AI Companions

Jack Kubinec

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">subscribe</a>.



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The crypto-powered cellular network Helium Mobile overhauled its pricing model for new subscribers — which formerly offered unlimited call, text and data for $20 per month.



Invite-only free plans come with 3 GB of data, 300 texts, and 100 minutes per month, $15 plans offer 10 GB of data with unlimited talk and text, and unlimited plans are now $30 per month. Legacy subscribers to the $20 per month plan can keep their existing price. It also introduced a points program to reward things like location sharing that users can redeem for gift cards.&nbsp;



The moves come amid a turbulent last several months that included layoffs and an SEC lawsuit at Helium Mobile’s parent company Nova Labs.



Helium Mobile is one of the most ambitious attempts at building a decentralized physical infrastructure network — DePIN for short — a popular concept among the “<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-lack-of-utility">crypto should do things</a>” crowd.&nbsp;



Helium Mobile comprises a network of individuals plugging in mobile hotspots to create a patchwork of what are essentially mini cell towers. Subscribers use Helium’s service where coverage is available and get T-Mobile service elsewhere. Helium Mobile rolled out its <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/helium-cell-plan-goes-nationwide">unlimited plan nationwide</a> in the US for $20 per month in late 2023.&nbsp;



$20 per month is a fraction of what legacy cell carriers charge for unlimited cellular plans, and combined with the fact that Helium Mobile must pay T-Mobile for some of the data subscribers use, it was never going to last forever. More price options are also nice for consumers — if you use less than 10 GB of data in a month, you no longer need to subsidize usage from data guzzlers.



Helium Mobile’s new free tier is a cool concept, but it’s not clear to me that it’ll find much demand — do you know anyone, particularly in the crypto world, who uses less than three gigs of data and 100 call minutes in a month? One possible target demographic could be <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/2025-solana-product-launches">Solana mobile phone</a> holders, who may own the devices as second phones and wouldn’t want to pay for a second cell plan.



Coco Tang, general manager of Helium Mobile subscribers, said the free plan could also be a good option for consumers wanting to try Helium before fully making the switch. Helium Mobile developer Nova Labs will hope the new pricing model can drive up revenue following what has been a turbulent year for the company. It laid off 36% of its staff in August, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/helium-parent-company-layoffs">Lightspeed reported exclusively</a>. Then a couple weeks ago, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/gary-gensler-resigning">outgoing SEC Chair</a> Gary Gensler made his last enforcement action a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-charges-nova-labs-with-fraud">lawsuit against Nova Labs</a> charging the company with fraud.



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Helium Mobile introduces free plan, hikes price for unlimited data

Casey Wagner

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">subscribe</a>.



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Newly-confirmed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent now has an additional federal agency to oversee, and he’s hitting the ground running.&nbsp;



Bessent was named acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau yesterday after President Trump fired Rohit Chopra. Chopra, a Biden-era nominee, was known for his aggressive regulatory approach at the agency, which saw major fines against names including Wells Fargo and Citigroup.&nbsp;



Now, Bessent has essentially put the CFPB on lockdown.&nbsp;



Staffers are to halt any litigation, investigation or enforcement proceedings and refrain from issuing public statements. The effective dates for any previously approved rules will also be suspended, per a memo shared with Bloomberg.&nbsp;



The switch-up was seen as particularly positive for the crypto industry, which was also a target under Chopra. The CFPB last month proposed expanding the agency’s electronic funds oversight to include cryptocurrencies.&nbsp;



While the rule is unlikely to ever be finalized, we will note that even the existence of such a proposal could influence pending litigation matters. The language in the proposal could also be adopted by states, several of which already have almost identical electronic fund transfer regulations.&nbsp;



The Trump administration has not yet nominated anyone to head the CFPB. It’s also unclear whether Bessent will hold the acting role until a permanent head is tapped.



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Bessent hits the breaks at CFPB

Ben Strack

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">subscribe</a>.



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January marked an <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/hester-peirce-reveals-sab-121-rescission">end to SAB 121</a>, welcomed Donald Trump’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/trump-vs-biden-crypto-orders">crypto executive order</a> and saw the creation of a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/new-sec-crypto-task-force">new SEC task force</a>.&nbsp;



Pair that with an <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-position-new-crypto-etf-proposals">ETF filing surge</a>, and it’s a good time to catch up with someone on the inside: Bitwise general counsel Katherine Dowling.&nbsp;



Her firm, after all, has plotted ETFs that would hold <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2039525/000121390024084334/ea0216197-s1_bitwise.htm">XRP</a>, solana and (as of more recently) <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2053791/000121390025007545/ea0228742-s1_bitwise.htm#:~:text=Additionally%2C%20Dogecoin%20is%20not%20a,the%20U.S.%20federal%20securities%20laws.">dogecoin</a>.



Dowling, an ex-assistant US attorney in the economic crimes unit of the Northern District of California’s US Attorney’s Office, described regulatory work as “siloed” in recent years — with SEC Chair Gary Gensler and the CFTC’s Rostin Behnam having “different views behind the scenes.”



Now, the signal of more SEC-CFTC cooperation is one of the biggest changes from the Gensler-era (“which now we can refer to as <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/gary-gensler-resigning">the past</a>,” she quipped).&nbsp;&nbsp;



The crypto task force seems “incredibly genuine” based on dialogue Bitwise is having with the SEC, Dowling added. That said, Dowling described the securities regulator as being in “a purgatorial state” with SEC chair nominee <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-chair-nominee-crypto-past">Paul Atkins</a> not yet confirmed. Mark Uyeda is serving as acting chair.



The SEC appears to be waiting for “directive from up high” on how to handle litigations, for example. Like that <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-advances-ripple-appeal">case against Ripple</a> you’ve probably read about. “Overnight those don’t just go away, nor should they,” Dowling said. “But when you have new leadership, there’s a new set of eyes. Are we looking at the right things in this particular case? Is there a settlement stance where we can both get what we want?”



The Bitwise exec noted some assets remain “caught up like dolphins in the fish nets.” She’s alluding to those apparently <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/the-sec-says-these-crypto-assets-are-securities-their-reasoning-is-wrong#">classified as securities</a> — <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/lightspeed-newsletter-mango-markets-sol">SOL</a> and XRP among them.



Something “needs to give” on that front before the SEC can move those ETF proposals along — justifying that purgatory, so to speak.



An ETF that holds dogecoin could have a clearer path, Dowling implied. After all, the SEC has not labeled DOGE a security.



