August Newsletter: BTC New ATH Ethereum Turns 10, Treasury Companies Explode, and BASE App Goes Live.

July brought a collision of politics, capital markets, and crypto-native reflexivity. Traditional finance responded to Trump-era economic maneuvers, while crypto continued to rewrite corporate treasury strategy, push new onchain primitives, and mark ten-year milestones. This wasn’t a quiet summer lull. This was a pressure cooker of liquidity, speculation, and recalibration.

Macro: America Leans In

Liquidity is still climbing, though the pace has moderated. Global liquidity grew at 8.8% annualized over the last three months, down from 18% in Q2. Historically, risk assets trail this movement by roughly three months, which means July’s rising liquidity backdrop is setting the stage for Q4 risk appetite, barring any unforeseen geopolitical shocks or inflation surprises.

Washington, meanwhile, lit a fire under trade policy. President Trump’s flurry of bilateral trade agreements with 33 countries culminated in a sweeping tariff reset. Baseline duties rose from 10% to 15%, boosting projected revenues by $300–400 billion annually. The flip side? Foreign markets dropped reciprocal tariffs on U.S. exports. The broader goal is clear: drive domestic investment, de-risk foreign dependencies, and plug the $1.3 trillion deficit ballooning ahead of the September fiscal close.

At the center of Trump’s push is “The One Big Beautiful Bill,” which combines tax relief with stimulus for U.S. production. Corporate taxes remain at 21%, but new full expensing rules, R&D deductions, and bonus depreciation make the effective rate as low as 12%. If you're wondering where all this is headed, look no further than the bond market. With the deficit-to-GDP ratio projected to top 7% by 2026, investors are bracing for higher-for-longer rates. The Fed stood still in July, but Trump’s public spat with Powell and the Fed’s internal rifts signal turbulence ahead.

Finally, the credibility of U.S. job growth data is under scrutiny. In 2025, nonfarm payroll (NFP) reports have seen an average downward revision of 48 percent, a sharp reversal from 2024, when figures were typically revised upward by about 12 percent. These swings stem from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' reliance on partial survey data at the time of the initial release, with full results arriving weeks later. The size and direction of these revisions have raised concerns about the reliability of key employment indicators that drive Federal Reserve policy and shape investor sentiment. What initially appeared as strong second-quarter job growth now looks overstated.

Meanwhile, Federal Reserve Governor Adriana Kugler has announced her resignation, potentially giving Donald Trump a chance to reshape the Fed if reelected. Despite speculation, Trump said he would not try to remove Jerome Powell as Fed Chair, citing the risk of financial instability. The comment echoes his broader approach to economic policy—assertive but cautious when it comes to markets.

SEC’s Project Crypto Sets the Stage for Regulatory Reset

The SEC’s newly announced Project Crypto marks the agency’s most direct effort yet to build a regulatory framework around digital assets without defaulting to outdated securities law. Chairman Paul Atkins’ declaration that “most crypto assets are not securities” signals a break from years of ambiguity that pushed development overseas. This is less a policy tweak, more a full rebuild.

The move draws historical parallels to past structural shifts, including the 1960s clearing crisis and the 1999 introduction of Regulation ATS, which legitimized electronic trading venues. Now, Project Crypto seeks to define onchain activity within modern legal boundaries.

Five priorities are on the table: clarifying token distribution rules, updating digital asset custody, enabling hybrid trading platforms for securities and non-securities, allowing automated market makers in regulated markets, and offering carve-outs for new business models. The proposed “super-app” license could erase the line between traditional and crypto markets by allowing both asset classes on a single platform.

Firms like Nexo, OKX, and Deribit are already ramping up U.S. operations ahead of anticipated clarity. Winners will be those with strong legal infrastructure and compliance-first models. The new rules won’t arrive overnight, but when they do, they’ll likely shape the next decade of crypto capital markets.

The Crypto Treasury Gold Rush

What MicroStrategy started in 2020 has metastasized into a full-blown capital market strategy. Crypto Treasury Companies (CTCs) are now a $160 billion market, up nearly 4x in the last year. Once dominated by BTC, the tide is shifting. BTC firms still account for 75% of the total CTC market cap, but ETH and SOL are quickly catching up. ETH treasury firms, in particular, exploded from $1 billion to $10 billion in three months, lifting ETH prices by 50% in the process.

Strategy (MSTR) is still the benchmark, having doubled its BTC stack over Q4–Q1 by issuing equity far above NAV. But the new class of CTCs isn’t just copying the playbook; they’re accelerating it. BitMine Immersion Technologies (BMNR), a hybrid ETH-BTC treasury firm, announced a $1 billion stock buyback—despite trading at a 54% premium to NAV. The goal wasn’t value—it was survival. After a $250 million PIPE registration unlocked in early July, selling pressure mounted, dropping BMNR’s share price nearly 40%. The repurchase was less about efficiency and more about managing float and optics.

That same dynamic is playing out across the space. PIPE investors, having bought shares near NAV, are unloading into retail enthusiasm once their equity unlocks, creating short-term pops followed by painful drops. This strategy only works when retail is willing to buy at steep premiums, which they have been. But that behavior won’t last forever. As the float on these firms jumps from 2% to 95% over the next few months, more volatility is guaranteed. Some CTCs will get crushed. Others, like Strategy and Metaplanet, may consolidate dominance.

