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Issue Summary: Welcome back to Coinstack, the weekly newsletter for institutional crypto investors and industry insiders. We reviewed the top news, stats, and reports in the digital asset ecosystem for our 300k weekly subscribers. This week, Pump.fun rolled out a new trader-focused “Cashback Coins” model to rebalance creator incentives, while a Bitcoin Improvement proposal, BIP-110 aimed at curbing spam sparked community backlash over censorship concerns. Meanwhile, Bitcoin also slipped after Donald Trump announced a 15% global tariff hike, adding fresh macro pressure to markets. On the fundraising front, Dragonfly closed a $650M fourth fund—beating its $500M target—to double down on stablecoins, on-chain payments, and DeFi. Meanwhile, Novig raised $75M in a Pantera-led Series B, bringing total funding to $105M as it scales its sports prediction marketplace.
Price performance since we began writing Coinstack in January 2021
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💵 Weekly Crypto Fundraises & Deals
Here are all the crypto fundraises we heard about this week, ranked by size…
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🗞️ Crypto News Recap: The Top 5 Stories
Welcome back to This Week in Crypto… everything you need to know in one scannable format. Here are the top 5 stories of the week…
🎉 Pump.fun Rolls Out New Fee-Sharing Model to Reward Traders: The Solana-based memecoin launchpad has revamped its creator fee model by introducing a new “Cashback Coins” model. Under this model, creators can choose whether to retain the rewards or redirect 100% of the trading fees to the traders. The update aims to create a fair and balanced reward system, addressing to the longstanding criticism that the previous system unfairly enriched the creators.
😳 Bitcoin Improvement Model to Curb Spam Receives Backlash: Pseudonymous developer Dathon Ohm who introduced the BIP-110 proposal, a “soft fork” upgrade in December last year, received sharp criticism from the industry. Ohm said that BIP-110 could temporarily reduce transaction data limit and unclog the network from spam risks. However, many industry experts argued that Ohm’s “spam fix” could impact decentralization, user accessibility, and undermine Bitcoin’s reputation.
🧨 Bitcoin Dips After Trump Hikes Global Tariffs to 15%: The price of Bitcoin saw a minor intraday dip on Saturday after President Trump hiked global tariffs from 10% to 15%. The move followed a day after the Supreme Court’s landmark 6-3 ruling on Friday that struck down Trump’s tariff imposition on the grounds of overreaching presidential authority.
🐙 Kraken Integrates ICE Chat for Institutional OTC Access: The U.S.-based crypto exchange Kraken has successfully integrated its OTC (over-the-counter) desk with ICE Chat, a messaging system managed by Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE: ICE). The integration allows Kraken to directly access ICE’s over 120,000 institutional clients worldwide via the OTC desk with real-time communications.
🤯 Google Search for “Bitcoin to Zero” Reaches Record High: Google Trends search results for the query “Bitcoin to Zero” hit a record score in the U.S. as it plunged towards $60K in February. Google Trends data shows that search results for “Is Bitcoin dead” and “Bitcoin to zero” have spiked significantly this week. The searches spiked similarly in 2021 and 2022 when Bitcoin hit local bottoms.
💬 Tweet of the Week
Source: @cz_binance
📊 Key Stats of the Week
Here are the most important and interesting stats in crypto this week...
1. Tether Gold has emerged as one of the top-performing protocols of 2026, quietly growing into the 11th largest DeFi protocol with $3.5B+ in deposits.
Over the past 30 days, Tether.io Gold has grown 47%, by far the fastest growth of any protocol in the top 25 by TVL.
As risk appetite contracts and capital rotates into onchain RWAs, the distinction between which protocols and which RWAs attract flows will matter more than ever.
Source: @DavidShuttleworth
2. Markets: 200M $XRP left @Binance over past 10 days as supply ratio dropped from 0.027 to 0.025, showing potential accumulation after 40% YTD correction.
Source: @CoinDesk
3. Another largely underindexed angle amidst all the market turmoil: onchain commodities have grown by $3B (+67%) YTD.
Over the past month, trading volume has surged 200% to record highs of $18.6B, with active users doubling to 60k and total holders now exceeding 230k (+23%).
Much of this growth has been led by @tethergold ($2.66B) and @Paxos Gold ($2.3B), signaling growing demand for simple, portable stores of value onchain as risk appetite fades elsewhere.
Source: @DavidShuttleworth
4. As onchain private credit accelerates, one protocol is quietly dominating by bringing real estate collateral and HELOCs onchain.
Figure now accounts for $15B+ in active loans, representing over 70% of all onchain private credit outstanding, driven almost entirely by its HELOC product.
At the same time, Figure’s yield-bearing stablecoin YLDS has grown to $600M in circulating supply, up 6x since December. It is now the 17th largest stablecoin by total supply and the fastest-growing stablecoin in the top 25 over the past month (+60%).