Beyond the litigation/securities uncertainty, there’s the question of whether the SEC will require the existence of “a regulated market of significant size” (historically via CME-traded futures).&nbsp;



SOL and XRP futures <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/cme-group-considering-sol-xrp-futures">are coming</a>, Dowling opined — and spot products beyond BTC and ETH exist in other jurisdictions. If the SEC wants to see XRP and solana futures operate for a while, we’ll have to wait for US products holding those.



“But if we can come at it from a different angle and provide another line of argument that gets them comfortable with that, that is great too,” Dowling said.



How long will this take?



She gave a little laugh (recalling her work with the SEC while at the US attorney’s office) before saying: “I always remind people … this is just one subset of what they’re doing.” So, yeah, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/us-crypto-etfs-approval-outlook">patience will be key</a>. A likely launch in the nearer term? A US ETF holding both bitcoin and ether. Bitwise got the <a href="https://x.com/JSeyff/status/1885098186223542599">19b-4 approval</a> on that. The SEC must now clear the S-1.



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SEC in ‘purgatorial state’ despite positive signs

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">subscribe</a>.



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Bolstered by Big Tech, US equities were on the road to recovery after yesterday’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/trump-tariffs-trade-war">tariff-fueled rou</a>t.&nbsp;



The Magnificent Seven stocks were in the green midway through the session, with Meta and Alphabet as the big winners. Meta is now riding a record 12-session winning streak while Alphabet saw positive momentum ahead of the company’s earnings release later today.&nbsp;



We’re about a third of the way into earnings season and results have been fairly solid.&nbsp;



As of last Friday, when 36% of S&amp;P 500 companies had reported, 77% had beat analysts’ earnings expectations for Q4 2024. This is in line with last year and slightly ahead of the 10-year average. 63% of companies so far have beat on revenue expectations, which is a bit below the 5-year and 10-year averages.&nbsp;



Today’s rebound aside, US Big Tech is still lagging behind big foreign names. NVDA, down almost 15% year to date, is the worst-performing Big Tech stock across every region. Alibaba (+21% in 2025) is the best.&nbsp;



Other top performers so far this year include Hong-Kong-listed Xiaomi (+16%) and Seoul-listed Hynix (+10%).&nbsp;



Zooming out, the CBOE Volatility Index, known as Wall Street’s “fear gauge,” was on the decline Tuesday after a brief surge to around 19.6 on Monday. Anything above 19.5 (the long-run average) is generally viewed as elevated.&nbsp;



While earnings continue to trickle in, these reports will impact share prices. But the bigger catalyst for further corrections is the tariff situation and potential fallout.&nbsp;



The uncertainty of if and when these tariffs may come into play, and the unpredictability of it all, is going to continue to weigh on global equities.



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Tech stocks lead US rebound, but still lag behind global names

Kate Irwin

Bitcoin and the rest of the crypto market took a turn for the worse over the weekend in price drops that have largely been blamed on <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/trump-tariffs-trade-war">Trump’s promised tariffs</a>. I overheard a handful of X Spaces hosts sound the alarms about it on Monday, acting as though the bull market was over.&nbsp;



But now that it’s Tuesday, things are already recovering. Tariffs on Mexico and Canada have been delayed, allowing bitcoin and some other cryptos to partially recover.



As often happens, gaming tokens were harder hit.



Immutable’s IMX token fell 14% from Sunday to Monday. Since then, it’s recouped a bit of that loss, but still remains down roughly 26% in the past week.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXee-772v40wcWM_U_lKuws5XG3hC0BMJqWVVfXX7cdD4fQB6mzq4n6MCyH6SvzwlsaZYrUaYIHgfhkf-IcbmmkF-uZDvB42AuWiNU-qV-JPAr9DoH8ye8X90HchLkcwmYQEkhNLqQ?key=1Aue4niH7Xg5RL1f7t8gn2Ac" alt=""/></figure>



Some other market notables:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>SAND, GALA, Ronin, AXS, MANA, BEAM, APE and PRIME all saw similar losses in the same period, with prices dropping anywhere from 21% to 30%. </li>



<li>Notcoin, the Telegram tap-to-earn game’s token, is down about 35% in the past week.</li>



<li>PIXEL fell roughly 32%. </li>
</ul>



Still, it’s not all bad news across the gaming token sector.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Sui is only down less than 2% in the past week. Sweat Economy continues to churn ahead, seeing its price rising about 8% in the past week. GoMining is also up modestly, as is Xterio and other smaller market-cap tokens.&nbsp;



That’s just a handful of winners though — price <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/view/gaming/">data</a> shows that most other gaming tokens have had a rough week.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">XP Alert&nbsp;</h2>



<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/pudgy-penguins-parent-layer-2-blockchain">Abstract</a>, the blockchain from the Pudgy Penguins team, doesn’t have a native token (yet). But it is issuing <a href="https://docs.abs.xyz/portal/overview">XP</a> — gamerspeak for experience points — and distributing it for the first time <a href="https://x.com/Phin_totten/status/1886780598531834197">today</a>. How did you do?



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Deadrop is dead — we all know why</h2>



You’ve probably heard by now that Midnight Society, the studio behind the “vertical extraction shooter” Deadrop, has shut down.&nbsp;



It had promise — think Call of Duty for crypto fans with a heavy Bladerunner vibe. And, I guess, cars you could drive into battle. Kind of cool?



Deadrop’s premature death isn’t surprising, though.&nbsp;



Last year, one of its other co-founders and primary marketer — Guy “Dr. Disrespect” Beahm — admitted in a (since-deleted) <a href="https://x.com/JakeSucky/status/1823741433825698082">X post</a> that he had inappropriate conversations with a minor. That incident was revealed as the reason for Beahm’s permanent ban from Twitch, which had previously been kept under wraps for years.



Shortly after that news broke late last year, the studio laid off some staff in September. Then, last week, the studio <a href="https://x.com/12am/status/1885061680398213160">posted</a> a brief note announcing that it’s shutting down. The studio didn’t say exactly why, and instead asked the broader gaming community to help its 55+ developers find new gigs.&nbsp;



One of its other co-founders, Robert Bowling, purged his social media accounts before the shutdown.



One former Midnight Society employee told me: “It is what it is. We just couldn’t get the Dr. D stink off us.”&nbsp;



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Gaming tokens hit in Trump tariffs fallout after Deadrop shutdown

Donovan Choy

This is a segment from the 0xResearch newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research">subscribe</a>.



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Hyperliquid (HYPE)</h2>



L1 tokens have pretty much taken a beating across the board, with one rare exception.



