Kalshi Polymarket Free Grocery Stunts

Prediction Markets Give Away Food in NYC vs WYDE’s Proven Food Insecurity Solution

Author

The Tech Buzz
February 06, 2026

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

WHAT’S INSIDE:

Feature: Prediction Markets Give Away Food in NYC vs WYDE’s Proven Blockchain Food Insecurity Solution

Top Tech News: Tech sell-off hits Nasdaq lows since Nov, TrumpRx $199 prescription plan, Anthropic AI triggers data analytics stock selloff, Epstein files released

Company Watch: OpenAI's Frontier + GPT-5.3 Codex, Anthropic's Opus 4.6 + $350B tender & $20B+ round, ElevenLabs $500M, Resolve an AI Unicorn, Fundamental Raise

Buzzy Tools: Cowork Plugins, Perplexity Model Council, Fibr AI personalized web experiences, Alexa+ AI upgrade, Virtuals tokenization, Superagent reports

Buzzy Tech: Moltbook security fix, ultrasound microbubble drugs, autonomous drilling 10x faster, quantum atomic imaging, Google AI genome sequencing

Crypto: Senate Ag Committee advances CFTC market structure bill, Treasury scrutiny on Trump-UAE-World Liberty ties, Eth hyper-scaling, Anchorage’s $100M from Tether

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH ELF LABS

The Billion Dollar Deal Locked in a Vault

In 2012, Disney acquired Lucasfilm for $4 billion — one of the most profitable entertainment deals ever made. But everyday investors never had the chance to participate, missing the upside.

Elf Labs spent a decade securing 500-plus trademarks and copyrights featuring Cinderella, Snow White, and other iconic characters to ensure that dynamic changes.

The company is building a tech-powered character universe, using AI, immersive technology, and 12 patents to activate these globally recognized characters across entertainment, gaming, and consumer products — a market estimated at over $2 trillion.

Analyst interest increased after the company hit a major inflection point this year and reserved their NASDAQ ticker: $ELFS.

For a limited time, everyday investors can still participate (plus receive up to 35% bonus shares) while the company remains privately held.

Disclosure: This is a paid advertisement for Elf Labs’ Regulation CF offering. Please read the offering circular at elflabs.com--Timelines are subject to change. Listing on the NASDAQ is contingent upon necessary approvals, and reserving a ticker symbol does not guarantee a company's public listing.

Top Technology News

Tech Falls — The tech sell-off continued Thursday sending Nasdaq to its lowest since Nov, metals and bitcoin tanked, on AI capex and job market concerns.

TrumpRx — The White House unveils a plan offering prescription drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy for just $199, a drastic cut from over $1,000.

AI Shake-Up — Fears over Anthropic's new AI tools triggered a selloff in U.S. and EU data analytics stocks & its new Legal Plugin tool triggered a drop in AI Legal software stocks like LegalZoom, Thomson Reuters, and Wolters Kluwer.

Epstein Files Unveiled — The DOJ released millions of Jeffrey Epstein files, including 3M pages and 2,000 videos.

WYDE’s Food Insecurity Solution Beats Prediction Market Companies’ Free NYC Grocery Stunts

Aaron Rafferty, founding member of WYDE and behavioral scientist, just published a provocative takedown of this week’s performative tech philanthropy in NYC. He lays out how while Polymarket and Kalshi burn millions on vanishing grocery pop-ups, WYDE’s blockchain infrastructure is quietly feeding thousands through transaction fees alone. The contrast reveals everything wrong with how tech approaches social impact, and everything right about what comes next.

The Million-Dollar Marketing Stunt

Polymarket dropped $1M on the Food Bank for New York City. Sounds generous until you do the math: that's roughly 10 million meals, or 0.1% of Feeding America's annual 9.7 billion meal distribution. Kalshi went smaller, handing out $50 gift cards at a single bodega for three hours. Both companies made hundreds of millions betting on elections. Both chose four-day stunts over sustainable infrastructure.

The new NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani sees it differently. His $60M pilot program for city-run grocery stores tackles food access where it actually breaks down: in wallets, not warehouses. Istanbul proved municipal markets work. Bogotá's subsidized transit and Vienna's public housing show that government can deliver. But grocery stores operate on 1-3% margins. Without perpetual funding that survives budget cycles and political winds, even brilliant pilots collapse.

