CRYPTO::TERMINAL

Q&A — questions we didn’t get to on the live calls

> overflow from the live calls — the questions we ran out of time for, answered here. // got one we missed? drop it on the ideas board →

> 12 questions

  • Q:The Best BTC Address Type for a Long-Term Ledger Hold▾
    A:

    Short answer: Native SegWit (bc1q...).

    Your Ledger can generate four BTC address types from the same 24-word seed:

    1. Legacy (P2PKH) — starts with 1
    2. Nested SegWit (P2SH-SegWit) — starts with 3
    3. Native SegWit / bech32 (P2WPKH) — starts with bc1q
    4. Taproot (P2TR) — starts with bc1p

    For almost everyone holding long-term in cold storage, Native SegWit is the right default.

    Three reasons:

    1. Cheapest fees on exit. Native SegWit transactions are smaller in vbytes than Legacy or Nested SegWit. When you finally move your coins, you pay less. Over a multi-year hold, that's real money.

    2. Universally accepted. Every major exchange (Coinbase, Kraken, Binance, etc.) will let you withdraw to a bc1q address. That's still not 100% true for Taproot (bc1p) — a handful of platforms either don't support it yet or quietly charge more. For long-term storage, you want the address that always works.

    3. Battle-tested since 2017. Taproot (live since 2021) is great, but its real edge shows up in multi-sig and complex scripts. For a single Ledger sitting in a safe, the practical upside is minimal.

    A few things to keep in mind...

    It's the same seed. In Ledger Live, you just create a "Bitcoin (Native SegWit)" account. That's a different derivation path off your existing 24-word recovery phrase. Your seed already covers all four address types — so if you ever need to recover BTC sitting at an old 1... address, the same phrase rescues it.

    Use a fresh receive address every time. Don't reuse. Same wallet, but better privacy and cleaner UTXO management down the road.

    Always verify the address on the Ledger screen. Clipboard malware is a real attack vector — what you see on your computer can differ from what your device is signing. The device screen is the source of truth.

    If you already have BTC at a 1... or 3... address, don't panic. It's safe. But if you're already planning to consolidate UTXOs at some point, that's a natural moment to migrate to bc1q. Don't pay fees just for the upgrade — wait for a low-fee weekend.

    TLDR: bc1q for the hold. Same seed, modern derivation path, lowest fees on exit, accepted everywhere. Taproot will probably be the right answer in a few years once the long tail of platforms catches up.

    —Chris

  • Q:What is the Recommended Portfolio Right Now?▾
    A:

    The current recommended portfolio is laid out in a three-tier structure. Tier 1 is the foundation, the assets we'd own regardless of cycle position. Tier 2 is the speculative moonshot layer (the smallest allocation). Tier 3 is the Subnet Portfolio.

    I won't reproduce the full holdings in this short answer. The live portfolio page is the source of truth, and it updates:

    https://my.paradigmpressgroup.com/subscription/esc/portfolio

  • Q:Constellation (DAG) — "It used to be a triple-down. What changed?"▾
    A:

    Good question.

    When DAG was a triple-down, three things were true at once: a live Air Force pilot, a clean "data-provenance for sensor networks" wedge, and a token small enough that a whisper could move it 5x.

    Three things to say, and then the exchange question...

    1. The DOD work matured ALOT. It actually shipped, which is more than you can say for most crypto-meets-government stories.

    2. There's AI² Holdings, the Nasdaq listing under AIAI, trading soon. This gives equity exposure to the ecosystem, a whisper could still run numbers.

    But...

    1. The one reason we're at wait-and-see: the competitive wedge has narrowed a bit. Before, Constellation's pitch was clean: "fast chain for big-data integrity, with a DOD customer." Since then, more competition has entered the space.

    On the exchange switch**, Coinbase/Kraken vs. the native chain: When we first recommended DAG, the native chain was the only good option. It wasn't listed on any major exchanges. Now it is.

    Native staking is great. But, for many members, one self-custody mistake on a thinner chain could swamp a year of staking yield. If a member is already staked natively, all good. It's just easier to buy now.

  • Q:What is the connection between Cartha and Ox Markets? Is Ox Market intending to compete with Hyperliquid? Is Cartha's revenue dependent on Ox Market or is Ox Market dependent on Cartha?▾
    A:

    Great questions.

    The connection: Same exact team. 0xMarkets is the user-facing decentralized exchange. Cartha is the subnet that provides its liquidity.

