This is why tokenized gold has surged to a record $6 billion in market capitalization this year. It represents an “air-gapped” value — a physical bar in a London or Swiss vault — wrapped in the utility of a token. But the wrapper matters as much as the content. In a landscape defined by “Digital Iron Curtains” and escalating geopolitical friction between the U.S., Venezuela, and Iran, your choice of gold token is ultimately a choice of which jurisdiction you trust to hold the keys to your so called digital fortress.

Before we analyze the titans of the industry, we must examine the wreckage of those who tried and failed to bridge the gap between physical gold and its representation in code as a tokenized commodity. The history of 2024–2025 is littered with “proxy” projects that serve as a reminder: the best technology in the world is a liability if the trust layer or the liquidity layer evaporates.

Let’s consider the Indigo Protocol on Cardano before we look into tokenized gold itself. Indigo was designed to offer “synthetic” exposure — mathematical representations of assets like Bitcoin (iBTC), Ethereum (iETH), and the US Dollar (iUSD), while not tokenized wrappers of physical commodities, they are representations of familiar assets manifested in code. Despite these products being technically impressive, Indigo has become a case study in Protocol Decay, currently operating at a fraction of its former Total Value Locked (TVL). Its history of depegging events, particularly with iUSD and iBTC, highlights the “synthetic trap.” Investors realized that in a 2026 crisis, they didn’t want a mathematical derivative backed by a volatile L1 token (Cardano’s native asset, ADA); they wanted a legal claim on a physical asset that has time and again been proven to hold its value. Indigo’s struggle isn’t a failure of the Cardano blockchain — which remains a rock-solid settlement layer — but a failure of the synthetic model to provide the “anchor” that investors actually crave during geopolitical storms.

On the other side of the Cardano ecosystem was Twin Finance. Unlike Indigo’s synthetics, Twin was built on the “Digital Twin” model: tokenized claims on fractions of real-world assets. It was an engineering challenge that failed to overcome the adoption hurdle. Twin’s silence in 2026 serves as a warning that tokenization requires a robust bridge to the physical world. Without massive institutional buy-in and a seamless redemption path, a “digital twin” is just a ghost in the machine. Market value comes from the high adoption of a particular product or service. In terms of tokenized assets, the value of something is next to nothing if there is no demand or next consumer to sell it to. Twin started with an excellent idea but it failed to attract the customers that it needed in order to offer the same quality of product as industry giants such as Paxos and Tether.

Meld’s neobank idea offers a similar scenario on the Algorand blockchain. Meld remains a fascinating example of “Product vs. Platform.” The MCAU token itself is a triumph — functioning as a tradeable gold certificate tracking the price of a single gram of gold, when combined with Algorand’s near-instant finality, this could be a winning formula if the token can gain enough traction. However, the Meld Neobank ambition has largely receded. The grand vision of a crypto-fiat banking suite integrated with precious metals became a cautionary tale of institutional overreach. While the tokens still track the spot price of gold, the failure of the neobank status reminds us: blockchain finality is not a substitute for institutional reliability. There is still some potential for MCAU. However, the $MELD institutional token’s decline and its lack of ability to expand its tokenized precious metal trade into Palladium, Silver and Platinum has largely eroded consumer confidence in its services. Creating a somewhat bleak outlook for the future of the MCAU token.

Perhaps the most sobering lesson that pertains to tokenized gold directly comes from the Perth Mint Gold Token (PMGT). Launched with the promise of being the world’s first government-guaranteed gold token, it was supposed to be the “safest” bet in crypto. Yet, by late 2023, its technology partner Trovio pulled the plug, and the token was effectively delisted and discontinued. The failure of PMGT wasn’t due to a lack of gold — the Perth Mint is a global powerhouse — but due to a cocktail of regulatory scrutiny, a lack of deep on-chain liquidity, and the Mint’s own struggles with AML/CTF compliance. It proved that even a government guarantee is worthless if the digital bridge to that guarantee is fragile. In the 2026 market, PMGT is remembered as the moment investors realized that “institutional” doesn’t always mean “permanent.” While most crypto investors are skeptical of government backed assets innately, this example does highlight the value in the large amount of liquidity held by the major gold backers in the space.

If you are an investor who values legal compliance above all else, PAXG is your “Legal Stack.” Issued by the Paxos Trust Company and regulated by the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), it is the most compliant gold token on the market. Each token is backed by one fine troy ounce of a 400 oz London Good Delivery gold bar, stored in Brink’s vaults. In the current climate of U.S. debt exceeding $38 trillion and the “Clarity Act” moving through Congress, PAXG is the choice for those who want to sleep at night knowing their asset is subject to monthly KPMG audits. However, this is a “permissioned” asset. This means that if the U.S. government decides to freeze your account, Paxos has the capability (and legal obligation) to comply with their demands. It is a fortress, but the keys are held by the state. It is the gold token of the compliant, sanitized crypto-economy. This is gold exposure for those that are comfortable with centralized control of their decentralized assets.

