A man taps Perps, picks bitcoin, hits 10x, and never learns where his money actually went.
So where did it go? Not to Phantom. The trade runs on Hyperliquid, an exchange most Phantom users have never opened. It matches the order, holds the margin, runs the liquidation.
Phantom adds 0.05% and keeps it. Since July 2025 that tab moved about 50 billion dollars for 192,000 people and earned over 20 million, with no order book of its own. MetaMask, Rabby, Trust Wallet, Ledger and the Base App now run the same engine.
The takeaway: the wallet is the storefront, the exchange is the factory, and the logo never tells you the difference.
November 2022. FTX implodes worldwide, and one office in Tokyo starts cutting checks.
FTX Japan was the first unit anywhere to pay clients back. The reason is the whole story: Japan had forced exchanges to hold client coins apart from company money since 2017. The coins were still there.
That trust pulled in SBI, Sony, Mercari, and a phone giant. SBI's crypto arm earned 21.2 billion yen before tax.
Cause of death for the old "crypto needs no rules" idea: Japan wrote the rules and built the safest rails in crypto. The catch is a 55% tax that sends the actual builders to Singapore. Tokyo owns the plumbing. For now, Singapore books the upside.
Coinbase went from $1.3B revenue in 2020 to $7.2B in 2025, with $1.26B in net profit. Tether reports over $10B profit for the year.
People still DM me every week calling crypto a Ponzi. So I opened the actual 2025 accounts of 20 crypto companies. They charge for real services and publish real profits.
Calling all of this a scam in 2026 is just 2017 thinking.
Pump.fun buys back 15.2% of its own value every year. Apple does 2.2%. Seven times the pace.
And yet Pump.fun is down 38%, while Aave, which buys back nothing, is down less.
The reason is supply. Apple's share count actually shrinks. A token can buy back and unlock new supply at the same time, which cancels the whole point. A buyback only counts when the supply really drops.
The naira lost 41% against the dollar in 2024, and that single fact splits two crypto markets in half.
In Nigeria crypto replaces the bank, so independents won: Roqqu hit 1.8M users with no outside capital. In Colombia 96% of adults are already banked, so the banks sell the crypto instead (Wenia is Bancolombia, Lulo X is Lulo Bank).
Nigeria built crypto companies. Colombia built crypto features.
Berachain locked $3.3B at its peak and still only made $84 of revenue a day. That one number tells you everything.
Most chains sell a story. The ones that last show revenue instead. Tron moves $94B of USDT, Solana cleared $650B of stablecoins in a month, Hyperliquid earns more than Uniswap, Aave and Lido combined.
A story gets a chain on the map once. Revenue keeps it there.
65 crypto firms got licensed under Europe's new MiCA law. 31 got locked out. BBVA is in. Binance is out.
Bitcoin was built to own an asset without permission. Now it's becoming a bank product, and that might be how it dies. Wrap it in a bank app and you keep the price but lose the point.
One French app, Bitstack, found the gap: 300,000 users, 200M euros saved rounding up coffees into bitcoin. The lesson? Get licensed like a bank. Build like Satoshi.
North Korea put $1M into a fake partnership and pulled $285M out of Drift in 12 minutes. In 2025 they ran 12% of crypto hacks but took 60% of all stolen funds.
Solana is doing what Apple did for retail. Ethereum? That’s Microsoft.
Apple won hearts. Microsoft built the infrastructure. Both crushed it.
Ethereum's path is B2B. 70% of all blockchain devs work on EVM-compatible chains. Uniswap, Aave, Lido... like the Azure ecosystem—devs, infra, enterprise-grade solutions. It’s the backbone.
Solana? It’s retail. 14M active wallets in Q1 2025. Topping app charts. Speed, cost, UX. It’s giving us the iPhone moment. Raydium is the new App Store. Meme coins = the early mobile games.
But here's the kicker…
L2s are in an identity crisis. Are they for devs? Institutions? End users? You can't be Apple and Microsoft at the same time.
The winners will be the ones who pick a lane, own it, and go to market like hell.
Gabriel Mamou-Mani
A man taps Perps, picks bitcoin, hits 10x, and never learns where his money actually went.
So where did it go? Not to Phantom. The trade runs on Hyperliquid, an exchange most Phantom users have never opened. It matches the order, holds the margin, runs the liquidation.
Phantom adds 0.05% and keeps it. Since July 2025 that tab moved about 50 billion dollars for 192,000 people and earned over 20 million, with no order book of its own. MetaMask, Rabby, Trust Wallet, Ledger and the Base App now run the same engine.
The takeaway: the wallet is the storefront, the exchange is the factory, and the logo never tells you the difference.
