What happened in crypto the past week? Bitcoin is in trouble as the US is creating more drama. ETH is underperforming. Solana shows potential. What else? Read below:
- Bitcoin: Spot BTC ETFs attracted a $1.9B inflow in just 2 days. Bitcoin miners are amassing BTC reserves to fortify themselves against tightening margins in an increasingly competitive landscape. The US government had been cleared to sell 69.370 BTC worth $6.5B, seized from the former darknet marketplace Silk Road. Before Trump becomes the president, just because he wants to keep all the 210K BTC worth $21B plus the US Treasury and the Fed should also buy 1M BTC in the next 5 years. That is 5% of the total supply for you. Bhutan SAR has announced plans to incorporate cryptocurrencies (including BTC, ETH and BNB), into its strategic reserves. MicroStrategy bought 1070 BTC for $101M, a bit less than usual. Gary Gensler's last speech made an interesting mention of "Bitcoin versus everything else". Was that a hint of what will come? Some institutions made big money, dumping 79K BTC at $108K, and buying back 34K BTC at $94K. The US entities are now dominating BTC holdings, with 65% more than all the offshore players combined.
- Ethereum: ETH is down 6.46%, underperforming BTC. Ethereum has faced a challenging start to the year, shedding 15% from its recent local highs and dipping to a low of $3,157. But we also had net outflows surpassing $1.4 billion, the highest level since November 2024, which made some people think that a rebound is coming. Right now we are at $3321.
- Altcoins and stablecoins: Pump.fun dominated 70% of all token launches on Solana this weekend. The first US Solana ETF may change everything if it is approved in January. Will this happen soon enough? 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. Ripple will use data feeds from the provider Chainlink to boost RLUSD stablecoin use in DeFi. The memecoins are taking a hard hit as the market turns red.
- NFTs and blockchain games: The GameFi market cap saw a slight drop from $25.36 billion to $24.95 billion over the last seven days. 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. Fun fact, if you are good at shooting games, try this one: BR Infinite: a “Real Money Shooter” where players deposit funds to compete, earning money for each in-game kill. @pvmihalache, tell your son about this.
- Good news: Canadian prime minister's resignation may clear a path for a less crypto-resistant government, with the frontrunner wowing to make the country a crypto capital. Kucoin is still my favourite exchange for the UK, unlike Binance, which cut off all the potential ways to generate a profit here. Backpack Exchange is set to expand its footprint in the EU, after acquiring FTX EU, the European arm of the bankrupt exchange FTX. Thailand launched a crypto payment pilot program for tourists in Phuket. Standard Chartered secured a Luxembourg license to offer crypto custody services.
- Bad news: CryptoQuant thinks that we are in the final stage of this bull run. But others are thinking that the end will come sometime by mid-March. Coinbase has alerted its customers that it may be compelled to share data with a US regulator, related to their interactions with the prediction markets platform Polymarket. The UK Treasury excluded crypto staking from the definition of the CIS (Collective Scheme Investment) scheme. In the UK, CIS are arrangements in which the participants are entitled to the profit or the income generated. According to the CFTC Chair, the crypto rules could take two years to finalize.
- Joke of the week: An early Bitcoin investor from Texas had been ordered by a federal judge to relinquish access to his cryptocurrency holdings by handing over the private keys and access codes to his wallet after he was sentenced for tax fraud over $3.7M in Bitcoin sales, making this the first criminal tax evasion prosecution centred on cryptocurrency.
All the best,
George
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.