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Robinhood (HOOD) slides 4% as crypto revenue sharply fell

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Robinhood (HOOD) slides 4% as crypto revenue sharply fell

Robinhood (HOOD) topped Wall Street’s second-quarter expectations, but shares fell about 4% in after-hours trading, adding to their 3.1% decline during Wednesday’s session.

The online brokerage reported adjusted earnings per share of $0.62, well ahead of analysts’ $0.43 estimate, while revenue climbed 32% from a year earlier to a record $1.31 billion, narrowly topping the $1.29 billion consensus forecast.

The results reflected strength across Robinhood’s expanding product lineup, even as crypto trading cooled. Crypto revenue fell 38% year over year to $100 million from $160 million, while transaction revenue was lifted by surging options, equities and prediction markets activity.

“Whether it’s the Robinhood Chain, Robinhood Ventures, or Trump Accounts, our product velocity is focused on one goal: making everyone an owner,” Vlad Tenev, Chairman and CEO of Robinhood, said in a statement.

The second quarter marked one of Robinhood’s biggest product pushes in recent years. The company launched Robinhood Chain, a blockchain network that supports tokenized U.S. stocks for eligible European customers as part of its push to bring traditional financial assets onchain.



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7 best life insurance companies of 2026

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7 best life insurance companies of 2026


An unexpected life event in your family can completely change the course of your financial future if you’re caught unprepared. Fortunately, a life insurance policy tailored to your specific needs can soften the financial blow and help you move forward on your terms.

To help you avoid the confusion of trying to choose between countless providers, we’ve done the research and compiled a list of the best life insurance companies, according to what makes them stand out (plus a few honorable mentions). 

7 best life insurance providers

  1. New York Life: Best overall

  2. MassMutual: Best for financial stability

  3. Nationwide: Best for policy flexibility

  4. Prudential Financial: Best for core products and riders

  5. Lincoln Financial: Best for claims experience

  6. State Farm: Best for transparency

  7. John Hancock: Best for customer experience

1. New York Life: Best overall

Star rating: 4.8 out of 5 ⭐

Why we like it: Among the life insurance companies we researched and compared, New York Life received top marks across multiple categories, including its core product availability, policy flexibility, and overall financial strength and stability. It also scored well on its application and claims experience criteria, as well as its transparency toward potential customers.

This sets up New York Life as the best-rated insurance provider on our list, as its offerings cover a wide range of specific life insurance needs. And with over 150 years in business, it has the industry know-how and financial reliability to address your insurance concerns and back up its policies.

2. MassMutual: Best for financial stability

Star rating: 4.8 out of 5 ⭐

Why we like it: MassMutual holds the same high AM Best Financial Strength Rating of A++ (Superior) as New York Life, but it has even fewer complaints, which are two huge reasons we rate it so highly.

In addition, MassMutual offers excellent core product availability and benefits, including guaranteed level premium periods for term life insurance policies. The claims process is a little vague, but we imagine that’s because we don’t have full access to all the details as non-customers.

3. Nationwide: Best for policy flexibility

Star rating: 4.8 out of 5 ⭐

Why we like it: Nationwide recently marked 100 years in business, which surprisingly makes it younger than many competitors. Still, relatively young age aside, it offers flexible policies and riders that fully compete with the offerings of other top-rated insurers. From a financial backing perspective,

Nationwide receives top marks for its AM Best Financial Strength Rating of A+ (Superior). (AM Best is an independent, global credit rating agency that rates insurers on their financial strength — the higher the rating, the more financially secure the company.)

We also like that you can apply for Nationwide life insurance online and find out your premium during the quote process. Many insurance companies point you directly to an agent, which isn’t always the most favorable experience for every potential customer.

4. Prudential Financial: Best for core products and riders

Star rating: 4.5 out of 5 ⭐

Why we like it: Prudential Financial, along with New York Life and Nationwide, received perfect scores in our rubric for its core product availability, policy flexibility, and riders. This means it hits all the right notes for what it offers in core life insurance products and riders, including term life insurance, universal life insurance, no-exam policies, and more.

Prudential also provides an easy-to-use online quote tool to view your estimated premium, all without speaking to an agent.

Where does Prudential fall short? The number of complaints: It’s well above the average when compared to other top-rated life insurance providers.

