Are We Hedging Yet? 🎯

Vitalik wants hedgers, not gamblers

This week, we look at, what we believe, are the top three news events of the week and how they were covered, focusing on:

• What Vitalik Buterin really wants prediction markets to be used for

• Why X’s “smart cashtags” could change how people trade from social feeds

• How a record Pokémon sale tests the “NFTs are dead” narrative

[Vitalik’s prediction‑market warning] 🧠

Vitalik Buterin says that today’s prediction markets are drifting toward low‑value gambling on prices and sports, and should instead be designed for people hedging real‑world risks.

The Context 🧑‍💻:

• Vitalik says prediction markets are drifting toward low-value betting on crypto prices and sports, which boosts volume but undermines long-term usefulness.

• He argues they should pivot toward hedging, where people use markets to reduce risk rather than gamble.

• Longer term, he envisions personalised baskets of prediction market positions that provide price stability for individuals, potentially serving as a decentralised alternative to fiat-backed stablecoins.

The Coverage 📰:

• “Polymarket investor Vitalik Buterin says prediction markets need to stop catering to ‘dumb opinions’” (The Block)

• “Vitalik Buterin: Hedging on Prediction Markets Could ‘Replace Fiat Currency” (Decrypt)

• “Vitalik Calls Out Prediction Markets” (The Defiant)

PR Perspective 🔎:

Vitalik’s underlying point is that prediction markets may have optimised around the wrong customer. Today, most platforms are built to monetise uninformed or speculative traders, which can drive impressive short-term revenue but offer limited long-term defensibility. If prediction markets instead centre on hedgers, people and organisations using them to reduce real economic risk, the priorities flip. Depth, reliability, and persistent liquidity start to matter more than raw volume. Markets would focus less on headlines and more on mapping real-world exposure. In that world, prediction markets begin to look less like gambling products and more like financial infrastructure, sitting alongside insurance, structured products, and macro hedging tools. That shift alone could move them from a niche category into something systemically important.

[X’s “smart cashtags” are coming] 💸

X (formerly Twitter) is preparing to roll out Smart Cashtags, a feature that will let users see live crypto and stock prices and place trades directly from their timeline.

The Context 🧑‍💻:

• X (formerly known as Twitter) is currently transforming into an “everything app” by integrating financial services directly into its interface.

• X is preparing to roll out Smart Cashtags, a feature that embeds live market data and trading links for stocks and cryptocurrencies directly into users’ timelines, signaling another step toward its push into financial services.

• The feature was first teased in January with a February target and will support real-time pricing for on-chain assets, including smaller-cap tokens.

• X’s head of product, Nikita Bier, confirmed the social media platform will roll out Smart Cashtags within weeks, enabling users to view financial data and execute trades directly from their timeline. The announcement came during discussions about platform policies regarding third-party crypto applications.

• Initial support is expected for major U.S. stocks and leading cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.

The Coverage 📰:

• “X to launch ‘Smart Cashtags’ for in-timeline crypto and stock data within ‘a couple weeks’” (The Block)

• “Elon Musk’s X to launch crypto and stock trading in ‘couple weeks’” (CoinDesk)

• “X to launch crypto and stock trading” (Finextra)

PR Perspective 🔎:

X’s trading integration signals something larger than a product update. It signifies a moment where crypto markets become embedded in the fabric of daily digital life. With 600M users now one tap away from executing a trade, retail participation could surge in ways that reshape liquidity and accelerate volatility in ways the market hasn’t seen before. But with that scale comes real risk: when Musk’s platform and Musk’s posts can move markets simultaneously, the line between social influence and market manipulation gets uncomfortably thin.

[Are NFTs really “dead”?] 🃏

Logan Paul’s once-tokenised PSA 10 Pikachu Illustrator card has sold to AJ Scaramucci for a record $16.49 million, more than tripling Paul’s 2021 purchase price and setting a new high for any trading card.

The Context 🧑‍💻:

• AJ Scaramucci (son of Anthony) paid $16.49 million at Goldin Auction for Logan Paul’s PSA 10 Pikachu Illustrator Pokémon card, more than tripling the $5.275 million Paul paid in 2021 and setting a new all-time high for any trading card.

• Before the sale, Logan Paul had tried to democratise ownership of the card through Liquid Marketplace, a blockchain platform he co-founded in 2022, but only 5.4% of the card was sold to investors (~$270K), and Paul later bought those shares back in 2024.

• Liquid Marketplace went offline in 2023, locking users out of their funds and triggering a 2024 Ontario Securities Commission lawsuit (Paul wasn’t named). Paul claimed he personally funded the site’s recovery to restore withdrawals, though investors accused the platform of misleading promotion and mismanagement.

• The sale didn’t happen in a vacuum: Pokémon TCG prices have risen steadily through 2025 and into 2026, with cards from sets like Fossil and Silver Tempest climbing 15–25%, as sustained collector and investor demand has pushed Pokémon cards ahead of traditional collectibles like baseball cards.

• Scaramucci described the purchase as the opening move in a “planetary treasure hunt,” with ambitions to next acquire a T-Rex fossil and even the Declaration of Independence, suggesting the high-end collectibles market may have found a new, very deep-pocketed protagonist.

The Coverage 📰:

• “Logan Paul’s Pokémon card smashes record in $16m sale” (BBC News)

• “Scaramucci’s Son Buys Logan Paul’s Pokémon Card for $16M Record” (Unchained)

• “Anthony Scaramucci’s son buys Logan Paul’s previously tokenized Pokemon card for record $16 million” (The Block)

PR Perspective 🔎:

When the NFT market began to bottom out, the steady rise of a new and lucrative collectible market in its wake, might have seemed unthinkable. Although the particular rise of Pokemon TCG stands in opposition to the common gripe many have with NFTs that “there is no physical item”, this once-tokenised item reentering the news cycle might give us pause for thought. Are NFTs as dead as we thought?

[Tweet of The Week]

Credit: @ayeejuju

---

Connect with YAP Global: Website, X & LinkedIn

The usual disclaimer: This newsletter collates the main themes and headlines of the week in DeFi/crypto/metaverse/Web3/NFT land and tries to provide unbiased context. It’s aimed at anyone who wants to keep an eye on the space. It’s put together by a team at YAP and doesn’t contain any promotion of our clients (if one is mentioned, we’ll flag that).

The team: Founder Samantha Yap, Alex Revutsky, Nathan Luckhurst, Nathalie Larrea, Meghna Dembla, Samvidha Sharma, William Knight, Taylor Handler, Abby Rose Notarnicola, Shajar Qureshi and TJ Thomas. Your feedback is, as always, welcome. Ping us at thecontext@yapglobal.com. Old newsletters can be found here.

This newsletter is prepared by YAP Global, a financial and technology PR consultancy that advises companies in the digital assets, fintech, stablecoins, AI and agentic finance sectors. Find out more about us here.