GM HEARTLAND |
|
—El Prof, Muhammed & Chad |
TOKEN | PRICE CHANGE | PRICE |
|---|---|---|
Solana ($SOL) | +1.00% | $144.19 |
Helium ($HNT) | -9.16% | $3.00 |
Pyth ($PYTH) | -16.07% | $0.17 |
Save ($SLND) | +0.88% | $0.29 |
(Price changes reflect past 7 days as of 3.4.25)
That tidy 1% weekly gain for $SOL does not accurately represent its rollercoaster ride this past week.
The token soared nearly 25% in a single day after Trump announced a federal crypto reserve, but crashed back down to earth as the trade war ramped up and the broader market sold off.
Analysts say it is consolidating around $140 with a $130 support level. Determining if it will break out or break down in the near term depends on whether you believe Trump is a good businessman, or just played one on TV.
In the short history of this publication, we’ve probably leaned a little too heavily on the phrase, “Memecoins have gone mainstream.” After all, memes are, damn near by definition, mainstream. But they’ve taken another meaningful step toward the seat of cultural and political power, moving beyond the acronymic in-joke of the extrajudicially-created DOGE to become the topic of a bonafide US policy proposal.
The proposed MEME Act was recently introduced by US Representative Sam Liccardo (D-CA), a Silicon-Valley-elected candidate looking to restrict politicians from launching or promoting memecoins. This comes on the heels of President Donald Trump’s launch of his own memecoin ahead of his inauguration, $TRUMP, which reportedly raked in some $100M in trading fees — much of which was no doubt contributed by foreign actors looking to curry favor.
While I love the sentiment of preventing politicians from leveraging their positions of power to accept not-so-anonymous bribes and manipulate public financial markets for their own gain, the alleged poster child for some of those nefarious activities hilariously lives down the street from the freshman congressman. I’m talking of course about the legendary trader, Nancy Pelosi, whose investments are the subject of many Twitter accounts and automated trading strategies, given her suspiciously consistent track record as one of the world’s top investors. I only pick on her, because she and Liccardo play for the same team, and this legislation simply targets emerging technologies, not the root corruption at play.
But the sector moves so fast that this topic, chosen at our weekly planning meeting on Thursday, is no longer the biggest news story of the week. On Sunday, Trump announced a “Crypto Strategic Reserve” including not just Bitcoin and Ethereum, but also XRP, Cardano, and, yes, Solana.
(No $mother yet, but at this rate, just give it a few days.)
But back to Solana, our namesake. The main critique I’ve seen of its inclusion in this strategic asset reserve is that it’s not… American enough? The argument came from Byron Gilliam in a Blockworks Daily op-ed, who pointed out that the Solana Foundation is based in Switzerland, blithely ignoring the “decentralized” in “DeFi”. He then proceeded to, in this writer’s humble opinion, further undermine his credibility by positing Ripple as a more legitimate inclusion, given its Delaware Corporation status, and despite being a centralized banking Ponzi.
Here’s what Gilliam — and seemingly so many others I speak to on a regular basis — continue to misunderstand. Cryptographic technology promises a future where everything to the smallest fragment of data coming off an application system’s streaming exhaust is logged on-chain for some AI agent to analyze and use to make predictions. That’s a lot transactions. The token with the ability to transact on this network most efficiently will become the most valuable, regardless of its market cap.
(Non-technical folks may have an antiquated understanding of the term transaction. To tech nerds, it means interacting with a database, and that happens with every keystroke I type, and retype these words with.)
That’s still the big picture view, to be clear. The larger macro-economic state of things due to Trump Tariffs, Europe’s consequential isolationist turn, and the downturn in risk behavior evinced by Pump.Fun’s fall from 300k daily active gamblers down to 150k suggests we could be heading for a bear market in the near-term.
But I’m no bear. We previously remarked on how the the distance from the Bitcoin halving to Pete Davidson’s “What’s an NFT?” SNL sketch was around 9 months. The crypto market is now approaching the dreaded Pete Davidson period. And there’s always resistance at the previous / new highs before it really breaks away for the cycle. The question is, what’s going to spark the movement?
—El Prof
Render Network is a game-changer, and it’s already transforming the way creatives handle one of the most demanding tasks in their workflow: rendering.
(A word which here, in the context of digital visual arts, means the process of generating a final image or animation from a 3D model or scene, using software to simulate lighting, textures, and effects. It transforms the computer-generated data into a realistic or stylized visual output, such as a still image or a video sequence.)
At first glance, decentralized GPU rendering might seem a bit unconventional. Rendering is a heavy computational task, after all. But Render Network is already providing real-time rendering across thousands of GPUs worldwide, offering creators near-limitless scalability with unprecedented affordability.
Traditional rendering methods have been deeply centralized — tied to expensive render farms or the raw power of high-end workstations. But Render Network is tearing down those silos, creating a decentralized, blockchain-powered system that taps into a global pool of idle GPU power.
Here’s where it gets most interesting for us. Render Network doesn’t just offer a cheaper, more scalable solution — it also gives creators full control over their data and projects. With Render Network, you can store your data securely and manage your workflow on your terms without worrying about being locked into centralized systems.
Render Network is yet another example of our favorite crypto use case, as a secure store of data to be strategically and lucratively deployed. Render Network creates an ecosystem where users can not only take advantage of global rendering power but also contribute to it. Individuals with unused GPU resources can monetize their hardware, creating a truly decentralized market for rendering power. It’s a system where everyone benefits — from the creator who needs rendering capacity to the provider who can profit from idle hardware.
With the continued growth of decentralized technologies, Render Network is positioned at the forefront of a much larger movement. As more creatives, developers, and organizations adopt the platform, we’ll see this model extend beyond rendering into other areas of creative production, ultimately unlocking new opportunities for digital work that were previously inaccessible.
With Render Network, the next stage in the creative cycle is not only about speed and cost — it’s about embracing a new way of working. A way that puts control in the hands of the creator and makes powerful resources available to everyone, everywhere.
—Muhammed
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