(05/52) Weekly Market Insights: The First Steps in Crypto Policy Change

Hot News

• After Trump took office as president, he pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the Silk Road website, who had served more than 11 years in prison. In addition, Trump signed an executive order to establish regulatory norms for the cryptocurrency industry, including exploring the possibility of establishing a national digital asset reserve. Mark Uyeda, the newly appointed acting chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), also established a task force to develop a clear regulatory framework for the cryptocurrency industry. Senator Cynthia also announced that she will serve as chair of the Senate Banking Digital Assets Subcommittee. According to reports, Eric Trump has confirmed that cryptocurrency projects in the United States will enjoy zero capital gains tax. In addition, Musk is also exploring blockchain-based collection solutions for the "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE).
• Institutional interest in cryptocurrencies has reached an all-time high. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has urged the U.S. SEC to approve the tokenization of bonds and stocks. The market value of stablecoins increased by about $5.7 billion last week, the largest single-week increase since November 2024.
• Bitcoin prices rose about 3.8% last week to a new all-time high of $109,400 before quickly pulling back.

Macro Outlook

• The Bank of Japan raised interest rates by 25 basis points, in line with market expectations.
• The direction of the market this week will depend on a number of key factors, including the much-anticipated FOMC meeting of the Federal Reserve, as well as earnings reports from major companies such as Microsoft, Tesla and Apple. In addition, President Trump’s political statements may also affect market sentiment.

The upcoming economic calendar includes:

• Tuesday, January 28, 9:30 p.m.: U.S. durable goods orders for December
• Thursday, January 30, 3:00 a.m.: FOMC meeting
• Thursday, January 30, 9:30 p.m.: U.S. fourth quarter advance GDP data
• Friday, January 31, 9:30 p.m.: U.S. December Core PCE, personal income and personal spending data

Cryptocurrency Market Quick Facts

• The US SEC has rescinded SAB 121, which requires banks to treat digital assets as liabilities on their balance sheets. The rescission of SAB 121 may prompt more and more banks to provide digital asset services.
• US court lifts OFAC sanctions on Tornado Cash.
• REX Advisers has submitted an ETF application to the SEC including TRUMP, ETH, BTC, SOL, XRP, BONK and DOGE.
• Microstrategy shareholders voted to increase their stock offering to buy more Bitcoin.
• Circle announced the acquisition of Hashnote, an issuer of $1.3 billion tokenized money market funds. At the same time, Circle launched the Paymaster feature, allowing users to use USDC to pay gas fees on Arbitrum and Base.

Layer 1 and Layer 2 Public Chains

• Avalanche announced a partnership with Aethir to launch a $100 million infraBUIDL fund to support infrastructure construction and AI projects within the Avalanche ecosystem. Avalanche has been widely considered to be an ideal network for DOGE, and its founder Emin Gün Sirer serves on the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Technology Advisory Committee, further supporting this possibility.
• Atoma announced a partnership with Sui and ElizaOS to launch a $100,000 Sui Agent Typhoon hackathon.
• Sonic announced a $250,000 DeFAI hackathon in partnership with HeyAnon, DoraHacks, and Zerebro.
• TON Network announced that its TON Wallet Link has become the only wallet linking solution for the Telegram Mini-App platform and blockchain wallets.
• Blast launched Blast Mobile and offers up to 50% APY as an incentive for BLAST holders.
• Chintai announced its entry into the US market and is seeking to obtain a securities license from regulators.
• Particle Network has launched UniversalX V2, a cross-chain trading platform that supports multi-chain transactions.

Dapps

• World Liberty Financial (WLFI) announced strategic purchases of WBTC, ETH, AAVE, LINK, TRX, and ENA, and subsequently pledged approximately 19,400 ETH to Lido.
• Jupiter announced that 50% of the protocol fees will be used to buy back JUP. At the same time, Jupiter launched Jupnet, a full-chain network that aims to aggregate all cryptocurrencies (beyond the Solana network) into a single decentralized ledger. In addition, Jupiter acquired a majority stake in popular projects Moonshot and Sonar Watch. Jupiter also launched Spot V2, which includes Ultra Mode, allowing users to view instant slippage estimates, dynamic priority fees, optimized transaction execution, and other features. The team announced that 3 billion JUP has been destroyed as progress in the proposal approved in August to destroy 30% of the JUP supply.
• Virtuals announced its expansion to the Solana network and will convert 1% of transaction fees into SOL as a strategic SOL reserve.
• Andy, the creator of Truth Terminal (TT), announced that the foundation has been established to give TT autonomy and sell approximately 75% of its FARTCOIN holdings to GOAT, with plans to hold GOAT tokens indefinitely.
• Dracula Labs launched DRACULA, a TypeScript-based decentralized AI Agent framework that features cryptographic consensus, rule-based logic, and swarm coordination capabilities.
• REI Network announced a partnership with Arkham to provide its agents with on-chain data insights and better pattern recognition training.
• Kaito launched the Yapper Launchpad, which enables Yaps point holders, influential KOLs and their Genesis NFT holders to vote on projects as the new Yapper Leaderboard. KOLs can earn Yaps points by promoting or posting to gain visibility for Leaderboard projects.
• INFINIT has launched INFINIT Terminal, a DeFAI agent that allows users to perform operations such as trading, lending, and liquidity staking.
• Thorchain announced that if ThorFi Saver and Lending experience large debt redemptions, the protocol may be at risk of insolvency.
• Fluid Protocol has launched Multiply, allowing users to easily create circular leveraged positions on Fluid.
• Liquity V2 is now live on the mainnet, offering user-defined interest rate settings and redistributing 100% of earnings to users.

Governance/Project Updates

• Uniswap V4 is expected to be launched this week.
• Abstract Chain is expected to be launched this week.
• CoW DAO passed CIP-61, which will implement the finalized revenue sharing model starting February 1st.
• Coinbase CEO announces plans to integrate decentralized exchange trading and liquidity support for users.
• ElizaOS founder Shaw announced more details about Eliza V2, which is scheduled to be launched in April 2025 and includes the "Agent Trading Market", "Block Tank" (AI version of Shark Tank), and announced a $10 million developer Magic Fund.

Token Unlock

• GRASS tokens were unlocked on January 28th and represent 1.51% of the total token supply.
• OP tokens were unlocked on January 31st and represent 2.38% of the total token supply.
• SUI tokens were unlocked on February 1st and account for 2.66% of the total token supply.
• DYDX tokens were unlocked on February 1st and represent 2.67% of the total token supply.
• JTO tokens were unlocked on February 7th and account for 3.97% of the total token supply.
• MOVE tokens were unlocked on February 9th and represent 2.17% of the total token supply.
• IO tokens were unlocked on February 11th and account for 2.58% of the total token supply.
• APT tokens were unlocked on February 12th and account for 1.98% of the total token supply.

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