We Crawled 97% Of The Way Back And I Still Feel Like A Hostage 🥹
OVERVIEW
We Crawled 97% Of The Way Back And I Still Feel Like A Hostage 🥹
Before we dive in, here’s today’s crypto market heatmap:
Source: finviz
And here’s a look at crypto’s total market and altcoin market cap charts:
Source: TradingView
STOCKTWITS
Latest Stocktwits Podcast & Videos 📺️
Cryptotwits Podcast -Why Buy a BTC Proxy Stock? (Saylor vs Tom Lee + Treasury Companies Wrecked)
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StocktwitsTV – Can LendingClub Grow Without Rate Cuts? CEO Breaks Down the Path to Margin Expansion
Community RIP Live – COMMUNITY RIP LIVE W/GPAISA, JFDI, & HOLDINGBAGS
The Philosophical Quant – Palantir Gap Setup: Bull Flag or Trap?
Ballpark Figures – Bulls & Bears: Cooper Flagg Mania, Mets Moves, and a PSA Grading Meltdown
NEWS
Someone At Bithumb Fat-thumbed $44 Billion in Bitcoin Out Of Thin Air. No, Seriously. 👎️
Bithumb – South Korea’s second-largest crypto exchange – ran a promotional giveaway on February 6th. The budget? 620,000 Korean won. That’s $423. Four hundred and twenty-three Murican dollars. 😱
A nice dinner for two in Chicago at that Michael Jordan steak house place I ate once. A mediocre dinner for two at that place, actually. Anyway.
One employee typed “BTC” instead of “KRW” in the payout field. And the system said, “Sure, sounds good.” No red flag. No secondary approval. No automated check going, “Hey, you sure you want to send 2,000 Bitcoin to each of these 249 accounts?”
Twitter tweet
The result: 620,000 BTC credited to user accounts. $44 billion. That’s roughly 3% of Bitcoin’s entire maximum supply – conjured from the absolute ether like some Gandal, Harry Potter, Merlin sorcery.
Bithumb held about 42,600 BTC in actual reserves. They just casually willed into existence 14x their total holdings on an internal ledger with zero blockchain settlement. Abracadabra. Poof. Here’s your Bitcoin, enjoy.
Users did what users do. They sold. Hard. BTC cratered 17% on Bithumb to $55,000 while the rest of the world sat at $68K wondering what was happening in Seoul. Eighty-six users managed to dump 1,788 phantom BTC before the exchange froze everything 35 minutes later.
Bithumb recovered 99.7% by simply reversing their own database entries – because none of this ever touched an actual blockchain. About $9 million is still outstanding from folks who apparently thought finders-keepers applies to ghost Bitcoin.
Twitter tweet
South Korean regulators are now crawling through Bithumb’s offices. We’ll keep you updated as this develops. Which means you, myself, and everyone else will probably for get this happened. 🤦
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DEFI
Your AI Just Learned How To Trade Crypto For You. That’s Awesome and Terrifying. 😐️
You might have heard of this thing called OpenClaw. Do you remember the first time you heard and learned about ChatGPT? Same kind of thing except OpenClaw is a an AI agent – a bot that does stuff for you. 🤖
OpenClaw that lets you run your own AI agent locally, basically Claude with root privileges and a Telegram account. When you wire it up to $NEAR ( ▼ 1.19% )’s NEAR Intents, something genuinely sci-fi happens: you tell a chatbot “swap my USDC for SOL” and it just… does it. Across chains.
No bridging, no DEX hopping, no fumbling through five tabs of approval transactions.
NEAR Intents works by broadcasting your desired outcome to a network of competing solvers who fight for your order. You say what you want, not how to get it. The trade either executes atomically or doesn’t happen at all – no partial fills, no stuck bridges, no mystery wrapped tokens stranded on the wrong L2.
For anyone who’s ever walked a normie through a cross-chain swap and watched their soul leave their body, this is the UX breakthrough crypto desperately needed. Well, a good step at least.
And it works from Telegram. You fund a wallet, type what you want in plain English, and the bot handles the rest.
