查理-Charlie

This NFP release tonight is quite unusual.

Job gains for July came in at -23k, when the market had been looking for +80k. Yet the unemployment rate fell from 4.2% to 4.1%. Employment has clearly cooled, but there are still no signs of a rapid deterioration in unemployment.

The market is trading rates first. With employment this weak, the pressure on the Fed to continue hiking in September will be much smaller, which is generally supportive for BTC.

Right now, BTC at $BTC is stalling around 65,000. What I care about more is whether, after the news, it can truly break and absorb the 65,200–65,300 range. If it holds steady, you could look at 65,500 and even 66,000. But if the bullish news comes out and it can’t hold above 65,000, be careful for a wave of profit-taking.

Personal analysis only; not investment advice.

Actually the square and the planet—I’m working on both. Compared to the square, the planet’s reward opportunities are indeed not as high.

So, here’s the thing: the square’s latest project just got cut off.

The one I participated in is the Invited List Top 15, which has a separate prize pool of 239,000 coins $BABY . Then I asked AI to convert it for me: I’m ranked ninth and I can get 12,870 coins (about 141 U). For two weeks, that comes out to 141 U—can you believe it?

Now let’s talk about the planet. This week I have 140k views in traffic. On average, each post gets more than 3k views, and the highest single post reached around 10k.

I got a 10U reward once before. Next Thursday, I’ll continue sharing my planet earnings

Thailand’s tax exemption policy only covers capital gains from cryptocurrency generated by individuals through local licensed exchanges, brokers, or dealers, and is valid until December 31, 2029. Income from overseas platforms, mining, staking, andirdrops is generally not included in the exemption.

The impact on the market is mainly within Thailand. It may attract more trading funds back to licensed platforms, and also drive growth in compliant users.

Overall, the major coins like $BTC are modestly positive, but relying on a tax incentive from a single country alone is unlikely to directly trigger a significant increase. In the short term, it is closer to an emotional boost; in the long term, it depends on actual net inflows of new capital.

$XAU gold has clearly strengthened over these past two days. Spot prices briefly moved to around 4262, hitting a new 7-week high. The previous trading day’s gain was about 4%. Weaker employment data, a pullback in oil prices, and cooling rate-hike expectations have provided room for gold to push higher again.

For the short term, first look at resistance at 4260–4280. After a breakout with increased volume, you can look for 4300. Support is at 4200–4220; if it breaks below 4180, this round of bullish momentum will clearly weaken.

The most attractive line about Babylon is: your BTC isn’t bridged over, wrapped, and put aside—it’s still locked on the Bitcoin mainnet. Hearing that, it definitely sounds safer than those wBTC solutions. But after actually operating it myself once, that sense of security in my heart gets discounted. @BabylonLabs_io

Not bridging over is true—the coins are indeed still on the Bitcoin chain. But they’re not sitting nicely in your own address. They’re locked into a conditional script. Whether and when you can get them back, and under what circumstances they’ll be slashed, is determined by Babylon’s rules and the behavior of those external Finality Providers. You could ask if this counts as self-custody. Strictly speaking, it does—your private keys never leave you. But that feeling of control, where you can move them whenever you want and withdraw anytime, disappears the moment you lock them away. $BABY

What truly concerns me is the slashing. In the project’s promotional material, dual-signing triggers the burning of the Bitcoin principal—this is the foundation of the entire security narrative. But how exactly this slashing is enforced on the Bitcoin mainnet is something ordinary users can’t verify at all. You can only trust that the design is correct, trust that those providers don’t do evil, and trust that there’s no loophole in the middle that can be exploited. If anything goes wrong in any step, the slashing might not hit the bad actors—it might hit you. #baby

I’m not saying it’s definitely a problem. Technically, the direction of not bridging over is, in my view, indeed stronger than wrapped coins. But strong doesn’t mean risk-free—it just moves the risk from being stolen via bridging to being tied to script design and provider behavior. The risk hasn’t disappeared; it’s just been relocated, and that new place is harder to understand.

