This editorial is from last week’s edition of the newsletter Week in Review. Subscribe to the newsletter to get this weekly editorial the second it’s finished. The newsletter also includes the biggest stories of the week with a comment on each story.
Key Takeaways.
Bitcoin held $80K as Jamie Coutts flagged treasury demand, pointing to a stronger next BTC bid. Stablecoins hit $321B as Tether’s $20B gold stash and Kraken’s $600M deal pushed rails mainstream.Zcash rose 72% in 30 days as Tushar Jain backed privacy, setting up a bigger 2026 ZEC debate.That split is classic Ethereum. Enormous embedded economic value, meaningful infrastructure dominance, but endless opportunities for the timeline to become psychologically uninvestable.
That creates pressure up and down the stack. It pressures exchange fees, it pressures narrative premiums, and it pressures the idea that crypto-native firms automatically deserve higher take rates just because they were early.
The KelpDAO and LayerZero saga kept bleeding into new corners of the market this week.
-Alex Richardson
