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FOMO HOUR: Base Leaves OP, OpenAI Solves Smart Contracts, Hype to DC
Recorded: Feb. 19, 2026 Duration: 0:34:19Space Recording
Short Summary
In today's crypto roundup, markets are facing a decline as Bitcoin approaches new lows, while geopolitical tensions ease with reduced odds of an Iran strike. Major partnerships and funding rounds highlight ongoing innovation, including OpenAI's collaboration with Paradigm to enhance smart contract security and Novig's significant fundraising success.
Full Transcription
Music Thank you. Oh It's
Yeah Yeah, I'm
It's Let's go. GM everyone and welcome to another episode of FOMO hour.
Today is Thursday, February 19th, 2026.
Folks, crypto edging lower again here this morning.
Bitcoin nearing a potential new lower low.
Is crypto about to break down again.
We're going to talk about it on today's show.
No Farouk, he is traveling back from that World Liberty Forum yesterday
that looks to have had a lot of industry leaders.
So very excited to catch up with him tomorrow.
He should be back in the studio to break all of that.
We're excited to have him back.
Mando should be joining us here shortly as well.
Folks, we have a lot to talk about.
And first off, thanks for joining us at the new special time.
We weren't able to start our typical 10 a.m. slot today.
We're live at 10.30, as always, on Kick and X.
We're going to talk about the markets.
Crypto down.
Stocks were kind of even.
Odds of an Iran strike, actually actually notably down over the last 24 hours.
Trump saying perhaps we'll find out over the next 10 days if a strike is needed.
We've got jobless claims falling to new lows.
Some open AI, anthropic bad blood coming out.
There's a new yield meeting.
It's actually live right now, so perhaps we'll hear more about that.
We've got some major news out of base, breaking free from OP.
Brian Armstrong saying quantum, eh, it's not that big of a deal.
It's solvable.
We've got open AI and paradigm leaning deep into solving smart contract risk.
That was a big one.
Polymarket sponsoring markets now, plus sub stack integration,
and then a new uh pretty big app
launch on mega east so we're going to talk about all of that plus more and then also make sure you
stay tuned to the last few minutes of the show yeet action as always we will pick a winner and
that person wants to wait long because tomorrow we should have all of our winners back for our
mega friday yeet special we're're still working amidst ourselves here,
trying to figure out just exactly how we're going to run this,
but very excited for what's going to be nine giveaways tomorrow.
We're going to smash all of our records, I think, on tomorrow's live show.
So very excited for that, plus a lot more.
With that being said, let's jump into it,
and I'll do my best Mando impression here while we wait for him to join.
But crypto prices, folks.
More red on the board.
It's not terrible, but it's not great.
We're down another 1.5%.
Bitcoin's at 66.2.
ETH down 3%, 19.20.
Solana down 3% at 80.27.
Just barely hanging on to that $80 level.
It was looking a little rough earlier this morning,
so we did go all the way to 65.5.
Wow.
So it was close to losing that higher low that we hit just a week ago on Thursday.
So I guess Thursday sell-offs, perhaps the February theme.
We did tap 65-1 or so.
So we have held that.
If we lose 65-1 here today, we will have lost that higher low.
So that's a level I'll be watching.
Other than that, there was no movers.
There were no top movers on the board today.
I ran the minutes this morning.
Usually there's at least a handful of alts that are up 5% to 10% nada today.
So it's a pretty red day across the board.
Again, ETH down more.
It had been briefly outperforming, but it's back to 19-20.
It's still holding its higher local low as well.
1900 will be the level to watch for that in Seoul.
I'm not sure folks are even too worried about that.
But it's still well above the 69 level
it hit. Gold is green. Again, gold and silver, the two green tokens on the hyperliquid board.
Not great. I mean, looking at broader macro here, so stocks kind of flat, a little bit red.
It looks like there was, Walmart had an earnings release this morning. It looked
like it was a little bit weak. And on the back of that, I believe Amazon for the first time
overtook Walmart as world's top revenue company. So that was a pretty big headline there. I think
the Walmart earnings perhaps driving stocks a little bit lower here today.
