Digital Asset News host discusses altcoin failures, market conditions, SpaceX earnings, Solana upgrades, and Trump investment accounts
A solo commentary episode from the Digital Asset News channel covering crypto market developments, a list of 82 shutting-down altcoin projects, and the Trump accounts investment initiative.
Summary
The host opens with a look at current crypto market conditions, with Bitcoin approaching $85K and total market cap near $3 trillion. He then covers SpaceX's strong earnings beat, driven by Starlink, AI compute leases, and government contracts. The main thesis of the episode is that the crypto market needs failing altcoin projects to die off in order for the space to thrive — and he lists 82 projects currently winding down, using Balancer as a detailed case study. He closes with coverage of Solana's Alpenglow upgrade and an extended breakdown of the Trump accounts initiative, noting that Elon Musk and the Dell family have together committed over $16 billion in private funding to seed the program.
The episode also includes a live Q&A segment in which the host responds to audience comments on topics including Social Security versus investment accounts, Cardano's adoption failures, Algorand's potential, Jim Cramer's Bitcoin flip-flopping, and life in Puerto Rico.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Crypto Market Overview and SpaceX Earnings
Host: Now we see the inevitable happening, which is altcoins and certain projects are beginning to die off. And these are the things that must actually happen for the crypto market as a whole to thrive. I think it might be already happening.
If we take a look at the markets right now — it's around 2 PM Eastern — Bitcoin is almost about to hit $85K. Last 24 hours up 2.4%. We're on the verge of reclaiming a market cap near $3 trillion, sitting at $2.92 trillion. Things are looking up. Ethereum up 2.9%, BNB, and so on. Zcash up 12% in 24 hours. Things are looking fantastic across the board.
So what happened lately? What is going on? Bitcoin ETFs just had a massive inflow — on the 19th of October, $526 million, and on the 20th, around $23 million. Those are pretty good numbers. It's almost like somebody knew something — like they had a speculation that actually turned out to be correct — and that speculation was SpaceX.
I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this because everybody's been talking about it today, but congratulations to all SpaceX holders. I own a little bit and I'm very happy with it. It went up 10%, and now it's holding steady around almost 7%, sitting around $159. From the tippy top after the IPO at $21, it's still down a bit, but it'll probably do fantastic numbers going forward.
The question is: where did all the money come from? That was my question. Starlink used to be the big driver — and I actually have Starlink in Texas, it works fantastic, and they're now putting it out to airlines for super high-speed in-flight internet. But the bigger story is multi-year compute leases to AI companies. Anthropic, from Claude — my favorite tool — is paying $1.25 billion per month. Google is paying $920 million per month. Reflection AI and others are contributing as well. X advertising is bringing in about half a billion or so. And Cursor, acquired in 2006, contributed $68 million. On top of that, SpaceX is working with NASA and the Department of Defense to launch satellites, and that's part of where the money has come from.
Congratulations to SpaceX and SpaceX holders. It actually does something and it's worth its weight. I thought this was not going to meet expectations and we'd see a big drop-off in AI sentiment. But because of this, there is renewed vigor in the AI space and particularly in infrastructure. We'll see how long it lasts, but I think this is big and good news moving forward.
The Case for Altcoin Consolidation — 82 Projects Shutting Down
Now, the bigger thing — and this is really the whole thesis for today — is the altcoins and projects that just have to die. They have to go away.
I didn't want to make this super negative, because these projects — I mean, I don't know what most of them are, quite honestly. Blur, Abstract, CoinEx, Balancer — which is the big one we're going to look at — Router Protocol, Full Lisk Chain, Step App, Proof of Play, Dango, BitMart, Bit — there's a lot of crypto products being shut down. Before I just go over there and say they failed — because they did fail — this is the truth. They are failing projects. And that's okay, because that's what happens in business and in life. Nothing is smooth sailing. Nothing is perfect.
