0:09
The Gateway to Digital Asset: On-Chain Data Infrastructure
The digital asset market is advancing rapidly. Stablecoins already process trillions of dollars a year in payments and remittances, and tokenization of traditional assets such as stocks and bonds is gaining momentum. Blockchain’s role now spans the financial value chain, from issuance and distribution to payment and settlement.
The question institutions ask has shifted from whether blockchain works to how to run it within existing accounting, tax, audit, and compliance workflows. Blockchain may sit at a new infrastructure layer, but institutional finance still holds it to the same procedures, controls, and standards.
This shift exposes a data challenge. Legacy systems run on standardized, structured records, but on-chain data is raw execution data, the direct output of state transitions, and institutions must index, decode, and normalize it before they can use it. It looks less like a tidy ledger and more like an unsorted pile of receipts.
Institutions therefore need a dedicated data pipeline that collects transaction data from distributed ledgers, refines it for business use, and stores and retrieves tens of terabytes on demand. On-chain data is public, but public access does not make it usable for institutional operations.
In the early stage of the digital asset market, this data access problem drew limited attention, since most digital asset services were small-scale pilots for a narrow set of participants. JPMorgan’s deposit token project, for example, functioned as a restricted payment instrument for a small group of institutional clients. In an environment where participants and use cases were clearly defined, transaction types stayed simple, and real-time precision carried limited importance.
On-chain data faced a lower bar at the time, since operations did not need every state to match in real time. Eventual consistency, the final state converging after a short delay, was often enough. A limited number of self-hosted nodes, an external RPC (Remote Procedure Call) endpoint, or a basic on-chain data API could support most operational needs in this environment.
This approach breaks down as on-chain environments expand. Asset types have diversified and transaction volumes have grown quickly, and data infrastructure now has to process more data, faster and more accurately. As digital asset services move into full-scale operation, the technical bar has risen from simple data lookup to something far more precise, timely, and reliable.
This higher bar requires a different standard for evaluating infrastructure. Tiger Research identifies three core requirements for on-chain data infrastructure that institutional finance can trust and use: completeness, consistency, and stability. On-chain data has to meet all three before institutions can actually rely on it in production.
Completeness is the most basic requirement for on-chain data infrastructure. It measures whether every transaction recorded on the blockchain ledger is collected and carried through processing without gaps. In institutional finance, a single missing transaction can change a balance calculation, an accounting entry, or a settlement result.
Gaps can first appear at the collection stage. A blockchain groups transactions from a given period into blocks and writes them to the ledger, and data infrastructure collects and processes these blocks in order. If node failures or network issues interrupt block collection for a stretch, the transactions in that stretch go missing along with it. This type of gap is comparatively easy to catch and fix, because a backfill operation can recollect the missing blocks and close the gap.
A second problem arises after infrastructure has collected all the raw block data. An indexer extracts the needed transaction records from that raw data and converts them into a queryable form, and records can be lost here if the parsing is incomplete. Consider indexing token transfer data on Solana, which runs an original token standard alongside an extended standard. An indexer built to parse only the original standard will miss the transfer history of tokens issued under the extended one.
High-performance chains raise the bar for completeness further. Shorter block times and higher transaction throughput both increase the volume of data the pipeline has to process within a short window. Even flawless collection and processing logic can fall behind if real-time processing cannot keep pace with the chain’s speed, and new transactions then take longer to show up. Completeness, in the end, means more than capturing every transaction. It means keeping pace with how fast a chain moves and how often it changes.
While completeness checks for missing data, consistency checks whether the data collected matches the blockchain ledger. It matters just as much as completeness in institutional finance, because a single bad data point can distort every calculation built on it.
On-chain data is probabilistic until finality.
5:39
305 Posts. Here's What Actually Matters, By Fund Stage.
I’ve written a lot for fund managers over the years.
I’ve done interviews, benchmarks, breakdowns, three years and 305 pieces worth. Most of it, maybe you’ve never seen.
So instead of digging through the archive yourself, here’s the cut that matters based on where you actually are in your raise.
Just added a really cool new section to my personal website called Toolkit.
