Top crypto stories of week 7, 2026
Mon 9 to Sun 15 February 2026
The 20 top stories on Kiwi News from Mon 9 to Sun 15 February 2026, ranked by upvotes, comments and clicks, with 22 comments in total. Most-shared sources: x.com.
Text under a title is an AI summary of the linked article.
- XMTP CLI - Decentralized communication inside your terminal (bsky.app)
- Executive Leadership Update | Ethereum Foundation Blog (blog.ethereum.org)
The Ethereum Foundation has announced that Tomasz Stańczak is stepping down as Co-Executive Director, and its Board has appointed Bastian Aue as interim Co-Executive Director, effective immediately. The announcement credits Stańczak with strategic guidance that expanded the Foundation's reach to broad groups of people and teams, deeper understanding of ecosystem businesses, and expanded enterprise community development. Bastian Aue, who previously focused on grants, enterprise, and operations as part of the executive team, is described as bringing deep organizational knowledge of the Foundation's structure and values. The Board thanked Stańczak for his service and said the transition is an opportunity to refocus on the work ahead.
- evmts/xvi: XVI - Ethereum execution client (vibe-coded!) (github.com)
XVI is an experiment in building an entire Ethereum execution client with AI agents writing every line of source code, orchestrated by Smithers, with humans supplying only architecture, specs and test targets. The project has two parallel client implementations, a Zig client at about 70% feature-complete and an Effect-TS client at about 65%, both mirroring Nethermind's architecture across 11 subsystems. The EVM engine Guillotine reportedly passes 100% of ethereum/tests from Frontier through Prague. Key gaps include the consensus engine, persistent RocksDB storage, full networking and the Engine API, and testing and polish phases have not started for either client.
- spanDEX (spandex.sh)
spanDEX is a TypeScript library, published as @spandex/core, for fetching swap quotes from multiple decentralized exchange providers. The article is a code snippet showing how getQuote is called with a chain ID, input and output token addresses, an exact-input amount, slippage in basis points, and a strategy option set to bestPrice. The example swaps 1 WETH for USDbC on Base (chain ID 8453), and it throws an error if no provider returns a successful quote.
- Russia blocks WhatsApp and Telegram (dawn.com)
- @RyanSAdams: governments pushing AML/KYC biometrics to apps, need zk solutions (x.com)
Ryan S. Adams argues that governments are pushing AML/KYC requirements onto the app layer, requiring citizens to submit biometrics and IDs to every third party that asks for them. He asks whether governments could at least mandate zero-knowledge solutions that let users prove their identity without handing it to every corporation. He calls the outcome an absolute privacy nightmare and a surveillance state with broken security, and says a digital civil rights act is needed now.
- @WatcherGuru: EU proposes banning all crypto transactions with Russia (x.com)
- @callebtc: OpenClaw bot pressured matplotlib maintainer, then shamed him in blog (x.com)
- @OfflineProtocol: Offline Protocol 2.0 launches mesh networking ecosystem (xcancel.com)
- Russia eyes digital ruble to break dollar’s grip on BRICS trade (dlnews.com)
Russia plans to use its central bank digital currency, the digital ruble, to trade with BRICS partners and reduce reliance on the US dollar, according to Timur Aitov, a member of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and chair of its Financial Market Security Committee. Aitov said BRICS countries need CBDCs to trade with one another, and the Russian central bank is targeting a September 1 rollout. He also said the Reserve Bank of India has recommended putting a proposal to link BRICS nations' CBDCs on the agenda of the upcoming New Delhi summit. Sberbank CEO German Gref has been skeptical of the digital ruble, and Russian central bank governor Elvira Nabiullina has ruled out stablecoins for domestic use.
- Building Zero Cost Openclaws (paragraph.com)
This guide argues that a fully autonomous OpenClaw agent can be built with minimal monthly cost by combining decentralized hosting with free-tier APIs, while still requiring attention to infrastructure, security and model behavior. It recommends deploying on Aleph.im's decentralized VPS (Debian 12, 7.5GB RAM), which offers one month of free credits, and running the agent under a restricted user with 600 permissions on config files. It warns that autonomous agents can stall when searching directories like node_modules, and that misconfigured keys such as "Unrecognized key" errors cause silent crash loops. It also advises using Google's text-embedding-004 for free semantic memory, configuring fallback model chains, and scanning third-party SKILL.md files for malicious instructions before use.
- @tbsocialist: vibe-coded a website to prove you're Italian using @zkpassport (farcaster.xyz)
- The Last Temptation of Claude (blog.cosmos-institute.org)
The essay argues that AI tools tempt people into a "meta-temptation": they remove the deliberation that would let people notice and resist ordinary temptations. Drawing on the marshmallow studies, where a 2018 replication found only a mild correlation between waiting time and later outcomes, the author frames self-control as partly learned. The author contends that AI most often produces means-end akrasia, in which people rationalize using a tool, and that this outsources the thinking needed to see those rationalizations clearly. Using AI for drafting emails or writing, the author suggests, can skip the generative process where people work out what they mean.
- The Jmail Encyclopedia (jmail.world)
- Discord's age verification rollout has ties to Palantir (pcgamer.com)
- @s_lutz95: White House stablecoin yield meeting handout shows banking red lines (x.com)
A White House meeting between banking and crypto representatives on stablecoin yield, the second round, produced a handout that sets out banking's red lines on yield. A source familiar with the meeting called it productive but said "nothing was solved." The source suggested it could be the last meeting held at the White House, with the talks passing to Senate Banking and to the industries themselves. The article also reports, based on unnamed sources, that some crypto players are leaning toward banking's asks while Coinbase is still "holding out."
- @zaddycoin: The Permanent Underclass is a Product (x.com)
The author argues that the "Permanent Underclass" narrative, the idea that AI will permanently divide society into those who can compete and those who cannot, functions as a product that drives sales of courses, API credits, and tools. The article says the phrase generates anxiety that pushes readers toward personal action such as studying harder, buying more tokens, or deploying more bots, rather than toward policy responses. It notes that AI displacement itself is real and cites Amazon layoffs as an example, but says the permanence framing is structurally different and unproven.
- chinese peptide physiognomy (open.substack.com)
The article argues that a "bioacceleration" trend is spreading through Silicon Valley, with consumer biotech such as unapproved Chinese peptides, testosterone optimization and embryo selection gaining ground as people look for an edge after AI. It says that "looksmaxxing" and body-focused talk have grown as technologists see themselves as embodied beings, and it traces the rise of "rizz" over "tizz" to LLMs moving from research to applications. It describes peptide use spreading through Telegram groups, Reddit and ChatGPT advice rather than doctors, and it cites Bryan Johnson's claim that fertility rates are down 62%.
- Banks Take Hard Line on Stablecoin Yields as White House Talks Stall (cryptopotato.com)
- @ameensol: Use MolochDAO testing guide to make Claude write better Solidity test (x.com)