In contrast to the centralized position of Paxos, lies the “Shadow Titan”: Tether Gold (XAUt). If PAXG is for the compliant professional, XAUt is for the sovereign rebel, those that value the security of assets outside the reach of US. Government regulation. Backed by over 148 tons of gold stored in Swiss vaults, XAUt carries the massive, somewhat opaque liquidity of the Tether ecosystem. As geopolitical sanctions bite, XAUt’s offshore status (domiciled in El Salvador) makes it the ultimate “War Stack” asset. It offers decentralization through distance. It is far harder for a New York regulator to reach a Swiss vault than a London one. You are trading regulatory transparency for geopolitical resistance. You trust the “Black Box” of Tether and the vaults of Switzerland more than you trust the NYDFS. In a 2026 world defined by sanctions, this is a trade that many battle-hardened investors are increasingly willing to make. For the long term investor, it may be prudent to invest in both tokens to gain exposure to both the sanitized and shadow gold narratives that each of these custodians offer.

When making a choice between PaxG or XAUt, we must move beyond philosophy and look at the nuts and bolts of each token. Here is a breakdown of the Pros and Cons of the leading 2026 gold proxies:

Pax Gold (PAXG)

Pros:

• The Regulatory Gold Standard: Regulated by the NYDFS, offering the highest level of institutional trust.
• Tier-1 Audits: Monthly attestations from KPMG verify 1:1 backing.
• London Good Delivery: Physical gold held is the highest LBMA standard.

Cons:

• Permissioned Chain Risk: Paxos must comply with U.S. government seizure orders.
• Ethereum Dependency: Vulnerable to network congestion and gas fee spikes.

Tether Gold (XAUt)

Pros:

• Geopolitical Resistance: Offshore and Swiss-custodied; difficult for Western regulators to freeze.
• Massive Liquidity: Deepest liquidity pool for large-scale gold trading.
• No Issuer Fee on Creation: Unlike competitors, Tether doesn’t charge to mint (redemption fees apply).

Cons:

• Audit Opacity: Reporting has improved but lacks the granular monthly validation of PAXG.
• Minimum Entry Barrier: Creation/redemption is gated by a high minimum threshold.

In the final analysis, tokenized gold in 2026 has revealed a hard truth: You can never truly be “trustless” when physical atoms are involved. Unless you are holding a physical bar in your own safe, you are always choosing a warden whether on the blockchain or in an investment account. The blockchain simply changes the nature of the bridge.

The choice of which token to hold is a choice of which threat model you are preparing for.

• The Institutionalist: If your concern is transparency, choose PAXG. It is the “Legal Stack.”
• The Sovereign: If your concern is the “Digital Iron Curtain,” choose XAUt. It is the “War Stack.”
• The Lesson: Do not get caught in the middle. The ghosts of PMGT, Indigo, and Twin Finance teach us that in a crisis, tech isn’t enough — you need either the law or the distance to protect you.

In 2026, the barbell strategy isn’t just about balancing Bitcoin’s growth with gold’s stability. It is about balancing physicality with velocity. Your gold bars in an “Analog Fortress” protect you from the system. Your gold tokens in your digital wallet allow you to interact with the system. Whether you choose the New York vault or the Swiss one, the goal remains the same: ensure that when the world goes offline, your wealth remains online.

Disclaimer: This is NOT financial advice. I’m a cow and I like to eat cereal. Any knowledge gained from this post is merely incidental and you are responsible for your own financial decisions. Make investments wisely and make sure to do your own research.

Tokenized Gold: Institutional Security or Shadow Stability? was originally published in The Financial Future on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In a time of profound uncertainty — marked by the recent U.S.-Israeli strikes on Tehran and the January extraction of Nicolás Maduro from Caracas — we find ourselves in a world where digital connectivity is as much a liability as it is an asset. For the modern investor, particularly the crypto-native who understands the fragility of centralized systems, gold provides the “off-switch” that a 24/7 digital economy lacks.

The geopolitics of 2026 feel like a fever-dream remix of the 20th century. During the original Cold War, the Space Race was a battle for physical high-ground — who could put boots on the moon first? Today, we are locked in a Quantum Race. It is no longer about who can launch a rocket, but who can build a computer powerful enough to render every private key on the planet obsolete.

When the U.S. enacted the “Digital Iron Curtain” against Iran and Venezuela this year, we saw how quickly a nation’s digital life can be zeroed out. The “discombobulator” weapons reportedly used in Caracas to silence Russian and Chinese defense systems illustrate a terrifying new reality: if you rely on a network, you are at the mercy of the network’s master.

