GM, frens! ☕️

Balance in crypto is underrated. Too much confidence and you get sloppy. Too much caution and you never move. Most of the time it’s about holding two thoughts at once: being open to upside without losing your head, and being aware of risk without freezing in place.

That middle ground is where most people who last a while end up living.

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

• 🏢 How New York got tokenized and rugged

• 🔥 Ambire’s Season 1 rewards drop

• 🥸 Clarity act: legal relief vs the crypto’s business model

• 🦁 Iran’s crypto: civilians looking for air and power looking for options

Below is how $WALLET is doing right now:

If you want to talk it through the Discord is always open 🫡 

How New York got tokenized and rugged

Crypto loves a recognizable name and promises that sound larger than the coin itself.

In this case, New York City became the backdrop for the launch of a new token branded around “civic good and public participation” and “fighting antisemitism and anti-americanism” of all things 🤔 

The idea was, apparently, to launch a digital asset framed as an experiment in funding education, social programs, and community initiatives through crypto.

• The figure attached to the launch was Eric Adams, a former police officer turned politician who served as mayor of New York City from 2022 through the end of 2025.

• During his tenure, Adams cultivated a public pro crypto image, converting parts of his mayoral salary into Bitcoin and Ethereum and repeatedly presenting New York as a future capital of digital assets 🪙 

The token was positioned as a continuation of that worldview, even though Adams had already left office by the time it launched.

• Within minutes, trading volume of the coin exploded and the token’s market capitalization briefly crossed the half billion dollar mark. For a short microsecond, it was treated it like a narrative win 💲 

… then it just rugged in the most dumb way possible 👇️ 

• Roughly thirty minutes after launch, the price collapsed by more than eighty percent. But this wasn’t a slow loss of confidence or a gradual dump. Liquidty was actually pulled and the chart printed the familiar shape that anyone who has been around crypto long enough already knows by heart.

Token supply was heavily concentrated, with a good % held by certain wallets from the start.

• A small number of wallets controlled the overwhelming majority of circulating tokens, with one address holding close to seventy percent. Once liquidity was removed, the price had no structural support 🤷‍♂️ 

This is the textbook definition of a pulling a rug.

Whether the liquidity withdrawal was executed directly by Adams by partners or by intermediaries tied to the deployment does not materially change the outcome for the users - funds were extracted at the peak.

Adams’ representatives emphasized that no public funds were used, that Adams personally did not profit, and that the token was a voluntary initiative subject to market volatility. In legal terms, that may hold (possibly). But in crypto terms, it does not negate what occurred 😐️ 

By the time the token launched, Adams had already completed his political arc around crypto.

His administration’s digital asset office had served its purpose as a signaling vehicle. His successor moved to dismantle it shortly after taking office. Whatever institutional project Adams was building around crypto had already reached its end state 🔨 

And that shitcoin certainly did not extend that project or add anything good.

By 2026, the space had already seen multiple attempts to merge political identity with token launches. None to date survived contact with market mechanics. Attention created the price, but it can’t last long 🫠 

Ambire’s Season 1 rewards drop

If you’ve been using Ambire, there’s a chance you’ve already got $WALLET rewards sitting there waiting for you to claim them 👀 

• Season 1 claims are live through the rewards page, with a claim card at the top that basically turns “wallet usage” into “wallet points” except the points are a token that is actually useful 🪙 

• Season 1 set aside 20M $WALLET. That’s not a some community jar, that’s a real warchest aimed at making habit formation measurable. Use the app, stack eligibility, claim the gibs 💰️ 

And yeah, Season 2 is already rolling, which is also the whole meta right now, as wallets are trying to be not just key managers anymore. They’re running ongoing incentives like any other dapp competing for screen time.

It’s practical, a little degen and honestly kind of inevitable once every other part of real crypto that is actually used by real people started rewarding users for their loyalty 😚 

Clarity act: legal relief vs the crypto’s business model

A new discussion draft of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act finally sketches out how the U.S. wants to deal with crypto going forward, but opinions on it in the space are varied.

The draft says that if a token is the main asset behind an exchange traded product listed on a registered U.S. exchange by January 1, 2026, it would not be treated as a security under this part of the law 🤐 

Something that makes altcoin connoisseurs extremely happy:

• This would put a short list of big names on the same legal footing as Bitcoin and Ethereum, assuming they clear that bar. The list includes XRP, Solana, Litecoin, Hedera, Dogecoin, and Chainlink 🫣 

• There’s no attempt to argue about decentralization levels, token origins, or how pure a network feels.

