SOL Broke $200 & SBF's 50-Year Sentence(?)

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Good Morning.

I will be releasing a pre-sale Google Form for a Launchy meme coin tomorrow. Just kidding. Although the shenanigans currently happening with SLERF made me reconsider my career choices. Higher for longer.

In Today's Email:

• What Matters: SBF’s sentence & FTX estate ⛓️ 

• Product: Solana meme coins 🐸 

• Charts: SOL crosses $200, EtherFi airdrop 📈

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WHAT MATTERS

DOJ Wants SBF to Spend 40-50 Years in Prison

State of play: The USA v SBF’s Government's Sentencing Memorandum shows that the DOJ recommends the judge consider a sentence of 40 to 50 years in prison for SBF, along with fines and forfeiture totaling $11B.

• The document stated that a 40-50-year sentence is necessary to protect the public and create a deterrent effect, given the nature and seriousness of the offense.

• The DOJ also argues that "a sentence of 40 to 50 years is necessary to avoid sentencing disparities" and refers to a list of criminals who steal clients' or customers' money with losses of $100M or more.

• The list includes Bernie Madoff, who is linked to $13B in losses and received a 150-year sentence.

• Throughout the memo, a recurring theme is SBF's alleged awareness of his illegal actions, acting as if he were above the law.

• SBF’s defense team proposed a 6-year sentence in a memo last month, which prosecutors deemed "woefully inadequate."

What’s next: SBF's sentencing hearing is set for March 28 and he could potentially face a maximum penalty of 110 years.

Our take: Judges have discretion in sentencing and can consider factors like SBF's age, being a first-time offender, and potential for rehabilitation.

• However, his testimony, which seemed evasive at times, could negatively influence his sentencing if found to be false.

For builders and investors: Although the recovery of the FTX Estate is looking pretty decent (last I heard it was 0.93 cents on the dollar), the opportunity cost of not being able to realize the price appreciation of those coins (read: Solana) is significant.

We’ve seen creditors protesting this policy by the FTX Estate.

Take a peek at our referral reward at the bottom of this issue. Share this newsletter and receive our list of 500 crypto VC individuals 👇

PRODUCT OF THE WEEK

Solana Memecoins

Last week, meme coins trading and speculation on Solana drove on-chain volumes to a record high on Friday, surpassing $3.79B.

• The latest token gaining attention is Book of Meme (BOME) which surged by more than 3000% since its launch just a few days ago.

• Meme coin presales have surged recently. An artist known as Kero initiated a presale by sharing a wallet address, quickly amassing nearly 55,000 SOL (approximately $10.66M).

• Kero publicly admitted to lacking a clear plan when polling their Twitter audience but proceeded to launch a coin named $SNAP.

• The latest meme coin presale on Solana is $smole by @0xDekadente which will be launched tomorrow night.

• According to Solana Explorer, @0xDekadente's presale wallet now holds almost 170,000 SOL, equivalent to $34M at the current price.

Yesterday, ZachXBT reported that an account impersonating @blknoiz06 (Ansem) phished over $2.6M by replying to his posts during the meme coin craze. The largest single victim lost around $1.2M.

Other cool products:

• SwapEasy, a limitless crypto exchange.

• QUINETICS, an AI-based trading strategy.

• vNFTy, a gateway tp unique digital treasures.

• EncryptFire, a wallet encryption, backup/recovery tool.

• Unencrypted Labs, an NFT and web3 gaming platform.

CHARTS OF THE WEEK

Solana Price Crosses $200

State of play: Despite a pullback in the overall crypto markets, Solana's price has continued to rally. Surpassing $200 for the first time since December 2021, Solana now sits just 22% below its all-time high of $259.

• Despite Solana's price being below its previous peak, the increased supply has driven its market capitalization higher. Previously, the SOL market cap ATH was around $77B, but now it is approaching $90B.

Our take: SOL usage metrics are breaking ATH almost every other week. It’s not too farfetched to say that SOL might finally establish itself as “the crypto asset to own” after BTC and ETH.

EtherFi’s ETHFI Allocation

State of play: EtherFi, a leading liquid restaking protocol on Ethereum, is set to conduct an airdrop of governance tokens called ETHFI.

• With a total supply of 1B tokens and an initial circulating supply of 115.2M tokens, the airdrop will occur in two stages.

• Season 1 will distribute 6% of the total token supply, covering behavior up to March 15.

• Season 2 will distribute 5% of the remaining tokens, covering behavior from March 15 onwards.

However, After the announcement, it was noted that Justin Sun would receive around 3.5M ETHFI from the initial 60M allocation. This followed a deposit of 20,000 ETH two days prior, according to Etherscan data.

• After community complaints, EtherFi founder Mike Silagadze announced on Discord that additional tokens would be airdropped to community members, with details to come.

Our take: Make sure you implement systems that prevent large whales from exploiting your airdrop mechanism at the very last minute.

QUICK BITES

• Starbucks shutters its NFT program.

• Kalshi plans to launch crypto price bets.

• Binance refutes insider trading concerns amid BOME.

• Slerf accidentally burns $10M worth of presale funds.

• Binance spun off its venture capital arm earlier this year.

• Ethereum supply drops to lowest level since August 2022.

• Andrew Kang purchases original Pepe NFT from 3AC estate.

• Charlotte Fang was hacked as Remilia's treasury got drained.

• Solana’s search interest surges on Google amid memecoin mania.

• HK Regulator says that MEXC has been operating without a license.

• Indonesia’s crypto market booms as volume hits $1.92B in February.

NOTEWORTHY READS & MEME

• Yuga.eth’s read on meme coins.

• Decentralised’s read on Oracle Extractable Value.

• Dirt Road’s read on EigenLayer economic security analysis.

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Disclaimer: All the information presented in this publication and its affiliates is strictly for educational purposes only. It should not be construed or taken as financial, legal, investment, or any other form of advice.