Katherine Ross

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">subscribe</a>.



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An interesting dynamic is taking place in the market right now: Dinocoins are having a bit of a moment. 



In a research note from K33, analysts looked at why institutions favor “older, more established coins over the new shiny things with no track record.”



“This, in turn, is causing more interest among retail investors and traders for the familiar ‘boomer’ or ‘dino&#8217; coins.”



Some of this also comes from the fact that President Trump’s administration has changed the tide, and he’s effectively “given altcoins the institutional stamp of approval.”



“The typical (young) altcoin trader favors the latest trending DeFi token or the latest memecoin looking to cook a 100x run. In contrast, cautious long-term participants seek out what they perceive as safer bets,” the analysts wrote.&nbsp;



“The term “boomer” may be facetious, but it reflects how older, or at least more institutionally minded, investors are now firmly marking their territory in the crypto space. Such investors are more comfortable with assets that have weathered market cycles while being supported by entities that present in a professional manner.”



In fact, DOGE is included alongside coins like LTC, XRP and ADA, the analysts said. Though, let’s be fair: ADA and XRP have massive, heavily-focused (or obsessed depending on who you talk to) retail followings. That following is quite different from the institutions that are looking for altcoin exposure.&nbsp;



ADA, for example, has been dubbed a so-called Ethereum killer, but that narrative hasn’t quite played out. Though there are plenty of comments one could make about the state of Ethereum right now, so perhaps I’m speaking too soon.



Ironically, this also fits into what Dedic and Pomp said about founders: Folks are looking for coins that can survive the narratives.&nbsp;



Whether or not the use cases for some of these dinocoins have come to fruition, they’re still around and kicking and they’ve managed to gain a spotlight — not just a post from the president.&nbsp;



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Dinocoins are making a comeback: K33

Donovan Choy

This is a segment from the 0xResearch newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research">subscribe</a>.



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On Sunday morning, Trump <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114093526901586124">announced</a> on Truth Social his plans to enact a “crypto strategic reserve.”



Which assets? The anointed few: XRP, SOL, ADA, ETH and BTC and <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114093946326587357">maybe more</a>.



Markets loved it, of course. BTC jumped 6% on the day, ETH was up 5.3% and XRP rippled up 18%. But the reality is that the reserve is still just talk, pending Congressional action.


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="alignright is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdWmB630_6edUZYCRw9HbhFr3BPEysJsth0AS6z-jGEycOw8itTeK45BbuPqKOxk7-JDqtr28PU2l-0WkVBdOI9-rkCIQZ4hs-_sFHbyURVp4y4IajVbOR1XL49RZlKUx0GAxXNUw?key=Oz1FaTfFBnHUObJJHdW3uW_f" alt="" style="width:519px;height:auto"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://x.com/adam3us/status/1896252662875861007">Twitter</a></figcaption></figure></div>


Putting aside legal issues, the idea that the US should <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-as-a-potential-us-reserve-asset">build a crypto reserve</a> is itself completely bizarre, and therefore should be treated with skepticism.



Countries typically establish gold or reserves in foreign currencies for reasons of economic stability and to bolster confidence in their own financial systems.



For instance, when the Swiss franc appreciated rapidly against the euro during the global financial crisis, the Swiss National Bank intervened in March by selling francs and buying euros to protect its export-driven economy.



Gold, on the other hand, serves as a hedge against fiat currency depreciation, and the largest central banks in the world buy them for that reason. Maybe you don’t buy into that thesis, but it reflects more than two thousand years of the metal’s history in being used as money.



What qualifies XRP, SOL, ADA, ETH and BTC to be national reserve-worthy?



Let’s start with the easiest: bitcoin. Bitcoin has the longest history of about 17 years, more than any other asset on Trump’s shopping list. But compared to gold, bitcoin has been around far too short to prove itself as an “inflation hedge.”



One could argue that there is sufficient empirical evidence in the history of the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/roger-ver-right-bitcoin-book">blocksize wars</a> to prove the asset as being durable and resistant to change (like gold). Okay, fair enough, though still a <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/daily/issue/post_a86f70e8-2026-4c78-821e-c99cc7fd3a4b">bad idea</a> for a strategic reserve.



ETH? Ethereum is a technological marvel, but an asset that struggles with value accrual and which is subject to a technological roadmap means the American taxpayer is effectively taking a bet on an equity-like asset, contrary to the entire purpose of a national reserve.



SOL? SOL was until last year a devastated asset, revived only by memecoin trading. That doesn’t sound like something US tax dollars should be spent on.



