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What is self-custody?
Explain it like you’re talking to your grandma. No jargon. No fluff. Just vibes.
10 winners split $1,000. Best replies take the prize! 💰 Good luck!
To Enter:
1️⃣ Simplify Self-Custody
2️⃣ Tag a friend
3️⃣ Repost this tweet
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Aster Founder Leonard on Balancing Transparency and Privacy in Next Gen Perp DEXs
@imyoungsparks met with @Aster_DEX founder @Leonard_Aster to discuss the perpetual DEX's rapid success and the evolution of on-chain derivatives trading.
The Block in partnership with @BNBCHAIN, this interview took place during their Korea Blockchain Week side event at the beautiful Hanok House, where The Block was present as media partner.
OUTLINE
- Introduction
- The Perp DEX Meta
- Dark Pools and Privacy
- Building Privacy-Preserving Infrastructure
- Trader or Holder?
- Managing Explosive Growth
- Testing 1000x Leverage and Closing Thoughts
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A Post-Crash Pilot Debrief from The White Whale
$62M - gone in a flash. But as was repeatedly pounded into my head in pilot training: any landing you can walk away from is a good landing.
As I’ve been processing yesterday’s events, I want to share a few thoughts from a place of honesty, vulnerability, and accountability - as I always have.
Let’s start with why I faced such a large liquidation, and then I’ll share some observations from the last 18 hours.
First and foremost: I got too fixated on the goal.
At one point this year, my unrealized PnL sat at 98 out of 100 million. Counting profits from other platforms, I had actually surpassed that goal - but because some of those platforms lacked HyperLiquid’s transparency, it became a mental game of “proof, or it didn’t happen.”
Heading into late September, my thesis was that because everyone expected a dip, it wouldn’t happen - and I wanted to be positioned in case I was right. I wasn’t. But I remained calm; I’ve survived every “black swan” this year and turned each into profit before.
That 100M milestone meant more than numbers to me. Years ago, I built a real-world company with that same amount as my exit target goal. But I walked away - choosing peace over profit. Running it had made me miserable; I was a prisoner to my own creation. So being able to finish that prior goal, this time on my own terms, became a form of redemption. A personal validation that I’d found a better way.
I’ve always been stubbornly resilient. Knocked down, yes - but never out.
That same determination that helped me survive life’s earlier chapters also made me impatient to start the next one. I wanted to move beyond daily trading and begin shaping the future of this space - helping build what comes next, not just benefiting from it.
Crypto is wild, beautiful, and broken in equal measure. My background has always been consumer-first: if you do right by people, your reward eventually comes. That principle belongs here, too - and I intend to bring it here.
But I rushed. I let excitement override discipline. And that’s on me.
While the timeline was full of “crime season” posts (ironically including my own), I’ve always believed this: you can’t claim the victories if you won’t own the failures.
Yesterday, when someone asked how I was handling it, I admitted I cried in my wife’s arms. Some mocked it with “no crying in the casino.” But I shared that moment intentionally - because sometimes, it’s okay to not be okay.
Vulnerability, especially among men, needs more voices.
And for the record - I’m still up for the year. I’ll recover, rebuild, and rise again.
A few quick observations from the wreckage:
L2 failures, once again.
During peak activity, Arbitrum and Base failed me - transactions hung while I tried to move stables. Solana, meanwhile, stayed rock solid. It wouldn’t have saved the position (nothing could outrun that $3200 ETH / $138 SOL wick), but once again Solana proved it performs when it matters most and earns more of my loyalty by the day.
Leverage isn’t the villain.
Some rushed to say, “See, that’s why leverage kills you.” I reject that. Leverage is just a tool - like a knife, a car, or money itself. Tools aren’t evil. The hand that wields them determines the outcome.
The humanity in the aftermath.
Amid the trolls celebrating others’ losses - a dark side of this space I’ll never understand - I also witnessed incredible compassion. People offering comfort, solidarity…even five individuals offering to send me money to help rebuild. I refused, of course - but the gesture hit me hard. It reminded me that for all the toxicity, there’s still goodness here.
