rewrite this title Do L1s make sense at these prices

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GM. Like a fruit salad, crypto news is always tossing together weird combinations you didn’t expect.

Let’s see which chunks are worth a bite today:

🍍 Options expiry ahead;

🛠️ Are crypto network effects real?

🍋 Paxos acquires Fordefi, Texas invests $5M in Bitcoin ETF + more

Bitcoin spent the last day swinging between $86K and $88K with the energy of someone pretending everything is normal while a smoke alarm chirps every 30 seconds.

And the chirp, in this case, is a huge Bitcoin options expiry landing on Friday.

Now, what this means in simpler terms 👇

Options are contracts that traders use to bet on Bitcoin’s future price.

👉 Some are bullish (calls);

👉 Some are bearish (puts);

… but they all have one thing in common: they only last until a scheduled end date, aka the expiry, when those contracts stop trading and get settled.

Friday is one of those expiries… and this one is huge: about $14B worth of BTC options all ending at the same time.

When a big expiry like that hits, it can move prices because traders and market makers unwind all the positions built around those contracts, and that unwind can cause fast buying or selling.

But here’s the thing: a huge chunk of the bullish options in this batch were placed way up around $91K+ – far above today’s $86K – $88K.

With Bitcoin still well below those levels, there’s no reason for traders or market makers to try to push the price higher before expiry. The incentive just isn’t there.

Source: BitDegree

That said, even if the strikes are far away, the unwind afterward can still cause quick price moves, and traders don’t wanna load up on new positions because they might get caught offside by mechanical flows.

So instead of betting aggressively, everyone’s doing the simple, safe thing:

keeping positions light, waiting for Friday, and letting the expiry clear.

Once it hits, those contracts disappear, their hedges unwind, and Bitcoin finally trades without the expiry sitting on top of it.

If BTC holds the $86K- $88K zone through the event, next week starts with a clean slate.

If it slips, traders are eyeing $85K as the next real support.

Until then, the story is exactly what the chart looks like: quiet, tight, and waiting for the switch to flip on Friday.

🚨 SEASON 8 PANIC ALERT

BitDegree Season 8 ends in 4 days, which in crypto time is basically 4 milliseconds, so if you haven’t been farming Bits… um… wyd?? 👀

Because those Bits = your share of the Season 8 $15K Airdrop.

So stop doomscrolling, stop overthinking, stop whatever you’re doing (unless you’re holding a baby or a sandwich – those are important)… and go earn more Bits.

🥝 Memecoin harvest

Wallets up, charts up, IQ down 🧠

Data as of 09:34 AM EST.

Check out these memecoins and plenty more here.

Think about that cool new coffee shop that opens downtown. Everyone says it’s “changing the game,” so it charges $22 for a latte.

You take a sip and think, okay, it’s good… but is it $22-kinda good?

That’s pretty much the vibe in crypto today. Except instead of a latte, the thing under the microscope is Layer-1 blockchains, and instead of confused coffee enjoyers, it’s analysts asking:

“Are we valuing this stuff properly, or have we all just been agreeing with a price tag nobody checked?”

It started with Santiago Roel Santos, a well-known investor, who looked at the total value of non-Bitcoin crypto – about a trillion dollars – and compared it to how many people actually use these chains.

By his math, each “active user” is being valued at something like $18K to $31K. To him, that number was bonkers.

He argues that inflated value comes from a myth: that blockchains have the same “network effects” as social networks (more users = more value).

But in reality, when more people use many chains, they get worse: slower, more expensive, more congested. The opposite of what social networks experience.

And then came the counterarguments 👇

1. You’re treating a highway like it’s TikTok.

Jasper De Maere from Wintermute said Santiago was using the wrong framework.

Blockchains aren’t apps. They’re infrastructure.

You don’t measure a highway by its “monthly active drivers.” You look at how secure it is, how much traffic it can handle, and what it connects.

2. Congestion isn’t destiny.

Another investor, Tomas Fanta, pointed out that new L1s don’t necessarily crumble under more users – some actually get better, because fees flatten out and liquidity deepens.

3. Yes, some chains are overpriced… but not all.

Finally, Ben Harvey from Keyrock said that yes, some chains probably are overpriced… but others might be undervalued because they support real economic activity and scale well.

And together, they basically said: Crypto isn’t one thing. Stop valuing it like it is.

So, the takeaway is that sometimes the latte is overpriced – but sometimes it’s not latte at all. It’s the whole kitchen behind it.

The real change happening is in how people think about blockchains: not as apps competing for users, but as the infrastructure everything else might end up running on.

And once you see it that way, the price tags start making a lot more sense.

Now you’re in the know. But think about your friends – they probably have no idea. I wonder who could fix that… 😃🫵

Spread the word and be the hero you know you are!