Olivia Capozzalo & Denis Omelchenko
February 09, 2026

gm Defiers!

Today’s big story:

After a year that truly has taken the wind out of crypto’s sails, some in the industry decided it was time to return to one of the world’s most-viewed stages.

In other news:

Analysts point out unusual IBIT trading
MegaETH reveals TGE plan
Bithumb fat fingers $30 billion

Read more below! But first, please give our sponsors some love; they make this newsletter possible.

Stellar: The Proving Ground for Real-World Privacy

The latest Stellar upgrade, X-Ray, delivers zero-knowledge cryptography that lets developers build privacy into their apps—protecting what matters while keeping Stellar radically open, trusted, and ready for real-world finance.

We’re back! Here’s what you need to know in web3 today

📈 Markets in the Past 24 Hours

TICKER	VALUE	24H
Bitcoin	$69,130	-2.93 %
Ethereum	$2,041.75	-4.07 %
XRP	$1.41	-3.12 %
BNB	$629.52	-2.03 %
Solana	$84.2	-4.45 %

Today’s Big Story

A Slideshow for Crypto

After a year that truly has taken the wind out of crypto’s sails, some in the industry decided it was time to make a mainstream comeback. Crypto finally tiptoed back onto the Super Bowl stage this year, blinking like someone who left the party early in 2022 and is now pretending nothing weird happened.

After multiple years of a notable absence of crypto Super Bowl ads — following FTX’s legendary Larry David “I don’t miss out” moment ad in 2022, just months before the exchange’s implosion — a few big names decided they were ready to be seen again in one of the world’s most-viewed events on TV.

The comeback kid was Coinbase. Once famous for turning the Super Bowl into a nation-wide reflex test with a bouncing DVD-style QR code that gifted $15 worth of Bitcoin for sign ups (also 2022), the exchange returned this year with a very different idea: a karaoke-style ad built around the Backstreet Boys’ 1997 hit “Everybody.”

From Coinbase’s Super Bowl LX ad. Source: Coinbase

The pitch was that crypto is for everyone, especially people who still know the words to boy-band choruses from the Clinton era.

But Crypto Twitter, naturally, didn’t let this slide. Some declared Coinbase the winner of the unofficial “most cringe Super Bowl commercial” award. Token Relations chief executive Jacquelyn Melinek summed up the collective anxiety:

“coinbase's superbowl commercial was just a backstreet boys singalong? oh my god we're really going to zero aren't we.”

Others joked that after the latest market bloodbath, Coinbase “only had a $20 marketing budget for their SuperBowl Ad,” a tongue-in-cheek take on the perceived low effort of the ad. Coinbase, however, wasn’t alone in keeping things subtle.

Crypto.com also showed up this year, sort of. Fresh off reportedly paying about $70 million for the domain ai[.]com, the company ran an ad that leaned hard into artificial intelligence and barely mentioned crypto — truly a sign of the times.

And while strictly crypto ads were limited this year, scammers stayed busy as usual. Fake YouTube livestreams posing as Super Bowl broadcasts circulated throughout the game, looping Donald Trump clips and flashing QR codes promising giveaways that definitely weren’t real.

So while crypto was at Super Bowl 2026, it’s hard to say that it was a full revival as it looked more like a PowerPoint karaoke slideshow than a Michael Bay-directed spectacle.

Denis, staff reporter at The Defiant

Forwarded this newsletter? Subscribe for daily insights and curated news from The Defiant team, Monday-Saturday. It’s free.

Subscribe to Defiant Daily

🎬WATCH

Crypto’s Point of No Return: Institutions are Finally Here, with Brett Tejpaul

In this episode of The Defiant Podcast, Cami sits down with Brett Tejpaul, Co-CEO of Coinbase Institutional, to discuss why institutional adoption accelerated last year. From ETFs and stablecoin regulation to banks using public blockchains in production, crypto crossed a line it can’t uncross.

Top News Since Friday

Bitcoin Selloff Sparks Hedge Fund Speculation Around BlackRock ETF

Unusual trading in BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF, iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), has led traders to speculate that this week’s sharp Bitcoin drop may have been triggered by one or more Hong Kong–based hedge funds, rather than selling pressure from crypto traders.

Why it matters: Other experts echoed parts of White’s view, noting that the size and structure of the move did not resemble a typical crypto-driven selloff.

MegaETH Unveils Token Buyback and TGE Plan

MegaETH, the highly anticipated Ethereum Layer 2, is launching its mainnet today, Feb. 9, but the token generation event (TGE) will be dependent on network performance milestones.

Why it matters: This comes just days after Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said the current Ethereum Layer 2 landscape “makes no sense.”

Bithumb Mistakenly Airdrops $30 Billion of Bitcoin

One of South Korea’s largest CEXs, Bithumb, made a multi-billion dollar mistake overnight when management accidentally sent 2,000 BTC, worth almost $140 million, to more than 200 users instead of 2,000 WON, which is worth less than $1.5.

Why it matters: Based on estimates from local media, the airdrop could have been worth up to $30 billion and regulators are investigating the incident.