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Ryan S. Gladwin

Ryan S. Gladwin

Ryan S. Gladwin is a staff writer based in the UK. He has previously been published in The Verge, Fortune, and CoinDesk. Disclosure: He holds BTC, ETH, and LINK.

Stories by Ryan S. Gladwin

  • Hyperliquid. Image: Decrypt

    What Is Hyperliquid? The Decentralized Exchange With Its Own Blockchain

    Decentralized perpetual futures exchange Hyperliquid has gone from being a market maker to one of the biggest crypto projects in the world. Hyperliquid has processed trillions of dollars in volume in its lifespan and is now the fifth-largest decentralized exchange by 30-day volume, per DeFiLlama. But what exactly is Hyperliquid? Why do people care so much about it? And how did it grow to be one of the biggest projects in crypto? What is Hyperliquid? Hyperliquid is a decentralized exchange specia...

  • Hodling out hope. Image: Unsplash/Decrypt

    Meet the Guys Still Clinging To the Terra Luna That Do Kwon Abandoned

    Pedro wipes the sleep from his eyes, kisses his wife on the cheek, and rolls over to pick up his phone to check on his Luna Classic validators. In the real world, he's waking up for his job as the head brewer at a beerhouse. But in the virtual one, he's known as Vegas, one of the leading voices in the Terra Luna Classic community. Terra Luna Classic is the blockchain that was forked and abandoned when Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon attempted to save his crumbling empire in 2022. Kwon has since b...

    Deep DivesLong Reads
    5 min read
    Ryan S. Gladwin
  • Coinbase. Image: Decrypt

    Coinbase Launches Pre-IPO Perps, Starting with Elon Musk's SpaceX

    Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is rolling out a perpetual futures product for pre-initial public offering (IPO) companies, allowing traders to speculate on a company's valuation before its debut. The first pre-IPO company to be traded on the platform is Elon Musk's aerospace company, SpaceX. The SpaceX pre-IPO will be settled using the USDC stablecoin, can be traded 24/7, and all positions will automatically translate when the IPO is complete. That means traders could make massive profits or l...

    NewsCoins
    3 min read
    Ryan S. Gladwin
  • Trezor Safe 7. Image: Decrypt/Trezor

    Trezor Reveals Hardware Wallet Vulnerability, But Funds 'Safe'

    Trezor has revealed a vulnerability in its flagship Safe 7 hardware wallet, but affirms that user funds "remain protected" due to the nature of the exploit. The vulnerability was uncovered during an independent security audit by the Ledger Donjon team, which reported a successful "laser fault injection attack" against the TROPIC01 Secure Element chip. It enables an attacker to extract one of three "secrets" that protect a user's PIN, effectively reducing three layers of protection to two. Tropi...

    NewsTechnology
    3 min read
    Ryan S. Gladwin
  • Source: Twitter/Decrypt

    Will Strategy's Peers Dump Bitcoin Now? Not So Fast, Analysts Say

    Bitcoin treasury company Strategy, and its Chair Michael Saylor, have become synonymous with the phrase "never sell your Bitcoin"—so when the firm did just that, announcing that it had offloaded 32 BTC for around $2.5 million Monday, the firm’s stock plunged alongside the price of Bitcoin. However, crypto market analysts don’t believe that it marks the beginning of a wave of similar sales by digital asset treasury companies. Rather, they argue, it's a much-needed wake-up call to investors to ins...

    NewsBusiness
    4 min read
    Ryan S. Gladwin
  • Judge's gavel. Source: Decrypt/Shutterstock

    Solana Meme Coin Surges 6,000% After Creators Arrested Over 'Rug Pull'

    South Korean prosecutors have charged five people over allegedly orchestrating a "meme coin rug pull" on Pump.fun, causing 900 million WON ($600,000) in damage. In response to the news, the meme coin has pumped almost 6,000%, with a group of traders attempting to "unrug" the token. According to the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors' Office, the five defendants created a token called CatFi on the Solana launchpad Pump.fun in February 2025. The meme coin quickly pumped to a market cap of $8.37 m...

    NewsCoins
    3 min read
    Ryan S. Gladwin
  • Soccer. Image: Shutterstock/Decrypt

    Lucky Trader Rides $341 World Cup Meme Coin Buy to 14,000% Gains

    A lucky trader bought $341 of a World Cup-themed Solana meme coin in mid-May, when it had a market capitalization of less than $40,000. Since then, the token has soared more than 30,000%, with the trader notching 14,000% gains after selling more than $49,000 of their holdings. World Cup Coin launched on May 11, ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which starts in June—and has historically been the most-watched sporting event in the world. Alongside this token, meme coins for each nation competing i...

