The Castle Chronicle: Citrini's 2028 Doom Article, Aave Drama Continues, and the Golden Path
PLUS: How to survive bear markets and keep your sanity
Welcome to Edition 159 of The Castle Chronicle!
Gm all!
Welcome to the newest edition of the Chronicle!
You’ll get a curated list of the most important macro news and DeFi news, along with insightful posts from guests and more! Actionable intel done the Castle way 🤝
Without further ado, let’s get into it, shall we?
In The Markets
Is this the Twilight Zone?
Each week, it feels like BTC is stuck under 70k, languishing in apathy like the rest of the crypto market. Crypto seems to be in a sort of limbo, neither going up nor down on any sort of news.
It’s very possible that it’s waiting for the US x Iran conflict to resolve and then proceed to follow whatever path equities take.
This is where the DCA’ers shine, as they can just start averaging in at these lower prices, as long as you believe that BTC will drift back above ATHs eventually.
Time after time, leverage traders continue to get wiped out, and with all the uncertainty surrounding crypto (and subsequently any war/tariff risk), it’s hard to justify going long on any measure of leverage right now.
Staying flush with buying power is the key, while staying nimble enough to add at levels that you’re comfortable with.
With market movements this droll, this is all we can really work with…at least until something happens and we break in either direction.
But luckily enough for us, we’ve had a newsworthy past week to keep our attention while crypto continues to be suspended in animation.
So let’s dive into the rest of the newsletter to see what went on this past week!
4 Articles That Demand To Be Read
This is normally the space where we would outline major news and offer observations and other insights (don’t worry, that’s coming later), but this time, a few articles have come out that deserve your attention and are worth a read.
Citrini - The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis
Citrini released what is likely one of the most thought-provoking articles in recent months, maybe even years. If you’ve ever wondered what an AI future might look like, then this is a must-read.
Read here:
While this article is not meant as truth (more like a what-if scenario), Citrini and co. have put together a convincing alternative future, one that brings a dark cloud of depression straight over your head.
Without spoiling the content of the article (which, really, go read it), it’s hard to believe that this is a future that might come to pass, especially with the amount of job displacement that happened in the article.
We’d like to think that governments wouldn’t let 75% of workers go bankrupt and entertain such a desolate job market with no interventions, but it doesn’t mean it’s not possible.
Likely, you’ll be seeing this article everywhere, and it’s one that should be read twice. If anything, it’s a good way to check your current portfolio and see if you would survive this type of future and if your holdings are aligned in a way to take advantage of it.
But if we do end up going down this route, well, best of luck to you all.
Evgeny Gaevoy - Golden Path
If you’ve been stuck wondering where crypto is headed and how we seem to have left our cypherpunk roots behind so quickly, this is the article for you. Evgeny, of Wintermute fame, wrote this article as another what-if scenario – a look at all the paths we can take.
He argues for the golden path of crypto, an uneasy coexistence between the existing system and us. This is the worthwhile path if we can get ourselves to take it, one where we aren’t beholden to the government and can operate in parallel with them, maintaining our cypherpunk nature.
But there are also other options, where TradFi absorbs crypto like a symbiote, snuffing out the cypherpunk spirit and becoming one with the suits. A situation where we have inevitably sold our souls.
The path we choose is entirely up to us as a collective, but which one will we take?
Will Clemente - Climbing a Broken Ladder
It’s a surprise to no one that Zoomers got the rough end of the stick. Born into a world where college degrees were still considered mandatory with loans they are unlikely to repay, AI/robots coming for an already decreasing job market, and boomers hoarding all the wealth like Tolkien’s goblins.
Will’s article aptly sums up the issues Zoomers face while still offering ways to get out of the mud.
Future generations will struggle (until some form of framework or governmental intervention comes into play) with this new paradigm, as it will constantly shift.
But the solutions that Will offers will help bridge the gap. They are not cure all solutions, and even working through them will be hard.
A world where labour markets are dictated by AI and robotics will be a difficult one to navigate, but for our younger readers, this article is where you can start.
Michael Bloch - The 2028 Global Intelligence Boom
You might be thinking, “Hey, this looks really similar to that Citrini article. What gives?” and you’d be right.
It’s almost the same article (with credit given), but it’s done in the opposite manner.
To end this series of articles, we realise the previous 3 had a bit of doom and gloom, so why not end it on a happy note?