If you were a civilian in Tehran during the March strikes, your access to global liquidity didn’t just slow down; it evaporated. In these “hard times,” physical gold acts as the ultimate hard money. It doesn’t require an Internet Service Provider, a power grid, or a consensus layer to simply exist. If the world goes offline, gold’s value remains stubbornly, beautifully “online” in the physical realm.

We crypto enthusiasts love the phrase “Don’t Trust, Verify.” It is the bedrock of the blockchain revolution. Yet, gold was the original trustless asset. Its rare chemical properties act as the ultimate verifiability tool; its purity, density, and malleability determine its value according to market prices — no whitepaper or GitHub commit required. Certainly no project insiders holding large amounts of tokens with a craftily planned unlock schedule.

Gold mining, therefore, is the ultimate physical proof of work. The electricity spent securing the Bitcoin network has a physical predecessor in the diesel, machinery, and human sweat required to pull gold from the earth. The costs associated with mining, purifying, and minting it act as the equivalent to the electricity in Bitcoin’s hashing process. The very physical proof of work that is not nearly so emphasized in the TradFi realm.

The limited supply of gold that enters the market each year — now hovering around 1,000 tonnes per quarter despite the price surge — is akin to the predictable issuance of BTC. While gold’s equivalent of a BTC halving isn’t mathematically coded into a protocol, it is coded into the Earth’s crust. Gold acts as the long-term, geological predecessor to Bitcoin. They are not enemies; they are different iterations of the same desire for an asset that cannot be printed into oblivion by an angry government. In essence, both assets are different forms of hard money.

The Quantum Race of 2026 and beyond is the most significant threat to the digital sovereignty we’ve built. While experts argue that a “Quantum Doomsday” for Bitcoin is still years away, the “harvest now, decrypt later” strategy is already in play. Adversaries are collecting encrypted data today, waiting for the hardware to catch up.

North Korean hacking groups, for example, have perfected the art of the bridge exploit and the private key heist. They have siphoned billions from the digital economy. But they will never be able to hack a gold bar. Physical gold is immune to Shor’s algorithm. It is immune to “long-range quantum attacks.” By holding a portion of your wealth in an analog format, you are effectively “air-gapping” a portion of your life savings. Before crypto, air gapping was more than a feature of some hardware wallets, it was an innate feature of physical gold investment.

In 2026, the way you hold gold determines which “attack vector” you are exposed to.

• PaxG or Tether Gold: These are excellent for high-velocity trading. You get the price action of gold with the speed of a digital token. However, you are trading network risk for protocol risk. If the issuer’s vaults are seized or the smart contract has a “black hole” bug, your gold is gone.
• iShares (IAU) or Physical Gold Stocks: A custodian like iShares holds gold in London vaults. This is the institutional path. It is safe until it isn’t. If the global financial system faces a systemic “snapback” of sanctions, your shares can be frozen in a millisecond.
• Physical Bullion: This is the only version that is truly “sanction-resistant.” It cannot be switched off. However, it introduces vulnerability to the “$5 Wrench Attack.” No amount of 256-bit encryption can save you from a low-tech criminal with a hardware-store tool at your front door.

This is the central paradox of 2026: digital assets carry “systemic risk,” while physical assets carry “personal risk.”

Because we live in a world of “hybrid warfare,” a hybrid portfolio is the only logical response. It is worth considering a 50:50 Barbell Strategy to balance the high velocity of crypto with the low-velocity stability of gold.

• 50% High-Velocity Digital (BTC/ETH/Sol): This is your growth engine. It is your participation in the future of finance, the AI-driven economy, and the borderless world we hope to build.
• 50% Low-Velocity Analog (Physical Gold/PaxG): This is your anchor. It is your “break glass in case of emergency” asset.

This ratio ensures that you are prepared for both the best-case scenario (hyper-bitcoinization) and the worst-case scenario (a global “Digital Iron Curtain” or quantum-driven network collapse).

Gold is not merely a “boomer rock.” It is a 5,000-year-old testnet equivalent that has never crashed. It holds immense intrinsic value because it represents the only form of wealth that is entirely independent of the human-made grid.

As central banks in 2026 continue to stack gold at record rates — reaching toward 800 tonnes this year alone — they are signaling a lack of faith in the very systems they manage. They are preparing for a world where “digital” might mean “vulnerable.”

Bitcoin is the king of the digital frontier, but Gold is the master of the physical realm. They complement each other perfectly. In an era of escalating virtual complexity, simplicity may well be the ultimate form of sophistication. Stack your SATS, but keep your bars. In 2026, the most successful investors will be those who can navigate the digital future while remaining anchored in the analog past. As paradoxical as that may seem, gold has held its value over time and it is the physical equivalent of the BTC we value so much. All assets come with elements of risk and reward, it is important to limit our vulnerabilities to those risks and capture the upside of those reward elements.