The exception is unsurprisingly Hyperliquid’s HYPE, which has actually posted a 15.8% gain on the week. The perps DEX generated <a href="https://dune.com/x3research/hyperliquid">$18.2 billion</a> in trading volumes and ~$4 million in fees on Sunday.



Those price gains are coming in against a deep backdrop of red. When we zoom in on larger market cap L1s, almost none were spared the guillotine. From previous generation L1s like Cardano (ADA), Avalanche (AVAX) and Algorand (ALGO), to newer generation L1s like Near (NEAR), Sei (SEI) and Ton (TON), all saw 20%+ price declines on the week.



RON saw the greatest price crash of 27%.



One other L1 that bucked the market crash is the little-known Kava Network L1, which is undertaking an AI pivot. The KAVA token ($539 million market cap) saw a 15.7% gain on the week. Kava launched its mainnet in October 2022 after carving out a niche for itself with an interoperable Maker-like collateralized debt position (CDP) product.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">MANTRA (OM)</h2>



The OM token, which is 31st largest token by market cap, is up 27% on the week.



For a token this large, I’m embarrassed to say I had no idea what OM was, so I looked it up.



OM is apparently the token behind the MANTRA project, a real-world assets-focused L1 catering to the institutional TradFi world.



Its mainnet launched relatively recently in October 2024. The OM token is used for validator staking, gas and governance — all pretty standard use cases. I expected to find huge TVL numbers on rwa.xyz, but they’re not even listed.



As far as I can tell, there is nothing particularly out of the ordinary that explains OM’s impressive price action. But look upon this price chart, ye Mighty, and despair.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcrD-L0vmbwOzURWagHlh4fpnvWJ3eU-7a0CAVj_Am2Vvke6_lPGChyNz1vvXmhscuBMAnxwABwAfJ1qLy0jKr-qrbKwR0KTovqHv3n4EcQu3llE8m-RxjKiYDamVs0j5fAF64gzA?key=tO46BXKOMwW93zUQ1ZlmI0Is" alt=""/></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Onyx (XCN)</h2>



Onyx (XCN) was a lending market for fungible and non-fungible tokens built on Ethereum, until it suffered a $3.8 million exploit in September 2024 and <a href="https://x.com/OnyxDAO/status/1839444128775503999">shut down</a>.



Is it possible to summon an explanation for why XCN (96th largest token by market cap) is up 7% on the week? Perhaps, but the mental gymnastics aren’t worth it.



All I have to offer is this: Onyx yesterday announced XCN Ledger, a new L3 blockchain built with the Arbitrum stack, but settling on Base.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Introducing Onyx: XCN Ledger — A modular Layer 3 Blockchain Built on <a href="https://twitter.com/arbitrum?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Arbitrum</a> &amp; Secured by <a href="https://twitter.com/base?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Base</a>, with EIP-1559 enabling onchain <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24XCN&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$XCN</a> burns 🔥 Details, Whitepaper &amp; Onepager available at <a href="https://t.co/86kFieYFY7">https://t.co/86kFieYFY7</a><a href="https://t.co/Ce28ook0wR">https://t.co/Ce28ook0wR</a>&mdash; Onyx (@OnyxDAO) <a href="https://twitter.com/OnyxDAO/status/1886539654071046206?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 3, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">AI agents</h2>



The AI agent sub sector has taken a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ai-selloff-too-much-excitement">pretty hard beating</a> since it <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ai-crypto-vs-dotcom-bubble">peaked</a> at a market cap of ~$20 billion in early January.



When agents were still going parabolic, everyone wanted to know: How high would this market go? Analysts far smarter than I were making bold <a href="https://blockworks-research.beehiiv.com/p/weekday-month-day-b7b075d4f641dd4e">predictions</a> that placed the agentic market at a range of $100 billion (base case) to $250 billion (bull case).&nbsp;



It’s been a month since, and market caps have cratered to $8 billion. Yikes.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdZP3kMKKwYsRW9rMR2Ta9MZ6eKnZVuTZAmwEKZ9WCAQ0e1sDT9B38p-jHEvUZiBnAIjMZ-oaZD2qDodvsvbxJ6Xc35KD5Auc85VfRKGVIpxcVdsrBvXv_-5fLRLQs77z7nxDNt2w?key=tO46BXKOMwW93zUQ1ZlmI0Is" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://www.cookie.fun/">cookie.fun</a></figcaption></figure>



The top tokens in the AI agent sector haven’t held up: VIRTUAL is down 24% on the week, while FARTCOIN and AI16Z are down 22.5% and 38.6%, respectively.



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HYPE, OM and XCN hold up against crypto crash

David Canellis

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">subscribe</a>.



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Altcoin season might never return.



At least, not how you know them. It may be that the next altcoin season will be more of an altcoin glow-up.&nbsp;



No more aping into random buzzy coins and turning a profit by the bull market top. Only a dozen or so high quality projects might give massive returns — coins with sensible tokenomics, realistic narratives and few enough vested interests that normal people stand to benefit early on.



How depressing.



I have an alternative theory: altcoin season is destined to return at size, purely because “crime season” is inevitable.



There’s been an <a href="https://x.com/search?q=crime%20szn&amp;src=typed_query">uptick</a> in calls for crime season since SEC Chair Gensler stepped aside and Trump was elected, at least in my particular algorithm, with the phrase now effectively a substitute for “do whatever you like, as long as it directly benefits you and me.”



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Crime szn People will fade the idea of it but it&#39;s true The fastest horse is the one that is willing to commit crime in these circumstances so focus should be on that Try to make as much as you can, as quickly as you can, crime is short-term bullish, long-term bearish <a href="https://t.co/0r9EGnh907">https://t.co/0r9EGnh907</a>&mdash; DonAlt (@CryptoDonAlt) <a href="https://twitter.com/CryptoDonAlt/status/1864844570338505021?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 6, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Crime season is not exactly exclusive to crypto. But in crypto specifically, it’s a return to peak degen behavior, as Virtuals agent AIXBT <a href="https://x.com/DiamondHandsDig/status/1881160815870693702/photo/1https://x.com/DiamondHandsDig/status/1881160815870693702/photo/1">put</a> it, whereby the name of the game is to make the number go up at all costs, even illegally.&nbsp;



Defining “<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/waiting-for-altcoin-season">altcoin season</a>&#8221; was fairly straightforward — comparing growth in altcoins versus bitcoin gives us three distinct altcoin seasons since 2016. The most recent one ended at the top of the November 2021 bull run, so we’re well overdue.



Crime seasons are less mathematical. They instead hinge on major news stories that symbolize the overall market vibe that gave cover to outright criminal enterprise.



