Hello 👋

gm, we're back from our hiatus!

Welcome to the 54th edition of Sfermion’s Collider where we highlight the latest & greatest news in the world of crypto, gaming & entertainment, consumer trends, AI, macro, and more!

Bi-weekly, we aim to drop a curated list of the most exciting stories & updates that we believe are enabling the future of tech and the emergence of the metaverse.

If you're looking forward to reading this edition of Sfermion’s Collider, please don't forget to subscribe below, share within your network, and follow Sfermion on Twitter to get the latest!

Crypto Updates

Berachain Launches Mainnet and $BERA Token (link)

Unichain Mainnet is Here (link)

Story Protocol Launches Mainnet and $IP Token (link)

MicroStrategy Rebrands to Strategy (link)

Trump's Crypto Czar Sacks Says 'Golden Age' Coming (link)

Senator Hagerty to Introduce Stablecoin Legislation (link)

SEC Scales Back Crypto Enforcement (link)

Senator Warren Calls Out Banks for Crypto Debanking (link)

Trump-Backed WLFI Launches Macro Strategy Token Reserve, Collaborates with Ondo Finance to Bolster Bitcoin and Ethereum (link)

Avalanche Foundation Partners with Aethir to Fast-Track InfraBuild AI Grantees into $100M Ecosystem Fund (link)

0G Foundation Unveils $88.8M Ecosystem Fund for Decentralized AI Applications (link)

Circle’s USDC Hits Record Market Cap Over $56B as Stablecoin Demand Soars (link)

Tether Expands USDT Infrastructure to Ethereum Layer-2 Arbitrum (link)

UBS Explores Blockchain Gold Investment via zkSync on Ethereum (link)

Robinhood’s Crypto Revenue Soars 700% in Q4, Driving Record Profit (link)

Barstool Founder Dave Portnoy Promotes Jailstool Token in Response to Backlash from Memecoin Trades (link)

Gaming Updates

Gaming network B3 (💰) officially executes their airdrop and launches the $B3 token, listed on Coinbase (link)

PlayEmber (💰) and Pudgy Penguins launch “Penguin Life” mobile game on Abstract (link)

Ethereum Gaming Network Ronin Opens Up (link)

Neopets Hits 400,000 Monthly Active Users, Tripling Growth in 2024 (link)

AI Updates

OpenAI Unveils a New ChatGPT Agent for Deep Research (link)

SoftBank commits to joint venture with OpenAI, will spend $3B per year on OpenAI’s tech (link)

SoftBank Set to Invest $40B in OpenAI at $260B Valuation, Sources Say (link)

Macron Unveils a $112B AI Investment Package as France’s Answer to Stargate (link)

Sam Altman Rejects Elon Musk’s Offer to Buy OpenAI Control and Mocks X (link)

Augmented Intelligence: Christie’s AI Art Auction (link)

Other Updates

Trump Tariffs Target Mexico, Canada, and China Imports (link)

Trump Orders Creation of US Sovereign Wealth Fund (link)

Federal Workers Offered 20,000 Buyouts by White House (link)

Meta Cuts 3,600 Jobs (5% of Workforce) in AI Focus Shift (link)

Zelle Payments Top $1T in 2024 (link)

Robinhood Yanks Super Bowl Betting Contracts After Regulators’ Pushback (link)

Charles Schwab Expands 24-Hour Trading to All Its Retail Clients (link)

Olipop Prebiotic Soda Valued at $1.85B in Funding Round (link)

Daniel Penny Gets Hired by Andreessen Horowitz (link)

Research & Interesting Reads

Archetype | Crypto Rails: Superconductors for Payments (link)

Multicoin | Inverting The Human-Agent Relationship (link)

Decentralised | When DeFi Met AI: Exploring the Intersection of Decentralized Finance and Artificial Intelligence (link)

NFT Drops & Updates

OpenSea Releases OS2 NFT Platform in Beta, Teases SEA Token Airdrop (link)

NFT Brand Doodles to Launch Solana-Based Token Called $DOOD (link)

PENGU Price Falls as Pudgy Penguins Burn Over $150M in Solana Tokens (link)

Notable Raises

Mighty Bear Games (💰) raises $4M for GOAT Gaming platform where AI agents earn rewards for players (link)

Cherry Ventures Launches $500M Fund to Propel Europe’s First Trillion-Dollar Company (link)

Steve Yun, TON Foundation veteran, launches $100M VC fund TVM Ventures (link)

Türkiye’s Laton Ventures Raises $50M to Invest in Global Game and App Startups (link)

Taproot Wizards Raises $30M to Expand OP_CAT Functionality on Bitcoin (link)

HashKey Group secures $30M investment from Gaorong Ventures (link)

Plasma Raises $24M Led by Framework and Bitfinex to Build the Leading Blockchain for Stablecoins (link)

Legend, an All-in-one DeFi Superapp, secures $15M First Funding Round from a16z and Coinbase Ventures (link)

Reservoir Raises $14M to Enhance Token Trading Infrastructure (link)

