Gabriel Mamou-Mani

The blockchains everyone fights about are the worst business in crypto. ⠀ Six things I noticed going through 2025 revenue numbers. ⠀ 1. Coinbase made $7 billion. Solana, the entire network, made $1.3 billion. One app on top earned 5x the chain underneath. ⠀ 2. Tron earned $608 million. Almost all of it from people moving Tether around. The road gets paid by the truck it carries. ⠀ 3. Tether pulled in close to $6 billion. Circle $2.4 billion. Neither pays you a cent of interest on the dollar you hold. ⠀ 4. Coinbase, Kraken and Crypto .com: $10.7 billion between them. Solana plus Tron: $1.9 billion. Casinos beat roads, 5 to 1. ⠀ 5. Aave crossed $3 billion lifetime. Hyperliquid $1 billion lifetime. Both took years. Coinbase does that in a bad quarter. ⠀ 6. Every name on this list charges a fee on someone else's bet. None of them needs the price to go up.

Every other industry counts revenue. ⠀ Crypto counts deposits. ⠀ 2017. A protocol launches. The first number on the website is total value locked. ⠀ Investors read it as traction. Founders read it as product-market fit. The press reads it as growth. ⠀ 2026. Same website, same number, three cycles later. ⠀ Money parked, waiting for a better rate. Deposits leave the day a competitor pays 2% more. ⠀ A bank calls deposits a liability. Crypto calls them a milestone. ⠀ The protocols still alive in 2026 run on a different scoreboard. ⠀ Build demand before supply. 100 people who pay beat $50M that waits for a use case. ⠀ Pay partners for paying users. A KOL sells attention. A partner sells customers. Only one shows up in revenue. ⠀ Grow revenue to $100K before Discord to 100K. One number pays salaries. ⠀ Activate 5 partners over announcing 50. An announcement is free. A revenue-share contract is proof. ⠀ Give users a reason to stay after the airdrop. Retention is the only metric a subsidy cannot fake. ⠀ Own one channel that converts before spending millions on brand. Distribution first, logo later. ⠀ Fees, revenue, retention. Three numbers that say if a protocol has a business. ⠀ TVL says how much it borrowed from strangers. ⠀ Pick one of the six this quarter. Start with the number your board never asks for.

26 million people. One adult in five holds crypto. Zero global exchanges born there. ⠀ Australia. I mapped it this week and the numbers do not add up the way you expect. ⠀ One in five adults. That is top 10 in the world per head. More than most of Europe. ⠀ 26 million people is a Shanghai. So every company that wins at home runs out of customers fast. ⠀ Five local exchanges split that market anyway. Swyftx, CoinSpot, CoinJar, Independent Reserve, BTC Markets. Coinbase and Kraken are guests here. ⠀ The biggest company born there sells to game studios, not traders. Immutable, 100+ studios, built in Sydney. ⠀ Two of the biggest bitcoin miners on Nasdaq are Australian. IREN and Mawson. Most of their machines sit in the US. ⠀ The regulator lost in court to a lending startup. Block Earner beat ASIC and then got the first crypto credit licence. ⠀ And the big four banks still close crypto companies' accounts. One in five customers hold the asset. The bank says no. ⠀ Full map of 15 companies in the chart. ⠀ Strong test market or trapped market. Which one do you see?