The chart below plots crime seasons against altcoin seasons over the past decade or so.&nbsp;



Grey shaded areas in the back show the market capitalization of crypto. Altcoin and crime seasons are represented by the colored bands.



Pink is for crime season, blue is for altcoin season, and purple shows where the two overlap — when crime season and altcoin season are happening at the same time.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdzm6D7UsXdcGf1S8PZrN78_A4sa38cRnP6fjLGdgpP4WcdxCPcDf22i9C9y10P5f5FtzsdFzS4Gsq0F7Lz7bCO2HM4mNIajJoq8pwjx5SMrXs4DubwbBzuecOfij6GnSFDmpVR?key=JOAUs5lZRL4PgoRC0B8h7JAu" alt=""/></figure>



The beginnings and ends of crime seasons are highlighted by the red lines. As you can see, there have been two separate — but huge — seasons of criminality in the past decade.



It’s a broad-brush approach, but to my eye, crypto’s first major crime season started when the first-and-best crypto ponzi <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitconnect">BitConnect</a> launched in February 2016.&nbsp;



The season eventually melded with Ethereum ICO mania and ran until April 2018, when the Feds <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/third-co-founder-of-centra-tech-charged-with-25-mln-securities-fraud">came</a> for the founders of Centra, the mostly-phony financial services crypto startup which raised $25 million. QuadrigaCX founder Gerald Cotten <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/05/business/quadriga-cx-gerald-cotten.html">disappeared</a> around eight months later.



The second crime season otherwise began when Sam Bankman-Fried founded FTX in 2019 — a domino that topped over into NFT bubbles, DeFi Summer, ransomware and flash loan attacks, as well as dog coin frenzies.&nbsp;



Perhaps the greatest crime season to date, it all <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/alleged-perpetrator-100-million-crypto-market-manipulation-scheme-make-initial">ended</a> with the arrest of the Mango Markets <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/alleged-perpetrator-100-million-crypto-market-manipulation-scheme-make-initial">hacker</a>, Avi “profitable trading strategy” Eisenberg, in Puerto Rico on Boxing Day 2022.



Notice that on the chart, altcoin season has always happened alongside crime season, barring just a few months in 2019. In fact, the two largest altcoin seasons in crypto history occurred smack bang in the middle of crime season.&nbsp;



The good news: Crime season is pre-programmed. Humans always find a way to do crime (imagine what autonomous agents will do). So maybe altcoin season is equally likely.



The bad news: Crime season is inevitable.



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Is crypto headed for a wildly profitable crime season?

Katherine Ross

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Blockworks’ head of research, Ryan Connor, thinks that we’re at a “crossroads” with fundamentals in crypto.&nbsp;



“It&#8217;s because the marginal investor coming into crypto as a result of legalizing crypto in the United States is going to be a traditional financial professional, not a degen,” he told me.



It can be boiled down to either the amount of market participants or those who control the capital. Both of these lead to the same outcome: Folks who want to see fundamental value in tokens.



“A lot of people in crypto still believe the primary driver of token price is ‘vibes.’ There’s ample evidence over the past, let’s say 18 months, that that’s increasingly not true,” he explained. That doesn’t mean that vibe trading isn’t a thing — and probably will still linger for a while yet — but those will remain in smaller pockets of the market, like memecoins.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">If tokens don’t trade on fundamentals then why is crypto correlated to Nasdaq&mdash; Ryan Connor | BWR 🟪 (@_ryanrconnor) <a href="https://twitter.com/_ryanrconnor/status/1886476222005202973?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 3, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



When you have scenarios of a “silly” token soaring and then crashing, it opens the door for fundamentals to play a bigger part as crypto matures.&nbsp;



“Most token projects are early-stage, and because there&#8217;s some opacity around governance models, we tend to just look at the top line first. As a general rule in TradFi, the earlier stage the project, the more you care about the top-line fundamentals as opposed to the bottom-line fundamentals. If you’re a high-growth tech company, you’re looking at sales growth, you’re looking at the [average revenue per user], and rate of change on those metrics,” Connor said.



Other fundamentals to look at, depending on the project, would be earnings, cash flows and dividend yields. For the most part, the TradFi metrics carried over will reflect what we see in high-growth tech firms.&nbsp;



Right now, though, revenue is “probably the most important thing today,” and then you can pick and choose other metrics to apply depending on the token.&nbsp;



One thing’s for sure: There’ll always be a place for vibes in crypto, but adding in metrics to monitor the success of a project only levels crypto up.



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Crypto’s at a ‘crossroads’ with fundamentals: Blockworks Research

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MetaDAO, the group pioneering markets-based governance via “futarchy” on Solana, is one of those things that lots of Solana people have heard of but has seen limited actual adoption.



Things could be changing though, as the liquid staking startup Sanctum just became the first Solana project to fully adopt MetaDAO for its platform governance. Its first decision market has drawn over 200 trades in three hours. When I recently called to catch up with MetaDAO’s pseudonymous founder metaproph3t, they portrayed the Sanctum launch as a potential means to build trust that futarchy can actually work, kicking off a potential adoption flywheel effect.



Futarchy is a term coined by George Mason University economics professor Robin Hanson for a governance system where markets, rather than voters or leaders, make decisions. MetaDAO brings futarchy to Solana governance.&nbsp;



<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/metadao-is-making-markets-into-its-government">The experiment</a> is generally well thought of in crypto, especially since traditional token-voting DAO systems have their warts — and can sometimes <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/measuring-dao-grants-for-growth">be accused</a> of being a little too trigger-happy with treasury funds.



Realms, which allows for traditional DAO models with token-based voting, is the more popular governance platform on Solana. Well-known projects like Jito and Drift have launched some form of governance on MetaDAO, but they have Realms pages, too.



Metaproph3t said they think MetaDAO can become the default governance platform for Solana — like, say, what Snapshot is to Ethereum — within six to 18 months. Still, they added, “I don&#8217;t think I foresaw just how much friction there is involved in someone learning how futarchy works.”



MetaDAO creates pass and fail markets for governance proposals. Anyone can trade in the pass and fail market by placing options-like bets on whether they think the proposal succeeding or failing will cause the token’s price to rise or fall. The market that predicts a more positive outcome for the token’s price succeeds, and only users who traded on the winning market see their trades executed at the market-determined price. Sellers, who are bearish on the proposal, buy with the native token and get paid out in USDC, while buyers, who are bullish, do the reverse.



This is all a bit convoluted at first, and metaproph3t is a fitting overseer for the wonkish project. At one point in our conversation, they summarized Geoffrey Moore’s book, Crossing the Chasm, at length to make a point.



