War All the Time
Markets bleed, tariffs escalate, and crypto finds itself caught in the crossfire.
War, what is it good for? Keeping on theme for the admin, it's chaotic and chaos = uncertainty. Markets like predictability. Tariffs changing, then fighting to add more back on, war with Iran — and it's getting harder to not talk about AI every week because it has completely changed everything.
When we are in what appears to be a bear market, not a lot of crypto news happens. DeFi news has hit a bit of a wall. Is this maturation or stagnation? My hope is that teams are cooking in silence, moving away from simple DEX pairs toward agentic protocols that can function in this high-chaos environment.
This past week was either AI + crypto or scams being exposed, theorized and general, continued negativity.
The charts reflect a market that is paralyzed by uncertainty.
- Open Interest: Aggregated OI on $BTC sits at $97 billion, with a nearly perfect 51/49 long-short split. Nobody is willing to lead the charge.
- Sentiment: We're stuck in Extreme Fear (16). While that's an improvement from the "5" we saw in early February, it shows that retail and institutions alike are waiting for a catalyst.
We have an early casualty from a mix of being hacked and a bear market that took out 3 projects at once on Solana. Step Finance hit us with the sad news — Step Finance, SolanaFloor, and Remora Markets will be winding down all operations following the hack at the end of January.
AI x Crypto News
Phantom created a Claude Code skill with dFlow. One prompt gives you a full-stack Solana app with wallets, swaps, predictions, and more built in. You seriously have nothing holding you back from making an app. With $20 (one month of Claude), patience and an idea, you can make and launch an app on Solana Mobile. Get off your ass and experiment.
The DFlow & Phantom Claude Code skill gives your agent the missing structure needed to build full-stack Solana applications, with the wallet and liquidity layers designed as a single system from a single prompt.
A first of its kind! SoFi bank now supports Solana network deposits! They are the first national chartered bank where individuals can buy, sell and hold crypto, and manage your SOL in the SoFi app.
Solana launched payments.org — a website catered towards payments, TPS and information for TradFi to view, compare and learn about how payments on Solana can benefit them. $2T in stablecoin transfers per quarter.
Magic Eden is dumping Bitcoin and EVM NFTs to focus exclusively on Solana and Packs going forward. Another casualty? The Magic Eden wallet — export your keys and bring them into another wallet before April 1st.
Can your DeFi holdings actually become your functioning bank account? MacBrennan from Project0 was on Lightspeed this week talking about their new Pay product that lets users pay rent or buy coffee without selling their crypto holdings.
SeekerClaw is the first AI agent fully running on your Solana Mobile. Does it have access to your seed vault? Be careful — try to make a new wallet in Phantom/Solflare to use it with.
Near introduced Confidential Intents in their wallet. You can use Near Intents to get pretty much any token these days.
Jane Street Allegations
It was impossible to miss this pattern if you paid attention. A recent lawsuit allegedly claims Jane Street pushed the Luna crash by having insider information. Jane Street and possibly others allegedly used massive, potentially manipulative derivatives positions to create effectively unlimited "phantom" Bitcoin exposure without ever touching actual BTC on-chain — heavily suppressing the spot price.
Axiom Exposed
Zach XBT pulled a page from the corporate playbook with a teaser announcement. It was Axiom — Broox Bauer was one of multiple Axiom Exchange employees abusing internal tools to lookup sensitive user details and insider trade by tracking private wallet activity since early 2025.
Metaplex Moves
Metaplex proposed a framework for an agent registry program on Solana. If it passes, it will allow agents to have a permanent, verifiable onchain identity tied to a Metaplex Core NFT.
They also launched the Metaplex app — launch pools are time-based token sales attempting organic onchain price discovery. Instead of a fixed token price, creators allocate tokens to the launch pool. Participants deposit during a defined window and once the pool closes, tokens are distributed pro-rata based on each participant's share.
Stay Free — Ebullition