So my stance is: don’t be fooled by the words “not bridged over” and “still on the mainnet.” Whether your BTC is truly safe doesn’t depend on which chain it’s locked on. It depends on whether those slashing rules and that batch of providers can be trusted. And right now, not many people who have locked funds have actually gone and checked these things.

We talked earlier about @BabylonLabs_io Babylon and penalties, and also about where the returns come from. This one is a bit more concrete: of the BTC that are currently locked up, how many are genuinely buying into this security narrative, and how many are purely here to wait for the airdrop.

I guess most of them are the latter—including me at the start.

If you look at the times when the locked-amount data climbed the fastest, it never corresponds to some specific chain actually integrating Babylon’s security and starting to pay for it. Instead, it’s always when the points rules were announced and the expectation of an airdrop took off. Everyone isn’t calculating whether this breach insurance is worth it—they’re calculating how many coins they’ll get back after locking so much for so long.

That’s completely different from the story #baby is trying to tell.

The problem with TVL propped up by airdrops is that it’s rented, not bought. Once the coins are sent out and the points stop, this batch of BTC will likely withdraw right back, doing whatever they were going to do. What can truly remain is only the security that downstream chains are willing to continuously pay for. And how much of that there is right now—basically you can’t see.

I’ve been through several rounds of this kind of thing. The playbook is always the same. Before token issuance, TVL rockets up; the project team uses that number to claim market share and talk about being a leading player. After the token is issued and a first unlock happens, the numbers drop—then nobody mentions that original peak anymore. $BABY

Will Babylon follow the same path? I don’t know, but at least this TVL right now—I’m not very willing to read it as demand. It feels more like a price set by airdrop expectations.

So my stance is: don’t just look at how much is locked. Look at how much is left after the coins have been issued and the points have stopped. That number is Babylon’s real picture. Before then, everything is prepaid.

The data at 10 tonight for $BTC isn’t very friendly.

The U.S. manufacturing PMI rose to 55.6, and the employment component also moved back from contraction to 52.8, indicating that companies’ hiring has not kept getting worse. After this result, expectations that Friday’s non-farm payrolls will deliver a major surprise drop a bit, and the Fed has more confidence to keep high interest rates in place.

The good side is that the price component eased slightly, but 71.1 is still very high and, for now, offsets the employment rebound.

So, the big picture is that around 63,000 is what it’s aiming for—more like waiting for Friday to deliver the final answer. If it can’t reclaim 64,000, then in the short term we’ll likely first look for support around 62,000.

My personal view only; it does not constitute investment advice.

This round of news is only a mild relief for the BTC outlook; it’s not a trend reversal yet.

After the U.S. paused further strikes on Iran, oil prices fell by about 5% immediately, which may ease inflation pressure a bit. But Iran denies that it is negotiating with the U.S., and there are still three votes within the Federal Reserve supporting further rate hikes. Both risks haven’t truly ended.

More importantly, after oil prices dropped, BTC still couldn’t hold above 63,000, which suggests that buy-side demand hasn’t followed through.

In the short term, $BTC is likely to digest between 62,000 and 65,000. Once the situation is confirmed to cool down and BTC can reclaim and stabilize above 64,000, there will be a chance to test 65,000. If talks fall apart or oil prices rebound, first look at 62,000; if it weakens further, then we need to watch out for the 60,000 area.

Personal opinion only; not investment advice.

Take another perspective on @BabylonLabs_io this time—let’s not talk about whether it sells punishment, let’s talk about where the little bit of returns it gives you actually comes from.

When you lock BTC, what you’re after is the yield. But that yield isn’t issued by the Bitcoin mainnet—Bitcoin mainnet gives nothing. The people paying are those who come to Babylon to buy security from it. The problem is: most of those chains haven’t generated real income yet. Some don’t even have their products fully launched. What they can hand over to pay you is basically their own token stack. $BABY

So what you locked is real BTC, and what you receive is a bunch of coins from new chains. How much those coins are worth depends on whether the chain behind them can actually survive. If it lives well, your returns are good.

