John Wang Profile picture
Aug 4 1 tweets 1 min read Read on X
One of the most underappreciated aspects of crypto is that you get real-time institutional-grade data, all for free.

On Wall Street, moats are made out of paywalls and delay. To track TradFi flow, you need:
– Bloomberg Terminal ($30K/year)
– CapIQ, FactSet, Pitchbook ($10K–25K/year each)
– A patchwork of gated data vendors
– Filings with 30–90 day lag
– Hidden dark pool and PFOF routing

To track crypto flow, you just need a browser:
– Live liquidation heatmaps
– Real-time whale trades and position sizes
– Wallet-to-wallet flows, token by token
– Onchain leaderboards and full account PnL

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More from @j0hnwang

Aug 2
I recently joined Ventuals as an advisor to help bring Pre-IPO Perps to life.

My hot take is that PERPS, not tokenized spot, is the real gateway to bringing RWAs onchain. Here's why: 🧵Image
1/ When people hear RWAs, they think tokenization.

Wrapped stocks. onchain treasuries. tokenized commodities. But what if the FIRST phase of bringing RWAs onchain isn’t wrapping them, but abstracting them?
2/ Tokenization tries to replicate TradFi onchain with wrappers, custodians, and legal sync. SKEUMORPHIC AF.

There’s a simpler crypto-native primitive that already works, scales, and fits how traders behave: Perps.
Read 12 tweets
Jul 31
Figma just left $2.3 BILLION on the table -- nearly double what they actually raised.

IPO'd at $33. Target open at $95.

That's not "market excitement". It's deliberate underpricing and legalized theft by investment banks who sold it cheap to their institutional buddies. Retail shoves in at open and gets used as exit liquidity.

Same playbook:
- DoorDash: $3.4B stolen
- Airbnb: $3.5B stolen
- 2021 total: $50B stolen

Since 2020, this cartel has stolen over $100 billion that should have gone to real value creators: founders, employees, and retail.
For decades, IPOs have been legalized front-running. Figma was obviously underpriced. The IPO was literally 40x oversubbed.

The playbook? Banks underprice shares by 20 to 40%, sell them cheap to institutions, and manufacture fake scarcity to create guaranteed pops on day-one for their recurring clientele. Retail gets in only after the edge is gone. Companies stick with this system not because it’s optimal, but because it’s the default.
Why does the IPO grift persist?
Picking Goldman signals credibility; going off-script risks future deals, analyst coverage, and index inclusion. So companies play it safe with investment bankers who then charge fat underwriting fees (up to 7% of proceeds), run closed-door roadshows, gather bids from their institutional friends, and set prices via verbal commits. Retail is excluded from this primitive book-building system, showing up on opening day and paying hefty premiums.
Read 7 tweets
Jun 20, 2024
Insights for L1/L2 teams from an aspiring app-layer builder

Listen in if you want to attract builders to your chain and hear what app founders actually care about 👇🏽
I’m sure many infra founders who have built performant L1s/L2s over the past 2 years touting architectural improvements are scratching their heads as to why its so hard to attract app devs and no-one is bidding their chain.
From an app-layer founder’s standpoint, for me to even consider your chain as an option it must:
1. Have great general infra (think seamless onchain and CEX bridges, an explorer, integrations with wallets)
2. Be average fast (most L2s tick the box, this isn’t the make-or-break)
Read 7 tweets
Jun 9, 2024
My thesis on why all of @wallstreetbets and retail trading will gravitate to memecoins from memestocks like GME: Image
1) There’s no fundamental utility which the meme is tethered to. The ceiling is infinite.
2) Total supply is fixed and finite. Companies have a fiduciary duty to issue more stock out of thin air for financing whenever price unpegs from ‘real valuations’
3) Memecoins and microtransactions can be integrated seamlessly into social apps enabling fundamentally new rails for inancialized virality
4) Social trends are real-time, 24/7, and global. Crypto is perfect for this. TradFi infra sucks (country restrictions, 9-5, T+1 etc)
Read 8 tweets
May 3, 2024
$BLAST is dropping this month, yet everyone is still framing it as ‘just another rollup’ with native yield.

You're fading an entirely new category.

Appchains revolutionized perp DEXs. “Yieldchains” will be the next gen of DeFi protocols.Image
Perp DEXs like @HyperliquidX, @dYdX, and @aevoxyz have built appchains. It makes sense for targeting speed, monetizing blockspace, and decentralization.

But, the value prop hasn’t been so clear for passive yield-generating protocols… until now.
Apps like Ethena (USDe) and Aave (GHO) face an existential problem with utility. The panacea?

Build a yield-bearing L2 ecosystem of native apps to artificially bootstrap utility for your synthetic assets just like Blast did with USDB. Own the user relationship or get owned. Image
Read 22 tweets
Mar 28, 2024
I attended the SBF trial. It was one of the most mind-blowing experiences of my life.

Seeing him get a 25 year sentence today is as surreal as it felt sitting right behind him in that courtroom.

Here’s my story of that day:Image
On Crypto Twitter, SBF was a larger than life character. I first texted him as a freshman Research Assistant in 2020 when FTX was getting started. He inspired me to join the Solana ecosystem in early 2021. Soon, Sam was the youngest billionaire in the world. Image
But sitting in the front row, all I saw before me was a meek, clenched, pale man -- smaller in stature than I expected.

We briefly made eye contact before his eyes darted away and he lowered his head.
Read 17 tweets

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