1 day ago | [YT] | 0
View 0 replies
Gabriel Mamou-Mani
November 2022. FTX implodes worldwide, and one office in Tokyo starts cutting checks.
FTX Japan was the first unit anywhere to pay clients back. The reason is the whole story: Japan had forced exchanges to hold client coins apart from company money since 2017. The coins were still there.
That trust pulled in SBI, Sony, Mercari, and a phone giant. SBI's crypto arm earned 21.2 billion yen before tax.
Cause of death for the old "crypto needs no rules" idea: Japan wrote the rules and built the safest rails in crypto. The catch is a 55% tax that sends the actual builders to Singapore. Tokyo owns the plumbing. For now, Singapore books the upside.
3 days ago | [YT] | 0
View 0 replies
Gabriel Mamou-Mani
Coinbase went from $1.3B revenue in 2020 to $7.2B in 2025, with $1.26B in net profit. Tether reports over $10B profit for the year.
People still DM me every week calling crypto a Ponzi. So I opened the actual 2025 accounts of 20 crypto companies. They charge for real services and publish real profits.
Calling all of this a scam in 2026 is just 2017 thinking.
5 days ago | [YT] | 0
View 0 replies
Gabriel Mamou-Mani
Pump.fun buys back 15.2% of its own value every year. Apple does 2.2%. Seven times the pace.
And yet Pump.fun is down 38%, while Aave, which buys back nothing, is down less.
The reason is supply. Apple's share count actually shrinks. A token can buy back and unlock new supply at the same time, which cancels the whole point. A buyback only counts when the supply really drops.
5 days ago | [YT] | 0
View 0 replies
Gabriel Mamou-Mani
Blast raised $2.2 billion. By October, $32 million was left. Abstract signed up 400,000 users and made $3,900 a day in fees.
I studied 20 chain shutdowns. The same loop broke every time: users pay fees, fees pay for security, security keeps users.
Blast had capital that didn't stay. Abstract had users who didn't pay. Speed is solved, so the real contest is who actually gets paid.
6 days ago | [YT] | 0
View 0 replies
Gabriel Mamou-Mani
The naira lost 41% against the dollar in 2024, and that single fact splits two crypto markets in half.
In Nigeria crypto replaces the bank, so independents won: Roqqu hit 1.8M users with no outside capital. In Colombia 96% of adults are already banked, so the banks sell the crypto instead (Wenia is Bancolombia, Lulo X is Lulo Bank).
Nigeria built crypto companies. Colombia built crypto features.
1 week ago | [YT] | 0
View 0 replies
Gabriel Mamou-Mani
Berachain locked $3.3B at its peak and still only made $84 of revenue a day. That one number tells you everything.
Most chains sell a story. The ones that last show revenue instead. Tron moves $94B of USDT, Solana cleared $650B of stablecoins in a month, Hyperliquid earns more than Uniswap, Aave and Lido combined.
A story gets a chain on the map once. Revenue keeps it there.
1 week ago | [YT] | 0
View 0 replies
Gabriel Mamou-Mani
65 crypto firms got licensed under Europe's new MiCA law. 31 got locked out. BBVA is in. Binance is out.
Bitcoin was built to own an asset without permission. Now it's becoming a bank product, and that might be how it dies. Wrap it in a bank app and you keep the price but lose the point.
One French app, Bitstack, found the gap: 300,000 users, 200M euros saved rounding up coffees into bitcoin. The lesson? Get licensed like a bank. Build like Satoshi.
1 week ago | [YT] | 0
View 0 replies
Gabriel Mamou-Mani
North Korea put $1M into a fake partnership and pulled $285M out of Drift in 12 minutes. In 2025 they ran 12% of crypto hacks but took 60% of all stolen funds.
1 week ago | [YT] | 0
View 0 replies
Gabriel Mamou-Mani
Solana is doing what Apple did for retail.
Ethereum? That’s Microsoft.
Apple won hearts. Microsoft built the infrastructure. Both crushed it.
Ethereum's path is B2B.
70% of all blockchain devs work on EVM-compatible chains.
Uniswap, Aave, Lido... like the Azure ecosystem—devs, infra, enterprise-grade solutions. It’s the backbone.
Solana? It’s retail.
14M active wallets in Q1 2025.
Topping app charts. Speed, cost, UX. It’s giving us the iPhone moment.
Raydium is the new App Store. Meme coins = the early mobile games.
But here's the kicker…
L2s are in an identity crisis.
Are they for devs? Institutions? End users?
You can't be Apple and Microsoft at the same time.
The winners will be the ones who pick a lane, own it, and go to market like hell.
1 year ago | [YT] | 0
View 0 replies
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