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This Week’s Top Stories

“Donald Trump Is Walking His Talk on Crypto And Bitcoin.” – This Week

• While Donald Trump did not mention Bitcoin or crypto during his inauguration speech on Monday evening, this past week had a lot of momentum and historical headlines on crypto. All of this came, of course, after the weekend, two days after Donald Trump and his team launched the official Trump Coin, but more on this later.
• On Wednesday, Trump pardoned Ross Ulbricht, who was serving a sentence for founding Silk Road, the infamous black-market bazaar, in 2011. Ulbricht was arrested in 2013 and had been in prison since then. Trump’s full and unconditional pardon for Ross Ulbricht was one of his promises made to the Bitcoin community during his election campaign.
• In his speech at the World Economic Forum on Thursday evening, Donald Trump stated that the United States will become the global hub for artificial intelligence and crypto. This was essentially the first time that Donald Trump mentioned the word “crypto” during his first week of presidency in a public speech. Shortly after, the news broke that he officially signed an executive order on cryptocurrency. Let’s break this executive order down to highlight the most important aspects of it.

“Executive Order: Strengthening American Leadership In Digital Financial Technology.” – Thursday, 23 January 2025

• Digital Assets and Innovation: The executive order emphasizes that the digital asset industry plays a crucial role in driving innovation, economic development in the U.S., and international leadership. President Trump and his administration aim to support the responsible growth and adoption of digital assets, blockchain technology, and related technologies across all sectors of the economy. The primary objective is to provide regulatory clarity and certainty.
• Establishment of the President’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets: A new Working Group will be chaired by White House AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks. The group will include the Secretary of the Treasury, the SEC Chair, and other relevant department heads.
• Federal Regulatory Framework: The Working Group is tasked with proposing a Federal regulatory framework governing the issuance and operation of digital assets, including stablecoins, within the United States.
• National Digital Asset Stockpile: The Working Group will evaluate the potential creation and maintenance of a national digital asset stockpile. It will propose criteria for establishing such a stockpile, potentially sourced from cryptocurrencies lawfully seized by the Federal Government through its law enforcement efforts.
• Revocation of Previous Orders: The Executive Order revokes the previous administration’s Digital Assets Executive Order and the Treasury Department’s Framework for International Engagement on Digital Assets. These earlier measures were criticized for suppressing innovation and undermining U.S. economic liberty and global leadership in digital finance.
• Prohibition of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs): Except where required by law, agencies are prohibited from undertaking any action to establish, issue, or promote CBDCs within the jurisdiction of the United States or abroad.

“The Ethereum Saga Continues.” – This Week

• Leadership Changes: Last week, Vitalik mentioned that there will be significant changes to the leadership structure of the Ethereum Foundation. He also outlined several goals, including expanding the technical knowledge of the leadership team, improving communication with developers and users, bringing in fresh talent, and broadening the Foundation's use of decentralized and privacy-centric technology.
• Vitalik Defends Aya Miyaguchi: On Monday, Vitalik responded to rising calls for the resignation of current Ethereum Foundation director Aya Miyaguchi, arguing that such demands only make organizational changes more difficult. He directly replied on X to a post from a community member urging Miyaguchi to step down.
• Foundation Criticism & Staking Plans: The Foundation has recently faced heavy criticism for its perceived lack of participation in the Ethereum ecosystem. However, on Monday, Vitalik tweeted that the Ethereum Foundation is exploring the option of staking its nearly $1 billion in holdings, citing reduced regulatory risks.
• New Multisig Wallet & DeFi Participation: Also on Monday, an Ethereum Foundation employee tweeted that the Foundation has set up a new multisig wallet and initiated the transfer of 50,000 ETH. He also noted that the Foundation is using this new wallet to participate in the DeFi ecosystem and that they have already conducted a test transaction on Aave.
• Second Ethereum Foundation Rumors: Rumors about a second Ethereum Foundation circulated this week after a mysterious account appeared on X. The speculation gained traction when Konstantin Lomashuk reposted the tweet on his personal profile. He later clarified that no second foundation has been created but mentioned that more organizations contributing to Ethereum would be beneficial. He promised to share further thoughts at a later time.
• “Etherealize” Announcement: On Thursday, a new group funded by the Ethereum Foundation and called “Etherealize” was created and announced on X. The organization appears to be an institutional marketing and product arm for the Ethereum ecosystem, aiming to accelerate adoption by bringing institutions to Ethereum.
• Vitalik’s 2025 Strategy: This morning, Vitalik published an article discussing Ethereum’s 2025 strategy. You can read his article here.

