GM ☕️ 

Crypto hits different this week - lighter, quicker, like it finally remembered how to breathe 🕊️ 

There's movement, there's noise, and for once, it doesn’t feel like a trap. Feels like opportunity’s back on the menu 👀 

This week, we’re watching:

• 🤔 Coinbase: crypto for every retirement fund (+ user data for every hacker)

• 🔥 Ethereum users create 11,000 smart wallets in first week after Pectra

• 🚀 The Launchpad meta

• 🔨 Europol crushes €20M crypto laundering network

The W3oF Degen Portfolio managed to climb a little - nothing wild, but enough to make opening the dashboard less painful. Modest & pleasant 🤠 

The Discord is open if you think the streak should continue… or not 😉 

Coinbase: crypto for every retirement fund (+ user data for every hacker)

Coinbase had the kind of week that only makes sense in crypto.

On one hand, it stormed the gates of traditional finance by becoming the first crypto native company to join the S&P 500 - a fortress of institutional investing where crypto was, until very recently, about as welcome as a wolf at the door 🤯 

On the other hand, it faced down a massive security breach, complete with leaked user data and a ransom demand.

Well, here we are 🙃 

Coinbase entering the S&P 500 is a financial earthquake. The crypto exchange, founded by Brian Armstrong, is now officially a permanent fixture in America’s premier stock market index 📈 

• This means something profound and immediate: crypto is now going to be in almost every american pension fund.

• It doesn’t matter if the retirement account is managed by an AI agent or a sleepy pension manager, or maybe a cool hedge fund guy - every passive ETF, every index tracker, and every major institutional investor has to buy COIN shares now 🤯 

Bernstein analysts estimate this could bring coinbase around $9 billion in passive inflows.

This is crypto’s biggest and boldest step towards legitimacy in traditional finance since the ETFs launched.

• The timing seems politically crafted: with Trump back in office, talking about making America the “crypto capital of the world” and pushing forward ideas like a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, Coinbase’s listing is less of a coincidence and more of a political statement 🤔 

But crypto rarely gives us good news without a matching dose of scandal. Just two days after the S&P500 news, Coinbase got hit with a big breach 👇️ 

• Customer support employees, paid off in cash, leaked personal user information to criminals. Names, emails, phone numbers, even government-issued IDs 🪪 

• This wasn’t a sophisticated blockchain hack or an exotic smart contract exploit - it was plain old human greed 🤦‍♂️ 

The attackers demanded a ransom - $20 million in Bitcoin. But Coinbase refused and instead offered a $20 million bounty on the criminals’ heads.

• CEO Brian Armstrong reassured customers that no funds were stolen, no private keys compromised, and no passwords leaked. But the damage was done: crypto’s largest, most respected gateway had shown itself vulnerable to a simple bribe 🤷‍♂️ 

• Coinbase also assured its customers that less than 1% of users were affected - but with their user base nearing 110 million, "less than 1%" translates into a million compromised accounts. Small comfort.

With breaches like this, expect fewer peaceful retirements and more daughters kidnapped or fingers sliced off as criminals come hunting for crypto balances 🥷 

Crypto evangelists always preached decentralization to prevent precisely these scenarios. Yet Coinbase’s success - built on ease of use and trust - created exactly the kind of tempting centralized target crypto promised to eliminate 🫠 

Crypto’s entry into traditional finance inevitably drags its unresolved paradox along: convenience versus security, mass adoption versus decentralization.

Ethereum users create 11,000 smart wallets in first week after Pectra

Ethereum’s recent Pectra upgrade, implementing EIP-7702, has immediately made a measurable impact 🥳 

Over 11,000 new smart wallets have been created since we spoke about it last week - showing rapid adoption of Ethereum's account abstraction capabilities 🫡 

• EIP-7702 enables regular Ethereum addresses (EOAs) to delegate authority temporarily to smart contract wallets, significantly reducing complexity for users.

• Tasks that used to involve multiple approvals or repetitive transactions can now be bundled into single, streamlined interactions 🎁 

• This simplifies UX, making advanced Ethereum operations accessible for everyday users, not just crypto native experts.