Disclaimer: this is NOT financial advice. I’m a cow and I like to eat cereal. Any knowledge gained from this post is merely incidental and you are responsible for your own financial decisions. Make investments wisely and make sure to do your own research.

Gold: An Analog Fortress? was originally published in The Financial Future on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Since the fall of UST, there has been a stigma that has been held against stable coins that are not backed 1:1 by fiat dollars or real world assets (RWAs). However, much work has been done to create more robust algorithmic and otherwise decentralized stable coins since the UST calamity. Initially, DAI(now USDS) and FRAX responded by adjusting their stability mechanisms to strengthen the collateralization underpinning their coins. So far, so good. Both of these projects have emerged from the recent crypto winter stronger than ever. Many other stable coins have since emerged to fulfill a decentralized and securely collateralized product market fit. The rest of this article will look at some of these options and discuss their potential as hedges to centralized stable coins in your crypto portfolio. Before proceeding, it is a core assumption here that the reader is comfortable investing in products with a medium-sized market cap.

Products such as LiquityUSD and Ethena have developed more robust systems of collateralization that use multiple strategies to secure the crypto backing their stable coins. Liquity seems to rely on a complex strategy of collateralized debt positions for those that mint the coins. Whereas Ethena uses a delta-hedging strategy whereby the asset that is used to collateralize a minting position in the protocol is both shorted and longed simultaneously to ensure equilibrium at all times in maintaining the dollar-peg. This is better explained by Ethena themselves, but it has fast emerged as a competitive market asset in EVM. Both of these protocols are backed by ETH and this perhaps the most robust collateral that could be used outside of BTC under present market conditions.

DJED is another algorithmic option that is fully backed by a large cap altcoin. This time, ADA acts as the collateral at a ratio of 400–800%. In DJED’s case, a reserve coin called SHEN is minted when the price of ADA drops. It is burned when the price of ADA rises. This allows the algorithm to efficiently maintain the USD peg of the DJED asset without the complications of collateralized debt positions. This pricing strategy is known as a dynamic pricing solution and allows for a higher tolerance of the volatile price swings that ADA is subject to as the underlying asset.

Other stable coins including similar mechanisms include MIM, CrvUSD, sUSD, DOLA and Gho. MIM is fully decentralized and backed by a dynamic range of crypto collateral, and it employs a fairly straightforward CDP and liquidation system. CrvUSD is the coin developed by Curve Finance and it operates using a ‘soft liquidation’ system that utilizes a slow approach to the liquidation of a collateral position allowing customers more time to react to market volatility in their underlying position. The Synthetix protocol issues sUSD and uses a similar system to MIM with a role for the SNX token as a reserve to adjust any anomalies that occur within the liquidation process. Gho is issued by AAVE and uses a CDP mechanism to maintain its USD peg. DOLA is issued by Inverse Finance and shares similarities with MIM in that it uses a range of assets to maintain its USD peg. Inverse Finance suggest that this basket system is more sophisticated and dynamic than a typical CDP position as it can react more dynamically to the price action of the underlying collateralized assets during times of market volatility.

The key take away from these products, whether new or improved to adapt to market conditions is that algorithmic stable coins are here to stay. It is clear that the teams behind the protocols that issue these assets are keen to offer products that are dynamic in the face of adversity caused by market volatility and that they have learned from the lessons that UST has taught us. The hubris of Do Kwon and the immaturity on display on Twitter collapsed against the weight of the market in 2022. It seems clear that these coins are well placed to maintain their pegs and offer viable alternatives to centralized products such as USDT and USDC.

Personally, I am very encouraged by the emergence of assets issued by protocols that have been seminal in the emergence of decentralized finance. AAVE, Synthetix and Curve Finance have a proven track record in the EVM DeFi space. It is also encouraging to see newer protocols issuing stable coins such as Liquity and Ethena. These projects have Doxxed teams and seemingly solid fundamentals, so the future of decentralized stable coins seems well placed to handle the challenges that will be presented by the next bear market. Finally, it is important to stress that decentralized alternative stable coins such as these are far more censorship resistant than the USDTs and USDCs of the world. Further, they have been created to promote the ideals of Web 3. They are pegged using crypto native assets and are not at the mercy of centralized authorities or venture capitalist market manipulation. Medium sized market caps that are localized to a few chains also allow for more localized market deployment and the demand for fee accrual from centralized actors.

Disclaimer: this is NOT financial advice. I’m a cow and I like to eat cereal. Any knowledge gained from this post is merely incidental and you are responsible for your own financial decisions. Make investments wisely and make sure to do your own research.

Decentralized Stable Coins in 2025: was originally published in The Financial Future on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Is it still worth mining Bitcoin in 2025?