A Quick Crypto Overview: A Volatile Week With A Lot To Digest

Over the weekend, Trump’s official memecoin sucked liquidity from other memes and altcoins, channelling it all onto Solana, which surged over 35 percent throughout Saturday and Sunday. More on this in a bit.

Bitcoin reached a new all-time high on Monday morning, likely in anticipation of Donald Trump’s Inauguration speech. What followed was a week of crazy volatility in the crypto market.

The total market capitalization started the week at $3.48 trillion, is currently sitting at $3.56 trillion, and experienced wild swings this week as uncertainty in the market persists. On Crypto Twitter, opinions remain divided: half of the participants are calling for a macro cycle top, while the other half is convinced that the cycle is just getting started.

Trump and the developments in the U.S. are very much in focus, and it remains to be seen how this will all unfold over the coming weeks and months. While the market seemed to experience some disappointment yesterday due to the absence of a clear statement regarding a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve in the U.S., it is likely that market participants will soon recognize the positive implications of the executive order for the growth of digital assets in the United States and worldwide.

Below, you can see the Bitcoin chart from this week. The uncertainty and the wild headlines are clearly reflected in the volatility the crypto market experienced throughout the week.

Chart of the Week: President Trump Launched His Own Memecoin

It still sounds crazy to us, but the President of the United States launched his own memecoin two days before stepping into office. And not only that – his wife launched her own memecoin one day later. So, let’s quickly rewind what happened: During Friday night, Trump posted on his social media channels that he launched his personal meme token, TRUMP. As most Europeans were likely asleep during this time, many probably missed the launch and the potential for generational wealth, as the meme quickly took off.

The Trump family still holds 80 percent of the token, currently worth more $27 billion. Their tokens are currently locked and will be released over the course of the next 18 months. The TRUMP token launched on Solana and was quickly added to several of the largest exchanges over the span of a couple of days. To name just a few, Coinbase, Binance, and Bybit all launched trading for TRUMP very quickly.

The top on-chain traders, as visualized by Dexscreener, made huge profits, with the largest PNL sitting at $34 million, followed by $33 million and $27 million.

The total market cap of the TRUMP token surged to $15 billion on Sunday and is currently sitting at roughly $7 billion. In the hours following the launch, various other altcoins took a hit as the whole crypto community aped into TRUMP, sucking liquidity from other projects. Solana was one of the few beneficiaries of the launch, as the TRUMP token was launched on Solana.

Trump responded to the TRUMP token for the first time during a meeting with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and others. Trump mentioned that he doesn’t know much about it, just that he launched it and that it was really successful. When told he had apparently made several billion dollars on it, he simply responded that this is “peanuts for these guys.”

TRUMP took a big hit to the downside when the official token of Melania Trump, his wife, launched on Sunday. The launch of MELANIA was initially successful, reaching a market capitalization of more than $2 billion, but it quickly traded to the downside, giving back most of its gains over the course of Monday and Tuesday. The launch of MELANIA was criticized by many market participants, as it was seen as a more obvious cash grab than the official TRUMP token.

What’s Happening On-Chain? World Liberty Financial On A Buying Spree

While Trump and his family launched two memecoins over the weekend, their family project, World Liberty Financial (WLFI), continued its buying spree over the course of this week. WLFI now holds 

• $190 million in ETH, 
• almost $60 million in wrapped BTC, 
• $50 million in staked ETH, 
• $44 million in USDC, 
• $10 million in TRX, 
• $7 million in AAVE, 
• $7 million in LINK, 
• and $5 million in ENA, bringing their total crypto holdings to almost $380 million.

You can check their holdings here.

Digital Asset Fund Flows: Trump Euphoria Brings Back Large Inflows Last Week

Last week, digital asset investment products recorded inflows totaling $2.2 billion. Bitcoin leads the pack, as always, with $1.9 billion in net inflows, followed by Ethereum with $246 million and XRP with almost $31 million. When looking at regional money flows, the U.S. is leading with more than $2 billion in net inflows, followed by Switzerland with net inflows of almost $90 million last week.

The numbers for the Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs this week show large interest in the products, with Bitcoin currently sitting on more than $1 billion in net inflows, while Ethereum shows muted interest with slightly less than $150 million in net inflows.

In terms of potential new digital asset investment products, this week the CME Group added pages for XRP and SOL futures on its beta website, indicating that both are expected to launch on February 10, pending regulatory approval. CME later communicated that the leak was an error and that there are no final decisions available yet.

