City Tycoon Games

Katherine Ross

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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The vibes may be off over on CT, but they’re not off for wrapped asset startup Universal, which exclusively told Empire about a $9 million round it raised led by a16z.&nbsp;



Universal Protocol was deployed roughly six months ago. According to Universal’s Austin Diamond — who’s also behind Alongside — the team’s been “really excited about the growth it’s seen since then.”



Which is understandable, given the metrics readily available via Dune. Since the launch, users have traded well over $800 million in uAsset volume.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdoFaDXz9cJ2hogUam6-l7fWAiqEjijcdRwS2BVpCCLGZpTNuFO1JTetznT6KCUu9W5sHtGufAHDE60lVNfuCjYUmIBP9d8lf74-zkqDbpRSoyvNP9Gzrib2j7JlW7Qa9dYbDxC9w?key=S6ZUtrpxMXUcwkCzW7EXNWHK" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://dune.com/universalasset/universal">Dune</a></figcaption></figure>



But let me back up quickly: The idea of Universal is kind of baked into the name, which is to make all kinds of tokens “tradable on crypto rails.”



&nbsp;“The goal with Universal is to make everything that we consider to be a crypto asset tradable with very deep liquidity on crypto rails, such that not only can end users just access any asset that they might be able to access on a centralized exchange but that any developer can use those,” Diamond explained.&nbsp;



So, Universal wraps the assets for users to trade. Taking it outside of crypto, Diamond likened it to bringing analog newspapers online.



“Historically speaking, none of those newspapers talk to each other. And now it&#8217;s like everything lives on a shared internet,” which is why Universal wants to make assets usable and tradable onchain.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfDuAnf03Cf90n3NfLOhcR-Jw47Cb60GH0k4jjia73jsI0PFrZJQ3NKKVceRwBD87rG2A2oPrZ68ervXjyAvoiqoX5qmS0K1VHh-orgMax5gRPAqr32KC7OSwWIaSuSkTo6L4mC?key=S6ZUtrpxMXUcwkCzW7EXNWHK" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://docs.universal.xyz/universal-protocol/introduction-to-universal/universal-asset-overview">Universal’s docs</a></figcaption></figure>



Diamond explained that this most recent funding round was a chance to once again work with partners — like a16z — and they pursued the round after Universal gained traction.&nbsp;



“We really reached kind of an inflection point on our growth, it felt like it was the right time to be in a position to pour gas on it, and so we view that money as fuel to be able to expand on what we&#8217;re doing. To date, we&#8217;ve launched largely through distributing new assets through other dapps. We want to continue to do that, but also want to drive more people to our front-end experience. And I think it felt like a good time for us” to raise now, Diamond explained. 



For the team, it’s “champagne problems” of having to scale up. It hasn’t been an easy road, Diamond noted…well, until they got “sufficient traction.”



“It was a very long and windy path to get there. I think once we&#8217;ve reached escape velocity and … We were lucky to have a long-standing relationship with a lot of our investors, and they trusted us. We were very upfront about the trials and tribulations over the course of the last couple of years. We came to them with [the] growth. There are real numbers here, here’s [what] our plans look like over the course of the next three, six months to six years,” he said.&nbsp;



Diamond’s dream is to make Universal’s offerings as “ubiquitous as wrapped bitcoin” which he admitted is not a simple task. But the goal is to break folks out of some of the “tribalism” and “divided factions” in crypto.&nbsp;



Perhaps that’s the next big narrative.



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Exclusive: Universal raises $9M in round led by a16z

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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One thing to note about Argentine President Javier Milei’s disastrous memecoin launch is that nothing about it was that unprecedented.



Every viral memecoin tends to pump before quickly losing value. So-called snipers have long been known to buy up new tokens before the broader public gets involved. Celebrities and “key opinion leaders” often engage with crypto on pay-to-play terms. Hell, two other presidents launched memecoins this past month.&nbsp;



When Melania Trump’s token pumped and dumped, the world moved on. Crypto doesn’t seem so willing to forgive and forget this time around. Maybe that&#8217;s because of how brazen the whole thing was.&nbsp;



LIBRA raced above $4 billion in market cap before dropping under $200 million in a matter of hours — a pump and dump far more drastic than, say, the MELANIA coin. After the fact, popular crypto figures spoke openly about trading on insider information. Barstool Sports CEO Dave Portnoy was <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/libra-memecoin-sausage-gross">allegedly refunded</a> the $5 million he put into LIBRA, a privilege not afforded to most traders who lost money.



And unlike the majority of celebrity memecoin launches, this one had real-world fallout attached. Most surprisingly, it was announced that Ben Chow, CEO of Jupiter-linked DeFi platform Meteora, chose to resign — although Chow and Jupiter’s pseudonymous CEO meow both maintain that he did nothing tangibly wrong apart from showing a “lack of judgement.” Meow said Jupiter would be hiring the tech law firm Fenwick &amp; West to investigate what happened.



Milei faces a lawsuit, Argentina’s stock market fell 5% after the opening bell yesterday, and SOL is down nearly 20% since Friday. KOLs started <a href="https://x.com/notthreadguy/status/1891635451011776953">issuing</a> mea culpas.



Crypto’s Twitterati is also very mad, and some are insistent that Solana needs to get back to focusing on constructive use cases like DePIN. It all feels a bit performative in the same way that investors and venture capitalists raced to explain why they never trusted Sam Bankman-Fried only after FTX went belly-up. I expect Kelsier Ventures CEO Hayden Davis — a LIBRA and MELANIA kingmaker who is doing a bizarre amount of media for someone accused of impropriety — to face some sort of legal action following all this collective ire.



But while lawyers will certainly rack up billable hours as a result of LIBRA, I doubt memecoin trading will take much of a hit. I asked Sphere CEO Arnold Lee whether he thinks the LIBRA fallout hints toward crypto finally drawing some sort of line on memecoins.



“An elephant never forgets, but crypto is not an elephant,” Lee said.



