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OVERVIEW

Tucker Carlson Gets SBF’s Take from Behind Bars 🤯

Source: Giphy

Before we dive in, here’s today’s crypto market heatmap:

Source: Santiment

And here’s a look at crypto’s total market and altcoin market cap charts:

Source: TradingView

NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
Crypto News 📰

💰 Bitwise Teams Up With Maple Finance for Institutional Credit

Bitwise has officially entered the DeFi scene through Maple Finance. Maple Finance offers structured, overcollateralized loans backed by digital assets, neatly sorted by risk so institutional money managers don’t accidentally confuse Bitcoin with XRP. Credit to Bitwise for joining the DeFi party. Crypto-Economy.

🇺🇸 Trump Family-Inspired DeFi Protocol Partners with Sui

World Liberty Financial has partnered with Sui blockchain, citing their shared passion for American-born innovation. “We chose Sui for its American-born innovation combined with impressive scale and adoption. It is a natural complement to our mission of bringing decentralized finance to more Americans,” said Zak Folkman, co-founder of World Liberty Financial. Sui CEO Evan Cheng believes their collaboration will help Americans reclaim financial freedom. Sui.

🇯🇵 Japan Finally Cuts Crypto Taxes to 20%

Japan’s ruling Liberal Democracy Party is pushing crypto capital gains tax down to 20%, officially making it cheaper to gamble on meme coins than buying an overpriced latte in Tokyo. And although one lawmaker bravely proposed converting Japan’s forex reserves to Bitcoin, Prime Minister Ishiba politely declined, proving Japan’s still careful enough not to YOLO the national treasury. Cointelegraph.

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NEWS
Tucker Talks To SBF 📷️ 

Out of nowhere today, Tucker Carlson dropped a 43-minute interview with SBF. 📺️ 

Tucker Carlson just sat down with Sam Bankman-Fried for a prison-side chat at Brooklyn’s MDC. Tucker drilled straight into what happens when you go from being crypto’s golden boy to swapping stale muffins and ramen packs behind bars.

The conversation centered on prison life, vanished political “friends,” and the total regulatory circus—especially SBF’s feelings on Gary Gensler’s SEC nightmare. Tucker also didn’t hesitate to highlight the political donations that apparently bought zero goodwill, considering SBF’s current accommodations.

Here are some key quotes from the interview:

On Prison Conditions

• “It’s sort of dystopian… No one wants to be in prison. Imagine locking 40 people charged with crimes in one room for years on end and throwing out the key—the most trivial things become all people have left to care about.”

• “Laughing is all you can do sometimes—there’s no better alternative.”

On Digital Life vs. Prison

• “I prefer having the digital world, not from a perspective of enjoyment or pleasure, but from productivity and ability to have an impact.”

• “The lack of meaningful things to spend my time on is one of the most soul-crushing things about prison.”

On Gary Gensler:

• “Gary Gensler’s SEC was something out of a nightmare. Companies would try to register; he’d sue them for not registering. But when asked how to register, his answer was essentially, ‘We don’t know.'”

• “He really liked being in the center of things, of power… he wanted his agency to gain more power even if he had no idea what to do with it.”

On Political Donations and Loyalty:

• “I didn’t call in favors… many quickly made their positions known and ran away as fast as they could.”

• “Right when the collapse hit, I got nice messages from people in D.C. Six months later, nothing.”

On Crypto’s Future:

• “Crypto isn’t quite ready to be an everyday tool for a quarter of the world—but it’s not that far away.”

• “If the industry keeps making progress rather than getting distracted by market prices, 5 to 10 years from now, billions could use crypto daily with privacy, security, and ease.”

On Effective Altruism:

• “Obviously, I feel terrible about what happened—it’s not at all what I intended.”

• “A classic mistake with effective altruism is assuming you know what distant people need when you really don’t.”

On Prison’s Economy:

• “The scale of everything is so diminished in prison… I’ve seen people get into fistfights over a single banana—not because they care, but because there’s nothing else to channel their caring into.”