It contains our two popular diagnostic tools for fund managers who are not closing their fund quickly (GP Velocity) and (Site Audit)
Fund I, no track record yet: (70% of fund managers do not get beyond this stage)
Your credentials are worthless: here’s what LPs actually want: This piece explains how the skills that made you great in banking, law, medicine, or startups may now be working against you
The PDF placement agents pray you don’t read: This one explains what most first- and second-time GPs actually miss
The Chainsmokers’ Alex Pall on his own fundraise, “no-track-record optimism to running the institutional gauntlet”. Chainsmokers are one of my favorite musical artists. I really enjoyed talking with Alex.
GP Velocity™, the free diagnostic, and the Free LP Audit, both benchmarked against 318,450 indexed Form D filings. Start here if you haven’t already. Yes, we have over 5 million rows of Form D data.
Fund II-III, proving it wasn’t luck:
Cindy Padnos on what second-time managers keep getting wrong. Really insightful piece. Cindy is a real leader in the space.
The system to secure 1-4 LP meetings a day. We will go deeper into this when I return from vacation on July 20.
Why LPs ghost after the first meeting: It happens a lot. You can actually talk about ghosting in the first meeting. You can also come up with ways to make sure they do not ghost you, like mandate matching. We go into detail on this. Office hours this week and last week went deep on this. If you want to attend office hours, go here.
Fund III+, chasing anchor checks:
How to land a $40-93M check from a major endowment, the Fund III/IV anchor strategy series. This is fun and it takes about 24-36 months.
Beezer Clarkson and Ted Seides, both allocator-side, fund-of-funds-caliber perspective. Two of the smartest folks in PE+VC/alts.
All of it, organized properly, is here: the toolkit.
Housekeeping: I’m out on vacation through the 20th, so no Monday office hours next week. Back to normal on the 20th.
One more thing, when I’m back: there’s something new I’ve been sitting on.
Worth the wait.
Keep it real.
-ajm
8:27
I Am Going To Lay Out My Trading And Investing Framework
The livestream today laid out the complete trading and investing framework behind Capital Flows, from interest rates as the price of money to building conviction through evidence and coherence.
Main takeaways from the free section:
Everything in global macro starts with interest rates. They are the price of money that the entire economy and market turn on, and if you understand HOW the SOFR curve is pricing changes, you set the stage for capital allocation decisions across any time horizon.
Conviction is always research and evidence based. Aggressiveness and concentration get moderated by the amount of evidence supporting the view and the coherence of every moving part, not by equally weighted lists of bullish and bearish reasons.
Volatility is a function of time. The edge is having a different time horizon or risk tolerance than the market: get onsides intraday or intraweek, then use that cushion to hold the bigger picture view.
Cross asset confirmation frames every trade. The CADJPY flush on oil’s double top confirmed getting longer equities, and the Z6 contract’s floor into the July FOMC set the bottom in ZN that set the intraday bottom in ES, WHICH keeps the path pointed toward an all time high while people still say liquidity is contracting.
CME launches single stock futures on July 27. Overnight risk transfer on names like Oracle will change HOW hedging flows move the underlying stocks, and dislocations will increasingly trade around the clock.
All the educational primers now live in one spot. Foundations, the macro toolkit, asset class primers, the alpha generation series, country deep dives, a 360 paper research library, and the TradingView models are free and downloadable in one click.
The Macro Intelligence Hub, every educational primer, playbook, model, and the 360 paper research library synthesized in one free spot: LINK
You can find the free recording on the Trading and Investing Framework Playbook here in the YouTube video:
The member section connects this framework to the live regime and positioning, with the recording linked at the bottom of this report.
Macro Decks From today’s stream:
All slide decks by Jaymes: LINK
The Macro Intelligence Hub, every educational primer, playbook, model, and the 360 paper research library synthesized in one free spot: LINK
Tomorrow’s stream digs into SOFR, interest rate volatility, and WHERE the macro endgame is heading as CPI and the July FOMC approach. We will map HOW the SOFR curve is pricing the path from here and WHAT compressed rate volatility means for every asset built on top of it.