When I asked if the futarchy project was just too nerdy to catch on broadly, metaproph3t replied that there are plenty of technologies people use without fully understanding.



“Who actually understands how a car engine works?” they asked.



I asked Sanctum co-founder FP Lee what it would take for MetaDAO to become the real default DAO platform for Solana projects.



“One great success,” he replied. “If we embrace it full-throatedly, and people see that it works, it will be embraced fully.”



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Futarchy needs ‘one great success’ to become Solana’s go-to governance model

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MicroStrategy took a breather from its aggressive bitcoin buying spree —&nbsp;during a week that would end with a sizable downturn, no less.&nbsp;



The company has hoarded BTC for four-plus years now, and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/microstrategy-shares-audacious-plan-to-buy-more-bitcoin#">accelerated those purchases</a> after the latest <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-impacts-since-election-outcome">US presidential election</a>.&nbsp;



First, let’s look at MSTR’s recent buys:



Oct. 31-Nov. 10: 27,200 BTC for $2 billion (avg. $74,463 per BTC) Nov. 11-17: 51,780 BTC for $4.6 billion ($88,627) Nov. 18-24: 55,500 BTC for $5.4 billion ($97,862) Nov. 25-Dec. 1: 15,400 BTC for $1.5 billion ($95,976) Dec. 2-8: 21,550 BTC for $2.1 billion ($98,783) Dec. 9-15: 15,350 BTC for $1.5 billion ($100,386) Dec. 16-22: 5,262 BTC for $561 million ($106,662)  Dec. 23-29: 2,138 BTC for $209 million ($97,837) Dec. 30-Jan. 5: 1,070 BTC for $101 million ($94,004) Jan. 6-12: 2,530 BTC for $243 million ($95,972) Jan. 13-20: 11,000 BTC for $1.1 billion ($101,191) Jan. 21-26: 10,107 BTC for $1.1 billion ($105,596) Jan. 27-Feb. 2: 0 BTC 



Total BTC acquired since Oct. 31: 218,887 BTC Total spent on BTC: $20.4 billion (average ~$93,200 per BTC)  



In a one-month span (Oct. 31 to Dec. 1), Saylor’s team bought nearly a third of the BTC it holds today.&nbsp;



In all, MicroStrategy bought about 1% of the bitcoin supply in three months, and now owns 471,107 BTC — more than 2% of the total number of bitcoin that will ever exist.



While some on social media <a href="https://x.com/JacobKinge/status/1886432620017246500">viewed</a> the BTC buying pause as a bearish development, a couple analysts think differently.&nbsp;



Benchmark’s Mark Palmer told me it likely stemmed from the firm’s focus on executing its first-ever issuance of perpetual preferred stock. Expected to close Wednesday, that deal would raise $563 million to buy even more BTC.



TD Cowen’s Lance Vitanza suspects MicroStrategy was prohibited from buying while marketing this preferred stock — an offering he thinks will allow MSTR to ramp up BTC purchases.&nbsp;&nbsp;



MicroStrategy did not immediately return a request for comment.&nbsp;



Palmer said: “We fully expect the company to continue to aggressively lean into its bitcoin acquisition strategy during the balance of 2025.”



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What to make of MSTR’s bitcoin pause 

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President Trump on Saturday issued promised tariffs on three of the US’s biggest trading partners, sending global markets into a tailspin as investors tried to position themselves for a trade war.&nbsp;



The higher fees initially were supposed to take effect just after midnight, but the White House said Monday it reached a deal with Mexico to delay the tariffs by one month. Trump also said he has spoken with Canadian PM Justin Trudeau and will do so again at 3 pm ET.&nbsp;



Volatility is the name of the game today — and probably will be all week — as traders struggle to keep up with every new headline.&nbsp;



I won’t try to recap every market move we’ve seen since Saturday, but here are some top-level highlights:&nbsp;



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Stock futures, predictably, plunged over the weekend. The S&amp;P 500 and Nasdaq Composite slid sharply at the open Monday, but both indexes pared some losses after news broke that the 25% tariff on Mexico will be delayed. </li>



<li>Bitcoin dipped to a 30-day low of just under $93,000 late Sunday but similarly rebounded. The largest crypto was trading around $100,000 at 2 pm ET. </li>



<li>The Mexican peso gained as much as 1% Monday, erasing its losses since Friday. The Canadian dollar also moved into green against the US dollar this morning but was not back to pre-weekend levels. </li>
</ul>



While Trump was able to reach a deal with Mexico to delay the tariffs for a month, the levies on Canada and China are still set to begin Tuesday, at least at time of writing.&nbsp;



The tariffs, in theory, should come as no surprise. Trump said on the campaign trail for months that he would hit Mexico and Canada with 25% tariffs and China with 10%.&nbsp;



But then his flurry of <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/donald-trump-day-one-actions">first-day actions</a> came, and tariffs were nowhere to be found. Plus, reports that his team would take a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/trump-gradual-tariff-policy">gradual approach</a> (like they did back in 2018), circulated. (I’ll be the first to admit, I was definitely in the “gradual” camp myself.)



But the market was “completely under-pricing the risks,” Deutsche Bank analyst Jim Reid wrote in a note today, hence the “severe shock” we are now experiencing.&nbsp;



Markets, until now, seem to have been viewing tariffs as more of a negotiation strategy than a reality. And a deal with Canada is still possible, but “there is still asymmetry to the downside in case of disappointment on the progress of these talks,” Aurelie Barthere, principal research analyst at Nansen, said.&nbsp;



Meanwhile, the latest ISM manufacturing index was released today, and it shows there was growth last month for the first time in more than two years. An argument could be made that the boost was due to pre-emptive tariff stockpiling rather than fundamental expansion, but only time will tell.&nbsp;



The Institute of Supply Management, which conducts the survey, says Trump’s tariffs pose a threat to manufacturing recovery.&nbsp;



“I don’t think tariffs are going to help us,” Survey Chair Timothy Fiore said. “This is not a good thing for business.”&nbsp;



Still, Fiore added, the timeline of tariffs (he said even before the Mexico deal was announced that he was skeptical they’ll be in place on Tuesday) remains to be seen.&nbsp;



The general fear, though, is that manufacturers will have to pay higher prices for raw materials while their own exports could also face higher fees from retaliation tariffs.