Ethereum at 10: Still Up, Still Running

Ethereum quietly hit its tenth birthday on July 30. Its most remarkable feat isn’t the TVL or protocol revenue, but the uptime. Ethereum has never gone down. Not once. In a world where legacy tech fails under far less pressure, that stat speaks volumes. The network is not just surviving, it’s evolving. This month, the first block of Ethereum’s second decade was produced by BuilderNet, a decentralized Flashbots-powered system designed to neutralize MEV and refund users. It’s already returned over 1,000 ETH.

Meanwhile, Linea introduced a bold ETH-aligned L2 economic design. It burns 20% of L2 ETH fees at the base layer, supporting ETH scarcity. The other 80% goes toward burning LINEA, creating a dual-token flywheel. With over 263 million transactions and median fees near $0.02, Linea is quietly making the case that scaling Ethereum doesn’t have to come at the cost of its values.

Base Goes Parabolic

Base now leads Solana in daily token launches, a milestone that would’ve sounded absurd six months ago. The surge is driven by Zora’s “Coins,” a blend of social media and liquidity mining where every post and profile becomes a tradable token. The reflexivity is huge as more users post, more tokens launch, leading to more trading, which fuels more engagement.

The Base App ties it all together. Every post becomes a token. Creator coins have fixed 1B supply, with half streamed to the creator over five years and 1% of each trade kicking back in $ZORA to the original poster. It’s Web3 social at full speed—over 3 million traders, 1.6 million tokens, $470 million in volume. Whether it’s a bubble or a blueprint is still up for debate. But it’s working.

Token Treasury Tension

Altcoin treasuries are stirring controversy. Critics argue it’s a glorified exit ramp for whales holding illiquid bags. Firms are raising capital at massive multiples to market cap, scooping up ETH, SOL, even DOGE, and rebranding themselves as CTCs. The Ether Machine, SharpLink Gaming, and BitMine are among the biggest ETH buyers, now pushing ETH perp dominance past BTC for the first time. Institutions are playing catch-up with retail on ETH exposure.

But some analysts say this ends in blood. PIPE unlocks begin in August. With floats expanding and price gains already locked in, a cascade of selling is expected. Firms without real revenue or strategic edge will fold. Those who bought at NAV will look to exit at 1.5x or 2x before the door closes. The reflexivity that pushed prices up could work in reverse. September to November may mark the unwind phase. 

Technical Upgrades Across Various Projects 

Ethereum: The next major upgrade, Fusaka, is advancing on schedule with a projected mainnet release in early November. Developers will begin public testnet deployments starting mid-September. Looking ahead, the planning phase has begun for Glamsterdam, which could include significant changes like a reduced slot time and further steps toward proposer-builder separation. Meanwhile, Ethereum’s gas limit has been raised to 45 million, expanding execution capacity.

Ethereum L2s – Polygon: Polygon PoS underwent its most significant upgrade since launch, replacing Tendermint with CometBFT and updating its Cosmos SDK stack. These changes improve finality to roughly 5 seconds and retire legacy tech constraints.

Base: BaseApp debuted as a modular super-app concept, blending on-chain social feeds, AI agents, payments, and mini-apps into a crypto-native interface. The rollout is framed as crypto’s answer to platforms like WeChat and TikTok.

Solana: Jito Foundation and Labs launched the Block Assembly Marketplace (BAM), a verifiable, revenue-sharing block builder protocol using TEEs and custom logic plugins. Separately, Solana activated SIMD-0256, increasing compute unit limits per block to 60 million, paving the way for more complex app execution.

BNB Chain: BNB Chain completed two major hard forks in early 2025, cutting block times and slashing MEV exploitation by 95%, according to internal estimates. Gas fees remain under a cent per transaction. The upcoming gas limit hike to 1 billion is expected to drive another wave of usage. Meanwhile, Binance integrated FastFinality, reducing confirmation times from 15 to 5 blocks.

Hyperliquid: The launch of CoreWriter on mainnet enables Ethereum-style smart contracts on Hyperliquid to directly write to its high-speed trading engine, allowing deeper composability without off-chain workarounds. This closes the loop on their full-stack trading infrastructure.

Cosmos: Cosmos Hub has scrapped plans for its own EVM-based smart contract platform, citing high development costs and poor alignment with its IBC-first architecture. The Hub will instead double down on its role in cross-chain services.

Odds and Ends

• ETH ETFs are seeing surging interest, with daily volumes reaching $3B. Perp dominance flipped BTC. Treasuries tied to ETH now exceed $10B.

• Solana’s memecoin dominance remains intact. Let’s Bonk holds 82% share, TROLL reached $60M FDV, and PUMP rebounded 30%.

• NFT floors bounced early in July, with CryptoPunks peaking at $210K, before retracing mid-month.
  

Closing Thoughts

The market is reflexive. Treasury companies issue stock to buy crypto, which sends their stocks higher, which lets them raise more, which drives token prices up, which pushes their NAV higher. It’s self-reinforcing—until it isn’t. Meanwhile, regulators, quants, and macro headwinds loom. Crypto isn’t dead, but the easy gains are. Whether you’re in altcoin treasuries, creator coins, or playing the macro trade, the music is still playing. Just know where the exits are.