OVERVIEW

Coinbase Is Having A ‘Hold My Beer’ Kind Of Week 🍺

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
Coinbase’s Week: S&P Glory, $20M Blackmail Drama, and a Side-Eye from the SEC 🤦‍♂️

Coinbase kicked off the week by finally landing its spot in the S&P 500 – cue the crypto bros popping champagne. Shares jumped nearly 25% and everyone was happy. 🍻 

And then things got weird. Like the Hangover movie weird.

Bribes, Blackmail, and a Bounty 🕵️ 

Some criminals bribed Coinbase’s offshore customer service crew, grabbing customer names, birth dates, and partial Social Security numbers.

• The hackers then started pulling classic social engineering scams, pretending to be Coinbase customer support to trick users into giving up crypto.

• The hackers tell $COIN ( ▼ 7.2% ) to give them $20 million.

• Coinbase immediately went full “Taken” mode: refused to pay the ransom, instead offering a matching $20 million bounty to track down the attackers.

• Armstrong straight-up said, “no” – cold, simple, badass.

— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong)
10:50 AM • May 15, 2025

Damage Control Ain’t Cheap 💸

• Coinbase estimates remediation and reimbursements will cost between $180 million and $400 million. 

• Good news: passwords, private keys, and actual crypto holdings stayed safe.

• Coinbase stock took a quick 6% dive but still ended up 22% higher for the month overall—guess investors like drama.

• Oh, and Coinbase plans to repatriate some of its customer support back to the U.S.

And according to Stocktwit’s sentiment data, Stocktwits users give zero effs about what happened because sentiment and volume are still in the deep, deep, bullish green:

Stocktwits Coinbase Sentiment Data

SEC Drama Never Ends 📑

And just when Coinbase thought they could breathe, the SEC popped back up, questioning Coinbase’s old-school monthly transacting user reports. Coinbase’s response?

• COIN is saying this investigation is a leftover headache from the Biden era. They quit reporting that user metric two and a half years ago and are basically telling the SEC to chill already.

• Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal’s vibe was pretty much, “Can we not?” 

TL;DR

• ✅ Joined the prestigious S&P 500.

• ✅ Told hackers to shove it, set up a bounty instead.

• ✅ Still dealing with the SEC’s hang-ups about metrics they’ve already dumped.

So – is the pain over?

COIN Weekly Chart – Click to enlarge.

Even though Coinbase is down -7% (as of 1530 EST), it’s still up +22 for the week.

But there are two more days left in the week. Because this is crypto, the forecast for COIN and crypto is partly cloud with a 50% chance of pain. 🤕

CRYPTOTWITS
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So we built Cryptotwits — a dedicated experience inside Stocktwits that surfaces the most insightful conversations, sentiment indices, trending assets, and real-time community data—all filtered just for crypto. No noise. No distractions. Just the pulse of retail crypto.

Here’s what’s inside:

💬 Connect with active crypto traders
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Dive into the crypto conversation. Tap the Stocktwits logo on the app or desktop to switch modes or just visit https://cryptotwits.xyz.

Need help? Check this out.

NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
Crypto News 📰

🚨 Cardano Just Dropped a Retail Bombshell

Charles Hoskinson announced Cardano’s new Midnight sidechain at Consensus 2025 and they’re handing out tokens to over 37 million wallets across eight major chains (think BTC, ETH, XRP, SOL, etc.). VCs got ghosted completely – only the everyday crypto degens get to join this airdrop fiesta. Midnight’s betting big on privacy and multi-chain, letting you even pay fees with your own native chain tokens instead of dealing with annoying wrapped assets. CryptoDNES.

📈 Crypto ETFs Await Their “NASDAQ Moment” While the SEC Twiddles Its Thumbs

Crypto indexes are getting itchy to include more than just BTC and ETH, but Uncle SEC has everyone on pause until July. Hashdex CIO Samir Kerbage thinks these diversified crypto ETFs could be the big deal traditional investors didn’t know they needed – no more agonizing between SOL, XRP, or LINK for your tiny 1% portfolio position. Basically, the SEC could set clearer rules to avoid another 100 rounds of ETF approval. Blockworks.

