BTC chills, Nasdaq slips – is crypto the safe haven now

Plus: Venice AI’s VVV token dropped – and AI agents scored big

GM. Think of us as your crypto bartender – mixing up the day’s zesty market movements, shaking out the fluff, and serving it straight, no garnish needed.

🤖 Venice AI.

🍋 News drops: crypto Ponzi scheme promoter gets sentenced, KuCoin has to leave the US for two years + more

🍍 Market flavor today

After all the BUFFOONERY we had to suffer through yesterday, we finally get to enjoy some more of those beautiful greens in the market today.

The Fear & Greed Index is meditating in Greed at 72, Bitcoin’s back above $100K. Life is zen 🧘

So, basically, our boy BTC managed to stabilize after the DeepSeek fiasco, which André Dragosch, a researcher at Bitwise, sees as hella bullish – especially knowing that the NASDAQ kept on sliding.

And if you’re still shaking from yesterday’s dip, macroeconomic expert Raoul Pal has some advice for you: calm down and go touch some grass.

20-30% price dips are completely normal out here – and 2025 is still lookin’ good for crypto.

He says we’re entering the Banana Singularity or Phase 2 of the Banana Zone, which is basically that moment in the market cycle when things go, well, bananas – prices, hype, sentiment, everything. According to him, we can expect Q1 to be super strong.

And finally, as always – when in doubt, zoom out:

• Metaplanet – aka the Japanese version of MicroStrategy – is raising money to buy more Bitcoin (and saying it’s the largest capital raise in Asia for this purpose);

• The strategic Bitcoin reserve bill in Arizona passed the State Senate Finance Committee and is now headed to the Senate Rules Committee. If the Senate approves, it’s off to the House. If the House approves, it’s off to set a trend for other states to do the same. And then, to the moon.

Sure, maybe your neighbor – who thinks crypto is some imaginary scam internet money – was throwin’ middle fingers at your window yesterday. Maybe your parents told you to move out of their basement when the market dipped (jk… maybe).

But look around – major players and states are still all-in on BTC. Don’t lose focus; the future’s lookin’ bright, my friend 😏

🥝 Memecoin harvest

This is what happens when the internet collectively decides, “we like this joke enough to make it valuable” 😃👍

	Name		24H Change
	Venice Token VVV		▲ 6.4K%
	TruthChain TRUTH		▲ 6.2K%
	GoFundMe GFM		▲ 173%
	Beenz BEENZ		▲ 132%

Data as of 09:35 AM EST.

Check out these memecoins and plenty more here.

“Why the frick does an Italian city have a token??” – one might ask after seeing the top memecoin on our list today.

… yeah, I know, no one thought that. What a stupid intro, actually. But it’ll do 🤠

Anyways, no, it’s not a city, you silly goose 🤪 – it’s a platform called Venice AI, launched in May 2024 by Bitcoin advocate Erik Voorhees to give you access to AI models like Llama and DeepSeek (sorry if this word triggers PTSD).

There have been plenty of rumors going around about AI models – like “DeepSeek is sending user data to China” – which make people question how safe AI tech really is.

Venice is here to tackle those concerns by storing conversations locally in your browser, encrypting them in transit, and processing everything on decentralized GPUs.

(In other words, nobody’s snooping on your weird AI interactions).

Plus, Venice offers private and uncensored API access for AI agents – meaning they explore more topics and improve their reasoning with a broader, unrestricted knowledge base.

Oh, and the platform launched that VVV token you just saw. It was an interesting launch, lemme tell ya:

• This was the first token airdrop aimed at AI agents – 25% of the VVV genesis supply went to AI community protocol accounts on Base (like Luna, aixbt, and VaderAI);

• Within about 90 minutes of launching, VVV hit a fully diluted value (FDV) of over $1B;

• Coinbase listed it on the same day of its launch (which, normally, takes weeks).

And what does this whole thing tell us?

• Everyone’s been saying 2025 would be the year for the AI + crypto combo – Venice’s success is another proof;

• Tokens allocated to AI agents show they’re becoming fully integrated players in DeFi;

• Under Trump, devs might feel safer building crypto projects – so we can likely expect more launches like this one.

🍋 News drops

⛓ Antonia Perez Hernandez, a promoter of the Forcount crypto Ponzi scheme, is heading to prison for 30 months. She and her crew scammed investors out of $8.4M by luring them into Forcount with promises of huge returns. Spoiler: none of those returns were real.

💸 KuCoin agreed to pay a $300M fine for running an unlicensed money-transmitting business in the US. Also, the founders were forced to resign, and the exchange is saying goodbye to the US market for the next two years.

📝 Tuttle Capital has filed for ETFs linked to Chainlink (LINK), Cardano (ADA), and even memecoins like MELANIA and TRUMP. Bloomberg’s James Seyffart says this is a case of issuers testing how far the SEC will go.

🇺🇸 Ripple got money transmitter licenses in New York and Texas. With this approval, they’re all set to offer cross-border payments in the US.

🗣 CFTC’s acting chair, Caroline Pham, announced public roundtable discussions to tackle market issues (including those that involve crypto). Over the next few months, they’ll gather input from industry experts, dig into data, and hopefully figure out some clear rules for crypto.

🧃 Sip of knowledge

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🍌 Juicy memes