Cardano and Ripple? Seriously? Both chains struggle to even find product-market fit in the circular industry of crypto and don&#8217;t crack the top 10 TVL page on <a href="https://defillama.com/chains">DefiLlama</a>, let alone having the merit to belong in a national reserve.



None of the above crypto assets are needed in a “strategic reserve” for the Fed to protect the dollar, conduct monetary intervention or strengthen the American economy.



When Trump promised to make the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/donald-trump-economic-new-york-club-comments">US the crypto capital</a> of the world, I assumed that meant fair and generalized regulations so crypto companies could pursue permissionless innovation under a rule of law in a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/gary-gensler-resigning">post-Gensler</a> SEC regime.



This development, however, screams political cronyism of the highest order. Surely ripple and cardano did not get on that list by chance.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Sorry poor people, no money left for your Medicaid we had to give it to David Sacks so he can use it to manipulate the crypto market for the benefit of handpicked insiders.&mdash; Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) <a href="https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1896347937363652961?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 2, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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There’s <a href="https://x.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1896362200119538055">talk</a> that the inclusion of these altcoins in the reserve presents a major conflict of interest with the investments of Trump’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/trump-picks-crypto-czar">AI and crypto czar</a> David Sacks, though Sacks has argued that he <a href="https://x.com/DavidSacks/status/1896480537839370374">no longer holds</a> BTC, ETH or SOL. It almost feels like something that was memed into existence by Twitter KOLs. It also runs contrary to all of <a href="https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2024/07/17/procrypto.html">crypto’s fundamental values</a>. But I guess no one still cares about that these days.



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Trump’s crypto reserve is absurd

Ben Strack

<div id="highlights-block_6130f7689de56" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Cardano’s ADA token price, which is currently up about 124% from 30 days ago, went above $3 following the testnet hard fork</li>
 <li>About 140 exchanges have switched to a live production environment to prepare for Cardano’s mainnet upgrade</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



The price of <a href="https://cardano.org">Cardano</a>’s ADA token shot up following the hard fork of the blockchain platform’s testnet on Wednesday.



ADA hit $3.09 Wednesday morning and was at $2.94 as of Noon eastern time, according to CoinGecko data — up about 4% in the last day and 124% from 30 days ago. The coin is the <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/cardano-now-third-largest-cryptocurrency-by-market-cap/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">third-largest cryptocurrency</a> by market capitalization at about $94 billion, behind only bitcoin and Ether, and ahead of Binance Coin.



Cardano’s Alonzo hard fork will bring its smart contract capability <a href="https://testnets.cardano.org/en/programming-languages/plutus/overview/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Plutus</a> to the network and provides the foundation for more decentralized applications to be built on the platform. 



The upgrade onto the company’s mainnet is still on track for Sept. 12, according to a tweet by <a href="https://iohk.io/about/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Input Output</a>, the blockchain infrastructure research and engineering company behind Cardano.



The blockchain platform launched a public testnet in early-August to allow 500 community members to work with smart contracts on the network before the upgrade, Nigel Hemsley, Cardano’s head of delivery, previously said. The hard fork on the testnet occurred Wednesday.



“We’ll be running our own tests and inviting others to test as well, with the main goal being to test for stability, security testing that the foundational code to write smart contracts is working properly and all the other miscellaneous things that need to be done to ensure that we can confidently hard for to the mainnet,” Cardano stated in a Sept. 1 YouTube video.



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<iframe loading="lazy" title="Cardano Smart Contracts Hardfork 2021" width="1024" height="576" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bymz6eVkm5c?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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With the testnet hardfork, about 140 exchanges switched to a live production environment to prepare for the mainnet launch, the video notes.



David Tawil, president of ProChain Capital, previously told Blockworks that this hard fork was “critical” for Cardano. He added that if there is a major uptick in adoption, investors would be justified to give Cardano a valuation that is similar or equal to Ethereum as the functionality will be the same or better.



Cardano saw inflows of $10.1 million last week, according to a CoinShares report. It was the largest total on record for Cardano, bringing its market share to 0.15%.



Meanwhile bitcoin had outflows for the eighth consecutive week, according to the report. Altcoins, including Ethereum, now represent 32% of total crypto assets under management, CoinShares data shows, which is close to the record of 35% set in mid-May.



