GM, First, I want to thank the very first readers who filled out the 2025 content satisfaction survey. After all, the scariest thing about sending out a survey is having no one respond. Reading through the feedback feels like looking into a mirror—every year, I notice subtle changes. Still,
GM, Happy New Year 2026. Blocktrend’s publishing calendar for the year is out. Over the coming year, Blocktrend plans to take 14 days off and has set aside 5 days for sick or personal leave. The only variable is that I’m still hesitating whether to fly to Mumbai,
GM, This is Blocktrend’s final article of 2025. The next time we meet, it will be 2026. Wishing everyone a happy New Year—and thank you for spending your increasingly scarce attention on Blocktrend over the past year. I owe it to you to live up to that trust.
Taiwan ranks second in the world—behind only South Korea—in convenience store density. The sheer breadth of services they offer has led people to jokingly call convenience store clerks “the strongest species on Earth.” They not only brew coffee, boil tea eggs, and make ice cream, but also double
GM, Lately, I’ve been seeing Firstrade ads all over my social feeds, tempting me to invest in U.S. stocks (as shown below). If you make your first wire transfer deposit of more than USD 2,500, Firstrade will reimburse USD 25 of the wire transfer fee. But this
GM, AI hackers are here—and they can launch attacks autonomously. Last week, the security research team at AI company Anthropic released a critical report showing that AI agents are already capable of independently discovering vulnerabilities in smart contract code, planning attack strategies, and executing attacks. In a simulated environment,
GM, In my previous article, I mentioned Central Bank Governor Yang Chin-long’s question 1 about stablecoins: “If future stablecoin issuers and related businesses are brought under regulation—required to follow AML, CFT, KYC, cybersecurity, and consumer-protection rules—will they still be able to offer the fast, freely circulating, and
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GM, Last week, Central Bank Governor Yang Chin-long delivered a keynote speech titled “Digital Innovation in Payments and the Role of the Central Bank” at the Financial Information Service Co. annual conference. His talk focused on three major topics: stablecoins, tokenization, and central bank digital currency (CBDC). This video is
GM, Ethereum has upgraded again. Around 6 a.m. Taiwan time on December 4 (today), Ethereum completed its second system upgrade of 2025, codenamed Fusaka (a blend of Fulu and Osaka). This upgrade includes 12 updates in total, but the two most important changes are: 1. Improving wallet user experience
GM, It feels great to be back at work. I spent the past two weeks traveling in Europe, and since I was traveling with my wife, I tried my best not to look at work during the trip. The only exception was keeping an eye on today’s topic. During
GM, This article concerns the public interest and is fully open — feel free to share it. As mentioned in recent Blocktrend articles, last week I discovered that two of my assets were stuck in DeFi services 1 2 3 : 1. Euler Finance (K3 USDT Earn Vault – Avalanche) 2. Silo Finance
GM, Starting next week, Blocktrend will take its year-end publishing break. Four articles will be paused, and regular publication will resume on December 2. This is a pre-planned family trip — not a getaway to recover from last week’s loss of funds 😅. But hey, it works out perfectly. Now, onto
GM, I originally planned to skip publishing this week—honestly, my mood was terrible. But after thinking it through, since I’ve already paid what feels like a million-dollar tuition fee, I should at least share my firsthand experience of falling into a DeFi pit. First, a quick reminder: if
GM, It’s currently earnings season for U.S. stocks, and last week, the American cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase held its earnings call. As the meeting was coming to an end, CEO Brian Armstrong admitted he was a bit distracted, then proceeded to read out a series of keywords: “Bitcoin,” “Ethereum,
GM, According to Tuesday’s poll results, this article will once again feature human narration. I personally prefer reading my own work aloud, though it does take extra time to record — unlike AI-generated audio, which is much easier 😂. Still, I’ll keep exploring AI tools to see if there’s
GM, Longtime readers of Blocktrend know that writing this article carries some legal risk for me. The main subject, OwlTing, once filed both civil and criminal defamation lawsuits against me and three other netizens in 2020 — all because I criticized the government’s so-called “mosquito chain” project on Blocktrend, for
GM, Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the indictment of 38-year-old fraud ring leader Chen Zhi (English name Vincent) and seized 127,000 bitcoins from his wallet — worth around $15 billion USD — marking the largest cryptocurrency confiscation in U.S. history. The Prince Group, chaired by Chen,
GM, Exactly one year ago, Stripe announced its $1.1 billion acquisition of Bridge, a startup providing stablecoin APIs — marking the largest acquisition in crypto history. At the end of my article back then, I wrote¹: The current model of cross-border remittance is built on the assumption that money itself
GM, Last weekend was Taiwan’s National Day holiday, but the cryptocurrency market went through a bloodbath. The turmoil began when Donald Trump suddenly announced a 100% tariff on Chinese goods starting November 1. The news triggered a global selloff—both in traditional markets and crypto. The Nasdaq Index plunged