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LIBRA jumped the shark

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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One of the biggest Biden-era crypto enforcement actions may be on its way to resolution.&nbsp;



The SEC last week said its <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/new-sec-crypto-task-force">new crypto task force</a> “may affect and could facilitate the potential resolution” of the agency’s lawsuit against crypto exchange Coinbase.&nbsp;



The lawsuit, first filed in 2023, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-howey-question-second-circuit">was escalated</a> to the Second Circuit last month with Coinbase’s successful motion for an interlocutory appeal.&nbsp;



Basically, the SDNY (the federal court that handled SBF’s trial and many other ongoing crypto matters) decided that a higher court needs to step in to resolve a key question: Do intermediated crypto transactions involve investment contracts (i.e., transactions made on an exchange)?



If the answer to this question is yes, then that means crypto exchanges are facilitating securities transactions, which would be a problem.&nbsp;



On the one hand, a ruling from the Second Circuit on this question would bring a lot more clarity to the space. One of the biggest issues with crypto regulation and enforcement today is that district court judges, sometimes even from the same district, are taking different stances.&nbsp;



An appeals court ruling would provide more concrete precedent for <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/legal-pro-analyzes-coinbase-sec-ruling">future cases</a>. (The caveat here is the appeals process is long and expensive. And either party could keep appealing to higher courts should things not go their way.)



On the other hand, a definitive crypto policy stance from the SEC would be even better than legal precedent. “Better,” of course, is relative here. The agency could come up with something the industry opposes.&nbsp;



So lots of potential outcomes here. We’ll have to wait and see how it all shakes out.



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SEC says crypto task force could help end Coinbase suit

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 “tariff trade,” or the market volatility we’ve seen the past couple of weeks as investors evaluate <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-markets-tariff-reaction">tariff risks</a>, has overshadowed the tail end of earnings season.&nbsp;



But many analysts still think US equities have room to go higher.&nbsp;



President Trump’s threats have been delayed, not canceled. 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum tariffs are slated to start next month, and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/reciprocal-tariffs-may-be-coming">reciprocal tariffs</a> against a range of countries are still being designed, so the news cycle — and market — are likely to take a break from focusing on duties.&nbsp;



In the meantime, Big Tech stocks are just starting to recover from some post-earnings dips, but the S&amp;P 500 is still outperforming the Magnificent Seven.&nbsp;



Amazon’s web services business reported a 37% profit margin in Q4 2024 — an impressive feat, but investors weren’t sold. Shares fell more than 4% following the company’s report.&nbsp;



Microsoft was a similar story. Shares had their worst day since 2022 after execs reported Q4 earnings, even though figures for earnings per share and revenue came in higher than expected.&nbsp;



Google shares were down more than 8% after Alphabet missed on Q4 revenue.&nbsp;



Still, Sevens Report Research founder Tom Essaye says that as long as economic data continues to stay in the “Goldilocks” range, the market should prove resilient. Should the Fed signal that this pause is likely to continue for a long while, we could be in trouble.



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Earnings season takes back seat to interest rate, tariff concerns 

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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BTC was rather quiet again last week as various narratives seem to be pulling sentiment in different directions.



We then saw the asset’s price sink below $94,000 around 1 pm ET Tuesday — down more than 3% from seven days prior.



Crypto exchange volumes reached their lowest level since the US presidential election, Compass Point analysts said in a Tuesday note.&nbsp;



Last week, the US spot bitcoin ETFs had $580 million of net outflows, Farside Investors <a href="https://farside.co.uk/bitcoin-etf-flow-all-data/">data</a> shows — breaking a six-week inflow streak.



And yet, on the other side, we have Crypto Twitter lighting up at each sign of institutional buying. 13F filings (showing holdings of investment managers with at least $100 million AUM) have given us a glimpse into that.&nbsp;



There was the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund — Mubadala Investment Co. — holding $437 million of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), as of Dec. 31.



Meanwhile, the state of Wisconsin reported having nearly 6.1 million shares of IBIT in Q4 — roughly double the 2.9 million shares it had held the prior quarter.&nbsp;



There was also Tudor Investment Corp’s increased BTC <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/923093/000090266425001008/xslForm13F_X02/infotable.xml">position</a>. The Paul Tudor Jones-founded firm upped its 4.4 million shares of IBIT held in Q3 to 8 million shares (worth $427 million) in Q4.



This reminded me of a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/paul-tudor-jones-likes-bitcoin-as-portfolio-diversifier">piece</a> I wrote early in my Blockworks career. Jones, talking about bitcoin, said on CNBC’s Squawk Box at the time: “I like the idea of investing in something that’s reliable, consistent, honest and 100% certain.”


<div class="wp-block-image wp-duotone-grayscale">
<figure class="aligncenter is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXc3mYD6ITxck2yEVUWBYWLys1K0QJFO3rQnzTCmCiSTeivrPeqxOnCrEo-CrFW8EQIXDJPSpGvvzdjM7sIKFCgBtto6mcWMuiq305yTa-VEs-6l0U45umwjsbwKvTLDt1mysWqMrA?key=Y3ev__dZt6jpCFns2ttWkIiP" alt="" style="width:572px;height:auto"/></figure></div>


Jones noted allocations of 5% in gold, 5% in bitcoin, 5% in cash and 5% in commodities at that point before considering other positions based on Fed actions, etc.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



The billionaire then <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/paul-tudor-jones-bitcoin-looming-recession">said</a> in October 2023 that gold and BTC “probably take on a larger percentage of your portfolio” given the macro picture and geopolitical tensions.&nbsp;



So, based on past comments, Tudor’s hefty IBIT position reveal is not exactly surprising. But this bitcoin vehicle being among the firm’s largest single positions is certainly noteworthy.&nbsp;



Going back to price action, BTC remains well off its all-time high around $109,000.&nbsp;



Mike Marshall, Amberdata’s head of research, noted that liquidity is accumulating around the $95,000 mark “with smart money positioning and retail making small purchases.”&nbsp;&nbsp;



He attributed BTC’s “quiet phase” to investors waiting for clearer economic data [and] <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-friendly-congress-steps-into-power">policy</a> and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/top-signals-of-this-cycle">renewed</a> market confidence.&nbsp;



“Better CPI results for February and resolution of tariff uncertainty could trigger this,” Marshall noted.



