OVERVIEW

When I Stared Into The Abyss, It Didn’t Stare Back, It Gave Me A Hug And Reassuring Shoulder Squeeze 🫂

Before we dive in, here’s today’s crypto market heatmap:

And here’s a look at crypto’s total market and altcoin market cap charts:

REAL WORLD ASSET TOKENIZATION
Tokenized Gold Is Having a Moment - Several Moments, Actually 🪙

Tether announced this week that Elemental Royalty Corporation, a publicly listed gold royalty company, will allow shareholders to receive dividends denominated in XAU₮ - Tether's physical gold-backed token. 🥇 

It's the first time any publicly traded gold company has offered this option.

Paying dividends in tokenized gold means shareholders receive returns directly tied to the underlying asset, settled on-chain, without the friction of traditional commodity exposure.

Gold Chains

The tokenized gold market has climbed more than 80% in just three months, hitting $5.4 billion in market cap.

Wintermute, one of crypto's largest market makers, launched institutional OTC trading for PAXG and XAUT this week, citing Q4 2025 tokenized gold volume that surpassed five major gold ETFs combined at $126 billion.

Also, Streamex is launching GLDY on February 25 - a yield-bearing, gold-backed tokenized security targeting up to 4% annualized yield paid in additional gold monthly.

Serenity Labs dropped a multi-billion dollar dual-tokenization framework for precious metals built with Chainlink, targeting 100,000 ounces of gold in its first phase.

NatGold Digital just published a clean security audit from FYEO on its gold mining tokenization infrastructure - no critical findings, full remediation.

Not exactly what DeFi maxis and crypto degens wanted - but hey, at least this is something. 🤷 

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NEWS
Optimism's Worst Day Gets a Silver Lining Nobody Asked For 🤦

$COIN ( ▲ 2.0% )’s Base just broke up with $OP ( ▼ 4.48% ), and $etherfi ether.fi slid into the DMs almost immediately. One is a blockbuster exit. The other is a genuine win - just not the same size of win. 🤷 

On Tuesday, Base announced it's ditching the OP Stack in favor of a consolidated, self-operated "base/base" tech stack, citing a need for faster shipping and reduced complexity.

I’ve held the belief, and still do, that Optimism is the worst named crypto in history - just horribly named. Somewhere between its all-time high of $4.86 and the past two year it should have changed its name from Optimism to Pesimism, and right not it should just be called Corpse.

Anyway.

But, there is some positive news: ether.fi announced it's migrating its Cash product - a DeFi-powered neobank with a credit card and savings account - to OP Mainnet as an enterprise partner.

About 70,000 active cards, 300,000 accounts, and millions in user TVL are moving over. The product processes roughly 2,000 internal swaps and 28,000 spend transactions daily, averaging $2 million in spend volume, with those numbers doubling approximately every two months since launch.

But let's not oversell the symmetry here. Base leaving is a stadium-sized hole. ether.fi filling it is more like a good food truck showing up in the parking lot. Appreciated. Useful. Not the same thing.

Optimism needs wins right now. This is a win. It's just that the loss came first, came loud, and came with a -32% (since Sunday) price tag. 😶

NEWS
The $733K Swap That Should Make PoS Believers Uncomfortable 😱

I stake. A lot. Love the yield, love the rewards, love watching my bags slowly grow while I sleep. Been a PoS (you know, as I type that out and read it…) guy for a while now. So it's with great personal discomfort that I tell you this Stellar piece messed me up a little. 😶

An Ethereum user tried to swap $733,000 USDC for USDT. Same peg. Dollar for dollar. Should've been boring. Walked away with $19,000.

No hack. No bug. No rug. Just Ethereum working exactly as designed.

A bot spotted the pending transaction, bribed the block validator to cut in line, drained the liquidity pool, and collected the spread. The validator took the bribe because there's no rule against it.

This is MEV - Maximal Extractable Value - and if you've been treating it as a niche technical footnote, that $714,000 haircut suggests a reassessment is overdue.

Here's what stings - this is Stellars words, not mine: Proof-of-Stake sells "economic security" as its flagship feature - validators post collateral, get slashed for violations, skin in the game. Except slashing punishes protocol violations, not market abuse.

A validator can front-run every user in a block and produce a perfectly valid block. The protocol sees nothing wrong.

Stellar's NYSE analogy lands hard. Imagine the exchange seeing your buy order, front-running it with their own capital, then filling your order at the marked-up price. Federal case in regulated markets. Revenue stream with a cute acronym on PoS.

Stellar's model removes the extraction incentive entirely - no staking rewards, randomized transaction ordering, validators who run nodes because their own assets settle on the network. Franklin Templeton secures $650M in tokenized funds this way.

