$COIN Earnings, CPI Running Hot, Sam and Elon's Beef

Just a whole bunch of sideways action this week … boring!

This Week in Crypto

As per, a peak first at the ETF flows:

And, well, they’ve not been great. That being said, price action for Bitcoin and indeed all majors has continued to be sideways. Any fears over tariffs and/or CPI have failed to make a strong impression on the market.

The main (and really only) newsworthy item this week was the corporate updates:

• Coinbase posted a massive beat, and for some reason, it pumped after hours and then cratered -6% on open.

• Robinhood’s earnings were robingood:

• Not quite sure why retail have not been buying {my bags}…

• 21 shares also have filed for a staked ETH ETF (maybe Eric Trump did know something after all). Pictured below are the Polymarket odds for other ETF approvals, if any are mispriced, it feels like SOL:

• FTX creditor payments will be starting on Feb 18th; we’ve known this for a while now and have written about it in previous editions. Given most of this exposure was bought up by traditional funds, we’re not expecting large flows to find their way back into the crypto eco-system.

Really quite thin on anything else to talk about this week, so I suppose I’ll just drop in some headlines:

• Goldman Sachs boosts Ethereum ETF holdings by 2,000%, Bitcoin ETFs to $1.5B

• Franklin Templeton Expands $594M Market Money Fund to Solana

• Tether Investments Announces Strategic Minority Stake in Juventus Football Club

• Opensea are launching a token (3 years too late)

This Week in TradFi

U.S. inflation data came out hotter than expected for January.

• U.S. consumer prices increased more than expected in January, rising by the most in almost 1½ years. 

• Shelter, including hotels and motel rooms, increased 0.4% and accounted for almost 30% of the rise in CPI. Food prices rose 0.4%, and grocery store prices increased 0.5%.

• And everyone’s favorite: egg prices surged 15.2%, the largest increase since June 2015 - primarily driven by the avian flu outbreak. Egg prices accounted for about ⅔ of the rise in supermarket prices and have increased 53% YoY. 

• Producer prices increased solidly in January, with the index for final demand rising 0.4% last month and 0.5% in December. 

• Investors are now worried that a heating economy and upcoming tariffs may lead to a delay in rate-cuts or possibly even (gasp!) a rate hike. 

• 10-year U.S. Treasury yields rose more than 10bps, up to 4.65%, the highest rate in nearly three weeks. 

• Interest rate futures now place the Fed reducing rates by 25bps by the end of the year at 70%, down from 80% earlier in the week. 

On the international front:

• European shares rose to a record high this week, on track for their eighth straight week of gains, with luxury stocks jumping after noteworthy earnings from Hermes. 

• India’s inflation remained steady last month at 2.31% YoY, slightly down from 2.37% in December. Food prices rose 7.47%, with vegetable prices up 8.35% YoY. 

• Thailand’s economy looks like it grew at its fastest pace in over two years last quarter, driven by a strong increase in foreign tourists and exports that have helped offset lower domestic demand.

• Gold prices rose today and are on track for their seventh consecutive weekly gain, fueled by fears of a trade war after President Trump’s announcements on tariffs. U.S. gold futures are up 0.6% today, at $2,961.30.

This Week in Tech

We’ll keep things rapid-fire today, so you can stop reading this and get back to your Valentine’s Day plans. (You do have plans, right?)

A group of investors, led by Elon Musk, have offered to buy OpenAI for $97.4B. 

• Sam Altman immediately dismissed the proposal, which would create problems for the planned conversion of the company from a nonprofit, which Musk is currently trying to block through a lawsuit.

• Altman’s lawyers argued that Musk can’t attempt to buy OpenAI while simultaneously trying to stop it from changing its nonprofit status. 

• Musk’s team responded that they would withdraw their bid if OpenAI stopped the conversion attempts.

Honda’s $60B merger with Nissan has fallen apart. 

• The merger has been allegedly called off because of Nissan’s “pride and insufficient alarm about its predicament”. 

• Reuters reported that the deal also fell apart because of Honda trying to revise the terms of the merger last-minute and proposing that Nissan become a subsidiary. 

• Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn has said that it now may be interested in buying a stake in Nissan since the merger has been called off. 

Founders Fund is on track to conclude fundraising of its third growth fund at the end of March. 

• The firm is raising $3B, following its previous $3.4B growth fund in early 2022. 

• The’ve also raised $1.8B for their eighth early-stage fund, which they split in half early last year, due to a lack of opportunities. 

Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, urged the AI industry and government to move faster and with greater clarity on regulation.

• He warned in a statement that AI is quickly becoming more sophisticated, and failing to regulate it could be disastrous. 

• He said, “Advanced AI presents significant global security dangers, ranging from misuse of AI systems by non-state actors … We must ensure democratic societies lead in AI, and that authoritarian countries do not use it to establish global military dominance.”

As usual, below are some fundraising announcements, M&A, and tech personnel changes that caught our eye:

• No-code platform Phase has raised $13M in funding from Gobi Partners, Hive Ventures, and more. 

• Apptronik, a company that makes humanoid robots, announced a $350M Series A, led by B Capital and Capital Factory.

• Suger, a toolkit that automates SaaS product listing across marketplaces, has raised a $15M Series A, led by Threshold Ventures.

Arch is building next-gen wealth management platform for individuals holding Alternative Assets. Our flagship product is the crypto-backed loan, which allows you to securely and affordably borrow against your crypto. We also offer access to bank-grade custody, trading and staking services, powered by BitGo.

Disclaimer: None of the above is financial advice, seriously.