BTC&#8217;s recent low-volatility profile mirrors those seen in September/October 2023, as well as those in February, June and October of 2024, Compass Point’s Ed Engel and Joe Flynn argued.&nbsp;



“Pronounced volatility” followed each of those four periods, they added, with price moving upward three times.



“Crypto prices often rally into the spring before declining into summer,” Engel and Flynn wrote. “BTC&#8217;s [$92,000] cost basis for short-term holders still provides strong support.”



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BTC sinks after a quiet week. But now what?

Kate Irwin

This is a segment from The Drop newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://thedrop.beehiiv.com/subscribe">subscribe</a>. 



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The Open Network, aka TON, made a splash with Telegram games and crypto integrations built on top, like with NOTcoin, which has seen over $1 billion in total volume traded since its launch.



A TON app page lists over 570 different gaming-related TON apps, which is a staggering number for any chain. But are the games on TON any good — and where does the TON ecosystem go from here?



“It’s been a hell of a ride,” Ivan Gusev, head of fun at TON NFT marketplace Getgems, tells me.



The games that launched on TON in 2024 are very early-stage right now. Jack Booth, co-founder of TON Society, an organization that contributes to TON, tells me he believes the games that release in 2025 and beyond will be evolved — hopefully better — versions of what we’re seeing now.



The tokens launched via TON and Telegram also don’t have much staying power. The games are typically very simple, using “tap-to-earn,” spinning a roulette, or other play-to-earn methods.



“The sustainable token model is something that I think these games will start to implement,” Booth said, noting that in his view, crypto in general has been too much about price speculation thus far.



In addition to playing games to earn altcoins, Telegram users can also buy Telegram usernames, profile decals, stickers, and more via TON as NFTs using the TON cryptocurrency.



Telegram has begun using TON for its own products and ads without notifying TON builders, Booth said. Telegram doesn’t tell TON what it’s going to do or when, creating a symbiotic but disjointed relationship.



Booth and Gusev both separately told me that TON builders like themselves have “zero relationship” with Telegram.



“We don’t know Telegram’s plans. I’m pretty sure Pavel doesn’t know Telegram’s plans,” Gusev tells me with a smile, referring to Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov. “They operate in chaos.”



Despite that chaos, however, TON builders like Booth and Gusev are confident that keeping TON tied to Telegram is the best move.



This is primarily because Telegram already has so many users — billions, in fact, many of whom like crypto. And user acquisition and growth is arguably one of crypto’s biggest hurdles.



Booth sees 2025 as a year where more favorable US regulation could mean the Telegram Wallet may become available in the US “very soon.”



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Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.



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TON builders reveal there’s ‘zero relationship’ with Telegram

Macauley Peterson

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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Blockworks has published <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ftx">520 articles</a> on FTX over the years, including a play-by-play of the exchange’s implosion <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/the-last-10-days-in-the-ftx-saga-a-timeline">and its aftermath</a>.



Given the company’s scale and influence, the FTX bankruptcy was <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ftx-is-bankrupt-but-you-can-still-trade-crypto-there">a surreal experience</a> for those of us working full-time in crypto in November 2022.



But down it went! And for the thousands of customers left with assets stranded in bankruptcy limbo, it was painful. At the time, I don’t think anyone would’ve expected that two years and three months later, creditors would be seeing 120% recovery of those funds. (Yes, yes, I know — only in depreciated nominal terms from the petition date — and many have missed out on realizing gains from the bull market of 2023-24, but still…)



It could have been a lot worse.



Unsecured creditors typically recover a fraction of their claims in bankruptcy cases. FTX paying effectively 9% interest on the USD value is a rare outcome.



At any rate, creditor payments are now flowing. According to multiple members of the “FTX 2.0 coalition” Telegram group, Kraken — one of two official distribution partners for the FTX estate — credited accounts on schedule around 10:00 am ET. Many claimants who selected BitGo are still waiting as its website is apparently buckling under the traffic influx — though that should be short-lived.



Around $1.2 billion in total is eligible to be paid to creditors with claims under $50,000. But for now, that will only include creditors who completed all preliminary steps including KYC with FTX — I’ve seen 70% or so mentioned — and around a third of those claims (an <a href="https://x.com/sunil_trades/status/1891821557338538468">estimated</a> $400m worth) were resold. That money is most likely not coming back into crypto.



So, let’s assume $400 million will be available to original FTX users today. What will they do with that cash?



Given the current market sentiment, I’d bet they won’t put it all back into the market. And perhaps not even most of it. No matter where you think bitcoin is going long term, or what your views are on a “super cycle,” you have to at least entertain the possibility that the top is in for a good long while. Folks who were burned by FTX — uncertain for years whether they would see any of that money — are prone to be cautious.



<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">$1.2b worth of FTX distributions going out today Where does the money go? &#8211; Surely some goes to mending wounds. Straight into repaying debts and cash. &#8211; Everyone is exhausted with memecoins and in extension SOL. &#8211; ETH on a relative basis has gone nowhere. &#8211; AI just did -90%.… <a href="https://t.co/qd5hwYVS7r">https://t.co/qd5hwYVS7r</a>&mdash; hansolar (@hansolar21) <a href="https://twitter.com/hansolar21/status/1891661657660850526?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 18, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Not everyone agrees. Mena Theodorou, co-founder at crypto exchange Coinstash, suggests Solana (SOL) may be a major beneficiary.



“FTX’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sam-bankman-fried-crypto-portfolio">historic investments in SOL</a> and the Solana ecosystem make it likely that some of these funds will flow back into the network, especially since SOL has been a standout performer, rising over 500% in the past year, with strong onchain activity and developer growth continuing to fuel demand,” Theodorou told Blockworks.



