Gm and happy Friday. Before breaking for the Memorial Day recess, lawmakers packed in a flurry of crypto-related activity—from Senate movement on GENIUS to House action on debanking and a hearing with SEC Chair Paul Atkins.

We're poeting in our bubble this issue #246 of your weekly poetry shot

Here's an interesting table via the Globe and Mail. As of January of this year, residential real estate loans in Canada totalled approximately $2.07 trillion. On top of this there's another $350 billion in home equity lines of credit. This brings total loans secured by residential real estate in this country to about $2.42 trillion. What this chart really shows, though, is how concentrated the mortgage market is. The "big six" banks make up about 74% of the market. If you include Desjardins, t..

Last few spots available for Unplug 25 here: https://lu.ma/unplug25 (absolutely epic crew already signed up) Another delayed week, apologies for that and thanks to Francesco for putting this together while I was writing about super nerdy venture fund construction math. This past week has been a battle of the giants, with releases from SOTA atomic models to new video generation and world foundation models. The leading AI labs are already binge eaters that devour larger and larger market chunks...

Users can earn yield on their stablecoins, WBTC, wstETH, and ETH via a new Kiln widget on Safe Wallet.

Before we get into it, I want to share this hilarious picture of my cat Nara I took last week. Despite the look of terror she has, I promise she’s a happy cat! She just isn’t the biggest fan of being carried…😅Alright, on to the serious stuff.REKT and brand coinsOver the past years, we’ve seen the memecoins proliferate to a point where there are subcategories of them. From my piece on memecoins last year, we’ve seen these terms pop up along with others that I didn’t mention below (celebcoins,...

Bitcoin’s record highs are grabbing headlines, but Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade is quietly building the on-chain future that could drive this bull run.

There’s a gym in New York quietly reinventing the fitness industry. It’s called The Athletic Clubs, and its core innovation is simple: “squads.” Squads are fixed groups of about 20 people who train together at the same time twice a week, then grab coffee afterward. Show up consistently and your squad becomes a group of close friends. It adds a team-like dynamic to your workouts that makes the routine feel more meaningful. This flips the traditional gym model, where the best customers are the ...

We’re opening up the AI Creativity rounds to vibe-coding! This week, you’re invited to help imagine or build lightweight apps for three Farcaster channels: /luminary, /arrow, and /lumart. You don’t need to be technical to join. Just show us what you can vibe-code: clickable mockups are enough. I recommend using a tool like Loveable or any other prototyping platform to express the idea. 👉 Post your ideas in /lum-protocol. Must be clickable mockups at minimum, and fit within the purpose of the...

In this edition of the Variant newsletter, we’re talking about decentralized physical infrastructure networks, or DePIN. In Part 1, Alana focuses on where DePIN can solve supply-side challenges. In Part 2, she explores how it can sustainably boost demand.