A Vicious Combo of Malaise and Ennui

Everyone is tired of the prices, which have the habit of sitting very still until they don't.

Everyone is tired of the prices, which have the habit of sitting very still until they don't. We are all looking toward January 30th as though it were the Last Judgment, or at least a very large clearance sale.

So it goes.

The Great Balancing Act

The 30th is the largest options expiry of the year so far with roughly $8.27 billion in contracts. There is a great pile of "calls" stacked at the $100,000 mark, like children reaching for a balloon that is tied to a brick.

• The Squeeze: If the price sneaks above $96.5k, it might unlock something called "gamma exposure," and the bulls will be very happy.
• The Wall: But the shorts have built a fortress at $100k. If we break it, they will have to buy Bitcoin to say they're sorry, which would rocket us to the moon.
• Max Pain: If we close below $90k, it is called "Max Pain." This is because the people who sell options will have all the money, and the people who bought them will have none.

While we wait for the computers to decide our fate, the world remains unhinged. President Trump is threatening tariffs on everyone. The EU, Canada, and then deciding, perhaps, that he was only kidding. Or not. Who the heck knows.

There is a possible government shutdown at the end of the month because apparently deciding on a budget is too challenging. The CLARITY bill has been shoved into a drawer again, and everyone is very busy arguing about ICE conflicts that will be used as weight against the budget. It is a vicious combo of malaise and ennui, like a party where the music has stopped but no one is allowed to leave.

Even the KOLs are drifting away from crypto now. AI is where the attention is at. Vibe Coding, LLMs, etc.

Crypto is currently the old man at the party, telling stories about 2021 that no one wants to hear. But the spring is still winding tighter. When it snaps, it will be very loud and very sudden. For now, its precious metals and AI are taking all of the attention.

Gwart (@GwartyGwart) summed it up pretty well.

Price Movements on the Week

• $BTC - Down 6.8%
• $SOL - Down 11.59%
• $ETH - Down 12.39%
• $ZEC - Down 9.35%
• $BNB - Down 7.35%
• Total Crypto Market Cap - Down 7.3% (under $3T at 2.9)

We have an app in the Solana Mobile store!!!! As someone who isn't a dev and a solo person writing articles because of my love of the industry, it's honestly a pretty crazy feeling to get an app out. I'll be working on an article about my experience, including the tools used, steps to take and how I did it. DeFi the System has no advertisers, no outside funding, etc. It's just me, Ebullition, making content. If you write and have interest in contributing, reach out.

You can find the app under Content & Streaming > DeFi the System. Downloading and leaving a review or helping to post about it makes a huge difference and helps.

If you'd like to help support DTS, I added a subscription option for $1/$5 a month, week whatever to help. We also accept any tokens sent to defithesystem.sol

Easily the 2nd biggest news this week (our app is clearly the most important) in Solana was the release of $SKR by @solanamobile. It rocketed up to $0.06, making devs who got the max drop's value at $45,000 at its initial peak. The DTS dapp hadn't been released yet, so we ended up in the 40k token tier. DTS isn't a team. It's one person and had I qualified for the 750k drop and staked it (25%), even at $0.03 per SKR, the monthly staking rewards could supply $400-500 a month to help pay for services we use and that's huge for a solo developer.

We've seen some teams offer up their monthly staking rewards as giveaways and about 50% of people who got $SKR staked it. If you haven't claimed yet, just make sure you do it through the wallet app on Seeker and not by searching on Jupiter, etc. There are fake claim sites out there, so be safe and stick to the Wallet on the phone.

Coinbase released their @Solana chain integration powered by @JupiterExchange so now you can discover and buy most solana tokens directly in the app on their Dex tab.

@OndoFinance expanded beyond Ethereum and BNB and launched on @Solana, bringing over 200 tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs onchain. In another win, for the first time, a tradfi IPO listed onchain as it happened with Bitgo ($BTGO on NYSE). Why does this matter? It opens up the ability to take part in IPOs directly onchain to be held in self custody. The cruddy part? Access is restricted in the USA currently, so you'd need to take a momentary visit online to your favorite country's IP address. Or you can trade on Jupiter, etc (if the tradfi markets are open). We aren't where we need yet, but keep inching closer.

