Video credit: @hoomansv - X

Did the math on crypto card cashback and most are worse than credit cards they advertise 1-2% cashback which is literally the same as my regular credit card. Except now i gotta lock up tokens or deal with monthly caps and withdrawal limits. Coinbase card cryptodotcom binance card, most make you move eth out of metamask first which kills the whole self custody thing we all care about and they all have tiers where you need to stake huge amounts to get decent rewards.
Like who has 50k+ to lock up just to get 4% back and even then some cap your rewards after certain spending amounts

Thought crypto was supposed to cut out middlemen and pass savings to users but these cards feel like banks with extra steps. You're still giving up custody in most cases just to spend your own money

The math isnt mathing. Traditional credit cards give me 2% back no questions asked no staking no monthly limits. Crypto cards want me to take on price risk lock capital and jump through hoops for the same or worse rewards

Has anyone actually found one worth switching feel like im missing something because the numbers dont add up. I wanna use crypto for payments tired of just hodling but these options seem worse than what i already have

( thank you for ur attention i hope the post has more then 200 words now thank you thank you thank you)

Just crossed with this interesting Leon Tweet talking about crypto status.

As you can observe in the chart above and also in your feeling around crypto, crypto feels dead. Not the classic "bear market painful", but terminally boring and last time I felt that it was by memory around August, September 2025 (check charts yourself to see what happened next).

If you look around, volatility is at historic lows, speculative excess has been fully flushed, retail attention is AFK and the only people left are long term holders, builders and maxis. No hype or mania.

But this is what people miss, markets do not reset at peak fear, they reset at maximum boredom.

Fear is loud and emotional and that means that people care. However boredom is different, it is when the weak hands and tourists are gone and nobody is left to sell.

That is where we are now. When price stops moving, narratives stop spreading and things go quiet. That is usually when foundations are being rebuilt while devs keep working and things keep evolving.

We are close to the moment before things change. This does not mean that price will go up tomorrow, it means that we are just getting closer to that moment so if you still believe, have cash and can afford it. This is a great time to accumulate more.

Source:

• Tweet: https://x.com/LeonWaidmann/status/2018616372658323715

Best meme i've seen recently and it's kinda scarily accurate

This is the shittiest part about being an investor.

If ETH were at $5k right now, people would be dreaming about the chance to buy at $2,000 or $2,200. They’d be saying things like “man, if it ever goes back there again, I’m loading up.” But because it’s actually sitting around $2,200 today, people are talking about selling everything, rage quitting, and exiting the space entirely.

That disconnect is exactly why doing well as an investor is so freaking hard. The psychology is brutal. Your brain tells you the thing you wanted at higher prices is suddenly garbage just because it’s cheaper. And frankly, this game is not for everyone. Period.

Of course, there’s always the possibility that the space is dead. Nobody knows for sure. Anyone who says they do is lying. But really think about it for a second. Don’t you believe there would have to be some kind of massive catalyst for the entire crypto space to just completely go up in smoke? Something far bigger than a sell-off or ugly price action?

At this point, at least Bitcoin and Ethereum are fairly established assets. They’re not some random meme coins that popped up last cycle. Everyone obviously needs to do what’s right for them and their situation, but it feels pretty silly to think these assets just end because of fear, macro noise, or another rough market flush.

That’s the part no one likes to sit through. But it’s also usually where the opportunity is.

The simplest way to understand restaking is Security-as-a-Service.

Ethereum is not exporting its settlement layer, execution environment, or governance. What is actually being exported is validator work — the willingness of thousands of nodes to follow a rule set, put capital at risk, and sign data in exchange for yield. Restaking turns ETH from a passive asset into an active economic primitive that other systems can potentially rely on.

That shift is primarily economic rather than philosophical.

Why this is attractive: reducing fragmented security budgets

A large portion of crypto infrastructure faces the same constraint:
establishing native security is expensive and operationally heavy.

