Eric SJ

However, there are still about 8 billion people in the world who do not have Bitcoin. The group holding $BTC accounts for only about 4.4% of the total population.

According to AI estimates, the number of people who hold gold is about 18%—30% of the total population.

Therefore:

The number of gold holders is approximately 4.1—6.8 times that of Bitcoin holders, and the market value is about 24.4 times that of BTC.

I highly recommend everyone to pay attention to Cloudflare ($NET.US ). This company’s market value is currently in the trillions.


I only realized how potentially amazing this company could be after I recently built my own website.

If you’re like me right now—where you hardly ever proactively open a specific website, and instead just let AI fetch things for you—then you’ll understand what I’m about to say.

Because Cloudflare has embedded one of its business scenarios into the middle layer between AI and websites.

➠ In the past: I have a need → open a website → the website returns data

➠ Now it’s becoming: I have a need → ask the AI → the AI accesses the website/API → scrapes and organizes the data → returns it to me

What it’s doing isn’t actually creating an entirely new business. I took the time to break it down over the past few days, and I found that almost all of its product launches are built around this propagation path:

➠ customers → Cloudflare → origin server/app ← Cloudflare ← requests from external users or Agents

Even the future business logic is the same—you could say it’s evolving from “carrying the internet” to “carrying the internet empowered by AI.”

As of 2026 Q2, about 23% of websites worldwide already use Cloudflare as a reverse proxy (Figure 1).

That means Cloudflare already sits at the request entry point for a sizable portion of websites.

And from the data of the past seven quarters, it has already validated the growth potential of the original business cycle in advance (Figure 2):

➠ quarterly revenue increased from $460 million to $696 million;

➠ year-over-year growth rate rose from 27% to 36%.

➠ DBNR recovered from 111% to 120%.

➠ the number of enterprise customers with annual revenue exceeding $100k increased from 3,497 to 4,698.

This original business was honestly not that “sexy.” It was more like an old story.

The new story (the link where AI requests access to websites) is what I personally feel has the biggest room for growth.

Because one person can’t, at the same time, continuously open a dozen websites and repeatedly call dozens of APIs, all day long, executing tasks. But that’s exactly the kind of behavior that AI can do—and does.

According to Cloudflare’s own network observation metrics, non-human traffic has exceeded 50% for the first time.

Not all of it is AI Agents—there are also traditional scrapers, automation tools, and malicious bots—but the direction is already very clear: machines are becoming an important visitor to the internet.

Over $400 billion left behind by Buffett has started to be spent

What does this tell the market?

This may be the most worth taking seriously Berkshire Hathaway’s earnings report over the past three years $BRK.B.US

Because this time, the data shows that Berkshire has once again become a net buyer of stocks, ending its prior streak of 14 consecutive quarters of being a net seller of stocks.

In the past few years, Berkshire has been selling everything and not repurchasing.

Then the cash kept piling up, and ultimately reached nearly $400 billion.

And the latest earnings report shows that in Q2 Berkshire bought about $23.5 billion of stocks and sold about $3.7 billion, resulting in a net stock buy of nearly $19.8 billion in the quarter.

I think the most important thing to highlight is the share repurchase action.

➠ Berkshire repurchased about $4.8 billion of its own shares in the first half, and the vast majority occurred in Q2 (about $4.5 billion).

Here’s some background you need.

Starting in 2026, Greg Abel officially took over as Berkshire’s CEO, while Buffett continues as Chairman. Berkshire’s current repurchase policy also clearly puts the capital allocation decision in the hands of the CEO, and requires consultation with the Chairman.

In other words, after both parties discuss it, if the repurchase price is below their conservative estimate of intrinsic value, they will proceed with the repurchase.

So at the very least, in Q2 it tells us one thing: the top management at Berkshire believes the price is undervalued and worth buying.

The interesting part is that Berkshire itself is a huge asset portfolio.

