You’ve probably seen the news about the EU hitting X with another €120M fine. Nothing surprising anymore. Last year the EU issued €3.8B in penalties to U.S. tech, and this year Apple got €500M and Meta €200M. Most major global antitrust fines now come from Brussels and mostly hit American big tech companies.

📊 All public European tech firms combined paid about €3.2B in income tax last year. The EU earned more money fining U.S. tech than its entire tech sector paid in taxes. That’s the scale we’re talking about.

Europe basically regulated its own tech sector into irrelevance. It can’t compete, it can’t innovate, and foreign companies became an easy target

💰 Fines turned into a reliable revenue stream, so regulators push harder, write harsher rules, and in cases like X, slap companies with charges that look more like excuses than violations.

🇪🇺 So it’s basically like: "Hello, I am Bernard Klaus-Rothschild. I am an unelected Eurocrat with a master’s in social business welfare gender studies, and I’m here to inform you that your company owes us hundreds of millions for regulations I drafted in a Google Doc last night."

@CoinPost

People will gamble on literally anything. There’s now a prediction market on whether Jerome Powell will open today’s FOMC press conference with “Good afternoon.” Traders have this at 97% like it’s the safest bet of their lives 🤣

Jokes aside, the actual FOMC event is in about 4.5 hours, and markets are pricing a 90% chance of a 0.25% rate cut on interest rates. Most of that is already baked in, but what Powell says afterward is what matters.

Guidance, tone, hints about future cuts, that’s where volatility comes from. Even if the decision is expected, the press conference can still move everything. I expect volatility 🕯

Why Most On-Chain “Whale Alerts” Are Useless 🔕

Most large transfers on-chain aren’t whales trading. They’re routine movements by exchanges, custodians, OTC desks, or market makers. These groups hold assets across many wallets and shift funds for operations, security, or accounting.

🔍 Block explorers often list these wallets as “unknown,” so whale alert bots broadcast them as if someone important is about to act. In most cases, nothing market-related is happening.

🐳 Even when the transfer comes from a real whale, you still don’t know the reason. Moving coins to an exchange doesn’t guarantee selling. Withdrawing coins doesn’t guarantee buying. Transfers happen for settlement, hedging, internal restructuring, or simply reorganizing storage. Treating this stuff like a trading signal usually leads to wrong conclusions.

⛓️ The on-chain activity that actually matters looks different. It involves wallets with known identities and clear behavior. For example, a well-known trader opening or closing a position on a transparent DEX like Hyperliquid, or a smart-money wallet making a significant swap on Uniswap.

When you know who is acting and what they are doing, the data is useful. Random alert like “10,000 BTC moved from Coinbase to unknown wallet” doesn't mean "oh, this whale just market bough", it really tells you nothing at all 🙅‍♂️

#FAQ

France Is Quietly Building the Most Dangerous Crypto Registry Yet 🇫🇷

A new amendment in the French National Assembly would force anyone holding more than €5,000 in a self-custody wallet to declare it to the tax administration. It targets private wallets where you hold the keys yourself. Before pretending this is harmless, look at the recent track record 👇

In May 2025, a database containing personal and tax information of over two million French citizens ended up for sale on a dark-web forum. Earlier that summer, a tax officer was arrested for feeding confidential taxpayer data to organized crime groups. And throughout 2025, France saw a wave of violent kidnappings targeting crypto holders, with several cases explicitly linked to leaked or stolen information.

🇫🇷 The state has already proven it can’t keep sensitive financial data secure, can’t prevent insider abuse, and can’t protect the people who end up exposed. Yet it now wants to build a new registry tying real identities to self-custody wallets, a dataset that would instantly become one of the highest-value targets for criminals.

I guess everyone understands that none of this is about safety or public service. It’s about monitoring, tracking, and taxing, even when the basic responsibilities of protecting citizens and their data aren’t being met.

One last point worth keeping in mind: it's easy to bypass this new regulation if you are French. Blockchains make it trivial to use multiple addresses, even under the same seed. Splitting assets across accounts has been basic operational hygiene for years. What that means in the context of a potential €5,000 reporting threshold is something every holder can think through for themselves 😉

@CoinPost

What were you doing in 2011 instead of claiming 5 free bitcoins ($458,900 today) for solving a single CAPTCHA on the original BTC faucet? 😐

Trump said he would consider eliminating federal taxes on gambling winnings. He grouped it with no tax on tips, Social Security, and overtime, and said he’s “going to have to think about it.” 😐

A world where you tax earned income and investment income, but don’t tax gambling income, is kind of broken. You’re telling people that working and building things gets punished but gambling isn't.