Now The Cold Water Splash
A security researcher found ten critical vulnerabilities in OpenClaw’s default config. The default permission model is essentially “anyone can tell your computer to do anything.” You’re handing an LLM – a machine that hallucinates for a living – shell access and wallet keys. That’s a bold trust assumption.
Cool concept? Absolutely. Would I put real money in it today? HELL NO. This is testnet-mentality capital at best.
But as a proof of concept for where AI + intent-based architecture is heading? It’s legitimately impressive – and a big win for NEAR’s ecosystem. The future where agents manage your cross-chain portfolio is coming. It’s just not quite production-ready yet. 🤔
DEPIN
From Barbershops to Airports: The Helium Deployer Playing 4D Chess ♟️
This story is freaking cool. Comes right from $HNT ( ▲ 10.96% )’s official blog. 👈️
So this guy Omar Henry spent years in traditional finance – banking, financial advising, running his own practice. Sold a logistics company in 2021 and pivoted to blockchain. Pretty standard origin story so far, right?
But here’s where it gets good. In 2023 he started deploying $HNT ( ▲ 10.96% )’s Mobile Hotspots in barbershops, salons, and gas stations. Simple economics, measurable returns, real demand. Fast forward to today and his company Decentralized LLC operates across four U.S. regions with a six-person team offloading 80-85 terabytes of mobile data every month.
Instead of trying to land some massive deal with a major venue, he goes after the small businesses inside those venues. The barbershop in the mall. The concession stand in the terminal. These operators are already swimming in foot traffic and they’re way easier to pitch – free connectivity upgrade, no upfront cost, plus some revenue.
As he puts it: “I don’t need a deal with Walmart. I can get a deal with the barbershop that’s in the Walmart.”
That mindset took him to a barbershop inside Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport. He drove down, got a haircut, and installed a Hotspot the same day. Three months later he was in LAX and talking nationwide rollout to airports and train stations.
The hosts get revenue sharing and performance visibility. They can take payment in fiat or tokens. For a neighborhood shop, that extra hundred bucks a month covers a utility bill. No gimmicks, just real-world value.
This is DePIN actually working the way it’s supposed to. 🧠
NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
AI, Stablecoins, & Privacy News 🕵️
🌱 Sproutly Uses USDC to Make Carbon Offsets Verifiable
Sproutly is putting carbon offsetting on-chain so “Proof of Impact replaces proof of promise,” addressing the voluntary carbon market’s trust problem of opaque data and sketchy verification. They’ve established 711,000+ agroforestry systems and planted over 3 million trees, with USDC handling settlement so climate finance can move globally without FX volatility wrecking the economics. Circle.
🤖 SKALE and Readia Want AI Agents to Pay for Content Without Human Babysitters
Readia is building a content commerce ecosystem where creators keep 100% of their earnings through x402 micropayments – and uniquely, AI agents can participate as both creators and consumers. They chose SKALE for gasless transactions, instant finality, and the BITE Protocol’s threshold encryption, which matters when you’re designing for autonomous actors roaming the internet. The “Pizza Test”: can an AI agent find your business, place an order, pay in stablecoins, tip the delivery driver, and handle disputes? If not, you’re not ready for the agentic economy. SKALE Network.
NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
Real World Asset Tokenization (RWA) News 🪙
🏦 Ripple Prime Adds Hyperliquid; Institutions Can Degen With Compliance
Ripple’s prime brokerage platform now supports Hyperliquid, letting institutional clients access decentralized derivatives while cross-margining against their boring traditional holdings like FX and fixed income. One counterparty relationship, centralized risk management, and the ability to explain your DeFi positions to your compliance officer without crying. TradFi and DeFi sitting in a tree, K-Y-C-I-N-G. Ripple.
🔐 Flare Partners With Hex Trust So Institutions Can Stake Without Hot Wallet Nightmares
Flare expanded its partnership with Hex Trust to provide institutional access to native FLR staking and FXRP minting. The integration maintains strict chain of custody while enabling participation in Flare DeFi via WalletConnect. As Flare adds more non-smart contract assets like BTC, Hex Trust provides the “we won’t lose your keys” layer institutions need. Flare Network.
NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
Metaverse, NFT, & Gaming News 🎮️
🎨 Flow Says On-Chain SVG NFTs Are Finally Affordable, Writes Technical Guide to Prove It
Flow published a developer guide explaining how to store SVG artwork directly on-chain for fractions of a cent – something that costs $25-100+ on Ethereum mainnet. SVGs are text-based, compact, and every browser renders them natively, so you can mint permanent NFTs with no IPFS gateways to go down or centralized servers to disappear. Flow.
🛒 Decentraland Opens a Physical Store Because the Metaverse Needs Merch
Decentraland launched an online store selling t-shirts, hoodies, stickers, and mugs with slogans like “The World Is Yours” and “Ideas in Beta” – for people who want to rep a virtual world in meatspace. More drops are coming, presumably until everyone who’s ever visited Genesis Plaza has a matching notebook. Decentraland.
⚽ Chiliz 2030: From Fan Tokens to Full-Blown Sports Finance Infrastructure
Chiliz delivered $700M to sports partners and is now pivoting from “fan engagement” to “SportFi” – DeFi tools, lending protocols, and derivatives markets for sports assets. Their roadmap includes omni-chain Fan Tokens via LayerZero, U.S. market re-entry with NFL/NBA/MLB tokens, and performance-linked tokenomics where team wins burn tokens and losses mint them. By 2030 they want to tokenize club equity so fans become fractional owners. Hello Ted Lasso? Chiliz.
NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
DeFi, DEX, & Lending News 🏦
🏛️ Tezos Reminds Everyone Why Decentralization Mattered in the First Place
Tezos published a “back to basics” piece reminding people that the original promise of crypto was moving value without permission, building apps without approval processes, and participating in governance without gatekeepers – not chasing narratives and hunting for the next pump. The network’s on-chain governance means upgrades happen without forks or “pick a side” drama, and anyone meeting the requirements can become a baker. It’s less a product announcement and more a therapy session for people who forgot why they got into this space. Tezos.
📈 Gala’s Fabric Perps Launches With 98 Markets and Dreams of 100x Leverage
Fabric Perps went live as Gala DeFi’s perpetual trading platform with 98 markets at launch, up to 100x leverage, and support for 17+ blockchains… one chain isn’t enough punishment. Gold and silver are “coming soon,” and GALA integration is being “actively explored”. GalaGames.
NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
Protocol News 🏦
📊 Arbitrum’s Dia Upgrade Makes Fees Less Jumpy When Everyone Panics at Once
Arbitrum’s ArbOS Dia upgrade introduced multi-window fee control that acts like shock absorbers instead of a springboard – short windows handle bursts, long windows anchor capacity, and peak volatility gets dampened by about 66% compared to the old system. They also raised the minimum L2 base fee from 0.01 to 0.02 gwei, which sounds tiny but makes spam less economically attractive. Arbitrum.
⚙️ SODAX Finished Solver v3 and Is Almost Ready to Do the Thing
SODAX completed Solver v3, which coordinates cross-network swaps in parallel instead of treating them like a painful sequential checklist. NEAR and Redbelly integrations are in final testing, the Savings frontend is waiting on NOL migration, and the partner dashboard is prepping for beta – so basically everything is “almost done” in the way crypto projects are always almost done. SODAX.
LINKS
Links That Don’t Suck 🔗
😶 World’s biggest YouTuber MrBeast acquires banking app ‘Step.’
👨 The Last ‘Person’ You Want Handling Your Surgery Is a Hallucinating Robot
🥈 Spot Silver Rallies More Than 6% Ahead Of January Jobs Report
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Author Disclosure: The author of this newsletter holds positions in AVAX, ADA, PUDGY, WLC, IMX, XTZ, NEAR, HBAR, ALGO, INJ, LTC, LINK, ZEC, XLM, and FET. 📋