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The trade war is here

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About 20 months after its initial announcement, Uniswap v4 quietly <a href="https://uniswapfoundation.mirror.xyz/MHmGXC9KZOL1VkKERF2ZwrR6RuYzLLoBV3eM67cMjXY?utm_medium=email&amp;_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8GfC8u_BwxlPkNcfdo5xaVuKVjDxq-o52q061TNOeTQWhMFBL2udaiZFnwn9LH1hrODHum9DVw9G80ZEL9fVMtg5DmRw&amp;_hsmi=345119714&amp;utm_content=345119714&amp;utm_source=hs_email">rolled out</a> over the past weekend on 12 chains.



<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/uniswap-v4-dex-hooks">Uniswap v4</a> is a big deal for the simple reason that it threatens to turn one of DeFi’s most essential primitives — DEXs — into a cheap commodity.



For the longest time, Uniswap competitors have tried to appeal to users with incrementally innovative and piecemeal features like dynamic fees (<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/trader-joe-ethereum-mainnet">Trader Joe</a>), providing out-of-range liquidity into money markets (Balancer), MEV internalization (Skip), etc.



Uniswap’s response: Build whatever DEX you like on v4.&nbsp;



That’s possible thanks to v4’s primary innovation of “hooks.” Hooks are separate smart contracts “attached” to Uniswap liquidity pools, enabling developers to implement custom DEX logic that triggers based on certain behaviors.



For example, Uniswap v3 pools are bound by <a href="https://docs.uniswap.org/concepts/protocol/fees">predefined fee tiers</a>. Now, v4 liquidity pool deployers can customize their pool logic with dynamic fee curves that adjust based on variables like volatility. They can even punish LPs with a fee when they withdraw liquidity.



Liquidity pools could be designed to deposit unused liquidity into Aave to generate a yield for LPs, or implement KYC features like NFT-gating or time-gating (so pools are tradable only within certain hours).



Devs can even introduce a “fee switch” without having to wait for Uniswap protocol to do so. The possibilities are endless.



V4 hooks, in effect, let liquidity pool deployers act as their own “DEX.”



For an example of hooks in action, look to Flaunch — a new memecoin launchpad on Base.&nbsp;



When tokens pre-launch on Flaunch, they can be bought at a fixed price for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, all remaining tokens are sold and the memecoin is launched on the open market.



Unlike pump.fun, however, 100% of trading fees are paid to creators and buybacks (the exact ratio depends on the creator). Buybacks take place when tokens collect 0.1 ETH in trading fees.



Using hooks, Flaunch was able to integrate this custom logic into every Uniswap v4 liquidity pool that a memecoin is launched on (there are already thousands).&nbsp;



Flaunch has launched 2,135 tokens, generated $75.6 million in v4 trading volumes, and paid back 51 ETH since its inception last Friday.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeW2QN4lib6kjA9Wbz9nXVX5Rm6f66bRjyqBk13iuPWnMutFrE7h6K87AzJVLOCBdbxxu8VIni-nQI5E9sANcqQc35k3A87IPgOSEfOzF0Qtw197oAKqOfuK7upKboZOUweqEh5bQ?key=-WIWG7FVcfGJ_n3_CMnn36ce" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://dune.com/jdhyper/flaunch-on-base">Dune</a></figcaption></figure>



According to <a href="https://hookrank.io/">HookRank.io</a>, 24 hooks have been deployed, with the overwhelming majority of TVL ($2.3 million) in Flaunch’s hook contracts.



Then there’s <a href="https://x.com/bunni_xyz/status/1885489587541385231">Bunni DEX</a>. It slaps a “rehypothecation hook” on top of v4 to route LP capital to lending protocols for more profitable LP strategies. There’s also <a href="https://whetstone.cc/doppler">Doppler</a>, a liquidity bootstrapping protocol by Whetstone Research that simply builds auctions on top of v4 contracts.



Another upcoming innovation on v4 hooks is the <a href="https://sorellalabs.xyz/writing/introducing-sorella">Angstrom DEX</a> by Sorella Labs. Angstrom is implementing a v4 hook that seeks to mitigate MEV leakages to L2 sequencers by protecting LPs against CEX-DEX arbitrageurs (loss-vs.-rebalancing) and traders against MEV attacks.



Based on this <a href="https://univ4projects.notion.site/15f5a32af0b580249d0ee2e3f16f302f?v=4cbe60597dcb4f4cb52a40847b18b5d7">directory</a>, there are about 24 active projects building on v4 hooks.



With v4, Uniswap is no longer a liquidity pool launchpad. Uniswap has effectively become a spot DEX launchpad.



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Uniswap V4 is live on 12 chains

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We’re totally doomed.



Doomed to forever suffer the psychology of big numbers — the more bitcoin goes up by raw dollar value, the further it falls when it corrects. Which can look much scarier than it really is.



Bitcoin has shed as much as $18,000 since its all-time high on Jan. 20, set hours before Trump’s second inauguration — a 16.5% drop in two weeks — sending the rest of crypto spiraling as it always does.



The hopium is that this isn’t even the worst correction of 2025 so far. What is currently a 12% retracement in the past week at worst is still better than the 13% lost in the second week of January.&nbsp;



Bitcoin also in a week fell from nearly $108,300 to under $92,500 in the middle of December — nearly 15%.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfacv_cba0OEXzmBGl3zy-lpwyzSwXEa8oFZtwXWrKw00ydPh5Xz9bzBKuQgBeYkOaBj6IzZhqTmd5L53eQHhcPWndfcsCZX5R-LoCvcGHMRmiVJUO0wxmFO8vTgr9MTp6nAdT6vg?key=JOAUs5lZRL4PgoRC0B8h7JAu" alt=""/></figure>



 You can see it on the chart above. The blue columns show bitcoin’s weekly price performance on a rolling basis, and the orange line points to the total size of bitcoin’s current pullback as of this morning.&nbsp;



Drawdowns like these happen regularly. The real trick is knowing when bitcoin won’t bounce back, putting an end to the bull market.



More hopium: Historically, the ends of bull markets have been marked by <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-bull-market-drawdowns">much larger short-term corrections</a> ranging around 20% to over 40%.



Still, as far as performance during the US election is concerned, bitcoin is holding up. It’s so far tracking how it did as Trump prepared to take office the first time, in 2016. 



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfX0YwNzfCunkTx0pB2tEUlJe8rigFldGEQVhq199vG0Vfpn6ulLMRslatPw2c8-ucIeg4n9pzpi0Af1lC175Ib1wG_DxeDBvoS-WtaPRSBmQaOkcztu1KdfMcydNKjqWMMBaRK?key=JOAUs5lZRL4PgoRC0B8h7JAu" alt=""/></figure>



Bitcoin, starting 30 days before Election Day until today, has gained about 53%. It had otherwise rallied 66% by around this time following Trump’s 2016 win. 



