阿简在路上

It’s been almost 40 days since the last time I went out to Thailand, and I’ve just been stuck at home. I’m going out to clear my head, and it’s been a while since I went to Hainan for a trip too. I heard that a lot of big shots in the industry are now living there temporarily?

Polymarket is discussing raising $1B at a valuation of over $20B. Previously, in April, Polymarket’s fundraising valuation had already reached $15B, with related investments from ICE. It’s not hard to see that prediction markets are evolving into a new type of information market: sports, macroeconomics, regulation, geopolitics, and corporate events—all can be priced into odds.

Still, as A-jian says: Polymarket’s value isn’t that it predicts the most accurately, but that it makes public the beliefs of people with money to bet. The price isn’t a fact, but it is a viewpoint with a cost—what it sells is attention, probability, event data, media distribution, and financialized perspectives.

But with such a high valuation, regulation won’t be easy. The more prediction markets resemble mainstream financial media, the more regulators will treat them as being about B/C, derivatives, or market manipulation.

Solana is pushing forward supply-tightening proposals such as SIMD-0553 and SIMD-0550. The proposal directions include increasing the SOL fee burn, raising the daily burn of $SOL from about $47K to about $650K, potentially reaching 7,500–9,000 SOL in daily burned amounts, and accelerating the decline of inflation by moving the 1.5% target up to 2029. Currently, 24.94M SOL has already expressed support.

Solana has often been described as a high-performance chain, a memecoin chain, and a low-fee chain. But if fee burn and the inflation curve can truly be discussed seriously, it moves into monetary policy territory. After a public chain matures, it inevitably faces one problem: how to balance subsidies for validators, security budgets, and token holder value. ETH is debating the staking cap, while SOL is discussing higher burn—at the core, it’s the same problem.

It’s important to know that increasing burn isn’t a free lunch. Excessively suppressing inflation or changing the fee structure may affect validator returns and ecosystem costs. If the daily burn really rises from $47K to $650K, Solana’s way of attracting users will shift from speed and cheapness—toward whether proof of usage can translate into token scarcity.

The metrics that ordinary traders care about also need to expand beyond TPS and meme hype to include fees, burn, inflation targets, and validator earnings.

Uniswap may launch pools.trade today at 16:00 UTC (12:00 Beijing time). Market reports say this is a token-launch platform on the Robinhood Chain. The current page already shows “Coming soon from Uniswap,” and it even has a frog video.

If it does turn out to be a token-launch platform, that would mean Uniswap has moved one step further from trading infrastructure into issuance infrastructure. Previously, people traded tokens using a DEX; in the future, it could be possible to issue, set up pools, provide liquidity, and conduct buybacks within the same ecosystem. This is crucial for Uniswap: swap is the trading layer, launch is the supply layer—whoever controls supply is closer to the attention gateway.

Ajian has always said Uniswap’s biggest problem isn’t that nobody uses it, but whether token holders can capture value. If the line of Robinhood Chain + fee switch + pools.trade really comes together, the narrative of $UNI will flow much more smoothly than before.

Today $BTC 24h+0.2%, it looks calm. Although on August 4 the BTC spot ETF saw net inflows of $211M, bringing total AUM to $78.26B, the problem is that liquidity is drying up too. On-chain data shows the crypto market’s daily spot trading volume is about $15B, down a full 70% from the January peak.

That’s interesting: money is coming into the ETF, but overall market trading is getting less, so whether the “water level” rises can’t be judged only by how much water is added—it also depends on whether there are sell orders and leverage-related resistance in the middle. And if BTC falls below $60,962, the liquidation pressure from long positions on major CEXs could reach $1.432B; if it rises above $67,082, the liquidation pressure from shorts could be about $1.214B.

Today’s price action looks more like slow money patching up positions in low-liquidity conditions. This environment is most prone to false breakouts, because even a little buying can push the price up, and even a little selling can knock it down. A Jian suggests you watch these numbers:
First, $60,962—after breaking below, long liquidation pressure may reach $1.432B;
Second, $67,082—after breaking above, short liquidation pressure is around $1.214B;
Third, the ETF’s daily net inflow of $211M.

