Good morning ☕️ 

You can really feel a certain quiet that shows up after the chaos this week - not peace, just the pause before the next decision.

The charts look better, the sentiment’s less grim, but no one’s trusting it just yet. Crypto’s version of a cautious exhale 🤔 

This week, we’re looking at:

• 🪙 Safe haven 2.0: Gold’s still king, but now it has an addy

• ⚽️ FIFA Collect wants to dump Algo... for ITS OWN CHAIN

• 🇬🇧 UK crypto regulations - London reads from the SEC playbook

• 😼 CAT purrs, dirty traders PANIC – the SEC’s newest tool is kind of scary

The W3oF Degen Portfolio remains a masterclass in inertia. Slightly red, thoroughly unimpressive, and still outperforming our expectations by not collapsing entirely.

We've seen worse. We might see worse again. For now, it simply exists - undisturbed and weirdly consistent.

…the Discord’s open, in case you want to ruin that 👀 

Safe haven 2.0: Gold’s still king, but now it has an addy

When the world shakes, people grab gold. That part’s ancient history.

The new part is that they’re grabbing it through smart contracts 🧠 

• As global trade tantrums return - courtesy of Trump’s tariff spree - gold backed crypto is quietly soaking up the fear.

• Tether Gold (XAUT) and Paxos Gold (PAXG) both hit ATHs this month, with smaller players like Kinesis and Quorum trailing close behind.

In a month where inflation chatter roared back and RWA charts went vertical, tokenized gold found its moment - not as a trend, but as infrastructure 🪙 

A hedge with an interface

Tether stores their gold in Switzerland. Paxos - in London. But the rails - Ethereum, Polygon, and soon Solana - are the point 🚆 

• Tokenized gold isn’t just bullion with branding. It’s a programmable asset. It plugs into wallets, DEXs, payment rails, lending protocols. It’s gold with APIs. That turns a 6,000 year old asset into something really usable.

• No surprise that on April 2, when tariffs dropped and the dollar flinched, crypto gold didn’t just mirror spot price. It outpaced it. While TradFi slept, onchain liquidity kept ticking 💰️ 

Winning the Boring War

RWAs are supposed to be the boring corner of crypto. Yet in 2025, they’re the ones printing headlines, volume, and new users 🤯 

The tokenized gold sector has quietly become the grownup table. It's not trying to reinvent finance. It’s just onboarding the parts that already work. Physical custody, clear audits, real world demand - but with crypto-native wrapping. No bank holidays. No middlemen. No excuses.

And you don’t have to drag a squad of experts with you to determine whether your bar has been hollowed out and filled with tungsten by some scammers 🤔 

And while VCs chase AI crossovers meme vaporware, tokenized metals are the ones responsible for onboarding the TradFi crowd.

Call it riskoff with DeFi rails. Call it BTC’s older cousin. Whatever the name, the market is clearly listening 👂️ 

FIFA Collect wants to dump Algo... for ITS OWN CHAIN

Most brands dip their toes into Web3. Years ago, FIFA cannonballed in 👇️ 

• FIFA Collect - the official digital collectibles platform of the world’s most famous football organization - is saying goodbye to Algorand and launching its own chain.

• A dedicated, FIFA branded, Ethereum compatible blockchain designed specifically for its collectibles 🖼️ 

It’s bold. And let’s be honest - building your own chain isn’t something you do unless you’re confident in your tech, your user base, and your plans for the future.

FIFA clearly isn’t playing to just be a guest in someone else’s ecosystem. They want to host the whole thing themselves 🧠 

• The migration is set for no sooner than May 20, and Algorand-native wallets like Pera and Defly will no longer work with FIFA Collect. Users will have to shift to EVM wallets, with no action required unless NFTs were previously exported off platform.

Now, the history here matters.

• Back in 2022, Algorand became FIFA’s official blockchain partner - a pretty big badge of honor 🥇 

• Since then, though, FIFA minted on Polygon, quietly explored EVM territory, and now decided the best experience means owning the full stack.

• According to their FAQ, the new chain is built to “enable wallet compatibility, support new experiences, and provide stronger foundations for future innovation” 🤔 

Translation: FIFA wants control, flexibility, and long-term reliability. And they’re willing to build it themselves to get there.

As for Algorand - they’ve wished FIFA the best of luck and kept things diplomatic. But make no mistake: losing a name like FIFA is a gut punch 👊 

ALGO is down over 5% on the news and nearly 94% off its all-time high.

