Noor | Crypto Research

Clarity over hype. Token-level halal screening, tokenomics teardowns, No leverage, no shills, scam red flags. Some weeks nothing passes. Research only — DYOR.

[Noor | Crypto Research @NoorScreens]

I started in crypto in 2017. Made money in the bull run. Gave every bit of it back in the bear.

I thought that was the lesson. It wasn't. It was just the tuition.

I had nothing left, so I earned my way back in the slow way. AMAs in Telegram groups for a few dollars. Airdrops. Testnets. Filling in forms at 2am for tokens that might be worth nothing.

Thousands of hours. That's how I rebuilt a stake.

That got me into early rounds. IDOs, public sales, private sales. More than a hundred of them.

A handful made money. That's not me being modest and it isn't bad luck, it's the base rate. Nobody tells you that before you send the money.

But the worst loss I ever took wasn't a bad chart or a bear market.
It was a founder I liked.

They were warm. Replied at midnight. Remembered things I'd mentioned weeks earlier. Over a few months they stopped being a contact and became a friend.

And because they were a friend, I stopped checking. Didn't read the terms properly. Didn't look at the wallets. Didn't ask the uncomfortable questions.

That's the whole trick, and I want you to see it clearly.
Scammers in this industry don't beat your analysis. They make sure you never run it. Trust is the exploit. Not the code.

One rule I'd give my younger self:
The people who deserve your trust are the ones who don't mind being checked.

Ask a straight question about their unlocks, their treasury, their wallets. Then watch what their face does.

So this account is the diligence I didn't do, done in public, every week.
Halal at the token level. Supply verified on-chain. Real usage, not bot noise. And when nothing passes the screen, I'll tell you nothing passed.

I'll explain all of it in plain language. No "value accrual mechanism" unless I've told you what that means first.

If someone new to this can't follow the post, I wrote it badly. That's my standard, not theirs.

I'm anonymous and I'm staying that way. Judge the work, not the face.

Research, not financial advice. Nothing I post is a reason to buy anything.

[Noor | Crypto Research @NoorScreens]

@AethirCloud @CoinMarketCap @ionet @akashnet @rendernetwork @CoreWeave @awscloud Real product, but until burns beat new supply, the token's story is still a promise.

Before you put money in, check who has to buy the token and why?

Not the pump, not the influencer.

Educational only, not financial advice. DYOR.

[Noor | Crypto Research @NoorScreens]

Project Research #22: Aethir @AethirCloud ($ATH)

On 21 Oct they said they'll burn $ATH daily from November, paid by network fees. Price jumped about 9% that day.

It's still about 94% below its June 2024 high, per @CoinMarketCap

So I read the docs. Will this burn actually matter? 🧵

[Noor | Crypto Research @NoorScreens]

Red flags 🚩🚩🚩:

- Burn size unknown. Their docs say the fee has no minimum and can fall to zero

- Their own schedule adds about 745M $ATH in November and almost a third more supply within a year

- Axe Compute's SEC filing shows it lent ATH through Aethir's portal at 6% interest

[Noor | Crypto Research @NoorScreens]

@tayvano_ Someone kept private keys in a hosting platform's environment variables. The platform was breached. About $371,000 walked out across 19 chains in one evening.

Your keys are only as safe as the least careful place you pasted them.

[Noor | Crypto Research @NoorScreens]

Someone kept private keys in a hosting platform's environment variables. The platform was breached. About $371,000 walked out across 19 chains in one evening.

Your keys are only as safe as the least careful place you pasted them.

[Tay 💖 @tayvano_]

They did drain crypto keys that were in Railway.

Seems like an okay sweeper script (read: not something homegrown for this one op)

Attacker:
0xd9773325282874d18cb83f1fe50f14c39750b2ee

~$371,000
Oct 21 19:36 UTC
500+ txns
200+ distict addresses
19+ EVM chains

[Noor | Crypto Research @NoorScreens]

Fireblocks raised at an $8 billion valuation in 2022. The reported Visa talks put it near $2.5 billion. Fireblocks says the report isn't true.

Either way, look at the gap. A private valuation is an opinion, and opinions get revised quietly.

[Simon Taylor @sytaylor]

Visa is in late-stage talks to buy Fireblocks for ~$2.5bn (Axios)

That is roughly 70% below the $8bn valuation Fireblocks raised at in 2022.

Fireblocks runs custody and wallet infrastructure for 2,400+ institutions, including BNY Mellon and BNP Paribas, and says it has secured over $10tn in transfers. It has become the biggest player in digital asset custody.

But increasingly it's expanding in more directions and product cross-sell, while underneath, competitors like DFNS are winning market share and mind share. Fireblocks hasn't raised in a while.

Visa's stablecoin settlement crossed a $20bn annualized run rate in September, up 15x in a year, with 160+ stablecoin-linked card programs live. They're arguably ahead on stablecoin-linked cards.

Then Mastercard bought BVNK, Visa's settlement and OTC partner. While Fireblocks isn't a like-for-like (Visa now partners with many in that space), it does take custody, arguably a harder piece to do in-house.