Both are well below the returns bitcoin posted around Biden 2020, although that was during the pandemic helicopter money era so it’s not really a fair comparison.



Everything that isn’t bitcoin is where it hurts most. ETH has slipped as much as 34% in the past week — from over $3,200 to $2,124 earlier this morning before climbing back to nearly $2,600. That’s good for a 20% bounce.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdfUyLPvl3X5BBcouuUHAxHezjOhiOiwUyZwaNvArC455CHHWj2awzUPTxwNj4me-nRYyEFjQPi86fRH5Wt5m_X8DFxc4y2xEXQgJ2PpzcvMDSbmL8TfOa9D51Z0YBdS_18RQBG?key=JOAUs5lZRL4PgoRC0B8h7JAu" alt=""/></figure>



Practically all other altcoins are undergoing something similar. Many are seeing their worst corrections since August, which was a tough <a href="https://www.grayscale.com/research/market-commentary/august-2024-bitcoin-the-dollar-and-fed-rate-cuts">month</a> for both crypto and the stock market after Powell signaled rate cuts were coming.



All that was quickly shrugged off and here we are, five months later and about 75% higher. 



Just don’t tell that to the nearly $1.9 billion in leveraged longs that have been reported <a href="https://www.coinglass.com/LiquidationData">wiped</a> in the past 24 hours, the most since December. Bybit CEO Ben Zhou <a href="https://x.com/benbybit/status/1886393172152156604">reckons</a> the total number could be as high as $10 billion.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



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Trump effect on bitcoin so far similar to 2016 win

World Liberty Financial, the crypto platform backed by President Donald Trump, has been courting blockchains to take part in “token swap” deals, two sources with knowledge of the matter told Blockworks.



Representatives for World Liberty Financial have been approaching blockchain teams with an offer: buy at least $10 million worth of unlaunched WLFI tokens with a 10 percent fee, and World Liberty Financial will buy the same amount of the blockchain’s native token.&nbsp;



A message from a World Liberty Financial representative shared with Blockworks said the WLFI tokens would be transferred at a $1.5 billion fully diluted valuation, which is crypto verbiage for the theoretical total value of a given crypto token.&nbsp;



The World Liberty Financial platform is expected to launch in Q3 of this year at a $1.5 billion FDV, the representative’s message said. The message insisted that none of the tokens could be subject to a vesting period, and the minimum buy in for a token swap partnership was set at $10 million.&nbsp;



A source at a second blockchain project, granted anonymity to discuss private business dealings, confirmed to Blockworks that they had received the same offer with the caveat that while $10 million was the minimum buy in, it would take $15 million to receive priority treatment from World Liberty Financial.



World Liberty Financial will aim to help users access third-party DeFi applications to do things like earn yield on stablecoins or borrow cryptoassets, according to the project’s official documentation. President Trump <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/on-the-margin-newsletter-trump-family-defi-venture">began promoting</a> the project while still on the campaign trail last year.&nbsp;



Right now, the only thing users can do on World Liberty Financial’s website is buy the forthcoming WLFI token. According to the website, roughly 24 billion WLFI tokens have been sold at $0.05 apiece, which would total some $1.2 billion.&nbsp;



Chinese crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun <a href="https://x.com/justinsuntron/status/1881169556506546485">claimed</a> that TronDAO has snapped up $75 million.



Only President Trump’s son Eric, who is on the project’s “board of managers,” is directly involved with World Liberty Financial, but the Trump family has financial upside nonetheless.&nbsp;



An LLC affiliated with President Trump and his family is entitled to 60% of the project’s equity, 75% of the fee revenue generated by the WLFI token sale, and 22.5 billion WLFI tokens, worth some $1.1 billion at the public sale price.&nbsp;



World Liberty Financial’s crypto wallet is public. ETH accounts for about half of the project’s $378 million in crypto, data from Arkham <a href="https://intel.arkm.com/explorer/entity/worldlibertyfi">shows</a>. The rest of the holdings include Justin Sun-linked wrapped bitcoin, staked ether, and USDC, as well as a smattering of smaller tokens.&nbsp;



Scoring a spot on World Liberty Financial’s balance sheet has become a point of pride for crypto projects.



“[We] would like to thank @worldlibertyfi for their continued support and look forward to an [American] future for MOVE,” Movement Labs co-founder Rushi Manche wrote on X after World Liberty Financial acquired $2 million in its native token.



“Movement has not purchased any WLFI tokens or engaged with WLF,” a Movement Labs spokesperson told Blockworks.



The message shared with Blockworks says token swap candidates will participate in an initial meeting followed by a video meeting with World Liberty Financial co-founder Zak Folkman to finalize the deal.&nbsp;



Folkman and fellow World Liberty Financial co-founder Chase Herro previously built Dough Finance, a crypto platform that was hacked for $2 million in July 2024, CoinDesk previously <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/09/03/inside-the-trump-crypto-project-linked-to-a-2m-defi-hack-and-former-pick-up-artist">reported</a>. The pair launched World Liberty Financial alongside real estate magnate and Trump associate Steve Witkoff.



Folkman, Herro and World Liberty Financial did not return direct messages sent to multiple social media accounts seeking comment.



World Liberty Financial’s token swap deal is currently running on a “first come first serve” basis, the message notes, although the Trump-backed platform is “prioritizing projects with the strongest technical metrics, mindshare, [and] willingness to do larger tickets than USD $10M.”



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Trump-backed World Liberty Financial courts crypto teams for token swaps

Jeff Albus

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">subscribe</a>.



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Crypto rideshare has died…again.&nbsp;



Teleport — a decentralized rideshare startup — promised lower prices for riders, higher earnings for drivers and bountiful rewards for early adopters. But on Thursday, the project <a href="https://x.com/teleportxyz/status/1885032072722464785">shut down</a>, run aground trying to make the business work.&nbsp;



Fellow OGs, I sense your déjà vu. <a href="https://x.com/ArcadeCityHall/status/1388669140718731268">Arcade City</a>, <a href="https://x.com/lazoozorg/status/982024458138513408">La’Zooz</a>, <a href="https://x.com/ChasyrDAO/status/1398323214930124805">Chasyr</a>, Ridecoin and more have all attempted to break Uber and Lyft’s stranglehold using blockchain-based incentives. Somehow, each has failed to gain social purchase.