Paid subscribers can join the livestream with this link (the first half will be free and streamed to Twitter and YouTube, where the second half will only be available on Substack for paid subscribers):
Source:
11:34
You don't care about your weakness
So, you know how people often talk about personality types like they're defined by their weaknesses? Like, ENTJs are supposed to be rough and insensitive, and INFPs are supposed to be all about being nice. But here's the thing - those aren't really weaknesses, they're just things that other people care about. They're not even things that we care about ourselves.
I mean, I'm an ENTJ, and yeah, I can come across as a bit rough sometimes. But I don't care about that. What I care about is being effective and getting things done. And what I've learned is that my "weakness" is actually just a problem that I solve in a unique way. It's not something that I'm trying to change or hide - it's just who I am.
The problem is, we often focus on the wrong things. We focus on our weaknesses, but we ignore our blind spots. And that's where the real problem is. Our blind spots are the things that we're not even aware of, the things that we're not consciously ignoring. They're the things that are holding us back, but we can't see them because they're invisible to us.
So, what's the takeaway here? It's not about seeing your weaknesses, it's about seeing your blind spots. And that's where personality type can be really useful. It can help you identify your blind spots and give you a new perspective on yourself. And that's what we're going to be talking about in our next Personality Type Office Hours, which is coming up on July 28th at 5pm.
For listeners who want to learn more about their personality type and blind spots, we recommend checking out our latest posts on ENFJs, ENTJs, INFJs, INTJs, INFPs, and ENFPs.
13:25
What Capitalism Actually Freed
New York was my first trigger.
I was there when Zohran Mamdani’s rise became more than local politics. He won. Whether we like his programme or not, that matters. Democracy is not only respecting elections when our side wins. He is young, clearly talented, and he has earned the chance to prove whether his ideas work in the real city, not only on a campaign stage.1
His programme was sold as affordability: rent freezes, free buses, city-owned grocery stores, universal childcare. Fair enough. New York is not exactly the discount aisle.
But the mechanism was old: when markets feel unfair, politics promises to replace them.
Two weeks later, a party in Bern, Switzerland.
Smart people, good wine, very Swiss calm — until I said: “I am a capitalist.”
Soon I was alone at the table.
Not because anyone had suddenly become Marx. This was Switzerland; even revolution would first go to a vote.
But the instinct was clear: more tax, more state, more redistribution, more suspicion toward ownership. And that made me realise something uncomfortable: many people now argue against capitalism without really knowing what capitalism freed us from.
Before modern capitalism, most people lived in an agricultural world. Land was not just property. Land was food, work, shelter, rent, tax and protection. Whoever controlled land controlled the conditions of life around it.
That made power personal. A landlord, ruler, church authority or local elite could decide what ordinary people were allowed to do. Some used that power responsibly. Many did not. The point is not that every person at the top was evil. The point is that the system gave a small minority control over the life chances of the majority.
This was not only poverty. It was dependence. If your work, home, safety and legal status depended on someone above you, you had very little real freedom. You could be hard-working, clever and ambitious — and still remain locked inside the place society gave you.
Serfdom varied across Europe, but the basic pattern was clear enough: obligations such as labour, rents and dues were tied to land and landlord. The majority produced the surplus. The people above them extracted part of it.2
That is the starting point. Capitalism matters only if we first understand what came before it: a world where economic life was shaped less by open opportunity and more by personal power.
Personal power became a permission system. You did not simply decide to leave, trade, learn a craft, open a workshop, borrow money or sell to a wider market. Someone often had to allow it.
In the countryside, the gatekeeper could be the landlord. In the town, it could be the guild. In trade, it could be a ruler granting a charter or monopoly. In social life, church authority and inherited status often gave the whole system a moral language. Hierarchy was sold as order. Privilege was sold as tradition. Exclusion was sold as quality control.
Guilds are a good example because they were not only bad. They trained people, protected standards and gave members security. But they also restricted entry and protected insiders. Sheilagh Ogilvie’s work shows that guilds often excluded outsiders, women and competitors, and helped members secure rents.3
This is the key idea: the old system did not mainly fail because people lacked talent. It failed because access was controlled. The mass of people were too often treated as labour, tax base, tenants, believers, soldiers, customers of monopoly — in short, as resources for the people already holding power.
Capitalism begins to matter when this permission system starts to crack.
The first big break was property.
