October 27, 2025

Welcome to the Meridian Update, your daily on-chain report. We published on a weekend for the first time ever. More to come. Let’s dive in.

Time to CFTC what’s going on in regulatory (part 2)

We interrupted regular programming on Saturday to share some reports about the CFTC:

“Things can change. But it seems the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has a new nominee for chair.”

Shortly after, Mike Selig confirmed the reports via tweet:

“I am honored to be nominated by President Trump to serve as the 16th Chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. With the President’s leadership, a Great Golden Age for America’s Financial Markets and a Wealth of New Opportunities stand before us. I pledge to work tirelessly to facilitate Well-Functioning Commodity Markets, promote Freedom, Competition and Innovation, and help the President make the United States the Crypto Capital of the World.”

Lots of Capitalization There as you Can see. One notable capital-ization (see what we did there?) was that last part: the Crypto Capital of the World.”

For those joining our readership for the first time today, we are throwing a lot at you. What is the CFTC? Who is Mike Selig? Why is he tweeting about crypto capitals?

The year is 2025. There are many ways to think about things happening on-chain (that is, things happening on blockchain networks). One of the ways we, and Crypto Twitter, often think about things happening on-chain is not actually happening on-chain. It is happening in Washington, D.C., the US capital of the world (insofar as there is no other US capital). As with all things, the law matters. One way the law can matter is if it says what you’re doing is legal. Or if it says what you’re doing is illegal.

The on-chain world is new. It is younger than the Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii. Throughout its infancy, there have been questions about what, if anything, is legal and what, if anything, is illegal on-chain. The implications for the on-chain world range from existential to highly relevant.

In 2025, the US president’s nominee to chair the CFTC pledged to help the President make the United States the Crypto Capital of the World. You can probably get a sense of what that means for the on-chain world. Something to keep an eye on.

Hypothetically, would you buy a roofing company on-chain?

From one of the founders of MetaDAO:

“hypothetically, would you buy a roofing company onchain?

$1.3m yearly free cash flow on a $4m valuation”

Paradigm, a crypto investment firm that many people in the on-chain world know about, is a MetaDAO backer. They announced they had doubled-down on Friday. They did this (at least in part) on-chain, buying $5.9M of the META token at $7.83 per token.

META is not a roofing company. But Paradigm wants to own META’s token on-chain. A theme of the Meridian Update and of the on-chain world in 2025 is that people are taking things from the off-chain world and tokenizing them, or making them ownable on-chain. We keep mentioning the CEO of BlackRock’s comments.

We wrote about MetaDAO a while back:

“Long-time readers have yet to hear us talk about the mechanics of a token going from nonexistent to tradable on-chain. This has been a major theme, and source of excitement, in the on-chain world in 2025. You may have heard of pump.fun, whose own token became tradable in July. We will have many opportunities to talk about token launches, token launchpads like pump.fun, and other elements of tokens becoming tradable in the coming months. But the key point is that there is a moment when a token starts trading.”

MetaDAO is a fundraising and governance platform for high-quality founders and their communities. Its platform allows tokens to start trading in a way that feels like a startup raising a round of funding through crowdfunding. We are writing about it again to make sure we keep hammering this theme. In 2025, people are tokenizing things.

That’s a wrap

Mike Selig confirmed reports that he will be the nominee to chair the CFTC and Paradigm invested in MetaDAO. We’ll see you tomorrow morning.

Think we missed something today? Email email@meridianupdate.com.