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On this fine day, January 28, which just so happens to be the five-year anniversary of what we’ll affectionately refer to as the Great GameStop Fiasco, Tenev took to Twitter (the modern-day town crier) to regale us with tales of yore. “Five years ago today,” he tweeted, “Robinhood and other brokers were forced to halt buying of several meme stocks, most memorably GameStop, in one of the strangest and most visible equity market failures in recent history.” In other words, it was like watching a circus elephant try to tap dance on a tightrope – thrilling, but ultimately a recipe for disaster.

This blustery Arctic storm has officially made the South and the lower Ohio Valley its chilly playground, with Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama, and West Virginia feeling the brunt of it. These states aren’t just cozying up with hot chocolate; they also host sizable clusters of bitcoin mining facilities, with Texas strutting around like a peacock in a mining competition.

February approaches, and the whales are no longer blind gamblers. They sniff the air, read the charts, and whisper secrets to their wallets. Momentum shifts, early reversals, and chart structures-these are their tools, their talismans in the dark forest of crypto.

In an interview, some guy named Joe Zhou, probably from some news site no one’s heard of, asks Buterin if he still messes around on Polymarket. “Yes, I made $70,000 last year,” he says, casually. When asked about his initial bankroll, he mentions he started with a fat $440,000-implying he didn’t exactly “chicken scratch” his way into this. Meanwhile, the average trader is just trying to keep up with the latest Twitter storm and getting chopped up like a sushi roll.

In a recent missive posted on the platform X, those keen analysts at 21Shares have laid forth a spectrum of predictions for the future of XRP. In their most conservative estimation-one might say the ‘base case’ scenario-they foresee XRP ascending to the lofty heights of $2.45, a figure which represents an almost delightful increase of 30% from its current station. Should the winds of fortune blow favorably, in their ‘bull case,’ XRP may even dare to flirt with the splendid figure of $2.69, a dazzling 40% gain! Yet, let us not forget the specter of defeat-the ‘bear case’ looms ominously, predicting a drop to $1.60, a rather disheartening descent of 16%.

Yet, amidst this chaos, Eric Balchunas, analyst extraordinaire and perhaps the market’s last comedian, proclaims that Bitcoin’s long-term ascent, a staggering 429% since 2022, dwarfs the humble gains of silver, gold, and even the venerable Nasdaq-100. “Fear not,” he seems to say, “for the mountain of gains makes this brief fog seem insignificant – like a bad joke or a fleeting nightmare.”

In an act reminiscent of a dramatic encore, Representative Logan Manhart (R) has donned his legislative cape and revived a plan that could redefine the state’s financial ballet.

During a CoinDesk interview, Witt, with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, hinted at an interagency effort to uncover how Maduro’s regime has been funding its antics. “A developing situation,” he murmured, as if the world didn’t already know Venezuela’s been a financial black hole for years. “National security equities,” he added, because nothing says “we’re serious” like throwing around jargon. When pressed about seized digital assets, Witt clammed up faster than a clam at a seafood buffet, citing the “sensitivity” of the matter. Sensitive? Or just inconvenient?

That old script worked because it was predictable. If Bitcoin surged, the rest of the market trailed along, like a chorus following a grand maestro.

The pattern isn’t a unique snowflake; it keeps showing up in market cycles, stitching the same cautionary quilt: 2018, 2022, and now early 2026. BTC is still above $89,000, but history treats this as a punctual reminder that past performance is a terrible magician and prices tend to vanish when you blink.