The Empire Strikes Back, Ethereum Declares Independence, Vitalik, Jamie and Trump Join a Group Chat, AI Breaks Records, No CEOs Missing the Moment, Bull Market Widens
“The code is law” — Lawrence Lessig
At its height, the British Empire controlled nearly a quarter of the world’s population and more than 20% of its land mass.
It did not expand through consent or commerce. It expanded through conquest: territory seized, cultures dismantled, economies hollowed out. What followed was centuries of extraction and subjugation, from Bengal to the Caribbean.
And yet, amid all the violence, something strange endured. Not born of empire, but carried by it.
Not the monarchy. Not the Anglican church. Not even the English language in some places.
What remained was a system of rules—not imposed from above, but assembled from the ground up.
Unlike civil law, it wasn’t a fixed code handed down by a sovereign. It was something closer to a living organism: flexible, precedent-driven, self-correcting. It evolved not through royal decree but through disputes—refined judgment by judgment, case by case.
At the heart of this system was Sir Edward Coke, a 17th-century jurist who defied kings and asserted that even monarchs were subject to the law. His claim that “reason is the life of the law” would become foundational.
Common law didn’t scale because it was imposed. It scaled because it worked.
It enabled contracts to be enforced across oceans. Property rights to be respected across borders. Commerce to flow without central coordination.
Over time, it became the operating system of global markets.
Today, it underpins legal frameworks in countries as varied as India, Canada, Australia, Singapore, and the United States.
It was never the empire’s most visible export. But it was its most enduring one.
And now, in an entirely different context, something uncannily similar is taking shape.
But this time, it’s being carried by the internet.
The Rules That Outlived the Empire
A base layer for writing and executing agreements on the internet.
It was proposed in 2013 by Vitalik Buterin, who saw that Bitcoin could transfer value, but not support complex instructions or conditional logic. Ethereum was designed to do both.
Its core innovation was the smart contract—code that executes automatically when certain conditions are met.
This made it possible to create applications that could transfer value, enforce agreements, or coordinate activity, all without a central intermediary.
Like common law, Ethereum provides a general-purpose framework. Not a rigid set of instructions, but an open system that evolves through use.
Common law developed case by case. Ethereum develops contract by contract.
Both are systems for organising rules at scale: modular, adaptive, and built to be built upon.
When Rules Become Capital
Once a rule system works well enough, it attracts users. But once it accrues enough users, it starts attracting capital.
Ethereum now hosts not just applications and contracts, but balance sheets. Last week, the total crypto market cap crossed $4 trillion for the first time. Ethereum’s share? $450 billion, nearly 12%, after a clean breakout from months of sideways churn. Bitcoin still anchors the space at $2.3 trillion. But Ethereum is beginning to look less like a Layer 1 blockchain and more like a Layer 0 economic substrate.
Some are treating it that way already.
SharpLink Gaming, a small-cap firm previously best known for its sportsbook integrations, last week became the largest corporate holder of ETH (the native token of the Ethereum blockchain) on record, surpassing even the Ethereum Foundation. As of mid-July, it held 280,706 ETH, worth over $1 billion at recent prices.
The company raised over $400 million earlier this month and converted most of it into Ethereum. It still holds another $250 million in dry powder for future purchases.
This model is not new. It’s a playbook pioneered by MicroStrategy (now rebranded as Strategy): raise equity capital, convert it to crypto, and let the scarcity trade lift both asset and stock. That model has caught on. 39 Bitcoin Treasury Companies now hold 670,000 BTC.
Not surprisingly, therefore, SharpLink isn’t alone in adopting this playbook for ETH. Bitmine Immersion Technologies and Bit Digital have both pivoted to ETH-centric treasury strategies in recent weeks. Bitmine even brought on Tom Lee (CIO of Fundstrat) as Chairman of the Board of Directors. The template is expanding.
Critics call it a gimmick. But if capital keeps showing up, gimmickry starts to look like strategy. And it’s not happening just in corporate treasuries.
The Institutions Want In
On the same week SharpLink made headlines, Ethereum ETFs registered $727 million in inflows, their largest single-day inflow.
BlackRock’s ETHA fund alone drew in nearly $500 million, pushing institutional ETH holdings to more than 4% of total supply.
This move coincides with Ethereum’s growing adoption as the base settlement layer for both stablecoins (like USDC from Circle) and tokenised real-world assets. As institutions seek exposure to yield-bearing instruments and programmable financial infrastructure, Ethereum is emerging as a preferred venue for large-scale capital deployment. Its dominance in the Layer 2 ecosystem, native staking yield, composability, and settlement rails (processing billions in daily transaction volume) make it uniquely positioned to support the next generation of tokenised money markets.
The Regulatory On-Ramp
That trend gathered momentum on Friday, when President Trump signed into law three landmark bills: the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act, the Digital Asset Market Structure Clarity (CLARITY) Act, and the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State (Anti-CBDC) Act. Together, they mark the first comprehensive federal framework for digital assets in the U.S., providing legal clarity for stablecoins, digital commodities, and the future role of public blockchains in financial infrastructure. For Ethereum, the implications are immediate: more volume, more legitimacy, and more demand for ETH to process transactions.
