US core inflation just surprised to the downside 📊

Markets expected a +0.10% monthly increase. Instead, inflation fell by −0.40%. That’s one of the sharpest monthly drops since 2023 and puts core CPI at its lowest level since March 2021, even closer to the Fed’s 2% target.

🇺🇸 Right after that, White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said now is the right time to cut rates. Polymarket traders currently give him a 53% chance of becoming the next Fed Chair.

This guy is signaling his alignment with Trump. Anyone aiming for the job knows what Trump wants: lower rates and, eventually, a return to QE-style liquidity, similar to 2021.

💸 That matters because cheaper borrowing directly lifts equities through higher multiples and cheaper capital, and historically crypto benefits even more, since excess liquidity and leverage is like a rising tide that lifts all boats.

@Coin_Post

Markets are pricing a 99% chance that the Bank of Japan hikes rates by 0.25% tomorrow. The last time this happened, on Jan 24, Bitcoin topped near $109k and then dropped 31% 🔽

Japan has been a key source of global liquidity for years. Near-zero rates fueled the yen carry trade, where cheap yen is borrowed and pushed into risk assets worldwide.

🏦 When the BoJ hikes, that trade unwinds. Yen strengthens, leverage gets pulled, and risk assets like crypto face forced selling.

I think the price action over the last few weeks means the market has already priced in this decision.

📉 However, the correction may continue, and we could see a decline to $70k, that's another 25% drop from current levels.

@Coin_Post

Meta didn’t “fail” to stop scams. It decided not to 👥

Meta, the company behind Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, knowingly makes a huge chunk of its money from scam ads. Internal documents leaked to Reuters show around 10% of Meta’s total revenue comes from ads promoting scams and banned goods. That’s roughly $16B per year.

💰 Meta’s own estimates say it’s involved in about one-third of all successful scams in the US, which implies $50B+ in losses for American consumers every year.

When internal anti-fraud teams managed to cut scam ads significantly, leadership paused the effort after seeing the revenue hit. The teams were later dismantled and scam ads quickly returned to prior levels.

⚖️ Was punishment a concern? Not really. Meta expected up to $1B in fines, while earning $3.5B every six months from high-risk ads. Fines are treated as a cost of doing business.

Meta charged higher rates for suspected fraudulent ads, effectively a 'scam tax'. Its algorithms naturally identify users vulnerable to scams and feed them more of the same ⚠️

@Coin_Post

Is It Safe to Connect Your Wallet to a Random Website? 🦊

Connecting a wallet by itself is safe. A basic connection lets a site see your public address, balances, and history. It doesn’t give control over your funds, but it does enable tracking and future signature prompts ❗️

The real risk begins when you sign or approve something. Token approvals are one of the most common ways people lose funds in crypto. An approval gives a contract permission to spend a specific token from your wallet. If that approval is unlimited and the contract is malicious or later compromised, that token can be drained without another prompt.

✍️ Signing transactions is more direct. You are explicitly authorizing an on-chain action, and fake or cloned websites often rely on users clicking through these prompts without checking details.

Message signing is also misunderstood. While it doesn’t move funds directly, a signed message can be used to log you into a service, create an active session, or approve actions that happen off-chain, such as initiating trades, listing NFTs, or issuing token permits later. Once signed, that permission can be reused without asking you again.

⏺To reduce risk, don’t discover apps through Google search results. Use X to find the project’s official profile and navigate to the website from its bio

⏺If you’ve already approved token spending on a site you don’t trust anymore, use revoke.cash to review and revoke active approvals

📌 Save for later and share with a friend

#FAQ

Save money on taxes using crypto tax loss harvesting 🪙

In the U.S., crypto is considered property for tax purposes. That classification opens up a legal way to reduce your tax bill when prices drop. The wash sale rule, which applies to stocks and mutual funds, does not apply to crypto. You can sell a coin at a loss, buy it right back, and still claim the full loss when you file your taxes.

