Market Pulse: Ceilings Are Rising

This covers the Market Pulse between August 20 and August 26.

Majors have been stalling a bit after an explosive move over the past 10 days, and while panic ensues as soon as BTC doesn’t go up in a straight line, it does imply that people have a little bit more capital to play around with, which naturally causes the on-chain ecosystem to explode.

It’s a great environment for you to grow your portfolio and capitalize on the chains vying for attention because everyone saw what Solana did last cycle and how valuable it is to be the go-to chain in an uptrending crypto bull market. With that in mind and social trading growing, they are vying for your attention, which is a great opportunity if you see things for what they can be instead of chasing everything in front of you.

In addition, over the past week we have seen 2.08B of BTC ETF buys over the past week and 705M of ETH ETF purchases over the same period, while Saylor has continued to not buy BTC, as he was a seller at the bottom to fund STRC.

It’s a great backdrop even if a lot of people suffer from bear market ptsd right now, and the developments that have been taking place in the crypto industry will be increasingly touted as price starts to go up.

Coinbase fights back

Coinbase fights back against Robinhood by being more open to listing tokens from a lower market cap on Base.

It’s likely not going to be enough; instead, the most effective strategy is to dangle the carrot in the form of an airdrop to ensure that people move over to Base in order to trade and generate volume in the hope of the airdrop. Until that happens, Robinhood will remain the dominant chain.

Twitter hints at social trading

I’ve suggested before that this cycle will be much larger than the previous one because distribution will be at a completely different scale, given Twitter's hints about making social trading directly available on the platform. Meaning that as soon as a ticker is shared, it can be directly traded on the platform.

This, in conjunction with Telegram getting serious about distribution and its ecosystem, and exchanges getting increasingly aggressive with listings due to increased competition, indicates that there will be abundant opportunities and a frenzy over the coming years.

The image below shows that this is now available for the SPCX ticker on Twitter, which likely is a pilot, but you can imagine in the not-so-distant future that it will be available for every token at people’s own risk.

Ceilings are being raised; dare to dream.

LayerZero launched ATLAS

LayerZero@LayerZero_Core

The world’s markets are undergoing a once in a generation transition. We’ve spent the last year building ATLAS (Aggregated Trading Liquidity and Settlement), a first-of-its kind, headless exchange designed for the future of global markets. It combines the performance and

2:01 PM · Aug 25, 2026 · 173K Views

44 Replies · 106 Reposts · 574 Likes

Atlas acts as a universal backend for global markets and can be used to both build crypto-native trading solutions and markets that are tailor-made for institutional trading.

The platform does not have any frontend and is instead accessed through other trading venues. This allows it to power multiple exchanges so people can use the technology to build on top of it instead of limiting themselves to one exchange. Due to this, it fosters market creation where market makers can converge to provide liquidity to enable efficient pricing.

The initial partners for the platform are GTE, Bullish, Defined.fi and TrueNorth.

If you want to read more about ATLAS, you can do so here.

The ZRO token pumped into the announcement as it was frontrun during a time when the market started to move, would be a good idea to look at the ZRO token when it quietens down around ATLAS and what LayerZero is building, or when there are clear instances of the platform getting distribution by routing significant trading volume.

Worth noting that nothing is in production yet so it is moving based on hype so far.

The data might say that volume is higher on Solana, but it is concentrated amongst a few tokens such as CATE, KET and STONK, whereas on Robinhood the whole ecosystem is moving all together. The Solana Foundation has shown an interest in both KET and STONK in particular.

However, as on-chain ceilings are being raised across the board, the volume will also increase on both chains, presenting great opportunities in the coming weeks and months. It’s clear to see that we remain in an on-chain uptrend, which is very exciting.

Green candles can cause you to feel that you need to force moves, but best believe that you are better off picking what you believe to be winners and holding them through volatility. You get paid for it, and you will likely end up outperforming that way instead of trying to catch every token.

Something something chasing two rabbits, you get it.

In the event of any eventual September pullback, don’t panic.

Not any clear trades to recommend this week with BTC having ripped so violently over a short time. It is very clear that we are in a disbelief phase of the market right now. However…

Uniswap V4 Hooks are bringing back experimentation, which is likely the market sector that is bringing back DeFi in a different iteration. I don’t think we have scratched one tenth of what will come out of it, as the leveraged side of it hasn’t really been explored yet on a large amount of tokens.

Hayden Adams posted this great article about where he sees Hooks going and how making tokenized markets programmable presents the next step for Uniswap.

Uniswap@Uniswap

https://t.co/qejeC0nXxk

10:52 PM · Aug 25, 2026 · 30.6K Views

21 Replies · 22 Reposts · 201 Likes

One of the protocols that is the reason why we have on-chain markets today, leading from the forefront once again in great for the Ethereum ecosystem new on-chain experiments happening on the EVM.

The last bull market came too soon for the Ethereum ecosystem, with DeFi struggling and hacks still rampant for even the large protocols. Now things seem to have settled, and we are finally ready to scale tokenization properly this time, and great new protocols are scaling tokenized equities through DeFi that are going to become unicorns, and Uniswap v4 hooks will likely play a big part in it.

Why I am highlighting V4 Hooks in particular is because it requires some kind of natural interest in DeFi to actually perform the research necessary to find and understand the opportunities within these protocols and the people that do continue to be rewarded for it.

In the paid article from last week, I mentioned HOOKR that has more than 6x’ed in price since then, and I will continue to cover opportunities I come across, but don’t let that stop you from being curious to find information asymmetry on-chain as well.

I mentioned this in a public note as well:

I’ve really focused on making sure my Premium Substack research has remained affordable for the vast majority of people, but I’m realizing that I am underselling myself in comparison to other people not even posting close to the same value at the same frequency.

I will keep the pricing at the same price it is now until September 31st and after that I will increase the monthly subscription to $20 per month and the yearly subscription to $200 per year.

It is still very cheap in comparison to what you get in return in comparison to other subscriptions.

Don’t worry if you are already a current subscriber or want to subscribe before that date, as anyone who is a premium subscriber before the price increase will retain the cheaper pricing forever as long as you maintain your subscription.

So to clarify, the new pricing won’t affect subs that are in prior to September 31st and only new people entering after that will pay the increased price.

Loyalty should rightfully get rewarded.

Let’s keep winning.

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Disclaimer: All Content on this site is information of a general nature and does not address the circumstances of any particular individual or entity. Nothing on the site constitutes professional and/or financial advice, nor does any information on the site constitute a comprehensive or complete statement of the matters discussed or the law relating thereto. I am just sharing my opinion. This post may contain affiliate links.