Farcaster Winds Down as Backers Reclaim $180 Million

Plus: 🔐 Ledger eyes a U.S. IPO, 🏛️ SEC and CFTC move toward a unified crypto stance

Author

Juan Aranovich
January 23, 2026

Hi! In today’s edition:

  • 🔁 Farcaster returns $180 million to backers as crypto social media consolidates

  • 🔐 Ledger explores a U.S. IPO after a surge in wallet demand

  • 🏛️ SEC and CFTC signal a more unified approach to crypto oversight

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Farcaster’s Backers Get Their Money Back as Crypto Social Media Consolidates

One of crypto’s most ambitious social media experiments is entering a new phase, and investors are getting a rare outcome in the process.

Merkle Manufactory, the company behind Farcaster, plans to repay $180 million to its venture backers, according to co-founder Dan Romero. The repayment follows Neynar’s acquisition of the Farcaster protocol, a move that raised questions this week about the project’s future and sparked confusion among users.

Romero moved quickly to clarify the situation. Farcaster is not shutting down, he said on X, and the protocol will continue operating under new ownership. What is changing is Merkle itself. After years of building, fundraising, and experimentation, the company is effectively winding down and returning capital to investors rather than pushing ahead as a standalone startup.

That outcome is unusual in venture-backed crypto, where projects more often limp along or quietly disappear. Farcaster was once valued at around $1 billion and attracted major backers during the peak of Web3 enthusiasm. But scaling decentralized social platforms has proven difficult. Ownership and tokens can help, but they do not automatically solve the challenge of building daily user habits.

The decision also reflects a broader shift across crypto. Consolidation is accelerating, with larger players acquiring infrastructure and smaller teams stepping aside. In that sense, Farcaster’s transition looks less like a failure and more like a sign that the industry is maturing and choosing sustainability over ambition at any cost.

Ledger’s IPO Plans Put Crypto Security in the Spotlight

Ledger, one of the best-known makers of crypto hardware wallets, is exploring a potential public listing in the United States.

Ledger is in talks with major banks including Goldman Sachs and Barclays about a U.S. IPO that could value the company at more than $4 billion, according to a FT report. While plans are not final, the discussions show how established financial institutions are increasingly involved with crypto-native companies.

The timing comes after a difficult year for crypto users. Hacks and fraud surged in 2025, with more than $3 billion stolen, according to industry data. 

As a result, more investors have turned to hardware wallets, which store crypto keys offline rather than on exchanges or apps connected to the internet. Ledger said it had a record year in 2025, with revenue reaching the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Founded in Paris in 2014, Ledger has grown into one of the largest providers of crypto storage devices.

The IPO discussions follow BitGo’s Thursday debut on the New York Stock Exchange, adding Ledger to a growing list of crypto firms considering public markets as a next step.

SEC and CFTC Signal United Front on Crypto

On Thursday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced a joint event aimed at highlighting their shared approach to crypto oversight. 

The timing matters. Both agencies now have Trump-appointed leaders, removing a key source of internal friction that has long plagued the industry.

SEC Chair Paul Atkins and newly confirmed CFTC Chair Mike Selig will appear together next week to outline how they are coordinating policy under Donald Trump’s pro-crypto agenda. The two said markets have struggled with unclear and overlapping rules and that closer cooperation is meant to fix that.

The event comes as Congress continues to debate a broader crypto market structure bill that would formally define each agency’s role. While lawmakers argue over details, regulators appear eager to show progress on their own.

For the crypto industry, the message is subtle but important. The turf wars may not be fully over, but Washington is at least trying to speak with one voice.

Uneasy Money: Why Crypto Still Can’t Overcome Its ICO Struggles

The crew digs into the Trove token crash, the death of InfoFi and Farcaster’s exit.

Trove Markets crashed at launch after a hyped ICO. X has pulled the plug on the InfoFi meta. Farcaster has been absorbed.

In this packed Uneasy Money episode, hosts Luca Netz, Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan delve into how Trove’s crash suggests that crypto’s ICO struggles persist. Kain suggests X’s move to block out InfoFi applications is “bullish” for the platform and the crew explores what’s next for decentralized social media along with the takeaways from Farcaster’s run.

They also discuss the pervasiveness of wallet poisoning scams, why Cosmos is struggling despite its good tech and why Paradex’s rollback suggests that crypto’s “code is law” ethos may be dying out.

Don’t miss out on how Luca nearly got wrapped up in the Trove drama and Tay’s tips to spot suspicious projects. Plus, why Kain thinks two people building with AI could succeed where Farcaster failed.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

  • 🚪 Caroline Ellison, the former head of Alameda Research and a key witness in the FTX case, was released from federal custody after about 14 months of a two-year sentence but remains under long-term supervision, asset forfeiture obligations, and a decade-long ban from corporate leadership roles.

  • 📊🪙 XXI Capital CEO Jack Mallers dropped the bitcoin-per-share metric for his Bitcoin treasury firm, arguing that constant share dilution to buy more BTC — a model popularized by rivals like Strategy — hurts investors and no longer reflects what the market wants from Bitcoin-linked equities.

  • ₿ Kansas lawmakers are considering a bill to create a state-run Bitcoin and digital assets reserve funded only by unclaimed crypto, airdrops, and staking rewards rather than taxpayer purchases, echoing federal plans to rely on seized assets instead of buying coins outright.

  • 🛰️ Decentralized satellite internet project Spacecoin announced a partnership and token swap with World Liberty Financial to combine satellite connectivity with DeFi payments, using WLFI’s USD1 stablecoin to handle settlement for users accessing the Spacecoin network.

  • 🇷🇺 Russia’s ruble-pegged stablecoin A7A5 processed more than $100 billion in transactions in under a year, acting mainly as a bridge between rubles and USDT to move money across borders despite sanctions, though activity has slowed sharply since mid-2025.

  • ⚙️ Chainlink acquired the Atlas transaction-ordering system to strengthen its tools that reduce harmful trading behavior in DeFi, keeping more value inside lending and trading apps instead of leaking profits to high-speed bots.

  • ⚖️ Donald Trump filed a lawsuit against JPMorgan and CEO Jamie Dimon over the alleged shutdown of accounts tied to his businesses in 2021, reviving broader “debanking” concerns long raised by crypto firms about politically motivated account closures.

  • 🪙 Ondo Finance plans to release tokenized versions of BitGo’s newly listed stock on Ethereum, Solana and BNB Chain shortly after its NYSE debut, allowing non-U.S. investors to buy shares using stablecoins without traditional brokerage access.

  • 🔗 Tokenization startup Superstate raised $82.5 million to move IPOs and corporate fundraising onto public blockchains like Ethereum and Solana, aiming to replace slower Wall Street systems with cheaper, always-on digital share issuance and settlement.

  • 💰 Capital One agreed to acquire stablecoin-focused fintech Brex for $5.15 billion in cash and stock, signaling a major move by a traditional bank to absorb crypto-native payment technology as stablecoins gain regulatory clarity and mainstream traction.