Arthur Hayes says stealth Fed support for the yen could expand dollar liquidity, weaken the DXY, and mechanically push Bitcoin and majors to new highs. Summary Hayes outlines a “Woomph” scenario where the NY Fed and U.S. Treasury quietly create dollar reserves to buy yen and JGBs, shoring up Japan’s bond market. He argues any…
Jerome Powell and the Fed are set to hold rates at 3.5%–3.75% despite Trump pressure, leaving Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana rangebound as traders focus on Powell’s tone over future cuts. Summary The Fed’s first 2026 meeting comes after three 25 bp cuts and is widely expected to keep rates at 3.5%–3.75%, despite political pressure for…
Tether has built the world’s largest non-sovereign gold hoard in a Swiss bunker, buying more than a ton a week to harden USDT and XAUT against fiat risk. Summary A Cold War-era Swiss bunker now anchors Tether’s reserves, with bullion flows of “more than a ton of gold” a week turning the issuer into a…
Chinese national Jingliang Su was sentenced to 46 months in US prison for laundering $36.9M in a USDT-based pig-butchering scheme that funneled victim funds via Deltec to Cambodia. Summary Prosecutors say Su helped an international network move over $36.9M from US bank accounts into a Deltec Bank account before converting it to USDT and sending…
Japan’s FSA plans strict bond rules for yen stablecoins, reshaping reserves, JGB demand, and megabank-led digital yen settlement projects. Summary FSA draft rules demand top-rated foreign bonds from 100T-yen issuers as stablecoin collateral, with consultation open until Feb. 27, 2026. New guidelines tighten oversight of banks, intermediaries and foreign stablecoin issuers, while allowing JPYC-style yen…
A US winter storm knocked Bitcoin hashrate to a 7‑month low as miners powered down to ease grid stress, even as BTC, ETH and SOL prices stayed relatively calm. Summary A powerful US winter storm drove Bitcoin hashrate down about 40% in two days to roughly 663 EH/s, before a rebound toward 854 EH/s. Miner…
Large Cardano holders added 454.7m ADA over two months, lifting their share of supply as small retail wallets sold into market weakness and cut exposure. Summary Wallets with 100k–100m ADA boosted holdings by 454.7m tokens, growing supply share from 66.3% to 67.53%. Sub-100 ADA wallets sold about 22k tokens, trimming their slice of circulating supply…
ERC-20 stablecoin market cap on Ethereum just fell $7b in a week, signaling investors may be exiting crypto entirely instead of rotating risk. Summary ERC-20 stablecoin market cap on Ethereum dropped about $7b in a week, ending months of steady expansion. Darkfrost’s CryptoQuant data shows growth stalled, then flipped into the first sharp decline of…
Vitalik Buterin reverses his 2017 stance, arguing zk-proofs now make “mountain man” full verification a real fallback as Ethereum stress-tests decentralization. Summary Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin revisits a 2017 clash with Ian Grigg, now favoring designs where users can fully verify state instead of outsourcing trust to nodes and devs. He calls ZK-SNARKs a “magic…
Base’s Jesse Pollak rules out using Base funds to pump tokens, insisting on lawful, transparent, organic price discovery. Summary Pollak says using Base funds to push token prices would be illegal and kill market trust. He backs fair, transparent incentives but rejects covert price support or coordination. Debate reflects wider meme market pump-and-dump problems and…