Taxes are used to shape behavior, but in this situation it works backwards. Gambling creates no value and already causes real social damage. If anything, gambling winnings should be taxed more than wages, not less. Incentivizing degeneracy over work is a bad idea 🎰

Except in situations where your goal is not the public good but rather destruction of a functioning society

@CoinPost

This is how prediction markets will get rigged 😱

Over $1.3M was bet on whether Russia would capture Myrnohrad. Russia didn’t actually take the town. But right before the market resolved, a well-known war map briefly showed Russian control. Polymarket relies on those maps to settle outcomes. The market resolved YES. Payouts happened. The map was changed back later.

🔍 That’s the problem. These markets depend on a small number of external sources, and a single edit or mistake can decide the result. There’s no real oversight, and once a market settles, it’s final.

Prediction markets are getting bigger, and this won’t be rare. When your money depends on specific data sources, people will try to influence those sources. Insider access becomes valuable, I don't know how this type of stuff can possible be fixed so expect more of this kind of news in the future 🤷‍♀️

Why Previous Highs and Lows Matter 🕯

Most price movement in liquid markets happens around a small number of reference levels. Previous highs and lows are among the most consistently respected because they are easy to identify and widely used.

📈 These levels mark prices where significant volume traded in the past. These areas often align with heavy participation, visible through volume clusters, multiple touches, or prolonged consolidation.

🔍 When price returns to these levels, there is often existing positioning tied to them. Traders who entered earlier may place exits near breakeven. Others place limit orders expecting a reaction. Stops tend to sit just beyond these levels. This changes order flow when price approaches.

Because of this, these zones often act as decision points. Price may slow down, reject, or move through quickly depending on whether resting liquidity is absorbed or defended ⚔️

The level itself is not a signal. What matters is how price trades around it. Acceptance is shown by sustained trading above or below the level with follow-through. Rejection is shown by fast moves back into the prior range, often with increased volume.

This is why simple horizontal levels derived from prior highs and lows (daily/weekly/montly) are useful. They align with positioning, liquidity placement, and repeatable behavior that can be observed directly on the chart 👀

#FAQ

What Are Psychological Price Levels? 🤔

Psychological price levels are prices where many traders focus their attention and place orders. They matter because enough participants treat them as reference points, not because of any inherent mathematical property 🤔

👌 This may sound insignificant, but it explains why Bitcoin reaching $100,000 was so heavily hyped, and why Bitcoin topped at exactly $69,000 back in 2021.

These levels usually fall into three categories 👇

1️⃣Round, meme, and numerological numbers

🟢Round numbers like $100k on BTC or $5,000 on ETH attract clustered orders because they are simple and obvious.

🟢Crypto also has meme levels like 69 or 420. These only matter when they are near price and widely noticed.

🟢Numerological numbers such as 888 or 88,888 can attract activity among Asian traders hours due to cultural preferences (very lucky number).

2️⃣Previous highs and lows: they act as reference points where traders previously entered or exited. When price returns, exits, re-entries, and stops tend to cluster, often causing a reaction. More on this in the previous post.

3️⃣Moving averages: Widely watched moving averages like the 50, 100, or 200 on higher timeframes become psychological levels not because of the formula itself, but because many traders and systems watch them at the same time.

#FAQ

Bitcoin is down 5% today, once again front running the stock market, which is slowly chopping downward 📉

Price action looks absolutely disgusting, no sign of bounces whatsoever. During this decline, more than $558.61M worth of futures long positions were liquidated in the last 24h.

🤔 It seems that the current narrative is that Fed rate cuts are no longer seen as a bullish sign, but rather as a rush to avoid economic recession and high unemployment, despite fears of a return to high inflation.

Personally, I see more and more despair and apathy in public discussions of the crypto market. Not a good sign for bulls in the short term, but it signals that quite a few tourists have already left the 'casino' 🤔

Are you buying the dip? Or are you waiting for a specific price?

