Plus: Is US tech overpriced?

GM. We're the fruit ninja of crypto - slicing through the mess to serve only the good stuff.

🚔 The police arrested seven people suspected of kidnapping the co-founder of Ledger.

🍋 News drops: Brazil bans World ID, Breaking Bad actor's X account gets hacked in crypto scam + more

🍍 Market flavor today

Find out more about the Fear & Greed Index here.

Crypto Market Cap: $3.44T -5.21% (24H)
Name		Price	24H	7D
	Bitcoin BTC	$99,885.19	-4.41%	-5.96%
	Ethereum ETH	$3,095.78	-6.55%	-8.28%
	XRP XRP	$2.94	-5.51%	-9.70%
	Solana SOL	$230.11	-9.88%	-10.10%
	BNB BNB	$663.80	-2.67%	-3.07%

What the f..?

We had such a glorious Friday with major regulatory Ws... but then the market did what it does best: gave us a reason to be anxious again.

We're talking over $860M in liquidations in the past 24 hours, and nearly every single coin in the top 50 in red. And tbh, I'm now seeing red in more than one way.

Source: BitDegree

Why's everything crashing?

Reason No. 1: the Fed's big meeting (FOMC) is happening on Wednesday, and everyone's convinced they won't lower interest rates. That means borrowing money stays expensive, so investors might avoid investing in riskier assets like crypto.

Reason No. 2:

There's this new kid on the AI block called DeepSeek - basically China's answer to ChatGPT. But here's the fun part:

• It hit #1 on Apple's App Store;

• It only cost about $6M to develop (compared to OpenAI's $17.9B);

• They open-sourced it.

This made investors go like, "Wait a damn minute... Are we overpaying for US tech companies? 🤨" and dump a bunch of US stocks.

Source: @KobeissiLetter

And analysts have noticed this trend: when the US stock market sneezes, Bitcoin and the rest of the crypto market catch the flu.

But hey, whenever things go south like that, look at Michael Saylor. My guy's back at it again - MicroStrategy bought another 10,107 BTC for $1.1B.

Source: @BitDegree

TL;DR:

Market crash? Hurts.

Good news? We're still alive (yay?..), and the big dogs are still buying - so this might be just another bump in the road.

🥝 Memecoin harvest

If the market is a sad movie today, these memecoins are the comic relief.

	Name		24H Change
	Shytoshi Kusama SHY		▲ 37K%
	FAFO FAFO		▲ 29.9K%
	Kyna KYNA		▲ 3.5K%
	DeepSeek SEEK		▲ 594%

Data as of 09:20 AM EST.

Check out these memecoins and plenty more here.

🙏 Be #Humble

You know those days when you're this 🤏 close to posting a screenshot of your crypto gains just to sh*t on your high school bully? Well, prolly not today, but when it does happen, our suggestion is... don't.

'Cause sometimes, the wrong people get the right info about you - and suddenly, you're living out Liam Neeson's worst nightmare.

Case in point: Davis Balland, co-founder of Ledger, and his wife got abducted from their home in France last Tuesday and taken to two different locations.

The kidnappers (trigger warning: gross) cut one of his fingers off and sent it to his associate to demand a crypto ransom - part of which was actually paid.

This horror show continued until the police freed him on Wednesday and got him to a hospital for his injuries. His wife was found the next day tied up in a car (thankfully otherwise unharmed).

The cops took 10 suspects into custody late Thursday - most of them were already on the police's radar for criminal stuff, though none had been involved in gang-style crimes before.

Since then, three got released, but the remaining seven (most in their early 20s btw) are now facing charges that could land them in prison for a lifetime.

Oh, and nearly all the crypto they extorted got traced, frozen, and seized.

And you know what else is scary? According to Jameson Lopp's "Known Physical Bitcoin Attacks" archive, seven other physical attacks involving crypto have already been documented in 2025 alone.

I'm not sharing this just to terrify you... okay, maybe a little, but I really don't want you to be part of this statistic.

Kendrick Lamar wouldn't say things just to say things. Sit down, be humble.

🍋 News drops

🤔 Is altcoin season over? Analyst Ali Martinez points out there are now over 36M altcoins floating around - compared to under 3K back in 2017 - and with that many coins in the mix, it's hard to see them all popping off like they used to.

🚨 The X account of Dean Norris, aka Hank Schrader from Breaking Bad, was hacked to promote a fake memecoin. Hackers even posted a video of him saying, "It's real," which might've been a deepfake or a misused cameo.

🇧🇷 Brazil's data protection authorities told the World ID project to pack it up. Tools for Humanity, the company behind the project, can no longer offer Brazilians cash or crypto in exchange for their biometrics.

📱 Confused by a million and one crypto apps? We narrowed it down to the real standouts - check out our list and pick your favorite.

🍌 Juicy memes

Source: @TheCryptoLark

Source: @boldleonidas

Source: @naiivememe