The short answer is yes. Bitcoin is an incredibly valuable asset that has seen continuous price appreciation since its inception in 2009. The long answer is still yes, but it requires the use of acceptable strategies in accordance with your risk tolerance and finances. Directly mining BTC without enough capital for a large mining farm is probably not profitable given the prices of equipment from companies like Bitmain and Ice River. In addition to this, the price of electricity to power these miners and keep them profitable, particularly during mining downturns, may simply not make sense in your area. If you want exposure to BTC without the need for contact with any third party beyond its initial purchase, then dollar cost averaging may well suit your needs. There will always be BTC on the market available for purchase at spot prices.

If you wish to operate your own hardware and have the technical expertise to do this, then you can contribute your mining resources to a BTC mining pool and mine directly while hosting your own equipment. Alternatively, you may wish to set up a cloud mining contract with a centralized mining service. This is not something that I would personally recommend though because it requires you to entrust your funds to a private company for a fixed period of time. I prefer decentralized crypto mining communities and choose to invest through NFT staking projects such as GoMining. Some basic crypto knowledge is needed to do this, however it allows you to purchase an NFT for as little as $30 and begin to get exposure to BTC.

Are there other cryptocurrencies worth mining?

Again, the simple answer is yes. However, the financial outlay for the ASICS running the scripts to mine these coins being equally as expensive as mining BTC. Coins such as Kadena, Kaspa, Doge, Litecoin, Nervos and DASH are very popular in diversified crypto-mining projects. These are coins that are routinely and traded on decentralized exchanges in 2025 but that have varying degrees of long term potential. If planning to hold these coins, more research is needed to plan an effective strategy. Again, I value the access of mining these cryptocurrencies in the form of NFT projects such as the Goofy Gophers and Fuzzy Fellas from the Kingdom Trust. On Cardano at present there are a number of these projects emerging with varying degrees of potential (see: Elite Cats; Snekkies, and Neo Vikings). NFT projects such as these bring their own risks and are driven by a community initiative. Unlike GoMining, they do not have a long track record of providing services to their community members. These projects mimic earlier projects such as Hydro Whales on Ethereum without the high transaction fees that come with interacting with that blockchain. The sales pitch offered by these kinds of NFT projects will always be that they are digital collectibles first and utility NFTs second. Keep this in mind before purchasing from any of these collections. Also note the issues that other projects have faced in previous cycles (e.g. Kadena Mining Club and Alpha Shares).

Is crypto-mining a profitable endeavour?

This depends on what you mine, power rates you pay and when you sell. In the long run, it is very likely that BTC mining will be a profitable endeavour if selling rewards at the height of a bull run or holding for the long term. For diversified crypto-mining, probably only if you play your cards right. Projects like the Goofy Gophers and Fuzzy Fellas (both linked above) pay their community members in ADA after selling the coins that they have mined at the end of each three month mining period. This way, the community member only has to worry about the price action of one coin and if they choose to sell it for BTC, stable coins or wrapped assets to use in DeFi, then this option remains open to them. There are no certainties in crypto markets except volatility. So when mining, be sure to ensure that you are only mining when it is profitable to do so and that you are confident that you believe that any coins you choose to hold have a profitable future. These kinds of questions cannot be answered with any convincing level of certainty, unless ideological fervor is at play. Many BTC maximalists will espouse the value of BTC over all of these other “sh*tcoins” and how it is the only coin with a long term future. If this is true in the long term — as there are no certainties in crypto — it does not mean that diversified crypto mining in the short term can’t be profitable. If receiving rewards in ADA, these rewards can always be traded into BTC once received anyway.

Disclaimer: this is NOT financial advice. I’m a cow and I like to eat cereal. Any knowledge gained from this post is merely incidental and you are responsible for your own financial decisions. Make investments wisely and make sure to do your own research.

Crypto-Mining: Bitcoin and “Sh*tcoins in 2025” was originally published in The Financial Future on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Strategy 1: Bitcoin Mining with the GoMining NFT Project:

GoMining is a project that operates on the Ethereum, Binance, Ton and Solana blockchains (at the time of writing). After purchasing an NFT with them and inputting a wallet address, you immediately start to earn rewards via their rewards dashboard. You can either generate a new miner with your first purchase, or purchase a miner from their NFT market place. The rewards you will receive in BTC will be proportional to the hash rate and power wattage characteristics of the NFT purchased. Before the 2028 Halvening, be sure to update the power usage of your NFTs to ensure that your rewards remain profitable. Purchasing an NFT miner does not provide the owning wallet with any share or ownership of any part of the GoMining operation. It represents a proportional share of their liquid hash rate. It usually takes around 9–18 months to achieve a return on your investment. Fuzzy Fellas and Goofy Gophers are also interesting projects that offer diversified crypto mining on Cardano.