Notably, the DXY, the dollar, was over 98 this morning and has been up.
That was a four-week high.
So since it hit 96 that last week of January, it has been grinding up fairly substantially.
And then when you zoom out, I mean, it still was kind of flat since last April.
It's still at that 98 level.
So not really a significant move
up or down dollar still
in that chop zone for sure.
I think a few other macro
that jumped out.
And I'm curious if Mandel
will have thoughts on this one.
There's this AI conference.
It's like all the biggest folks in the world at this event,
they're all raising their hands together except for Sam Altman and Dario.
Dario, the head of Anthropic, Sam Altman, the head of OpenAI.
So no love loss there.
The only two on stage who refuse to hold hands.
I think some good and bad.
So I think the good takeaway is it's nice that we're going to have some competition.
And perhaps this is what's driving these two companies to launch their new model updates
seemingly on a weekly, biweekly basis right now, which is good for consumers.
The bad, I think, some of them, we probably want our AI leaders working together to perhaps to, you know, for security reasons, for safety reasons, for a lot more.
So we will certainly see where this goes, but no love lost between these two folks.
That is for sure.
You can see it zoomed in here from the Autism Capital tweet.
And then we did get a few other headlines macro this morning. For sure, you can see it zoomed in here from the Autism Capital tweet.
And then we did get a few other headlines macro this morning. So jobless claims, again, surprisingly at new lows.
But, of course, those have been getting revised quite a bit.
I also saw housing was very weak.
I'm not sure that's a surprise there.
there, but missed expectations fairly substantially.
But missed expectations fairly substantially.
So folks are not out buying new homes as of January, February, 2026, unfortunately.
And some of the crypto headlines, I said this in the intro, but there is another stable
coin yield meeting happening.
So I guess it is live or perhaps even finished.
or perhaps even finished,
Maybe we'll be getting reports out of this here soon from DC.
maybe we'll be getting reports out of this here soon,
from DC.
This is the third stablecoin yield meeting
across these groups.
So we've known that this has been
the primary sticking point for the Clarity Act.
Big banks don't want yield.
They don't want to give away their yield,
effectively, to stablecoins, to DeFi protocols.
Then you've got the crypto native folks
fighting for it, of course. Then you've got the crypto native folks fighting for it.
Of course, that's one of the primary advantages,
incentives for using stables in DeFi is the yield.
So this has been the sticking point.
Some of the leaders have said that they're making some progress.
I think Brian Armstrong said some progress perhaps is being made.
And I know we'll hear more from Faroq tomorrow about,
you know,
boots on the ground,
how that world Liberty forum went yesterday down in Mar-a-Lago.
But the one thing he did put out on X,
the TLDR is they all want the clarity act passed as soon as possible.
So it does seem like,
you know,
perhaps there is something there and perhaps that is the catalyst that is going to break us out
of these bear market vibes and price action,
certainly that we've seen over the last few months.
Rounding this out, I guess I buried perhaps what is the lead a little bit,
but yesterday we talked about Iran, Iran
strike markets had risen substantially. Uh, those have since fallen back a little bit. So
34% U S strikes Iran by end of February, 48% by mid March, 57% by end of March. I think the March
31st odds yesterday were as high as 80%.
So 57, significantly lower than 80%.
It doesn't require a math genius to figure that out.
And then March 15th, I think we peaked.
Where were we?
Now it's down to 48.
So I guess it hasn't moved that much.
Trump was talking about Iran this morning.
He says, we are at peace.
Peace is important. He said, basically are at peace. Peace is important.
He said, basically, we'll figure out peace in the Middle East over the next 10 days.
So I thought that was a notable timeline. That's the first time I've seen him give that 10-day
target. That would put a strike by February 28th in the lower range of outcomes. This is not a
market I'm personally interested in wagering on. I don't really feel like I have an edge. I don't really feel like most folks out there have much
of an edge in this one. As it all feels like it's still
someone up in the air. Part of me feels like it's still just posturing
for a deal. We know Trump loves making deals, the art
of the deals. It's just a show of force to help put the
U.S. side ahead?
We will certainly see.
But it is a movement that is so substantially large it is hard to ignore.
