Zeros

God Save the Scene The House of Windsor has been America's favorite soap opera for forty years. Somewhere along the way, nobody asked us if we wanted a refund. Let us pause, for just a moment, and register appropriate astonishment. The British Royal Family — that ancient institution of hereditary ceremony, chinaware, and corgi photographs — has managed to become genuinely confusing to the American public in a way that no war, no Brexit  backstop, and no number of Downton Abbey seasons ever quite accomplished. We are not confused because the story is complicated. We are confused because we cannot figure out whose side we are supposed to be on , and nobody in Buckingham Palace seems interested in helping us work that out. Cast your mind back, if you will, to the early 1980s. Charles and Diana. The wedding dress with the preposterous train. A billion people are watching on television. The entire Western world was invited to believe that something genuinely fairytale ...

Are stablecoins truly ready for wholesale markets? And what about the potential of smart contracts?  Let's explore these exciting developments together! Recently, an argument has been pushed forward that stablecoins fall short of the standards required for wholesale financial market transactions— the kind of large-value, institution-to-institution settlements that underpin the global banking system . The main argument, grounded in post-2008 regulatory frameworks , is that settlement assets must carry demonstrated  zero credit or liquidity risk . Central bank reserves are the gold standard, and stablecoins aren't . But the argument largely sidesteps something worth contemplating: the role smart contracts play in changing the settlement equation entirely .  Pulling the Thread The critique rests on real regulatory architecture. Financial Market Infrastructures , the entities that handle wholesale settlement , operate under 24 inter...

If you’ve been even half-paying attention to the softer corners of the internet lately, you already know: the world has quietly, collectively adopted one tiny, wide-eyed soul. His name is Punch , and at just about nine months old now , he may be the most heartbreakingly adorable toddler you’ll ever see. Punch—the baby Japanese macaque at the Ichikawa City Zoo — was born in July 2025 and almost immediately had to figure life out on his own after being abandoned by his mother . And yet, if you’ve seen the videos ( and let’s be honest, you have ), what stays with you isn’t the sadness—it’s the astonishing, almost uncanny sweetness of how he moves through the world. Because Punch doesn’t just act like a baby monkey. He acts like a baby. He studies his hands with the seriousness of a tiny philosopher, flexing his fingers as if he’s counting them— one, two, three —like he’s just discovered math and is pretty pleased about it. He toddles, yes toddles , upright across the enclo...

The Exchanger: How a 22-Year-Old Washed $263 Million in Stolen Digital Assets Evan Tangeman wasn't the one making the calls or picking the locks — he was the man who made the money disappear . Now he faces nearly six years in federal prison. Every large-scale digital currency theft needs someone to solve a fundamental problem: the money is hot, traceable on-chain, and utterly useless until it isn't . That's where Evan Tangeman came in. Known online as E , Tate , and most tellingly, Evan|Exchanger , the 22-year-old Newport Beach resident served as the financial plumbing for a multi-state criminal enterprise that, between October 2023 and May 2025 , stole more than $263 million in digital assets from victims across the United States . The enterprise itself was a sprawling, compartmentalized operation — database hackers, social engineers posing as customer support agents , physical burglars targeting hardware wallets, and organizers coordinating it all. It grew, a...

The NFL Draft came to Pittsburgh like a whisper this year— soft, efficient, and somehow cleaner than a Sunday morning after the jukebox finally clicks off . If you blinked, you missed it. If you didn’t blink, you still might’ve missed it, because that’s how well it went . Rumor has it the Pittsburgh Steelers didn’t just draft players— they drafted peace and quiet . In a move that felt less like sports news and more like a plot twist in a late-career arena tour, the Steelers reportedly recruited Bill Belichick and Peyton Manning to step into the long shadows of Mike Tomlin and Ben Roethlisberger . No press conference spectacle, no drawn-out farewell tour—just a smooth handoff , like a classic pop duet where one voice fades and another takes the chorus without missing a beat. And the city? The city barely flinched . Local pizza shops—those sacred, fluorescent-lit institutions where big news usually travels faster than melted cheese— had no idea anything had happened . N...

AI Infrastructure &  The Next Bet: AI Data Centers on Tribal Land Washington is pitching AI infrastructure as an economic lifesaver for Native American Tribes . The digital currency community has seen this movie before — and it didn't always end happily ever after. For Digital Currency Hobbyists The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Indian Energy  has recently published a four-color brochure aimed at Native American Tribal governments. The pitch : partner with hyperscale data center developers, lease your land, sell your power, and collect a stake in the infrastructure boom fueling artificial intelligence . The document is enthusiastic, professionally illustrated , and conspicuously light on the kinds of warnings that might slow down a deal. If that sounds familiar, it should . A generation ago, the same optimistic framing surrounded Tribal gaming — casinos as a form of economic sovereignty. And for a while, it worked. Then came the buyouts, the manageme...