Read more: Your comprehensive guide to life insurance riders

5. Lincoln Financial: Best for claims experience

Star rating: 4.5 out of 5 ⭐

Why we like it: Lincoln Financial clearly outlines how its claims process works, helping to put your mind at ease if that’s one of your life insurance concerns. There are multiple paths for filing, along with details on special situations.

While we couldn’t find information about publicly disclosed premium costs, Lincoln’s offerings are still worth considering. It scored well on its core product availability and policy flexibility, which make for a nearly complete package when you also consider the details of its claims process.

6. State Farm: Best for transparency

Star rating: 4.4 out of 5 ⭐

Why we like it: If you want a transparent, online research experience, consider State Farm. With State Farm, you can find sample premium estimates and details about different types of policies, and even get a life insurance quote — all online. 

That’s not to say there’s no depth to a company like State Farm. It still has an overall low number of complaints and an A+ (Superior) Financial Strength Rating from AM Best. 

However, if you specifically want more coverage period options for term life insurance, you may need to look elsewhere, as State Farm offers a limited number of coverage periods compared to other insurers.

7. John Hancock: Best for customer experience

Star rating: 4.4 out of 5 ⭐

Why we like it: Similar to State Farm, John Hancock offers a modern, online-centric experience for people who prefer researching quotes on their own without an agent. You can get online quotes, review the claims process, and peruse different types of policies at your own pace and leisure.

In addition, John Hancock has a low number of complaints and offers adequate policy and rider options. However, it’s a little unclear whether any policies are available that don’t require a medical exam.

Other life insurance companies to consider

Pacific Life

Star rating: 4.3 out of 5 ⭐

What we think: Pacific Life scored well overall, especially with its policy flexibility and availability of riders, but the claims process and guidance for beneficiary claims are somewhat vague, which could be a hindrance for potential customers.

Securian Financial

Star rating: 4.3 out of 5 ⭐

What we think: Securian Financial outlines its claims process well and provides a useful online calculator for estimating your life insurance needs. However, its core product availability and policy flexibility slightly underperform those of higher-rated competitors.

Northwestern Mutual

Star rating: 4.3 out of 5 ⭐

What we think: Northwestern Mutual has excellent financial strength and stability, a low number of complaints, and over 150 years in the industry. Still, it’s missing (or the information isn’t disclosed) essential riders and term life policy flexibility.

Transamerica

Star rating: 4.3 out of 5 ⭐

What we think: Transmerica has a good lineup of available products and offers high transparency, but there are a few concerns with its overall financial strength and stability. Namely, its AM Best Financial Strength Rating of an A (Excellent), while still good, is lower than that of many other insurers. Also, Transmerica has more complaints than almost every other provider we compared.

Guardian Life

Star rating: 4.1 out of 5 ⭐

What we think: Guardian Life has a low number of complaints and excellent financial stability, but we found it lacking in its core product availability and policy flexibility. Specifically, it doesn’t disclose whether its term life insurance offers different term lengths, and the details for riders and other benefits are few and far between.

How to choose the best life insurance

1. Consider your insurance needs

Life insurance isn’t typically a one-size-fits-all proposition; any policy won’t work for every individual. You have to consider the best policy based on your specific situation.

For example, term life insurance may make sense if:

However, permanent or whole life insurance may make sense if:

Related: Term vs. whole life insurance: Which should you choose?

2. Review riders

Life insurance policy riders are optional add-ons you can use to customize your plan. You may want to consider and review riders to better suit your needs.

Here are examples of common life insurance riders:

  • Accelerated death benefit (ADB): If you meet certain conditions, you can claim a portion or all of your death benefit while you’re still alive.

  • Accidental death: Can increase your payout if your death results from a covered accident.

  • Charitable benefit: Adds an extra amount to your death benefit to be paid to the charity of your choice.

  • Child and spouse: Pays out a death benefit if an insured child or spouse passes away during the rider’s term.

  • Chronic care: Provides tax-free access to a portion of the death benefit if you become chronically ill.

  • Renewable term: Can allow you the option to purchase renewable and convertible level term insurance as a way to increase the death benefit for a limited amount of time.

  • Term conversion: Allows you to convert a term life insurance policy to a whole life policy, typically without having to undergo a medical exam.

  • Waiver of premium: Can keep paying your premium if you become disabled and are unable to work.

Related: The comprehensive guide to life insurance riders

3. Compare providers

Once you’ve locked in the type of coverage and riders you need, it’s time to compare what different providers are offering. You may already have experience with certain companies from using other types of insurance, like homeowners or car insurance, but that doesn’t mean you should immediately use the same insurer.

