The day after Valentines. You’re either recovering from too much red wine or plotting a breakup.

It’s okay, now that Valentine’s Day has come and gone nobody is going to think you’re a monster for doing a little bit of romantic rearranging.

But if you haven’t already booked a room at the heartbreak hotel, come check in to Coffee & Crypto. We’ve got you a honeymoon suite and we’ve covered the bed in crypto news.

Want some crypto news you can absorb with your eyes and ears? Check out the newest episode of our podcast here:

Espresso Shots

☕️ Stablecoins Face Scrutiny 🚔 🪙

Earlier this week the walls came tumbling down around the third largest stablecoin in the world: BUSD or Binance USD.

Despite the Binance branding, BUSD is actually not managed or owned by Binance at all. BUSD is issued by Paxos, a New York-regulated trust company.

Paxos is expecting to be sued by the SEC and is under investigation by the New York State Department of Finance for offering an unregistered security.

This charge alleges that BUSD, billed as a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar and backed by reserves, was not actually properly backed and was therefore a security.

While Paxos claims innocence, money is flooding from BUSD, and New York State has ordered them to stop minting new tokens.

The stablecoin wars are now in full swing and it's becoming increasingly clear to us that we can only end this section by saying: more like unstable coins!

☕️ England's Illegal Crypto ATMs 🏧 👮‍♂️

UK financial regulators have been cracking down on unregistered, illegal crypto ATMs.

Several of the machines have popped up around the city of Leeds, sending British officials scrambling to shut them down.

Great Britain is already wary of crypto, but they’re really not into unregulated crypto tech.

“Crypto products themselves are currently unregulated and high-risk, and you should be prepared to lose all your money if you invest in them.” said Mark Steward, executive director of UK’s Financial Conduct Authority.

Unfortunately, the unregulated crypto ATMs are England’s best option until those red phone booths start accepting Bitcoin.

☕️ Andrew Tate's Bitcoin Seized 🚨 💰

Fallen crypto bro, Andrew Tate, has often bragged about his Bitcoin gains, but it seems that his stash has already been seized by Romanian authorities.

Romanian law enforcement confiscated digital assets from both Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan. Andrew Tate only had 5 Bitcoin. Tristan Tate had 16.

The combined Tate crypto fortune would only be worth about $467,000. Not quite at the brag worthy level that Andrew Tate would have had us believe.

But lying on Twitter about your net worth is certainly not the worst thing that Andrew Tate has done. No, that would still be the ties to human trafficking.

But if there’s one takeaway from the fall of Andrew Tate, it’s to avoid starting online fights with spooky Swedish children.

Spilling the Beans

Trump's NFTs are Back in the News 📺

The Trump NFTs have a dysfunctional legacy befitting only the Don himself.

When these things first rolled out, they rightfully garnered a lot of criticism from those of us… who actually use and understand crypto and NFTs.

The Trump Digital Trading Cards seemed like a sleazy and ill-conceived cash grab.

And that’s not just because of the low-quality of the images on the trading cards, but more on that later. It’s because just months before their release, Donald Trump went on record to criticize crypto.

“I know it so well. I want a currency called the dollar. I don’t want to have all these others, and that could be an explosion someday, the likes of which we’ve never seen. It’ll make the big tech explosion look like baby stuff. I think it’s a very dangerous thing.”

Say what you will about Donald Trump, there has never been a persona in American politics who is this quotable. And nobody sounds more like themselves in these quotes.

Did you read that in his voice? We certainly did.

Anyway, just months after calling crypto, “a very dangerous thing,” Trump unveiled the Trump Digital Trading Card collection.

They were 45,000 NFTs, each with a mint price of $99.

The NFTs all depicted photoshopped images of the former president in various jobs, such as a cowboy, astronaut, or even a superhero with lasers coming out of his eyes.

It was quickly revealed that these images were crude photoshops, many of the outfits and backgrounds lifted directly from Amazon stock photos or California costume shops.

But what about the utility, you ask? Don’t premier NFTs come with some benefits?

Well, that was exactly how they were pitched. Different Trump Digital Trading cards came with access to a one-on-one zoom, a free pass to one of Trump’s golf courses, or a cocktail hour at Mar-a-Lago.

Turns out that the one-on-one zoom was actually a group zoom with thousands of participants, the golf pass was just a coupon, nearly impossible to redeem, and the cocktail hour at Mar-a-Lago was just an empty promise.

Beyond the lack of real-world functionality, the NFTs were also sent to the wrong wallets. The only way to redeem them was through sifting through lines of code for an actual, functional address.

But despite the myriad flaws, the Trump Digital Trading Card Collection sold out within 24 hours.

You can chalk some of those sales up to Trump’s fan base, eager to support him or get closer to Trump in anyway they can.

But a significant portion of the sales went to users who were simply “doing it for the lulz” or morbidly curious about how these NFTs would trade.

And they were right to fuck around, because the Trump NFT collection yielded roughly $10 million in secondary market trading.

And then the hype, of course, naturally died down.

But shocking all of us, the Trump Digital Trading cards seem to be firing back up.

Last Sunday, the Trump NFTs, which are minted on Polygon, hit an all-time high floor trading price of $1,000.

They’ve since dropped down to the high $900s, but this is an absolute return from the dead from a gag that we thought was long since over.

So, what’s pumping up these NFTs?

It would seem that the return of Trump NFTs are directly tied… to the return of Trump.

Beginning in January, Trump seems to be slowly garnering power like a banished dark lord, due of course to his third run for the presidency.

His Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter accounts have all been restored, though Trump has very publicly stated he no longer wants anything to do with Twitter. Which is fair.

With Trump back on the rise and another presidential bid on underway, these Trump NFT holders are betting that these digital monstrosities are only going to get more valuable.

They surged in value after an SNL parody, and we can only imagine the results if Trump says “NFT” at any point on the campaign trail.

But if Trump is definitively anything, he’s definitively unpredictable. He may be just as likely to condemn his own NFTs as he is to endorse them.

“It’s a 50 IQ play,” says DonAlt, a prominent crypto Twitter and Youtube personality. “It’s Trump… He’s gonna be loud again in 2024.”

Are Trump NFTs a good investment? Maybe. Are they funny? Definitely.

But it’s still only our second favorite 50 IQ play, first place still belongs to swallowing mouthfuls of colorful buttons.

Meme of the Day

This country has all different color boxes! Which ones have Bitcoin??

Crypto 101

Floor Price: The lowest price which you can purchase an NFT for. Floor prices read the market at large and tell you how cheaply you can purchase an NFT for.

Floor prices tend to be a good indicator for where bidding should start but the actual price of a given NFT also depends on the rarity, utility, and demand for that unique token.

Floor prices tend to vary wildly for NFT collections, some collections have floor prices in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, while others have floor prices of less than $5.

The Last Sip

Three more 50 IQ plays to rival investing in Trump NFTs:

• Turning your pajamas inside out for a snow day.

• Chewing all the flavor out of a popsicle stick.

• Condescending atheism.

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.