped in 2026? asked by @notthreadguy ...
Hyperliquid's market capitalization is $10.2 billion, while the figure for ethereum stands at $265. 6 billion.
If not the native token for the perpetual trading venue, perhaps Tether's USDT which is at $184.1 billion, Ripple's XRP ($89.5 billion), or Solana's SOL ($51.5 billion)??????????????
If YOU had to write the section of the 2014 Ethereum whitepaper that talked about applications, and take a first-principles perspective of what makes sense in defi, decentralized social, identity, and elsewhere, what would you write? At least take the step of marking all path-dependence concerns down to zero, pretend for a brief moment that the Ethereum chain today has exactly zero usage and you're the one suggesting or building the first apps, and see what comes out.
I think it's healthy for us in the Ethereum world to have a more bold and open mindset to many things, particularly on the application layer and on how we see ourselves in the world.
We should not compromise on core properties: censorship resistance, open source, privacy, security (CROPS). We should not have "open mindedness" of the type that leaves people with no confidence of what security properties the L1 will still have one year from now. We should not ask ourselves questions like "do we really need light clients to be able to trustlessly verify correctness of the chain?". But especially on the layer of applications and Ethereum's interface to the world, we should be more willing to radically rethink various concepts and step outside our comfort zone.
This includes issues of technological direction, eg. "what if AI basically means that wallets as browser extensions and mobile extensions are dead within a year?"
One example last year was the shift to thinking about privacy as a first-class consideration, something we value equally to the other types of security. This implies a radically different Ethereum application stack, because the entire stack so far has not been built around privacy. Great, let's build a radically different Ethereum application stack!
An example this year is the growing work on the networking side of privacy, both inside the EF and outside.
It includes application-layer issues, eg. "what if the rest of defi is basically just universal futures markets on top of a good decentralized oracle and letting users self-organize on top of that?", and "what if the ideal decentralized oracle is just a SNARK over M-of-N small LLMs over zk-TLSes of some major news sites?"
(BTW this is interrelated with the AI issue: one consequence of AI is that it moves "applications" away from being discrete categories of behavior with discrete UIs, and more toward being a continuous space, so "build fewer apps and rely on users to self-organize around them" should inevitably expand as a pattern)
One example this year is rethinking from zero the role of L2s, and what kind of L2s are actually most synergistic and additive to Ethereum.
It also includes culture. This is a big part of "the whole milady thing" for myself, @AyaMiyagotchi and others. Yes, it's a silly meme. Yes, I find the political takes of some milady partisans cringe and sometimes outright bootlickerish (though other milady partisans are quite the opposite). But the core underlying subtext, the message behind the message, is: rip off the suit and tie. If you have your suit and tie on, be willing to grab the nearest wine glass and spill it all over your suit and tie, so you have no choice but to rip it off and reclaim your body's full flexibility and freedom. Actually imagine yourself doing this the next time you get invited to a richpeopleslop formal gala dinner. Take the preconception that you are "respectable", write it down on a piece of paper, crumble it up and burn it. The psychological baptism of doing this leads to the intellectual baptism of unlocking greater creativity and expanding overton windows.
For too long, our algorithm in Ethereum has been: we have this existing ecosystem, what's the logical next step to make it one step better? Now, our algorithm should be: we have this L1 that is amazing and will become more amazing, we have a growing array of tools, both those built within our ecosystem and outside it, what are the most valuable things to build, knowing what we know now? If YOU had to write the section of the 2014 Ethereum whitepaper that talked about applications, and take a first-principles perspective of what makes sense in defi, decentralized social, identity, and elsewhere, what would you write? At least take the step of marking all path-dependence concerns down to zero, pretend for a brief moment that the Ethereum chain today has exactly zero usage and you're the one suggesting or building the first apps, and see what comes out. Do this even if you're the one building today's existing apps. This is how Ethereum can grow back stronger.
Something about old footage of the twin towers, especially in popular culture, strikes a chord with nostalgia. Postmodern, post-partisan, post-covid. Does history ever stop? Obviously not, but the feeling that it has sometimes emerges when walking around new york