If a provider doesn’t offer what you’re looking for, move on to the next. 

You can individually research each life insurance company via its website, use an independent agent, or try out a comparison website. There’s generally no wrong approach to this, as long as you end up with a policy you want at a price you’re comfortable with.

Related: How much life insurance do I need? A guide for every life stage.

Life insurance FAQs

What is the best life insurance provider?

The best life insurance providers include:

  • New York Life: Best overall

  • MassMutual: Best for financial stability

  • Nationwide: Best for policy flexibility

  • Prudential Financial: Best for core products and riders

  • Lincoln Financial: Best for claims experience

  • State Farm: Best for transparency

  • John Hancock: Best for customer experience

What are the four types of life insurance?

Life insurance categories generally include:

  1. Term life: Provides coverage for a certain number of years, but will only pay out during the coverage period.

  2. Whole life: Provides coverage for your whole life, paying out no matter what age you are when you pass away, as long as your premiums are paid.

  3. Universal life: Also provides coverage for your whole life, but offers more flexibility with your death benefit and premiums.

  4. Variable life: Typically provides whole life coverage, but there’s also an investment factor that can affect your death benefit and cash value.

What affects the cost of life insurance?

In general, these factors can affect your life insurance premiums:

  • Age

  • Health

  • Family health history

  • Gender

  • Occupation

  • Lifestyle

  • Tobacco use

  • Coverage limits

  • Policy type

What happens if I outlive my term life insurance?

You typically get no benefit from a term life insurance policy if you don’t pass away within the coverage period.

At what point is life insurance not worth it?

Life insurance may not be worth it if you have no need for the death benefit or potential savings tools. For example, if you already have enough savings or investments, or if you have no dependents, you may not need to consider buying a life insurance policy. This could also be the case if you’re already in your retirement years and have no affordable life insurance options.

Methodology

We compiled our list of the best life insurance providers by creating a rubric to compare countrywide life insurance companies. Our selection of providers was based on the 12 highest-ranked NAIC groups and companies that sell individual life insurance directly to consumers.

We did not consider every available life insurance group or company. 

We compared the selected providers based on various factors outlined in our rubric, including core product availability, policy flexibility, financial strength and stability, and more. Each provider received scores in each category, which contributed to a final percentage score and an overall star rating.



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Bitcoin holds near $64K as Fed keeps rates steady, September hike remains in play

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Bitcoin holds near $64K as Fed keeps rates steady, September hike remains in play


Bitcoin [BTC] traded near $64,000 after the US Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged at 3.50%-3.75% on July 29, a decision that largely matched market expectations.

However, policymakers struck a more hawkish tone than the headline suggested. Three Federal Open Market Committee [FOMC] members voted for an immediate rate increase. 

At the same time, Chair Kevin Warsh declined to rule out another hike in September, keeping pressure on risk assets, including cryptocurrencies.

Three Fed officials break ranks

The FOMC voted 9-3 to keep interest rates unchanged.

Beth Hammack, Neel Kashkari and Lorie Logan dissented in favour of raising the federal funds rate to 3.75%-4.00%, marking a notable shift from June, when all 12 voting members supported leaving policy unchanged.

The accompanying statement described economic activity as continuing to expand at a solid pace, with labour market conditions remaining stable.

At the same time, officials said inflation remains above the Fed’s 2% target, citing persistent price pressures partly reinforced by energy-related supply disruptions.

The Fed’s implementation note left its operational interest rates and balance-sheet policy unchanged.

Warsh keeps September firmly on the table

During his press conference, Warsh rejected suggestions that July represented a routine pause, describing the meeting as an active assessment of the Fed’s policy options rather than the start of an easing cycle.

He also downplayed the significance of June’s softer inflation reading, saying it influenced policymakers “not much” as they continue to focus on broader inflation trends.

While Warsh stopped short of signalling a September increase, he acknowledged that higher interest rates could still become necessary if inflation fails to moderate.

He also noted that financial conditions had already tightened between meetings, pointing to higher nominal and inflation-adjusted Treasury yields despite no change in the policy rate.

Those market developments, he said, would be monitored alongside incoming economic data rather than treated as policy signals in their own right.