    NewsCoins
    3 min read
    Ryan S. Gladwin
  • Image: Shutterstock/Decrypt

    13 WTF Moments of the Year: 2025 Crypto Edition

    The story of cryptocurrency’s rise to mainstream popularity is one of the most bizarre in history. Created by an anonymous, shadowy figure named Satoshi Nakamoto—who’s now among the richest people in the world—the technology is now a darling of finance bros, altruistic lefties, white supremacists, Balkan political dissidents, West African entrepreneurs, and Redditors convinced that Satoshi was in fact an alien. So it's hardly surprising that 2025 began with U.S. President Donald Trump launching...

    NewsOpinion
    10 min read
    Ryan S. Gladwin
  • Image: Pump.fun/Decrypt

    Creator Capital Markets: How Pump.fun Changed Streaming in 2025

    This time last year, the Solana meme coin launchpad Pump.fun had disabled its livestreaming feature after creators flooded the platform with videos of dangerous stunts in attempts to pump their tokens. Now, Pump.fun views streamers as the future of its platform, with plans to take on other livestreaming competitors head on: “Our plan is to kill Facebook, TikTok, and Twitch. On Solana,” the company posted on X in July. The move is being billed as “creator capital markets”—the idea that viewers ca...

    Deep DivesLong Reads
    8 min read
    Ryan S. Gladwin
  • OpenSea's SEA token. Image: OpenSea Foundation/Decrypt

    How NFT Marketplaces Adapted to Survive in 2025

    NFT mania is a distant memory in 2025. It was an era—back in 2021 and early 2022—when Beeple sold a jpeg for $69.3 million, CryptoPunks were going for tens of millions, and celebrities kept aping into the Bored Ape Yacht Club.  The cumulative NFT market cap has dropped 99% from its 2023 all-time high of $184 billion to just $487 million, per CoinMarketCap. In what is now a comparatively barren wasteland, NFT marketplaces have been forced to adapt, with titans of the sector like OpenSea and Magic...

    NewsNFTs
    5 min read
    Ryan S. Gladwin
  • Dogecoin is the crypto market's leading meme coin. Image: Shutterstock/Decrypt

    The Year in Dogecoin 2025: DOGE Goes Political and Commercial

    It started as a joke, but this year, Dogecoin was embraced by institutions, bought up by public companies, and its namesake was shared with a highly controversial U.S. government initiative led by billionaire Elon Musk. Still, despite this, the original meme coin didn’t set a new all-time high—to the dismay of its diehard fanbase. As of December 15, DOGE has erased any gains made in 2025, falling about 65% over the course of 12 months. As a result, Dogecoin has had an awkward year; it has moved...

    NewsCoins
    6 min read
    Ryan S. Gladwin
  • Las Vegas Sphere. Image: Shutterstock/Decrypt.

    How Pudgy Penguins Landed the Las Vegas Sphere—After Dogwifhat Couldn't

    Pudgy Penguins will wrap the Las Vegas Sphere for Christmas after debuting on the glowing venue on Tuesday. The crypto-native brand's recent announcement sent some traders into a meltdown, as the community behind Solana meme coin Dogwifhat (WIF) failed to advertise on the venue earlier this year despite raising $700,000 in an attempt to do so—funds the team later refunded to contributors. A Sphere spokesperson previously told Decrypt that it would only accept crypto advertising from exchanges or...

    NewsBusiness
    4 min read
    Ryan S. Gladwin
  • GG's 2025 Story of the Year: Crypto Gaming Collapses. Image: Decrypt/Midjourney

    GG Story of the Year 2025: Crypto Gaming Collapses as Funding Dries Up

    This was the year that, for many, the crypto gaming dream died. But that dream didn't end on its own—it was smothered by venture capitalists who stopped believing in it, and crucially, stopped investing in it. In 2025, numerous notable crypto games shut down their operations, which Decrypt has tracked throughout the year. These closures left developers unemployed, dedicated player bases abandoned, and entire collections of digital assets rendered practically useless. Some of these titles even pr...