Silver is already up 122% this year, and rally is now being reinforced by China 📈

The silver market has had a physical deficit of over 2,500 tons per year for several years. Mine supply hasn't increased, and inventories continue to decline.

🇨🇳 Then there's China, the world's biggest silver exporter. Starting in early 2026, they will restrict exports to large, state-approved producers only. Physical supply gets centralized, and pricing influence shifts toward Shanghai’s physical market instead of Western paper markets like COMEX.

If you didn't know, back in 2020 Samsung patented new tech of silver-carbon anode solid-state batteries, and they plan mass production of these batteries for EVs for 2027.

Basically, China gains direct influence over silver pricing as demand and technological use accelerate 🔼

The global imbalance between supply and demand is expected to worsen, resulting in even higher silver prices. So, if you're considering buying souvenir coins...

@CoinPost

How to turn ChatGPT into your personal crypto due-diligence analyst 🎨

Want to turn ChatGPT into your research window for all kinds of crypto and financial documents? Just copy the prompt below and paste it into ChatGPT chat 🔍

[instructions]
You are now operating as a dedicated Crypto & Financial Due Diligence Analyst.

This chat window is a specialized research workspace for analyzing complex documents such as:
- Crypto whitepapers
- Tokenomics papers
- Financial statements and reports
- Security audits of DeFi protocols
- Protocol documentation
- Governance proposals
- Investment or risk memos

Your priorities are:
- Clarity
- Accuracy
- Brevity
- Professional tone
- Zero filler, hype, or repetition

Avoid generic AI language. Avoid speculation. Avoid unnecessary disclaimers.

You must remain in the role of a Crypto & Financial Due Diligence Analyst for the entire duration of this chat unless explicitly instructed otherwise.

[operating_rules]

1. No-Document Mode
- If no document, text, image, or file is provided, respond with one short sentence asking the user to upload or paste the material.
- Do not explain capabilities or generate analysis without source material.

2. Document Analysis Mode
When a document, screenshot, or pasted text IS provided, always follow the structure below unless the user explicitly asks otherwise.

[analysis_structure]

A. Document Identification
- What this document is (type, purpose, intended audience).
- What it attempts to explain, justify, or demonstrate.

B. Structure Overview
- Short list of sections or chapters with descriptive titles.
- Orientation only — no summaries yet.

C. Executive Summary (Plain Language)
- Explain the document clearly in non-technical terms.
- Focus only on information that materially matters to an investor, user, auditor, or risk assessor.

D. Key Findings & Signals
- Highlight the most important claims, numbers, assumptions, risks, or conclusions.
- Separate clearly between:
• Claims made by the authors
• Evidence provided to support those claims
- Explicitly label claims that rely on future execution, assumptions, or unspecified dependencies.

E. Materiality Filter
- Prioritize information that could influence real decisions.
- Deprioritize or explicitly mark as non-material:
• Marketing language
• Background history
• Generic explanations
- If a section has little decision-making value, state that clearly.

F. Verdict
- Provide a clear, opinionated assessment derived strictly from the document.
Examples:
• Security audit → overall safety assessment and rough safety score (1–100)
• Financials → overall financial health (strong / mixed / weak)
• Whitepaper → credibility and execution risk assessment
- Explicitly state limitations of the verdict based on document scope.

3. Depth Control
- Default responses are concise but complete.
- Go deeper only when the user asks follow-up questions.
- Do not re-explain the entire document unless requested.

4. Technical Translation
- When content is highly technical, explain it first in plain language.
- Provide technical detail only if necessary or requested.

5. Integrity Rules
- Do not assume facts not present in the document.
- If information is unclear or absent, say so explicitly.
- Do not fill gaps with speculation.

6. Formatting Rules
- Use clear headings.
- Use bullet points where appropriate.
- Avoid walls of text.
- Avoid repetition.
- Maintain a professional, analyst-grade tone.

7. Multi-Document Context
- If multiple documents are analyzed in this chat, maintain continuity.
- Compare new documents to previously analyzed ones when relevant.
- Explicitly call out contradictions, confirmations, or changes.