This legislative clarity could trigger a wave of institutional engagement. As a senior Treasury official noted on a Friday press call, growing stablecoin adoption will have “a profound effect” on dollar dominance and future demand for U.S. government debt. More on this in my newsletter dated 23 June 2025.
President Trump described it as an “exciting new frontier” for crypto. Reports suggest that major banks, including JPMorgan, are exploring the use of public blockchains like Ethereum to issue their own tokenised deposits, bypassing legacy rails.
Franklin Templeton’s Sandy Kaul recently predicted that we’ll see more innovation in financial infrastructure over the next five years than in the past fifty. Wallet-based systems, she argues, will force even the most conservative banks to adapt or be left behind.
History shows that the rules which endure are not the ones imposed from above—but the ones people choose to build upon. Ethereum may be writing its own chapter in that story.
The Recovery, the Feud, and the Fed
The rally in risk assets since the April 8th bottom has been nothing short of remarkable. A full-blown U-shaped recovery is underway. Even the return of the Trump-Powell feud hasn’t managed to derail the risk-on regime.
But one uncomfortable question now looms over the Federal Reserve: Can anyone still advocate for U.S. rate cuts without being seen as a political puppet?
That question took centre stage this week after Fed Governor Christopher Waller made a surprisingly direct case for a 25 bps cut at the next FOMC meeting. He cited valid (though politically charged) economic rationale. In this climate, even good arguments risk being dismissed as partisan theatre.
I wonder: Is Chris Waller now the Fed’s shadow Chair? He certainly seems to be playing the part.
Meanwhile, Kevin Hassett has surged to 35.45% in prediction markets, emerging as the front-runner to replace Powell. A key adviser during Trump’s first term and former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Hassett is known for his dovish lean and deep alignment with the former president’s policy instincts.
All eyes now turn to Powell, who speaks Tuesday at 8:30 AM ET. Markets will be listening for clues on inflation, rates, and recession risks.
Trump, for the record, appointed Powell.
But claims he didn’t. 🤣
The U-Shaped Economy, Trump 2.0, and the AI-Fueled Rally
This chart from ZeroHedge caught my attention this week: Trump 2.0 is now outperforming Trump 1.0. The red line tracks the performance of the S&P 500 during Trump’s first term. The green line shows where we are now.
Stocks are at the all-time highs.
The soft landing narrative remains intact. June’s Retail Sales and Industrial Production data surprised to the upside, supporting the U-shaped recovery thesis. Consumer spending is holding up. Manufacturing is rebounding. The Fed is on hold. And last week, the U.S. government quietly backed down on China chip restrictions, lighting a fire under Nvidia.
Nvidia is now more than $1 trillion larger than Apple and accounts for over 3% of global market cap.
But it’s not just Nvidia driving the rally. Here’s the final S&P 500 weekly heat map from last week:
Palantir - $PLTR +8.0%
Oracle - $ORCL +6.4%
Tesla - $TSLA +5.1%
Nvidia - $NVDA +4.5%
Google - $GOOGL +2.7%
This is broad participation across high-conviction AI names.
Oracle has been surging after its blowout earnings report and a fresh AI partnership with OpenAI, doubling down on AI infrastructure. Larry Ellison, at 80 years old, is now the world’s second-richest person, surpassing Mark Zuckerberg.
TSMC on Thursday reported a near 61% year-on-year (!) surge in profits for the June quarter to reaching NT$398.3 billion, smashing estimates as demand for AI chips hit a fresh high. Revenue for the quarter jumped 38.6% to NT$933.8 billion, also above expectations.
Google signed the world’s largest corporate clean energy agreement. A $3 billion hydropower deal with Brookfield to upgrade two plants in Pennsylvania. It’s directly tied to Google’s planned $25 billion AI data centre expansion in the state.
This week, Mark Zuckerberg said Meta is beginning to observe signs that its AI models can improve themselves, and suggested that reaching superintelligence is now within reach.
It’s difficult to push back on this AI-driven rally when it’s translating so clearly into earnings growth, rising share prices, and real productivity gains. Case in point: this chart from BofA: revenue per employee has reached an all-time high.
The Great Rally
According to UBS, trend-following funds are projected to double their equity exposure over the next two weeks: adding $60-70 billion in stock purchases.
Meanwhile, hedge funds are still short.
Large speculators are holding their biggest net short positions since the April bottom. If momentum holds, these positions could act as fuel for another leg higher, forced covering becomes the next catalyst.
Additionally, earnings revisions are turning.
After 15 straight weeks of downward revisions tied to tariff fears, S&P 500 earnings forecasts have suddenly snapped higher. It turns out U.S. corporates may be absorbing the shocks better than expected. That could be a tailwind.
And finally, retail flows remain strong.
Retail investors are now driving twice the impact they had pre-pandemic. The collective weight of flows, positioning, and macro resilience continues to support the rally.
Cue:
Feel the pulse, stay ahead.
Rahul Bhushan.