The Castle Chronicle: New AI Meta, NYSE going 24/7, and MegaETH soon!
PLUS: The first rug of 2026?
Welcome to Edition 155 of The Castle Chronicle!
Gm all!
Welcome to the newest edition of the Chronicle!
You’ll get a curated list of the most important macro news and DeFi news, along with insightful posts from guests and more! Actionable intel done the Castle way 🤝
Without further ado, let’s get into it, shall we?
In The Markets
For just a few days, it had started to feel like the markets of old.
Pure and utter mania.
This, of course, refers to the mini AI craze that blew up on Solana, featuring tokens like GAS and RALPH. This new meta has brought on something akin to Open Source Funding.
Essentially, it’s meant to bridge a gap between developers and the communities that use their tools. These tokens are created on the Bags App with most of the fees funnelled to certain developers, like Steve Yegge (former Google/Amazon engineer), for his Gas Town creation (multi-agent orchestration framework), and Geoff Huntley’s RALPH loop, a coding technique that forces agents to keep retrying tasks until they succeed.
This sent CT into a frenzy and even caused Bags App to flip Hyperliquid in 24hr revenue.
Unfortunately for trenchers, the GAS developer dismissed CT and the token a few days in, causing an 89% correction Sunday night. Then, you couple that with the hiccup in BTC price action, you get a widespread correction on the whole meta, sending RALPH and others down as well.
We also saw BTC finally break out of its consolidation, and for a moment there, it looked like it wanted to see what the underside of 100k looks like! But alas, it was not meant to be.
Over the weekend, we had another Trump Tariff Tantrum over the Greenland issue, causing markets to once again get skittish at the thought. Odds are this will turn around (as it has before), but who knows how long it will take.
But we’ll have to see if this keeps up, as talks around Trump’s purported controversial acquisition of Greenland and possible military intervention in Iran keep heating up.
Plus, aliens???
Crazy times, let’s dive into the newsletter!
Trench Revival (then death…)
Circling back to the trenches, you can see how CT was completely enamoured with these new AI coins. The GAS token posted a 265,205% 7D change, while RALPH posted a more modest 538%.
These are similar numbers we saw before the Trump Coin launched last year, just before a market-wide drop. For the time in a little while, it felt like CT was lively again, and people were having fun making money again.
It didn’t last.
Sadly, the holders of GAS and RALPH got pummeled Sunday night, as you can see below.
The trenches have always been a decent barometer of risk appetite in crypto, and if this latest stint is indicative of anything, appetite is definitely there. However, the creeping, dissonant voice in my head says it’s maybe more a sign of desperation than anything.
One of the largest takeaways from this short-lived hype is that crypto participants are still trying to figure out tokens and how they should be structured. GAS and RALPH were a new attempt at funding builders and a possible leader in the AI meta 2.0, but without any sort of structure, these tokens didn’t have much to move on.
Crypto Round-Up
Boomers Beware: Crypto is Coming For Your Stocks
The New York Stock Exchange just announced its new tokenisation platform, enabling 24/7 stock trading! That’s a pretty huge development, as stock trading has historically always been Mon-Fri with holidays off.
We can finally welcome the Boomers to the hell of constantly checking the charts with no weekends off!
This platform will use stablecoin-based funding, and all tokens will be issued natively as digital securities.
Technically, the 9-5 traditional NYSE will still operate in parallel with this new 24/7 platform, giving traders the best of both worlds. But I would imagine that once they realise equities can be traded 24/7, few people will look back.
A Treasure Trove of Crypto Drama
Crypto is always just a few seconds away from drama, it seems, and this week was no exception. Trove Markets were one of the hotter raises on CT (over $11m), with their novel idea of trading perpetuals on collectables.
While their token and platform were initially set to launch on Hyperliquid, Trove pulled an abrupt 180-degree turn, announcing they would instead halt development on Hyperliquid and commit to a full Solana pivot, rebuilding their DEX from the ground up. The team stated that an LP (holding the necessary $500K of HYPE to launch on Hyperliquid) pulled out and decided to unwind the position due to the recent sentiment on Trove.
The token just launched and immediately plummeted 97% to under 1M.
This serves as a reminder that things in crypto can change at the drop of a hat, and you have to be prepared for that volatility as an investor.
MegaETH is Coming
MegaETH announced a stress test on January 22nd, allowing users to access the mainnet to test latency-sensitive apps.
They aim to push 11B transactions in 7 days, eclipsing the total transactions from Base and Polygon PoS since their launches, which is a huge leap forward for L2s, going towards a truly real-time blockchain.
Once this stress test is complete, the public mainnet will begin.
Ethereum was the butt of many jokes in 2025, but MegaETH aims to make ETH great again while knocking away some of the stigma surrounding L2s and their tokens.
Schizo’s Solitary Confinement
It’s another day in my padded cell, and I gotta say, I’m a bit less comfy than I was last week.
Even though I’m very comfortable in my theses (see last week’s edition for the full rundown), I can’t help but think something is still off with the markets as a whole.