Michael’s take on the above is bullish: AI does indeed get huge and cause massive disruption, but it also brings a boom that benefits all people. Hidden costs that people didn’t realise they were paying evaporated, giving households a nominal ‘raise’ over time.
The eradication of certain hidden frictions can save people a lot of money, as this article believes will happen.
It pays more to be a happy optimist than it does to be a gloomy doomer, so if you want a little pick-me-up, read this article and bathe in the golden sun of sweet, sweet bullishness.
Schizo’s Solitary Confinement
Alright, it’s official.
The world is ending.
Well, at least that’s what the markets are thinking. When a thinkpiece from Citrini can influence even a tiny bit of stock selling, we’re in a weird place.
Not to mention, we have IBM crashing 12% in a day due to a new Claude development.
These are not things that happen in a bullish market.
So if we’re in a bear market, what’s the best way to survive it?
Here are a few ways that might come in handy:
Remembering that cash is a position
There’s no reason to run around and buy every single dip that you see. Holding on to cash is a worthwhile choice because you’re insulated from portfolio losses on deep wipeouts, and you have ample ammunition for said wipeouts.
Crypto may have taught you otherwise, but every solid portfolio always has a cash anchor. Debasement be damned, hold some cash, and learn when to deploy it.
Touching grass is vital
Your mental health in a bear market tends to erode just as quickly as price does. You need to be grass-maxxing, IRL-maxxing, friend-maxxing as much as humanly possible. Don’t get stuck in a trap of isolation in times of desperation.
No good decisions were ever made by someone stressed out to the max, so take some time off from crypto. I promise it will still be there. Go enjoy some video games, watch movies, read some books, and get the hell off of CT. Your mind and wallet will thank you later.
Take the time to research
Be slow and intentional with your research. This is one of the few times when it’s better to be thorough than quick. A lot of tokens are going to be at their most depressed, and value buys will look good down here at some point in the future. That is, assuming you buy the correct ones.
There are really so many different ways to pass the time in bear markets, but these are some of my favorites. The goal here is not to stare at the screens and make yourself feel worse.
Crypto has gone through this many times, and each time, people come out of the bear markets flush with discounted assets. So many were wishing and hoping for a chance to buy tokens lower, and now that we’re here, people are skittish?
While I’m a big proponent of fewer tokens, that just means you need to follow step 3 of my guide and research the good tokens that remain.
I assure you, there are still some good ones — you just gotta find them.
Schizo out!
In The Know
Coinbase announced that they are officially moving off the OP stack and creating their own unified Base stack. While this is likely useful for the Base L2, it comes off as very bearish for Optimism and their stack. The OP token is already in the dumps, but when the OP stack (what they’ve built a lot of their organisation on) starts to lose its users, it’s not a good sign.
This was likely the biggest piece of news this past week, but BGD Labs announced it was not renewing its engagement with Aave, ending its partnership. While on the surface this may not seem like worthy news, it is and here’s why: BGD Labs essentially built Aave v3, Umbrella, and the safety module rewrite. The majority of Aave v3’s revenue comes from their code. This departure brings people to believe that you can no longer safely “just use Aave” like before, without giving consideration to this massive loss.
We also had a collaboration between Paradigm and OpenAI to create a benchmark for smart contract security agents. This EVMBench allows for testing of agents on patching, detecting, and exploiting vulnerabilities in smart contracts. We have 100B+ sitting in smart contracts like sitting ducks, waiting for someone to find an exploit and steal all the money. Building agents that can learn and work towards autonomously flagging these types of vulnerabilities would be hugely beneficial for the security of our space.
There’s some drama in the AI world, as Anthropic says that Chinese AI companies like Deepseek, Moonshot, and MiniMax created fake accounts to extract data from the Claude model. This method of training AI systems is called distillation, and its reported the companies made over 16 million queries to do this. Anthropic says this could speed up China’s model development at a much lower cost and raise national security concerns. This seems like something that would be hard to stop from an outside perspective and is likely to be happening all over the place. Nonetheless, it’s worth it to pay attention to just in case.
That’s it for another edition of the Chronicle! Every week brings new opportunities, so don’t fret!
We’re all gonna make it eventually!
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In our newsletter, we may discuss projects or tokens in which we hold positions. While we aim to provide informative content, our views are not financial advice. Please conduct your research and consult professionals before making investment decisions. Crypto markets are volatile, and past performance doesn't guarantee future results. Invest responsibly, and be aware of the risks. Your capital is at risk, and we do not accept liability for any losses.