Figure is quietly building a real RWA lending platform with real usage, and is compounding that credit layer by building products like YLDS on top of it.
Source: @DavidShuttleworth
5. 100 Days in the Red
“In just 100 days, the crypto market has erased more than $730 billion in value. What we are witnessing is an unprecedented short-term capital flight, deepening the contraction of the crypto economy.” – By @GugaOnChain
Source: @cryptoquant_com
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📝 Highlights from the Top Crypto Reports
Here are the top highlights from the best crypto research reports this week…
About the Author: CoinDesk Research offers unbiased data-driven reports and digital asset trends, aims to help you understand crypto like never before by harnessing the power of DeFi market dynamics along with macro trends, on-chain data & analytics. This is an excerpt from the full article, which you can find here.
📝 By CoinDesk Research:
What to know:
Stablecoins now represent a much deeper capital base than the last cycle. Total stablecoin market cap has exceeded $300B, up ~6x from under $50B in early 2020 — signalling a structurally larger liquidity layer than 2020–2021.
On-chain activity is operating at a higher baseline than 2021. Weekly stablecoin volumes peaked around $160B in early 2025 (vs ~$80B in 2021), and now average roughly $60B, compared with ~$30B last cycle.
User and revenue growth is broader and increasingly multi-chain. Solana has reached over 4.1M daily active users and BNB around 1.9M, while weekly app revenues now average $50M–$70M and have exceeded $250M at peak — far beyond the 2020–21 cycle.
Binance highlights how crypto platforms are evolving into multi-asset financial venues. After introducing gold and silver futures, commodity volumes on Binance surged to $70B, reinforcing the report’s “micro → macro” shift toward broader financial infrastructure.
Macro Landscape: A Subdued Market
Over the past few years, the digital asset industry has achieved milestones that once seemed aspirational. Spot crypto ETFs launched in the U.S. to record-breaking inflows. A pro-crypto administration and more constructive regulatory environment have reshaped the policy landscape. Public companies are adopting digital assets as part of their corporate treasuries and large investors are allocating directly to tokens,
Despite these constructive long-term developments, near-term market sentiment has softened considerably. The Fear & Greed Index now sits at historic lows, indicating a degree of risk aversion that exceeds even the depths seen during the FTX episode. Bitcoin has declined more than 50% over the last few months, and many altcoins have fallen to multi-year lows - without experiencing the broadly anticipated "altcoin season."
At the same time, key capital inflow indicators have softened. The stablecoin market cap recently recorded its first decline in 26 months in November 2025, suggesting a slowdown in new capital entering the ecosystem. Institutional participation has moderated, with spot ETFs experiencing recurring outflows and Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) purchases stagnating, often trading below their mNAV.
Adding to the pressure, Bitcoin has underperformed many traditional financial indices and gold over the past year, with TradFi assets continuing to hover near all-time highs. In a period marked by heightened geopolitical uncertainty, Bitcoin has yet to consistently demonstrate the defensive characteristics many associate with its “digital gold” narrative - a role that could prove critical to its long-term positioning.
Microstructure: The Disconnect between Price and Fundamentals
While current market conditions remain muted, recent price action alone does not fully reflect the broader trajectory of the digital asset sector. Infrastructure has strengthened, regulatory frameworks have matured, institutional integration has deepened, and real-world use cases continue to expand. This divergence becomes even more evident when comparing today’s fundamental metrics with those of the 2021 cycle.
As it stands, the total stablecoin market capitalization has exceeded $300B, up sixfold from under $50B in early 2020. As stablecoins serve as a primary proxy for liquidity entering the crypto ecosystem, this expansion signals a much deeper capital base than the previous cycle.
Ethereum remains the dominant chain for stablecoins, but BNB Chain (BSC) leads the pack in terms of annual growth, surging 133% year-over-year. Networks like Solana and newcomers like Hyperliquid are capturing visible market share, signaling a transition toward a high-speed, multi-chain stablecoin economy.
🎧 Top Crypto Podcasts of The Week
Here are the crypto podcasts that are worth listening to this week...
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Tracking the most important blockchain stories of the 2020s, including a decentralized internet and the creation of a new open global monetary system that works for everyone. As always, published for informational purposes only. Please do your own research. Just our opinions. Not intended as financial advice as we are not financial advisors. We may own some of the digital assets we write about as we believe strongly in the sector. Please do your own research.
Coinstack is a news and analysis newsletter for the digital asset industry. None of the information here is a recommendation to invest in any securities or other types of investments. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. AI usage disclosure: Some portions of this document may have been created with the assistance of AI tools. The content has been reviewed and edited by a human. As a result, our research/editorial may contain errors. For more information on the extent and nature of AI usage, please contact the publisher. For personalized investment advice consult with a registered investment advisor.
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