    Deep DivesLong Reads
    8 min read
    Ryan S. Gladwin
  • GG's 2025 Game of the Year: Pudgy Party. Image: Pudgy Party/Decrypt

    GG's 2025 Game of the Year: Pudgy Party

    Pudgy Party delivers a premium mobile gaming experience that the Pudgy Penguins team intends to make one of the franchise's core pillars moving forward—and it is GG’s 2025 Game of the Year. Mythical Games, the studio behind Pudgy Party and other crypto games like NFL Rivals and FIFA Rivals, said that Pudgy Party has reached 1 million installs since its September release, while maintaining a 4.9-star rating on the Apple App Store. In doing this, Pudgy Penguins CEO Luca Netz told Decrypt that the...

    Deep DivesProfiles
    7 min read
    Ryan S. Gladwin
  • U.S. President Donald Trump (center) with sons Donald Jr. (left) and Eric (right). Image: Decrypt/Shutterstock

    Crypto Industry Must Make Progress Before Trump Leaves Office: Etherealize Co-Founder

    Donald Trump has been branded a pro-crypto president, thanks to his administration’s passage of crypto legislation. However, some industry observers say his personal stake in the future of crypto—via companies the Trump family has backed—has stood in the way of progress, and threatens to cause further backlash once he leaves office. Danny Ryan, co-founder of institutional marketing firm Etherealize and a former Ethereum developer, told Decrypt recently that this threat of retaliation from a new...

    NewsLaw and Order
    4 min read
    Ryan S. Gladwin

  • Decrypt’s 2025 Project of the Year: Hyperliquid

    Jeff Yan had just watched Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire collapse in a matter of days in 2022. And it was then, amid the chaos of the collapsing FTX and the contagion it caused, that Yan decided to go all in on building his own cryptocurrency exchange—a decentralized alternative he called Hyperliquid. Now, three years later, Yan appears to have been vindicated. After co-founding Hyperliquid Labs in 2023, Yan has helped develop one of the most impactful decentralized exchanges and layer-1 netw...

    Deep DivesLong Reads
    16 min read
    Ryan S. Gladwin
  • Jarett Dunn outside court. Image: Decrypt.

    Former Pump.fun Dev Sentenced to Six Years in Prison for $2 Million Solana Fraud

    Canadian national Jarett Dunn was sentenced to six years in prison by a London judge on Thursday, Wood Green Crown Court told Decrypt. He had previously pleaded guilty to fraud by abuse of position and transfer of criminal property. The former Pump.fun employee had already spent 308 days on tag, the Court said, 154 of which will count towards his sentence. He had also spent approximately five months in prison on remand, which typically automatically counts towards an individual’s sentence. The s...

    NewsLaw and Order
    4 min read
    Ryan S. Gladwin
  • North Korea. Image: Shutterstock/Decrypt

    North Korean Hackers Have Stolen $2 Billion in Crypto This Year: Report

    Hackers from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, also known as the DPRK or North Korea, have stolen $2.02 billion worth of crypto so far in 2025, a Chainalysis report revealed Thursday. This represents a 51% increase from last year’s figure, and is the largest year on record for DPRK-related crypto theft. As a whole, crypto has seen $3.4 billion in thefts this year, the report says, meaning that DPRK attacks account for 59% of these stolen funds. Chainalysis believes that the data shows a...

    NewsLaw and Order
    3 min read
    Ryan S. Gladwin
  • SEC Logo. Image: Shutterstock/Decrypt

    Crypto Lending Protocol Aave Says SEC Has Ended 4-Year Investigation: 'DeFi Will Win'

    Aave announced Tuesday that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has concluded its investigation into the decentralized finance (or DeFi) protocol, with no intention to recommend an enforcement action.  It comes four years after the investigation was opened, the Aave CEO said on X, over which time the project has invested significant time, energy, and funds in protecting itself from the SEC. “This process demanded significant effort and resources from our team, and from me personally as t...

    NewsLaw and Order
    3 min read
    Ryan S. Gladwin
  • Do Kwon. Source: FAQX via Wikimedia Commons / Decrypt

    These Bleak Victim Letters Helped Seal Terra Founder Do Kwon's Fate

    There were potentially millions of victims of the $40 billion collapse of Terra's UST and LUNA, a U.S. judge said during Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon’s sentencing on Thursday. And 315 of those victims submitted letters that detailed suicide, bankruptcy, and health crises that all circle back to Do Kwon’s actions that led to the 2022 downfall of the prominent crypto ecosystem. U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer said he read all 315 letters, according to reporting from Inner City Press, even st...

    NewsLaw and Order
    5 min read
    Ryan S. Gladwin
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