The Funding Gap No One Wants to Fix

Here's the problem every founder, VC, and public policy wonk should understand: charity doesn't scale because it relies on conditions that fluctuate. Donations spike during crises and evaporate during quiet news cycles. Corporate giving optimizes tax strategies, not outcomes. Government programs get gutted when administrations change or economies contract.

Food insecurity affects 3 million New Yorkers right now. It needs funding mechanisms that operate automatically, transparently, and permanently. That means infrastructure generating resources by default, not through quarterly fundraising campaigns or viral moments.

The $EAT Token Model That Actually Works

Enter WYDE, the world's first 501(c)(4) tax-exempt impact exchange, and their $EAT token launched in December 2025 on Coinbase's Base network. The mechanism is brutally simple: 25% of every transaction fee flows directly to verified 501(c)(3) hunger relief partners. Not during campaigns. Not when markets feel charitable. Every single trade. Automatically. Forever.

By mid-January, normal trading activity funded 4,184 meals. That number now exceeds 7,000 meals. No pop-up store. No publicity stunt. Just people trading a digital asset while smart contracts route fees to food banks in real time. The remaining 75% of fees fund liquidity pools, platform development, and token holder rewards, solving what Rafferty calls the Philanthropic Token Trilemma: building systems that last decades instead of weeks.

The tokenomics create accountability tech VCs should envy. 80% of the 100 billion token supply stays locked behind impact milestones: 100M meals, 250M, 500M, 750M, 1 billion. Rewards unlock when outcomes deliver, not when timers expire. Every transaction lives on-chain, transparent and auditable, unlike the opacity plaguing traditional charity or the disaster of former NYC Mayor Eric Adams' $NYC token that became a cautionary tale in crypto philanthropy.

How The Model Could Scale to Solve NYC’s Food Problems

Imagine Mamdani's municipal grocery program funded by $NYFOOD, a causecoin structured like $EAT but targeting verified partners across the five boroughs. The math at modest scale looks like this:

$10M daily trading volume × 1% fees × 25% to food programs = $25,000 daily = $9.1M annually in perpetuity.

Scale to $50M daily volume and you're generating $45.6M yearly without a single budget hearing or donation ask. The $60M pilot becomes the foundation. The causecoin becomes the engine that survives when political will fades and initial funding dries up.

Why This Matters Beyond Food Banks

For technologists and investors, this model proves blockchain's utility beyond speculation. For real estate professionals, it demonstrates how crypto infrastructure can stabilize neighborhoods by addressing root causes of instability. For founders, it offers a blueprint: build protocols where user activity generates social outcomes as exhaust, not through guilt-driven giving.

For VCs evaluating 2025 portfolios, the question becomes whether impact can generate returns while solving problems governments can't fund and charities can't sustain. WYDE proved the answer is yes. Federal tax-exempt status validates the legal framework. Thousands of meals prove the operational model. The technology exists. The partners are verified. The transparency is absolute.

The Choice Ahead

Cities can keep chasing headlines with initiatives that vanish by Valentine's Day, or they can deploy infrastructure that operates automatically through every market condition and political cycle. Polymarket and Kalshi proved appetite exists. Mamdani proved political will exists. WYDE built the funding mechanism that survives both.

Read Rafferty's full breakdown on the Tech Buzz here to understand why the next wave of social infrastructure might run on transaction fees instead of tax dollars.

The model exists. The math works. All that's missing is deployment at scale.

Breaking News: Ending Hunger is Now Public!

The first crypto 501c4 nonprofit (WYDE: END HUNGER $EAT) using trade fees to feed those who are hungry has recently:

  • Hit it’s all time high market cap following a new year surge to $14.4M FDV 

  • Reached the milestone of funding 5000 meals through Food charities

  • Secured Charitable Status as Tax-exempt (the 1st U.S. exchange to do so)

Companies To Watch

Latest deals and trending companies

Open Deal: The Wyoming Exchange Building the "New York Stock Exchange for Nonprofits." Watch an investor talk by co-founders on WYDE’s mission & news.

OpenAI — Launched Frontier end-to-end platform for enterprises to build and manage AI agents. + GPT-5.3 Codex, an enhanced coding model improving previous versions by 25%.

Anthropic — Released Opus 4.6, featuring innovative 'agent teams'. Plans an employee share sale at a $350B valuation, alongside a funding round for over $20B.

Orbital Data Centers — Elon Musk unveils plan for development of orbital data centers to revolutionize data storage and processing.