So we'll be watching these markets closely as all markets will be looking towards these.
It was a pretty big day of crypto headlines yesterday.
So we got to get into some of these.
So one, Hyperliquid is heading to DC.
So I feel like they've kind of stayed out of the lobbying game so far.
They did just launch their new Hyperliquid Policy Center.
And they're giving them a million hype, a million hype tokens in backing. So that's around $29 million as they look to build out or provide
advocacy for DeFi in DC. As I understand it, this is not a broader crypto lobbying effort.
It is laser focused on decentralized market infrastructure, according to the Hyperliquid team.
As for why now, they did point to the market structure bill.
Clear tax being stalled in the Senate.
Jeff Yon, founder of Hyperliquid,
made the project lack a unified voice in important policy discussions until now.
So they want to weigh in on this.
Notably, Jake Stravinsky is leading the effort for the Hyperliquid Policy Center. If folks aren't familiar with him, he was chief officer at Variant. He's got deep background in crypto, Unis is known to be a vocal defender of DeFi.
So certainly a good choice for the role.
And I think a lot of reactions to this is broadly a hyperliquid being taken more seriously
and enjoying the fight.
So this is going to be a big one to watch. But arguably bigger news out of the day.
Base made a surprise.
I think it was a surprising decision for most of us.
They are effectively going to leave the optimism stack.
So we had their engineering team post this update on their engineering blog yesterday,
team post this update on their engineering blog yesterday, a new unified stack for the base chain
in an effort to effectively accelerate innovation, scaling, and security. They are going to leave
the OP stack chain, the super chain, as it was once called. I don't think it's being called super
anymore. And now moving to just their own unified base operated stack.
I think tactically,
anyone who has been operating nodes for base will need to go through the
software details here, follow the releases, moving from the base base.
Instead of the optimism releases.
So there will be some actions to take there.
I think for end users like us, not really sure there's going to be much of an impact.
So still business as usual.
They did go into a little bit more about reasons why they are doing it.
Faster shipping, cadence, so speed, less overhead, less coordination.
And I guess a deeper collaboration with Ethereum directly are their primary reasons that they're giving here.
The real reasons, I think that's where this gets a little bit more interesting.
And we did see Andy from the roll-up saying the rumor mill saying the base token is coming later this year.
And that drove a lot of the decision-making for leaving optimism.
They're going to have their own stack to drive value to the token, which wasn't previously
possible.
And I think that that certainly makes sense as a potential driver for this, right?
And I think this broadly has base outgrown optimism. That certainly makes sense as a potential driver for this, right?
And I think this broadly has base outgrown optimism. It is by far the largest chain in that super chain group.
I was looking at the data this morning with 3.85 billion TVL,
and it has over 90% of the revenue generated across the super chain.
So that's pretty significant, 90% coming from the base app.
So they basically are the super chain at that point.
And now they are branching off.
And unfortunately for optimism or OP token holders,
taking that revenue with them.
And the market did respond and not well.
Optimism down 25% on the day since this happened.
And it's going to be hard to see the bull case for them losing 90% of the revenue with base splitting off.
So not sure this is a falling knife that many folks will want to catch here in the near future.
As for what's changing, technically, I wanted to do this a little bit, but base V1 hard fork, base V3 coming around the Glamsterdam upgrade.
That will be the next step in furthering their ties with Optimus.
Again, node operators will need to be the one migrating to the base-based releases.
As for what's not changing, they'll still remain compatible with the OP stack.
Remains a stage one roll-up under the Vitalik L2 framework, remaining open source.
And it says they'll continue collaborating with the,
the optimism team, but not great for the,
the super chain to, to leave there to lose their biggest player.
But, but now focusing on base seems like a very strong move, right?
I think there've been concerns, you know,
there was flood floating around this week. Is base just going to abandon?
Is Cormac's going to abandon base Cormac going to abandon BASE?
Is it going to abandon its app?
I mean, in fact, the opposite.
So they're just looking to take more control over it,
drive perhaps more revenue, more fees as they lean in even more.
So pretty big news.