Repurchasing Berkshire’s own shares is, in essence, not fundamentally different from buying Apple and related portfolio holdings.

Because Berkshire isn’t a single business company; it’s a bundle of capital allocation made up of insurance float, operating businesses, and a stock investment portfolio.

This is more direct than any interview where someone says, “I’m confident about the market ahead.”

_____________________________________

However, Berkshire’s net stock purchases in Q2 were only about 5% of its broad cash position at period end.

So if you conclude that the bearish trend has ended based on just this one quarter, it would be too early.

All we can say is that over the past few years, this cash has been more like a card laid on the table.

Berkshire chose not to play its card—until Q2, when it played part of it.

But the card still hasn’t been played out.

At least it has started playing—that’s a good sign. You can observe it; I won’t go into more details from the rest of the earnings data.

A little-known fact: Pump Fun’s DEX business, PumpSwap, is also one of the largest DEXs on Solana.

This means Pump Fun occupies two key positions at the same time:

The largest launchpad + the largest trading venue

And the biggest source of Pump Fun’s fees is actually not the launchpad, but PumpSwap.

After reorganizing the data in Figure 2, it can be broken down into three parts:

（1）Bonding Curve fee volume: $78.14 million

= $62.06 million in protocol fees + $10.86 million in creator fees + $5.22 million in rebates

This is the core of Pump Fun’s token issuance stage, and it’s also currently the largest portion of the protocol’s cash inflows.

（2）PumpSwap fee volume: $124 million

= $23.40 million in protocol fees + $25.64 million in LP fees + $74.87 million in creator fees

This is the part that the market is most likely to overlook.

Once the Token completes the Bonding Curve, it doesn’t end there—it moves into PumpSwap for further trading, carrying the token through the second stage of its lifecycle.

（3）Other business: $10.11 million

Smaller scale, not expanded here.

Note that DefiLlama tracks the total fee volume generated by the protocol; some of it is allocated to participants such as LPs and creators.

So what you truly need to look at is the money the protocol keeps.

In the Q2 fee volume of about $212 million, Pump Fun ultimately keeps about $91.55 million in gross profit.

Of that:

➠ PumpSwap captures $23.40 million
➠ Bonding Curve captures $62.06 million

In other words:

PumpSwap has a larger fee volume, but the Bonding Curve has stronger value-capture ability.

Now let’s look at the trend over the past few quarters (Figure 3):

The Bonding Curve clearly depends on the Meme market’s heat and Solana’s on-chain activity, so it’s more volatile.

The PumpSwap growth curve is smoother, which also indicates that Pump Fun’s revenue structure is changing:

In the past, it earned money from the token issuance stage;

now it’s starting to capture revenue from the token’s circulating/liquidity stage.

Bonding Curve earns from issuance; PumpSwap earns from the lifecycle.

Finally, take a look at this:

$PUMP is currently in a pullback phase within an uptrend. Around 0.0022, it has not yet touched any key support for the moment.

That’s all for now~

Suddenly realized

“Circle $CRCL and companies like it—stablecoin issuers—feel a bit like someone standing in the era of internet media, yet still choosing to go all-in on old-fashioned print media.”

“No matter how chaotic it gets on-chain, it still eats its share of profit from reserve yields based on scale.”

“In a future rate-cut cycle, Circle may be in trouble.”

Add some data:

Circle’s second-quarter USDC scale and usage are growing rapidly:

➠ End-of-period circulation was $73.3 billion, up 19%; quarterly on-chain transaction volume was $148 billion, up 151%

➠ But Circle’s total revenue and reserve income were only $701 million, up 7%, below expectations

Putting it together:

USDC growth is network-scale growth, while Circle’s growth is mainly interest-income growth—there’s no strong positive correlation between the two.

Because stablecoin issuers don’t take fees from every on-chain transaction, the gas fees generated by USDC transfers mainly go to the respective chains.