You can test it by analyzing the original Bitcoin whitepaper written by Satoshi Nakamoto back in 2008 🟠

An easy-to-copy version of this prompt can be found in the comments 👇

Chances of Elon Musk becoming the first trillionaire before 2027 are sitting at 40% right now, at least according to Polymarket traders 😇

Today he crossed another line anyway. Musk became the first person ever worth over $600B, with estimates now around $680B after SpaceX’s latest tender valued the company at $800B, up from $400B just months ago. He owns about 42%, so that single reprice added roughly $170B to his net worth.

And now people are literally placing bets on whether one guy’s number goes from 12 digits to 13. Welcome to 2025, where becoming a millionaire increasingly means gambling on someone else becoming a trillionaire 😂

@Coin_Post

Imagine you’d been working a regular job since 2012 and setting aside just $100 each month. That's a doable goal, right?

👥 Instead of letting that money sit in cash, you consistently invested it into Meta (Facebook) shares. No timing, no leverage, no tricks. Just buying every month.

After nearly 14 years, today, that investment would be worth over $101,000. If you’d kept the same $16,300 in cash, inflation would have erased roughly a third of its value!

↗️ Nothing fancy. Just patience, ownership, and compounding.

@Coin_Post

US core inflation just surprised to the downside 📊

Markets expected a +0.10% monthly increase. Instead, inflation fell by −0.40%. That’s one of the sharpest monthly drops since 2023 and puts core CPI at its lowest level since March 2021, even closer to the Fed’s 2% target.

🇺🇸 Right after that, White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said now is the right time to cut rates. Polymarket traders currently give him a 53% chance of becoming the next Fed Chair.

This guy is signaling his alignment with Trump. Anyone aiming for the job knows what Trump wants: lower rates and, eventually, a return to QE-style liquidity, similar to 2021.

💸 That matters because cheaper borrowing directly lifts equities through higher multiples and cheaper capital, and historically crypto benefits even more, since excess liquidity and leverage is like a rising tide that lifts all boats.

@Coin_Post

Markets are pricing a 99% chance that the Bank of Japan hikes rates by 0.25% tomorrow. The last time this happened, on Jan 24, Bitcoin topped near $109k and then dropped 31% 🔽

Japan has been a key source of global liquidity for years. Near-zero rates fueled the yen carry trade, where cheap yen is borrowed and pushed into risk assets worldwide.

🏦 When the BoJ hikes, that trade unwinds. Yen strengthens, leverage gets pulled, and risk assets like crypto face forced selling.

I think the price action over the last few weeks means the market has already priced in this decision.

📉 However, the correction may continue, and we could see a decline to $70k, that's another 25% drop from current levels.

@Coin_Post

Meta didn’t “fail” to stop scams. It decided not to 👥

Meta, the company behind Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, knowingly makes a huge chunk of its money from scam ads. Internal documents leaked to Reuters show around 10% of Meta’s total revenue comes from ads promoting scams and banned goods. That’s roughly $16B per year.

💰 Meta’s own estimates say it’s involved in about one-third of all successful scams in the US, which implies $50B+ in losses for American consumers every year.

When internal anti-fraud teams managed to cut scam ads significantly, leadership paused the effort after seeing the revenue hit. The teams were later dismantled and scam ads quickly returned to prior levels.

⚖️ Was punishment a concern? Not really. Meta expected up to $1B in fines, while earning $3.5B every six months from high-risk ads. Fines are treated as a cost of doing business.

Meta charged higher rates for suspected fraudulent ads, effectively a 'scam tax'. Its algorithms naturally identify users vulnerable to scams and feed them more of the same ⚠️

@Coin_Post

Is It Safe to Connect Your Wallet to a Random Website? 🦊

Connecting a wallet by itself is safe. A basic connection lets a site see your public address, balances, and history. It doesn’t give control over your funds, but it does enable tracking and future signature prompts ❗️

The real risk begins when you sign or approve something. Token approvals are one of the most common ways people lose funds in crypto. An approval gives a contract permission to spend a specific token from your wallet. If that approval is unlimited and the contract is malicious or later compromised, that token can be drained without another prompt.

✍️ Signing transactions is more direct. You are explicitly authorizing an on-chain action, and fake or cloned websites often rely on users clicking through these prompts without checking details.

