Title: Coinbase Just Speedran “Web2 M&A Tactics” on a Web3 Project and Somehow We’re All Supposed to Clap So Coinbase spent all of 2025 doing its best impression of AWS for crypto, hoovering up every fast-moving infra team it can find so it can build the “everything exchange.” Cool. Fine. Whatever keeps the lights on. Then Nov. 21 hits and boom — Coinbase nabs Vector.fun, basically the fastest Solana DEX aggregator in existence. The pattern is familiar: acquire the rails, kill the app, inject the speed into Coinbase’s own stack. But this time? They left the token behind. Like… on purpose. Tensor Foundation keeps the TNSR token and the NFT marketplace. Coinbase takes the part that made TNSR worth anything. No compensation. No utility. Just vibes and bag-holding. And somehow we’re supposed to pretend this is “normal M&A in crypto.” Sure. The TNSR Chart Looked Like Someone Accidentally Leaned on the Buy Button Before the announcement: TNSR chilling at $0.0344, down 92% YTD Volume: “don’t worry bro, it’s building” levels — sub-$10M most days Then suddenly: Nov. 19 volume explodes to $735M Nov. 20 hits $1.9B (yes, with a B) Price spikes 11x to $0.3650 Nov. 21: nukes 37% in 24 hours, back to $0.1566 Totally organic. Definitely no one knew anything. Retail definitely didn’t just show up at the top like lambs to the liquidity slaughter. Absolutely normal behavior for a token whose main utility just got repo’d. The Separation Makes Sense Only If You Ignore Token Holders Entirely Vector wasn’t some random app. It was: Tensor’s consumer funnel The thing that gave the token narrative The liquidity generator Coinbase wanted: The infra The speed The routing logic The Solana advantage Coinbase did not want: A governance token The SEC sending thank-you letters Any baggage that requires acknowledging token holders exist So they surgically extract the good part and leave token holders with a governance token for an NFT marketplace that’s now missing the engine. Congrats, you now govern an empty garage. Even Dragonfly’s Omar Kanji said the quiet part extremely loud:“Token holders got their best asset stripped and got ~$0 in return.”Translation: we’re back to the dual-class system — equity eats, tokens tweet. Why This Matters (Besides Watching Another Token Get Kneecapped) If this becomes normal: Tokens lose any pretense of being long-term value instruments Acquirers can cherry-pick infra while ignoring tokens completely Token holders eat losses while equity holders capture upside “Governance tokens” become “governance cosplay tokens” Meanwhile Coinbase is out here trying to pitch itself as the premier ICO launch venue. Bold strategy when your last move looks like a textbook rug-by-acquisition. As DBA’s Jon Charbonneau pointed out:It’s kinda hard to sell “trust us with your token launch” when your own acquisition leaves token holders holding the bag. And Let’s Talk About the Front-Running Elephant in the Room The biggest daily volume TNSR had all year was $83.7M. Then suddenly we’re at $1.9B the day before the announcement? Someone knew.Someone bought.Retail arrived late and unlocked an exciting new achievement: Exit Liquidity Provider. If this becomes the norm for Coinbase acquisitions, the “clean and compliant” branding starts to look shaky compared to the offshore casinos they’ve been dunking on for years. The Bigger Takeaway Coinbase wants to dominate token launches. It wants to be the U.S. hub for new assets. But you can’t also pretend token holders don’t matter when you acquire projects. Either: You compensate token holders, or You admit tokens are purely decorative, or You brace for the day developers stop launching tokens on your platform because equity gets the exit and tokens get the obituary. Right now Coinbase’s answer is basically:“Equity winners get steak. Token holders get the menu.” Let’s see how long retail keeps paying for dinner.