There were also some interesting statements from BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink, who stated in an interview in Davos at the WEF that he believes we could see prices of up to $700,000 per BTC if people adopt the suggested 2 to 5 percent allocation to bitcoin. In another interview, he stated that he is truly a big believer in blockchain and that he wants the SEC to rapidly approve the tokenization of bonds and stocks. Interesting comments from Larry Fink once more, reaching a broad audience on large TV channels straight from Davos.

Market Sentiment: Stocks Back In Neutral & Crypto Apps On The Rise

While the CNN fear and greed index spent quite some time in fear territory over the last few weeks, it is now back in neutral levels. The crypto market is still in greed territory but slightly down from extreme greed levels earlier this week.

Do you remember last week’s update on the AAII investor sentiment survey? We saw their members at their least bullish levels since November 2023... Well, now they are all bullish again – at least 43.4 percent of them, up from 25 percent last week. Interesting, but not surprising, as the S&P 500 closed at record highs yesterday and U.S. equities generally traded to the upside during Trump’s first week of his second term.

The position of the Phantom Wallet in the App Store increased from below 500 to rank 15 on Monday, largely attributed to President Trump’s memecoin launch. The app is now back to rank 76 today. Not only did Phantom gain some ground, but the Coinbase app also reached a new top rank this week at rank 16 and is now back to place 29.

Other Relevant News

• U.S. President Donald Trump has appointed CFTC Commissioner Caroline Pham as acting chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. – Link
• U.S. President Donald Trump has appointed Republican Mark Uyeda as acting chair of the SEC, succeeding former chair Gary Gensler. – Link
• The official website of DOGE, the U.S. government efficiency department led by Musk, has been launched, using Dogecoin as the avatar at the time of the launch. – Link
• MicroStrategy has acquired 11’000 BTC for $1.1 billion at $101’191 per bitcoin. – Link
• TON will become the exclusive blockchain infrastructure powering Telegram’s mini app ecosystem. – Link
• MicroStrategy shareholders approve increasing shares from 330 million to 10.3 billion (55.8% approval). – Link
• Ledger co-founder Balland released after kidnapping in France. – Link
• Another Court Orders Treasury to Lift Tornado Cash Sanctions. – Link
• SEC rescinds controversial crypto accounting guidance SAB 121. – Link
• Morgan Stanley CEO Ted Pick says bank will work with U.S. regulators on offering crypto. – Link
• Senator Lummis announces new role as Chair of the Senate Banking Digital Assets Subcommittee. – Link

Looking Ahead: Trump Is Delivering On his Promises, What Now?

The long-awaited Trump Inauguration is behind us, and the first executive order for crypto is officially signed. Trump has furthermore delivered on many of his promises from during his election campaign. So far, so good! While there is no new concrete information on the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, as this bill will have to follow the official process, there is now news on a potential digital asset stockpile. The market did not really react much to this headline from yesterday, which is understandable, as the Working Group will “only” evaluate it and because it would likely only include digital assets that had previously been seized by the U.S. government. The actual buying of bitcoin or other digital assets is still up in the air and will likely take months, if not years, to materialize.

While the news from the U.S. is perceived as positive for the crypto market, there are still quite a few concerned voices, as such developments have often indicated multi-year highs for bitcoin and crypto.

Bitcoin is currently trading above $105’000, and the total market capitalization is above $3.5 trillion, both showing resilience. The S&P 500 closed at record highs yesterday, and the U.S. Dollar Index is down almost 2.5 percent from its recent high above 109. It remains to be seen whether we are getting more crypto-specific executive orders or headlines in the coming days or weeks, and if not, it could mean that one should watch the U.S. stock market and macro developments for hints toward the trend in the coming weeks and months. Given it’s only been a few days since the new administration has been in office, the outlook regarding regulation for crypto is certainly perceived as optimistic by many market participants and institutions.

Below, you can find some of the key data releases and events to watch out for next week.

Tuesday, 28 January 2025

• U.S. – Atlanta Fed GDPNow
• China – Holiday, Chinese New Year

Wednesday, 29 January 2025

• U.S. – FOMC Statement, Fed Interest Rate Decision
• China – Holiday, Chinese New Year

Thursday, 30 January 2025

• China – Holiday, Chinese New Year
• Eurozone – GDP
• Eurozone – ECB Interest Rate Decision
• U.S. – GDP, Initial Jobless Claims, PCE Prices

Friday, 31 January 2025

• China – Holiday, Chinese New Year
• U.S. – Core PCE Price Index