Message signing is also misunderstood. While it doesn’t move funds directly, a signed message can be used to log you into a service, create an active session, or approve actions that happen off-chain, such as initiating trades, listing NFTs, or issuing token permits later. Once signed, that permission can be reused without asking you again.

⏺To reduce risk, don’t discover apps through Google search results. Use X to find the project’s official profile and navigate to the website from its bio

⏺If you’ve already approved token spending on a site you don’t trust anymore, use revoke.cash to review and revoke active approvals

📌 Save for later and share with a friend

#FAQ

Save money on taxes using crypto tax loss harvesting 🪙

In the U.S., crypto is considered property for tax purposes. That classification opens up a legal way to reduce your tax bill when prices drop. The wash sale rule, which applies to stocks and mutual funds, does not apply to crypto. You can sell a coin at a loss, buy it right back, and still claim the full loss when you file your taxes.

🤔 Say you bought 1 Bitcoin at $120,000 in August. Today it's worth $88,000. You sell it and immediately repurchase the same amount. That $32,000 difference becomes a realized capital loss. Even though your holdings haven't changed, the IRS sees the sale as a taxable event and allows the deduction.

You can use that loss to offset capital gains from other investments like stocks or other crypto. If you don’t have gains this year, up to $3,000 can be applied against ordinary income such as your salary. Any remaining losses roll forward to future years and can be used the same way 💸

This strategy works best if you keep clear records, including exact dates and amounts. If you're using a centralized exchange, download your transaction history and confirm that cost basis and proceeds are being tracked accurately. Crypto loss harvesting is legal, straightforward, and especially valuable during a market downturn.

Also note, that repurchasing resets your basis (and usually your holding period) in the new lot. That can change whether a later gain is short-term vs long-term. So this is a tradeoff we make when doing this tax loss harvesting 🤑

Outside the U.S., similar crypto loss–harvesting strategies fully or partially work in countries like the UK, Germany, Italy, and France (with restrictions)

@Coin_Post

Variational: The Next Perp DEX to Watch 🕯

🔗 Variational is a perp DEX built on Arbitrum. They officially launched their points campaign through Omni on December 17. What matters now is that this is an active campaign, not a one-off. Points will keep dropping weekly until the end of Q3 2026.

To earn more points you need stay active and maintaining a tier to boost your multiplier. Tiers are updated weekly based on recent activity, so it’s about consistent volume and OI 💸

If you traded before launch, you got a 10% bonus. You also earn 1 point for every 10 earned by your referrals. For me, this one doesn’t feel like a copy-paste perp DEX project like Aster, they’re clearly trying to reward real users.

🪂 Don’t expect this to be life-changing airdrop like Hyperliquid or even Lighter (which I mentioned back in summer — points are now up 22x in price and TGE is coming soon). Variational is later in the rotation and perp farms are getting crowded. But it’s still early here, and if this hits, you need to be active from the start.

You’ll need an invite code to use the app, so check their Discord if you're trying to get in 🎮

@Coin_Post

Maker vs Taker Fees and Why They Matter More Than You Think ❓

Fees are a bigger part of trading than most people realize. If you only trade spot and hold for months, losing 0.01% on entry and exit may not feel important. But if you trade futures, scale in and out, or open and close positions often, fees compound fast.

🕯 Take Bybit as a simple example. On perpetual futures, a typical account pays around 0.036% as a maker and 0.1% as a taker. That’s a 2.7x difference. Open and close a position as a taker and you already paid about 0.2% round trip. Do this frequently and fees can eat a large share profits.

The difference comes down to liquidity. A maker order adds liquidity to the order book. This happens when you place a limit order that does not fill immediately. Because this helps the exchange, maker fees are lower. A taker order removes liquidity. Market orders are always taker orders, and limit orders that fill instantly are also treated as taker orders.

😱 Many traders accidentally pay taker fees even when using limit orders. To avoid this, use post-only orders. A post-only order guarantees your limit order will only be placed if it adds liquidity. If it would execute immediately as a taker, the exchange cancels it automatically.

Where you trade matters too. Fee structures differ a lot between exchanges. Some perpetual DEXs offer 0% maker and taker fees, which changes the math completely. I personally saved around $20,000 in fees just this year by trading on Lighter compared to doing the same trades on Binance or Bybit 💸

#FAQ