Investing is my life's calling. Been a private market investor for 10 years. Started out at @MorganStanley's PE group and @GoldmanSachs's special situations group, focusing on distressed assets and complex situations. Jumped at the chance to work for @sershokunin and began investing in crypto in 2021. Now deploying @caladanxyz's balance sheet across early stage projects, liquid tokens, LP opportunities, and the occasional oddball trades (e.g. buying @coinbase senior note at ~50c in 2022 and @GalaxyDigital's stock last summer). Made a lot of friends along the way. Genuinely love what I do. Enneagram 3. Love food, travel, and novel experiences. Believe there's always a deal when the price is right—whether in investing or in life.

Another banger product on Variational! Check it out! 🚀

Congratulations to the @variational_io team on this raise. One of the strongest teams building in perps. Excited for the RWA rollout and to keep working closely with them on what's next. @variational_lvs @mr_plumpkin @0xMGB

Excited to back team @AxisFDN!

x402 seemingly came out of nowhere: with its ecosystem tokens surging and the protocol processing nearly 500,000 payments in a single week, a 10,780% increase in activity. At first glance, it looked like another “AI + crypto” narrative pump. But after digging in, it’s clear x402 represents something deeper, a native payment layer for AI agents. Here’s the foundation: When apps or AI agents talk to servers, they send a request and receive a status code: 200 = OK 404 = Not Found 402 = Payment Required That 402 code has existed for decades, but was never actually used. x402 revives it, turning it into a functional crypto payment rail. APIs can now charge for access inside the HTTP request itself, paid in stablecoins like USDC. So instead of developers managing API keys, subscriptions, or credit cards, AI agents can now pay autonomously on a per-request basis. Why this matters: 1) As AI agents become more autonomous, they need a way to transact, not just fetch data. x402 enables that, using stablecoins as the settlement layer. It’s the first real bridge between AI and on-chain economic activity. 2) Payments are handled by facilitators, crypto-native equivalents of @stripe, verifying and executing on-chain transactions so developers don’t need to build blockchain logic themselves. Not to mention: Serious infrastructure players betting on this becoming standard internet plumbing. The x402 alignment map includes @coinbase, @Cloudflare, @googlecloud, @PayPal Ventures, and @generalcatalyst. To summarize: → Stablecoins finally have a real use case. → AI finally has a payment rail. → Crypto finally has consumer-grade utility. x402 isn’t another cycle narrative; it’s the connective tissue between AI autonomy and blockchain utility. Bullish 🔥

Congrats to @PerleLabs on their beta launch! 🔥 Perle Labs is scaling the human layer by providing structured, verifiable annotation work tied directly to model performance. Real, tokenized value accrues to contributors based on measurable precision and onchain rep. Built on @solana, Perle is optimizing for speed, cost, and transparency. No clunky payouts or legacy bloat. This is how you build AI training pipelines that are verifiable, composable, and globally accessible. This isn't just another annotation app. It’s an entirely new environment for human capital in AI, where the value you create gets recorded, recognized, and rewarded. Early contributors are literally shaping the quality of next-gen AI systems, earning the upside that comes with it. Excited to see where this goes!

Honored to be included 🙏 From day 1, the mission at @OpenEden_X has been clear: make real-world assets actually accessible onchain with compliance, transparency, and yield that institutions can trust. Still early. The $EDEN ecosystem keeps on getting stronger!

Been following the x402 convos since last week. Glad to see quick developments from @Mantle_Official More on x402 from me this week

Omni just hit $1.6B in daily volume with $330M in open interest. A week ago, it crossed $1B for the first time. The OI number grew by another 33% since @variational_lvs posted the stats just 3 days ago. Spreads have been cut by up to 90%, $BTC small order spreads are now tighter than almost anywhere else onchain. You’d pay 50x more in transaction costs on Binance. They’ve refunded over $1M in trading losses to date. Around 2%+ of losses are automatically refunded, including $190k in a single day. The largest individual refund? $21,877. The platform now lists 500+ tokens, has processed over 1M trades, and is averaging 1,200+ daily active users. Recent changes: - Spread discounts were removed in favor of platform-wide improvements - Loss refund odds increased from 1% → 2% - UI precision and performance upgrades - System now built to handle much higher volumes All major metrics, volume, OI, revenue, user growth, are surging week after week. @variational_io is becoming the most cost-efficient, user-aligned venue for onchain perps. The growth speaks for itself. 🔥 For folks who want to try out the closed beta product, here is my referral code: omni.variational.io/?ref=OMN…

My entire CT feed is talking about this: @coinbase recently acquiring @cobie's @echodotxyz, and with it, the rights to revive the @UpOnlyTV podcast, for a combined $375M. At face value? Feels wild. But it’s actually one of the most strategic acquisitions in crypto this cycle. Let’s unpack it 🧵 🔥 1) Echo gives Coinbase the upstream layer: community-driven capital formation 2) UpOnly gives them the culture + narrative vehicle to capture mindshare Together, this is the playbook: → Fundraising infra (Sonar) → Community narrative (UpOnly) → Distribution and liquidity (Coinbase) They now control the full lifecycle: Step 1: Founders launch tokens via Echo Step 2: UpOnlyTV sparks demand + community Step 3: Listings + liquidity flow through Coinbase Step 4: Profit 👏 Cobie’s move was classic, he memed a podcast into a $25M acquisition. But Coinbase didn’t just buy the meme, they bought attention. And in crypto, attention monetizes faster than ever. Echo has already helped raise $200M+ across ~300 deals. But under Coinbase’s umbrella, it becomes the default interface for web3 fundraising, both for startups and tokenized real-world assets. Expect Echo to integrate directly into the Coinbase ecosystem: wallet, custody, trading, governance. For founders? Faster, community-native capital access. For investors? Earlier deal access without needing VC intros. For Coinbase? A moat in origin + capital markets. It’s also a clear bet on a future where: - Onchain capital formation replaces traditional seed rounds - Podcasts drive distribution, not just storytelling - Liquidity meets culture in a seamless product loop This is infra + narrative, capital + content, all bundled into Coinbase’s next chapter. And I’ll say it: the UpOnlyTV reboot will be the most expensive podcast revival in history. But if it funnels enough founders, capital, and attention into Echo/Coinbase, it might be worth every dollar. Builders build. Memers meme. Coinbase is doing both + Everybody wins.