Olas Raises USD 13.8M to Launch a Decentralized AI Agent Pearl (link)

Beamable Raises $13.5M, led by Bitkraft, for Decentralized Open-Source Backend for Games (link)

GameFi project GamerBoom completes $9M in new round of financing, with NVIDIA and others participating (link)

NodeGo Secures $8M to Expand Decentralized AI Infrastructure (link)

Japanese Game Maker Gumi Announces $6.6M Bitcoin Purchase (link)

Blum Raises $5M for AI-Powered Crypto Trading on Telegram (link)

Flashnet Raises $4.5M in Oversubscribed Seed Round Led by Abstract VC (link)

Mechanism Capital Leads $4M Seed Round for Consumer-Facing AI Agent Developer Mirai Labs (link)

Cabal, an Initia-based Yield-generating Governance Protocol, Raised $3M in a Funding Round from Hack VC (link)

InfiniFi, Depositor-Driven DeFi System, Raised $3M in a Pre-Seed Funding Round Led by Electric Capital (link)

Berachain Ecosystem Project Henlo Announces Completion of $3M Seed Raise (link)

Anoma Secures $2.5M Strategic Funding for Blockchain Infrastructure (link)

Mo & Andrew's Curated

Macro

Elon Musk

@elonmusk

The @DOGE team just discovered that FEMA sent $59M LAST WEEK to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants.

Sending this money violated the law and is in gross insubordination to the President’s executive order.

That money is meant for American disaster relief…

647.4K

10:03 AM • Feb 10, 2025

Senator Bill Hagerty

@SenatorHagerty

Today, I’m introducing the GENIUS Act w/ @SenatorTimScott, @SenGillibrand, & @SenLummis, a bill that establishes a clear regulatory framework for stablecoins.
 
I look forward to working with @RepFrenchHill and @FinancialCmte to get it to the President’s desk and signed into law.

Bloomberg

@business

Senator Bill Hagerty will introduce legislation to create a framework for stablecoins, the latest push to create crypto-friendly guidelines for an industry that’s a priority for Donald Trump trib.al/5YIkabN

2,289

3:06 PM • Feb 4, 2025

The Kobeissi Letter

@KobeissiLetter

It's official:

The Fed's Reverse Repo Facility (RRP) is now down ~$2.5 TRILLION from its peak in December 2022.

The US is borrowing so much debt to fund deficit spending that the RRP has been DEPLETED to a 1,386 day low.

What does it mean? Let us explain.

(a thread)

9,760

6:47 PM • Feb 8, 2025

Bitcoin Archive

@BTC_Archive

JUST IN: University of Austin to buy $5m Bitcoin.

"We don’t want to be left behind" says CIO of the university fund.

9,337

4:35 PM • Feb 9, 2025

Crypto

Sebastian Siemiatkowski

@klarnaseb

Ok. I give up. Klarna and me will embrace crypto! More to come

Yes I know! This post will get a huge sigh and 2 views

But it still feels historic. Last large fintech in the world to embrace it. Someone had to be last. And that’s a milestone as well of some sort…

8,782

8:44 PM • Feb 8, 2025

Story (꧁IP꧂)

@StoryProtocol

Story's Public Mainnet launches on Thursday, February 13th.

$IP claim and checker go live on the same day.

The world's IP, in your hands. ꧁IP꧂ is inevitable.

8,054

12:58 AM • Feb 11, 2025

matthew sigel, recovering CFA

@matthew_sigel

We analyzed 20 state-level Bitcoin reserve bills.
If enacted, they could drive $23 billion in buying, or 247k BTC.
This sum is independent of any pension fund allocations, likely to rise if legislators move forward.

1,389

1:21 PM • Feb 12, 2025

Avichal - Electric ϟ Capital

@avichal

Tether is likely the most profitable company in the world per employee.

Goldman Sachs - $288,172 profit per employee
Meta Platforms - $455,586
Apple - $571,341
NVIDIA - $1,006,757
Tether - $85,625,000 profit per employee

It just looks silly when you graph it

4,028

10:29 PM • Jan 31, 2025

DEGEN NEWS

@DegenerateNews

BREAKING: SEC COMMISSIONER HESTER PEIRCE STATES "IF PEOPLE WANT TO BUY A TOKEN OR PRODUCT THAT LACKS A CLEAR LONG-TERM VALUE PROPOSITION, THEY SHOULD FEEL FREE TO BUT SHOULD NOT BE SURPRISED IF SOMEDAY THE PRICE DROPS"

2,308

8:55 PM • Feb 4, 2025

Shaw (wartime arc)

@shawmakesmagic

I would advise you to think twice about launching a fair launch coin if you intend on using it to fund a long-duration project.