🤔 Say you bought 1 Bitcoin at $120,000 in August. Today it's worth $88,000. You sell it and immediately repurchase the same amount. That $32,000 difference becomes a realized capital loss. Even though your holdings haven't changed, the IRS sees the sale as a taxable event and allows the deduction.

You can use that loss to offset capital gains from other investments like stocks or other crypto. If you don’t have gains this year, up to $3,000 can be applied against ordinary income such as your salary. Any remaining losses roll forward to future years and can be used the same way 💸

This strategy works best if you keep clear records, including exact dates and amounts. If you're using a centralized exchange, download your transaction history and confirm that cost basis and proceeds are being tracked accurately. Crypto loss harvesting is legal, straightforward, and especially valuable during a market downturn.

Also note, that repurchasing resets your basis (and usually your holding period) in the new lot. That can change whether a later gain is short-term vs long-term. So this is a tradeoff we make when doing this tax loss harvesting 🤑

Outside the U.S., similar crypto loss–harvesting strategies fully or partially work in countries like the UK, Germany, Italy, and France (with restrictions)

@Coin_Post

Variational: The Next Perp DEX to Watch 🕯

🔗 Variational is a perp DEX built on Arbitrum. They officially launched their points campaign through Omni on December 17. What matters now is that this is an active campaign, not a one-off. Points will keep dropping weekly until the end of Q3 2026.

To earn more points you need stay active and maintaining a tier to boost your multiplier. Tiers are updated weekly based on recent activity, so it’s about consistent volume and OI 💸

If you traded before launch, you got a 10% bonus. You also earn 1 point for every 10 earned by your referrals. For me, this one doesn’t feel like a copy-paste perp DEX project like Aster, they’re clearly trying to reward real users.

🪂 Don’t expect this to be life-changing airdrop like Hyperliquid or even Lighter (which I mentioned back in summer — points are now up 22x in price and TGE is coming soon). Variational is later in the rotation and perp farms are getting crowded. But it’s still early here, and if this hits, you need to be active from the start.

You’ll need an invite code to use the app, so check their Discord if you're trying to get in 🎮

@Coin_Post

Maker vs Taker Fees and Why They Matter More Than You Think ❓

Fees are a bigger part of trading than most people realize. If you only trade spot and hold for months, losing 0.01% on entry and exit may not feel important. But if you trade futures, scale in and out, or open and close positions often, fees compound fast.

🕯 Take Bybit as a simple example. On perpetual futures, a typical account pays around 0.036% as a maker and 0.1% as a taker. That’s a 2.7x difference. Open and close a position as a taker and you already paid about 0.2% round trip. Do this frequently and fees can eat a large share profits.

The difference comes down to liquidity. A maker order adds liquidity to the order book. This happens when you place a limit order that does not fill immediately. Because this helps the exchange, maker fees are lower. A taker order removes liquidity. Market orders are always taker orders, and limit orders that fill instantly are also treated as taker orders.

😱 Many traders accidentally pay taker fees even when using limit orders. To avoid this, use post-only orders. A post-only order guarantees your limit order will only be placed if it adds liquidity. If it would execute immediately as a taker, the exchange cancels it automatically.

Where you trade matters too. Fee structures differ a lot between exchanges. Some perpetual DEXs offer 0% maker and taker fees, which changes the math completely. I personally saved around $20,000 in fees just this year by trading on Lighter compared to doing the same trades on Binance or Bybit 💸

#FAQ

BTC has been compressing inside a clean descending wedge for weeks. Lower highs getting weaker, higher lows getting tighter. Classic pressure build 🔍

We’re now flirting with the upper trendline. This week we got a clean break and now need to hold above ~90k to open the door for a squeeze back toward 100kb. That’s where a lot of short positioning gets uncomfortable.

If it fails here, downside is still defined. ~84–85k is the obvious support. Lose that and this turns into another leg of the correction, perhaps to my funny target of 69k 📉

@Coin_Post

Whatever you do in crypto, don’t buy new altcoins right after TGE 😱

Hundreds launched in 2025. Most of them dumped 70%+ within months 🔽

One of the few strategies that actually worked was the opposite: shorting a diversified basket of freshly launched, high-FDV tokens from protocols nobody uses.