I’m not so sure. In the wake of the latest <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/libra-latest-solana-memecoin-episode">memecoin scandal</a>, SOL has now broken through a key daily support level on both the USD and BTC charts. For aggressive dip buyers, this arguably could be an opportunity, but for many it’s time to panic.



Even if I’m wrong on the trader psychology, this isn’t likely to be the big liquidity injection that some have been hoping for. The vast majority of the claims in nominal terms are those greater than $50k — some $17b worth — and for any of that to re-enter crypto we’ll have to wait at least a few months longer.



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FTX payouts begin, but will creditors buy back in?

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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Kanye West. J.K. Rowling. Woody Allen. Some find it nearly impossible to separate art from artist.



Crypto markets are struggling with something similar about Solana. While there are all sorts of use cases for the chain that don’t have anything to do with highly manipulated memecoins, SOL is still getting punished for the LIBRA debacle — which all happened on Solana.



Since LIBRA insiders pumped and dumped the coin on Friday evening (supposedly to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/libra-memecoin-sausage-gross">outsnipe the snipers</a> waiting to capitalize first), SOL has tanked by as much as 18%.



It’s rebounded slightly since but the damage is clear, especially considering BTC and ETH are mostly even over the same period. SOL now has a $83.4 billion market cap, just over half that of XRP.



Meteora is tied to both Jupiter — though it’s said that the two have been positioned independently over the past year — and LIBRA. JUP, the native token for Solana DEX aggregator Jupiter, has also shed as much as 24%.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfUhy5p_b413tBM0t9o3mP24arRq7RoOF69aRpkIrMs6t7Fu8LqA5aGJXM-U04MhEeZ5HkJMV-CNKnuJwntLu68XyoTTOEw38ZxYBYG3xpqUDSx75DuI_kPxu5i9wqopYuNI99ldA?key=NsXOV3_qihTu7KComdTDSng6" alt=""/></figure>



The chart above plots price action for six coins throughout the LIBRA launch starting almost two days earlier: TRUMP (orange), MELANIA (yellow), ETH (green), SOL (purple) and JUP (pink).



LIBRA’s market cap is otherwise shown by the blue area in the front.&nbsp;



What’s peculiar is that TRUMP, JUP and MELANIA rallied hard leading up to LIBRA’s sudden appearance, with the former reaching as high as 54% just four hours before LIBRA launched, and JUP as much as 17%.&nbsp;



Those trajectories changed one or two hours before LIBRA hit the chain and have been trending downward ever since the scandal broke out.&nbsp;



Jupiter, in a <a href="https://x.com/JupiterExchange/status/1891181433588470052">statement</a> on X, described plans to launch LIBRA as an “open secret in memecoin circles.” The team says it has conducted an internal investigation and found no evidence of insider trading.



We’ll probably never know if the pre-LIBRA pumps were coincidences. But it’s obvious that the market finds it all convenient enough to bundle them all together under one roof — the Solana memecoin complex, as Galaxy’s Thorn put it — and it’s indeed valued much lower than before, at least over the short term.



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Crypto market no longer able to separate memecoins from Solana

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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“I spread the word,” Argentine President Javier Milei <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-18/milei-denies-wrongdoing-in-his-first-defense-of-crypto-debacle?embedded-checkout=true">reportedly said</a> in a TV interview yesterday defending his promotion of Libra.&nbsp;



Milei seems pretty set in denying any wrongdoing in the Libra fiasco, despite promoting the coin on his own social media and watching it tumble more than 90% overnight after briefly hitting a $4.5 billion market cap.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe8GIPSGkx-88qnIc7B2M--ZTy2yEKXlMz3dDSLktcioIoPm4QhaKSvVNN8xR7KbR5uu8blfXBBF4iR_Gd_ePp6KZXK7dIEsWcW1-3bhJD0TCg8CoYNqQQLTblQfXklzH5J37Zdeg?key=NsXOV3_qihTu7KComdTDSng6" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A quick timeline for those of you who didn’t catch <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/libra-memecoin-sausage-gross">David’s write-up on LIBRA</a> Monday morning</figcaption></figure>



For Milei, who admitted he’s not an “expert,” the lack of judgment here is potentially career-damaging. And my use of “potentially” there is generous given Milei’s excuse that his specialty is “economic growth, with and without money.”&nbsp;



Monday morning saw the S&amp;P Merval index — the benchmark stock market index for Argentina — fall over 5%. Mind you, for the folks who don’t keep up with the Argentinian economy, it just <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/c92c1c71-99e7-49c1-b885-253033e26ea5">exited</a> a recession.



As Galaxy’s Alex Thorn pointed out, this is just the latest Solana memecoin debacle after TRUMP and MELANIA earlier this year. And that’s going to lead to some potentially painful questions.&nbsp;



“While a souring memecoin narrative had already begun following the liquidity suck caused by $TRUMP’s launch, the fallout from the $LIBRA launch and dump could result in further destruction of the memecoin complex, thus reducing the market’s need to hold SOL,” Thorn wrote in a note.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd6XO8BqFjXWswufoDMlmXxppNsvECbUIlxfQXhNhMR2STSkNYBZvEOrgjm9x8sAOmLXa_39Wpl6H5MiYXI67Wwk4c8tBTlPpoCjSMkYHUfH2Sz8DhwpQAVU10mO2VJ6js1zWN9yQ?key=NsXOV3_qihTu7KComdTDSng6" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A look at SOLUSD</figcaption></figure>



This saga, however, has all the drama: A president in hot water, onchain data showing insider selling, and — as of late last night — an executive departure.&nbsp;



Ben Chow, co-founder of Meteora (which was used to create liquidity pools for LIBRA), resigned late Monday after the scandal.&nbsp;



Prior to Chow’s resignation, he said: “Meteora and I personally, have never received or managed any tokens on the side, do not receive knowledge or get involved with any offchain dealings, and we keep to the highest levels of confidentiality for any token launch happening on our platform.”



