GM, frens! ☕️

Dreams in our space are a funny thing. Everyone’s got one - stuff like bigger bags, better timing, that 100000x that changes everything. It’s what pulls people in and keeps them here longer than they planned, if you think about it 🤔 

But most of the time, those big outcomes are built out of smaller steps. Not one perfect call, just a series of decent ones that add up over time.

Anyways, here’s what we’re looking at this week:

• 👴 Banks are feeling the squeeze: why DeFi makes them want to cry

• 🔥 Ambire expands hardware wallet access with QR support

• 😵JENNER meme token lawsuit gets tossed out

• 👀 The market is ignoring the biggest quarter in Ethereum history

• 🦊 MetaMask co founder Dan Finlay walks away after a decade

Below is how $WALLET is doing right now.

If you’re still chasing your version of it, you can share it with us - our Discord is always open.

Banks are feeling the squeeze: why DeFi makes them want to cry

We have been conditioned to believe that accessing our own money is a privilege granted by a guy sitting behind a mahogany desk 👴 

Most countries’ constitutions have some sort of freedom to transact baked into their core principles but modern banks are definitely not what those who wrote them had in mind. Being able to move value freely, many could argue, is a fundamental human right that sits dangerously close to the freedom of speech 📑 If you cannot spend your money without permission you cannot truly speak your mind or support the causes you care about.

So for most of us in this space, DeFi is above all else the actualization of that right.

TradFi system operates on the assumption that you need permission to interact with the global economy. It is a structure designed entirely around control and extraction where the institutions act as the ultimate arbiters of who gets to participate 😶 

Now TradFi is terrified because decentralized finance is completely bypassing their walled gardens 💀 

The Bank for International Settlements (which is essentially a club owned by 63 central banks) just dropped a massive warning label on the industry 👇️ 

• Their report claims that crypto platforms are turning into lightly regulated shadow banks offering bank-like services. They are specifically targeting the earn and yield products that have become popular for retail investors seeking passive income 💰️ 

• The report basically says retail users are getting tricked into unsecured loans because they do not have the warm blanket of traditional deposit insurance. But really, it’s obvious they want to paint the whole industry as a massive risk just because it operates outside their control 🤷‍♂️ 

But why banks actually need that insurance in the first place?

• Trad banks take your deposits and immediately lend them out using fractional reserve magic while hiding all the actual risk inside a corporate black box. The only reason they need a government backstop is because their entire model runs on total opacity, and everyone knows that ⬛️ 

• Onchain protocols replace that black box with verifiable code. You do not need a state sponsored bailout promise when you can just look at the smart contract and verify the collateral reserves or LP in real time 🤓 so the risk is not hidden at all. It is calculated and totally public.

The authors also complain that crypto platforms are acting as multifunction intermediaries by bundling things like trading and lending 💵 

• They try to make this look as some massive structural danger but it is really just an attack on efficiency. The legacy financial world loves forcing you through five different middlemen who all take a cut of your money.

• When one platform can handle the whole process without the bureaucratic bloat it threatens their entire fee extraction model. They call it a shadow bank because they hate seeing capital find yield outside of their grip 💸 

Then they drag out the corpses of Celsius and FTX to prove how dangerous the crypto space is. This is where their logic just completely falls apart, as neither of those companies were actually decentralized finance. They were highly centralized corporate entities run by executives who acted exactly like the bankers themselves 🥸 

They took user funds and gambled them behind closed doors. When you keep your assets onchain and use self custody you are immune to some centralized CEO deciding to gamble your deposits.

BIS report also points to the October 2025 flash crash where 19 billion dollars got liquidated as proof that the system is broken. But that event actually proved the exact opposite, if you think about it.

• When the market violently tanked the onchain infrastructure did not need a government bailout or a trading halt to survive. The smart contracts executed the liquidations perfectly and deleveraged the system exactly as written without socializing the losses 🤔 

Sure some dev teams took security too liberally in the past and some still do but that is a completely fair trade off.

We are trading the sanitized illusion of safety for a system based on transparent rules. And if you ask most in this space, the bankers are fighting a losing battle here because people are finally realizing that code is a way better arbiter of truth than a centralized gatekeeper 🫠 

Ambire expands hardware wallet access with QR support

You used to need the right brand and the right amount of patience just to get a hardware wallet working smoothly. That setup always felt a bit too neat for crypto, where every vendor wants its own lane and every user ends up doing extra work 🥱 

Ambire is trying to cut through that mess a different way 👇️ 

You can now use Ambire with almost any hardware wallet through QR based support, instead of relying on one vendor specific integration after another. That means devices like Keystone, Keycard, OneKey and others that speak the same language can plug into the same path 🔌 

In crypto terms, that is about as close to common sense as this industry gets.

It also makes hardware wallet support feel less like a museum of separate glass boxes and more like something built for actual users.

JENNER meme token lawsuit gets tossed out

We all remember the absolute circus of celebrities launching their own tokens 🎪 

The play was always exactly the same - a famous person launches a coin and promises to use their clout to make the price go up while retail buyers throw money at it hoping to get rich quick 👇️ 

Now one of examples of that era just got a massive legal pass.