Title: NFT Buyers Up 77%, Sellers Up 106%, Transactions Down… Sure, That Makes Sense So apparently everyone suddenly decided they love NFTs again—well, at least enough to buy and sell them like they’re on clearance—but not enough to actually increase transactions. Buyers up 77%, sellers up 106%, but total transactions down 12.67%. Truly the efficient market at work. And of course this all happens while crypto decides to take a swan dive off a cliff.BTC chilling at $84k (crashed from recent highs), ETH losing its grip on $2.8k, and the total market cap sliding to $2.87T. Nothing like a little market-wide bloodbath to get people panic-listing their JPEGs. Top NFT collections recap (aka: what’s somehow still moving): Algebra Positions NFT-V2 still flexing in first place with $7.26M, down a modest 7%. Congrats on being the least ugly red candle. DMarket at $6.67M, basically unchanged. Someone out there is keeping the lights on. Courtyard jumped 32.58% to $2.97M because why not. Polygon decided to show a pulse. Pudgy Penguins eked out a tiny +2% to $2.76M, doing their best. CryptoPunks up 12.57% to $2.32M, proving you can’t keep a boomer NFT down. BAYC back from the dead with a 37% surge to $1.98M, because there’s always at least 60 people willing to gamble on a monkey rally. Chains breakdown (spoiler: everyone’s confused): ETH still #1 at $31M, down 6%. Wash trading: the usual $2.22M. BNB Chain up 160% in buyers because apparently someone convinced TikTok that BNB NFTs are the next big thing. Bitcoin NFTs (yes, still a thing) at $7M, down 7%, but buyers up 85% because people love suffering. Polygon showing signs of life with buyers up 175%, wash trading doing wash trading things. Solana down 41%, but buyers up 114%, which feels like the perfect summary of Solana’s vibe: chaos, but fun chaos. Conclusion:The market is tanking, NFTs are somehow pumping and dumping at the same time, and buyer activity is exploding like it’s 2021 while prices behave like it’s 2022. Truly a golden era for those of us who enjoy watching charts that make no logical sense. Anyway, I’m off to go “buy the dip” for the seventh time this week.

Here’s a Reddit-style post in the voice of a slightly sarcastic crypto trader: Title: BitMine wanted to be “ETH’s Berkshire Hathaway.” Instead it’s speed-running the “Oh no, my treasury” arc. So BitMine — the company that once flexed about becoming the Berkshire Hathaway of Ethereum — is now sitting on over $4B in unrealized losses because ETH decided to yeet itself 27% in a month and face-plant below $3K. Remember when they said they’d lock down 5% of all circulating ETH like it was a Costco bulk buy? Yeah, well, turns out building your entire corporate identity around a single hyper-volatile asset can hurt a bit when the number goes down. They’re holding 3.6M ETH (about 2.97% of the supply), which used to be worth north of $14B. Now it’s not even $10B. 10x Research says they’re down roughly $1,000 per ETH bought. Incredible work, team. And before anyone says “just HODL,” this isn’t some degen staking pool. These are Digital Asset Treasury companies — their whole purpose is literally “buy crypto and pray.” When the praying stops working, the business model evaporates faster than liquidity on a 2017 ICO. Other DATs aren’t doing any better either: SharpLink, Ether Machine: down as much as 80% from yearly highs Sector-wide returns: –25% to –48% FX Nexus? They were gonna raise $5B to become the ETH kings… then ETH nuked and they panic-sold 10,900 ETH to buy back their own shares instead. Truly the “diamond hands” we deserve. The core issue? The almighty mNAV premium.DATs only work when their stock trades above the value of their crypto stash. When that premium dies, so does their ability to issue shares and accumulate more ETH. BitMine’s mNAV is now: 0.75 basic 0.90 diluted Meaning the market basically said, “Your ETH is worth X, but you are worth less than X.” Not bullish. Markus Thielen even called it a “Hotel California scenario.” Investors can check in, but once the premium disappears, they can’t check out without taking a chainsaw to their portfolio. And let’s not forget the fee structures. These guys basically glued hedge-fund management fees onto a closed-end fund holding one volatile asset and said “We’re innovators.” Spoiler: ETFs do this cheaper and without trapping investors in a discount doom-loop. TL;DR of the DAT doom spiral: ETH price goes down Their asset value goes down Their stock discount widens They can’t raise capital They sell ETH to survive Selling creates more pressure Everyone loses Except the popcorn industry Capriole says most DATs now trade below mNAV, closing the door on growth and turning the sector into a museum exhibit titled “Why you don’t build a business around vibes alone.” For DATs to survive, three miracles must happen: ETH moons again mNAV premiums reappear Investors magically forget the billions vaporized Right now, we’re 0 for 3. BitMine might still clutch their bags long enough to hit that 5% supply goal, but at this point they’re less “Berkshire Hathaway” and more “long-only hedge fund with main-character syndrome.” The DAT model’s first real stress test is here. And the results are basically a warning label:Do not attempt to build an entire company on one volatile asset unless you enjoy existential dread.