• “It’s whatever people have… Muffins…or a packet of ramen soup… They’re a currency of need. They don’t have that much to recommend themselves…but two muffins are kind of similar, so you can trade them.”

On Loyalty and Friends:

• “Anyone close to me ended up with a gun to their head, told they had two options—and one involved decades in prison.”

• “It got me thinking about what it means to have good friends, and the power certain systems have in our country, achieving intimidation implicitly.”

Robbers are good at chess

• “Former armed robbers who don’t speak English, and probably didn’t graduate middle school—a surprising number of them are fairly good at chess. I’m not saying they’re Grandmasters, but I lose games to them all the time.”

On FTX’s Collapse And Bankruptcy 

• “Today it would have about 15 billion dollars of liabilities, and about 93 billion of assets… Instead [of making everyone whole], it all got shredded in a bankruptcy… The assets were dissipated incredibly quickly… It’s been a colossal disaster.”

On The Most Disgusting Thing The Government Did

“I think Ryan Salame is sort of the saddest example of that and the most disgusting example from the government’s perspective where, you know, they charged him with totally bogus crimes. He said, ‘No, I’ll see you in court.’ So they went back and said, ‘All right, well how about your pregnant wife? What if we put her in prison?’ And so he pleads guilty because they’re going to put his wife in prison—which no sane legal system would make a permissible thing for a prosecution to do.”

“Right after all that, they went back on their promise and charged his wife anyway—just to disabuse any notion of them operating in good faith. It’s disgusting.”

ON-CHAIN ANALYSIS
Crypto Market On-Chain Metrics: Investors Are Feeling… No One Knows 🤔 

Bitcoin’s NVT Price: Fundamentals, Who Needs ’Em? 👍️ 

BTC NVT Oct 2023 – Feb 2025, Source: Glassnode

The NVT Price Model measures Bitcoin’s “fair value” by comparing its network valuation (market cap) against the amount of transaction volume happening on-chain. 

It’s basically crypto’s version of the classic stock market PE ratio, except instead of corporate earnings, it’s all about how actively BTC.X ( ▼ 0.68% ) is getting shuffled around on the blockchain.

• BTC’s current price comfortably ignores its fundamental valuation.

• Transaction volume has dipped, yet prices remain high anyway.

• The NVT Premium flatlining indicates traders don’t particularly care about “fair value.”

Translation: Neither bulls nor bears want to commit.

Ethereum’s Realized Price-to-Liveliness: Close to Pain 🩹 

ETH Price-to-Liveliness May 2024 – Feb 2025, Source: Glassnode

The Realized Price-to-Liveliness Ratio is basically the crypto market’s equivalent of checking for a pulse—gauging how actively coins are being moved or hoarded. ✅ 

• Falling below the Rezlied Price (blue line) would signal average ETH.X ( ▼ 1.21% ) holders are officially underwater.

• Overall, the Realized Price-to-Liveliness implies ETH traders are cautious, inactive, and generally uncertain.

Bottom line: ETH traders are nervously staring at their break-even point and reconsidering their life choices.

Cardano’s HODL Cave: Mediocrity, but With Dedication 🤔 

Source: Glassnode

I don’t think I’ve ever gone over this on-chain metric before – but, in a nutshell, the HODL Cave visualizes how long crypto holders hang onto their coins (in days) and maps out the range of profits or losses they’re stuck with—revealing just how rewarding (or miserable) their patience has been. 😐️ 

Cardano’s HODL Cave metric (holding duration vs. returns) reveals:

• Short-term ADA.X ( ▼ 7.73% ) holders experience wild volatility and uncertainty.

• Long-term ADA holders achieve modest, stable—but thoroughly unimpressive—returns.

• Median returns just barely above breakeven.

In short: Cardano holders might not be losing big, but they’re definitely not winning big either.

Solana’s SOPR: Timing Is Everything (and Nothing) ⌚️ 

SOL SOPR Nov 2024 – Feb 2025, Source: Glassnode

SOPR (Spent Output Profit Ratio) is crypto’s way of measuring how good—or hilariously bad—investors are at timing their exits. 

