Even a macro and AI research shop long wary of Bitcoin has started building a crypto basket. Citrini Research recently published the long essay “Breaking The Wall” and disclosed the first crypto token portfolio in its history. For anyone who followed its theme calls over the past two or three years, the move itself is loud: the wall is still there, but the author decided to step across and look.
From “Hammer Looking for Nails” to a Public Book
Citrini Research has lately been known for AI hardware and semiconductor themes; market memory more often ties it to Nasdaq-side tech narratives. In its public framing, crypto long looked like a parallel universe of “holding a hammer and hunting for nails”: beyond meme speculation and stablecoin transfers, it seemed hard to plug into Wall Street’s mainline story. Through the end of 2025, its public account still carried structures such as “long Nasdaq, hedge short Bitcoin,” with a blunt rationale — many tokens, as described, lacked fundamentals and verifiable cash flow.
That is why “Breaking The Wall” reads more like a confession of a softening stance: not a sudden Bitcoin long, but an admission that crypto rails have grown products and pipes that map to traditional finance — worth touching with real money.
Why Break the Wall: Agentic AI Meets RWA
The author’s reason for breaking the wall sits at the intersection of Agentic AI and RWA. According to public materials, the author deposited about $1,000 into a Coinbase Wallet and tried the flow on-chain. While the tech world still debates GPU compute bottlenecks, the on-chain side, as described, has already built rails closer to TradFi: tokenized Treasuries and stocks, options, lending, and programmable debt.
In other words, the narrative is no longer only “coin prices go up or down,” but “can automated agents call programmable financial pipes.” Crypto is put back into the macro research toolbox — not as a replacement for the AI mainline, but as a possible settlement and collateral layer when the agent economy lands.
The Public Crypto Basket: DeFi Rails, Real Revenue, Derivatives
According to public materials, the portfolio leans DeFi infrastructure + real revenue + derivatives, with rough weights as follows:
- Derive (DRV) about 10%
- Lighter (LIT) about 10%
- Ether.fi (ETHFI) about 10%
- Aave (AAVE) about 9%
- Ethena (ENA) about 9%
- Solana (SOL) about 8%
Almost all tilt toward protocols with fees or real business flow, tokenization capability, or a seat at the core of on-chain liquidity engines. Lending and yield layers (such as Aave and Ethena), restaking and node-side (such as Ether.fi), derivatives and perpetual trading pipes (such as Derive and Lighter), plus Solana as one settlement and application-layer base, sketch a map of “what can charge rent, what can collateralize, what can fill.” That deliberately distances itself from meme style that “only bets narrative, ignores cash flow”: the basket asks who collects rent on-chain and who supplies collateral and settlement pipes. Weight figures are compiled from public materials; actual holdings may shift with markets, and this article is not a buy or sell prompt.
Equity and Compliance Mirror Book
Beyond tokens, the materials also mention an “equity / compliance mirror” book, used to map companies in traditional markets already closer to tokenization and crypto rails — for example Securitize, Circle, Coinbase, Robinhood, and Bitwise-related Hyperliquid ETF product lines. Touching on-chain protocols with one hand while mirroring listed names for compliance and distribution with the other is the part of the essay macro readers are more likely to accept.
Put the “long Bitcoin-skeptical hedge” and the “first crypto basket” side by side, and the change is not in slogans but in experimental design: verify with a small amount of real cash whether the pipes actually work, then use public weights to show which rent and liquidity nodes the bets land on. For readers, what is more worth watching is not the short-term path of any single token, but whether macro research shops start discussing on-chain finance as auditable infrastructure. Whether the wall truly falls still depends on later execution and risk disclosure; at least for macro research used to keeping crypto outside the door, a crack has opened.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