Want more investor-focused content on digital assets? <a target="_blank" href="https://cms.blockworks.co/events/digital-asset-summit-2021-2/" rel="noreferrer noopener">Join us</a> September 13th and 14th for the Digital Asset Summit (DAS) in NYC. Use code ARTICLE for $75 off your ticket. <a target="_blank" href="https://cms.blockworks.co/events/digital-asset-summit-2021-2/" rel="noreferrer noopener">Buy it now</a>.

Cardano ADA Token Price Rises as Hard Fork Hits Testnet

<div id="highlights-block_6116bac58c8d1" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Potential wide adoption of the blockchain platform’s upcoming smart contracts offering could lead to a valuation for Cardano similar to Ethereum, industry executive says</li>
 <li>ADA token was above $2 on Friday, up 46% from seven days ago, according to CoinGecko data.</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



<a href="https://cardano.org">Cardano</a> (listed as ADA) has become the third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization as it is just weeks away from its planned hard fork that will bring smart contracts to the platform.&nbsp;



The token was priced at $2.02 as of 2 p.m. eastern time Friday, <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en">according to CoinGecko</a>, bringing its market cap to more than $64 billion. ADA’s price was up about 16% from the previous day and up 46% from the previous week, the data shows.



ADA’s market cap, which is below only bitcoin and Ethereum, is now slightly above Binance Coin (BNB) and Tether (USDT).



The boost in price comes as proof-of-stake blockchain platform Cardano gets set to execute an upgrade on its main network. The hard fork is set to occur on Sept. 12, Cardano executives revealed in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnV4eWw37Ts">YouTube video</a> on Friday morning.



“As we come up to this hard fork, we will deliver the Plutus capability — our full toolbox of smart contract capability — and then we’ll start to iterate from there,” said Nigel Hemsley, Cardano’s head of delivery. “It gives us the foundation to build on Cardano. We’ll have more and more [decentralized applications] and other innovations coming out shortly afterwards.”&nbsp;



<a href="https://testnets.cardano.org/en/programming-languages/plutus/overview/">Plutus</a> is Cardano’s platform for smart contracts, which are contracts stored on a blockchain that are executed when predetermined conditions are met. To write a smart contract using the platform, one can code directly in what is called the <a href="https://playground.plutus.iohkdev.io/">Plutus Playground</a>.



Founded in 2015 by Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson, Cardano’s price accelerated as the rise of DeFi in 2020 caused congestion on the Ethereum protocol, creating incentives for developers <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/eth-remains-strong-despite-coin-challengers/">to build alternatives</a>. Though now worth more than $2, a Cardano token was worth 10 cents in late 2020.



David Tawil, president of ProChain Capital, called the hard fork and smart contract update “critical,” noting that Ethereum is now seeing more competition.&nbsp;



“If there is a major uptick in adoption, investors will be justified in a valuation of Cardano that is similar or equal to Ethereum now that the functionality will be the same or better,” he told Blockworks.&nbsp;



Though smart contracts overall are still in the early stages of development, they will continue to be perfected over time, Tawil said.&nbsp;



“We’re lucky to have very smart and ambitious competitors focused on the product,” he noted. “These participants will continue to sharpen each other; it is capitalism in the truest sense … [and] regulators should hang back and allow animal spirits to run.”



Cardano launched a public testnet about a week ago, Hemsley noted, which will allow 500 community members to work with smart contracts on the network before the upgrade. It plans to hard fork the testnet on Sept. 1.



“We have components, we’ve got dependencies, we’ve got implementations going on [and] we’ve got different testing routines that we’ve got to perform across the end-to-end stack,” he said in the video. “This period of stability we’ll have on the Cardano testnet is very important to us to make sure that we get the confidence that we’re ready to hard fork the main net, and we haven’t found any potential catastrophic issues.”



The testing stage is also a way for exchanges to test their set-up in a pre-production environment. So far, 140 exchanges have listed ADA on their marketplace, Hemsley said, and getting them on board ahead of the hard fork is crucial for liquidity purposes.



“The best thing of course is all of this additional functionality, all of the new [decentralized applications] that people are going to be writing won’t require another hard fork,” Kevin Hammond, a software engineer working with Cardano, said in the Friday video. “We will be in a situation where people can develop the DeFi applications that they want to.”



Want more investor-focused content on digital assets? <a target="_blank" href="https://cms.blockworks.co/events/digital-asset-summit-2021-2/" rel="noreferrer noopener">Join us</a> September 13th and 14th for the Digital Asset Summit (DAS) in NYC. Use code ARTICLE for $75 off your ticket. <a target="_blank" href="https://cms.blockworks.co/events/digital-asset-summit-2021-2/" rel="noreferrer noopener">Buy it now</a>.