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- Pikachu Illustrator Card Sets $16.49 Million Record in Private Sale
Pikachu Illustrator Card Sets $16.49 Million Record in Private Sale
Plus: 🧩 ZeroLend winds down after liquidity collapse across layer 2 networks
Juan Aranovich
February 17, 2026
Hi! In today’s edition:
🎴 Pikachu Illustrator card sells for $16.49 million in record breaking deal
🧩 ZeroLend shuts down after total value locked falls from $359 million to $6.6 million
Today’s newsletter is brought to you by Fuse Energy!
FUSE ENERGY HITS A $5B VALUATION FOLLOWING A $70M SERIES B
Fuse Energy is a $400M ARR utility powering 200,000+ homes, and has recently announced a $70M series B at a blockbuster $5B valuation.
This comes after the recent beta launch of The Energy Network, a new digital layer engineered to scale our grids and save billions in costs.
And now, it’s just building momentum:
$170M raised to date
$5B valuation
Beta live on Solana
Landmark SEC no-action letter secured
Planning listings for early 2026
A new foundation for the grid is coming.
Check out their announcement here and follow Fuse on X for updates.
Scaramucci’s Son Buys Logan Paul’s Pokémon Card for $16M Record
A.J. Scaramucci, son of SkyBridge founder Anthony Scaramucci, has purchased Logan Paul’s rare Pikachu Illustrator card for $16.49 million, setting a new record for the most expensive trading card ever sold.
Paul originally bought the 1998 card in 2021 for $5.3 million. Only 39 copies were distributed, and this is believed to be the only PSA 10 graded example, meaning it is in virtually perfect condition. The sale eclipses the previous $13 million record for a sports card.
The transaction also revived controversy from 2022, when Paul fractionalized a small portion of the card through his now defunct platform, Liquid Marketplace. About 5.4% of the card was sold to investors before the site later went offline.
In 2024, Canadian regulators charged the platform and associated parties with securities violations. Paul has said he bought back the fractional interests and restored access so users could withdraw funds.
ZeroLend Shuts Down After Liquidity Dries Up Across Layer 2s
Another DeFi lender has called it quits.
ZeroLend announced Monday that it is winding down operations after three years, with founder “Ryker” saying the protocol had become unsustainable. The core issue was not a single exploit or market crash, but a slow bleed.
Several of the layer 2 networks ZeroLend operated on saw activity and liquidity dry up, while some oracle providers stopped supporting those chains altogether. That made it harder to run lending markets reliably, and revenues failed to keep up with costs.
At its peak in November 2024, ZeroLend held nearly $359 million in total value locked. That figure has now collapsed by about 98% to roughly $6.6 million. The ZERO token fell another 34% in the past 24 hours and is down 99% from its 2024 high.
Users are being urged to withdraw funds, though some assets remain stuck on thinly traded networks. The team says it plans contract upgrades to help redistribute stranded liquidity. For token holders, however, the project’s closure appears final.
TODAY: DEX in the City at 12pm ET
Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, Vy Le, and Jessi Brooks examine the CFTC’s industry-heavy advisory committee, Sam Bankman-Fried’s latest bid for a retrial, and what a rise in crypto-linked ransom demands and trafficking payments means for enforcement.
⚡🏗️ Crypto investment firm Paradigm argued that Bitcoin mining should be viewed as a flexible grid participant rather than an energy drain, emphasizing that miners adjust electricity use based on price signals, account for just 0.23% of global energy consumption, and help absorb surplus power instead of operating as constant loads like AI data centers.
🌐 Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin argued that Ethereum must remain neutral and permissionless at the protocol level, insisting users should be free to build and transact even if they reject his views on DeFi, politics, privacy or AI, while encouraging the community to openly defend its own values at the application layer.
🪙 Blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs found that Monero’s transaction activity held steady through 2024–2025 despite exchange delistings, noting that ransomware groups still request XMR for privacy but most ransom payments ultimately convert into Bitcoin before settlement.
🤖 deBridge, a cross-chain infrastructure protocol, launched its Model Context Protocol (MCP) to let AI agents execute swaps, bridging, and multi-step transactions across Ethereum-compatible chains and Solana without taking custody of user funds, streamlining complex blockchain actions behind a single automated interface.
🤝 Crypto lender Nexo partnered with Bakkt, a publicly traded U.S. digital-asset platform with regulated infrastructure, to re-enter the American market, allowing U.S. customers to access Nexo’s yield, lending, and exchange products through a compliance-aligned framework after previously stepping back from the country.
📊 Metaplanet reported a $605 million annual loss after aggressively accumulating 35,100 bitcoin worth $2.4 billion, revealing that its average purchase price of $107,000 per coin left it deeply underwater as prices fell, while signaling increased reliance on preferred shares and options-writing revenue to stabilize finances.
📉 Bank of America’s February survey showed bearish bets against the U.S. dollar fell to their lowest level since 2012, while Bitcoin displayed an unusually strong positive correlation of 0.60 with the dollar index in early 2025, meaning further dollar weakness could weigh on BTC unless a rebound sparks renewed volatility.