💸 FTX Finally Paying Up $5B to Creditors

FTX is finally opening its wallet to repay creditors $5 billion starting May 30 via BitGo and Kraken – but here’s the catch: they’re paying back the dollar-value of customer balances from when everything tanked in November 2022, not current market prices. Yep, SOL gains don’t count, but hey, at least some traders think this payout might pump the market anyway. TheBlock.

STOCKTWITS
Daily Rip Live with eToro 🤯 

Watch our interview with the founding family of eToro: Yoni Assia, Ronen Assia, and David Assia.

NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
AI, Stablecoins, & Privacy News 🕵️ 

💸 Sonic Levels Up: Native USDC

Sonic just upgraded from bridged USDC to the real-deal native USDC issued by Circle, complete with CCTP V2 for near-instant cross-chain transfers. Good news: your integrations don’t break (miracles happen), and now institutions can trust your DeFi app isn’t running some sketchy bridged asset nonsense. Payments, trading, and cross-chain shenanigans are now faster and smoother. Circle.

⏩ NEAR Just Dropped 600ms Blocks and 1.2s Finality

NEAR Protocol upgraded to lightning-fast 600-millisecond block times with practically instant 1.2-second finality, making even Solana look sluggish by comparison. That means transactions finalize faster than you can blink, literally, sort of, you get my point. Perfect timing too, as real-time AI applications, autonomous agents, and demanding dApps can now run on NEAR without the annoying lag. NEAR Protocol.

NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
Real World Asset Tokenization (RWA) News 🪙 

🚗 Americorp Wants to Tokenize Parking Lots on Casper

Americorp is teaming up with Casper Network to put the entire $144 billion U.S. parking industry onto blockchain, bringing transparency, instant audits, and eventually tokenized parking spaces. No more shady cash transactions or endless audits. Casper Network.

🔎 Mina & Mirae Just Dropped STOPE – Privacy-Focused Asset Tokenization

Mina Foundation and Mirae Asset released STOPE, a zero-knowledge-powered framework to tokenize assets privately and securely. Institutions can finally share sensitive financial data without exposing everything to regulators (or competitors), thanks to zk-SNARK magic. Your portfolio stays secret, regulators stay happy, and loan applications become painless (well maybe less painful). Mina Protocol.

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

🎮 Pixelmon Joins Avalanche

Pixelmon, the monster-catching RPG franchise, is jumping onto Avalanche with their flagship mobile game Warden’s Ascent. It’s Pokémon but actually fun for crypto people – complete with blockchain-backed collectibles and gameplay smooth enough to make normie gamers forget they’re using Web3 tech. Avalanche.

🌱 Chiliz Greenhouse Launches to Turn Sports Fans into Web3 Builders

Chiliz just launched Greenhouse, a platform rewarding developers, content creators, and entrepreneurs with CHZ tokens to build out the SportFi ecosystems. It’s Web3 meets ESPN, giving sports fans a place to create (and get paid) rather than just yelling at screens. Chiliz.

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

💪 Synthetix Plans to Gobble Up Derive and Become the Ultimate Ethereum Perps Powerhouse

Synthetix is proposing a $27M token-based merger with Derive (the artist formerly known as Lyra) to dominate Ethereum mainnet perps trading. The merger brings options, CLOB tech, and talent back under one SNX-powered roof. It’s the crypto equivalent of reuniting the Avengers, but instead of fighting Thanos, they’re taking on dYdX and Binance. Synthetix.

🔐 Decentralized Key Management: Freeing DeFi Agents from Centralized Puppet Masters

Ever worry about who’s really holding the keys to your DeFi bot’s wallet? Oasis’ Sapphire and TEE Cloud tech fixes this mess with decentralized key management, letting autonomous agents manage assets without anyone secretly pulling the strings. No more “trust me, bro” security – your bot can finally run on its own without some bad dude sneaking in through the back door and walking off with your funds. Oasis Network.

LINKS
Links That Don’t Suck 🔗

🤝 Negotiations are ‘90% there’ as lawmakers continue talks on Senate stablecoin bill

💲 Ondo Finance enables 24/7 conversions between OUSG and PayPal USD

🏦 Crypto Bank Sygnum expands loan collateral to include staked Solana

🔬 Sonic Labs Secures Court-Ordered Multichain Liquidation After $210M Hack, Users Await Repayment

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