    It's kind of like Hyperliquid, but they're not directly competing. Hyperliquid is pure crypto. 0xMarkets is going after traditional finance markets first. They'll overlap on crypto perps, but the core is different.

    As for revenue...

    Both need eachother. Yes, right now Cartha needs 0x more, but that could flip.

    If Cartha's liquidity coordination mechanism proves out, it could (and I think likely would) become infrastructure other platforms want to use. Cartha was designed as a "Liquidity-as-a-Service Engine"—the architecture isn't necessarily 0xMarkets-specific.

    A second perp DEX could plug into the same miner network. Then a third. Tokenized stock platforms, prediction markets, decentralized hedging products—anything needing deep distributed liquidity could route through Cartha's vaults.

    At that point, 0xMarkets becomes one among many, and Cartha's value capture decouples from any single venue. If Cartha becomes the shared liquidity layer for multiple products, the depth concentrates rather than fragments... bringing in even more products. That's when the dynamic flips. That's what we're betting on.

  • Q:I bought TAO several months ago, and invested in about 15 subnets. I’m down about 12 TAO. Can you please explain how and why this happens?▾
    A:

    One simplified way to think about it...

    You're holding two assets, not one. TAO and the subnet alphas you bought with it.

    Both dropped. If TAO is down from where you bought, most subnet alphas dropped harder—they trade at higher beta, so when TAO falls 20%, alphas often fall 30-50%.

    Our thesis: the right subnets outperform TAO over time. But we're currently very conservative on the number we recommend—a small basket of high-conviction names with real revenue, not a wide spread across the whole ecosystem.

    The reason: Holding a lot of subnets in this market functions more like 15x leverage on the same TAO sentiment, since most alphas move together on ecosystem news and emissions changes.

    Whether it's a problem depends on the subnets you're allocated to, not the price. If your subnets are still shipping product and generating revenue, you're sitting through a sentiment cycle. If the fundamentals broke, you're sitting through a thesis breakdown.

    We believe the subnets in our portfolio represent the former, not the latter.

  • Q:Tier 2 tokens feel ignored. Can you communicate more proactively when the thesis is at risk (like JKL) or there's a security concern (like TRU)?▾
    A:

    Thanks for raising this—you're right that Tier 2 (our Hold portfolio) deserves more consistent coverage, especially when something material changes.

    We're working on something to help with that. More to come soon.

    Keep the feedback coming.

    —Chris

  • Q:Re: CLARITY ACT NEWS .. Please Comment on the meaning of RESTRICTED RECIPIENT... WHO IS THAT EXACTLY? AND WHO IS UNRESTRICTED? IS THIS A POTENTIAL LOOPHOLE FOR THE EXCHANGES TO *EFFECTIVELY* PAY YIELD?▾
    A:

    Here's my read so far...

    Restricted recipient = the U.S. retail holder of the stablecoin.

    Covered party = the centralized crypto operator paying out.

    Digital asset service providers, exchanges, brokers, custodians, and their affiliates. The new section closes the gap on the exchanges that were passing through reserve interest as "rewards."

    Who's unrestricted? One of them is DeFi participants... or non-custodial smart contracts.

    The language creates a regulatory split between CeFi and DeFi yield in U.S. law. Same template MiCA used in the EU, which has driven migration of users into DeFi protocols.

    But here's the loophole:

    The prohibition kills PASSIVE yield—anything with idle balance on a centralized exchange.

    What survives is ACTIVITY-based rewards: payments, swaps, transfers, staking, loyalty, market-making rebates. The line is whether the user has to do something to earn it, or whether it accrues on the balance alone.

    Coinbase now supports the CLARITY bill... meaning, they likely believe they can find a way around the new rules and preserve their revenu stream.

    The SEC, CFTC, and Treasury have 12 months to decide what "activity" means, so we don't know yet how big the loophole is. But Armstrong's support signals it'll probably be big enough.

  • Q:Where do I find the recommended portfolio on your website?▾
    A:

    You can find the full portfolio on our website at this page:

    https://my.paradigmpressgroup.com/subscription/esc/portfolio

  • Q:TAO Subnets are down. Please advise.▾
    A:

    Here's the tricky thing...

    Thesis breakdown and capitulation look identical on the way down.

    The only thing that tells them apart is whether the underlying business is still doing what we bought it for.

    Two examples:

    Ridges shipped a paid product. $12/month code extension. Real revenue. All told, Ridges has economics that work as the product scales.