 Alright, so Moku decided to wake everyone up by launching the preseason for Grand Arena—the same project that ran an over-allocated pre-sale in October because of course it did. If you’re sitting on a Moki Genesis NFT (currently flexing a ~$160 floor), congratulations: you’re now legally obligated to become a virtual personal trainer. You can jump into the Moku Manager and start pumping your little digital creature full of stats. Five of them, because nothing says “fun” like min-maxing before the game is even live: • Speed – your Moki’s normal run/fly speed• Strength – the “buff form” zoom• Defense – wart-riding NASCAR stats + how fast you can go full Hulk mode• Dexterity – speed while carrying a giant gacha ball like it’s a newborn• Fortitude – respawn time + deposit speed for said gacha ball And yes, you can pay-snack your way through training. Because if there’s one thing Web3 knows how to do, it’s monetize snacks. Then there’s Moki Mayhem, the team-based mode where squads of three Mokis auto-brawl it out. Your stats matter here too, so expect week one to be full of sweaty tryhards optimizing “airborne buff form wart-riding breakpoints.” Win fights → earn mXP → get stronger → repeat until your eyes bleed. The preseason lasts four weeks, and all that grinding actually carries into Season 1, which casually has a $1M prize pool. No pressure. Oh, and the top 100 Genesis NFTs graduate into official Champion cards. Those owners get royalties whenever anyone unpacks or trades a card in S1. So basically: get good, get paid, or get rekt. Full preseason details and class breakdowns are in the blogpost, if you’re the type who reads documentation before clicking buttons. I am not.

 Title: Improbable just dropped their 2024 numbers… and apparently they’re everyone’s new “venture builder” sugar daddy So Improbable — yes, the same London tech shop that’s been pivoting harder than a degen trying to explain their liquidation history — just released their 2024 results. Revenue? A majestic £10M.Cash? A much spicier £163M. If you’re wondering how a company makes 10M but sits on 163M, don’t worry, they’ve got a strategy: they now call themselves a “venture builder.” Translation: “We fund a bunch of startups and hope one of them moons so we don’t have to.” And to be fair, they’re spending like they mean it. In 2025 they’re set to throw £17M at more than 10 companies, including: MSquared (gaming infra) Jitter (multiplayer streaming games, not the feeling you get checking your bags on Binance) Somnia (EVM blockchain — because of course) They’re already holding 12 ventures, and apparently plan to spawn even more in 2026. COO Peter Lipka says they want to become “the most attractive partner” in metaverse/Web3/AI. Bold claim, considering the metaverse currently has fewer active users than my failed meme coin Discord. But hey, you can’t say they aren’t loaded. When you’ve got £163M in cash, you can call yourself whatever you want — “venture builder,” “ecosystem architect,” “web3 whisperer,” whatever. If even one of these startups pops off, they’ll look like geniuses. If not… well, at least they’ll have enough cash to announce another pivot next year.

Title: Ultra just went from “Steam killer” to “seven-person speedrun” So Ultra raised $12M earlier this year, hired a shiny new CEO, promised a full-stack gaming–NFT–DeFi–do-everything mega-platform… and now they’ve slammed the brakes so hard the airbags deployed. They’re down to a core team of seven. Yes, seven. As in: one for each day of the week, I guess. Original co-CEO Nicolas Gilot is back in charge because apparently the “ambitious reboot” was a little too ambitious. Translation: trying to build a game store, NFT marketplace, wallet, tournaments platform, publishing tools, AND dive into DeFi with Vaulta… all while pretending they could compete with Steam and Epic. Sure, why not. What could go wrong? Ultra’s own post basically admits they went full “let’s build the entire metaverse on day one” mode and shocker, they spread themselves thinner than altcoin liquidity after a rug. So now here’s the new plan: • Paused: the gaming client and the two games (Citadels & Empires).• Still alive: Chrome extension, web wallet, NFT API, onboarding.• New focus: the Ultra blockchain itself.• Bonus: launching the Ultra DAO, seeded with treasury funds, because if all else fails, decentralize it and call it a strategy. The official timeline: • Maintain blockchain services – Now• Bridge release – Jan 2026• DAO launch – Jan 2026• “Repositioning” Ultra – Q1 2026• Citadels & Empires release – TBA (aka “lol we’ll see”) As a trader: not gonna lie, this is peak 2025 energy. Raise millions, expand aggressively, realize the market is ice cold, downsize to a party bus–sized dev team, pivot to the chain, sprinkle in a DAO, and pray to the liquidity gods. Ultra’s not dead, but it definitely rage-quit the boss fight and is resetting the level. Let’s see if seven devs and a DAO can carry the run.