Strategy 2: Staking Native Assets:

This is by far the simplest of the five strategies mentioned here. It just requires you to place blockchain native assets on proof of stake blockchains (e.g. Eth on Ethereum; ADA on Cardano; XTZ on Tezos etc.) and sit back and allow the awards to accrue in your wallet. Staking assets helps to reduce volatility and promote network stability because it reduces the amount of currency circulating at any one time. Due to the nature of the process, assets remain in the user’s wallet and are thus in self-custody, meaning that nobody has control over your keys. With this, risks such as those associated with third parties or smart contracts are thus averted. With this low risk, comes low but stable rewards. Depending on the currency, staked assets may also allow the user to participate in blockchain governance. If staking through a centralized exchange, third party risk is a factor however and any governance privileges will be afforded to the exchange that validates the coins being staked.

Strategy 3: Liquid Staking Native Assets:

Liquid staking is quite an easy process but offers higher dividends than simple staking. A number of services allow you to stake blockchain native assets and receive another token that acts as a sort of “receipt”. This “receipt” is known as a liquid staking derivative or (LSD) and can then be used to DeFi protocols to earn extra yield. Essentially, this means that you will be earning interest on two tokens rather than just the original token that you actually own. The biggest of these services is Lido and it allows you to stake Eth to receive their LSD “stEth”. Marinade offers this service for Solana, where Stader allows you to do this with Eth as well as BNB, HBar and Pol/Matic. Be aware that should you wish to liquidate the original position, you will have to return the original number of LSD tokens that were issued at the time of opening your liquid staking position.

Strategy 4: Farming Stable Coins:

This is the strategy that will help to bring stability to your portfolio. Stable coins such as USDC and USDT can easily be farmed on yield aggregator websites such as Beefy Finance. This is an aggregator tool that conveniently allows you to choose which farms and tokens best fit your risk profile across a number of Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) blockchains. Those with the most reliable reputations are Arbitrum, AVAX, Base, BNB, Optimism and Polygon. Beefy works with services such as Curve, Compound and Stargate to offer reliable services for stable coin farming strategies.

Strategy 5: Lending Stable Coins:

The final strategy is to simply lend stable coins on DeFi protocols such as Aave, Liqwid and Kamino. All of these protocols will allow you to lend your yield peer-to-peer and earn even more yield on your crypto. Lending stable coins allows you to keep your wealth in large cap stable coins such as the aforementioned USDC and USDT. However, it is also possible to lend decentralized stable coins such as Gho, crvUSD, DAI and sUSD.

Summary:

All of these strategies are quite straightforward and utilize the lending, staking, mining or farming of blue chip crypto assets and stable coins. They limit the exposure to volatility in some cases and suggest the use of only large cap altcoins in others. The proviso here is that these are the least risky assets in the crypto space. While some of these suggested assets are still exposed to some volatility, these are the assets that investors are trading most at the present time. All of these strategies offer modest yields without the risks of leverage or swing trading.

Disclaimer: this is NOT financial advice. I’m a cow and I like to eat cereal. Any knowledge gained from this post is merely incidental and you are responsible for your own financial decisions. Make investments wisely and make sure to do your own research.

Simple Beginner Strategies to Succeed in Crypto in 2025 was originally published in The Financial Future on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

MELD, the neobank project on Cardano and Avalanche has announced that it will shut up shop. This is bad news for many investors, but provides a very valuable lesson for those in DeFi and crypto in general. Don’t invest too much in potential, invest in fundamentals. If you have a small portfolio, then stick to blue chip assets such as BTC, ETH, SOL, ADA or stable coins such as USDC and USDT. Don’t bet the farm on projects that have not yet offered a stable product. Many people feel aggrieved by this because they may have purchased the MELD token and it is now worthless. However, businesses that have investors go bust all the time and yet, these investors in the TradFi space never seem quite as hurt as crypto investors. As an investor community, I think that we need to be a bit more mature in our approach to investment. Projects won’t succeed simply because we have invested capital into them.

A Youtuber by the name of Josh who goes by Late Game Crypto on YouTube was known as a massive advocate of the MELD Project. He seems very distraught at the collapse of the project and this sentiment was shared by Fareed from DApp Central and Peter from Learn Cardano. These are all people that believe in the transformative power of emergent financial markets, and on the Cardano blockchain in particular. My beliefs are aligned with theirs and I want to state that from the offset.

While I was not an investor in MELD directly, I am an investor in Cardano and I believe that this blockchain in particular will bring decentralization to the masses. I am passionate about this, but this does not mean that you should trust my passion, nor theirs. Josh has no power over my portfolio and neither do Fareed or Peter. I can delegate my funds to their stake pools if I choose to, but I remain in control of those funds, as they stay in my wallet. These influencers may tell me their thoughts, feelings, ideas and opinions via YouTube, but I am responsible for my own financial decisions. MELD’s fall is simply the fate of a project that promised a lot and couldn’t deliver, this is not new in Crypto.