I don’t necessarily think it’s a fault with crypto; I think it’s a fault with the participants. I genuinely think there has been a terrible vibe shift amongst everyone, and it’s kinda sad to see.
Crypto used to be one of the most exciting places to be, and everyone was stoked to be here and experiment with new projects, new DeFi, new concepts, everything.
Somewhere along the way, that seemed to die.
Too many people are desperate for money, which is leading them to make bad investment decisions and seek short-term gains instead of thinking about the long term. This is also a product of the environment, too; the landscape of crypto is changing so rapidly that it’s hard to adjust to.
We have BTC underperforming stocks recently, and to be honest, it’s currently failing the currency debasement test, something Gold is exceeding. We’re also having a reckoning of sorts with our basket of tokens, demanding more from them than we ever have before.
This has given many of these assets a negative connotation, and they’re crumbling under the pressure. There are very few diamonds in the rough, and I still think there is a lot of churn left to happen.
This isn’t a doom post, though. I really think this is the best thing that can happen to us. We need this stress test to determine the best future for our tokens.
And we can do this while Tradfi figures out how they want to get everything onchain, and by the time we’ve polished out all the kinks with these new rails and on-ramps, along with creating apps that an everyday person can use consistently, then we will be in a much better position to handle it all.
There are growing pains in every market, and Satoshi knows we’re not immune to them.
So don’t get discouraged, anon, we’re still on the right path.
We still have the Mandate of Heaven after all.
Schizo out!
In The Know: News and Headlines
Trump speaks on Greenland, explaining why he believes it is of massive importance for the United States national security. This is weighing heavily on markets and investors, as the threat of additional tariffs has been widely discussed over the weekend.
unusual_whales@unusual_whalesTrump: "We need Greenland for national security very badly. If we don't have it we have a big hole in national security. Especially when it comes to what we're doing in terms of the golden dome and all of the other things. We have a lot of investments in military."5:01 PM · Jan 19, 2026 · 487K Views312 Replies · 273 Reposts · 3.26K LikesGold has continued its meteoric rise, breaking another ATH. And once again, BTC has had the floor ripped out from under it in the opposite direction. This is likely giving you clues as to how the world is thinking about assets right now.
DEGEN NEWS@DegenerateNewsBREAKING: GOLD HITS NEW ATH
11:09 PM · Jan 18, 2026 · 43.6K Views96 Replies · 68 Reposts · 621 LikesThe CLARITY Act lost some clarity this week as Coinbase pulled its support for the current iteration of the bill. This is due to a division between banks and Coinbase: one side wants to continue passive yield on stablecoins, while the other believes it undermines their ability to provide loans to homeowners and businesses. This seems like a great endorsement of DeFi still, as it provides both of these options, but Coinbase doesn’t want to give up a profitable part of their business (the yield they keep before passing the rest to users), and banks don’t want to “lose” the loan side of their business.
What To Watch This Week
Here are the biggest things to be aware of this week:
Continued turbulence in the markets due to a number of factors, including Iranian war fears, new EU tariffs, potential military acquisition of Greenland, and the uncertainty surrounding the Supreme Court’s decision on Trump’s tariffs.
Pendle just announced their new tokenomics, moving from vePENDLE to sPendle. This is a pretty big change, as it removes the hefty locking period (up to 4 years) that users didn’t like and gives them a more flexible option.
Pendle@pendle_fihttps://t.co/YjEk6OUnVF2:00 AM · Jan 20, 2026 · 225K Views115 Replies · 104 Reposts · 609 LikesCap Money (a stablecoin protocol on MegaETH) has announced an ICO, along with the first-ever stabledrop! This could be a good way to get some additional exposure to MegaETH.
Cap Labs Limited@caplabslimitedhttps://t.co/kXCmFbLS623:48 PM · Jan 19, 2026 · 93.7K Views71 Replies · 33 Reposts · 291 LikesYield Basis announced its new hybrid vault, allowing for a solution to one of its largest problems: scaling. The demand for its IL-free pools is outpacing what the protocol can currently accept, as it must limit its impact on the crvUSD peg. This new vault allows users to enter YB pools by first depositing crvUSD into it, creating a Personal Cap. The idea being that the Hybrid Vaults can expand and scale Yield Basis much faster without compromising crvUSD integrity.
yieldbasis@yieldbasishttps://t.co/YpKWaRr8903:44 PM · Jan 17, 2026 · 72.1K Views18 Replies · 39 Reposts · 206 Likes
That’s it for another edition of the Chronicle! Every week brings new opportunities, so don’t fret!
We’re all gonna make it eventually!
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In our newsletter, we may discuss projects or tokens in which we hold positions. While we aim to provide informative content, our views are not financial advice. Please conduct your research and consult professionals before making investment decisions. Crypto markets are volatile, and past performance doesn't guarantee future results. Invest responsibly, and be aware of the risks. Your capital is at risk, and we do not accept liability for any losses.