🤔 Price discovery after TGE is almost always down, not up. Let the hype bleed out first if you want to buy something.

@Coin_Post

Warren Buffett will step down as Berkshire Hathaway’s CEO this week after more than 60 years. The portfolio he leaves behind is already structured for that transition 👋

Warren Buffett has always treated investing as buying pieces of real businesses and then getting out of the way. Nearly 64% of Berkshire’s equity portfolio is concentrated in just five companies. These positions were built gradually and allowed to grow through price appreciation and buybacks, not frequent reallocations or short-term trades 👇

💸 Apple leads because it’s a consumer monopoly disguised as a tech company. The ecosystem locks users in, services add recurring revenue, and buybacks quietly increase ownership over time.

💸 American Express remains core because it operates as both issuer and network, earns on transaction volume, and serves a higher-income customer base.

💸 Bank of America provides exposure to the US banking system through deposit scale and lending spread rather than financial engineering.

💸 Coca-Cola stays due to global distribution, brand power, and repeat consumption that produces steady cash flow.

💸 Chevron adds exposure to energy production and real assets, with capital returned through dividends and buybacks instead of growth promises.

Buffett's famous line, “Our favorite holding period is forever” refers to the type of businesses that Berkshire wants to own, and not a general instruction to hold on to every stock you ever buy.

This is why Berkshire’s portfolio changes so slowly, it's because it is built around businesses expected to remain economically relevant and cash-generative over long periods, and very few businesses can meet these criteria 🤔

@Coin_Post

One of Wall Street’s Biggest Credit Players Is De-Risking 😨

Apollo Global, which manages nearly $1 trillion in assets, has been telling investors it is cutting risk, reducing leverage, and stockpiling cash. CEO said his “number one job” right now is to have the strongest balance sheet possible so the firm can perform well “when something bad happens.”

🔍 This is happening while markets are still strong, with the S&P 500 trading near all-time highs above 6,900. Apollo isn’t calling a crash publicly, but it is clearly positioning for turbulence in credit and equity markets.

When a firm of this size starts pulling back instead of chasing returns, it matters. Especially if you’re holding high-risk assets, which are typically the first to be sold off in a recession or equity bear market, like... crypto 🤣

@Coin_Post

The Big Bet on Human Failure Is Accelerating 📈

Gold moved past $4,500 an ounce. Silver followed, printing new ATHs near $71. At the same time, crypto and other speculative assets are struggling to gain traction, with Bitcoin still below $90k.

🔍 On the surface, the drivers are familiar. Expectations of lower US interest rates, a softer dollar, central banks accumulating gold, and persistent geopolitical stress all push precious metals higher. But those factors alone don’t explain why capital is choosing gold and silver while avoiding assets that are supposed to benefit from liquidity and easing financial conditions.

What seems to be happening is less about growth and more about protection. Gold and silver don’t depend on earnings, innovation, or social coordination. They don’t need functioning institutions or optimistic assumptions. They just sit there. In periods when confidence in systems weakens, that simplicity becomes attractive.

📆 More than a decade ago, Joe Weisenthal described gold as a bet on human failure. The idea was straightforward: buying productive assets like stocks is a wager that humans will keep cooperating, building companies, enforcing rules, and improving technology. Buying gold is a hedge against those assumptions breaking down.

Bitcoin may share some “store of value” narratives, but in practice it still trades like a volatile, risk-on asset. Gold doesn’t. And the last few years have trained people to expect dysfunction, not things getting back to normal.

We will get more debt, weaker currencies, permanent crises, more political instability, and thinner trust. The rush into precious metals reflects governments and individuals bracing for more of the same, and that's worrisome 😐

@Coin_Post

I’d like to wish a Merry Christmas to all Coin Post followers. Thank you for reading and supporting with reactions, comments, and reposts ❤️

If your portfolio doesn’t look great today, remember this: above screenshot is how crypto looked like 7 years ago at Christmas. Red everywhere. Pain. Doubt. People calling it dead.