As a content-creator of sorts, not that I make any money from this, I urge you to take control of your financial freedom and your finances. Make your own decisions. The tale of MELD is one of unrealized potential. It had a very noble aim and aimed to merge the Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 financial worlds. This was ambitious and incredibly promising, but not a simple task to perform or product to bring to market. Especially with the regularity uncertainty put out by different territories in recent years.

To build a community, MELD tapped into the positive vibe of Cardano DeFi. This meant having stake pools on popular DApps like MinSwap and using them to raise funds for their project. They also offered staking of the MELD token on their own website. After some time, they announced that they would also use the Ethereum Layer 2 chain Avalanche to build their neobank infrastructure. Naturally, in the Cardano DeFi community, this ruffled some feathers. However, this didn’t concern me for the project’s future because I believe that the future is multichain. Whichever chains survive will build the financial architecture of the future. MELD later began to operate on a test net of its own blockchain. It announced that it would be offering debit card services very soon. It had a banking lite license. But unfornutately, the project failed before it was able to bring anything to market. The reason for its failure is because of a lack of adoption and investors pulling out at the last minute at a key point in their growth. Without enough backing and a product that was gaining traction, it seems that there was not enough liquidity to keep the MELD vision alive before they were able to manifest it in the market. Had this vision been met, early DeFi investors may have experienced some gains.

As a DeFi user, if you believe in the transformative potential of the technology or in a particular project, you need to both use and advocate for its use and adoption. DeFi is a fast changing place and nothing seems certain for very long, at least outside of DeFi on Ethereum.

On a personal level, I am very tired of people exhibiting entitled behavior towards the projects that they invest in. Doing your own research is incredibly important. Many crypto investors have an unrealistic mindset when investing in unproven DeFi projects. Yet, they would never consider throwing money at a TradFi business that had never had a day trading or no accounts to prove its value as a company. I think it is very unfortunate that MELD has folded before it was able to open its doors. I also felt that it had a lot of potential as an idea. I trusted in its future success because of the support that it had from many of the YouTube channels that backed the project. I didn’t invest in the token though, simply because it had no real world utility yet. Seemingly, people buying the tokens were not using the project when it came to test net. On chain debit cards are an incredibly exciting project idea, but like anything in crypto, self-custody all funds that you aren’t comfortable losing. Anything that you are willing to risk is just that, it’s at risk. MELD as a project gambled on its future success and it came up short. It happens. It’s not easy to write that, but it is the truth.

Thinking forward, the lesson that I will take away from the collapse of MELD is one of warning. Invest in what is already succeeding and has promise for the future. Separate hype from reality and invest in projects with a realized real world use case. So many projects will come and go. Blockchain native assets will too, but there is more security staking these than betting on assets native to a particular blockchain or limited number of blockchains. DeFi and any project that dabbles with it are unknown entities for the long term and there is no such thing as a passive income when using DeFi protocols. Always remain active and observe the performance of the assets that you invest in. MELD is a good reminder of this. Don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose. Altcoins are different to Bitcoin and don’t offer the same level of security.

Personally, I invest in Solana, Cardano and Ethereum predominantly. I don’t trust that they will survive for the long term completely though. I am merely confident enough to invest in them for at least the duration of the upcoming bull run. Josh, mentioned above, was emotionally invested in promoting MELD more so than he was recompensed by the brand. The idea of a crypto neobank is a very enticing one, so I understand this emotional investment in their product. But before placing money, emotional energy or time into any project, wait for it to come to market and gain some form of adoption. This way, at least it can be somewhat battle tested against the forces of the market. DeFi is a fast moving place and the more time I spend using protocols, the less I feel that I am investing passively. I sincerely hope that a similar project comes to fruition and is able to offer similar services to the Cardano and broader crypto communities. However, I remain healthily skeptical until I see this product realized in the form of an app on my phone. I suggest that you do too.

Disclaimer: this is NOT financial advice. I’m a cow and I like to eat cereal. Any knowledge gained from this post is merely incidental and you are responsible for your own financial decisions. Make investments wisely and make sure to do your own research.

MELD: A Tale of Unrealized Potential was originally published in The Financial Future on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Tether is the company behind the most widely used stable coin in DeFi by some margin, USDT. Its current market cap is approximately $106.15 billion USD at the time of writing. It’s gold stable coin, Tether Gold, has a market cap of approximately another $560 million USD. This company holds a lot of sway in the crypto markets as the primary service provider for stable coins in many DeFi ecosystems. This makes their services essential. On a fairly recent episode of Bankless, Tether’s CEO Paolo Arduino was talking about the amount of US debt that is currently owned by the company. He said that the company owns slightly more US government debt than the UAE and slightly less than Germany. This shows that the company has similar reserve levels to major economic nations, the extent to which I found quite surprising.

