RaaS #597: Polymarket Gears Up for TGE!

BigTrout Rallies on Solana, Pumpdotfun Goes Cross-Chain, And Moar!

BIGTROUT surged on Solana after whale BigTrout flipped the usual memecoin script. Instead of extracting, fees are being reinvested directly into Meteora liquidity, with a transparent 45M token lock-up for one year. The team got two major exchange listings on Kraken and Bybit, while the community rallies around a “reinvestment over extraction” narrative.

Gemini is pulling out of the UK, EU, and Australia as it restructures operations and cuts staff to consolidate around the U.S. market. The exchange is pivoting toward prediction markets, signaling where it sees the next growth frontier. Regulatory pressure abroad, opportunity at home.

Blockratize, Polymarket’s parent company, filed a trademark for “SYNOPTIC,” covering crypto software and financial services tied to the POLY token. Coming off a $9B valuation and mounting founder hints, the filing is widely seen as a strong signal that a TGE, and likely a large airdrop, is imminent. The name fits the thesis: a global, data-driven view of reality through markets.

It won’t go away, but will it go back to $40K?

Tether injected $100M into Anchorage Digital at a $4.2B valuation, deepening its relationship with the regulated crypto bank. The move strengthens Tether’s institutional custody footprint and reinforces its strategy of backing foundational infrastructure rather than just issuing stablecoins.

Pumpdotfun acquired Vyper, a multi-chain trading terminal, folding its tech and team into Pump Terminal to accelerate EVM and Base support. Vyper users get 90% cashback for the first month, while Pumpdotfun gears up for platform upgrades, a Feb 10 chat with Tim Draper, and its $3M hackathon. Meme launchpads are quietly becoming full-stack trading platforms.

Your daily dose of bite-sized crypto news.

1. Trend Research sold another 19,000 ETH, bringing total sales to 215,580 ETH ($477M) to repay debt.

2. Perp DEX, Aster, launched a testnet for its own L1, targeting mainnet in Q1 2026.

3. Strategy reported a $12.4B net loss in Q4 2025 but raised $25.3B for the year, making it the largest equity capital raiser in the U.S.

4. Binance’s SAFU fund bought another 3,600 BTC (~$233M), pushing holdings to 6,230 BTC as part of its stablecoin-to-BTC rotation strategy.

5. Rainbow raised $23.06M at a $100M valuation, only to list $RNBW at a $45M FDV and $8.2M market cap. Another day, another rug.

Brazil’s Bill 4,308/2024 mandates 100% reserve backing and segregated funds for stablecoins, effectively sidelining algorithmic models like USDe and Frax. Issuing an unbacked stablecoin could carry a penalty of up to 8 years in prison. This isn’t guidance, it’s a warning shot.

Fidelity Digital Assets rolled out the Fidelity Digital Dollar (FIDD) on Ethereum, fully backed 1:1 with dollars and audited monthly by PwC. Enabled by the GENIUS Act, FIDD is already trading near peg as exchanges like Kraken and Bullish add support. TradFi isn’t testing crypto anymore; it’s shipping.

Bitwise filed an S-1 with the SEC for the first spot Uniswap (UNI) ETF, proposing a passive fund holding UNI with Coinbase as custodian. Approval isn’t guaranteed, but the filing alone shows how far DeFi governance tokens have moved into institutional territory.

We’re going full circle soon.

Top Gainers: HBTC, SKR, DCR, FHE, BUTTCOIN.

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

1. Liquidations aren’t bad luck; they’re mechanics. Arkham explains how leverage, margin thresholds, and forced closures interact under volatility, and why accounts get wiped in seconds. The takeaway: most blowups come from position sizing and liquidation price blindness, not bad entries.

2. Vitalik’s bet for 2026 is reversing a decade of convenience-driven compromises. The roadmap prioritizes verifiable RPCs, easy-to-run full nodes, private payments with public UX, seedless wallets, censorship-resistant block building, and unstoppable dapp frontends. Ethereum is done trading sovereignty for growth.

3. As AI agents flood the web with indistinguishable text, voice, and transactions, the internet lacks native ways to prove humanity, intent, or ownership without sacrificing privacy. a16z argues blockchains provide the missing primitives: identity, coordination, payments, and verifiable interaction between humans and machines.

4. Part 2 of Roh’s roadmap goes deep into the quantitative foundations behind profitable prediction market trading. From system-level behavior to execution under load, the message is clear: understanding marginal polytopes and optimization theory matters, but execution discipline is what separates bots from gamblers.

5. While markets have evolved from phone calls to instant settlement, most tokenized equity products today replicate TradFi rails instead of rethinking them. The article argues the real innovation hasn’t arrived yet: programmable settlement, continuous markets, and composable ownership are still largely unrealized.

Opinion raised $20M to scale its decentralized prediction market platform, underscoring continued investor appetite for markets that price truth, even as broader crypto sentiment remains shaky.

Merkle Trade announced it will shut down operations after processing $30B in cumulative volume. New positions close Feb 6, all positions unwind by Feb 10, and final revenue distributions land Feb 12. Remaining treasury assets will become redeemable for MKL holders. A clean exit, rare in DeFi.

That’s all for today!