Attention now shifts to the Fed’s Jackson Hole Symposium in August, where Warsh indicated he could provide further guidance on the economic outlook ahead of the September meeting.

Bitcoin reaction remains subdued

Bitcoin traded around $63,850 following the decision after fluctuating between roughly $63,516 and $64,640 during the session.

The muted reaction suggests investors had already priced in both the rate hold and the possibility that policymakers would maintain a cautious stance on inflation.

Even so, the meeting did little to improve the near-term outlook for risk assets.

If incoming inflation and employment data continue to support the Fed’s hawkish stance, expectations for a September rate increase could strengthen. That would likely keep pressure on Treasury yields and the US dollar upward while limiting liquidity conditions that have historically supported Bitcoin and the broader crypto market.

Final Summary

  • The Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged, but three policymakers voted for an immediate increase, highlighting a more hawkish split within the committee.
  • Bitcoin remained near $64,000 as investors shifted their attention to Jackson Hole and the possibility of another rate hike in September.

 



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Federal Reserve holds rates steady, extending pause as markets await Warsh’s policy roadmap

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Crypto Week Ahead

The Federal Reserve left its benchmark fed funds rate range unchanged at 3.50%-3.75% on Wednesday, extending its pause for a sixth consecutive meeting as policymakers continue to grapple with stubborn inflation.

“Inflation remains elevated relative to the Committee’s 2 percent goal, in part reflecting supply shocks that have driven price increases in certain sectors, including energy,” the policy statement read.

“Economic activity is expanding at a solid pace despite elevated uncertainty that owes, in part, to the conflict in the Middle East. Productivity growth and capital investment are strong,” the statement added. “Job gains have kept pace with the workforce, and the unemployment rate has changed little.”

There were three committee members dissenting, preferring to raise rates by 25 basis points. Nine voted to keep policy in place.

Bitcoin climbed to above $64,400 following the decision, up over 1% over the past 24 hours. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq bounced, trimming earlier declines. Gold also rose, up 1.2% through the day.

The decision came after one of the most uncertain pre-meeting setups in years. Futures markets had assigned roughly a 65% probability to a hold and 35% odds of a quarter-point increase, according to CME FedWatch data.



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56-year-old fast-food giant has closed over half its restaurants

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56-year-old fast-food giant has closed over half its restaurants


When beef prices climb, a restaurant like Chili’s or Applebee’s can advertise chicken specials and find ways to entice customers to order more affordable proteins.

But when a chain focuses on one specific protein as part of its brand identity, its options become limited. Buffalo Wild Wings advertises boneless wing specials when bone-in prices rise, and WingStop, despite its name, sold chicken thighs in 2021 when wing prices skyrocketed, according to CNBC.

Still, the more specific your offering, the harder it is to pivot. That’s what doomed a number of Texas BBQ restaurants recently, as the price of beef has climbed, TheStreet reported.

When customers expect brisket, they may not want pulled pork, and when they’re going to a seafood chain, it’s hard to sell them beef or chicken. This problem factored into Red Lobster’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy, impacted Bahama Breeze, which was closed completely by parent company Darden Restaurants, and led to the Joe’s Crab Shack downsizing.

Long John Silver’s keeps shrinking

Long John Silver’s has long been one of the most successful seafood-based fast-food chains in the United States by sheer store count. Captain D’s, a rival chain, may have surpassed it with about 530 restaurants, according to documents published on Franchise Depth.

At its peak, Long John Silver’s had 1,081 locations, and that number may be below 500 now. The seafood fast-food restaurant chain, launched in Lexington, Ky., in 1969, closed another 30 locations in 2025, according to Undercurrent News, which pulled the information from the chain’s franchise disclosure documents (FDD).

The store locator page on Long John Silver’s website shows 494 remaining locations.

Long John Silver’s menu features fried Alaskan pollock, shrimp, and chicken. It also offers grilled salmon and shrimp options.

Seafood chains have struggled

Affordable seafood has been a challenge for restaurants. Red Lobster fell into bankruptcy partly because it offered an all-you-can-eat shrimp promotion.

Shrimp is an expensive protein, and people can eat a lot of it. That promotion, which was only one factor in Red Lobster’s eventual Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, cost the company $11 million.

More Restaurants:

The challenge with offering affordable seafood is that seafood just isn’t cheap. In theory, you can lure people in with shrimp, lobster, and crab leg deals, hoping to sell them high-margin drinks or desserts, but historically, this hasn’t worked all that well.

