Top crypto stories of week 8, 2025
Mon 17 to Sun 23 February 2025
The 20 top stories on Kiwi News from Mon 17 to Sun 23 February 2025, ranked by upvotes, comments and clicks, with 81 comments in total. Most-shared sources: hackmd.io, xcancel.com, x.com.
Text under a title is an AI summary of the linked article.
- Chris Carella and Mac Budkowski recap ideas from Farcaster 2026 writing contest (youtu.be)
- L2 Issuance Was Fun While It Lasted (research.auditless.com)
Issuing tokens on L2 rollups carries weaker security guarantees than L1-issued assets, and the piece asks how much issuance really matters for rollups given Solana's dominance. It says deposited L1 tokens are the funds that matter, since rollups support forced withdrawals of directly bridged L1-to-L2 tokens. As Vitalik points out, holders of a rollup's upgrade keys could change its proof system and mint unlimited L2 tokens. The piece responds to Vitalik's proposal for higher L1 gas limits, noting that putting all tokens on L1 is not currently viable, and raises concern that rollup-issued tokens could fragment liquidity.
- ZachXBT: Suspicious outflows from Bybit of $1.46B+ (t.me)
- Retro Funding: Onchain Builders round open (atlas.optimism.io)
- Cobie on dealing with bad actors (xcancel.com)
Cobie argues that public shaming rarely removes bad actors from crypto, because those who promote scams tend to profit from the attention and fight back. He says shaming is used as populist rhetoric, that accused figures counter-accuse, and that some YouTubers have promoted scams across three cycles while staying popular. He adds that crypto's cycles keep bringing in new audiences, and that the only people he has seen shamed off the app were relatively credible people who made a mistake or did not depend on it for income. He also estimates it can take five or more years for the crowd to recognise someone's nature, and only if they get sloppy.
- Daily discussion thread 2025-02-17 (hackmd.io)
- The Open Intents Framework (openintents.xyz)
- Apple Removes E2E iCloud Encryption in the UK (theverge.com)
Apple has stopped offering Advanced Data Protection, its end-to-end encrypted iCloud storage, to new users in the UK, and existing UK users will eventually have to disable it. Apple spokesperson Julien Trosdorf told The Verge that Apple is "gravely disappointed" that ADP protections will not be available to UK customers. The move follows a report by The Washington Post that the UK Home Office, led by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, demanded backdoor access to encrypted files of users worldwide. Trosdorf said Apple has never built a backdoor or master key and never will.
- @sassal0x: bizarre 500 ETH burn w/ cryptic message about brain-computer weapons (x.com)
- The /llms.txt file (llmstxt.org)
The /llms.txt proposal, now in its second version, asks websites to publish a markdown file at /llms.txt that gives LLMs a curated overview and links to clean markdown versions of key pages. The author, Jeremy Howard, describes it as a response to agents reading HTML pages that are cluttered with navigation, ads, and JavaScript, and says thousands of sites now publish the file. The proposal also recommends serving each page as markdown at the same URL with .md appended and linking the two using standard link relations. It positions llms.txt as complementary to robots.txt and sitemap.xml rather than a replacement for them.
- Vitalik AMA on Tako (translated to English) (paragraph.xyz)
Vitalik Buterin answers questions in a Tako AMA hosted by Mable Jiang, arguing that Ethereum can serve as both a digital currency and a "world computer" because the same traits, decentralization and resilience, support both roles. He says Ethereum's development now largely happens outside the foundation, and that L1 needs enough throughput for anyone who wants to use it at least occasionally, with L2s handling higher-performance workloads. On rollups, he supports a hybrid L1 plus L2 approach and a two-part ecosystem that includes centralized sequencers alongside L1-based or based rollups, and says the DAO selecting a backup sequencer is worth studying. He also says there is no "ETH 3.0" yet and that Justin Drake's five-year plan covers only the consensus layer.
- The Meaning of Memecoins (rightclicksave.com)
- @financeguy74: Why Jack Dorsey might be the real Satoshi Nakamoto (x.com)
This post argues that Jack Dorsey is the real Satoshi Nakamoto, based on a list of circumstantial links. It cites his 1996 cypherpunk mailing list membership, a 1997 to 1999 ACM membership, and his 2003 statement about creating a barter network, along with date coincidences such as the first Bitcoin transaction on 1/11/09, which falls on his mother's birthday. The post also points to Dorsey's April 2020 answer to Lex Fridman, in which he said he would not admit it if he were Satoshi, and to his 2024 Nostr post about imagining Satoshi laughing. These are presented as the author's interpretations of coincidences rather than established facts.
- Daily discussion thread 2025-02-18 (hackmd.io)
- Circles Litepaper (aboutcircles.com)
- Daily discussion thread 2025-02-21 (hackmd.io)
- Policing the web in Germany, where hate speech, insults are a crime (60 Minutes) (youtube.com)
In Germany, hate speech and insults are crimes, and prosecutors and police police the internet, whereas in the U.S. most hateful online speech is protected as free speech under the First Amendment. The 60 Minutes video examines this policing. The broadcast, known for investigative reports, began in 1968 and remains a regular Nielsen Top 10 hit more than 50 seasons later.
- Brian Armstrong on memecoins (xcancel.com)
Brian Armstrong argues that memecoins, though often silly, offensive, or fraudulent today, should be approached with an open mind because new technologies often start as toys before evolving into something more powerful. He says memecoins are a canary in the coal mine signaling that everything will eventually be tokenized and brought onchain. Coinbase's approach is to let customers choose legal tokens for themselves while removing outright scams and providing useful information such as reviews or community notes. Armstrong also states that insider trading in some memecoins is illegal and carries prison time.
- Farcaster mini app ideas (docs.google.com)
This is a crowdsourced list of ideas for Farcaster mini apps, with each entry credited to the Farcaster user who suggested it. The ideas range from games and social tools to finance and content features. Examples include a Sudoku mini app from kimmy, a Backgammon mini app from northchop, and a Minecraft-style mini app from dwr.eth. Other suggestions include a mini app that sends notifications when ENS domains are about to expire, proposed by baseddesigner.eth, and an onchain wishlist from priyanka.
- Daily discussion thread 2025-02-20 (hackmd.io)