In this issue:

• This Week in Neo Tokyo: We Bullpost $BYTES Until The Number Goes Up (by PhoenixxDown)

• It’s So Over (For Solana) (by Flower83)

News has been light in The Citadel lately—which, honestly, is a blessing when you look at the chaos outside. Hacks, liquidations, crashouts, reputations destroyed, death threats… yeah, we don’t deal with that here. The worst thing happening? Becker calling bottom over and over, only for us to go lower and lower. That’s MY gimmick.

Neo Tokyo is your warm cocoon away from all that unsightly filth. And don’t worry—just because it’s quiet, that doesn’t mean things aren’t happening behind the scenes.

This Week’s Neo Tokyo Content

Interlinked #69 (nice) - "Are these pump and dumps even legal?!" A question we’ve all been asking lately. The SEC has been busy dropping cases against Coinbase, Uniswap, and Gemini.

Cryptoetheus and Jarred discuss the SEC’s impact and whether regulation could clean up fraud while still fostering legit projects. No Ben this week—he was busy getting married! Congrats to him and his beloved.

Market Monday - Memes died (again), so does that mean utility season is finally here, right? RIGHT?! The team debates this fanciful notion while also diving into the rumored $YE coin and the ByBit hack.

It’s been a bit of an eventful week since then—so expect Episode #112 this Monday to be a banger. Listen back here.

Castle of Blackwater AMA - Jojo Meylaerts, co-founder of Castle of Blackwater, joins the AMA team to talk about their 2D social deduction game and its upcoming Steam Fest demo (Feb 24 - Mar 3). Want to learn more? Listen back here.

NT x Unfungible Space - Later today at midday EST, the panel will discuss the Web3 builder experience. Sharing their insights will be some heavyweights, including our very own Jeff Treves. Set your reminders for it here.

Short Scoops

🎮 DECIMATED Game Night

Later today at 17:00 EST, join NT Plays for a few rounds of DECIMATED. Play to win 1 of 10 Neo Tokyo skins!

🧥 ETH Denver Drip

A rep from the finest tailors in Web3 was spotted at ETH Denver, and it sparked some hoodie inquiries. You already know where to get one (but in case you don’t, it's here). Spread the word.

💰 We Bullpost $BYTES Until the Number Goes Up

Since news is slow, let’s just bullpost $BYTES for the rest of this section. Enjoy.

More?? Ok.

And always…..

Tag us, @Neo_Tokyo_News, in your $BYTES bullposting and we’ll bookmark it ready for the next round of ammunition.

Until next next week, citizens.

Bear supercycle (real).

If someone were to ask me if I’d buy Solana here, my answer would be a hard no.

I mean, to be fair, would you? Just look at its monthly chart.

There are three main reasons why it's (actually) totally over for $SOL:

1. It already pumped massively this cycle.

Which means many people are up on it; way more than on other coins. It is actually one of the best performers this cycle (a 37x or so from its bottom of $8, to its high of $298), and certainly the best performing coin in the top 10 by current market cap.

Objectively, there is very little upside from here. Sure it could go back to its ATH again for a cool 2x, maybe 3x. But 5x? No, I don't think so. If presidents launching coins on the chain barely moved it up for a few dozen bucks (and briefly, too), what else could happen that would push it past $500?

Everyone that was screaming $1000 per $SL turned out to be an evil scammer anyway, so, maybe let's not listen to them. Idk. Moving on.

2. The “Sol Casino” is now closed.

This is perhaps the biggest reason imo.

While there are apparently some consumer apps on Solana, and a few non-memecoin related NFT collections building there (shoutout to Market Elites), it is no secret that the majority of Solana’s infrastructure was built either directly or indirectly to support gambling on memecoins and not “serious” use cases or “utility.”

Now that once again memecoins are no longer interesting, Solana has little to nothing else really going for it. And by the looks of it, the cracks are starting to show.

After Trump, Melania, and a bit later when Argentina rugged us, and insiders pocketed their millions, people finally said enough is enough. 

Apparently, nobody likes to play a losing game for the long term and it took us a while to correctly estimate the odds. Spoiler alert: they turned out to not be in our favor. People are disillusioned and it turns out our prophets were also quite wrong.

Now, people are broke, PumpFun extracted $500 million from the space without giving anything back, Photon likewise took an additional $230 million, and some other SOL-native apps nabbed a combined $500 million+.

Combine that with the money drained from celebrity rugs, and you can see why “warriors” are leaving the trenches, bruised and battered. It is becoming clear why there are almost no new coins that bond these days.

3. Solana’s Price Action

You just know it when you see it. On the way up, everytime BTC dipped a bit, SOL didn't budge much; it was a strong coin. Now it is one of those that gets hit the hardest.

Additionally, there are massive unlocks scheduled for March. It is safe to assume we can expect a lot of sell pressure in the following weeks.

I honestly would not be surprised if Sol does another bear market fractal all the way back down. This time, obviously, for different reasons than FTX collapse.

See you at the lows next week 🫡 

You favourite bear,

Flower83

Note: I am just a bear, not a financial advisor! All of this is for educational purposes only and also does not necessarily reflect the views of Neo Tokyo. DYOR & NFA.)

All content from Neo Tokyo News is for entertainment purposes only, is not financial advice, and does not reflect the opinions of Neo Tokyo.

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