It’s also particularly ineffective for a fast-food chain with limited up-sell options.

Fear over prices, however, is real. I’ve avoided ordering from Red Lobster because its prices are higher than many of the other chains I can get via Uber Eats or DoorDash.

That’s anecdotal, but to someone who has covered the restaurant industry for over 30 years, it feels pronounced.

Long John Silver’s has been in a slow decline for years. Shutterstock

Seafood is an expensive menu item

American consumers are worried about costs, and seafood is the most expensive protein.

“Consumer sentiment has been on a rollercoaster ride. By and large, consumers are concerned about the sustained level of inflation and [whether they] have a job tomorrow,” 210 Analytics Principal Anne-Marie Roerink said at the 2026 Global Seafood Market Conference, Seafood Source reported. 

She also shared the average 2025 retail prices for each protein.

  • Seafood: $10.52/lb

  • Beef: $7.18/lb

  • Pork: $3.27/lb

  • Chicken: $3.17/lb

“Meat has moved from villain to vital because of the protein story,” she said.

Over half (57%) of Americans said they want to eat more seafood, according to Technomic’s 2025 State of the Food Industry and the Role of Seafood.

But some see price as a problem: A third of those surveyed see seafood as the least affordable protein.

For Long John Silver’s, however, seafood may just be part of the problem amid a challenging operating environment.

“The restaurant space has been tough. There’s a lot of competition, so it’s a very saturated market to begin with,” Black Box Intelligence Chief Insights Officer Victor Fernandez told Restaurant Dive.

“Nine percent of the full-service restaurants it tracked had lost 30% or more of their peak sales between 2019 and 2025. In limited service, that figure was just 4%. Among the most distressed units, 3% of full-service locations and 1% of limited-service locations had lost more than half their peak sales over that period,” according to Black Box.

“The softening economy that took hold in the second half of 2025 pushed many of those struggling units past the point of viability,” Fernandez said.

“That tips [them] over the edge,” he added.

Related: 87-year-old grocery giant closing more stores

This story was originally published by TheStreet on Jul 29, 2026, where it first appeared in the Restaurants section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.



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As crypto perpetual futures boom, Ethereum’s role is shifting

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As crypto perpetual futures boom, Ethereum’s role is shifting

For years, Ethereum has been synonymous with decentralized finance. It pioneered onchain financial tools like lending protocols and tokenized assets, which today underpin much of the crypto economy. But one of crypto’s fastest-growing sectors, perpetual futures, or “perps”, has largely flourished elsewhere.

Ask traders where onchain perpetuals live today, and the answer is more likely to be Hyperliquid or Solana than Ethereum. That is because perpetuals demand something Ethereum’s base layer was never designed to optimize for: extremely fast, low-cost, high-frequency trading.

“Perps require frequent transactions, fast execution, and deep liquidity,” said AJ Warner, chief strategy officer at Offchain Labs, the main developer firm behind the layer-2 Arbitrum. “That makes them a natural use case for the Arbitrum platform.”

The distinction has become increasingly important as decentralized perpetual exchanges mature from crypto-native products into markets attracting institutional attention.

Why Ethereum L1 fell behind

Perpetuals are one of the most demanding applications in crypto. Their exchanges require thousands of rapid-fire updates, liquidations, funding payments, and order executions, all without interruption.

“Perps onchain are really hard,” said Brian Smith of the Jito Foundation. “It’s not just the average performance that matters, it’s the 99.99% success rate. If your perps platform goes down, that’s existential risk.”

Ethereum’s security-first architecture made it an ideal settlement layer, but historically, its block times and gas costs made it an expensive place to run latency-sensitive trading applications.

When decentralized perps exchange GMX launched on Arbitrum in 2021,, it helped establish a template that many others would follow. “Ethereum mainnet fees were prohibitively expensive, which naturally attracted perps builders to Arbitrum,” Warner said. Offchain Labs then leaned into that momentum, actively prioritizing perpetuals as a strategic category.

“By prioritizing the vertical, we were able to attract a concentration of builders and capital to the ecosystem.” Today, much of Ethereum’s perpetual trading activity lives not on the Ethereum mainnet, but on layer-2 networks like Arbitrum and, increasingly, Base.

Ethereum’s layer-2 ecosystem has become something of a compromise: preserving Ethereum’s security while dramatically improving trading performance. Networks like Arbitrum and Base have reduced block times while also becoming an increasingly attractive trading destination because of their growing user base and liquidity.