Ambire quickly integrated these changes, allowing users to batch multiple transactions and even pay gas fees in tokens other than ETH 🪙 

Such flexibility greatly lowers barriers to entry for newcomers and encourages broader use of Ethereum applications 👇️ 

Developer confidence also spiked with the Pectra release.

dApps can now easily build smoother user flows that once required elaborate backend structures. The sharp increase in smart wallet creation demonstrates the demand among developers and end users alike for simplified blockchain interactions 📈 

Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade shows clear momentum toward mainstream usability and widespread adoption 👀 

The Launchpad meta

If you've opened Crypto Twitter lately, you've seen the madness. A new meme coin every 20 seconds, all launching from apps that sound like a joke 🙄 

But this isn’t some niche corner anymore - launchpads/memepads are the current crypto obsession, and everyone’s diving in headfirst, hoping for that one golden ticket 🤯 

• It started with Pump.fun, Solana’s go to factory for meme coins, which once controlled pretty much the entire market.

• At its peak, it held around 98% of the meme launchpad market, but its grip is slipping. New players like LetsBonk, Believe, LaunchLab and countless others figured out you need something fresh to keep gamblers interested 🎲 

What’s driving this?

Simple: FOMO. Nothing else gets people throwing money around quicker than the fear of missing out on a 10,000% gain in 24 hours 💰️ 💰️ 

Now over 200,000 wallets hit these Solana launchpads every single day, trading tokens with names you'd be embarrassed to mention out loud.

LAUNCHCOIN is one example - it blew up to $200 million almost overnight.

Some of these launch and die out within hours, but some catch fire and drag thousands of users along for the ride. Each win just pours more fuel into the hype 🔥 

Why is Pump.fun losing ground?

Easy: It got lazy. It hasn’t changed much, while competitors started offering something slightly new, even if it’s just a different way to package the same casino.

• Some memepads bring social features - essentially, social media on steroids to boost hype - while others highlights tokens that survive longer than five minutes after launch.

• Some degens also have a strange superstition that large ruggers and bots are absent from newly launched launchpad platforms 🤔 

Pump.fun still leads in volume, but now its market share is down to about 57%. People clearly want something fresh - or at least slightly less stale.

Token graduation: real or just good marketing?

One of the biggest changes lately is this new metric - token graduation rates 🤓 

• Some of the launchpads brag about how many tokens keep trading steadily instead of rugging immediately.

• Does this mean these degen coins would magically stop being scams in 99% of the cases? Of course not 🙃 

But it does mean that these platforms are starting to pretend they're promoting quality over rugs, which users like to believe, even if deep down everyone knows the game.

And that’s crypto degens for you.

Europol crushes €20M crypto laundering network

Europol just dismantled a major crypto laundering operation, taking down a sophisticated crime ring responsible for funneling over €20 million into digital assets.

• The bust, conducted alongside Spain’s Policía Nacional and Eurojust, unraveled an international scheme involving fake money remittance services - a front for money laundering tied to drug trafficking and human smuggling.

The gang had two interconnected branches: an Arab syndicate handling international cash flow and a Chinese cell managing domestic logistics, both seamlessly working together to convert physical cash into cryptocurrency, skimming commissions along the way.

• To maintain appearances, they branded themselves as a legitimate money remittance service, running ads across social media platforms to attract clients 💵 

• Beneath the slick digital façade, though, was an extensive criminal network, carefully shuffling illicit funds and hiding their tracks 🥷 

The authorities struck hard, launching coordinated raids across Belgium and Spain.

More than 250 officers stormed 13 locations, arresting 17 suspects in cities including Madrid, Valencia, Malaga, Antwerp, Almeria, and Cadiz 🔨 

The scale of the seizures paints a vivid picture: over €200,000 in cash, €183,000 in crypto, luxury cars worth hundreds of thousands, real estate valued at €2.5 million, highend fashion items, premium cigars, and encrypted tech devices - all swept up in the raids.

Currently, 15 suspects are behind bars, charged with money laundering and operating a criminal organization 🤔 

Europol is hailing this bust as a major blow against crypto enabled organized crime, marking a significant victory in the ongoing battle to clean up the crypto space.

Other worthy reads

“The Art of the Deals and the Forces Behind Them” by Ray Dalio:

Polygon founder warning about deepfake attacks:

“What went wrong with SocialFi?” by Matt:

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 DeFi is here to stay. Thanks for joining us, and we look forward to seeing you back next week. Cheers!

Yours, The 🔥 Team

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