OVERVIEW

Crypto On Tariffs: ‘Meh’

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 📰

🔑 Phantom Era On Sui: 15M Users Can Now Access SUI

Phantom wallet integrated Sui as its first Move-based chain, letting users easily swap and manage SUI assets. The chain’s soared into the top 10 TVL, crossing $2 billion locked, so Phantom’s bet is that Sui mania isn’t slowing down. Sui blog.

📈 Grayscale Debuts Bitcoin Miners ETF

Grayscale’s new ETF (ticker: $MNRS) invests in public mining companies and picks up data center, hosting, and hardware stocks. Think Marathon, Riot, and others that basically bet on Bitcoin’s price without actually holding BTC. CryptoBriefing.

🐕 ShibOS Farewell (Kinda): Shytoshi Takes On “Lead Ambassador”

Shiba Inu’s main visionary is stepping aside from daily duties to champion global adoption as a top spokesperson. He insists he’s done everything except stablecoin Shi and Shibacon, so now it’s time for “execution and communications.” Shiba Inu blog.

👩‍🎓 Gen Z: Front-Runners Of Crypto Adoption

A Gemini survey says over half of Gen Z globally has hopped on the crypto train. They see it as both a quick income source and an inflation hedge. They’re also the least keen on more government oversight; ironically, they might end up making the rules if (or when) they swarm Capitol Hill. The Shib.

❤️ Quant Partners With Cure3 To Battle Parkinson’s

Quant is sponsoring a Cure3 fundraising event to help cure Parkinson’s. Proceeds from NFT-based art pieces will funnel back to the charity every time they’re resold. It’s a nice example of “digital money meets actual real-world good,” so let’s hope the synergy helps kill one more nasty disease. Quant blog.

🚨 $74 Million Gone: January’s Ugly Start For Crypto

Hackers had a field day in January, scoring $74 million from 19 incidents, per Immunefi’s monthly security tally. A CeFi attack on Phemex snatched $69 million alone, with the rest split among various DeFi hits across BNB Chain, Ethereum, Arbitrum, and Base. On the bright side, it’s still “only” half of what we lost in January 2024—so, progress? The Block.

💼 Ondo’s Bringing Tokenized Treasuries (OUSG) To XRP Ledger

Ondo Finance is deploying OUSG, a short-term US Treasury fund, onto XRPL for institutional DeFi. Ripple and Ondo are setting up liquidity so big money can flip in and out of stable yields around the clock. With onchain compliance built in, it’s basically the “bridge traditional finance was waiting for,” if you believe what their PR folks claim. Ondo blog.

⚠️ Robinhood CEO: “Tokenize, Or We Fall Behind”

Vlad Tenev says the US is missing out if we don’t let people buy tokenized shares of big private companies like OpenAI and SpaceX. He wants relaxed accreditation rules and a clear path for “security tokens” so normal folks can invest before these tech unicorns are public. Otherwise, the US might watch the rest of the world pass us by in the “financial markets 2.0” race. CryptoSlate.

💰 Tesla’s $600M BTC Accounting Twist

Thanks to new FASB crypto accounting rules, Tesla can book a $600 million “paper gain” on its Bitcoin stash for Q4 2024, bumping GAAP income up to $2.3 billion. No more carrying crypto at a discount on the balance sheet—Wall Street can’t make fun of “impairments” now. TL;DR: Tesla’s still holding a billion-dollar chunk of BTC, courtesy of the new regulations letting them count it at fair value. Cointelegraph.

⚡ Circle Rolls Out Native USDC on Aptos

Forget bridging your USDC from Ethereum; Circle’s minted a fresh, official version on Aptos, meaning no more random “lzUSDC” that’s not redeemable through Circle. Aptos devs can now integrate the “real” stablecoin, minted 1:1 with real greenbacks. Circle blog.

🪙 Kraken Relaunches On-Chain Staking for (Some) U.S. Users

Kraken’s bringing back a brand-new on-chain staking product for 37 states and 2 territories, letting you lock up your assets and help secure networks. This is the real, on-chain bonding experience: Kraken hands your tokens to validators, they make blocks, and you (hopefully) rake in those sweet staking rewards. It’s a partial U.S. rollout for now, but Kraken says more states will follow. Kraken blog.

