The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones! (weekly crypto updates)

What happened in crypto the past week? Bitcoin is up and down, like a yo-yo. Trump may be to blame, when he is not busy launching memecoins. Gary Gensler went home on January 20. What else? Read below:

• Bitcoin: MicroStrategy bought another 450.000 BTC while the exchanges hit a 6-year low. Fed's rate cut drama pushed BTC down to $90K, only to come back shortly after to $108K. Then dropped to $89K. As I write this, it is getting close to $105K. A true rollercoaster. HashKey is talking about a $300K BTC this year. Wow! Coinbase is bringing back BTC-backed loans, partnering with Morpho Labs to offer up to $100.000 in USDC loans against your BTC holdings.

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• Ethereum: ETH lagged behind, rising only 2.71%, compared with 7.91 for BTC. Swiss retail bank PostFinance launched ETH staking for 2.7M clients.

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• Altcoins and stablecoins: Remember that only 293 wallets out of more than 13.5M made over $1M in profit from Pump.fun, can you do it? Binance's altcoin trading volume hit 78% while BTC's dominance dropped. A Lisk airdrop is ongoing, with 47 days remaining to climb the leatherboard (feel free to use my referral 0fRpWD if needed). You can use Velodrome or Okutrade for daily transactions. I did have some fun with Intract, where you do quests for NFT and even win some crypto in contests. Tether (USDT) is relocating its entire operation from the British Virgin Islands to El Salvador. Even after Coinbase Europe delisted USDT, and USDC increased its market cap from $42B to $46B, Tether is still leading with a $137B market cap. Dogecoin jumped 11%. XRP went up 15% too. Tron launched USDD 2.0 with a 20% APY, with some similarities to Luna stablecoin, so, I will not really trust it much. Phantom Wallet raised $150M in a Series C funding round. Check Jupiter January airdrop, as the checker is live. Canary Capital updated the paperwork for a Litecoin ETF. Litecoin ETF could attract as much as $580M in inflows.

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• NFTs and blockchain games: Azuki announced the launch of the ANIME token on ETH and Arbitrum in January 2025, mirroring the PENGU token. The NFTs just closed their roughest year since 2020, with trading dropping 19% to $13.7, and sales crashed 18% too, to 50M transactions. On Splinterlands, we are getting ready for a new card collection, with some cool summoners that are now auction-only, yet it seems quite expensive. Check my Holozing article to learn about a new blockchain game that looks full of potential. I am also playing Golemancer on Hive, and it is quite profitable, I would say, with some great updates lately. Check this article that I wrote about it: Link.

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• Good news: Coinbase won a round against the SEC, as judges called the commission's crypto approach as 'arbitrary'. Pantera Capital thought that Trump's inauguration would be big for crypto. The next US Treasury Secretary could be crypto's best friend. ETF giants are flooding the SEC with ETF applications, as Gary Gensler's final day was on January 20. MoonPay acquired Solana-powered crypto payments processor Helio for $175M. Sygnum reached a valuation of more than $1B, achieving Unicorn status. Thailand weights allowing BTC ETFs on local exchanges.

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• Bad news: Mango Markets will close after the $110M exploit drama, as its TVL dropped from $210M in November to $9M. Bitmex was ordered to pay $100M in fines by a DoJ judge. CFTC scrutinizes Crypto.com sports derivatives contracts.

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• Joke of the week: The Trumps are taking over crypto with the TRUMP token dominating the crypto space at a $15B market cap, and the MELANIA token hitting $5B too. Some accused them of starting pump-and-dump schemes.

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All the best,

George

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Why not...

...have fun and win rewards on my favourite blockchain games (Splinterlands- Hearthstone-like card game) (Golem Overlord - Play2Earn game on Hive) (Upland - real-life virtual land) (Holozing - Pokemon-like game)and (Rising Star - Music creators game).

...get crypto while writing on Publish0x blog, using Presearch search engine to maximize your income with PRE tokens. Use Torum instead of Twitter . I am also writing for crypto on Grill and Hive.