This really got me thinking about the amount of exposure that I have to USDT in my portfolio. In my case, exposure mostly comes from my Injective bag. There is a lot of FUD spread about Tether and I wondered if this is simply just conjecture or if there is something more to this. This led me to an episode of Crypto Critics Corner where they seemed quite certain that the doom of Tether was an inevitability. What would that look like for DeFi if we were to lose our largest stablecoin?

According to the claims on Tether’s website at the time of writing, all assets are backed 1:1 with a fiat asset. This seems plausible if backed by audit reports. Reported numbers suggest that things are going pretty well business wise. However, reports that Tether has managed to reach over $100,000,000,000 USD in assets without ever being sufficiently audited abound (e.g. here by Protos). It is also detailed that they have had ties to many failed companies in the industry over the years (e.g. Alameda Research; Three Arrows Capital; and, Celsius most recently). In a nutshell, it is hard to find a clear picture of their standing as a company. Their next biggest competitor in the stable coin market is about a quarter of their size, Circle’s USDC. However, in the case of USDC, reports seem a lot more transparent through a complete historical record of audits. In the USDT versus USDC debate, USDC appears to have a cleaner image due to the more transparent nature of its regular audit structure. USDC also has a record of compliance and recently announced that it was pulling its products from the Tron blockchain.

Personally, I’m unsure whether Tether is fully backed. This is due to the lack of a transparent audit record being visible via their website. However, I do think that they play an incredible role in DeFi at present. While there are plenty of viable stable coin options that are more decentralized than USDT or USDC (e.g. DAI; FRAX; DJED; LUSD; crvUSD; Gho; USK; and, ERN), most investors seem to prefer the idea of a centralized stable coin. I’d suggest that USDC is fully regulatory compliant in the US whereas USDT is mostly compliant, note that this differs from “non-compliance” as is often suggested in sensationalized media.

Its also interesting that this slightly lower level of perceived compliance results in four times the market share for USDT over USDC. Personally, I prefer to invest in decentralized stables where possible just to reduce the risk of my assets being frozen in the future. The problem with that statement being that decentralized stable coins are often backed by other crypto assets and it can be complicated to know how the volatility of markets will affect their backing (UST’s demise being the worst ending for this asset type). Choosing between stable coins does not seem to be as simple as centralized versus decentralized, USDT versus USDC, or even a happy medium such as DAI or FRAX. Ultimately, investors essentially need to assess the use case of each stable coin asset that they invest in and figure out which assets work for their strategies in each specific DeFi protocol/blockchain play that they employ.

To return to the question posed in the title of this article, no, I don’t think it is time for me to untether. Simply because it is so prolific across the market and I want to make money. There are really great opportunities offered by protocols that utilize USDT on Injective alone (e.g. DojoSwap; Helix; Hydro; Mito and Neptune). I would hate to miss out on wealth creation because of the fear of risk based on sensationalized media. Of course, it is possible that Tether could collapse, this is a distinct possibility. But as part of a diversified stable coin portfolio, it is a risk that offers much in the way of potential reward. That said, if pressed, my personal preference is for chain native decentralized stable coins (e.g. DJED). This is simply because they are assigned a very specific domain to work in and there is a reduced risk of market overstretch on the part of the issuer due to its concentrated market size.

I do understand that broadly speaking, the market does not always reflect my sentiments here though. It seems to me that most retail investors wish to invest in large companies with brand recognition. This starkly contrasts with the homegrown crypto native solutions that exist in DeFi. As the market matures, the influence of centralized actors such as Tether and Circle will continue to grow. Naturally, the share of the market in centralized assets will also grow. Personally, I will invest in USDC and Tether to a minimal degree but will balance this with investments in decentralized assets such as sUSD, crvUSD, LUSD, DAI and FRAX. The concern here is that the fall of a company the size of Tether would have profound contamination across the crypto markets. This means that it is important to remain aware that centralization in crypto is a trend that will continue to grow because the inverse of this would be industry shattering. As opposed to untethering we need to diversify across the centralized-decentralization cline as much as we do across volatile and non-volatile assets. We need to educate ourselves across the continuum of blockchain products on offer and ensure that we are well situated to embrace future market trends.

Disclaimer: this is NOT financial advice. I’m a cow and I like to eat cereal. Any knowledge gained from this post is merely incidental and you are responsible for your own financial decisions. Make investments wisely and make sure to do your own research.

Other articles of interest: The Problem with NFTs; Investing in Liquidity Pools; Kayfabe and Cryptocurrency; and, DePIN.

Is it really time to “UnTether”? was originally published in The Financial Future on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.