Publicly traded exchanges Coinbase (COIN) and Robinhood (HOOD) popped this week after delivering impressive earnings beats. Both companies more than doubled analyst earnings expectations, with COIN reporting $4.66 in earnings per share and HOOD posting $1.01
Although Coinbase saw $439B of crypto trading activity and impressively doubled platform volumes from Q3 to Q4, Robinhood stole the show with its $71B in Q4 crypto trading volumes, representing an enormous 5x quarter-over-quarter increase.
We previously identified HOOD as an up-and-coming underdog in the battle to become crypto’s top retail trading platform. Now, the exchange’s market capitalization has come to rival that of COIN, and its status as a registered securities exchange could pay dividends in a future where the SEC lays out clearer rules.
In December of 2024, Doodles founder, Scott Martin, hinted at a token launch for the NFT project in a cryptographic tweet. Earlier this week, Doodles made it official, announcing on Twitter that they are launching a token with the ticker DOOD. The token will be launched, perhaps controversially, on the Solana chain and will have a supply of 10,000,000,000, with 23% of the token allocation going to the company and team while 30% will be allocated to the Doodles community.
3️⃣ Quintenz Nominated for CFTC Chair
This week, Trump nominated Brian Quintenz to lead the CFTC. Brian Quintenz has experience in the CFTC serving as a commissioner from 2017 to 2021 and is perhaps even more notably currently working at a16z crypto as their Global Head of Policy. If Quintenz were to be put in charge of the CFTC, he would have the responsibility of managing the CFTC's regulatory and enforcement agenda. This nomination by Trump highlights his campaign promise of making the US the crypto hub of the world.
4️⃣ Ethereum Foundation Begins Deploying ETH
With more attention being placed on the Ethereum Foundation's leadership, and critics demanding they turn to wartime mode, the EF opted this week to deploy ETH from its treasury into multiple protocols. Over the past week, over 45K ETH has been deposited across the Ethereum ecosystem with plans on deploying more capital in the future. Hopefully this will foster some sort of growth on-chain and incentivize builders to keep leveling up Ethereum.
5️⃣ OpenSea Teases $SEA
SEA is coming. The OpenSea Foundation tweeted earlier this week hinting at criteria for the SEA airdrop. While no official announcements are out there regarding tokenomics or a release date, the tweet details that historical usage of OpenSea will factor into the allocation of the airdrop that users will receive, and U.S. users will indeed be able to claim their allocation.
FRIEND & SPONSOR: FRAX
The Fraxtal ecosystem is expanding at lightning speed—this month’s biggest highlight is IQAI.com, the newest Agent Tokenization platform from IQ and Frax. IQ is building autonomous, intelligent, tokenized agents launching on Fraxtal in Q1. Empower on-chain agents with built-in wallets, tokenized ownership, and decentralized governance—all within a fast-growing Fraxtal ecosystem.
This week’s Weekly Rollup covers Trump’s clash with the Fed over interest rates and the surprising crypto moves from Trump Media.
Gauntlet’s Tarun Chitra joins us to unpack the latest developments—from OpenSea’s upcoming airdrop to Arbitrum’s permissionless fault proofs—while we debate whether airdrops are truly over.We also dig into Vitalik’s “communist” joke and Dave Portnoy’s memecoin mania.
Tune in for all the drama and alpha happening in the second week of February!
Not financial or tax advice. Bankless content is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.
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