Chris Boulous of Dromos Labs, the main developer firm behind Aerodrome, a decentralized exchange that lives on the Base network, argued that technical performance is only part of the story.

“Trading is effectively a network-effects business,” he said. “You have to build where the liquidity and users currently exist.” That dynamic has become self-reinforcing: protocols launch where traders already are, liquidity providers follow the traders, and then new applications build around existing liquidity. It’s one reason Boulous sees Aerodrome as complementary to perpetual exchanges rather than competitive with them.

“You can kind of think of perps as a customer of spot exchanges,” Boulous said. Spot exchanges provide pricing, liquidity and hedging opportunities that perpetual markets depend on. “Spot and perps are two sides of the same liquidity coin.”

Why Solana and Hyperliquid surged

Still, Ethereum’s layer-2 ecosystem isn’t the only place where developers can build high-performance trading infrastructure. Hyperliquid built an application-specific chain optimized almost entirely for perpetual trading. Solana, meanwhile, combined low fees with a large base of retail traders already actively trading memecoins and other speculative assets.

According to Smith of Jito, that user base matters as much as the technology. “The most important ingredient for any exchange platform, but especially perps, is retail organic flow,” he said. “Solana is the king of retail trading activity.”

Smith also argues Ethereum faces an additional challenge: fragmentation. “You need to be able to trade everything in a single spot,” he said. “What Ethereum is suffering from is a level of fragmentation.”

Ethereum’s scaling strategy largely relied on layer-2 networks like Arbitrum and Base to handle high-volume activity. While that approach dramatically reduced costs and improved performance, it also dispersed users and liquidity across multiple ecosystems. Traders often need to bridge assets between networks, making the experience less seamless than on single-chain ecosystems such as Solana. Earlier this year, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin acknowledged that the original layer-2 roadmap vision “no longer makes sense” as layer 2s have decentralized more slowly than expected and Ethereum’s base layer has itself become more scalable.

Not everyone sees that fragmentation as a fatal flaw, however. Some Ethereum proponents argue the focus on execution misses the network’s longer-term role in the onchain financial stack. Matthieu Saint Olive, a staff product manager at MetaMask, argues the framing itself misses what’s happening. “I’d push back gently on the premise that it’s a competition in the first place,” he told CoinDesk.

Purpose-built trading chains may ultimately win on execution speed, but they still require somewhere to source collateral, liquidity, stablecoins, and settlement. “Ethereum’s role is the settlement and collateral base where the deepest liquidity, the widest range of assets, the stablecoins, and the most mature DeFi primitives live.”

Several leading perpetual trading platforms either operate directly on Ethereum layer 2s or remain closely connected to Ethereum’s ecosystem for collateral, settlement, and developer tooling. “L2s are how Ethereum scales into use cases like active trading without giving up the thing that makes the base layer valuable,” Saint Olive said.

The institutional question

As institutions begin paying closer attention to onchain derivatives, the conversation is shifting from whether decentralized perpetuals can work to whether they can compete with traditional infrastructure. “It comes down to execution, custody, and predictability, not ideology,” Saint Olive said.

Institutions, Warner of Offchain Labs argued, still need deeper liquidity, more efficient capital usage, and better execution before deploying significant trading volume onchain. “Capital is still fragmented across venues,” Warner said. “Institutions will want better access to credit, cross-margining, and the ability to trade across venues without leaving large amounts of capital idle.”

For Boulous, the next milestone is straightforward: “You have to be able to do things onchain that you can’t do, or can’t do as cheaply, in traditional markets.”

While much of today’s decentralized perpetual volume still revolves around crypto assets, market participants increasingly see the infrastructure supporting perps as the foundation for broader capital markets. Saint Olive believes perpetuals are already demonstrating what programmable markets can become.

“Perps are the leading indicator, the first place you can watch traditional financial activity genuinely migrate onchain,” Saint Olive said.

That may also explain why Ethereum’s role in the market is evolving rather than diminishing.

Solana and purpose-built chains like Hyperliquid have established themselves as the venues where traders execute high-speed transactions. Ethereum, meanwhile, is increasingly positioning itself as the settlement and collateral layer that underpins those markets through its layer-2 ecosystem and broader DeFi infrastructure.