Most days I’m the one offering support, not receiving it. Yesterday reversed that dynamic - and it meant more than I can express.
This wasn’t my proudest moment. But every chapter - even the painful ones - has purpose. If this experience reminds even one person to stay humble, to manage risk, to remain human through the chaos, then it wasn’t wasted.
Losses teach what profits never can: where strength truly lives. And mine was never in the number - it’s in the will to rebuild.
🫡 From the depths —
The White Whale 🐋
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Despite the event and what you might think, altcoins as a whole won’t miserably die.
Too juicy is the opportunity for the big hands to continue to pull the trigger up and down, down and up, in order to accumulate wealth.
Sure, the vast majority will inevitably perish over the long run as they’re the fruits of micro-macro vaporwaves designed to scam tech-believers and liquidity chasers.
"Innovative projects" will fade into the digital void.
But that doesn’t mean the entire sector is doomed.
Markets are mechanisms of redistribution and crypto, more than any other, thrives on cycles of destruction and rebirth.
Each washout clears the excess, burns the noise, and prepares the ground for the next rotation.
Curiously enough, those labeled as "old and not innovative" continue to remain resilient cycle over cycle, liquidation after liquidation.
"Maybe", after all, the real innovation resides in being strong enough to survive in a world of vaporwares and "ground-breaking technologies".
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Lots of people have lots of question regarding what is next. Always important to observe both #BTC & #ETH as the market leaders
Both had wild wicks too but nothing sort of the stuff we saw for nearly all alts
Liquidation wicks essentially don't matter for the market directionality, daily closes do and so far those are holding well for both of these.
Obviously what you wanna see are things to stabilize over the next days. As long as they do & hold this way the road to recovery can begin & the outlook for Q4 & 26 haven't changed one bit
ETH very much resembles August 2024 BTC price action + liquidation wick, follow through must come in though
More detail in the sub content coming in ✍️
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The worst daily crypto liquidation of all time by 4-5x and Bitcoin is over 110k and only 7% down for the 24hr period right now
If that doesnt tell you that the market structure is different today than before IDK what to tell you
Doesnt mean no drawdowns etc just that if your thinking is just based on an idea of 3 yrs up 1 yr 80% down with alt season in between then your mental models are wildly out of date
We can argue to what degree and how the market is different but its not the same
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Probably one of the most severe flushes I’ve ever seen on alts, I didn’t even imagine alts had this much leverage in them. It feels like someone got hit very hard and will see a large body float to the surface soon, reminds me a little of summer 2021.
Good reminder to myself to own things that I am actually bullish on, and not things I am trying to shift on momentum. Some charts look like they’ll never recover, whereas some things look buyable for the first time in a while.
When everyone is making hilarious amounts of money I am always tempted to start using leverage again. It is almost impossible to fight the feeling that you’re not making enough, or everyone else is outpacing you. Good reminder that fighting that feeling and avoid the wipeouts is worth it in the end.
Check on your friends, likely a bad day for many.
Personally, am concentrating my bags into the things I am happy to own for the next few years, and shedding the fat. Realised I own some assets based on not wanting to miss out, rather than on some actual thesis. Days like today are much easier for me if I think my bags will bounce back, and much worse if I’m losing money owning things I don’t even believe in.
Don’t let a leverage blowup dictate your long-term views. The future is bright, good things to come, patience is rewarded.
嵐の後
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I know there are a lot of emotions right now and this flush is in the top 3 all time
There are a lot of people in incredible pain right now, myself included in that
Not really a lot to say, but just check in on your friends if you have moment, make sure they are okay. You never know what someone might be going through right now
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Binance has 200M+ users.
Robinhood has 25M+ users.
Aster has 3M users.
Aster has everything robinhood and binance have to offer but more...
Add in
-No KYC
-No VPN
-24/7 global access
-Stocks + crypto in one place
-The fastest L1
The upside isn’t just big… it’s generational.