As a reminder — and I know most of you who watch this channel are entrepreneurs yourselves who like to take risks, because if you didn't like to take risks, you wouldn't be investing in crypto and digital assets — I want to share a great piece, a speech from Theodore Roosevelt, one of our great American presidents. It's called The Man in the Arena. And it holds true then and holds true today.
"It's not the critic who counts — and there are plenty of them everywhere. It's not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood. Who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming. But who does actually strive for the deed. Who knows great enthusiasms, great devotions, and does the work that he needs to do."
Essentially: it's not the critic that counts. It's the people that get up there and try and just don't make it. And that's pretty much how business goes.
The Full List of Shutting-Down Projects
Now, if we go through these things, it's just fascinating how far along we've come. And I'm just going to call it out now: I don't think we need any more new altcoin projects coming into the marketplace. There may be some niche projects that could come out at some point for something I've obviously missed. But for the majority, 2021 is over. Altcoins are going to die, and they're going to die in great numbers. We've talked about this for the last four years or so — just like Amazon, just like Facebook, just like the big conglomerates and institutions, there will be very few winners. Because they can do everything. And if they can't do everything, they'll just absorb the ones that are lagging behind and make themselves even greater. That's just pretty much how it always works.
I don't think we need any more altcoins. Let's just stick with what we've got, because I think we all know our winners.
Here's what we have: OneSwap Coin, Balancer, Router Protocol, Full Sale List Chain, Shipyard, Step App — I remember that one, it didn't work out too great — Proof of Play, Dango, Bit, Zapper, Loop Ring — I remember Loop Ring when it first came out, it was an ICO and everybody was talking about how great it was, here we are — Polygon ZK EVM. This is different from Polygon. One is a side chain and one is a layer 2 solution, so keep those separated. Polygon is still around, but Polygon ZK EVM is dead or on its way to winding down. And the rest of these I have no idea what they are: Botanics, Radiant Capital, Zero Network — I do remember that one — Everclear, Fantasy Legend, Luckio, Mint, Pixel, Opulus Foundation, Megaphone, Leap Wallet, Magic Eden Wallet — I remember this one. Magic Eden was a big NFT marketplace and they released their own wallet with its own token and its own project, and that of course failed even though there were hundreds of millions of dollars involved. Milky Way, Bit.com, Genome Protocol, Step Finance, MovementFi — which made sense, you could actually walk and get paid some tokens, and through partnerships and affiliate links you'd spend those tokens on different things — Entropy, Slingshot, Angle Protocol, Parseek, and Zero Lands XYZ.
So those are just 82, but there are more to come. That's just pretty much how it is.
Balancer Case Study
Let's take a look at Balancer specifically. From their official X account, posted September 29th: BAL holders approved an orderly wind-down. BIP 928 passed; the for-proposal did not. Pools keep working. Key dates: October 16th was the last day for partners to ask for specific pools to stay live. November 30th, the V3 vault is paused. And end of May 2027, the first treasury distribution round opens.
Good job, good try for everybody. But this is how businesses work. And just to take you back down memory lane — when you see the next shiny object, just be aware of stuff like this.
I find it very odd that today Balancer is up 3.2% in 24 hours, because you've got to love the people who just want to squeeze every gamble out of everything. Good for you guys — I wouldn't do that, but sure. Over the 7-day, still up 2%. 30-day, still up 2.1%. 3 months, still up 5.5%. And over one year, okay, that makes more sense. But if we go over the maximum time frame — in 2021, because I remember there was ICO talk back in 2020, like all things ICO'd back then — it topped out at around $70. And today it is worth 12 cents. Anyhow, that's a little trip down memory lane. Not great to look at, but we have to look at it so we can move forward.
Altcoins That Are Working
By moving forward, I want to talk about altcoins that are working and can work and will do good things. Solana.
On this channel I've talked a lot about the best bets: Binance, Ethereum, Solana, Tron. I've even got AI agents buying and selling XRP through my ITRE account. Also Bitcoin, Near Protocol, Canton, Liquid, Hyperliquid. Those are the ones I think are going to do pretty well. I know some people hate some of those and love others, but those are my picks.