And if you're bullish on a BASE token perhaps coming in 2026,
I think you have to be bullish.
You have to be happy about this move.
That does seem like it would be good for that token.
We also had news out of Brian Armstrong.
He had a busy day.
He was at the World Liberty Forum doing several interviews.
And a big headline here is he's downplaying quantum risk.
He's calling it a solvable issue for crypto, pointing to the new advisory council that they spun up recently.
And I do think this is a big deal. And we've talked about it on this show over the last month.
It seems like the quantum fears have started to reach TradFi, big whale investors, and to the point where there perhaps is even a cap on where Bitcoin can go until quantum is solved.
And there really weren't many leaders in the crypto space coming out and speaking on the quantum topic, saying whether or not it is under control.
And it seemed like Saylor was just kind of just putting it aside and not
really talking about it much.
Here is Brian Armstrong coming out and addressing it more head on in line
with the actions that they're taking to spin up that new advisory council.
So I thought this was a pretty big headline.
So I guess, you know, more background on where this came from.
So yeah, this was an interview with CNBC at the World Liberty Forum yesterday.
He got the direct question.
One thing I've heard is that quantum is going to break the blockchain.
Is that true?
Brian Armstrong, no, that's not true.
I think that's a very solvable issue.
Talking about how they've been front footed on this, going to continue to engage.
They've been in contact with all the major blockchains on the path to a post-quantum crypto world.
So positive update.
I mean, not really much tactical progress to point to beyond just the council being spun up and him talking about it.
But on a soft note, I do think it is positive to see him coming out and addressing this.
So a nice headline, but not one that's necessarily going to move prices by year. I do think it is positive to see him coming out and addressing this.
So a nice headline, but not one that's necessarily going to move prices by any means.
One headline that could lead to some price impacts is OpenAI leaning into crypto and smart contracts, I think for the first time here. So OpenAI, the headline and Paradigm,
OpenAI and Paradigm working together to create this EVM bench tool,
which effectively tests how capable AI agents are at finding and fixing smart
contract vulnerabilities.
I covered this in the Morning Minute newsletter here this morning,
but basically this EVM bench is an open benchmarking framework. It evaluates AI agents' capabilities
across three things. So their ability to detect vulnerabilities in Ethereum smart contracts,
their ability to patch them, and their ability to actively exploit them.
to actively exploit them.
They looked at like 120 curated high risk vulnerabilities
from prior real world audits to see like, okay,
what are the primary security risks
that we have in smart contracts to date
based on real world audits?
And I guess when they started the project,
the best models they had could only exploit
about 20% of critical bugs.
And now that number is over 70%.
So some pretty substantial growth here.
They also, as a part of this, have launched or are committing $10 million in API credits through this cybersecurity grant program to support more defensive crypto research.
So pretty important update here for a few reasons.
One, I think it's been very clear
that the builders of the top AI models
have focused on software development to date.
And the idea is once you get into that recursive development,
the models are developing software on their own,
then you improve much faster recursive development, the models are developing software on their own. Then you improve much faster.
And then it opens the door to start working on other problems as well using software.
And crypto is next.
Or crypto is certainly adjacent.
So that next might not be the right word.
This is the first.
I mean, other than OpenAI's ties to WorldCoin and some of the ties and some of the issues that WorldCoin is looking to potentially solve.
This is one of the first major crypto projects that I've seen their team work on.
And it seems like a pretty substantial one, right?
I think some of the negative feedback for the crypto AI integration is it's all been slop, right?
feedback for the crypto AI integration. This has all been slop, right? It was slop reply guys
on crypto Twitter, you know, slop tokens being launched. Well, this is not slop. This is using
some of the best AI models in the world to solve smart contract risk and make smart contracts
better. This was a five, I think $5 billion lost in DeFi exploits I saw over the
last two years. And I wouldn't be surprised if that number was much higher. Now we've got one
of the biggest players in AI in the world coming to try to solve that. So I do think it is a big
deal. I think it's also a bit of a signal that this isn't the last thing they're going to do.
This is probably opening the door for more collaboration
between OpenAI, perhaps Anthropic, and others in the crypto space.