Like <a href="https://x.com/veradittakit/status/1877386098726547838">a lot</a> of DePIN projects, the crypto rideshare concept depends on collective belief and a functional labor market. Projects face an uphill battle when participants can’t be sure who they’re working with, whether incentives will remain stable or whether the system itself will exist in six months. Plus, engagement in an actual ecosystem requires real work and participation. Yuck.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The slow death of usefulness</h2>



Sadly, it seems a lot of folks have lost the love of substance that the blockchain community once prized. An utter lack of social accountability has long transformed trust into a liability and utility into a sucker’s bet. It only takes a glance at crypto&#8217;s timeline to see how we got here.



Bitcoin offered scarce digital money with transparent ownership — real utility with tangible value. Altcoins followed, <a href="https://x.com/SatoshiLite/status/1446159273633800192">building first</a> and assigning value second. Then came ICOs, where mere ideas replaced the need to actually deliver working products, and NFTs, where hype fully eclipsed the promise of any actionable use case whatsoever (beyond feigned social hierarchy).&nbsp;



Identifying problems became more profitable than solving them, and the space shifted from innovation to speculation.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">And then there were memecoins</h2>



Memecoins don’t pretend to have real-world use cases, and that’s the point. They embrace chaos as a form of economic rebellion. Everything down to the puckishness with which participants insist upon calling the people behind these assets &#8220;devs&#8221; is an act of performative irony.&nbsp;



Utility is a liability because it requires belief over time. Meme-based assets, on the other hand, are fully self-aware vehicles, operating in a no-holds-barred race to the exit. They&#8217;re fast, they&#8217;re easy and they make losing fun.



Meanwhile, attempts to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-leaders-insist-on-memecoin-utility">sneak utility</a> into memecoins have flopped. McAfee’s AI memecoin tanked mid-AMA the moment its upcoming product suite was <a href="https://x.com/diosHD_/status/1885067326753546278">mentioned</a>. The Venmo founder’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tech-players-interested-in-memecoins">JellyJelly soared</a>, then cratered 75% the instant its creator <a href="https://x.com/jellyvideochats/status/1885378084712436209">hinted</a> at a roadmap.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Reputation as the missing piece</h2>



So why are promises of tangible value and effort so anathema to the current movement? Well, the optimism of belief is gone. We have so far failed to create sustainable methods of accountability, leaving investors to gamble in the dark. As a result, real builders have become indistinguishable from grifters looking for a quick cash grab.



So why even bother? Just throw another $1000 on Fartcoin and call it a day.



Looking back, we probably should have built Sybil-proof reputation systems in tandem with smart contracts and made blind trust a fundamental cornerstone of Web3 architecture. If we had methods to trace builders&#8217; reputations, reveal asset distributions across a reputability mesh, and flag early mass exits based on transparent behavioral data, we might have preserved faith in long-term utility instead of fueling an endless cycle of speculation.&nbsp;



Anonymity without accountability breeds chaos. And until that balance is restored, utility will always be a losing bet.



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Crypto’s rideshare dreams crash again

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">subscribe</a>.



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The Senate has wasted no time in starting the confirmation process for President Trump’s Cabinet hopefuls.&nbsp;



Three of his more controversial nominees faced questions on Capitol Hill yesterday: RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel. They are up for health secretary, director of national intelligence and FBI director, respectively.&nbsp;



RFK Jr.&#8217;s two days of hearings mostly focused on his past comments on vaccinations, highlighting some of his more contentious views that even some Republicans can’t get behind.&nbsp;



“Your past of undermining confidence in vaccines with unfounded or misleading arguments concerns me,” Sen. Bill Cassidy said Thursday, adding at the end of his questioning that he still needs to consider how he’ll vote.&nbsp;



Gabbard, former Democratic congresswoman-turned-MAGA-celebrity, faced criticism from both sides. Dems and Reps alike wanted Gabbard to explicitly denounce Edward Snowden as a traitor, which she refused to do.&nbsp;



Intelligence Committee members also had the opportunity to question Gabbard behind closed doors. The vote to advance her confirmation will also be private, although some Republicans are pushing for a public vote, which, in theory, would pressure the party to support Trump.&nbsp;



Of the three, Patel seems to have the most outward Republican support — or at the very minimum, the least Republican opposition. Democrats however were concerned with Patel’s past comments on a range of right-wing touchpoints, including his praise of Jan. 6 rioters and support of QAnon influencers.&nbsp;



“I have no interest, no desire, and will not, if confirmed, go backwards,” Patel said in response to concerns that he’d abuse his position. “There will be no politicization at the FBI. There will be no retributive actions taken by any FBI.”



Howard Lutnick, who’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/trump-nominates-commerce-dept-leader">vying to become</a> commerce secretary, faced senators on Wednesday. The Senate Commerce Committee is set to vote on Lutnick on Feb. 5.&nbsp;



Notably, Lutnick confirmed his firm Cantor Fitzgerald has a convertible bond with cryptocurrency&nbsp; company Tether. It was the first time he has publicly acknowledged the financial institution’s ties to the stablecoin issuer.&nbsp;



Lutnick also said that he would sell “everything,” including his personal assets and business interests, should he be confirmed for the position.&nbsp;



Several Democrats, including Sens. Maria Cantwell and John Hickenlooper, questioned Lutnick about Tether, bringing up concerns about the stablecoin’s reserves and how it could be used by illicit actors.&nbsp;



“Tether <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tether-denies-government-investigation">did no business</a> with anyone that wasn’t KYC appropriate,” Lutnick said, adding that the public nature of the blockchain makes tracking illicit transactions easier.&nbsp;



With Republicans’ 53-47 majority, the GOP can only afford to lose three votes on any confirmation should all Democrats oppose <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/donald-trump-cabinet-selection">Trump’s picks</a>.&nbsp;



Outside of confirmation hearings, senators are also scheduled to address a key pain point for much of the cryptocurrency industry: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-teams-analyze-debanking-narrative">debanking</a>. The Banking Committee next week will host its first <a href="https://www.banking.senate.gov/hearings/investigating-the-real-impacts-of-debanking-in-america">hearing</a> on the topic. On the witness list is Anchorage Digital CEO Nathan McCauley.&nbsp;



Over in the House, the Financial Services Committee will host a <a href="https://financialservices.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=409451">hearing</a> on Feb. 6 on “<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/operation-choke-point-2-0">Operation Choke Point 2.0</a>,” which the industry has taken to calling the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/chokepoint-2-0-efforts-effective">alleged targeted attack</a> on crypto companies and their access to banking services. Witnesses have not yet been published.&nbsp;



Unplug this weekend — there’ll be plenty of political drama to follow next week.



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