Solana's Alpenglow — its biggest network upgrade overall since 2020 — goes live today. I just don't think we need any more layer ones. Let's just call it a day. Solana transactions could soon become irreversible in just 150 milliseconds, roughly 40 times faster than today, as the network switches on its Alpenglow upgrade. This is pretty good if you want to do tokenization of assets — specifically equities, stocks, those types of things — and if you want to do this 24/7, 365, it's a pretty good chain to do those on.
Not only is it faster, but it's cheaper. Validators currently burn through about two SOL a day on vote fees. That's a lot. Alpenglow scraps those fees in favor of a flat entry charge called a validator admission ticket, which is 0.8 SOL per 24 hours — about 60% cheaper. So you have more tokenization of real-world assets on your chain, you went from 6% to 25% of total value — catching up to Ethereum's near-100% — and then you make things cheaper and faster. This looks pretty good. And before someone says, "But Rob, it goes down all the time" — no, it doesn't. Name me the last time Solana went down. I think it was two years ago. Correct me in the comments section. These are the things that look to be winning.
Trump Accounts — Expanded to Under 40
Lastly, before we get into Q&A, this one's interesting. From Eric Balchunas, the ETF analyst for Bloomberg: Trump accounts may soon be expanded to anyone under 40 years old.
Before we go on — the Trump accounts were introduced by the Trump administration. Essentially, for children born between 2025 and 2028, they get an initial investment of $1,000 in free seed money. And now it looks like it's being expanded to up to 40 years old. We'll see. This is according to Brad Gerstner, who is the main person spreading efforts on this for the Trump administration.
And then this is where it gets me. He also said Elon is the tip of the iceberg. When I see that, I'm thinking: how much money do we have to print to give everybody under 40 years old a thousand bucks? It's going to be a lot of money.
So, what exactly are Trump accounts? Here's the guide. A $1,000 seed — kids born between 2025 and 2028 get a one-time treasury contribution of $1,000 when they're born. You have a certain number of years to claim it as a parent. Annual contributions of up to $5,000 per year are allowed from parents, family, and employers. I believe it's tax deductible and tax exempt unless you enroll into an IRA or 401k. In the first year, you can contribute up to $6,000 inflation-adjusted. What they're giving you is $1,000 in low-cost S&P 500 index funds. Historically, the S&P 500 has delivered around 10–11% annualized returns with daily compounding.
Here are the projections, and I think this is an even bigger play for investing in assets. If you did maximum contributions for your kid — $6,000 per year for 18 years, compounding at 10% — you get $303,000 by age 18. And if you do that for your kid, by age 28 it's over a million dollars. Now, a million dollars in 28 years might only buy you a Big Mac at McDonald's if both of those are even still around — I don't know how much purchasing power the dollar will have — but a million dollars, sure. With no extra contributions, it's only about $6,000 by age 18 or $18,000 by age 28. So what this says to me is: contribute, let compound interest work. After age 18, it can go into a traditional IRA, which is then tax exempt.
This is all cool until you start asking: where's this money coming from? I was asking that question. I thought it was coming from the taxpayer. But I was wrong — at least partly. The Dell family, of Dell computers, contributed $6.25 billion. That'll give $250 each to 25 million kids. That's a pretty huge thing. And then there's that Elon thing — remember it said Elon is the tip of the iceberg. Well, Elon, just in the last 24 hours, is going to contribute $10.5 billion, or one SpaceX share per child. That's pretty big.
So privately, these Trump accounts already have around $16.75 billion — let's round up to $17 billion — coming from essentially three people. That's amazing. However, the taxpayer doesn't get off entirely, because $14.5 billion comes from the federal treasury. Yes, the taxpayer is footing some of that bill, but they're investing in America. I was just blown away that $16 billion is coming from essentially three people.
