Good Morning,

Rug Baby, Rug.

Here's a quick preview of today’s content: Where do we even begin … Argentina president in hot water over rug pull, anon employee burns millions of ETH to send a message of apparent mind control, State Street looks towards crypto custody next year, Blockchain.com makes moves for IPO, Pump.fun goes mobile, and so much more.

This might go down as the craziest weekend in all of crypto

Happy Tuesday, Let’s dive in.

Market Snapshot

As of 2/17/2025. Data per CoinMarketCap.

  • The Libra token briefly rose to a peak market capitalization of $4.56 billion at 10:30 pm UTC on Feb. 14 before falling over 94% to the current $257 million market cap in just 11 hours since the token debuted for trading on decentralized exchanges, Dexscreener data shows.

    • Make sure to check out our ‘Chart of the Day’ below to see the hourly candles drop at the bottom of the newsletter

Headline Roundup
The major headlines driving crypto markets

  • Argentina’s president Javier Milei launched a memecoin 'LIBRA' which surged to $4B before crashing 89% – now he is facing criminal charges that could impeach him (FT)

  • Hayden Davis (Milei’s Memecoin Advisor) said he has $100M stemming from the failed launch of LIBRA but then went on a spree of committing crimes when questioned by Dave Portnoy live on stream that you can view here

  • An anonymous programmer burned $7M worth of ETH with and inscription claiming military powers are using brain-computer interfaces to control citizens (DC)

  • Apple is rumored to be working on humanoid robots for its smart home ecosystem (DC) 

  • UAE SWF Mubadala Investment acquires $436M of BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF (DC) 

  • Coinbase's 2024 revenue hits $6.1B, over double its revenue in 2023 (TB) 

  • SEC is set to review Greyscale’s Dogecoin ETF proposal (DC)

  • State Street plans to launch a digital asset custody business in 2026 (TB) 

  • Dave Portnoy mistakenly buys $170,000 of wrong LIBRA token, pumping it over 3,000% (TB)

  • A memecoin trader made over $10M trading Broccoli memecoins, which were named after CZ’s dog Broccoli (TB) 

  • The State of Wisconsin’s Investment Board now owns $336M of BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF (DC) 

  • Barclays discloses a $131M position in BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF (DC) 

  • US judge grants a 60-day pause in the SEC’s legal battle against Binance (DC) 

  • Blockchain.com hires two Wall Street executives as it moves toward an IPO (CD) 

  • Crypto exchange Bybit is removed from France’s AMF regulatory blacklist  (CD) 

  • Japanese energy consulting firm Remixpoint acquires $59M of crypto (CD) 

  • BitVM and Bitlayer bridge pave the way for Bitcoin's promised scalability (BM) 

  • Ethereum's core developers clash over disagreements on how to implement the EVM Object Format for its network upgrade (DC) 

  • TRUMP memecoin project to airdrop around $50 of tokens to buyers of Trump-branded products (TB)

  • CZ refutes Binance sale rumors but open to minority stake offers over time (CS)

  • MEMX, a US securities exchange, has asked the SEC for permission to list an XRP ETF as a “Commodity-Based Trust,” according to regulatory filings (DC)

  • Stablecoin Tether has agreed to help the Republic of Guinea explore the possibility of using blockchain and set up education programs on the technology (CT)

M&A Announcements

  • Tether acquires a minority stake in Italian football team Juventus Football Club (TB) 

  • Crypto venture fund 1confirmation acquires tokenized metaverse avatar IP Meebits (DC)

  • Hex Trust acquires Byte Trading to improve institutional offering (BN)

Launches

  • SafeMoon plans to launch a Solana memecoin (CD) 

  • Solana memecoin launchpad Pump.fun launches a mobile app (BW) 

Venture Capital

  • HashKey Group secures a $30M investment from Chinese VC Gaorong Ventures at a $1.5B valuation (TB)

  • Brevan Howard Digital backs on-chain financial portal Kinto with $20M (CN)

  • Mango Network announces $13.5M financing round from multiple funds including KuCoin Ventures, Becker Ventures, and more (CC)

  • GamerBoom closes $9M seed round from Mask Network, Metaverse Group, and others, for web3 gaming (CH)

  • FrodoBots Lab raises total $8M from Protocol VC, BBH, and others for Embodied AI research (CS)

Regulation

  • Italy’s Central Bank engages with crypto firms on regulation plans (CT)

  • Ripple CEO is bullish on bi-partisan crypto regulation (CS)

Cybersecurity

  • The FBI’s Operation Level Up has saved crypto-fraud victims $285M (DC) 

  • CluCoin NFT founder is sentenced to 27 months for stealing $1.1M from investors (TB) 

  • Las Vegas man is indicted for stealing $24M via a crypto mining Ponzi scheme (TB) 

  • Saudi Prince name used to promote crypto scam (CP)

  • The Hacker News covers weekly recap including crypto hacks (THN)

Extra Reads

Chart of the Day

$LIBRA token erased $4.4B worth of wealth in less than a day

Meme Dump

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