<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">There have been questions regarding Meteora and my involvement in <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24LIBRA&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$LIBRA</a>, so I want to explain our role and share why we work with 3rd parties. Meteora and I personally, have never received or managed any tokens on the side, do not receive knowledge or get involved with any…&mdash; benchow.sol (@hellochow) <a href="https://twitter.com/hellochow/status/1891341548115149190?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 17, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Meow, who founded Jupiter and co-founded Meteora, said he believes Chow’s statement that there wasn’t any “financial inappropriateness in dealing with partners” but that he had “shown a lack of judgment and care about some of the core aspects of the project.”



For Thorn, this is just the latest “sordid episode of Solana’s memecoin complex.”



<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">Hi, I’m meow from Jupiter, and I also cofounded Meteora. Firstly, I’d like to reiterate my confidence that no one at Jupiter or Meteora committed any insider trading or financial wrongdoing, or received any tokens inappropriately. Secondly, we are hiring an independent 3rd…&mdash; meow (🐱, 🐐) (@weremeow) <a href="https://twitter.com/weremeow/status/1891664435321647186?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 18, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Here’s the thing: There’s now a pattern of memecoin launches tied to political figures and I can’t be the only one watching it take place with discomfort.&nbsp;



There’s no denying that memecoins have had quite the run, but — as Thorn pointed out — this type of activity could just lead to the market reducing overall positions in SOL.&nbsp;



Which leaves me wondering: Where do we go from here?



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LIBRA’s the latest ‘sordid episode’ of Solana memecoins: Galaxy

Jeff Albus

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Every great innovation starts with a problem. For Solana, the issue was obvious. Blockchains were too slow, expensive and unapproachable for mainstream adoption. Ethereum struggled with congestion, Bitcoin was too rigid for complex applications, and no one else had made any meaningful strides to address the scalability problem. For one engineer, this would become an all-consuming technical challenge, leading him on a mission to build his own decentralized network capable of processing transactions at internet speed.



In 2017, Anatoly Yakovenko, a seasoned Qualcomm engineer, turned his attention to Web3. He was drawn by its potential to decentralize finance and reshape the internet. While the technology was promising, blockchain had begun to atrophy under a fatal flaw after nearly 10 years of relative triumph: It was too slow to scale. This inefficiency was a fundamental bottleneck. It was clearly preventing mass adoption in fields like real-time gaming, decentralized finance, physical infrastructure networks, AI inference and autonomous machine coordination.



The issue was that blockchains lacked a built-in clock. Each node in a decentralized system confirmed transactions sequentially, requiring network-wide agreement before finalization. This&nbsp; process was sluggish, and it made blockchain unfit for high-speed applications. Yakovenko’s breakthrough came with the introduction of proof-of-history (PoH), a conceptual cryptographic method that timestamps transactions before they enter the block, creating a verifiable sequence of events.



Unlike traditional validation — where nodes process transactions in sequence — PoH enabled simultaneous processing. This innovation was rocket fuel for efficiency, unlocking unprecedented throughput and eliminating congestion. Yakovenko assembled a team of engineers, including Greg Fitzgerald (also from Qualcomm) and Raj Gokal. They founded Solana Labs in 2018, inspired by the California beach town where Yakovenko spent time surfing.



In its early days, Solana Labs was bootstrapped through private fundraising rounds and raised approximately $20 million from venture capitalists and early crypto investors. The team built and tested a prototype network, proving PoH’s potential with benchmarks demonstrating over 50,000 transactions per second — many orders of magnitude faster than Ethereum and Bitcoin.



Solana officially launched its mainnet beta in March 2020, right as the Covid-19 pandemic sent global markets into chaos. Despite the timing, the network gained traction among developers and investors attracted to its promise of high-speed, low-cost transactions. The ability to process transactions for fractions of a cent made it an ideal platform for DeFi applications, gaming platforms and a multitude of experimental decentralized tools — all of which had, up until that point, been constrained by Ethereum’s slow speeds and high gas fees.



In June 2021, Solana Labs secured a $314 million funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Polychain Capital. The legitimacy this runway brought the ecosystem allowed for rapid expansion and innovation. Solana soon became home to Serum (a DEX), Raydium (an AMM liquidity provider), Mango Markets (a margin trading protocol) and more. The end of 2021 saw the Solana price surge to highs of $260 — up from $0.50 just 18 months before — cementing its status as a top-five cryptocurrency by market cap. Investor confidence soared, and Solana’s momentum appeared unstoppable. By the end of 2021, Solana had evolved from an ambitious experiment into a major force within the crypto space. However, beneath its meteoric rise lay unseen challenges that would soon test the network’s resilience and stability. Next time: The fall. How the collapse of one of crypto’s biggest players sent shockwaves through the Web3 ecosystem, and why many believed Solana wouldn’t survive.



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Solana’s origins: Turning an idea into reality

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Grayscale Investments has historically had a four-stage lifecycle for its products. A recent Cardano ETF filing signals that could be changing as <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-friendly-congress-steps-into-power">regulatory winds shift</a>.



The company typically first goes with private placement launches for accredited investors (like the Dogecoin Trust it launched a couple weeks ago).



Step two is obtaining public quotations for unrestricted shares of those private placements.



Grayscale then makes its products SEC-reporting companies, subjecting them to more disclosure and regulatory oversight.&nbsp;



Finally, it looks to uplist its products to an ETF when the regulatory environment allows for it (think last year’s conversions of GBTC and ETHE).



“Given the environment is rapidly evolving before our eyes, there may now be a few shortcuts appearing,” said Nate Geraci, president of The ETF Store.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Indeed, Grayscale appears to be skipping these steps in its quest to launch an ETF holding cardano (ADA). See NYSE’s 19b-4 filing for listing the planned product <a href="https://www.nyse.com/publicdocs/nyse/markets/nyse-arca/rule-filings/filings/2025/SR-NYSEArca-2025-12.pdf">here</a>.&nbsp;



Grayscale does not currently have a trust holding ADA. And so, the direct filing for an ETF could signal optimism the SEC “is now open for business” and could move quickly to approve more spot crypto funds beyond bitcoin and ether, Geraci said.