Teams need resources to build. Generally, when a team raises a Series A from VCs, they give away 10-20% and keep 80-90% of the initial capital. If the…

2,407

5:30 PM • Feb 4, 2025

Solana

@solana

Meet Israel, owner of Rifados Taquería — saving on fees by accepting stablecoin payments with @venta_xyz

swing by for tacos during Solana APEX, coming to Mexico City on Feb. 7th

1,409

9:55 PM • Jan 30, 2025

Benjamin Cowen

@intocryptoverse

The supply of #ETH will likely reach the pre-merge supply within the next few weeks. It is currently increasing by about 45k ETH/month, but the supply is only 32k ETH away from the pre-merge supply.

Back in July 2024, I mentioned it could happen by December if the supply…

Benjamin Cowen

@intocryptoverse

If the supply of #ETH keeps increasing by ~60k/month like it has been since April, then by Dec the supply will be back to what it was at the merge.

Could be a narrative that people focus on later this year, when they should actually focus on monetary policy.

Thread

1,134

4:24 AM • Jan 13, 2025

Nate Geraci

@NateGeraci

SEC now has a "crypto" email address...

Never thought I'd see the day.

2,110

8:10 PM • Feb 4, 2025

BlockNews

@blocknewsdotcom

Adin Ross just bought $50,000 worth of $MLG live on stream

899

1:50 AM • Feb 4, 2025

AI

Brett Adcock

@adcock_brett

Today, I made the decision to leave our Collaboration Agreement with OpenAI

Figure made a major breakthrough on fully end-to-end robot AI, built entirely in-house

We're excited to show you in the next 30 days something no one has ever seen on a humanoid

11.3K

7:31 PM • Feb 4, 2025

Justine Moore

@venturetwins

New @a16z thesis: building websites / apps with AI

There's been an explosion of products that help users "vibe code" a web app from text prompts.

We dove deep on these tools - who's using them, how they work, and where they might be headed.

Our market map + insights

3,317

4:05 PM • Feb 11, 2025

Qwen

@Alibaba_Qwen

The burst of DeepSeek V3 has attracted attention from the whole AI community to large-scale MoE models. Concurrently, we have been building Qwen2.5-Max, a large MoE LLM pretrained on massive data and post-trained with curated SFT and RLHF recipes. It achieves competitive…

7,599

3:31 PM • Jan 28, 2025

Ord.io

@ord_io

BREAKING: @HyperliquidX just launched a bridge to Bitcoin L1 and has integrated with @XverseApp

1,413

8:07 PM • Feb 14, 2025

NFT

doodles

@doodles

introducing $DOOD, the official token of Doodles.

the creative revolution is here.

11.8K

4:55 PM • Feb 13, 2025

MegaETH

@megaeth_labs

Introducing our Flagship MegaETH NFT Collection: The Fluffle.

10,000 NFTs, soulbound, representing meaningful ownership in the MegaETH network.

4,920

1:19 AM • Feb 5, 2025

TylerD 🧙‍♂️

@Tyler_Did_It

Just In: Sam Spratt's "X. Masquerade" 1/1 sells to Kanbas for $3,000,000

1,158 ETH equivalent

One of the single biggest digital art sales in years...

h/t @RogerDickerman

341

4:19 PM • Feb 12, 2025

Gaming

KGeN 🟩

@KGeN_IO

Gaming isn't just another use case for AI. It's been AI's secret training ground all along.

Why are we building gaming's first specialized LLM?

Long before X was swarmed with slop bots and ChatGPT wrappers, gaming was quietly perfecting AI. NPCs were learning player behavior,…

4,299

1:30 PM • Feb 11, 2025

B3 🎮

@b3dotfun

$B3 is launching on @Base this Monday, February 10th on Bybit + other major exchanges.

to usher in a new golden era of gaming, we can’t keep doing the same thing and expect different results.

B3 scales gaming on Base’s thriving ecosystem, opens doors to collaboration & brings a…

1,174

7:05 PM • Feb 7, 2025

Playember

@play_ember

Penguin Life is now LIVE

Huddle up, climb the leaderboard, and earn rewards and Abstract XP!

Links below

641

5:28 PM • Feb 5, 2025

Peter / ‘pet3rpan’

@pet3rpan_

x.com/i/article/1884…

1,264

2:05 PM • Feb 5, 2025

technoir 🎮

@0xtechnoir

Excited to finally share BITKRAFT's latest thesis piece on crypto x AI x gaming (linked at the end)

Here's a few highlights to wet your appetite

84

6:31 PM • Jan 23, 2025

Other

@jason

@Jason

Just ban these stupid fucking meme coins @SECGov

2,416

5:22 PM • Feb 11, 2025

Aaron Levie

@levie

This chart is insane. AI has now enabled the creation of the fastest growing software product maybe of all time.

4,924

10:57 PM • Feb 5, 2025

💰 = Sfermion Portfolio Company

Curated by @mopat1214 + @AndrewSteinwold

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Sfermion does not offer investment advice/analysis and makes no recommendations on how to act. Information regarding any company or investment in this Newsletter, including any links to information on our website, should not be viewed as an endorsement or recommendation of that company or investment for any purpose whatsoever. Any person receiving this Newsletter is encouraged to consult with their own financial advisor, or relevant personnel, before making any investment decision.