If it doesn’t take off, all you have is a handful of chips that no one is picking up—while you’ve tied up BTC liquidity for months, even longer. #baby

I’ve done quite a few kinds of staking like this. The pattern is pretty consistent. In the early days, the annualized numbers they show look great because the denominator is made of tokens that nobody is genuinely selling on the secondary market—the quote is inflated. Once tokens are unlocked and can be sold, the yield rate immediately shows its true face. Babylon adds an extra layer: you also have to underwrite the survival of those downstream chains.

In other words, you’re not finding yield for Bitcoin—you’re making an early investment in a batch of unproven new chains, using the opportunity cost of BTC to fund it. Whether you’re willing to invest is another question. But at least you should understand that this is what you’re investing in—not some risk-free, interest-bearing thing.

My position hasn’t changed: how many BTC you lock doesn’t matter. What matters is whether you know who’s paying the returns and what they’re paying with. If you can’t figure out those two questions, then that string of TVL numbers is meaningless to you.

Many people say that @BabylonLabs_io means that you can earn “interest” by helping yourself fall asleep with BTC. I think that’s the most boring interpretation.

What it’s really selling isn’t yield—it’s punishment.

Whether PoS security can be “bought” has nothing to do with how much the thing you stake is worth. It only comes down to one thing: when you do something wrong, will you really end up losing it?

What Babylon does is keep BTC from crossing bridges, wrapping, and behaving honestly locked on the Bitcoin mainnet—but once a Finality Provider co-signs twice, that BTC will be slashed.
$BABY

So what it sells to other chains isn’t the name “Bitcoin.” It’s a form of default insurance backed by BTC principal.
#baby

That’s the contradiction. The people who hold BTC want returns with almost no risk. The people buying a “secure” chain want a loss that will truly hurt when slashing happens. These two groups aren’t thinking about the same thing at all. The more the first group wants safety, the “weaker” the security the second group gets. The more the second group wants harsh slashing, the higher the returns the first group demands. This can’t be smoothed over by just issuing more incentives—these incentives are inherently in conflict.

My own view: how many BTC you lock in isn’t the key point. The real point is whether someone can set a price for safety. Which chain is worth taking this risk with BTC—how much BTC should be burned for a single double-sign, and whether the reward is enough to withstand that kind of low-probability but catastrophic scenario where, if something really goes wrong, it’s over.

For these questions, there’s currently no answers.

Before there are answers, that string of numbers on Babylon’s balance sheet—I don’t really want to call it “staking.” It’s more like a pile of Bitcoin just sitting there waiting for an airdrop.

There are only four days left before this Babylon’s leaderboard is finalized. Right now, I’m in 9th place.

Top 15 has its own prize pool—one person can win up to 200U.

Tell me, can I make it to the other side? 🤨

Yesterday I rummaged through a wallet and saw that the batch of $BABY BTC that I originally staked and received from—tucked in there still, priced at 0.0116u. I did the math: since it launched, the on-paper value of this batch of airdropped tokens has shrunk to just scraps. Back then, locking BTC, saving points, waiting for the airdrop—going through the whole process took a lot of time and effort. Looking back now, the little bit I ended up with isn’t worth the mental energy and time I put into it.

The issue isn’t whether you received the airdrop; it’s the unlocking part. Early stakers used points to exchange for the airdrop—first come, first served—so it looks like a benefit. But the tokens are released in batches, one wave after another, and dumped into the secondary market. The buying power on the secondary side simply can’t keep up with the amount being released. So the price keeps sliding down. The longer holders keep holding, the more they lose. #baby

I only figured it out later: what truly determines retail investors’ outcomes in an airdrop project is the unlock structure. No matter how high the TVL is, or how much BTC gets locked into it, that’s just protocol data—it’s not the same as the price of the coins in my hands. When the unlocked coins can’t find enough demand, the people still holding are essentially providing a floor for sell pressure.

