Cope, Survive, Repeat: Another Week in the Trenches

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GM my fellow earthlings! 

Despite everything that happened at the start of the week, I’m glad you’re still here. The dump freaked us out for a sec, but hey, we coped and survived. 

For now, you don’t have to do much. Let your spot bags sun-soak for a bit, and time will do the rest. 

Updates-wise, it has been quite a busy week. Lemme quickly run you through the key developments. 

Trump, tariffs, and trade wars

President Trump imposed tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China over the weekend. This action planted the notion of a global trade war in people's minds. The result: a nasty wipeout. 

Traders all across the board got rekt. The total liquidations crossed $2.26 billion, a new 2025 high. 

While BTC dropped over 8% over the weekend, ETH straight away dived by 20%. Just when it felt like our tolerance had reached its threshold, Trump agreed to hold off imposing tariffs on Canada and Mexico for 30 days, but but but, China wasn’t shown any mercy. 

We’re kinda stabilizing in the current range at the moment. Fear has gradually vanished, and neutral sentiment has taken over, but the chart below continues to haunt ETH bag holders.

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Smart-money movements on Ethereum.

Smart-money movements on Solana.

AI falls to only 32% mindshare.

Crypto taxes? Absolute pain.

Sifting through receipts, crunching numbers — it's a yearly ritual of suffering. Throw crypto into the mix, and it’s full-blown chaos.

Now you’re juggling transactions across wallets, flipping between CEXes and DEXes, and wondering if that airdrop was a win or just a taxable headache. And let’s not even start on staking rewards…

Well, it doesn’t necessarily have to suck.

Crypto Tax Calculator is built for degens like you. With over 1000+ integrations, a custom shitcoin pricing oracle, and the superpower to handle your on-chain terror.

 You can either generate reports your accountant will love or directly file ‘em yourself. 

 Snag 20% off your first year. Your accountant — and sanity — will thank you.

Pump in legal crosshairs 

Pump.fun’s parent company and its three founders have been charged with a proposed class action lawsuit. Parallelly, they’ve also been hit with a cease and desist order. 

The allegations: Offering and selling “highly-volatile” unregistered securities to investors + making nearly $500 million from fees + violating US securities laws + scripting a novel evolution in ponzi and pump and dump schemes. 

Who filed the suit? Diego Aguilar, an investor who suffered losses by investing in three memecoins: FRED, FWOG and GRIFFAIN. 

I mean… given their ultra-unhingedness, we all kinda knew that this was bound to happen. 

The important bits.

• Anon (DeFAI) - Launching today

• Mode (L2) - Features Muchachos (DeFAI project)

• Core DAO (BTCFi) - Earn 5x Spark rewards using Pell Network

• Ramen Finance (Berachain) - Participate in Ramen launch today!

• Yeet (Berachain, NFT) - Launching today on Ramen Launchpad

• mETH Protocol (DeFi) - mETH is planned to be a core asset of Mantle’s Enhanced Index Fund

• Maia DAO (DeFi) - Tune in for the weekly AMA session today

• HMX (Perp. DEX) - Weekly HMX staking yield reached 45% APY

• Peapods Finance (DeFi) - Leveraged Volatility Farming beta goes live today

• Tanssi (DeFi) - Releases details on TANSSI tokenomics

• Sophon (Entertainment layer) - 7,900 actives nodes reached

The Bera era 

Q5 has finally arrived. The Berachain TGE and mainnent launch have officially been checked off the list. The start has been pretty solid. 

Despite skepticism and criticism, you know down there that they have utility, they are legit, and do honor the community. 

If your conviction remains shaken, then here’s a knock-knock reality check post by Shad that could help change your mind.  

Life gets busy so here’s what you’ve missed.

Crypto Sentiment Is Awful: Friday recap with blocmates.

Podcast

Today's episode features just Alex and Gazz, with Mike absent. Another brutal week on the timeline has actually freed up some space to think and let builders build. We're talking tariffs and where we go from here: Hyperliquid, MegaETH, pump, fun, and Berachain.

Tune in on Spotify | YouTube →

MegaETH NFTs

Berachain and MegaETH have been ruling over the mindshare charts this week. The Mega guys released their flagship collection called 'The Fluffle’ comprising of 10,000 NFTs.

Each NFT costs 1 ETH and will cumulatively represent at least 5% of the MegaETH network. The allocation is dynamic — designed to increase as the NFT collection evolves. 

All NFTs are gonna be offered on a whitelist-only basis. Importantly: No one from the MegaETH team will hold any of the 10,000 NFTs. Fair, healthy, community-first distribution.

Also, just in case MegaETH doesn’t ring a bell: They’re the ones who raised $10 million in less than three minutes in mid-December via Echo, Cobie’s angel investor platform.

Other honorable mentions 

HyperEVM implemented two major testnet architectural upgrades: dual-block architecture and sender-agnostic token transfers. They're set to optimize block speed, transaction scalability, and developer experience on Hyperliquid. Pretty sic!  

While companies worldwide are busy adding BTC to their treasuries, publicly traded Canadian firm Neptune added 1 million DOGE. A meme coin in a treasury—that’s a feat in itself. 

MicroStrategy has rebranded to Strategy. Very obviously, this has been done to signify their commitment to Bitcoin. However, things might not be going well for the firm on the money-making front. In its latest earnings report, it was revealed that the Nasdaq 100 company registered a net loss of $670.8 million in Q4 2024.

Crypto Scammers stole over $65 million from Coinbase users via social engineering scams between December 2024 and January 2025. Irrespective of the state of the market, such incidents keep taking place, so stay safauuu! 

When you're out there in the sea surfing, you must ride every wave that comes your way, no matter how rough it is. Well, in crypto, you’ve to do precisely the same thing. There will undoubtedly be phases when it feels like it’s gonna be game over, but remember, that’s exactly when the foundational stones for the comeback are laid.

The weekend’s here. Step out. Breathe some fresh air. Take a break from the charts. Unclog your head. It’s all gonna get better. 

stay safe homies,

Lavina 🫡