If price holds and consolidates above $64K while the ETF continues to flow in, that’s a slow repair. If the ETF is still flowing in but price breaks below $63K, be more cautious.

Haven't you wiped it off yet, bro? 🥳

The one you missed last night—today you can take a look at gold. It’s expected that $XAU will see a small pullback, so don’t place a directional entry.

NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin proposed establishing the NEAR Sovereign Fund, using reserves and protocol revenues to support ecosystem security and public goods, and to reduce the inflation of $NEAR in the long run. It is still under community discussion.

This is not a simple positive for $NEAR . Many other public-chain treasuries just leave money sitting there, but the sovereign fund concept is to put the treasury, revenues, inflation, and public goods into a single balance sheet. It is more like a governance experiment: can the protocol move from funding the ecosystem with token issuance subsidies to sustaining it with returns on assets?

Public chains used to love talking about the ecosystem—developers, events, hackathons, and subsidies—but this action with $NEAR is more like saying they will use protocol revenues and the treasury to support security and public goods over the long term, while reducing inflation.

I think this is a step of maturity for a public chain: early on you attract users with subsidies; in the mid stage you retain them with applications; and in the later stage you must rely on a balance sheet to sustain the ecosystem.

Two suspected addresses allegedly related to a16z transferred 979,000$HYPE into Hyperliquid, deposited it, and staked it, worth about $53.53M. At the same time, Hyperliquid whales’ positions are about $4.708B, and the long/short ratio is close to 1:1. Also, $HYPE has risen slightly over the past 24h, but ETF net outflows are $964.3K. The above data, whale contracts, and ETF products represent three different “money” languages and cannot be viewed together.

Spot staking is for VC / long-term accounts; whale positions are for contract accounts; ETF outflows are for product accounts.

The VC account says, “I’m willing to lock.” The contract account says, “I’m betting on volatility.” The ETF account says, “I’ll leave a bit first.”

A-Jian believes HYPE’s long-term thesis lies in trading flow and staking, while short-term risk lies in ETF outflows and high-leverage positions—both must be looked at together. If these staked addresses really are related to a16z, it represents a long-term staking signal, but the ETF outflow suggests the packaged product side isn’t hot.

So big-holder staking doesn’t mean there’s no selling pressure, and ETF outflows don’t necessarily mean the project has gotten worse. Next time you look at HYPE, remember to view staking, ETF, OI, and whale PnL together.

$ETH Over the past 24h, prices have basically been flat, and performance has been weaker than $BTC . As for ETFs, on August 3 there was a net outflow of $8.7M, while last Friday saw an inflow of $9M—this suggests capital is still probing back and forth. On the other hand, Bitmine has deposited another 150,120 ETH into Ethereum staking, meaning that of the 5.8M ETH it holds, 87% has already been staked, with a yield of about 2.66%

That’s pretty interesting: short-term ETF outflows can affect sentiment, but when treasury companies take ETH to stake, it’s a different kind of slow-moving factor. It doesn’t guarantee price will rise, but it does change circulating supply and how institutions hold it.

So A Jian’s still the same view: ETH’s problem right now isn’t that nobody is buying—it’s that the market hasn’t fully believed ETH can leave holders enough value. That’s why it’s being locked up by institutions on one side, while the price is still “disappointing” on the other.

For ordinary traders, you don’t need to guess whether ETH will go up or down tomorrow. Instead, watch ETF flows, the size of staking, treasury-company actions, and the value flowing back from L2 to the mainnet:

If ETF outflows expand and the price loses the $1,850 level, don’t force optimism first;
If ETF inflows resume, staking keeps expanding, and $1,850 holds, then re-evaluate whether it’s still being locked up.

How should we look at today’s $BTC ? It doesn’t seem like an emotional pump; it feels more like leveraged and options positions are being squeezed and rebalanced. Over the past 24 hours, it’s up roughly 1.6%. ETF net inflows are $58.7M. But when you combine that with last Friday’s outflow of $265.4M and the 36 “Fear & Greed Index,” you still can’t say that stable buying is back. More convincing is the derivatives side: over the past 24 hours, BTC liquidations were about $82.32M. The total BTC options OI across the whole market is roughly $26.03B. Deribit’s max pain is at $63,000—meaning the price is currently trading right along the options “pull” point.