I still admit the Babylon Bitcoin staking narrative makes sense to me—technically, it really aims to solve something. But narratives are one thing; whether retail investors who put in real money end up being the ones who take the bag depends on how the tokens are distributed and how they’re unlocked.

This time, I’ve basically accepted it as a loss and paid the tuition. The above is only my personal experience and does not constitute advice. @BabylonLabs_io

grvt really gave me something good to eat. A short, fast project on the square for five days—made me end up using about 160u, almost zero books. $GRVT

Let’s talk about staking @BabylonLabs_io BTC. After I looked it over, I kinda want to laugh 😂

Let me put it plainly: Babylon’s whole thing is to let your Bitcoin “stay out of your wallet” and be used as security for other PoS chains, earning some safety fees.

Finally, it can earn yield—and it’s fully self-custodied. Who wouldn’t be tempted.

But I dug into it, and a few pitfalls need to be made clear $BABY

1. Self-custody doesn’t mean zero risk. The coins haven’t left you, but once you need to handle slashing or do an unbonding, the scripts and time locks are not something you can simply decide on your own. There’s a gap between “safety” and “who will take the bullet,” and it slides by pretty naturally in the official wording. #baby

2. The unbonding period is genuinely annoying. You have to wait a week+—during that time, if the market moves, you can only watch. Liquidity gets frozen directly, 🫠

3. The annualized return is so low it makes you question reality. The actual staking yield is thin enough to be almost insulting. People aren’t really rushing in for those tiny interest payments—they’re going for the “airdrop expectations” that haven’t even landed yet. Basically: doing it out of love, and taking a bet on the side

4. TVL is a bit inflated. Billions of dollars sounds impressive—stop the points or incentives for a moment, and you’d better believe the money can run faster than a rabbit.

Anyway, I’m just holding a small position, waiting it out—no big pain even if I’m wrong. These are my personal views, for reference only.

The Apple Store for the China region ID has reopened the top-up bonus credits again

You can only claim it once. The maximum top-up is 1k, with a 10% bonus credit—effectively giving you 100 yuan for free

But I really can’t think of any apps worth paying for with a China region ID 🤨

I mapped the Trustless Bitcoin Vaults (TBV) link for @BabylonLabs_io , and what really made my scalp tingle wasn’t the borrowing interest rate—it was the “three sets of liquidation clocks”:
1) Bitcoin averages about one block every 10 minutes;
2) TBV’s first use case goes through Aave v4, using native BTC as collateral to borrow USDC/USDT, where the price and liquidation depend on oracles and on-chain execution;
3) Assuming the borrowed stablecoins are then put into GRVT to be used for derivatives—GRVT also has off-chain matching, on-chain settlement, and its own margin risk control.

First, a note: I didn’t find that both sides have already been integrated; this is purely a stress test of the architecture. If I actually hit a plug-in situation, the problem probably won’t be “how much yield”—it’ll be which risk-control clock pulls me out first 😂

TBV lets BTC avoid wrapping and cross-chain steps, so there’s definitely one less layer of trust; but once funds leave the lending/borrowing layer, the risk doesn’t disappear—it just changes its clock. With my typing speed, if all three sides alarm at the same time, I’ll probably only be able to take screenshots 🤡 $BABY #baby

Crypto News Morning Briefing

Apple’s market value surpasses $5 trillion
Technology stocks strengthen, which benefits global risk appetite and may indirectly benefit BTC and ETH.

Ministry of Commerce addresses “overcapacity”
This relates to trade frictions and protectionism. If external conflicts escalate, it may suppress risk assets.

NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang says AI will not eliminate jobs
He continues to strengthen the narrative around the AI industry, which may drive attention to AI-related tokens.

The Global IoT Top 500 is released
Huawei and SpaceX rank at the top; this may spur speculation in DePIN and IoT-related token sectors.

SpaceX’s market value drops sharply
This may affect risk appetite in tech stocks and spill over to Musk-related tokens such as DOGE.