• The rule is simple. If an asset is solid enough to back a regulated exchange product, lawmakers treat it like one 📜 

For the tokens mentioned, equal treatment with Bitcoin and Ethereum would clear a lot of baggage. It would line up the law with how these assets are already being used day to day.

Though that same push for clear categories is also what blows up the bigger deal around it

Because the second you put some tokens on the “basically commodities” shelf, the next question becomes: alright, so who gets to run the market, who gets to custody, who gets to settle, and who gets to skim yield off the dollars everyone parks in the system?

That’s where the law turns into a fight.

• By multiple accounts, the Senate Banking Committee delayed debate after Coinbase publicly pulled support for the current version 🤯 

• That delay wasn’t about the token list or whether SOL is “pure” enough. It was about stablecoins, and more specifically, whether crypto platforms are allowed to pay interest like returns on stablecoin balances 👇️ 

• Banks have been pushing hard against that idea, because from their point of view it turns exchanges into savings accounts without bank rules, and it pulls deposits out of the traditional system.

• Coinbase and other crypto firms see it as lawmakers putting a legal thumb on the scale, because stablecoins are the cash layer of crypto trading and payments already, and cutting off rewards kneecaps how platforms compete 🙅 

So you end up with a law that does two things at once.

It tries to normalize a short list of major tokens by tying them to regulated products, while also trying to keep the most valuable part of the whole ecosystem, stablecoin distribution and yield, fenced off from crypto companies 🥸 

So sure, holders of those exact coins can read this as a green light to send it, but it’s worth asking: if the industry gets clarity at the price of giving the most important cash flows to the old system, is that crypto finally “growing up” or just getting changed into something else?

Iran’s crypto: civilians looking for air and power looking for options

A new Chainalysis report pegs Iran’s crypto ecosystem is now at about $7.8 billion, with activity accelerating as the country dealt with deepening unrest, a sliding currency, and the kind of day to day financial chaos that makes people stop trusting whatever their government calls “money” 💵 

In that environment, crypto stops being a hobby and starts acting like an exit hatch.

• The report points to a spike around late December 2025, when mass protests ramped up and a nationwide internet blackout hit.

• Chainalysis describes crypto withdrawals to personal wallets jumping, which is the onchain version of taking cash out of the ATM because you do not feel like being the last person politely waiting for the bank to “restore services” 🪙 

And it tracks with the economic backdrop.

• The piece notes inflation hovering around 40% to 50%, which is a brutal range where saving in local currency starts to feel like agreeing to lose.

• In that kind of market, bitcoin gets framed as the “flight to safety” asset, while stablecoins get used for practical stuff like remittances because they are cheap, familiar, and predictable compared to a currency in free fall.

Chainalysis says crypto in Iran is playing two roles at once: a financial escape valve for regular people, and a channel that state linked actors can lean on while sanctions do their thing.

The report highlights IRGC linked networks in particular, saying they accounted for more than half of Iran’s crypto value received in late 2025 🥷 

That is the core of the Iran story: crypto is not “taking over” just like that, it is filling gaps that open up when trust collapses 📢 

• The scary part for incumbents is that once people learn how to do this, they do not necessarily unlearn it when the crisis calms down.

• One of the comments quoted in the piece goes straight at that point, arguing that adoption is permanent and a full return to traditional channels is unlikely after the fact 😲 

Btw, that Internet outage in Iran also acted like a real world test for crypto itself 👨‍🔧 

It’s easy to make threads about self custody and “permissionless money” or whatever when your connection is stable and the apps load on the first try.

A blackout forces the uncomfortable question: how usable is any of this when the internet becomes a privilege. Even if people wanted out, the stack of technologies they rely on can still get choked off 🤦‍♂️ 

Some like to claim that crypto is for when society at least partially collapses (because of fiat and bankers, etc) but who said you’re going to have 5G towers and a data plan then? That’s definitely something to think about.

Other worthy reads

Some projects in the space actively discuss moving away from Discord:

“Full-Year 2025 & Themes for 2026” by Binance Research:

“My 2026 crypto predictions: Where the REAL Money Will be Made” by Miles Deutscher:

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!