    If the fundamentals are intact (we believe they are), the alpha exit is sentiment. If they're softening, the exit is the early warning.

    Chutes is messier. Inference rails, more diffuse revenue, dominance pressure from competing subnets. Same diagnostic though—is volume holding, are devs still building? Yes means rotation.

    The bull case: Chutes still ranks as the #1 provider on OpenRouter, the major AI aggregator serving 5M+ developers across 60+ providers. About 20-25% of Chutes' daily volume routes through OpenRouter. That's real demand.

    Worth remembering: the ecosystem just absorbed the Covenant exit shock and Q1 revenue held through it. That's data. If the products are still shipping and the revenue's still flowing, drawdowns are when conviction gets tested—not when the story changes.

  • Q:Question: What is it going to take for Crypto to outrun selling pressure from hedge funds and institutional investors in order to allow this asset class to permanently hold respect and thrive internationally?▾
    A:

    Short answer...

    Crypto doesn't need to outrun institutional selling. It needs to absorb institutions without losing its sovereignty. That's happening.

    Five things we look at:

    1. Supply is shrinking. Halvings reduce sell pressure. ETH burns net-deflationary at high usage. Long-term holders sit at all-time highs. Tokenomics are improving alongside scale and adoption.

    2. ETFs put crypto on the allocation sheet. Crypto used to be owned almost entirely by people who would sell when things got hard. Now a growing chunk is owned by institutions committed to holding through cycles.

    3. Cash-flow tokens change the math. ETH gas burns. Bittensor revenue subnets. Once a token is productive, it slowly gets rerated as a yield instrument (and finally viewed distinct from a memecoin). Equities went through a similar evolution, crypto will likely mirror it.

    4. Sovereigns are stacking. The US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. El Salvador. Bhutan. Others quietly doing it. Altcoins will join the party. State buyers don't sell on quarterly P&L.

    5. Native usage is the floor. Stablecoin rails. DePIN payroll. Onchain wages. When crypto is how people increasingly get paid, demand stops correlating with risk-on macro.

    We can't avoid some institutional selling. Redemptions, margin calls, fund closures. Equities have it. Gold has it. Respected asset classes don't lack sellers. But they have buyers structurally bigger than the sellers.

    That's the line we believe crypto is crossing now.

  • Q:What is the correct contract address for DAG? There are several addresses.▾
    A:

    Two options here...

    Open the Coinbase app or on desktop and paste the contract address below into the search bar (don't search "DAG").

    Contract address (Base network): 0x74299A718b2c44483a27325d7725F0B2646DE3B1

    You're getting wrapped DAG on Base inside Coinbase Wallet. No external wallets needed.

    It's also available on Kraken—DAG was listed November 2025 via INK Network.

    Search DAG on Kraken, buy directly. Kraken handles custody, so no contract address to verify.

    Both work.

  • Q:Three weeks running, and still no answer—if subnets are worth many multiples more under your TAO thesis, why did Sam Dare exit around $10M? Is disagreement with leadership really enough to explain walking away from that kind of upside?▾
    A:

    TLDR: Truth is, Dare was extracting value the whole time. By the time he walked, the window was closing on him. And his subnet wasn't a revenue generator—which is what our thesis (and subnet portfolio) is focused on.

    Dare ran his subnets for years and earned tokens the whole time. He sold along the way. The $10M dump on the way out was leftovers, not the lifetime take.

    Add the VC money he raised, the AI model his team built, the staff, the investor list, and the next company he's already teasing. The real number is closer to $50M. He also couldn't have gotten more if he tried.

    His sale alone crashed the price 25% in six hours. Selling slower wouldn't have helped—everyone would've noticed. And he was on a clock. (More on that in a sec.)

    But here's the thing…

    His subnets were the wrong kind to get rich in the long-run. They ran research, not revenue. The "multiples more" case lives in the subnets earning real money—Targon, Ridges, Bitcast.

    Total network revenue didn't even flinch when he left, because his subnets weren't producing it. The thesis is largely about cash-flowing subnets being mispriced. He exited the ones that weren't.

    The kicker: the protocol fix Bittensor is rolling out now to prevent another exit like this? Dare designed it himself before he left.

    Const admitted it.

    It's called Locked Stake. Subnet owners lock their tokens for a fixed period to prove commitment. Once it ships, founder-scale exits like Dare's get harder—the door he walked through closes behind him.

    That's the time constraint. He walked from a system missing the piece he'd built and the team hadn't shipped. Wait any longer and he'd be locked in.