Whether that division of labor persists will depend on how quickly Ethereum can solve some of the challenges its critics point to: fragmented liquidity across layer 2s, better interoperability between networks, and a smoother user experience. If it can, proponents argue Ethereum doesn’t necessarily need to become the fastest place to trade perpetuals. It simply needs to remain the deepest and most trusted place to settle them.

Read more: Perpetual futures could become crypto’s next ETF moment



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This 83-Year-Old Entrepreneur Is Rejecting a $400 Million Payday

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This 83-Year-Old Entrepreneur Is Rejecting a $400 Million Payday


Key Takeaways

  • Eddie Smith Jr., the 83-year-old owner of Grady-White Boats, turned down a $400 million sale and instead committed the company’s future profits to charity.
  • Smith has kept full control of the company since buying it in 1968 and growing it into a leading producer of high-end recreational fishing boats.
  • Under the new structure, Smith will remain at the company as chief executive emeritus and draw an annual salary of undisclosed value.

In 1968, Eddie Smith Jr.’s path was far from guaranteed success or riches. That year, he took a gamble on a struggling boat company in Greenville, North Carolina, buying the company even though it was barely staying afloat.

Smith managed to steer the company to success, initially putting in 100-hour weeks to turn things around. Over the years, he rebuilt the business, called Grady-White Boats, into a powerhouse known for its high-end recreational fishing boats. Today, Grady-White generates hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue and has been profitable for 50 years. 

Notably, Smith did it all on his own terms, never bringing in outside investors or taking the company public. He said in a recent interview with The New York Times that he “had a burning desire” to prove that he could do something on his own. 

Now, at age 83, Smith has made his boldest decision yet. He has walked away from a potential $400 million sale and committed all of Grady-White’s future profits to charity, according to the Times. 

“God has really blessed me to put me in a position to give away the vast majority of my net worth,” he said. “I don’t need a 200-foot yacht or to spend the winters in the Mediterranean. I’m really happy here in eastern North Carolina.”

His inspiration

Smith said Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard inspired his decision. In 2022, instead of selling Patagonia or taking it public, Chouinard transferred ownership of the company into two new entities designed to serve a mission rather than investors. 

The entities were the Patagonia Purpose Trust, which holds all the voting stock and ensures that the company stays aligned with its environmental values, and the Holdfast Collective, a nonprofit that owns the non-voting shares and receives the company’s profits. 

This structure enables Patagonia to keep running as a for-profit company. At the same time, it directs its annual profits, estimated at $100 million a year, toward supporting environmental causes.

Smith has recently moved down a similar path

In recent weeks, Smith has quietly shifted control of Grady-White into a new structure. He moved the company’s voting shares into a purpose trust. That trust will hold the shares permanently, ensuring that the company stays independent, can’t be sold and continues to follow his principles, including sharing profits with its 350 employees.

Smith transferred the rest of the shares, which don’t carry voting power, to a new nonprofit. Together, the trust and the nonprofit will oversee the company through independent boards, without Smith’s direct involvement. 

Each year, Grady-White will set aside tens of millions of dollars in profits. These funds aren’t needed to run or grow the business. The company will send that money to its nonprofit arm. From there, the nonprofit will direct the funds to causes like conservation, healthcare and education. 

Smith will remain connected to the business as chief executive emeritus and will receive an annual salary of undisclosed value. The company informed employees of the expected change last week, per the Times. 

Key Takeaways

  • Eddie Smith Jr., the 83-year-old owner of Grady-White Boats, turned down a $400 million sale and instead committed the company’s future profits to charity.
  • Smith has kept full control of the company since buying it in 1968 and growing it into a leading producer of high-end recreational fishing boats.
  • Under the new structure, Smith will remain at the company as chief executive emeritus and draw an annual salary of undisclosed value.

In 1968, Eddie Smith Jr.’s path was far from guaranteed success or riches. That year, he took a gamble on a struggling boat company in Greenville, North Carolina, buying the company even though it was barely staying afloat.

Smith managed to steer the company to success, initially putting in 100-hour weeks to turn things around. Over the years, he rebuilt the business, called Grady-White Boats, into a powerhouse known for its high-end recreational fishing boats. Today, Grady-White generates hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue and has been profitable for 50 years. 

Notably, Smith did it all on his own terms, never bringing in outside investors or taking the company public. He said in a recent interview with The New York Times that he “had a burning desire” to prove that he could do something on his own. 



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