So that $148 billion in transaction volume reflects an increase in USDC’s usage and settlement role, but it doesn’t directly translate into Circle’s revenue growth.

What truly determines Circle’s profit is reserve yield.

Average USDC circulation increased about 25% year over year, but reserve income grew only 5%. The core reason: the reserve yield fell by 66 basis points year over year.

Scale is growing, but unit returns are declining.

This also reinforces the point:

“No matter how chaotic it gets on-chain, it still eats its share of profit from reserve yields based on scale.”

Stablecoins are an on-chain product, but the issuer’s income statement is highly dependent on real-world interest rates.

If the economy enters a rate-cut cycle, the same scale of USDC would generate noticeably less revenue.

And currently, reserve income makes up about 95% of Circle’s total revenue—other businesses aren’t yet enough to become the second growth driver.

Circle has a massive pool of US dollar reserves, but it hasn’t built a value-capture system that’s tied to stablecoin network growth.

So it urgently needs a second growth curve.

Otherwise, a stablecoin-issuing company is like someone in the era of internet media, yet still choosing to go all-in on old-fashioned print media.

各单位注意各单位注意

$BTC 要上去了，依旧日内单

小周期往下插了一下收了个pinbar出来，沿着支撑趋势线估摸得上去了

500点

Getting the license = standard equipment ≠ success

In the past two months, I believe everyone’s feed has been full of news about exchanges setting up direct securities connectivity services and expanding to include broker-like functions.

But after scrolling for a while, you’ll see many platforms repeatedly stressing, “We can buy U.S. stocks.”

Take a look at a data point disclosed in FINRA’s annual report: last year, around 100 broker-dealers entered the market, while more than 160 closed.

And the downward trend in the number of broker-dealers has been going on for years.

It’s not that exchanges can’t make it happen—this market has been around for a long time, and getting the business license is only the first step.

Exchanges’ “stablecoin system + 7×24H” certainly has objective advantages, since it removes traditional barriers like deposit onboarding thresholds and trading-hour limitations.

But ultimately, what this business really competes on is customer acquisition cost and the product experience at the operations level.

Let me repeat it again: Getting the license = standard equipment ≠ success.

When people enter this market, they’re facing an environment even more fiercely competitive than crypto exchanges. And the “stablecoin system + 7×24H” is also something traditional financial institutions are working on.

The competitive landscape is intensifying, but the market is only so big.

If you can’t find external growth points and end up just competing over existing market share, it’s still functional self-amusement within the industry.

"The Stellar Chain, this “old-timer,” may have gotten a ticket for the new cycle"

At the moment, in the RWA U.S. Treasury sub-sector, the asset size of Stellar Chain $XLM ranks third—already surpassing Solana

If we look at the total RWA asset size, Stellar Chain is fourth, with only a gap of about $500 million left versus Solana

It has always focused on enterprise-grade payments, but it may now be getting heavily backed by institutions

For a long time, the Stellar Chain has been ignored by the market, yet it has the most important “quality” for the new cycle: compliance

Here are some of its changes:

➠ On August 1 last year, the RWA market value on the Stellar Chain was about $500 million. Today, after a full year, that figure has already exceeded $3 billion

Meanwhile, the stablecoin market cap reached about $461 million, up 40% over the past 30 days

Its RWA asset composition isn’t a case of isolated prosperity supported by a single product; it has started to form a complete asset issuer structure: traditional asset management, on-chain U.S. Treasuries, and private credit products

Along with stablecoins

In short, among the more mainstream RWA asset issuers in the industry today, nearly all of them have been doing issuance on the Stellar Chain

➠ Last month, MoneyGram, Figure Markets, and Range announced that they would become Tier 1 validator nodes for the Stellar Chain, with onboarding expected to be completed before mid-month

These three companies are big players in payments, one of the leaders in RWA, and also provide compliance tooling—the three capabilities needed for the Stellar Chain to build an institutional finance closed loop

And institutional use of a chain is completely different from whether institutions are willing to maintain a chain

I think all of this is telling us one thing: this “old-timer” on the Stellar Chain may have gotten a “ticket” for the new cycle

_____________________________________

Now let’s switch to the chart

Currently, the daily structure of $XLM is reapproaching the sideways support area that formed earlier

If you enter in the 0.16–0.17 range, the odds look good

This range has been absorbing chip exchange for a long time—it was also where the price previously launched quickly. Downside risk is clear, and upside potential is substantial

Why share this all of a sudden?