So today’s big BTC isn’t a quick bull run back to strength, and it isn’t a dead-cat bounce either. It needs to prove two things: whether ETF inflows can continue, and whether the $62K–$63K area can keep getting absorbed. If ETF flows flip back to large outflows again, or if $63K is breached, then this small repair today could easily turn into a short-term longs’ psychological stop-loss.

Also, there’s news that a trader sold $173M worth of BTC call options, betting that BTC won’t break above $70K before September 25. If his view is right, he could keep $3.03M in premium. Don’t treat this large options position as a simple bearish bet on BTC. The person selling calls makes money from time value and volatility. As long as BTC doesn’t quickly push through $70K, he can eat the premium.

In summary, if you’re watching BTC today, pay attention to these three numbers:

First, $63K. This is Deribit BTC max pain and also the psychological level near the current price.
Second, $62.2K. This is near the 24-hour low; if it breaks, short-term support will likely be questioned.
Third, $70K. Because someone sold $173M in BTC calls, betting that it won’t break above this level by September 25.

So, did this pump actually hit us with some profit, brothers?

Tonight at 10:00 PM Beijing time, the U.S. Institute for Supply Management (ISM) manufacturing PMI for July and the final reading of S&P Global's manufacturing PMI will be released. The market currently expects them to have rebounded to around 54. Overall, they are still expected to remain in the expansion zone above 50, so after the U.S. stock market opens today, there may be a small positive surprise.

Yesterday I listed some key unlocks for the week but missed $PROVE . In fact, this is quite representative, because the unlock size of about $34.96M is roughly 104.17% of the circulating supply. The absolute amount may not be larger than the wider market’s capital, but this supply-percentage for many small coins is a structural shock pressure point.

You should know that what the market fears most isn’t just sell pressure—it’s not knowing how much fresh supply will enter the market. A $100M unlock facing a $10B liquid market may have limited impact; a $5M unlock facing extremely low liquidity can still smash a big hole.

So when dealing with small-cap coins, don’t just look at market cap and FDV. Pull up the unlock calendar for the next 30 days—especially the unlock-to-circulating ratio and the daily成交量-to-volume ratio—so you can avoid getting educated by the market.

A wallet related to Strategy withdrew 299.84, $BTC , about $18.91M. This wallet also sold 3,588 BTC for about $216M in July. And the narrative about corporate BTC treasuries has been the market’s core variable for the past few weeks. In the current liquidity environment, as long as the related wallet moves, the market will first think about potential sell pressure.

Without realizing it, the company’s BTC treasury has moved from an accumulation narrative into a stage of readily usable assets. I would categorize the company’s BTC holdings into three types:
Reserve-type: like long-term core assets—move them as little as possible;
Liquidity-type: use them when cash is needed;
Financing-narrative type: buying coins is part of the market story.

So don’t just look at the number of coins when assessing a company’s treasury. You also need to look at on-chain transfers, cash reserves, debt, share buyback pressure, dividend pressure—don’t blindly assume the trend.

Didn’t expect that Coldcard’s thread would still be fermenting today—an alleged 4th wave of attacks has emerged: 218 transactions moved about 388.9$BTC BTC from 462 addresses. You know, the scale of the previous rounds of attacks has already exceeded $88M. This is yet another reminder to all you friends: one thing—Web3 freedom comes with service fees.

If you lose your bank card, you can report it for cancellation; if you forget an exchange password, you can reset it; if you make a mistaken bank transfer, it’s annoying, but there’s still customer service. With self-custody BTC, the mnemonic phrase, firmware, signatures, address verification, backups, and even the device supply chain—all become your responsibility.

You think you’ve escaped the bank, but actually you’ve laid off the bank’s risk control team, and then you’re the one who has to stand in for them. That process is both cool and brutal.

So if you’re a cold wallet user, Ajian recommends that at this point you first confirm three things:
First, whether your wallet model and firmware are affected;
Second, whether your mnemonic phrase has appeared on connected devices, in photos, on cloud drives, or in WeChat saved items;
Third, if you need to migrate, test with a small amount first—don’t go all in at once.