🤞 If you do the right thing, things tend to get better. Survive long enough to see you win.

What Is the S&P 500 vs GDP Ratio? 📊

The S&P 500 to GDP ratio compares the total value of U.S. stock market to the size of the U.S. economy. It answers a simple question: how much investors are paying for a dollar of economic output. When this ratio rises, stocks are becoming more expensive relative to what the economy produces.

🔍 Right now, this ratio is at a new all-time high. That matters because similar extremes were only seen near major cycle peaks like 1999 and 2007. This does not mean a crash is imminent. Markets can stay expensive for a long time, especially during strong earnings cycles and a bubble narrative (like AI boom).

What it does affect is future returns. Historically, buying equities when this ratio is elevated has led to lower average returns over the next 10–12 years. The market can keep going up, but the margin for error shrinks.

📈 There are reasons the ratio is higher today than decades ago. Large U.S. companies earn a big share of revenue overseas, profit margins are structurally higher, interest rates were low for years, and GDP does not fully capture modern, asset-light businesses. These factors explain part of the move, but they do not eliminate valuation risk.

The practical takeaway for today: at these levels, equities are strongly overvalued, and are priced for near-perfect conditions. Upside is still possible, but long-term returns are likely pretty low 👈

#FAQ

Trust Wallet extension security incident 🚨

The Trust Wallet team has confirmed a security incident affecting Browser Extension version 2.68 only. So far, $6M+ has been stolen from hundreds of users.

What happened, in simple terms: a compromised update caused wallet data to be leaked when users imported their seed phrase into the extension. Once the seed was entered, attackers were able to drain funds almost immediately.

If you are using the extension:

🟥Disable it immediately

🟥Upgrade to version 2.69 using the official Chrome Web Store link

🟥Mobile-only users and all other extension versions are NOT affected.

The team says they are actively working on the issue and will share updates. Until you’ve upgraded, do not import your seed phrase ❗️

@Coin_Post

A woman in Arkansas turned a $2 Powerball ticket into a $1.8B jackpot, the second-largest win in history, hit on Christmas Eve 😮

She chose the lump sum instead of the 30-year annuity. That meant about $735M before taxes.

🤔 After federal taxes and fees she only took home $492.6M. A massive cut, but still life-changing money.

For perspective, the odds of winning are 1 in 292.2 million. The chance was so low that if every adult person in the U.S. bought a ticket, you’d still need 10% of them to do it again to expect just one winner 😐

@Coin_Post

What I’d do in crypto if I only had $1,000 🤑

First, the more money you have, the easier it is to generate livable income. Making $1k–$10k a month in crypto is realistic but you need big capital. With $1k, it's usually pretty hard to earn anything.

🤔 If I truly had only $1k, the rational move would be to get a job, save, and come back with more capital so the time spent actually pays off.

But if I was forced to climb in crypto with $1k here’s what I wouldn’t do: trade directionally with leverage, try to predict markets, or spot-buy BTC or ETH (even a 100% move doesn’t change much at that size.)

What I’d look for instead is asymmetry and subsidized activity. Right now, that’s still the perp DEX points-farming meta. I’d create accounts on Lighter and Variational. Lighter just finished Season 2 and I think they started Season 3. Variational is still early and heavily incentivizing volume and OI (wrote about it here).

👉 I’d split the capital: $500 on each DEX. Both have 0% trading fees, so you can generate volume cheaply and just lose a bit on spreads. With small size, funding arbitrage is optional but still try looking for it.

The setup would be delta-neutral. For example, long 2 ETH on Lighter and short 2 ETH on Variational. Use around 10x leverage, set multiple stop losses and take profits on both sides at the same prices, then step away. Try to generate good volume ($1m+ a week), hold positions opened for some time and rebalance by moving funds from the winner to the loser account.

With $1k, this is one of the few paths where risk is controlled, outcomes are relatively predictable, and the upside can be asymmetric when points convert into tokens well later 💸