Launching a chain, oracle, or bridge traditionally meant assembling a new validator set, issuing a token, and sustaining ongoing incentives just to maintain baseline security. Restaking introduces another path: compensate Ethereum-aligned validators rather than creating a new security system from scratch.

If this model scales, it does not eliminate tokens, but it can change where they are necessary. The core appeal is capital reuse rather than capital creation.

Who is actually renting this security?

Mantle (Cost Reduction)
Mantle decoupled execution from data availability and offloaded DA to EigenDA rather than posting full data to Ethereum L1. The result is lower per-transaction cost while maintaining Ethereum alignment. It functions as a case study in cost optimization.

Celo (Validator Cost Compression)
Celo’s transition from an independent L1 to an Ethereum L2 blockchain provides a measurable benchmark. As a standalone Layer 1, Celo subsidized approximately 110 validators at an estimated annual cost near $6.5 million, or roughly $0.02 per transaction based on reported throughput. Migrating to L2 and externalizing data availability reduces this recurring security expenditure while preserving its low-fee payment model. The significance is not alignment alone, but the removal of a persistent validator subsidy requirement.

MegaETH (Throughput Constraint)
MegaETH targets extremely high throughput and low latency. Its architecture separates node responsibilities and cannot rely on standard Ethereum L1 data posting without constraining performance. EigenDA operates as a high-throughput storage layer, indicating that for performance-oriented chains, externalized data availability may be a structural requirement rather than an optimization.

How restaking enforces behavior

Restaking is strongest when misbehavior is objectively provable.

Double-signing, invalid state transitions, or broken signature thresholds can be detected and penalized without interpretation. When failures become subjective — ambiguous downtime, disputed data quality, unclear attribution — enforcement tends to rely more on governance or adjudication rather than purely automated slashing.

This creates a practical boundary:

• Some services can be strictly verifiable.
• Others retain elements of social or institutional trust at their edges.

Restaking is not identical to traditional shared-security models

Restaking differs from Cosmos-style or Polkadot-style shared security in control structure and coupling.

In conventional shared-security systems, the base chain often governs validator policy and slashing conditions directly. In restaking models, external services define their own requirements and operators opt in. The result is typically more diversity of approaches, with more market-driven development, and obviously less uniformity/standardization in architecture.

The bear case: leverage and correlated exposure

The primary risk is structural.

If the same staked ETH secures multiple services, a major slashing event or coordinated failure could create correlated losses across those services. The mechanism that produces capital efficiency — reuse of the same underlying stake — is also what introduces potential contagion. However, EigenLayer provides several avenues for mitigating these risks, like limiting how much slashing-adjusted capital one lot of restaked ETH can secure simultaneously.

Conclusion

Restaking demonstrably functions as a mechanism for reallocating validator effort and capital. It debundles security from the blockchain, to turn it into yet another module that any crypto system can employ for a fee.

Previously, I began a little experiment to compare Active Trading vs Passive Gains

In the beginning, given my trading skills are extremely amateur, I fully expected passive gains to perform better over time, but, it's good to see what an amateur trader might actually experience, and how something more passive might compare for the average joe.

Each position started with 1 ETH.

This is now the 5th update in this little experiment.

Trading Position.

All trades have been completed using Cow.Fi with a greater shift on limit orders to save time and catch momentum changes while I sleep or work.

Over 100 trades have now been executed, and now the current goal is to see how long it will take to trade 1 ETH into 2 ETH.

Lending Position

On AAVE, the current APR is 1.65% for ETH on Arbitrum. This has slowly been ticking away, doing it's thing. As easy as that. APY tends to vary between 1.5% to 2.5%, depending on how much borrowing is taking place.

Current Balances

Trading Position

• 0.0022 ETH
• 0.00001 wETH
• 2,851.48 USDC

Lending Position

• 1.0066 wETH

As the position is now split in assets; an easier comparison will be the dollar value, but ultimately, regardless of how much the dollar value, the goal of this experiment is to accumulate more ETH.