Many people don’t die at the hands of hackers; they die from their own panic-driven mistakes. Freedom and stupidity—sometimes all it takes is just one more step.

Over the past 24 hours, about $145M was liquidated across the entire network, including $57.9M for longs and $87.4M for shorts; $BTC shorts were liquidated by about $27.5M, $ETH shorts by about $24.9M. A total of 54,578 traders were liquidated. The largest single liquidation occurred on Hyperliquid, about $3.16M.

It looks like yesterday the market was more like longs getting beaten up, and today it’s a bit like shorts getting a lesson via a rebound/short-covering. As I said yesterday, this isn’t a reversal confirmation—it's just leverage starting to squeeze both sides.

BTC’s real direction hasn’t been chosen yet. Short liquidations don't necessarily mean the market must enter a long-term uptrend; it could also just be a technical rebound after a drop. Treat it as a measure of position crowding. If you see which side gets liquidated, you’ll know which side is too short-term confident.

$BTC has entered a tense state with the potential for severe directional shifts at any moment: on the one hand, at the $63,000 level there are as many as 890,000 BTC piled up, showing extreme distribution, while the combined total of the $62,000 and $62,000 price levels accounts for about 8% of the float. Within a 5% range of the spot price, the concentration of chips has also risen in step to 13%. Such concentration implies a sharp increase in price sensitivity—any external event or even a minor change in price could trigger this massive stack of short-term chips, leading to a violent redistribution upward or downward.

On the other hand, the data shows that a large amount of patient buy orders is concentrated in the current price range, specifically 2%-20% below it. These buys began appearing in early June and belong to passive buy demand laid out in advance. If the price were to drop rapidly and reach these areas, it is expected that these buy orders will act as a buffer, reducing the magnitude of market volatility and potentially becoming supportive force during a short-term market pullback.

In summary, DYOR

MARA’s CEO says the opportunity for BTC as a medium of payment has already passed; compared with stablecoins, BTC is more like a store of value. For many OGs, that probably sounds quite harsh, since the Bitcoin whitepaper title literally says it’s a peer-to-peer electronic cash system—and yet, years later, a mining company CEO has stepped out to deny it.

But I actually think that’s not a bad thing. The maturation of an asset usually isn’t about being able to do everything; it’s about knowing what it’s best suited for.

Look at the real world: gold isn’t bad, but no one buys coffee with gold bars every day; cash dollars aren’t the best store of value, but they’re best suited for settlement; credit cards aren’t money itself, but they’re best for front-end spending. Each asset has its place.

Crypto will be layered like this too: BTC as the base reserve asset; stablecoins as on-chain “dollar” accounts; Ethereum and various chains as the settlement and application layers; wallets and exchanges as the front-end entry points. In the future, when AI agents need to make payments, they’ll most likely use stablecoins.

So when I see the BTC payment narrative getting weaker, I won’t interpret it as bad news. I’ll see it as clearer division of labor: BTC continues to serve as a scarce asset; stablecoins handle payments; chains and wallets handle the front end; RWA and perps handle the asset layer.

Perhaps when BTC no longer has to forcibly carry the payment narrative, it’ll end up looking more like an asset that institutions can understand. You wouldn’t ask why gold can’t be scanned to order takeout, so you also shouldn’t keep pushing BTC to buy bubble tea every day.

Next week, multiple projects will be unlocked: AVNT unlocks about 29.25M tokens, worth $2.43M; MOVE unlocks about 17.674M tokens, worth $1.33M; MGO unlocks about 19.312M tokens, worth $1.79M; GMT unlocks about 55.31M tokens, worth $2.43M

These numbers may not seem huge at first glance, but when liquidity is thin, even small unlocks can turn into psychological pressure. Unlocks don’t automatically dump the market, but they do change holders’ expectations—especially for small-cap coins, where the market often prices in the impact early.

If you hold any of the small coins mentioned above, it’s time to get prepared. You don’t need to predict it will definitely fall, but you can’t pretend you don’t know.