Good Morning,

Here's a quick preview of today’s content: Coinbase has historic 2024 year, CFTC Commissioner talks future of prediction markets, Mastercard focused on tokenizing transactions last year, South Korea may lift a 7-year crypto ban, and so much more.

Finally Friday. Let’s dive in.

Market Snapshot

• Coinbase stock jumps +8.5% close to $300 per share following earnings report

  • Q4 ‘24

    • Revenue: $2.27B vs $1.84B exp.

    • Earnings Per Share: $4.68 vs $2.11 exp.

  • FY ‘24

    • Revenue: $6.6B (+138% YoY)

    • Net Income: $2.6B (+300% YoY)

• Crypto market volatility continues in 2025 with tokens jumping daily

  • BTC heads into the weekend around $97k with ETH near $2.7k

  • Broccoli, a memecoin based on CZ’s pet, saw nearly $1B in trading volume Thursday

Headline Roundup
^{_{The major headlines driving crypto markets}}

• Coinbase FY 2024 earnings release, doubling revenue to $6.6B (PY)

• Hashflare’s co-founders plead guilty to a $577M crypto mining ponzi scheme (CD) 

• Tether may have to sell some of its reserves to comply with new proposed US stablecoin regulations (CD) 

• Not suprisingly, Bitboy crashed out again on stream - watch here

• Vitalik Buterin tweets ‘Make Communism Great Again’ (TD) 

• Japan’s Metaplanet raises $26M via zero-interest bonds to acquire more Bitcoin (TD) 

• CFTC Commissioner Summer Mersinger says election prediction markets are ‘here to stay’ (TD) 

• Binance’s $1.5B fine accounted for almost all of the DOJ’s $1.51B record-setting year in 2024 (DC) 

• Robinhood founder Vlad Tenev explains Robinhood’s use of stablecoins for 24/7 settlements, including weekends (X)

• Robinhood stock is up 440% over the last year, thanks in part to a jump in crypto trading (MBI)

• Gamestop stock surges 7% on report that the video game retailer may invest in Bitcoin (DC) 

• Binance founder CZ reveals the name of his dog, Broccoli, sparking a memecoin frenzy (TD) 

• Broccoli memecoin creator made $6.5M from ~$800 investment (MI)

• The Ethereum Foundation injects $120M of ether in various lending protocols (TB) 

• Bitcoin miner Hive Digital reports $29.2M in Q3 revenue (CT) 

• Mastercard tokenized 30% of its transactions in 2024 (CT) 

• A trading card collector finds a $100K Bitcoin redemption card in a $50 pack of cards (DC) 

• US Customs and Border Protection expands seizures of Bitcoin mining machines to MicroBT and Canaan units (TB) 

• MoonPay eliminates transaction fees for crypto purchases using MoonPay Balance (TD) 

• Social media platform and L2 Lens Chain will adopt stablecoin native GHO (TD) 

Launches

• OpenSea confirms the launch of its SEA token and the OS2 beta of its token marketplace (BW) 

• Story Protocol launches its IP-focused blockchain and associated token (CD) 

Venture Capital

• Peter Thiel-backed stablecoin startup Plasma raises a $20M seed round led by Framework Ventures (CD) 

• StakeStone to expand liquidity staking with $10M backing from BingX Labs (CN)

• Robotics and crowdsourced data startup Frodobots raises $6M in a seed round led by Protocol VC (BW) 

• DeFi.app raises $4M in a seed extension round at a $100M token valuation (TB)

• Teneo Protocol announces $3M seed financing co-led by RockawayX and Borderless for its DePIN protocol (CC) 

• Fireverse music platform completes $2.5M Series A led by Nobody alongside OKX Ventures (CC)

• Gam3Girl strategically backs Yield Guild Games and plans to purchase tokens directly from the market (PN)

Regulation

• South Korea plans to lift a 7-year ban preventing institutions from trading crypto (CD)

• U.S. SEC and CFTC discuss collaboration on regulation moves (CS)

Cybersecurity

• Phantom wallet server outage turns to alleged security breach (BN)

• This week’s crypto hack roundup (BiS)

Coinfessions

Extra Reads

• Coinbase earnings destroyed analyst estimates

  Here are some factors that led to their historic 138% YoY revenue growth

• Fintech vertical has had a strong pull from investors in the last 3 years

  VanEck Venture Partner Juan Lopez writes the massive impact stablecoin networks will bring to fintech solutions

Chart of the Day

Coinbase revenue reaches $6.6B in 2024, with $2.6B in net income and $2.3B from subscription services 🚀

Meme Dump

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