ET TU, STRIPE?

Hi,

We’re livestreaming now, tune in.  

Agenda for today’s show:

• AI boyfriends

• Sports betting and the world of tabletop gaming with writer David Hill

• AI valuations and FIGMA’s IPO with VC Maya Bakhai

• The future of media with Daisy Alioto

Bye!

The Boys

Writer: Deana

Stripe builds its own chain. News leaked Monday that Stripe, fresh off the Bridge and Privy acquisitions, is spinning up its own Layer-1 to power its big bets on crypto. It will be EVM-compatible, so friendly to Ethereum tools, but not strictly “Ethereum aligned” since they didn’t decide to build, say, an L2.

Circle piled on with its announcement of Arc, a payments-focused Layer-1. Needless to say, the ETH maxis are mad and posting through it. The corpo L1 era is upon us: fintechs want predictability, compliance controls, and fee capture at the base layer, not just apps on someone else’s chain.

ETH Highs. Sad, struggling ETH holders (me) who have been watching Bitcoin’s price ascend to the heavens, finally got a win this week as ETH started moving, hitting north of $4,600 as of this morning.

There are two main reasons for this, which are related.

1) Crazy inflows to ETH ETFs. “Corporate hoards expand” is the erotic descriptor that Bloomberg used.

2) Tom Lee, a former J.P. Morgan chief equity strategist and now Ethereum treasury company guy, keeps going on boomer TV and singing from the crypto hymnbook. He’s talking his own book, of course, as he’s currently trying to raise $20B to buy more ETH for BitMine, his Ethereum Treasury company. His talking points include how Ethereum is set to have its Bitcoin 2017 moment, Ethereum is the choice for Wall Street, zero downtime, legally compliant and secure, AI meets crypto, etc. Inject it in my veins, Tom.

Quick Hits.

• If you work anywhere near media, read this rn → “The Future of Media is a Bank.”

• Crypto kidnapping story goes viral in NYMag.

• The girlies over on r/myBoyfriendIsAI are going through it thanks to the new ChatGPT-5 model release.