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Coca Cola pays you 3% dividend annually- put $10M in, get $300k-$320k out per year passively - A DREAM SITUATION FOR MANY
Little do ppl realize, Id bet that with the 90%+ of Aster revenue that’s gonna go towards buybacks on $Aster - we are getting over a 50-100% INVISIBLE dividend annually right now
Hard to quantify because we don’t know exactly how much the volume and revenue will be after 365 days exactly
But all I know is that, there is not a stronger passive invisible dividend in the world then the Aster DEX at only 4B market cap
working for you in your sleep right now to buyback your tokens higher. You are an owner of this DEX and its fees
If you own enough, you don’t have to work again
Not enough people understand
Aster completely shits on Bitcoin or Coke stock at just 4B market cap today
But 99% of people in the world today would pick $320,000 passive yield from Coke with 10M invested
Or $10M at 7% annual return in the stock market
That’s why these people will never have $10M to put in any of these
If you can’t think for yourself you don’t deserve a $320,000 passive annual yield from Coke
Or a way better invisible yield from Aster
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1. I am limited to what I can address regarding the transaction specifically, due to Reg S, Rule 144A restrictions in place, but I can speak about capital markets in general rather than this transaction specifically. If you study primary public offerings; a reason large institutional investors may come to the table for a company they have not had a prior relationship with is because a capital markets transaction enables sufficient size at an attractive price. i.e. MSTR converts, and prefs, have been massively upsized, in part because of the offered pricing. This has been strategic by MSTR, specifically with the prefs, as the discount at IPO brings about large capital markets players who read the prospectus, study the capital structure, and learn about the business strategy who might not otherwise if the transaction didn’t take place or was priced at par. One could strongly argue that this is remarkably positive in terms of expected value given the type of investor this brings to the table in the short, medium and longer term, as the investors who both invested and ultimately passed on the deal are now intimately familiar and actively/passively following the pricing of the security on an ongoing basis following the transaction. Additionally, discounts to market/par aren’t atypical for billion dollar capital market transactions. This is the reality of capital markets. Scale of billions of dollars is different than millions , or tens of millions, or even hundreds of millions. Additionally, when considering the range of a discount especially for a common equity transaction for institutional investors, the standard daily variance of the stock plays a role. A 5% discount for a stock with 30% volatility is very different in terms of its level of attractiveness than a 5% discount for a company that trades with 100% volatility. Furthermore, one may consider the positive reverberations of being able to discuss their business plan with some of the largest portfolio managers in the world, as underwriters have reached out to their network of global investors to bring them to the table. This process does not occur without an incentive. Long term, the second and third order effects of this exposure could greatly outweigh a face value discount on the capital market transaction, given the positive exposure the transaction brought out. On all of the above, I am speaking broadly about capital markets and primary transactions, and not about Metaplanet, given Reg S, Rule 144A restrictions.
2. With regards to the question on short selling, an extraordinary report was filed with the relevant authorities in Japan under the FIEA, which established it to be unlawful for investors to cover short sales with securities purchased in the offering. All registered securities brokers in Japan were advised of these restrictions in advance and were prohibited from allocating offering securities to investors seeking to settle such short positions. Any notion to pinpoint negative price action on one factor or another, is speculation, which we cannot comment or address here, and instead we should communicate that to the best of our ability we aimed to protect investors interests through the transaction, with the relavent legal authorities being involved to enforce this.
3. There have been a lot of lessons learned through the experience. More importantly and meangingfully, we believe the experience was a large net positive given the engagement during the period with institutional investors whom we aim to have an ongoing relationship into the future. Non-deal roadshows compared to primary capital market transactions can bring about an entirely different attitude and level of engagement with an institutional investor base, which is required to reach a deca-centi billion dollar scale. These relationships are vitally important when looking at the general roadmap for a BTCTC to reach sufficient scale to succeed in accessing the institutional grade credit market/s.