Stellar’s take is PoS infrastructure is designed to extract from users rather than serve them. And yeah, that's uncomfortable to type as a staker. 🥹

NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
AI, Stablecoins, & Privacy News 🕵️

🤖 Zano MCP Lets Your AI Agent Query a Privacy Blockchain and Execute Trades

Zano released an MCP server that gives Claude, Cursor, and other AI tools 45+ tools for querying blocks, checking wallets, and trading on the DEX - all without your wallet password touching the config. Three tiers: read-only with a public node, wallet monitoring, or full automation including transfers and ionic swaps. The security model keeps credentials in a separate terminal you control. Zano.

NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
Real World Asset Tokenization (RWA) News 🪙

🏦 Centrifuge and Pharos Team Up

Centrifuge and Pharos are building distribution infrastructure so institutional assets like tokenized Treasuries and AAA credit don't just sit on-chain collecting dust after issuance. The problem isn't tokenization - it's that most institutional products remain fragmented, passive, and impossible to use in DeFi. Pharos provides the execution layer; Centrifuge provides the assets. Centrifuge.

📚 Plume Launches RWA Academy to Explain Why Real Assets Beat Memecoins

Plume's RWA Academy is educational content explaining that tokenized Treasuries, credit, and real estate are more useful than whatever dog coin launched this week. They say familiar assets on faster rails, with programmable utility that lets you do something with your Treasury bill instead of watching it sit there. Plume Network.

NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
Metaverse, NFT, & Gaming News 🎮️

🎓 Akash Says Ambassador Programs Are the New Internship

Akash published an essay arguing that Web3 ambassador programs have replaced traditional recruitment pipelines, because on-chain proof of work beats credentials on paper. Students write docs, deploy tutorials, and manage communities - building portfolios that live forever in GitHub repos and Discord archives. Akash Network.

NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
DeFi, DEX, & Lending News 🏦

🇦🇪 DeXe and RWAlabs Partner to Connect UAE Tokenization With DAO Governance

DeXe Protocol and RWAlabs.ae are linking UAE regulatory structuring with on-chain governance infrastructure. RWAlabs handles the legal and compliance rails; DeXe provides the DAO tooling for treasury operations and transparent rules. McKinsey estimates $2T in tokenized assets by 2030 - someone has to govern all that. DeXe.

💸 1inch Explains Why Moving Liquidity Around Quietly Destroys Your Returns

1inch published a breakdown of the hidden costs of reallocating liquidity: transaction fees, slippage, approvals, and crystallized impermanent loss every time you exit a position. Each step adds friction that erodes margins, especially for active strategies that rebalance frequently. Aqua's shared liquidity layer is supposed to fix this by letting one balance support multiple strategies. 1inch.

🏛️ Spark Prime Brings CeDeFi Margin Lending to Institutional Hedge Funds

Spark Prime combines Spark's DeFi governance with Arkis' margin technology, letting institutional borrowers collateralize positions across CEXs, DEXs, and qualified custodians within a single framework. Launch partners include Edge Capital ($600M AUM), M1 ($180M), and Hardcore Labs ($100M), with $15M allocated initially, or is it initially allocated? Spark.

NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
Protocol News 🏦

📊 The Graph's 2026 Roadmap

The Graph published a technical roadmap covering protocol, product, and economic layers - including AI-compatible Subgraph gateways, x402 payments for autonomous agents, and Amp for institutional-grade SQL access. Substreams handles real-time streaming for DeFi and DePIN; Token API provides pre-indexed data for wallets and explorers; Tycho makes DEX liquidity queryable without running your own nodes. The Graph.

🌐 IOTA Forms Advisory Board With Trade Experts

IOTA announced an Expert Advisory Board for TWIN (Trade Worldwide Information Network), bringing in customs specialists, logistics leaders, and trade economists to ensure the infrastructure reflects real-world operations. The board includes people who advised the UK government during Brexit and designed temperature-tracking systems for supply chains. IOTA.

LINKS
Links That Don’t Suck 🔗

💵 Arthur Hayes Tells Jerome Powell To ‘Warm Up’ Printer After Blue Owl Freezes Redemptions

🪙 Eric Trump Doubles Down On $1 Million Bitcoin Call – Says Crypto Is ‘On The One-Yard Line’

🏦 Coinbase Expands Crypto Lending Beyond Bitcoin, Ethereum – To Offer XRP, DOGE, ADA, LTC In ‘Everything App’ Push

⌚️ CME Group To Launch Round-The-Clock Cryptocurrency Futures And Options Trading

😐️ Minneapolis Fed President Says White House Is Trying To Compromise The Central Bank’s Independence: Report

🤔 Why Did Bitdeer Stock Tumble 14% Pre-Market Today?

Get In Touch 📬

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Author Disclosure: The author of this newsletter holds positions in AVAX, ADA, PUDGY, WLC, IMX, XTZ, NEAR, HBAR, ALGO, INJ, LTC, LINK, ZEC, XLM, and FET. 📋