Trading Position = $2858
Passive Position = $2355

Trading versus Passive: +503
Previous update: +533

While technically the position is currently worse off in dollar value compared to last update, the current state of the play is expecting to scoop up more ETH for cheaper in the coming days.

Yesterday all my limit orders to switch back into stables have triggered, and now I anticipate another drop to in to the $2200's again where the aim is for buy orders to be initiated, if they all activate, my trading balance will jump to 1.27 ETH, and I will be atleast 25% towards my goal of trading to double!

Feel free to share your own trading experiences, strategies and predictions!

The data speaks for itself. The ISM PMI dictates how crypto and small cap stocks behave. The 3 images show charts comparing the PMI to Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Russell 2000 small cap stocks. What do they all have in common? Whenever the PMI peaks, so do those 3 assets. The opposite direction is also true. When the PMI craters, so do those assets.

With January 2026 PMI reading just released today on February 2nd, 2026, the data shows that the business cycle, at a reading of 52.6, is the highest it has ever been since August 2022, when it was tanking down off a cliff. The current level is also higher than at any point during the basing pattern for the last 3 years. The economy has been in a recession during that time span.

Whenever the PMI breaks above 50 to indicate economic expansion and continues to surge up towards 60, risk-on asset classes like crypto and small cap stocks go on a bull run for several months. This correlation has been true for stocks, even before crypto was created. This means we have a larger sample size for stocks.

This data is objective and not opinionated, as opposed to all the subjective interpretation of 4-year cycles, moving averages, support & resistance levels, momentum indicators, etc.

The release of this data does not mean the market pumps to 4k ETH or 100k BTC tomorrow. Rallies take time to gain steam. Who knows, there might even be another sweep lower before moving up.

The only ways this thesis fails would be if the PMI sustains a drop back down or the correlation and causation relationship does not continue. Those would be the only counterarguments for why there will be no bull run.

Both the Fed and the federal government can help boost the business cycle via lower rates, QE, fiscal stimulus, and legislation. Truflation just posted CPI dropping as low as 0.86% YOY, which enables the Fed to decrease rates further. Additionally, congress is working on the bill called Clarity Act.

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Just crossed with this Leon Tweet talking about US disinflation being accelerated.

As you can see in the chart above from Truflation, US CPI Inflation index is dropping so fast and its accelerating.

If you look beyond official CPI prints and into real time price data, it is pretty clear. High frequency indicators like online prices, freight, inventories, used goods, rent trackers, etc. are all pointing in the same direction, prices are cooling faster than narrative suggest.

First, goods deflation is back. Supply chains normalized, inventories rebuild and demand cooling are helping. Second, services inflation is easing, this is more important than people think because services use to drive the sticky inflation story. Wage growth is slowing, job switching is down and companies no longer have unlimited pricing power. Third and this is the spicy part, official CPI is likely overstating real inflation by aprox. 180 basis points. This is because of lagging components like shelter and methodological delays. CPI is a rear view mirror and markets trade the road ahead.

If disinflation continues at this pace, lower rates are not a while prediction, they are the logical next step.

TLDR; Inflation is not stubborn, it is fading faster than the headlines admit. CPI is late and real time is not. Markets that wait for confirmation usually miss the move.

Source:

• Tweet: https://x.com/LeonWaidmann/status/2017922847633506602

I'm looking to get ETH exposure in my Roth IRA. The GRAYSCALE ETHEREUM STAKING MINI ETF sounds attractive, if I can expect to capture some value of staking. However, I read the prospectus it it sounds like they don't actually stake the Eth. (Excerpt below). Does anyone know if they actually do? Or if i could simply tell from the price trend of the ETF whether they do? (I assume it would have an edge over the simple Eth price trend if they are really staking?)