The firm did not return a request for comment.&nbsp;



Various fund managers have live proposals for ETFs holding litecoin, solana, XRP and other crypto assets. We recently reported on <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/litecoin-etf-approval-odds-2025">the possible odds</a> of those launching this year.



To Geraci’s point, Bryan Armour, a director of passive strategies research at Morningstar, said he expects Grayscale to file directly for ETFs if the firm expects approval. The private trust/OTC route only makes sense if funds holding those assets are deemed “unavailable” from a regulatory standpoint, he added.



Geraci doesn’t exactly agree on that second point.&nbsp;



From a competition perspective, Geraci explained, he likes the idea of Grayscale bringing a private placement offering to market first (like it did with its latest DOGE Trust).



“It offers them the ability to get a head start on attracting assets prior to converting into an ETF,” he explained. “They can essentially front-run the competition.”



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Planned Cardano ETF signals a Grayscale strategy shift?

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President Trump released a fresh batch of cabinet nominations late last week and among them are two names familiar to the crypto industry: Brian Quintenz and Jonathan Gould.



Quintenz is being tapped to run the CFTC and Gould is Trump’s pick for comptroller of the currency. Neither nomination hearing has been scheduled yet.&nbsp;



Quintenz served under Trump as a CFTC commissioner from 2017 to 2021. Most recently he’s been the policy lead at a16z crypto. Republican Commissioner Caroline Pham, also seen as a crypto advocate, has led the agency since Trump’s inauguration.&nbsp;



Quintenz mentioned crypto in a post on X last week thanking Trump for selecting him.&nbsp;



“The agency is also well poised to ensure the USA leads the world in blockchain technology and innovation,” Quintez wrote. “I look forward to working with President Trump’s incredible financial regulatory team.”



“Looking forward to more SEC-CFTC cooperation,” SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce replied, adding that “this time” the agencies will <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/new-sec-crypto-task-force">focus on crypto</a>.&nbsp;



Gould most recently practiced at Jones Day, a law firm that has represented Trump’s campaign. He served at the OCC as chief legal officer during Trump’s first term.&nbsp;



Prior to Jones Day, Gould had a brief stint as the chief legal officer of Bitfury, a crypto infrastructure company.&nbsp;



The crypto industry is fired up for a few reasons. First, these are two major positions in the financial regulation space — a space that in recent years has taken a harsh approach to crypto.&nbsp;



The OCC specifically supervises US banks, a sector of the financial industry many crypto companies have felt ignored by. These frustrations were brought to light during recent <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/congress-crypto-regulation-updates">Congressional hearings</a> unpacking so-called “<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/operation-choke-point-2-0">Operation Chokepoint 2.0</a>.”&nbsp;



Much of the crypto industry has also recently advocated for Congress to give more power to the CFTC to oversee the crypto industry. With Republicans in control of both chambers, this could be the year a market structure bill makes it over the finish line. Plus, Peirce’s comments signal that the agencies are not looking to get involved in a turf war.



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Latest Trump nominees have ties to crypto 

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In The Prestige, Michael Caine’s character John Cutter is a veteran illusion architect who knows how the magic sausage is made better than most.



As it goes, there are three parts to every great magic trick. And it actually runs analogous to LIBRA, the colossal screwup of a memecoin initially endorsed by renegade Argentine president Javier Milei.



<ol class="wp-block-list">
<li>“The Pledge” involves the magician showing the audience something ordinary, like a deck of cards, or in crypto’s case, a Solana memecoin.</li>
</ol>



<ol start="2" class="wp-block-list">
<li>“The Turn” sees the magician take that ordinary thing and make it do something extraordinary — like disappear (in LIBRA’s case, pump to a $4.5 billion market cap).</li>
</ol>



<ol start="3" class="wp-block-list">
<li>“The Prestige” involves returning the thing from the ether to complete the illusion. “Because making something disappear isn&#8217;t enough; you have to bring it back.”</li>
</ol>



LIBRA is stuck between stage two and three. After doing 20x in its first hour alongside Milei’s endorsement, LIBRA spectacularly crashed 97% over the next seven and is yet to rebound in any meaningful way.



The bulk of the collapse occurred as project insiders dumped upwards of $87 million worth of LIBRA, as tracked by Bubblemaps, leading Milei to distance himself from the project and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/15/world/americas/argentina-milei-crypto-trump.html">order an official investigation</a>.



<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"><a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24LIBRA&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$LIBRA</a> TEAM IS CASHING OUT They already made $87M by removing USDC and SOL from liquidity pools <a href="https://t.co/hRGnRPTDiE">https://t.co/hRGnRPTDiE</a> <a href="https://t.co/aiDmODKi6o">pic.twitter.com/aiDmODKi6o</a>&mdash; Bubblemaps (@bubblemaps) <a href="https://twitter.com/bubblemaps/status/1890567816752873794?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 15, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Instead of illusion ingénieur John Cutter spilling the beans on magic, we have memecoin fixer Hayden Davis, also known as Kelsier, telling us exactly what occurs behind the curtain.



Davis, in an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqizJTbxAEM">interview</a> with Coffeezilla overnight, described himself as the “launch strategist” for LIBRA, MELANIA and others. He says he’s now fearing for his safety and is unsure of what to do with all the money.



As Davis put it, anyone launching a memecoin in 2025 must fight against unseen forces that nobody has figured out how to beat: onchain snipers who will bid up fresh memecoins at the drop of a hat, only to dump them soon after on anyone buying into the pump they created, usually killing the project in the process.



Which is why Davis opted to snipe LIBRA and MELANIA first — max bidding tokens on the way up and unloading them on the way down, with the supposed intention to rebuy the token once again after the initial wave of external snipers had unloaded their clips.



