🙈 Discord IP-OH!

Good afternoon! Meta hit pause on its international rollout of Ray-Ban Display smart glasses as demand in the US quickly outpaced supply. The company said it is prioritizing domestic orders after receiving overwhelming interest in the AI-powered specs.

The move looks less like a setback and more like a stress test passed. The $799 glasses have earned solid reviews, helped boost EssilorLuxottica’s sales, and signaled that smart glasses might finally be breaking out of their flop era.

Wall Street might finally be dusting off its IPO calendar.

Chat platform Discord has confidentially filed for an IPO and is working with Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, according to reports. Founded in 2015, Discord now counts more than 200 million monthly active users, making it one of the largest social platforms still sitting on the private-market sidelines. The company was last valued around $15 billion in a 2021 funding round, shortly after it turned down a $12 billion acquisition offer from Microsoft.

Discord’s move is reopening the conversation around long-awaited tech listings, especially as AI-driven capital needs push companies toward public markets. OpenAI is widely viewed as the biggest wildcard, with private valuations reportedly north of $500 billion and long-term infrastructure commitments that make public capital increasingly attractive. Anthropic, the maker of Claude, is also in focus after a late-2025 funding round valued it as high as $350 billion, positioning it as the enterprise-focused counterweight to OpenAI.

Then there’s SpaceX, which could be the crown jewel of the next IPO cycle. Elon Musk has said a 2026 listing is “accurate,” and recent secondary transactions have valued the company near $800 billion, with some upside estimates reaching $1.5 trillion. If SpaceX goes public, it would likely become the largest IPO in history.

Despite the buzz, this is still more thaw than flood. Venture capital fundraising fell sharply in 2025, and many startups that raised massive private rounds over the past few years don’t urgently need public cash. At the same time, public markets have become far less forgiving, demanding clearer paths to profitability and tighter disclosure, which keeps many companies private longer.

That’s what makes Discord’s filing notable. In a market starved for exits, even a single high-profile IPO can help reset expectations, return capital to investors, and reopen the pipeline just as AI, space, and crypto companies gear up for another capital-intensive growth phase.

Crypto markets caught a quiet but important break this week, with two developments easing pressure on digital-asset-linked stocks and reinforcing longer-term conviction around ethereum.

Strategy $MSTR jumped after MSCI said it will allow digital asset treasury companies to remain in its global indexes, reversing a proposal that would have excluded firms whose crypto holdings exceed 50% of assets. Had the change gone through, passive funds tracking MSCI benchmarks would have been forced sellers, creating a meaningful technical overhang for Strategy and its peers.

MSCI emphasized the decision is not permanent and said it will continue studying how to distinguish operating companies from investment vehicles. Still, for now, the risk of forced index-driven selling is off the table, giving crypto treasury stocks some breathing room.

At the same time, ethereum $ETH is flashing a separate signal of growing conviction. The queue to exit ETH staking has dropped to zero days, while the line to enter has stretched beyond 25 days, with roughly 1.46 million ETH waiting to be locked up.

Analysts see the imbalance as a sign that deleveraging pressure has cleared and longer-term holders are stepping in. Institutional demand is playing a bigger role this cycle, with asset managers, ETFs, and corporate treasuries increasingly opting to earn yield through staking rather than holding idle tokens.

BitMine Immersion Technologies $BMNR, the largest ethereum treasury firm, began staking part of its holdings in December, while ETF providers like Grayscale have started distributing staking rewards to shareholders. As more ETH gets locked up and fewer validators rush for the exits, circulating supply tightens.

The broader takeaway is subtle but important. While price action remains volatile, the underlying structure of ethereum ownership is shifting toward longer-duration holders, a setup that historically supports a more constructive medium-term outlook.

The data parade keeps marching on tomorrow with the weekly check-in on initial jobless claims. We’ll also get a grab bag of macro updates, including the US trade deficit, consumer credit trends, and a final look at productivity and labor costs from Q3.

Earnings stay relatively light, but a few familiar names step up to the mic. Reports are due from RPM International, Acuity Brands, Tilray Brands, and WD-40, offering a quick pulse check across industrials, lighting, cannabis, and whatever magic is still inside that blue-and-yellow can.

Join our options subreddit ⚡️: https://www.reddit.com/r/optionstrading/

Join our discord community 💠: https://discord.gg/optionality

Check out our latest issues 🎯: 0ptionality.com