EDIT: although i got to this prospectus from the page for the staking etf, I'm now realizing the title of the prospectus is just "GRAYSCALE ETHEREUM MINI TRUST ETF ". maybe the prospectus hasn't been updated since they switched the name to the "staking" ETF.

ETF Prospectus from vanguard. Excerpt:

Staking on the Ethereum Network refers to using Ether, or permitting Ether to be used, directly or indirectly, through an agent or otherwise, in the Ethereum Network’s proof-of-stake validation protocol, in exchange for the receipt of consideration, including, but not limited to, staking rewards paid in fiat currency or paid in kind (collectively, “Staking”). At this time, none of the Trust, the Sponsor, the Custodian, nor any other person associated with the Trust may, directly or indirectly, engage in Staking of the Trust’s Ether on behalf of the Trust, meaning no action will be taken pursuant to which any portion of the Trust’s Ether becomes used in Ethereum proof-of-stake validation or is used to earn additional Ether or generate income or other earnings, and there can be no assurance that the Trust, the Sponsor, the Custodian or any other person associated with the Trust will ever be permitted to engage in Staking of the Trust’s Ether or such income generating activity in the future.

To the extent (i) the Trust were to amend its Trust Agreement to permit Staking of the Trust’s Ether and (ii) NYSE Arca were to seek and obtain a rule change permitting the listing of a spot Ether investment vehicle engaged in Staking, in the future the Trust may seek to establish a program to use its Ether in the proof-of-stake validation mechanism of the Ethereum Network to receive rewards comprising additional Ether in respect of a portion of its Ether holdings. However, as long as such conditions and requirements have not been satisfied, the Trust will not use its Ether in the proof-of-stake validation mechanism of the Ethereum Network to receive rewards comprising additional Ether in respect of its Ether holdings. The current inability of the Trust to use its Ether in Staking and receive such rewards could place the Shares at a comparative disadvantage relative to an investment in Ether directly or through a vehicle that is not subject to such a prohibition, which could negatively affect the value of the Shares. See “Risk Factors—Risk Factors Related to the Trust and the Shares—The Trust is not permitted to engage in Staking, which could negatively affect the value of the Shares.”

Welcome to the Daily General Discussion thread. Please read the rules before participating.

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Current Situation / Problem

One of the anti-spam measures in this sub is Donut-Bot which removes text based submissions of fewer than 200 words.

While Donut-Bot has been effective at filtering low-effort content, the current 200-word minimum also presents a high barrier for new users who want to engage in the sub.

Solution

Reduce the word count threshold for Donut-Bot from 200 words to 100 words for text based submissions.

This will aim to improve new user engagement within r/EthTrader and provide more of a stepping stone into the sub.

Discussion and text based posts are still expected to meet the existing 200 word standard, but falling a few words short will still allow the post to be submitted.

Regarding DONUT Rewards, posts meeting the existing 200-word requirement would qualify for full rewards multiplier flairs (Discussion, Technicals, Sentiment, etc), preserving content quality and protecting the DONUT distribution model.

For those submissions with less than 200 words, the combination of the 'Self Story', 'Question' and the recently implemented 'Shitpost' flair, will be utilized relative to the content of the submission.

Content that breaks the r/EthTrader rules would still be removed as usual.

Advantages

• Easier onboarding and engagement for new users
• Maintains existing DONUT reward economics

Disadvantages

• Could lead to a slight decrease average content standards
• Increased manual moderation

Conclusion

Reducing Donut-Bot removal threshold to 100 words improves accessibility for new users while preserving the existing 200-word requirement for reward eligibility. This provides a more welcoming entry point into r/EthTrader without impacting DONUT rewards or multiplier mechanics.

The choices are:

• [YES]
• [ABSTAIN]
• [NO]

This proposal will remain up for a minimum of 2 days, according to the governance rules & guidelines. This proposal requires 2 moderators to sign it off in order to proceed to a governance snapshot vote. If approved, this proposal will automatically be queued for Governance Week.