The Putz And The Genius Act and More Degeneracy For All...Sunday Reads and Listens

Before I get started today, back in September 2023, I cycled in the Pyranees with my pals and climbed a lot of the same famous mountain passes that this years Tour De France just raced through.

The day we did ‘Tourmalet’ (about 6,000 feet/19km/average 7.4 percent grade), the Tour cyclists called a warmup as they rode on to THREE more peaks and a total of 15,000 feet of climbing. The Tour pros speed, endurance and recovery relative to other humans is what makes me a fan. I think you can call this type of cycling degenerate and the economy of cycling (road gravel, mountain and e-bike) is growing fast.

Ok..onward…

This week our President (the Putz) signed the ‘Genius Act’. I am all for the USA being the center of the crypto economy. Stablecoins ($CRCL ( ▼ 4.81% ) ) are genius and a lot of very smart friends have worked for years trying to get these crypto technologies adopted.

Trump understands the art of being paid so all it took was a Trump coin and Melania coin and a lot of other ‘nudge nudge wink wink payola’ to get over the goal line.

This was a huge week for the crypto economy. This chart captures it best as the total crypto market hit $4 trillion:

When Yoni at Etoro told me to buy Bitcoin at 11 cents back in 2011, I think the total crypto market was under $50 million, so the technology/money/economy has come a long way in 14 years and one thing apparent is I should be much richer.

It’s not just crypto, but crypto derivatives benefitting and hitting all time highs.

Robinhood, Coinbase and Microstrategy are all $100 billion companies as of this week and Blackrock’s fastest growing ETF is a Bitcoin one.

Now to put all this in perspective, the total crypto market is now the size of Nvidia ($NVDA ( ▼ 0.34% ) ) which this week became the first company to reach $4 trillion.

I try very hard not to be a hypster, just a simple trend follower, but I am pretty hyped about the future of money, money movement, investing, trading and yes degeneracy that comes from it all.

Here are key product and platform launches this week…

Coinbase launched a ‘super app’, more here.

Robinhood launched ‘staking’ and this interview with Vlad dives deep into how Robinhood is thinking about ‘tokenization’ in this must watch interview

Not exactly key or important…my friend Luc, the founder of Pudgy Penguins ($PENGU.X ( ▲ 3.55% ) ) made me (and Stocktwits) it’s own ‘pudgy penguin’…

Note - Luc will be at Stocktoberfest as will execs from Robinhood, Etoro and Coinbase and many of the Bitcoin treasury companies). The event details and tickets for the event October 20-22 in San Diego, Coronado are here.

Finally…

I am trying a new solo format video show to unpack the biggest shifts shaping the degenerate economy—where tech, money, politics, culture, and free time collide. In this first episode, I dive into $HOOD ( ▲ 4.07% ) ’s private market tokenization pivot, why Vanguard is now passively long Bitcoin via $MSTR ( ▼ 6.23% ) , and how Elon’s AI antics with Grok 4 point to the darker side of digital life. Plus: Kalshi, Polymarket, and the new reality of betting on everything—including prop bets on $NFLX ( ▼ 5.1% ) earnings calls.

As a reminder: you can check out my Degenerate Economy Index here.

JUMP TO THE GOOD STUFF:

• (0:00) Intro: What Is the Degenerate Economy?

• (1:12) Robinhood’s Tokenization Bet

• (3:20) Vanguard Owns Bitcoin (Sort Of)

• (5:14) Elon, Grok 4 & the Dark Side of AI