Intel — Announced plans to enter the GPU market, challenging Nvidia. CEO Lip-Bu Tan revealed this at the Cisco AI Summit, focusing on gaming and AI chips.

Lunar Energy — The CA home batteries startup raised $232M to expand their innovative grid solutions, highlighting their growth potential and market impact.

ElevenLabs — Raised $500M led by Sequoia, boosting its valuation to $11B. Existing backers a16z and Iconiq increased their stakes to support global expansion and new tech segments.

Resolve AI — Achieved unicorn status with a $125M Series A, led by Lightspeed at a $1B valuation. Automates site reliability engineering using AI.

Resolve AI — Co-founded by former Splunk executives, this $1B-valued automating system reliability engineering startup raised $125M in a Series A led by Lightspeed.

Fundamental — The stealth AI startup has raised a $255M Series A. Its new model, Nexus, offer structured data analysis to Fortune 100 clients and AWS.

Buzzy Tools & Tech

The Latest Trending Tools & Cutting Edge Technology Developments

Buzzy Tools

Buzzy Tools To Watch and Try Today

Cowork Plugins — Customizable plugins for workflows in sales, finance, marketing.

Perplexity — Model Council runs three AI models in parallel for improved accuracy.

Fibr AI — AI agents create personalized, real-time web experiences, $6M from Accel.

Supabase — Enabled MCP server installation on web and desktop for latest models.

Amazon — Alexa+ offers improved AI for natural conversations + itinerary planning.

Virtuals — "60 Days" tokenization feature - tokenize ideas risk-free for AI agents.

Superagent — AI assistant creates fact-checked reports for strategic planning.

Buzzy Technology

Buzzy Tech Discoveries and Breakthroughs Trending Today

Moltbook — Fixed a security flaw that exposed data of 6,000+ users.

Enzymatic Microbubble bots — Ultrasound bubbles deliver drugs to tumors.

Atomic-Scale Imaging — New quantum tunneling optical method sub-nanometer resolution

Google AI for Species — AI reduces genome sequencing time/cost

AI Credit Concerns — AI risks software debt as innovations threaten products

Space Race

Orbital Data Centers — Elon Musk unveils plan for development of orbital data centers to revolutionize data storage and processing.

Cryptocurrency News

The Latest News in Crypto & Blockchain

Open Deal: The Wyoming Exchange Building the "New York Stock Exchange for Nonprofits." Watch an investor talk by co-founders on WYDE’s mission & news.

Senate Crypto Bill — The Senate Agriculture Committee advanced a crypto market structure bill aiming for a national regulatory framework under the CFTC.

Treasury Scrutiny — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent faced criticism over ties between World Liberty Financial, Trump, and the UAE.

Ethereum Hyper-Scaling — To boost Ethereum by ~1000x, new, cheaper state forms are proposed. Vitalik Buterin claims Eth’s original Layer 2 vision is outdated with Layer 1 updates.

Paradigm Predictions — A new tool offering a browsable and filterable map of prediction markets will target events like the 2026 World Cup and elections.

Anchorage Digital Boost — Secured a $100M investment from Tether, valuing it at $4.2B. The funding supports secure digital asset infrastructure.

Hyperliquid — Crypto options and prediction markets startup is enhancing its platform with general-purpose outcome trading to offer fully collateralized contracts.

Breaking News: $EAT hits All-Time High Marketcap and Meals Funded ($14.4M MC & 5000 meals)

Ending Hunger is public!

The first crypto 501c4 nonprofit (WYDE: END HUNGER $EAT) that has aimed to use trade fees to feed those who are hungry has just hit it’s all time high ($14.4M FDV) the same day it reached the milestone of funding 6000 meals.

Coinbase Listing: $EAT

It was launched on the Wyoming Decentralized Exchange and is now tradable on Coinbase.

About WYDE: END HUNGER($EAT)

  • Tradable on Coinbase - TRADE

  • The first cause coin with an organizational structure behind it (DUNA 501c4 federally approved tax exempt organization).

  • The $EAT team is working with some of the most well-respected nonprofits in America

  • Every trade funds verified food banks and operators who impact their local community.

  • Holding $EAT provides you with governance in the organization (coming soon)

  • Fair launched and fully decentralized.

  • Meals Funded so far: 5,100 / Next Milestone: 10,000

  • Current number of holders: 548

Visit www.wyde.org for more information on Wyoming Decentralized Exchange

Follow Us On Social Media