• Solana’s SOPR oscillates chaotically around 1.0, suggesting widespread indecision.

• Recently dipped consistently below 1, meaning sellers frequently booked losses.

• Indicates investors might need better exit strategies—or at least a functioning stop-loss.

Conclusion: SOL.X ( ▼ 1.06% ) traders are mastering the fine art of exiting trades at precisely the wrong time.

Overall Market Sentiment: Confused and Slightly Depressed 🥹 

Putting all of these metrics together paints a broad, uncomfortable picture of crypto’s market sentiment:

• Investors are broadly stuck near breakeven levels.

• Traders a swinging between cautious optimism and outright despair.

• Traders seem reluctant or incapable of profitably timing market moves.

In other words, no one knows what the hell is going on and just want the marke to make a decision one way or the other. 🙃

NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
Metaverse, NFT, & Gaming News 🎮️

💳 GalaChain Just Made Buying $GALA So Easy Even Your Grandpa Could Do It

Alchemy Pay is now live on GalaChain, so buying $GALA tokens is as simple as ordering DoorDash after a night out—no wallets, no crypto complexity, just good old-fashioned fiat. This move hopes to onboard normies by letting them buy GalaChain tokens via credit card, bank transfer, or whatever local method they can figure out without panicking. Essentially, GalaChain finally realized that most people prefer clicking “buy” over learning about crypto wallets. GalaGames.

🎸 SongBits Finally Gives Musicians a Real Payday—Turns Out Artists Like Getting Paid, Who Knew?

SongBits—co-founded by Dave Stewart from Eurythmics, because who better to tackle music royalties than a guy who’s actually been screwed by labels—is bringing artists and fans closer by letting fans literally buy pieces of songs. Leveraging Sui’s tech stack, SongBits enables musicians to monetize their work directly without industry vampires taking their usual 90% cut. Sui.

🚀 Clutch Moves Its Web3 Gambling Circus to Arbitrum

Clutch, once known by the embarrassing name “Smoovie Phone,” is expanding to Arbitrum One to suck up more liquidity and offer even more degenerate betting options through Polymarket-powered parlays. The “Be the Bank” feature lets users play bookie, staking CLUTCH tokens or USDC and profiting when other gamblers inevitably implode. Arbitrum.

NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
DeFi, DEX, and Lending Protocol News 🏦

💸 From Metis: Aqualis and Artemis Join Forces to Make Lending Actually Smart in DeFi

Aqualis integrated Artemis, finally bringing stablecoins and Liquid Staking Tokens (LSTs) together in one platform, because complexity in DeFi wasn’t already high enough. With Artemis, users can borrow stablecoins and earn staking rewards simultaneously—yes, you read that right, borrowing without losing staking rewards. And Aqualis v2 is already coming, promising multi-purpose asset deposits to juice yields further and mitigate impermanent loss. Metis.

🏦 Bancor & Carbon DeFi Are Laughing at Centralized Exchanges

Bancor’s Carbon DeFi is bringing CEX-style trading features onchain. Mark Richardson broke down how Carbon DeFi lets traders use limit, range, and recurring orders without sacrificing decentralization or control, essentially automating trading strategies to avoid dumb human mistakes. Mark also casually dismantled the myth of fragmented liquidity, pointing out that Ethereum mainnet alone dwarfs CEXs. Bancor.

LINKS
Links That Don’t Suck 🔗

❤️‍🩹 Crypto czar David Sacks laments US government’s previous management of Bitcoin holdings

🚀 ‘Eve Frontier’ Recruits Central Bank Economist to Develop Ethereum Game’s Virtual Economy

😡 Charles Hoskinson Calls Out White House for Ignoring Cardano in Crypto Talks

📜 New York bill aims to protect crypto investors from memecoin rug pulls

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Author Disclosure: The author of this newsletter holds positions in ADA,IMX, COPI, MIN, AGIX, ALGO, ZEC, AVAX, XLM, and NEAR. 📋