☝️ Tech Bros Thriving, Anons Vibing, Wassup With You?

Unlike the past few ‘dry’ weeks, this week was eventful. In fact, it was quite eventful. While everyone was talking about a few events, the remaining kinda shaped up under the hood. In today’s edition, we’re gonna delve into them all.

Are you ready? 

💵 The SuperBowl betting wave

Over $1.15 billion was shelled out on this year’s SuperBowl winner-related bets alone on Polymarket. This is evidence that we’re kinda stepping into the “fu*k bookie” era already. 

Stats-wise, the Panthers, Browns, and Raiders grabbed volume chunks greater than Kansas City and the Eagles. Meanwhile, the Eagles chances to win by 22+ were JUST 4% on Polymarket before the game started. 

Takeaway: Early predictions are raw. Wait for them to solidify. 

Pseudonymous sports trader ‘abeautifulmind’ profited over $550,000 from their Eagles bets. Meanwhile, ‘hubertdakid’ lost over $718,633 by betting against the champions. 

🇿🇦 CAR memecoin launch 

The Centra🚮 African Republic launched a memecoin on Pump.fun earlier this week. Yeah, you read it right — on Pump.fun — lmao.

Why, you may ask? Well, to boost national development. Cool. This is what crypto was built for EOD, right? But, the price action of the coin is nothing short of depressing. 

Some detectors (Ensemble and Seferbekov) flagged the president’s video on the site and warned about its “deepfake” nature. However, other models, including Avatrify and Deepware’s detector, did not highlight any concerns. 

Despite skepticism about its legitimacy, an early trader converted $5k to $12 million in a span of three hours. Meanwhile, another trader lost more than $1.5 million

The President, however, has deemed the launch to be a “success” and said that the govt. is “building for the long term.” Godspeed, is all I’m gonna say.

The important bits.

• Core DAO (BTCFi) introduces the first Dual Liquid staking token, enabling you to earn 40% APY

• Ramen Finance (Berachain launchpad) successfully received 147,770 BERA as part of RFA program

• Tannsi is setting the stage for mainnet launch coming up this month

• Vana (Data, AI) introduces AI agent data trading with ElizaOS and Datapig

• Yeet (Berachain) deploys the NECT/YEET pool, get your rewards

• Kaito AI released new whitepaper, explaining the new frontier of attentionFi

• Sui introduces SuiPlay0X1, a portable gaming console

• Shogun (Cross-chain DeFi) is now live on Binance chain

• Doodles (NFT) announced upcoming token to launch on Solana

Even more important bits.

• SEC acknowledges Grayscale's 19b-4 filing for its spot Dogecoin DOGE ETF

• GameStop GME considers investing in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

• President Trump says interest rates "are going to be going down."

• Grayscale started transferring ETH to Coinbase Prime

Charts and stats of the day.

• BTC OTC desks are drying up. (blue line)

• OpenSea has had higher market share of NFT volume than Blur for three days in-a-row

• Coinbase reports $2.3 billion in revenue for Q4, 23% higher than expectations

• Berachain TVL is rapidly increasing

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.

🚮 The ‘great grand garbage dump’ saga continues

Remember James Howells, the bean-eater who mined around 8,000 BTC in 2009 and his ex-girlfriend mistakenly tossed out his hard drive containing the Bitcoin wallet in 2013? He had earlier taken legal action to gain access to the landfill, but in January, a judge dismissed his request.

Now, he and his investment partners are looking to buy the WHOLE Newport Docksway landfill site. If his efforts fail, he’ll consider launching a utility token or NFT collection. Man firmly believes that the crypto community has his back.

A fun fact though: the landfill site is actually expected to close in the 2025-2026 financial year. The Council is currently securing planning permission to convert part of the land into a solar farm. If this ain’t double standards displayed by authorities, then idk what its. 

🚀 Launches, upgrades, shippings

With respect to tech related shippings, Uniswap’s Unichain went live this week. To boil it all down: It’s a L2 that aims to serve as "the home for liquidity across chains." 

Story protocol’s public mainnet was launched yesterday. The native IP token was put to sea alongside. 

OpenSea’s platform has also shipped a new reimagined version of its OS2 protocol in beta. Parallelly, the team is also looking to launch a native token, SEA. The best part? US market participants won’t be hindered from participating. 

It has, very obviously, been a very fruitful week for the tech bros. 

↔️ US-Russia prisoner swap 

Alexander Vinnik, the co-founder of the BTC-e crypto exchange, has been released from US custody. If you’ve been in this space for long enough, you’d know that BTC-e was one of the largest crypto exchanges when it was operational (2011-2017). 

It kinda had negligent KYC rules, and DOJ authorities believe it helped launder more than $4 billion in criminal proceeds. In May last year in SF, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering 

As a part of the US-Russia prisoner exchange, Vinnik has been swapped with school teacher Marc Fogel who was held captive in Russia for 3.5 years owing to the illegal possession of less than half an ounce of medical marijuana at the airport. 

Trump promised the Fogel family that he’d bring Marc home. Said and delivered. But in return, a money launderer has been let go of. I mean… nevermind. 

Started the week with a Superbowl hangover, and we’re ending it on Valentine’s. Crazy, multi-faceted, multi-dimensional lives we’re living. Anyway, that’s it from me for this edition.

Go enjoy your weekend. Do some rock climbing, island hopping, boxing, stargazing — whatever you fancy. Refuel and get back on Monday; you’ll find us right here, in the trenches.

Until next then,

Sayonaraaaa!