• Caitlyn Jenner (an Olympian athlete and a media / political personality famous for various shenanigans) just beat a class action lawsuit over the JENNER token because a federal judge decided it was not actually a security under US law 👨‍⚖️ 

• A group of buyers originally sued Jenner and her manager Sophia Hutchins back in November 2024. The lead plaintiff was a UK citizen named Lee Greenfield who claimed he lost over $40,000 when the token crashed 👎️ 

• The buyers tried to argue that JENNER was an unregistered securities offering. They claimed investors pooled their assets because Jenner promised that once the token hit a 50 million dollar market value a transaction fee would fund buybacks, marketing, donations to the Donald Trump presidential campaign and a token for fractional ownership of her Olympic gold medal 🤦‍♂️ 

The judge tossed the whole thing out.

• He ruled that the lawsuit failed to plausibly plead that the tokens were investment contracts. He pointed out that the tokens were intended solely for entertainment purposes and that promotion alone does not establish a common enterprise 🤔 

• There was no pooling of money to develop any related product or technology. He also noted that the amended complaint focused heavily on planned donations to Trump but failed to explain how anyone thought that would provide a financial return. As for the gold medal plan the judge noted it was not even announced until August 2024 which was after Greenfield made his final purchases.

The history of the token is a perfect snapshot of the chaotic memecoin meta. It originally launched on the Solana blockchain via Pump dot fun in May 2024 before getting tangled in drama with a claimed collaborator named Sahil Arora 🤡 

Jenner then relaunched the token on Ethereum which investors claimed destroyed the value of the original Solana bags.

The token hit a peak market value of nearly 7.5 million dollars in June 2024 before essentially going to zero. The judge denied giving the group another chance to amend the lawsuit in federal court. He told them their claims regarding contracts and common law fraud under California law were best sent to state court instead 🤐 

The market is ignoring the biggest quarter in Ethereum history

We spend so much time staring at the candles and crab walking prices that we completely ignore the underlying engine. The popular narrative right now is that most networks are losing momentum just because the token prices are failing to do anything exciting 🤨 

But if you look at the actual data from the reality is a completely different story 💻️ 

According to data from Artemis, Ethereum just pushed through 200.4 million transactions in the first quarter of 2026 🤯 

That is the first time the network has ever crossed the 200 million mark in a single quarter. The numbers show activity stabilizing through 2024 and then going into overdrive across 2025 and early 2026. It is a clear sign of a rebuilding phase turning into actual network demand 👇️ 

The massive pump is mostly coming from Layer 2 ecosystems and stablecoins:

Networks like Base and Arbitrum are handling all the user activity at much lower costs and then settling everything back to the base layer. When you add in the fact that stablecoin supply on Ethereum has climbed to around 180 billion dollars it is obvious the network is the dominant settlement layer for onchain dollars 🪙 

The problem for many is that this massive growth is not showing up in the price.

ETH was trading around $2.3k recently which is just a tiny 1.7 percent bump over the past month. Thanks to upgrades like Dencun reducing costs for L2 data posting more transactions do not automatically translate to higher fees or a stronger token price.

But the network heartbeat is clearly stronger than ever 💗 

MetaMask co-founder Dan Finlay walks away after a decade

After more than a decade of maintaining MetaMask, co-founder Dan Finlay is officially walking away from ConsenSys.

He posted his resignation on Thursday citing severe burnout and a simple desire to spend more time with his family.

• Finlay has been one of the most visible faces in crypto since the early days when MetaMask was just a basic browser add on. His exit marks the end of a massive era especially as the wallet sector finally tries to move past ancient manual tech and into smart account territory.

You cannot really blame him for wanting out. Maintaining the biggest wallet in the industry without breaking it is a massive burden even if the daily user experience leaves a lot to be desired 🫥 

This departure points to a clear pattern happening right now. As the space gets more institutional and the daily grind stretches into endless product roadmaps the early pioneers are stepping back from the front lines 🏃 

It perfectly mirrors what is happening in traditional tech too, where guys like long serving Apple executive Jeff Williams and former GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke handed over the reins after years of intense leadership.

Nothing indicates that early builders are losing faith in the actual tech, or anything, but they seem to be really exhausted from the relentless pace. And who wouldn’t want their normal life back? 🌱 

Other worthy reads

“The art of exit liquidity” by Tulip King:

“The missing infrastructure for AI agents: 5 ways blockchains can help” by A16Z:

“Why DeFi keeps getting hacked and here’re the red flags you’re missing?” by Karl Marx OnChain:

MEMES

That's all for now, frens.

We'll meet in a week! And remember, the market conditions are temporary, but our commitment to building a better Web3 is here to stay. Thanks for joining us, and we look forward to seeing you back next week. Cheers!

Yours, The 🔥 Team

Brought to you by Ambire: The Only Web3 Wallet That You’ll Need!