“Every single time, the snipers walk away with $80 million, $100 million, $200 million, and they just disappear. Meanwhile, the project gets blamed, and so do I,” Davis told Coffeezilla.



&#8220;So do I think that sniping is the most ethical thing in the world? No. But do I think that anyone has figured out a better way to deal with it? Also no. If anyone has a better solution, I’d love to hear it. But nobody has given me one.&#8221;



It all makes fertile ground for an insider cabal to profit in secret, while the general public — albeit cognizant that they’re gambling in an onchain casino — is largely unaware of the rules of the game.



Davis, if he were Michael Caine starring in a crypto version of The Prestige, would say that the restorative third act LIBRA would involve imbuing it with some utility, magically turning it from empty memecoin into “SocialFi” offering with some intrinsic value.



“Like, imagine if you had big influencers, big figures like Dave (Portnoy) getting involved, and these tokens started cross-promoting each other, burning tokens, adding utility,” Davis said. “Then maybe there’s an actual chance that these projects could become part of a real SocialFi ecosystem.&#8221;&nbsp;



Dave Portnoy actually lost $5 million trading LIBRA, which Davis says he directly refunded shortly after.



<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">For the record I could care less that people know Hayden paid me back. I was fully planning on saying it on the live stream but he caught me off guard by texting me in the middle of it and asking me not to mention it. You can actually see my eyes read the text in real time… <a href="https://t.co/DR4pqpDKhS">pic.twitter.com/DR4pqpDKhS</a>&mdash; Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) <a href="https://twitter.com/stoolpresidente/status/1891285564713836830?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 17, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



In the meantime, Davis, who said he still believes Milei will turn back around and endorse the token again, says he’s holding onto the extracted capital as leverage as investigations start to play out.



Perhaps stranger things have happened, but maintaining the illusion of an impending climactic third act goes one step further than Sam Bankman-Fried did in his now-historic <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-25/sam-bankman-fried-described-yield-farming-and-left-matt-levine-stunned">interview</a> with Money Stuff’s Matt Levine in April 2022 — about eight months before his arrest.



Bankman-Fried had described yield farming tokens in matter-of-fact terms — black boxes that do “literally nothing” but were dressed up to look like a “life-changing, world-altering protocol that’s gonna replace all the big banks in 38 days or whatever.”



The more money was piled into those completely useless boxes, the higher token valuations went, making headway for early participants to massively profit off of newer entrants. That left Levine to summarize Bankman-Fried’s position as: “I&#8217;m in the Ponzi business and it&#8217;s pretty good.”



For what it’s worth, The Prestige dramatically ends with gruesome details about the lengths to which two magicians went to maintain their “disappearing man” illusions: a mass grave of drowned clones in one instance, and a wife that chose suicide over living with the deceit of being duped by her husband and his secret twin brother.



If crypto can’t move on from these types of predatory token launches, then its future could end up even gorier — tight regulation of memecoin launchpads by way of a US government agency. Yeuch.



Fingers crossed that it’s possible for Davis’ interview with Coffeezilla to be the deathknell for these types of memecoins, in the same way that the Bankman-Fried chat largely put an end to high emission yield farming.&nbsp;



I’m not sure crypto wants to be fooled anymore.



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LIBRA showed us how the memecoin sausage is made — it’s gross

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Solana is in love with memecoins, and it just got a Valentine’s Day gift.



The Solana memecoin launchpad pump.fun released a mobile app this morning, representing the viral platform’s first major update since it <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/pumpdotfun-suspends-livestream-feature">disabled livestreams</a> in November. It’s further confirmation that apps users can play with on their phones are becoming table stakes for crypto projects, roughly a month after Donald Trump embraced a mobile memecoin app for his <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/trump-memecoins-rock-solana">token launch</a>.



Perhaps true to form for a platform initially dubbed 4chan for memecoins, pump.fun mobile is a bit rough around the edges. The app’s onboarding process is quite smooth — I entered my email, and pump created a crypto wallet for me, courtesy of Privy — but I found it hard to land transactions without manually adjusting my priority fee and slippage.&nbsp;



By the time I got my transaction through on a dog-themed Valentine’s Day memecoin, early buyers had already nuked the chart to go invest in fresher tokens, and I was left holding a big bag of worthless dogwifrose.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcoOFc4I3lceVrDG41Y0T4fCJhJAWlAxf2u3Xli9Ikxt38hE_nYymGIsLoYaodAxSYlQRFmG_y-QuIfr6fRYWc-SIEWObsTw7YxOOe2STHlYVn41eylE982i2sjH731j3Slcg9xHA?key=tuvzs0i8J4eYRURHd5aQRSro" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Transactions failing as I tried to buy a memecoin called dogwifrose</figcaption></figure>



The app’s early users seem to be facing some of the same struggles. Pump.fun has a 2.5 star rating on Apple’s App Store and a 2.1 star rating on the Google Play Store (as a note, many of these reviews came before today’s public launch).&nbsp;



“Is it my internet or [is] the pumpfun app kinda slow,” one user asked on X.&nbsp;



Pump.fun going mobile doesn’t seem to be driving much new usage on day one. The platform has seen 27,000 token launches today, according to a Dune dashboard, which is currently down from a range of 48,000-54,000 daily token launches earlier this week.&nbsp;



Still, a mobile app is a longer-term play, and longtime readers of Lightspeed know that we have learned better than to bet against pump.fun’s continued success. A little more than a year after first launching, the platform has <a href="https://dune.com/adam_tehc/pumpfun">generated</a> around $548 million in revenue.  My gut tells me that to take the mantle from Moonshot — the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/jupiter-majority-stake-moonshot">Trump-favored and Jupiter-owned</a> mobile memecoin app — pump.fun will have to fix the mobile transaction landing woes, even if that means giving users slightly worse prices. Retail users hoping to hit a 100x trade likely wouldn’t be too rankled by a few extra percentage points of slippage if that means their transactions are actually making it to the blockchain.