Property is often misunderstood as “owning stuff”. That is too shallow. Property means recognised control. It means the right to use an asset, improve it, rent it, sell it, pass it on, borrow against it or risk it.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines property as rules governing access to and control of resources. That matters. Property is not just a thing. It is a decision right.4
If your control over land, tools, inventory, a workshop or later shares in a company is legally recognised, you can plan. You can invest. You can improve. You can take risk. You are less dependent on the mood, favour or permission of someone above you.
This did not make everyone free overnight. Many people still had no property. Many owners abused power. But the principle changed: economic agency could now be anchored in rights, not only in status.
That is why property became one of capitalism’s core foundations. It moved the question from “Will someone powerful allow me?” to “What can I do with what I control?”
B O X
For women, the old permission system often went even deeper. Many were not only dependent on lord, church, guild or family status. They were also legally and economically dependent on men.
In English common law, the doctrine of coverture meant a married woman’s legal identity was largely absorbed into her husband’s.
18:52
Trump Accounts May Create Millionaire Gen-Beta Retirees
Lights! Camera! Activate Trump accounts!
Contributions are now flowing after the Treasury Department launched its much-anticipated Trump account app this week. Any child under the age of 18 with a Social Security number can participate, and US citizens born between January 2025 and December 2028 can receive a $1,000 government deposit. Maximum annual contributions are set at $5,000, with the money automatically invested in low-cost index funds. It’s a fantastic approach to savings, according to Adam Bergman, a tax attorney and founder of IRA Financial, one that will give millions of young Americans a financial head start by the time they reach adulthood. The biggest impact of the accounts, though, could actually be felt many decades down the line, when the emerging generation of Americans is ready to retire.
“These new accounts are a way for families to supercharge their kids’ retirement savings,” Bergman told Retirement Upside. “Thousands of dollars invested at a very early age could easily grow to millions by the time someone turns 60 or 65.”
It’s not much of a stretch to connect the accounts with retirement goals, Bergman said, considering they are technically a type of traditional IRA with some added restrictions. Withdrawals are generally prohibited before the beneficiary turns 18, for example. Otherwise, they are essentially IRAs with no earned income requirement before age 18, and withdrawals before age 59.5 are subject to standard income taxes plus a 10% early withdrawal penalty. “Again, I’m a big fan, to the point that I would have liked to see some kind of automatic enrollment feature that kicked in when people get a Social Security number,” Bergman said. “That would help ensure that kids who are eligible get the $1,000 government deposit.”
Currently, the IRS has a priority order for individuals who may open a Trump account on a child’s behalf:
- Legal guardians are first.
- Parents are second, followed by adult siblings or grandparents of the beneficiary.
Specific policies also exist as to who can open an account for foster children, orphans, emancipated minors and wards of the state.
More Than One Option. Bergman stressed that Trump accounts aren’t the only option for saving on behalf of children. One alternative is 529 accounts, which offer significant tax advantages for education expenses. In addition, up to $35,000 in a 529 plan can now be rolled into a Roth IRA.
Brokerage accounts are another option that could compete with Trump accounts, as detailed in an analysis from the Bipartisan Policy Center. Although they lack tax deferral or tax-free withdrawals, investment returns are typically taxed at the long-term capital gains rate, which is substantially lower than ordinary income tax rates. As a result, the BPC found, a brokerage account invested in a low- or no-dividend mutual fund could potentially outperform a Trump account over long time horizons.
The post Trump Accounts May Create Millionaire Gen-Beta Retirees appeared first on The Daily Upside.
22:15
Can SK Hynix Escape Chipmaking’s Cyclical Curse After Nasdaq Debut?
The only thing more in-demand than SK Hynix memory chips? Demand for SK Hynix Nasdaq-listed stock.
The premier South Korean memory chipmaker, which already trades on the Korea Exchange, makes its US debut today, and investors are so desperate to get another piece of the company that it’s arriving more than seven times oversubscribed, according to a Bloomberg report. Now, one big question remains: Can the company break free from the sector’s historically cyclical nature?