And for family, parents, and employers, you get up to $5,000 per year to contribute.
So that is what we have for Trump accounts. That's what we have for altcoins. That's what we have for the markets themselves. Things are looking pretty good. We'll see how it all plays out. We've got a Fed meeting coming up on October 28th, which looks like they're not going to raise rates, but anything can happen. And if they don't raise rates in October, December is right around the corner.
Q&A
Now let's get into a little Q&A.
T says Elon doesn't even take care of his own kids. This isn't parenting advice, so I don't know.
Jimmy says he feels age discriminated against. I feel age discrimination too — it's up to 40 years old, and I passed 40 a long time ago. I'd like my $1,000, please.
Alien Lady says canned beans and rice. Beans and rice is a great, fantastic fare here in Puerto Rico. Mofongo is probably my favorite thing to eat. Beans and rice are actually a complete protein if you put them together — very cheap, which means you can buy some more alts.
Geek Dice says Trump accounts are better than paying into Social Security for 55 years and getting a base dollar that didn't grow. That's actually true. It'd be interesting to see — the Social Security Act was passed in 1935 by FDR as part of the New Deal, for ages 65 and older. I wonder what would have happened if that money had been in the S&P 500 instead. Take out the 70s and part of the 90s, and you'd be doing pretty good. Maybe we should be teaching our kids to invest in assets instead of investing in the government and just having the government take your money and do whatever they want with it. Kids, when I was your age, we used to give 35%, 42%, in some cases 55 to 56% of our entire salaries to the government. Then we didn't see it until we turned 65, and then we got a couple of thousand dollars — which in 2038 will pay for a pack of Twizzlers. So it's a good point to really think about.
Rusty Bot says Jim Cramer just told a first-time home buyer that gold, not Bitcoin, is his preferred way to round out a stock-heavy portfolio. We all know what that means — to Valhalla. Jim Cramer seems to flip-flop quite a bit on Bitcoin. Maybe he's a politician.
Good Day Dave says the Roblox and Minecraft generations will be the builders of the blockchain world and the investors. I'm sure there is an AI agent somewhere able to do that, whether that be Grok, Claude, or OpenAI — to actually make Roblox characters start to build blockchains. But again, do we need more blockchains?
Jeff just got here. Jeff, I just told you my five altcoins that are going to 1000x. Remember those titles and thumbnails from back in the day in 2021 — the next 5x or the next five altcoins to do a 1000x? Those were good times. Everyone was just guessing with no models whatsoever, and then all of a sudden they'd just say, "See, I told you guys." Fartcoin. SafeMoon. I remember that one too.
Cloudy says they'll stay buying Algorand and don't care what anyone says. Algorand is a great project that does good things and can really go far. It's just all about what gets adopted and what kind of deals are made behind closed doors — the handshakes and things being done. I know people like to think these products will just be great because they're great projects, but business is still business. It's not about what you know, it's about who you know and the connections you can make. Algorand can still do that — they just have to start making those connections.
I'll give you a prime example. Cardano was a good chain that tried to do good things, but they let everything pass by. They let stablecoins pass by. They were so compressed into what they wanted to do that they didn't want to spend on advertising because it's all for the community. But what the heck grows on Cardano now? If you don't believe me, there was a great interview I did with Big Pey, who was one of the biggest Cardano fans around, and he pretty much just laid it out — they failed us for the things they did. Just look for Big Pey on Digital Asset News and you'll see how even I was like, "Wow, that's pretty bad."
Dot is waking up — I agree.
PR is not a state — it's a commonwealth. It's a great place to be. Besides the Act 60 thing, the tax valuations of your primary residence are from what is it, 1946 or 1953? It's a valuation of your house from decades ago and it never really goes up. Pretty great.
Rusty says — and this is not for me, I was laughing at another joke — a little Cardano news: Cardano has achieved a major world adoption milestone with 100,000 Indian farms now registered on its blockchain. To the moon, baby. To the moon.