RaaS #548: Upbit Confirms $37M Hack on Solana!

Vitalik Donates to Privacy Apps, Irys Sybil Drama, and Moar!

Upbit revealed a $37M hot wallet exploit on Solana but said member assets are fully safe, since the exchange will cover the loss entirely. Still, the market is already down badly, and now hacks are speedrunning the pain.

S&P downgraded Tether’s stability rating to “weak” due to BTC and gold exposure, and Paolo, Tether’s CEO, dismissed it by saying the company “wears it with pride,” calling legacy rating models broken relics of a collapsing TradFi system.

Huge RWA moment: Securitize just secured approval under Europe’s DLT Pilot Regime, letting it run a fully regulated trading & settlement system on Avalanche across all 27 EU countries, and the first issuance is slated for early 2026.

Yugi, our Chief Betting Officer, and Ziya, our Growth Analyst, are going live tomorrow to battle it out over their football predictions, and trust us, the arguments alone are worth tuning in for. Even if you don’t care about football, come watch two degens debate which team deserves their hard-earned bags.

A delivery-driver impersonator broke into investor Lachy Groom’s (Sam Altman’s ex) $4.4M home, tied up his housemate, and drained $11M in BTC & ETH within 90 minutes. Another reminder that IRL attacks are becoming the new wallet-drain meta.

Not the hero we deserved, but the hero we needed

Irys’ token launch got messy after analysts flagged 1,273 wallets across 21 sybil clusters claiming 20% of the airdrop, many funded via identical Bitget-linked flows. Small claimants are furious, and Irys still hasn’t responded.

Coinbase Ventures revealed its four big themes for 2026: RWA perpetuals, specialized exchanges & prediction terminals, next-gen DeFi, and AI-driven robotics data infrastructure. The next cycle looks less like memecoins and more like an infrastructure season.

Your daily dose of bite-sized crypto news.

1. Polygon’s co-founder suggested the idea of asking exchanges to revert POL back to the more familiar MATIC ticker.

2. Binance launched Binance Prestige, a premium service for VIP clients with tailored trading, investment, and account support.

3. Robinhood expands its prediction markets offering through a joint venture with Susquehanna to operate a CFTC-licensed exchange and clearinghouse.

4. Grayscale just submitted initial registration for its Zcash trust, ZCSH, a move that could clear the path for the ZEC ETPs.

5. Michael Saylor explained in a CoinDesk interview that volatility draws in sharp investors and fuels high returns for patient holders.

Vitalik sent 128 ETH each to Session and SimpleXChat, backing messaging apps that push permissionless accounts and metadata privacy, and told everyone to actually use them, not just retweet them.

More news on Tether as it recently pulled out of Uruguay, laying off 30 of 38 employees after burning over $100M building out local operations, citing high energy costs and regulatory friction.

Trading with God on my side in the great 2025.

The Magma Points Program is officially live! Users can now put their gMON to work, stack points, and earn staking yield across a slate of new opportunities. Your progress updates in real time, so you can watch your volcano fill up as you farm.

Top gainers: MERL, BANANAS31, IRYS, SHX, METFI

High-signal reads are worth your time, all in one place.

1. TulipKing argues that Polymarket is the iPhone moment for markets, collapsing everything into YES/NO primitives, letting traders express complex worldviews, correlations, and even outcome-changing incentives.

2. Leon warns that fresh graduates aren’t leaving for higher salaries, but for meaning. AI feels like a frontier; crypto feels like a casino. Until the industry recaptures its mission, the brain drain will continue.

3. ICObeast breaks down past wealth waves and why nothing in 2025 has recreated that easy compounding. Bots got smarter, players got sharper, and the casino stopped printing. The next spark may come from new primitives or RWAs, but we’re not there yet.

4. Loki clarifies that the problem with NFTs isn’t art or collectibles, it’s the broken relationship between brands and holders. Until brands fix this gap, the floor (and trust) keeps bleeding.

5. Radarblock’s Oli says that crypto x AI isn’t dead, but with thousands of tokens and a $1.8T AI industry forming, the winners will be teams that carve a blue ocean and build for autonomous on-chain users.

Tom Lee told CNBC he’s still expecting Bitcoin to break $100K this year despite October’s liquidation wipeout, arguing crypto is lagging at turning points and the “10 best days” haven’t hit yet.

Lido unveiled its GOOSE-3 roadmap, targeting an expanded staking ecosystem, Lido Core upgrades, new DAO revenue lines, and real-world integrations, fully pivoting into a comprehensive DeFi platform by 2026.

That’s all for today!