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The Crypto Minute
Your Weekly Guide to Surviving the Crypto Rollercoaster.
CoinBrain
February 17, 2025 • Reading Time: 9 minutes
Welcome to a new issue of Crypto Minute by CoinBrain! These days the intersection of politics and crypto seems more like a guilty pleasure soap opera 🧼 - excruciating, yet very hard to stop watching.
☕️ Get ready for your weekly load of drama and absurdity. We hope your portfolio is still alive by the time you read this 🎢
⤵️ Today’s Agenda:
Argentina's President Milei learns the hard way that promoting crypto projects comes with downsides 💸
🥦 CZ's dog goes viral. Belgian Malinois named Broccoli sparked yet another memecoin-feeding frenzy.
Elon renames his X account to "Harry Bōlz" to mock journalists (say it out loud).
Ethereum Pectra upgrade due in March promises to lower fees, faster transaction and gas fees payable in other tokens ⚡️
And more…
📊 Market Snapshot
| $96,100BTC-1.7% | $2,690ETH+1.6% | $3.19TCrypto Market Cap-1.2% | 38 (Fear)Fear & Greed Index+3 from last week |
📅 Crypto Events You don’t want to Miss
Tuesday, Feb 18th - US President Trump Speaks
🎤 Will speak in a joint interview along with Elon Musk conducted by Fox News.
📊 This might be a serious market mover. Given Musk’s and Trump’s influence over the crypto market, traders will analyze every move and sentence to determine the market's direction.
Crypto could increase especially if we hear positive news about: the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, tax reductions, or crypto regulation.
Friday, Feb 21st (2:45 PM UTC) - US Flash Manufacturing + Services PMI data drop
The Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) is a key economic indicator that measures business activity.
⬆️ A stronger-than-expected PMI suggests economic growth, which could boost risk assets like crypto.
⬇️ Conversely, a weak reading could fuel recession fears, leading to a crypto market pullback.
🐋Smart Money Tracker
Tuesday, Feb 11th: After Elon Musk changed his profile name to Harry Bōlz, the price of $HARRYBOLZ surged to $0.025.
Wallet "LeBron", who made $8.9M on $MELANIA and $3.2M on $TRUMP, spent 25 $SOL ($4,807) to buy 128.8M $HARRYBOLZ.
They then sold 109.8M $HARRYBOLZ for 3,649 $SOL($737K), leaving 18.97M $HARRYBOLZ($277K) with a total profit of ~$1M.
Thursday, Feb 13th: This guy made a profit of ~$7M on a memecoin named after CZ’s dog - Broccoli.
Incredibly, his cost was only 1 $BNB($707), a 9,900x return!
Friday, Feb 14th: A sniper made $27.8M by sniping the memecoin named after Broccoli! 😱
In the end, this sniper earned a total of 27.8M $USDT!
Saturday, Feb 15th: The team behind $LIBRA has cashed out $107M! Other insider wallets made millions in profit.
📉 Most investors suffered significant losses on $LIRBA
Source: Lookonchain
📰 News Recap (Feb 11 to 17)
CZ's Dog Breaks Crypto Twitter! 🐕 Binance's founder CZ shared a pic of his Belgian Malinois named... Broccoli! Within minutes, dozens of BROCCOLI tokens flooded the market 🥦
Source: CZ on X
The twist? CZ's actually playing along, hinting he'll "interact" with some of these coins on BNB Chain. This comes right after his TEST token tutorial turned into a 2000% pump.
Harry Who? Elon's Latest Name Game 🎭 Elon Musk changed his X name to "Harry Bōlz" and - surprise surprise - triggered another memecoin frenzy! One HARRYBOLZ token hit a $25M market cap before crashing 97% 📉
The name was intended as a pun (say it out loud and you will get it). It even went as far as a CNN news anchor getting mocked on X after saying the name on a live broadcast.
HILARIOUS moment from CNN's Dana Bash:
"Now the 'Disruptor in Chief,' @elonmusk, who apparently has adopted the alias, at least he changed his social media handle, to 'Harry Bōlz', tweeted this morning, 'Democracy in America is being destroyed by judicial coup. An activist… x.com/i/web/status/1…
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest)
5:24 PM • Feb 11, 2025
Ethereum's Getting a Major Glow-Up ✨ March is looking spicy for ETH holders! The Pectra upgrade is coming with some serious improvements - think easier transactions, cheaper fees, and better staking options.
Source: ethereum.org
The best part is that you'll finally be able to pay gas fees with different tokens, not just ETH 🔧 Test runs start Feb 24, and if all goes well, we're looking at a March mainnet launch.
Time for Ethereum to show why it's still the boss of smart contracts!
🌍️ Story of the Week
Argentinian president promotes $LIBRA, community gets rugpulled 🤡
Argentina's crypto-loving President Milei just learned the hard way that not everything that glitters in crypto is gold!
He pinned a post promoting $LIBRA, a token supposedly designed to boost Argentine small businesses. The result? The token skyrocketed to a mind-boggling $4.5 billion market cap 🚀
However! Just hours into this financial telenovela, 8 sneaky wallets (supposedly team members) cashed out a casual $107 million, sending the token crashing harder than your hopes and dreams during a bear market 📉
The drama got spicier when blockchain sleuths discovered that 83% of tokens were held by a tiny group of wallets—talk about decentralization!
Token supply concentration in wallets. Source: bubblemaps.io
Milei, realizing he'd stepped into crypto's version of a soap opera, quickly deleted his endorsement and went full rage mode, calling the perpetrators "filthy rats of the political caste."
Meanwhile, KIP Protocol's CEO hopped into an X Space claiming nobody profited from this mess (except, you know, those wallets with $107M)
💸 The token now sits at a humble $232M market cap, serving as a reminder that in crypto, even presidential endorsements come with a "DYOR" warning! 🎪
🔒 Major Token Unlocks of the Week
The Alpine Fan Token ($ALPINE) unlock is an extremely rare opportunity that can signify a near-price dump. Tokens will be released mainly to the “Team,” “User Fund, “ and “Developer Fund, “which may or may not drop them on the market.
🗞️ From our Blog
💡 1 Minute Learning: Wash Trading
Wash trading is when someone trades with themselves to create fake market activity - like playing tennis alone by hitting the ball back and forth between your hands.
Using multiple accounts, traders buy and sell the same assets to themselves, creating an illusion of high trading volume without any real market interest 🔄
You'll often spot this in crypto when an obscure token suddenly shows massive trading activity that feels too good to be true.
Source: napkin.ai
Why Should You Care? ⚠️ Some exchanges and token projects use wash trading to appear more popular than they are - similar to a restaurant placing mannequins at empty tables.
This deceptive practice is illegal in traditional markets but still common in crypto. It is important to look beyond trading volume when judging a project's legitimacy.
And that’s a wrap! 🎉 Enjoyed this newsletter? Forward it to a friend, and let them know they can subscribe here.
Got any ideas or feedback? We’d love to hear from you! Drop us an email at [email protected].
DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or make financial decisions. Always do your own research and stay safe out there.