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Nothing like another Sunday where Trump announces more tariffs. Find out how markets reacted below 👇

Here's a quick preview of today’s content: Dave Portnoy dominates headlines with memecoin buying, Kanye’s X rampage includes mentions of celebrity memecoins, Yahoo Finance supposedly suppressing crypto articles, BlackRock’s ownership in Saylor’s Strategy hits new high, FTX repayments coming soon, Tanzania billionaire impacted by hack, and so much more.

Monday is here. New Super Bowl Champions have been crowned. Let’s dive in.

Market Snapshot

• Crypto markets stumbled as US President Donald Trump announced tariffs on aluminum and steel — the latest salvo in an escalating US trade war

  • Trump said that any “steel coming into the United States” and aluminum will be hit with a 25% tariff

• Following the tariff announcement, crypto markets dipped temporarily, with bleeding across the board. However, there has since been a steady recovery

  • Bitcoin crossed back over $97,000 after dropping to $94,000 briefly

  • At the same time, the total crypto market cap dropped from $3.15T down to $3.10T - It has since recovered to $3.13T

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

• Dave Portnoy has dived head first into meme coin trading and is currently up close to $2M on memecoin $JAILSTOOL, a coin that he himself did not make (X)

• Coinbase surpasses $420B in assets (DH)

• Polymarket reaches 450K monthly active traders (TB) 

• Yahoo Finance is allegedly excluding press releases from crypto companies (CS) 

• Crypto prices take quick dip Sunday afternoon as Trump announces 25% tariffs on aluminum and steel (TB)

• US foundations and university endowments are joining the crypto rush by building bitcoin portfolios (FT)

• Poland’s Central Bank rules out holding Bitcoin in its reserves (CN) 

• Japan requests Apple and Google to block access to unregistered crypto exchanges (CS) 

• Kanye suggests that celebrities who shill a crypto and claim they were hacked may have been paid (X) 

• Circle’s USDC supply reaches a new ATH of $56B (CS) 

• Ether has underperformed in recent months due to intense competition (CD) 

• BlackRock increases its ownership of Strategy to 5% (CD) 

• Centralized crypto exchanges reported a decline in trading volumes in January (TD) 

• a16z calls on the DOJ to stop holding DeFi protocols accountable for users’ mistakes (BN)

• Crypto trader Loopify raises over $500K to fund humanitarian efforts in Gaza (TB) 

• Bitcoin miner CleanSpark reports $162M in Q4 revenue (TB)

• FTX prepares to begin creditor repayments on February 18th (PRN)

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Launches

• Startup Receipts Depositary plans to launch XRP-backed securities (CD) 

• Brazilian stock exchange B3 is set to launch Bitcoin options and futures contracts for Ether and Solana (CD) 

• a16z-backed Story Protocol unveils details of the tokenomics for its native token (TB)

• Decentralized storage project Arweave launches its mainnet release of its computing platform, AO (TB)

Venture Capital

• Hex Trust total funding hits $100M with recent investment from Morgan Creek Digital (TNG)

• Superlogic, a blockchain powered customer experience platform completes $13.7M Series A led by Powerledger (P2)

• Dubai-based The Game Company raises $10M for cloud blockchain gaming (PG)

• Hashed and Finality Capital Partners back Fragmetric with $7M (CH)

• QuantStamp and Republic co-lead $5M seed funding for Prodigy.Fi (PAN)

• Coala Pay announces $3.5M raise for stablecoin solutions (FN)

• Victus Capital makes $700k strategic investment in W Chain (FS)

Regulation

• A third of US states are pursuing legislation to establish strategic Bitcoin reserves or crypto investments for public funds (DC) 

• Kentucky and Maryland are considering legislation to establish a Bitcoin reserve (DC) 

• Florida senator files a bill to allow the state to invest in Bitcoin and other crypto (TB) 

• SEC indicates it has began reviewing Grayscale’s filed Solana ETF (CP)

• Nigerian SEC begins embracing blockchain and crypto solutions after Binance crackdown (CP)

Cybersecurity

• A Canadian man is sentenced to 41 months in prison for laundering $43M in Bitcoin (DC) 

• Tanzanian billionaire Mohammed Dewji’s X account was hacked to promote a $1.4M scam Tanzania coin (A)

Extra Reads

• Both Elon Musk and Coinbase's CEO have now proposed putting all US spending on blockchain. This means $6.9T of US spending per year would be placed on a decentralized ledger.

Here’s a full breakdown what this might mean

• ‘VC Coins’ put in the hot seat after recent BERA launch

Here’s why retail investors are furious with this model

Chart of the Day

A look at U.S. government spending in the past couple decadescoming soon to a blockchain near you

Meme Dump

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