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Fewer people than expected filed for unemployment benefits last week, data released this morning shows. 

Initial jobless claims fell by 9,000, coming in at 215,000 for the week ended April 12 — a sign that neither federal layoffs nor tariffs are weighing on the labor market. At least for now. 

Continuing claims, however, are on the rise, signaling that while companies may not be engaging in significant layoffs, they also aren’t ramping up hiring. There are now 1.89 million people receiving unemployment benefits, a level not seen since November 2021. 

The report comes a day…

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This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.

In the world of macro, the FOMC roadshow has been sidelined as global markets and pundits are squarely focused on Trump’s trade policies and their impacts on the global economy. 

That creates a state of fragility with a bunch of crosscurrents. Economic activity is grinding to a halt as businesses have trouble making hiring and capital investment decisions without knowing what the outlook will be on tariffs. 

After some initial tariff frontrunning in January and February, the Philly Fed Manufacturing Index cratered to a multi-year low: 

Traditionally — as economic activity…

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Transaction URL: https://etherscan.io/tx/0xc821120d89012b44857a71845187e6ccb8f10e80e714fd31c739288c7366f7cb

Transaction URL: https://etherscan.io/tx/0x3d6bc532919f40d867cd409f82a60acd2ba450304eda2a16e3907e9a1e23eef8

This is a segment from The Drop newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.

Coinbase’s Base team launched two tokens Wednesday afternoon — and a lot of people were not impressed.

One of the tokens is dubbed “Base is for everyone.” The second is called “Base @ FarCon 2025.” 

The first token quickly spiked 962% in price — from $0.0016 to $0.017. Then, it abruptly crashed, spurring a flurry of allegations that the token was a “scam” or rugpull.

Rabby, a crypto wallet, even labeled the first Base token a scam token on its interface as a warning to traders, Tally CEO Dennison Bertram pointed out. 

One trader who claimed to hold 1% of the token’s…

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Transaction URL: https://etherscan.io/tx/0x18eed9357cb8d3dd2ed43a31db6211524ed83ae248593290f7e504ae5ec744fa

Transaction URL: https://etherscan.io/tx/0x5abc973f1fa261fc921fa18ec64bc5465dd6a780459ec70c460a4b693dab2899

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In light of all the hype around real-world assets (RWAs) of late, I thought it’d be interesting to look at Ostium.

Ostium is a perps DEX on Arbitrum that lets you trade RWAs onchain. It’s not a new project: The team raised $3.5 million in a round led by General Catalyst and LocalGlobe in October 2023, and went live last year. 

What is new, however, is its recently-launched points program, which has propelled TVL up tenfold from $5.5 million to $53.6 million.

Source: DefiLlama

What sets Ostium apart from competitor perps DEXs is its ability to long or short popular market indices…

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This is a segment from the Supply Shock newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.

We’re coming up on 14 years since Satoshi Nakamoto’s last-known correspondence — an email to early Bitcoin developer Mike Hearn saying that he’d “moved on to other things.”

Remember, the “known” there is doing a lot of work. The existing compendiums of Satoshi’s writings will probably go unfinished forever. There’s likely still loads of private emails, direct messages and other interesting stuff that have never been made public (and with good reason).

The most recent dumps of unreleased Satoshi texts came early last year, when Martti Malmi and Adam Back provided years…

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