Happy 10th Anniversary! 🥂
🎉 Unchained celebrates its 10th birthday! At 6pm ET, Laura and Haseeb Qureshi of Dragonfly have an unstructured conversation today about the past 10 years and whatever else comes up 👀Tune in!
In today’s edition:
📈 Bitcoin topped $65,000 to a two-week high after the US and Iran reached a deal to end hostilities and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, sending oil sliding and risk assets higher
🪙 Exodus and Ondo Finance launched Exodus Markets, giving customers one-tap access to more than 200 tokenized stocks and ETFs directly on Solana
⚖️ Sam Bankman-Fried lost his appeal as a Second Circuit panel ruled his FTX fraud trial was not unfair, days after he asked Trump for a pardon
Bitcoin Tops $65K as US and Iran Reach a Deal
Bitcoin climbed above $65,000 to its highest level in nearly two weeks after the US and Iran reached a deal to end hostilities and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, pulling the geopolitical premium out of oil and lifting risk assets worldwide.
BTC traded around $65,844 on Monday, up 2.1% over 24 hours and roughly 9% above the sub-$60,000 low it hit last week, its weakest since October 2024. Ether, Solana, and XRP all gained, while Brent crude slid more than 4% toward $83 a barrel. Asian stocks jumped, and S&P 500 futures rose.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced the deal first, followed by President Trump and Iranian state media. The Strait is set to reopen Friday upon signing, with a formal ceremony planned in Switzerland. Neither side has released the full text.
Exodus and Ondo Launch 200-Plus Tokenized Stocks
Exodus, the publicly traded self-custodial wallet, launched Exodus Markets in partnership with Ondo Finance, giving customers the ability to buy and sell more than 200 tokenized stocks, ETFs, and real-world assets directly on Solana.
The launch extends Exodus from a wallet into a broader financial platform where users can trade, spend, send, and earn in one app. Exodus was the first publicly traded company to tokenize its own stock, back in 2021, and now lets customers in supported regions trade its EXOD shares alongside 200-plus other tokenized assets.
"Tokenized stocks are one of the most important developments in modern finance," said JP Richardson, CEO and cofounder of Exodus. The tokens convey economic exposure but, the company noted, are not the same as owning the underlying securities and carry no shareholder rights.
Sam Bankman-Fried Loses His FTX Appeal
Sam Bankman-Fried lost his bid to overturn his fraud and conspiracy conviction Friday, after a federal appeals court panel ruled that his arguments in his trial were not persuasive.
The Second Circuit panel upheld Judge Lewis Kaplan's handling of the 2023 trial, rejecting the former FTX CEO's claims that he was blocked from presenting key arguments. The court was blunt that the evidence against him was overwhelming and that whether his misappropriated funds might later have appreciated was irrelevant to whether he committed fraud.
The ruling matches the skeptical reception the panel gave his attorney at a November hearing. It also lands days after Bankman-Fried formally asked President Trump for a pardon, a request Trump has previously said he would not grant. He is separately seeking a new trial.
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Bitcoin ended a turbulent week essentially flat, while Michael Saylor's comments about whether to sell — or not — have divided the community.
Austin, Ram, and Chris dig into the Saylor controversy alongside the SpaceX IPO, new Reg NMS developments, Anthropic's latest moves, Iran peace talks, and decentralized AI.
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⚖️ The CFTC sued New Mexico in its latest bid to assert federal authority over sports-betting prediction markets. The suit escalates a jurisdictional fight with states and follows the agency's first formal prediction-markets rule proposal last week.
🥊 Trump-backed World Liberty Financial will fund UFC fighter bonuses in its USD1 stablecoin at a White House event. The arrangement puts a Trump-family-linked token at a federal venue, raising fresh conflict-of-interest questions.
⛏️ Bitcoin mining difficulty dropped 10% in the second-largest negative adjustment of 2026. The drop signals miners powering down rigs as the price slump squeezes margins.
🌍 Zimbabwe moved to regulate its crypto sector, requiring firms to register with the central bank, per Reuters. It is the latest African state to bring digital assets under formal oversight.
🟠 Metaplanet agreed to acquire Siiibo Securities for about $13 million to develop bitcoin-linked yield products. The deal gives the Japanese bitcoin treasury company a licensed securities arm to build out financial offerings.
📊 Blockworks acquired Messari, combining two of crypto's better-known media and data businesses. The deal marks notable consolidation in crypto research and analytics.