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Pump.fun releases mobile app

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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President Trump yesterday said his team is off to the races with reciprocal tariffs. Advisers have been instructed to come up with new tariff levels that consider fees and taxes placed on US exports.&nbsp;



The timeline is a bit uncertain. But Commerce Secretary nominee <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/trump-nominates-commerce-dept-leader">Howard Lutnick</a> said the studies may be completed by early April. Lutnick, if confirmed, will work with the office of the US Trade Representative on establishing the new levies.&nbsp;



The import taxes, Trump said, will be designed on a country-by-country basis in order to offset tariffs on US exports and non-tariffs barriers, like exchange rates and value-added taxes.&nbsp;



Markets took Trump’s announcement well, a sign that his comments were not as bad as investors had feared, or at the very least it’s going to take several weeks for tariffs to be implemented. The S&amp;P 500 and Nasdaq Composite both reversed midway through Thursday’s session to close 1% and 1.3% higher, respectively.&nbsp;



The uncertainty around the nature of the tariffs and when they may start is going to leave investors uneasy. But generally, we expect talk of tariffs — and therefore market impact — to die down a bit over the few weeks while advisers conduct their trade studies.&nbsp;



In the meantime, it’s primarily going to be data moving markets. Next week we’ll get some key manufacturing numbers as well as the minutes from the Fed’s FOMC meeting last month, both of which will be useful in determining how long the interest rate-cutting cycle may be paused.



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Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.



Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/onthemargin">Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter</a>.



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Reciprocal tariffs may be coming, but markets don’t care much just yet 

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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When Coinbase reports its quarterly results, crypto and TradFi investors alike tend to tune in.&nbsp;



COIN, after all, is, in the words of Oppenheimer analysts, a gateway for customers to access Web3 given its “leading and focused position in crypto, which benefits the company as onchain becomes the new online.”



And it’s public — unlike some others <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-ipos-bringing-back-retail">waiting their turn</a>.&nbsp;



Onto the results from yesterday: The crypto exchange’s $2.2 billion of net revenue last quarter was up 143% year over year.



That was $305 million above Oppenheimer analysts’ estimate.



Transaction revenue was nearly $1.6 billion, a 172% increase from Q3. So-called subscription and services revenue grew 15% over that span, to $641 million.



The biggest surprise, Oppenheimer’s Owen Lau told me, was the higher-than-expected participation from the retail segment — showing such users are “gradually coming back.” See, for example, the “consumer” line in the chart below.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeWr-jn1FRkgNWITopySCbliiuEXeyLGEJSWnWOmv9gdlroXdqEw0R_XCJQdmmEZHpPdsSsJW4bk9D_HbhZ7i7QxyXKv_UjB9miz4OvdA6cjqNYeR3a2EP_kUliQ70dkU03JCjVeQ?key=pR55TriNLz_IB-A4BWeYJbgp" alt=""/></figure>



Sure, this was during a quarter where <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-all-time-high">bitcoin</a> and a number of <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-sets-all-time-high-of-263">other</a> crypto assets hit all-time highs following the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/donald-trump-declared-president-2024-election">victory</a> of Donald Trump and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-friendly-congress-steps-into-power">crypto-friendly</a> Congressional candidates.&nbsp;



But even as BTC has remained range-bound in recent weeks below its peak, Coinbase’s early 2025 numbers appear to be strong.



Its 2025 transaction revenue stood at $750 million as of Feb. 11, the company said. Coinbase is forecasting Q1 subscription and services revenue to slightly increase to between $685 million and $765 million.



On that point, Morningstar analyst Michael Miller said his eye will be on the exchange’s USDC revenue in Q1 given the stablecoin recently hitting an all-time high market cap.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“I’ll be curious to see what a full quarter will look like at its scale and if USDC continues to take market share away from other stablecoins,” Miller told me.



COIN’s price was around $278 at 2 pm ET — down nearly 7% on the day.&nbsp;



Oppenheimer’s price target for the stock is $388, while Miller believes the shares are “overvalued” as, post-election, “the market is pricing in too much growth.”



You might recall one of Bitwise’s 10 predictions for 2025 was <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/2025-crypto-industry-predictions">Coinbase surpassing Charles Schwab</a> as the world’s most valuable brokerage. The asset manager said it expects its stock will top $700 per share, citing continued growth in its stablecoin business, L2 Base, and staking and custody services.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Bitwise senior investment strategist Juan Leon has this November 2023 tweet pinned:



<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">How can <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24COIN&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$COIN</a> get to $1,000 in this <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/crypto?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#crypto</a> cycle? • 2023 Net Revenue Estimate: $2.6B • 2025 Net Revenue Estimate: $14.5B • 2023 Monthly Transacting Users Estimate: 8.5M • 2025 Monthly Transacting Users Estimate: 32M • 2023 Assets on Platform Estimate: $130B • 2025…&mdash; Juan Leon (@singularity7x) <a href="https://twitter.com/singularity7x/status/1729553963677053106?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 28, 2023</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Another catalyst to watch for, Lau said, is COIN’s possible inclusion in the S&amp;P 500.&nbsp;



And then, you know, all the potential regulatory tailwinds that come from having a pro-crypto president, Congress and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-chair-nominee-crypto-past">SEC</a>. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said “it’s hard to overstate the significance of this change” given it is likely to pressure increased crypto adoption worldwide.&nbsp;



“Up to 10% of global GDP could be running on crypto rails by the end of this decade,” Armstrong said on Thursday’s earnings call — noting Coinbase will be “the preferred partner” due to its “trusted and scalable infrastructure with the longest track record.”



The company said it’s chatting with regulators and legislators to help shape US crypto regulation.



The chance of a stablecoin bill and digital asset market structure bill passing in the 119th Congress? Compass Point’s Ed Groshans, in a Friday note, said 75% and 60%, respectively.



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Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.



Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/onthemargin">Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter</a>.



Get alpha directly in your inbox with the <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research">0xResearch newsletter</a> — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.



The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Subscribe to daily Solana news</a> from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

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