EarningArtist

You have traveled back from five years in the future. The competition among large models has just ended, and most transactional work can gradually be handed over to AI. Many people have started making AI videos. Blockchain has also become a form of infrastructure; U.S. stocks, forex, and prediction markets can all be traded on-chain, but everything seems to have only just begun. You see tech companies starting to lay off employees, and at this moment you know what you need to do is.......

OPay has applied to list on the NYSE at a valuation of $4 billion. Its founder, Zhou Yahui, previously had a successful company called Kunlun Tech. Nigeria contributed 89.5% of OPay’s revenue in the first half of the year and is also the main market for its self-operated lending business. In the first half of 2026, self-operated loan disbursements in the market totaled approximately $928 million, compared with approximately $305 million in the same period last year.

Making hardware wallets is almost the worst business in crypto. Hardware gross margins are very low, product update and iteration rates are also very low, and there are no long-tail services that can be monetized. Brand equity is fragile, and maintaining brand influence requires much higher marketing costs; the slightest incident can lead to a systemic brand collapse. There are also ongoing R&D costs :（

Ledger had an incident, and everyone started attacking OneKey. What's the reason? Is it because OneKey's boss is Chinese and can understand Chinese?

Sun Ge and Allen Shao both understand that controversy drives traffic, and they both know exactly how to play it. As long as people are talking about them, they’ve already won. Too many things happen every day, attention is extremely expensive, and it is repeatedly harvested.

OTC trading is definitely becoming increasingly low-margin, and a license isn’t much of a moat either. I had a chat with a big shot in traditional payments, and that was his conclusion.

I noticed that Kuaishou co-founder Su Hua, the family office of Meituan co-founder Wang Huiwen, Matrix Partners China, Source Code Capital, IDG, and Innovation Works all invested. Then, astonishingly, Wangsu Science & Technology also came up with 300 million to invest. The other firms’ investments make perfect sense, but Wangsu hasn’t been doing well in recent years—it basically took the little capital it had left and went all in.

This year at Token 2049, I saw many new card issuers, fewer payment companies, and more card-issuing teams. There were companies from Hong Kong and Europe. Visa and Mastercard have improved their support for stablecoins, and many startups now see this as an opportunity again. The logic behind building cards is different from before: it used to be a vague, borderline workaround, but now they market themselves as a product.

Ledger’s incident has dragged all hardware wallet companies into the pit. Hardware wallets can use the best encryption methods and technology, but their distribution systems and logistics processes can still be compromised, leaving backdoors. As it turns out, the best hardware wallet is still the iPhone.

Luckily, we didn't set up a booth at Token2049 this year; we used the money for a side event where we could have more in-depth discussions.

Every exchange will inevitably start organizing esports-style trading competitions. Nothing attracts young people’s attention more easily than this format, and nothing offers better communication effects or a more sustainable way to create stars.

A Bank of England official said stablecoin growth will strengthen the dollar’s dominance and boost demand for U.S. Treasuries. A Bank of England official singing the dollar’s praises—what darkly comic imagery. The pound was brought down by the dollar back in the day, and now it still has to publicly sing its praises. History has always been winner-take-all: the losers are left to provide the commentary.

Banking lobby groups are once again calling for tighter restrictions on stablecoins, citing consumer protection. Translated: these things are taking deposits too aggressively; please have the government step in and regulate them. Taxi companies used to urge the government to regulate ride-hailing in the same way, for the same reason: “for passenger safety.”

Venezuela was sanctioned and kicked out of the dollar system, but stablecoins instead became ordinary people’s digital dollars. The sanctions were intended to make the country suffer, but ended up teaching the entire nation to use USDT. Quite ironic—like confiscating someone’s notebook, only for them to turn around and submit their homework on an iPad.

Over 40% of Polymarket’s traffic comes from sporting events.

Why hasn’t anyone put A-share stocks on-chain?

This is a startup direction that provides data.

Why do so many people share how to automatically generate videos and post them on social media, when they don’t understand the platform at all? The platform is resistant to this kind of content. What the platform wants is emotion—either the account creator has emotion, or it can trigger the viewers’ emotions. Creating a bunch of streaming media junk will be countered by the platform’s technology very quickly.