Still, this isn’t just a chain migration story. It’s a sign of how serious Web2 giants are getting about owning their Web3 infrastructure, and it seems if you want to play at the top level, you have to build the stadium yourself.

UK crypto regulations - London reads from the SEC playbook

Britain has made up its mind. Finance Minister Rachel Reeves just announced the country’s draft crypto laws.

This, framed as an effort to “align” with the U.S., brings crypto exchanges under stricter regulation – transparency, consumer protection, operational resilience 🤷‍♂️ 

It’s not subtle either. Reeves confirmed direct talks with the U.S. Treasury and declared intentions to “closely cooperate” going forward 🤯 

• What we’re watching is the gradual solidification of the global regulatory axis – not between East and West, but between Wild and Tamed. The U.S. plants its flag, and others nod along 🎏 

• EU, with MICA framework, was already offering a more tailored take. Britain, post-Brexit and mid-identity crisis, is opting for safety in familiar coordinates.

But rules aren’t neutral. They decide who gets to play.

Rules written for the old world often don’t translate cleanly into the new one. Centralized enforcement favors centralized platforms. Decentralized projects might get caught in the filter or left out of the conversation entirely 🙅 

• There’s a line somewhere between legitimate oversight and quiet suffocation. And while consumer protection sounds noble – and is, when done right – it can also be the velvet glove over the iron grip of financial incumbency.

• Especially when rules are shaped not by what crypto is becoming, but by what legacy finance still fears.

One number worth highlighting: as the treasury said, 12% of UK adults reportedly own crypto.

That’s not fringe. That’s a voter base. A customer base. A cultural shift in plain sight.

For now, that means stricter oversight, tighter frameworks, and the gentle suggestion that crypto should wear a tie if it wants to be taken seriously 🤵 

But funny internet coins, as always, might have other plans.

CAT purrs, dirty traders PANIC – the SEC’s newest tool is kind of scary

Alan Williams is 79 years old. He should’ve been yelling at clouds, not rigging markets. Instead, he ended up front-running trades in a $47 million insider scheme alongside a former Nuveen employee - and now he’s going to prison 👎️ 

One year, to be exact. Not bad for a man who helped cheat the system for half a decade and made over $55K per day by betting against stocks before a corporate dump 💵 

But the sentence isn’t really news worthy. The system that caught him is.

This one’s brought to you by CAT - the SEC’s Consolidated Audit Trail. A controversial surveillance tool that’s been under political fire since inception. It logs every twitch, ping, and execution across U.S. markets - up to 500 billion events a day 🤖 

Most of the time, it’s accused of being a bloated overreach.

• CAT flagged 1,697 shady intraday trades made by Williams over five years. The system noticed a neat 97% “win rate”. And it was only after CAT got involved that prosecutors finally pieced the whole thing together.

• Williams pled guilty. He forfeited a $35 million haul and a luxury home in Oregon, US. In court, he even called himself “an uncommonly decent and giving man” 🤦‍♂️ 

Still, the bigger story is what this case means for the SEC’s tech stack. CAT has been on the chopping block for years. Wall Street hates it. Politicians hate it. Even former SEC officials think it’s a privacy nightmare.

But now it’s delivering headlines. Arrests. Forfeitures. Enforcement wins that regulators can pin to their chest while Congress decides whether to defund the whole thing.

• Timing isn’t accidental. The SEC is under pressure from all sides - Trump’s “Project 2025” blueprint wants to neuter federal oversight, financial lobbying groups want CAT shut down, and lawsuits are flying. But with this case and two more recent actions tied to the tool, CAT just gave itself some breathing room.

• And here’s the part no one wants to say out loud: if it hadn’t been for the tracker, granpda probably would’ve gotten away with it. Because before this, no one was watching closely enough to notice the mouse eating through $47 million in crumbs 🐭 

And yeah this was a low hanging fruit. The guy was 79. He didn’t hide well. The real test is whether they can scale this operation - whether the next one to get caught is 35, anonymous, and plugged into 200 shell wallets 🥷 

The SEC says the tool works. The critics say it’s a surveillance state in beta. But while they argue about that, the tracker’s already moving on to its next target 🔎 

Other worthy reads

Looks like some new docs and details just dropped around the whole Movement token-dumping mess:

“It's Too Late: The Changes Are Coming” by Ray Dalio:

“Deep Dive: A Primer on Stablecoins” by Chamath Palihapitiya

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!