Staying on brand, information leaked that @Ledger is planning an IPO with a potential valuation over $4 billion. If they go public, are you an investor?

As exciting as the idea of being an early investor in ICOs coming back was, it's showing the market that not everyone is a winner right away. For a lot of these, it doesn't even really feel like truly getting in early. The new playbook is setting whatever cap, then playing polymarket, forcing the raise to go above the cap and making money there. Hopefully you didn't take part in the @TroveMarkets raise. Trove is retaining $9.4m in ICO funds after raising from the public on false pretenses. The token is trading at a $1.4m fdv after starting at a $20m valuation. Just be careful, do your research on the teams and pick projects you actually use vs speculating on any opportunity.

Pump (@Pumpfun) announced a build in public hackathon with rewards. 12 projects will win $250k at $10m valuation and provide mentorship with pump fun's founders. You do the work, get money from your followers or users, then Pump swings in to give extra money to the ones that make it to the top. I couldn't find in the docs if Pump takes a certain % of the token of winners. Let's just assume for now a "project" is some attempt at a meme roadmap that takes over the world and gets into Walmart with stuffies and a video game.

• Launch a token
• Build a "project"
• Own at least 10% of the token's supply
• Build in Public: Posting on X, forming a Community & Streaming on Pump fun are HIGHLY encouraged

Moonbirds (@moonbirds) are launching $BIRB on the 28th. They did so many campaigns with partners for those SBT cards, so if you collected any, you should get something. Does anyone really care outside of Moonbird holders about a token tied to an NFT brand? So far, $pengu and $dood haven't done anything exciting. Why would I want to buy the token? I don't, but I'm ok taking what's given and swapping out of it.

Loopscale (@Loopscale) dropped their Solana Mobile app into the store and is doing a 2X points promo. Your account must have a Seeker Genesis Token (sorry Saga).

Solflare (@solflare) added a benefits tab that extends beyond just an airdrop checker. It catches airdrops and perks available to you based on your wallet activity. Claims / Access / Staking / Yield / Quests / Airdrops / VIP or early access / Event tickets / Exclusive content / Discounts and giveaways, etc. This almost feels like a social integration compared to some of the airdrop checkers out there like Jupiter has. I dig it.

Justin Drake (@drakefjustin) says Ethereum has formed a Post Quantum (PQ) team, led by Thomas Coratger (@tcoratger). After years of quiet R&D, EF (Ethereum Foundation) management has officially declared PQ security a top strategic priority. We will see more chains take this seriously, but will Bitcoin group together in time? I have faith Solana is already working on this behind the scenes and taking it seriously.

Did you use Nifty Gateway (@niftygateway) ever, or last cycle for your NFTs? Bad news. The platform will be closing on February 23, 2026. Starting today, Nifty Gateway is in withdrawal-only mode. Customers with a current balance of USD or ETH, or who hold an NFT, will be notified by email with instructions for moving their assets off of the Nifty platform. You may be thinking...withdraw my NFT? They're holding 650k NFTs which need to be manually withdrawn. NFTs from Beeple, Xcopy, etc potentially lost forever.

Well...as @alnboltn described, all the art is centrally minted from one NG wallet, so not from the artist themselves. So now on OpenSea, there are just thousands of works under the NG wallet as the creator. Secondly, NG gave everyone their own internal wallet. You just signed up with an email address and could fund your account with a credit card, etc. It made onboarding very easy. But now, everyone has to withdraw their NFTs to their own wallets before the site closes, or I guess they are lost.

Have an onchain brand? Solana Spaces (@solanaspaces) wants you! Import your Shopify store into Solana Spaces in just 1 minute. No rebuilds. No extra setup. Just plug in and go. For now, you need to tag yourself or a brand on their post or send an email via their site to apply.

The trenches are hungry for a runner it seems. Last week it was the White Whale (since retraced a ton) and this week? Penguins are hot. $PENGUIN rocketed to $100M and is up 11,263% since it began trending. I didn't take part as memeing takes way too much active attention for my taste, but congrats to anyone who scored on it.

Thanks for reading,

Stay Free • Ebullition