So I thought this was a very, very positive headline here.
Excited to see more to come.
I think the flip side of this is, are these models,
are they just going to be used for good or bad?
So the fact that they could exploit 70% of these contracts is great from an audit perspective, from the white hat perspective.
It's a problem from the black hat perspective.
So anyone who is a worse actor who is using these models would effectively have the ability to potentially exploit these contracts.
So pros and cons, you know,
whose hands are these models going to be in?
A very important battle, for lack of a better word,
to watch here over the near future
as these models continue to iterate and get better.
But arguably the biggest headline of the day there
is around to the rest of the list.
A couple of big headlines out of the prediction market space once again.
So Polymarket had a few headlines yesterday.
One, they are partnering with Substack to integrate live prediction market data into newsletters.
Hey, shout out to Myriad.
Myriad had it first.
Myriad had the media integration angle locked down
about six months ago or more.
I personally am a huge fan of integrating live markets
relevant to media in articles.
And I think we're just going to see more and more of that.
So clearly Polymarket sees the opportunity as well.
They've partnered with Substack
to integrate their prediction markets directly in newsletter.
But arguably the bigger headline, and I missed this from a couple days ago, is these new Polymarket sponsored market rewards.
So effectively anyone can now sponsor these markets.
now sponsor these markets. And what sponsoring means here in this context is it allows you to
offer incentives for folks to provide liquidity for specific markets. And those who do provide
that liquidity will get bonus rewards. So you can say, okay, if you provide liquidity for the U.S.
striking Iran market by February 28th, I'm going to donate $100,000 in LP rewards.
So then that drives incentive for market makers to come in and provide more liquidity for those specific markets.
So I think markets like the huge geopolitical ones probably don't need this as much.
But think about the group who's trying to spin up more of those niche markets.
These type of liquidity rewards will go a long way.
And the more liquidity they have, of course, the more accurate they will most likely be.
So this is a pretty big one, especially for more of those niche markets.
And then Kalshi had a headline as well.
The institutions are continuing to lean even further into the prediction market space.
So Kalshi signed this deal with this bond trading hub trade web to effectively bring their prediction markets to institutional investors.
I mean, we just saw yesterday it was the prediction market ETFs are, where there's going to be individual markets as ETFs.
So like the 2028 presidential election, will a Democrat win?
Will be its own ETF?
Will a Republican win the 2028 election?
So on and so forth.
I guess the idea here is to provide access to folks who may not be able to wager on a prediction market themselves.
I feel like the barriers to entry there are getting lower.
But for some folks, I guess, perhaps still too much.
Certainly a lot of hedging could be done with an ETF like that as well.
So a lot of cases and also just more and more deep equity coming to these markets with products
like these ETFs being spun up. So bullish prediction markets,
bullish prediction market volume with these institutional players coming in.
What does it mean for your, your retail trader? Probably a slight bearish lane.
I mean, in some ways better liquidity is great, but you're also,
you're going to be competing against some of the most,
some of the sharpest players in the world. And the competition is only going to heat up.
So something certainly to be aware of there.
Continuing through this thing,
arguably the biggest app launch from yesterday.
I didn't see a whole lot of folks talking about this,
but the MegaEath team at least
is framing this as a pretty big deal.
So they are welcoming their World Markets product.
And they're touting it as the first ever exchange to unify spot trading, lending, and perps
under one central portfolio risk engine.
And what that means is like your cross margin would go across all three of these products.
So you could use margin across spot trading, across lending, across perps. And I think typically
for my products like hyper liquid, those are separated. Um, so your spot, your perps are
kind of in different buckets. You're, you're not able to access margin across those two buckets.
Here, you would be able to do it.
Certainly an unlock, certainly a high-risk unlock, to say the least.
I think one could argue that it's good to have those buckets separated as it does protect the investor, the trader.
the investor, the trader.
But for those who are willing to throw caution to the wind, so to speak,
you will have your chance on world markets.
And it feels like this is a big one.
MegaEth has been, I think, curating their launches.
It feels like they kind of held this one back perhaps on purpose,
but they're continuing to march forward.
