It’s the most important day of the year! Well, not the most important of course, but it’s important to remember it! If only you could… it’s right on the tip of your tongue…

That’s right! It’s St. Valentine’s Day! So go sprint to the nearest corner store and pick up a bouquet of overpriced flowers and whatever chocolates you can find.

After you’ve done all that, race back here for several candle lit courses of steaming hot crypto news.

Espresso Shots

☕️ Genesis Reveals Payback Plan 💰 📆

After months of back and forth with Gemini, helmed by the Winklevoss twins, Genesis Global Capital and its parent company Digital Currency Group have announced a plan.

Digital Currency Group or DCG, the company that owns Genesis, will essentially sell the company off in pieces.

Specifically, they intend to turn equity from Genesis Global Trading over to Genesis Global Holdco. They’ll then package those companies together and try to sell them.

All in all, DCG needs to raise well over a billion dollars to settle the bar tab.

This plan is even better than their runner-up, distributing millions of post-it notes with “IOU” written on them.

☕️ Sam Bankman-Fried's Civil Trial Delayed ⚖️ ⏰

A Judge has granted a request from US prosecutors to delay the CFTC’s civil case against Sam Bankman-Fried.

Federal prosecutors are trying to hit three birds with one stone by delaying the civil cases against Sam Bankman-Fried.

The civil cases are from both the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) and the CFTC (Commodities Futures Trading Commission.)

Civil cases have a far lower burden of proof in the United States than criminal cases. Which means, if a criminal trial finds Sam Bankman-Fried guilty, a civil trial could be a whole lot easier to win.

The CFTC has successfully delayed their case while the SEC’s request has not yet been answered. This has no effect on the criminal trial which is scheduled for October.

This delay was consented to by Sam Bankman-Fried as it gives him more time to try to finally conquer League of Legends while playing as the incorrigible Azir.

☕️ Nouns Show Released 📺 👾

The NFT Collection, Nouns, have released an animated series based on their property, and you can watch it now with a $5 NFT pass.

Each episode is 11 minutes and matches the pixelated-style that Nouns are known for. The show is intended to be adult animation, with mature sex and drug content.

The show, called “The Nouners,” was funded via a small $15,000 grant from the Nouns DAO treasury which controls over $43 million in Ethereum.

South Park and Robot Chicken have been cited as inspirations, which is proof that just because it’s made on web3, it doesn’t mean it’s original!

Feel free to buy the $5 pass and watch, or do what we’ll probably do and just pass altogether.

Spilling the Beans

The Origin of the Crypto Bro

Crypto bros command headlines, hang with movie stars, and seemingly spend all their time doing whatever they want.

In a way, they're like real-life superheroes, only a lot lamer. But, much like superheroes, crypto bros tend to have some absolutely fascinating origin stories.

Today, we’re gonna dive into just a few of these crypto bros and how they came to be. We’ll also tell you which superhero we think they’re like. Because it’s fun.

Vitalik Buterin

This young buck rose to fame for creating Ethereum. Unlike Ethereum’s cousin Bitcoin, we can certifiably say who invented it, this young Russian-Canadian prodigy.

Buterin’s family emigrated from Russia to Canada when he was just six-years-old. From an early age, Vitalik showed a knack for computation science. In third grade, he was placed in advanced classes for math, programming, and economics.

After attending the University of Waterloo, Buterin was assistant to renowned cryptographer, Ian Goldberg.

And no, a cryptographer has nothing to do with maps. This kind of cryptography is the study and practice of secure communication against adversarial forces. Essentially, Buterin studied under one of the world’s foremost minds in anti-hacking tech.

After being introduced to Bitcoin by his father, and motivated against centralized forces by repeated frustrations with his World of Warcraft account, Buterin proposed Ethereum in a white paper in 2013 and received a $100,000 grant from the Thiel Fellowship.

And the rest is history.

If Vitalik Buterin was a superhero, he’d probably be Ironman. In that his only power is being, like, really really smart.

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss

This set of Harvard twins went from getting absolutely owned by Mark Zuckerberg to being some of the most preeminent figures in crypto.

Well, Cameron speaks out a lot more. But it felt mean to not mention Tyler. Often one twin will get a lot more nutrients in utero, and that’s almost certainly the case here.

But regardless of whoever occupied most of the womb, the Winklevoss twins, or as we affectionately call them here at Coffee & Crypto, the Winklevi, recovered from humiliation in the Facebook trials and went on to found crypto exchange, Gemini.

Though they’ve recently become embroiled in the Winklewars over the FTX-related failure of the Gemini earn program, each twin still holds an estimated $1.4 billion in crypto.

If they were superheroes, they’d have to be the Wonder Twins. They may not have any blockbuster movies, but you’ve certainly heard the phrase, “Wonder Twin Power: Activate!”

Our reasoning being that they’re both twins. And like the fictional Wonder Twins, the Winklevi are almost certainly shape-shifters.

Brian Armstrong

The CEO of Coinbase and sort of the crypto bro ideal, in that like the Winklevi, he looks like he can do a pull up.

But Brian Armstrong didn’t get his start in the gym, it all started at IBM, where Armstrong was a developer and consultant. He then moved to, at the time, fledgling startup AirBnB, where he was a software engineer.

But Brian Armstrong’s most crucial networking didn’t take place in the breakrooms of either of these companies, but rather in a chatroom on Reddit, where he met Coinbase co-founder, Fred Ersham.

Rather than a superhero, Brian Armstrong is really the most like Adam Sandler, because he purportedly went on 50 virtual Reddit “first dates” before he found the perfect partner in Ersham.

But if we had to pick a superhero, we’d say that Brian Armstrong would be Aquaman. Not only because his bald head makes him incredibly aquadynamic, but because he’s constantly being overshadowed by cooler, more controversial characters in crypto.

That wraps up our crypto bro roundup and effectively sets up the first phase of the Crypto Cinematic Universe.

But don’t leave your seat, wait for the post-credits scene in which Sam Bankman-Fried will menacingly clench his fist in a jail cell.

Meme of the Day

We're very confident about this one.

Crypto 101

DYOR: This is an acronym you’ll often see in the crypto space and it stands for “Do Your Own Research.”

Even the least friendly guy in the comments section wants you to do your own research and make an informed decision when it comes to crypto trading.

But that’s why you subscribe to Coffee & Crypto, cause we’ll take care of all (some of) that research for you.

The Last Sip

In keeping with this superhero-themed newsletter, we’re going to think up some new currencies and companies, and you can guess which caped crusader is using them.

• BatCoin

• Krypton-Currency

• Green Arrow Capital

Stay Caffeinated,

Coffee & Crypto Team

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DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.