The American Depositary Receipt (ADR) listing comes just as investors are starting to let a little air out of their big bet on the memory sector. Fellow Korean memory chipmaker Samsung, whose shares rose roughly 150% this year before Tuesday, lost about 10% of its value after a blowout earnings report showing operating profit roughly 19 times higher than a year ago. Micron, the other member of the Big Three memory chipmakers, is similarly up 217% year-to-date … and down some 17% from an all-time peak on June 25. Korean-listed shares of SK Hynix have posted almost exactly the same rise and fall, down 25% from an all-time peak on the same day as Micron.
Some of the selloff was likely in anticipation of SK Hynix’s US arrival, but it has nonetheless been big enough to send South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI index into bear territory. That might alarm recent tourists to the memory trade, but longtime residents are quite familiar with the bust following the boom. For SK Hynix, whose founder called its product “industrial rice,” it’s baked into the entire value proposition:
- Despite the prolonged share price rally, SK Hynix is still priced at about 7 times forward earnings. Though that figure could tick up slightly after the Nasdaq listing, it will still be firmly in the territory of a value stock rather than the high-flying growth stock that its revenue and profit explosions would make it seem.
- That modest price-earnings ratio is consistent across the sector, reflecting the risk of a cyclical downturn. Samsung, for instance, trades at a forward price-earnings ratio of about 6, while Micron has edged up this year to about 11; the S&P 500 trades overall at about 20, according to LSEG Datastream.
Sooner … or Later: But if the world believes a memory sector downturn is a matter of when more than if, even in the AI age, no one can quite agree on how to set the countdown clock. Analysts expect SK Hynix to pull in $150 billion in net income this year. Revenue may triple this year and continue increasing through at least 2030, according to FactSet data, suggesting that a downturn may still be a ways away. The only thing that is certain? The best time to buy that new laptop or Nintendo Switch 2 was yesterday.
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25:25
AstraZeneca Plunges After New Heart Disease Drug Fails Trial
It was just another manic market day, at least for AstraZeneca.
Shares of the British-Swedish biopharmaceutical company tumbled Thursday after it shared the surprising failure of its drug Wainua to meet its target in a recent clinical trial. AstraZeneca and Ionis Pharmaceuticals said the heart disease treatment didn’t outperform the placebo in preventing heart problems in patients with transthyretin-mediated amyloid cardiomyopathy (or ATTR-CM), a rare and potentially fatal disease.
It was a blow analysts weren’t expecting, and AstraZeneca’s shares fell as much as 10.6% in London, its largest intraday plummet since 2017, per Bloomberg. The company’s New York Stock Exchange-listed shares ended Thursday down 5.7%.
High Expectations
AstraZeneca is “meant to be able to have exceptionally good trial design ability,” Jefferies analyst Michael Leuchten wrote in a note following the news. Even so, the market reaction seems outsized for a clinical trial failure and is just the latest evidence that the stock market is dealing in extremes and making headline-based decisions. Results short of perfection can send investors on a selling spree while positive ones spur massive rallies, especially ones related to AI. For instance, as AstraZeneca’s stock was struggling, Micron’s popped after the announcement of billions of dollars in chipmaking investments, and stocks of AI infrastructure companies soared on news that Meta plans to start manufacturing an in-house chip. Speaking of Meta, the hyperscalers are playing a daily game of “they love me, they love me not” with investors.
Of course, one company’s bad news is another’s opportunity:
- The stocks of AstraZeneca rivals Pfizer, BridgeBio Pharma and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, which sell treatments for ATTR-CM, all initially gained on the news.
- BridgeBio ended the trading day up 15%, and Pfizer ticked up 0.83%. Alnylam reversed earlier gains, ending the day in the red.
Euphoric Markets: When markets are this giddy, the is-it-or-is-it-not-a-bubble question never gets old. Savita Subramanian, head of US equity and quantitative strategy for Bank of America, recently pointed out a red flag to Barron’s: “When there’s massive outperformance of the high-multiple, high-expectation companies like we have seen lately, that tends to be a sign of speculation or FOMO,” she said. “It’s more psychological than fundamentals- or valuation-driven.”
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28:15
Slowing Costco Sales Growth Unnerves Investors
Shares in the membership-based retailer Costco fell 4.1% on Thursday after a June sales update failed to meet Wall Street’s lofty expectations.
That continued a weeks-long slump, but it also means the stock is looking more and more like one of the chain’s hot dog deals.