Because after seeing these recent changes on the Stellar Chain, I believe it may regain mainstream market attention in the next cycle

That’s why the above view—starting from the RWA development trajectory—has been extended to $XLM

What night is it now?

I just saw a tweet saying that someone is building an application on Polkadot $DOT

This can’t really be described as something like what the troops who entered the country in 1949 could have said anymore.

My meme collection still has that “ancient folk song” from back then.

First comes Polkadot, then comes the sky—Ethereum and Bitcoin are all on the sidelines
Asynchronous isomorphism + bonus points + a side-by-side chain
Parallel threads, a brand-new experience
You can mine blocks anytime, anywhere—everything in the world is put on-chain
Laughing at how everyone in the crypto market is like “Ah Dou,” and once a slot goes live, it can break into the thousands

I’ll say this: 99% of the people who saw this post won’t understand it.

The Perp DEX quarterly report I posted the day before yesterday

The four protocols I selected may not represent the entire Perp DEX industry, but they basically form a management sample spanning from the top tier, to the mid tier, and down to the tail

Their total Q2 revenue fell by 21.4% quarter over quarter, and this happened even though Q2 was more volatile than Q1

I also went to check the CEX derivatives trading data, and after compiling it, I found that it too declined quarter over quarter

What I put above is the combined revenue decline; in the data shown in Figure 2

Although all four protocols saw declines, the proportions vary greatly—the two middle protocols saw the largest decline, both at over 50%

This suggests that when market trading activity drops, users and liquidity do not withdraw evenly from all platforms

My inference is that funds likely left first from platforms with weaker user stickiness or those more dependent on incentives, and only later would that start to affect the top-tier platforms with stronger network effects

➠ Or put another way, mid-tier protocols may be used as backups—when “market temperature” cools, the “spare tire” is abandoned more easily

As for tail protocols, because their user base is relatively smaller, the impact they experience is not as large as what certain mid-tier protocols with a certain scale have experienced

_____________________________________

Then, looking at profit margins: for now, you can use 70% as an observation line to divide the four Perp DEXs into two basic layers:

Hyperliquid @HyperliquidX and Lighter @Lighter_xyz have profit margins above 70%, while edgeX and ApeX are below 70%

This line reflects not only each platform’s pricing power, but also cost control, liquidity efficiency, and ecosystem incentive spending—so it cannot represent overall operational quality on its own

If you want to further evaluate a Perp DEX’s operating quality, you need to observe three dimensions at the same time: revenue scale, profit-margin stability, and costs

Cost items vary somewhat across each protocol, but they largely come down to these elements: market maker rebates, referral rewards, liquidity incentives, and other ecosystem allocations

Even half of these expenditures are not positively correlated with trading volume

➠ For example, liquidity: even if a trading platform’s trading volume declines in a given quarter, it must still maintain order-book depth, market-making quality, and user experience; otherwise, the revenue decline will further turn into user churn

When entering or withdrawing funds in the crypto world

If you know right away that there’s a problem, it’s usually because there’s an issue with the account/card—there can be many reasons.

Sometimes it’s just triggering risk controls; going to the bank to resolve it is usually easier.

If there’s a problem with the funds, you usually won’t know immediately. But once your funds are frozen, many cases like this involve funds tied to an investigation.

These are the bigger cases—people end up losing both money and people.

Some U-merchant themselves are already part of a certain gray–black industry chain. They can roughly tell when this money will run into trouble.