And I have to imagine we are getting closer to them hitting their KPIs,
which will unlock those mega tokens.
And a lot of folks waiting anxiously for that.
So this is going to be a big one to watch.
They're calling it a $5 billion plus market.
It looks like it's invite only beta right now,
but there are some opportunities to try to get those beta access codes for
those who are trying to, to dig in. So hit up bread. Why not?
Getting bread's dams. I'm sure he's got some time on his hands.
Rounding this out. Let's see what else.
Did see a notable headline out of Novig. So the this out, let's see what else. Did you see a notable headline out of Novig?
So sports betting, people are just throwing money
at different types of betting platforms.
It seems like in some ways it's this weird dynamic
where the entrenched players, FanDuel, DraftKings,
their stock is down mega as the cows of the world,
as the prediction markets come in
and eat a lot of their sports betting launch, so to speak.
But then on the same time,
I'm seeing money being thrown
at some of these new players or newer players.
So Novig specifically is a peer-to-peer sports betting exchange.
So in theory, no house, you are betting player to player.
And they had a $75 million Series B yesterday
to help build their version of the future of sports betting.
This is not their first raise, of course, since the Series B.
They've now raised $105 million.
So substantial raises here for the Novig team.
So clearly a lot of folks believe in what they're doing.
It was led by Pantera Capital,
multi coins in this,
makers fund,
edge equity,
and a few others.
So really,
really big raise.
So look for more to come out of Novig.
And then down the risk curve,
the finality of this,
man,
the trenches are dead,
dead,
dead. I'm scanning this every day just to of this, man, the trenches are dead, dead, dead.
I'm scanning this every day just to look for, okay, were there any runners overnight?
I'm not seeing many tokens get past a million these days.
So it has certainly been a week, week for the trenchers.
Not much action going on.
I don't know if this is tied to the pump fund creator creator fee change and folks just haven't really figured that out yet. If it's just apathy, there's not folks trading.
I mean, I take a glance at the pump fund metrics every other day or so.
It seems like they're, they're doing okay.
They're not going up and to the right, but they seem to be leveling off.
They're still making a million bucks a day in revenue.
But it's not reflected in the on-chain action, so to speak.
So this is about as weak as it's been in 2026, at least from my perspective.
Maybe other folks are having more success, but I'm certainly finding it harder and harder
to find here in late February.
And with that, that's the roundup, folks.
Did it in 30 minutes here today.
Thanks for sticking with me on my solo rant
through today's news.
With that, Charlie, let's reward all of our listeners
who just listened to me go off for 30 minutes straight
with a shot at some yeet cash.
So we will spin the wheel and, uh, see who is our winner.
You're going to be guaranteed at least 500 bucks.
Um, and you will come back tomorrow, uh, to claim that prize.
Sorry, let's give it a spin all right uh mr mr dukes so it's hard for me to zoom in on this uh what are the letters there
mr dukes is there an e in there all right right. Mr. Dex. My eyes. All right. My eyes are struggling.
Do we have them in the chat? Mr. Dex. Mr. Dukes. There they are. Mr. I don't know how to say that.
Mr. Deokes. Yeah. So you won. Congrats. And you don't have to wait that long. Come back tomorrow.
We are going to do our mega yeet show plus catch up on Feroke, catch up with Feroke, everything from the world Liberty forum.
I'm very interested to hear how that went.
We'll be catching up with Mando as well.
I mean,
we might do 20 minutes of yeet action.
We got to figure out how we're going to do it.
If you have thoughts,
let us know either in the comments or on X.
We're still brainstorming.
How do we want to do it?
Like,
I don't think we're going to do 10 different lamb chop runs.
That feels like it would be a little bit too time intensive.
Do we do a variety of games?
Do we do everyone in the same pool?
Do we just play Omaha 10 times?
Do we do coin race 10 times?
A lot of potential ideas.
So if you have thoughts, again, let us know on X or in the comments here. And let us
know on tomorrow's show as well. We'll have time to figure it out. But again, I want to thank you
all for tuning in today. We will be back tomorrow at 10 a.m. Eastern. Until then, go have a beautiful
day. Goodbye. Thank you.