Conflict-ed Earnings
The S&P 500 Consumer Staples sector tumbled more than 10% at the start of the Iran war, amid fears that consumer spending would suffer because of higher oil prices. Costco initially proved resilient, falling roughly half as much as the sector through the initial rough patch, and then it soared. The company’s business structure seemed tailor-made for the moment: Costco’s cheaper bulk sales at the heart of its membership model appeal in times of consumer stress, and its nearly 600 US gas stations allow it to capture additional earnings when fuel prices rise. By mid-May, shares hit an all-time high.
Then, investors began to sour. The US and Iran signaled they were working toward a peace deal, oil prices started sinking toward pre-conflict levels and Costco’s shares tumbled with them. There were never concerns that Costco was struggling, but some investors cashed out their gains, assuming the record valuation wouldn’t hold. After all, Costco’s high forward price-to-earnings ratio suggests much of its value is already priced in (its 42 forward p/e Thursday is well above the Consumer Staples average of 25). What did concern investors was that Costco’s growth is slowing, a view this week’s numbers appeared to validate:
- Costco’s net sales rose 10.6% in June, the slowest pace since February, after topping 14% in May.
- What remains to be seen is whether the US and Iran end hostilities, which could reignite favorable conditions. Both countries exchanged new attacks this week, but President Trump said he’s unsure if the conflict will resume.
Do We Have a Bargain? Costco shares closed at $912.97 on Thursday, roughly 16.6% below their $1,094.32 May 19 high and the cheapest since early January. Last month, analysts at D.A. Davidson, who set a $1,000 price target on the stock, added Costco to their Best-of-Breed Bison list, which tracks high-quality companies they expect to outperform in the next five years.
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30:51
The Medicare Myths Costing Retirees Thousands
Not everything your clients hear on the pickleball court is true.
Social Security grabs a lot of headlines with warnings of looming benefit cuts and trust fund insolvency. Financial advisors also talk a lot about the program and the importance of clients’ claiming decisions. Less attention, however, is devoted to Medicare, according to Cole Craven, co-founder of the health care cost analysis and planning platform Move Health. That gap is often filled by Medicare myths and misconceptions that mislead retirees making coverage decisions, potentially resulting in excess costs or subpar coverage. It could be a chance for advisors to provide added value to clients.
“You’ve got the opportunity to save clients a lot of money and headaches and look like an absolute superhero, but most advisors steer clear of healthcare planning in general,” Craven said.
The first and most prevalent myth that Craven sees among financial advisors is an assumption that Medicare is overly complicated, which leads many to “simply not touch” the health care question when building a retirement income strategy. There are some nuances in the program, to be sure, but the initial claiming and subsequent reenrollment decisions aren’t exactly rocket science, either. Nor are the income-based rules that trigger surcharges.
“We need to pick up A, we need to pick up B, we need to pick up a Part D drug plan, and we need to figure out what we’re doing for supplemental coverage,” Craven said. “It’s either that, or going with the Advantage approach, but that’s about it. You just need to understand how those things work and how income affects costs.” A quick overview:
- Part A, which is premium-free for many, covers hospital care, skilled nursing facility care, hospice and some home health care.
- Part B covers outpatient care, doctor visits, preventive services, lab tests, X-rays and durable medical equipment.
- Advantage or Part C is an “all-in-one” alternative to original Medicare Parts A and B, offered by private companies and often including extra benefits like vision, hearing or dental.
- Part D helps cover the cost of outpatient prescription drugs and many vaccines.
The next myth is that Medicare is a low-quality option for health care in retirement, so people end up rushing to get treatment while they’re still on private insurance or an Affordable Care Act marketplace plan. In reality, waiting for Medicare to kick in before getting a potentially delayable procedure like a hip replacement can make a lot of financial sense. Another attractive (and oft-overlooked) feature is that traditional Medicare doesn’t have a network, which is an advantage over most private insurance. “You want to go to Mayo Clinic to get that mole on your back looked at? Great, go,” Craven said.
Remember to Revisit the Drug Plan. Finally, Craven said, people fail to realize that Medicare selections aren’t set-in-stone, one-time events. For example, Part D plans’ costs and schedules of covered drugs change every year, so it’s important to review and shop around.
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