The Breakdown

Gemini and Figure Markets both raised significant cash in their IPOs last week, but their subdued trading debuts highlighted a cooler speculative environment compared to Circle’s explosive June listing. NLW unpacks what these IPOs signal about crypto market appetite, Bitcoin’s September sluggishness ahead of the Fed’s

This week’s Friday Five dives into the accelerating cryptoization of finance. SEC Chair Paul Atkins signaled a new era of pro-innovation policy, extending beyond crypto to AI and agentic trading. Senate Democrats introduced their own market structure framework, opening the door to bipartisan progress. Meanwhile, NASDAQ

SEC Chair Paul Atkins says the Gensler era of regulation by enforcement is over, as the agency launches Project Crypto to bring clarity and push capital markets on chain. From tokenization and super apps to a wave of new partnerships and IPOs, crypto’s next phase looks set to be fundamentally American. Enjoying this co

Senate Democrats have introduced their own framework for crypto market structure, setting up negotiations with Republicans and potentially clearing the way for bipartisan legislation. The proposal gives the CFTC new powers, pushes for exchange registration under the Bank Secrecy Act, flags DeFi for potential oversight,

August’s jobs report showed just 22,000 payrolls added, unemployment rising to 4.3%, and manufacturing losses continuing—making it the weakest labor market since 2016. With downward revisions and a looming payroll adjustment cutting nearly a million jobs from earlier counts, markets now see a Fed rate cut next week as

Stripe has unveiled Tempo, a new blockchain built for high-throughput stablecoin payments, developed with Paradigm and backed by partners like Visa, Shopify, and Anthropic. The launch has set off a firestorm—Ethereum advocates bristle at yet another corporate L1, critics call it a VC chain, and skeptics question whethe