 Title: Soooo… Another “Totally Normal” -29% Bitcoin Dip. Everyone Doing Okay?Well folks, it finally happened. Bitcoin decided it was tired of pretending to be stable and yeeted itself under not one but two price floors this week. First it slipped under $91k for the first time since April, then dipped below $90k for the first time in seven months. Congrats to everyone who said “there’s no way we see sub-90k again.” Your certificates are in the mail.We’re now looking at a neat little ~29% drawdown from the October 6 ATH. Love that for us.Altcoins? Also Dying, But In Their Own Unique WaysETH chilling at $2,990 like it’s trying to convince itself everything is fine.XRP holding $2.15 while doing the crypto-equivalent of deep breathing exercises.BNB hovering around $899, clearly evaluating its life choices.TRX, DOGE, ADA — all red. No surprises, only pain.Liquidations: The Market Wanted Blood, and It Got $5B WorthLeverage bros got sent to the shadow realm this week with over $5B liquidated. Roughly $1.2 trillion in total market cap evaporated in the last 42 days. It’s like someone hit Ctrl+Z on the entire market, except the undo button doesn’t work.“Bitcoin Has Survived Worse” — Yes, But My Heart Hasn’tThe Kobeissi Letter reminds us that since 2017, Bitcoin has seen:• 10+ drops of 25%• 6 crashes of 50%• 3 absolute meltdowns of 75%Basically, volatility is the only guaranteed utility Bitcoin offers. But hey, historically it does recover… eventually.Winklevoss Says This Might Be the “Last Chance Below $90k”Which either means this really is the bottom… or we’re about to see $89,999, $88k, and emotional breakdowns across the community. Hard to tell.Outlook: Bullish Hopium vs Macro DoomCoinbase and Glassnode think BTC could run above $130k in the coming months.Inflation and central banks think: “lol no.”But ETF demand, long-term holders, and institutions are still showing up like responsible adults at a college party, so there’s that. Anyway, how’s everyone’s portfolio looking? Personally, I’m just sitting here watching my bags shrink and telling myself it’s all part of the “market cycle.”

 Well, fellow degenerates, looks like the adults in the room (aka ETF investors) spent Nov. 13 doing what they do best: panic-flipping the sell button like it’s a new memecoin presale.Spot BTC ETFs clocked $866.7M in net outflows, the second-worst day since launch. Grayscale’s Mini Trust alone unplugged about $318M, BlackRock tossed $257M, and the rest of the TradFi squad chipped in just to make it a party. And Bitcoin? Naturally, it dipped below six figures again because why wouldn’t it. Slipped under $100k on the 13th, then face-planted all the way to $94,890 the next day—its first time in the $94k zone since early May. Ah yes, the sweet smell of nostalgia. Apparently this is all part of a lovely three-week, $2.6B de-risking wave, because markets decided the U.S. government finally un-shutting itself means the Fed won’t cut rates in December. So folks are rotating into cash, bonds, gold—basically anything that doesn’t move 5% during your morning coffee. Also, remember those super chill piles of leveraged longs stacked up after BTC hit ~$126k in October? Yeah, those got wiped. Around $190M in BTC longs evaporated, over $300M across crypto, and ETFs got dragged into the waterfall when institutional risk alarms started screaming. Meanwhile, the first XRP spot ETF launched the same day and somehow pulled $250M in inflows. So yes, we’re in the timeline where people are dumping BTC to rotate into XRP. Solana got some love too. ETH? Also bleeding. Before anyone starts screaming “ETF system broken” like it’s 2021 again: structurally, everything worked fine. Redemptions cleared, liquidity held, no fires. BTC ETF AUM still sits above $80B, and the $2.6B outflow is ~3% of holdings—basically a macro-driven shrug. But now BTC’s chilling around $94k, a clean 25% drawdown from the highs, sitting right on a support zone that decides whether we get: a classic capitulation bottom, or multi-week boredom consolidation where we all stare at a line going sideways. In summary:ETFs dumping.Bitcoin sliding.XRP ETF pumping.Macro vibes cursed.But hey, at least the ETFs didn’t break. Just our spirits.