And the strategy here is fascinating to observe

To my mind, Visa wants to be the provider of choice for any FI going onchain, especially the big banks. Fireblocks is a large book of enterprise clients and fits exactly where I think Visa is going.

Cards are where stablecoins drive Visa today.

As settlement for non-card payments starts to go onchain, Visa needs the wallet and custody plumbing underneath those flows. Fireblocks then looks like a logical play.

Visa gets the enterprise relationships and the plumbing in one deal. Fireblocks customers now have a custody vendor owned by a card network, and some exchanges and Mastercard-aligned banks will think twice. DFNS and the rest now compete with a vendor that has Visa's sales team already inside the big banks.

It reminds me that Standard Chartered also said it would take full ownership of Zodia Custody.

Digital asset custody is consolidating into the incumbents.

Visa paid $2bn for CyberSource in 2010 to own the e-commerce gateway. (Arguably no longer *the default* gateway, but certainly one that's very successful at least in part due to Visa's market distribution).

This is that play for onchain.

For Fireblocks, this is a down round and a half if it happens. But not dissimilar from what we've seen in SaaS with bending spoons. A lot of companies got bid up high in the 2021 era, and no matter how successful and how much revenue they pile on, it's still big shoes to fill.

Fireblocks is a talent team, so I wish them well if this is true or not. Either way. Keep doing things.

Visa and Fireblocks both sponsor tokenized, but as you'd hopefully imagine, I have no insight or color on this from either team and haven't spoken to anyone there about it.

[Noor | Crypto Research @NoorScreens]

@sytaylor Fireblocks raised at an $8 billion valuation in 2022. The reported Visa talks put it near $2.5 billion. Fireblocks says the report isn't true.

Either way, look at the gap. A private valuation is an opinion, and opinions get revised quietly.

[Noor | Crypto Research @NoorScreens]

@Vet_X0 @daniel_wwf @aesthetes_art One vote dropping and resetting the counter is the part most people skip past. Amendments don't ship, they get voted in. Worth knowing who holds those votes before you call any chain settled.

[Noor | Crypto Research @NoorScreens]

@TheBlockCo 93.5% is a strong mandate for research. The holder question underneath it is simpler: if Starknet becomes its own chain, does $STRK start earning anything it doesn't earn today?

[Noor | Crypto Research @NoorScreens]

@leomschwartz The logo that sold a hundred token launches is taking "crypto" out of its own name. Worth remembering next time a deck's strongest line is who's backing it.

[Noor | Crypto Research @NoorScreens]

@ReutersLegal Worth reading twice: the interest here comes from a bank deposit, not from crypto. That's the honest version of "earn yield on your cash". Most crypto apps selling the same sentence are lending your coins out to someone.

[Noor | Crypto Research @NoorScreens]

@ReutersLegal The sentence that matters is in the Central Bank's own release: the safeguarding account was "underfunded for lengthy periods of time". Coinbase admitted it and says no customer lost money. Five years is a long stretch for nobody to notice.

[Noor | Crypto Research @NoorScreens]

A project says it has 400,000 holders. Sounds like a crowd.

Sort that list by size. Most of those wallets hold less than a dollar. They took a free airdrop and left.

That's counting everyone who walked past your shop as a customer.

What's the emptiest holder number you've seen?

[Noor | Crypto Research @NoorScreens]

@ZsasFun Small correction: block spacing is ZIP 218, not 945.

You're right about the height though. NU7 activates at mainnet block 3,543,405. The 5 Nov date is just when that block is expected to arrive.

[Noor | Crypto Research @NoorScreens]

Project Research #21: Zcash @Zcash (zcash:native)

zcash:native bounced about 25% from its 18 Oct low to the 21 Oct close (Gate data), a big upgrade is due around 5 Nov, and privacy coin calls are everywhere again.

So I read the specs. One question: if Zcash wins, does the coin holder win too? 🧵

[Noor | Crypto Research @NoorScreens]

@storyprotocol raised $140 million to build its own blockchain.

This week the boss told @CoinDesk he's not sure their own chain still makes sense. They're switching it off.

Every $DATA coin out there adds up to $53 million.

You didn't buy a chain. You bought a plan.

[Noor | Crypto Research @NoorScreens]

@Nexo said: park your coins here, earn interest.

Sounded like a savings account. Your coins got lent out and you took the risk.

The @SECGov said it needed registering. Nexo paid $45 million, without admitting or denying.

Interest is interest, whatever the app calls it. ethereum:0xb62132e35a6c13ee1ee0f84dc5d40bad8d815206

[Noor | Crypto Research @NoorScreens]

One line: real tech, real use, but nothing pushes value to the coin. Price rests on people wanting to hold private money.

The habit: ask who has to buy the token and why. A pump or an influencer is not a reason.

Educational only, not financial advice. DYOR.

[Noor | Crypto Research @NoorScreens]

Red flags 🚩🚩🚩:

- Holders get no fees. NU7 pulls 60% of fees, then pays it out again from 2031. Not a burn

- New supply: about 3.9% a year

- Futures volume is several times spot

- EU rules from July 2027 hit "anonymity-enhancing coins"

- ECC team quit in Jan over a board fight