TECHNICAL ANALYSIS
Long Term, Good. Short Term, Bad. 🎭️ 

Let’s take a look at some charts.

ETHUSD Daily Chart – Click to enlarge.

From a daily perspective, a good chunk of the altcoin market looks a lot like Ethereum’s daily chart above. And it’s not pretty. It’s pretty damn ugly.

But that’s on the daily chart. On a weekly timeframe, a lot of the altcoin market looks like Algorand’s:

ALGOUSD Daily Chart – Click to enlarge.

So, while the daily chart’s look uber ugly, the higher timeframes show things are still boolish. 🐂 

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

🔗 Enjin on MetaMask: “Snaps” Makes It One-Click Easy

Enjin is hooking into MetaMask via a Snap, letting 30 million monthly users send, receive, and manage ENJ right in their usual wallet. No new seed phrases or sketchy setups—just a quick add from the Snaps Store or Enjin dApps. Enjin blog.

🤖 Are Your Apps Ready For The AI Horde?

AI agents are blaring into communities, sometimes shouting louder than real humans. You might want to add spam filters and ID checks before your “thriving community” turns into “bot apocalypse.” Bottom line: if you don’t have a plan to handle the machine takeover, fake likes and comments might become your entire user base. Civic Coin blog.

🎬 Gala Film Rewards Node Operators With Extra Goodies

Theatre Nodes are the backbone of Gala’s decentralized content delivery, and now they get a 5% reward boost plus random monthly prizes. They’re even shifting node purchases to $FILM only, 100% burned. Basically, run a node, support content streaming, and score free Moments and Mystery Boxes—like collecting trading cards, but for Netflix in Web3. Gala Games blog.

🗺️ Decentraland Dev Cycle 9: Maps, Cameras, And Animated Textures

New map categories, “favorites” for quick visits, and a swanky in-world camera that can tilt and zoom like a pro. Creators can now tweak texture tiling and animate 3D environments so everything looks cooler than your standard pixel-lot. Day/Night toggles are thrown in too—god mode on the sky so you can capture the perfect screenshot for your metaverse postcards. Decentraland blog.

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

🏆 Sushi x Base AI Token Trading Contest—13,000 OP Up For Grabs

Trade at least $100 of “AI tokens” on SushiSwap over on Base, and you could snag a cut of 13k OP. The top traders by volume win the big chunk, but there’s also a “lucky draw” for the rest of us non-whales. Registration’s on Galxe, and the scoreboard might be sweaty—trade responsibly. Sushi blog.

🚀 PriveX Launch: A Perp-DEX For Humans…And Their AI Minions

COTI isn’t messing around with DeFAI. PriveX ties decentralized perpetuals into AI-driven agents that can trade on your behalf (on Binance). You can train and tweak these bots, then share them with others for extra yield. And if you’re early, there’s a points system for you to rack up $PRVX. COTI blog.

💱 Alchemy Pay 2024 Recap: 300% Growth & A New Blockchain On The Way

After a year of pro-crypto mania (thanks to new BTC & ETH ETFs and so on), Alchemy Pay saw 300% ramp growth, 8 million transactions, and expanded to over 200 new fiat channels. They’re teasing their own Layer 1, “Alchemy Chain,” to unify fiat and crypto with $ACH as the utility token. Sounds like 2025 is gonna be “degen meets TradFi” but with more compliance badges. Alchemy blog.

🚀 Mantle Network: Building A “Liquidity Chain” For Next-Gen On-Chain Finance

Mantle’s layering up with EigenDA, zero-knowledge proofs, and a pile of 157k mETH for security, all to become the hot new L2 for DeFi. They’re also doling out $50M+ in rewards, doing hackathons, and basically shouting: “Dev here, earn yield, build real stuff.” If you’re into the “scalable chain + big treasury = synergy” vibe, Mantle’s got your 2025 roadmap locked. Mantle blog.

LINKS
Links That Don’t Suck 🔗

🐤 SEC acknowledges Canary Capital’s Litecoin ETF application

🤖 DeepSeek Backlash: OpenAI, Washington, And Italy cry foul

🔢 Illinois joins growing list of States proposing Bitcoin reserve

🤔 Trump crypto order may disrupt Bitcoin’s 4-year cycle: Bitwise

💀 ‘Deadrop’ game studio shutting down following Dr. Disrespect dismissal

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