 Well, folks, another day in crypto where all the numbers go up and down at the same time, and somehow we’re supposed to know what that means.According to CryptoSlam, NFT buyers shot up a casual 989% to 222k, sellers jumped 714% to 189k… and yet total transactions fell 21%. So apparently everyone showed up, looked around, and said “nah.”Meanwhile Bitcoin decided $96k was too luxurious and slid right down, dragging the whole market cap from $3.48T to $3.26T. Ethereum also slipped under $3,200, doing its best impression of someone missing a stair.But the real circus is in the collections:Algebra Positions NFT-V2 exploded into first with a microscopic 807,352% surge. Totally normal. Nothing to see here. Just $7.8M in sales from 742 transactions.DMarket fell slightly to $6.67M, doing its best to pretend it’s still stable.Pudgy Penguins faceplanted 36% to $2.79M. Cute penguin, not a cute chart.Guild of Guardians and Courtyard are both down.Panini America randomly 4x’d like it found pre-workout in the kitchen.CryptoPunks did $1.95M on 17 transactions, because apparently Punk holders only sell during lunar eclipses.As for blockchains:Ethereum still king at $33.7M (+4.68%), with a spicy $2.67M in wash trading just to keep things interesting.BNB Chain up 28%, taking second place like it trained for this.Bitcoin NFTs down 15.5%, probably because everyone is too busy panic-refreshing BTC charts.Polygon down 28% but still doing $6.6M in wash trading because… reasons.Anyway, NFT sales overall dropped 5.4% to $79M while the entire market looks like it’s been left in the sun too long. Buyers are piling in, sellers are piling in, prices are dropping, and volume’s dipping. Classic. So yeah, everything’s totally normal in crypto.

 Here’s a Reddit-style post with a slightly sarcastic crypto-trader tone: Title: We Built All These Fancy Crypto Yield Pipes… and Institutions Are Still Stuck at the Faucet So apparently crypto has spent the last few years building every yield widget imaginable—staking on ETH/SOL, yield-bearing stables, DeFi lending, tokenized Treasuries—you name it. The pipes are all there, humming along, spitting out APYs. And yet only 8–11% of the entire crypto market is actually generating yield. Meanwhile, TradFi (you know, those guys still sending faxes somewhere) has 55–65% of its assets earning yield. Not because they have better products, but because they have… wait for it… disclosures. Risk ratings. Stress tests. Prospectuses. All the fun bedtime reading. RedStone drops the numbers: ~$300B–$400B in yield-bearing crypto assets versus a $3.55T market cap. And that’s before you subtract all the double-counted ETH that gets staked, wrapped, deposited, rehypothecated, and yeeted across six protocols before ending up as “TVL.” The big takeaway: crypto doesn’t have a product issue; it has a “please tell me what I’m actually risking” issue. Regulation Helped… Kind Of The GENIUS Act finally gave stablecoins a grown-up framework—full reserves, BSA oversight, no more regulatory purgatory. Boom: yield-bearing stablecoins grew ~300% YoY. But does the Act force anyone to disclose meaningful risk metrics? Of course not. It just solves the “are we allowed to exist?” question, which is apparently enough to get institutions to move from “nope” to “okay, now show me the actual risk, please.” Crypto vs TradFi Risk: Not Even the Same Sport TradFi has risk buckets, ratings, standardized disclosures. Crypto has: APY leaderboards TVL dashboards Vibes A 5% yield on staked ETH ≠ a 5% yield on a stablecoin backed by T-bills. One has slashing, liquidity freeze risk, smart contract exposure; the other has interest-rate risk and maybe issuer shenanigans. But there’s no universal way to compare that. No risk score. No standardized collateral map. And nobody’s labeling the oracle dependencies like: “This entire pool implodes if two guys running servers in their garage go offline.” The Transparency Gap RedStone nailed it: “The barrier to institutional adoption at scale is risk transparency.” Right now: No consistent risk scoring across products Asset quality disclosures are inconsistent or incomplete Rehypothecation is a choose-your-own-adventure Oracles/validators are black boxes Double-counting makes everything look bigger than it is Everything is “on-chain,” but turning that firehose into something a treasury desk can model? Not happening yet. Closing the Gap: No New Toys Needed We don’t need new DeFi Ponzinomics 3.0. We already have: Staked blue-chip assets Yield-bearing stablecoins Tokenized Treasuries The next phase is boring but necessary: standardized disclosures, credible third-party audits, consistent treatment of leverage and rehypothecation. TradFi isn’t winning because it’s safer—it’s winning because its risks are measurable. Crypto’s yield penetration (8–11%) doesn’t mean yield is scarce. It means the risk behind those yields is illegible to anyone managing actual institutional money. Until crypto can answer the most TradFi question in existence—“What am I risking for this yield?”—the big money stays sidelined, and the APYs keep getting farmed mostly by us degenerates who read smart contract audits at 2 a.m. and call that “due diligence.”