Today's news tips:
BTC breaks through $109,000, up 3.95% on the day
Binance Futures will launch MELANIAUSDT 1-25x USDT perpetual contracts
Robinhood announces that it has launched TRUMP
Trump's wife issues Meme coin MELANIA, with a current market value of about $6.4 billion
Trump will be sworn in at 1 a.m. Beijing time on January 21
Italian Lawmakers Urge Country’s Banking Foundation to Buy Bitcoin
Regulatory/Macro
Thailand plans to launch crypto regulatory sandbox in Phuket this October
Former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said a cryptocurrency sandbox is expected to be launched in Phuket in October, according to the Thailand Post. While discussing the ASEAN economy, Thaksin said Thailand is more willing to promote cryptocurrency than any other country in the region, especially after U.S. President-elect Donald Trump plans to adopt cryptocurrencies. He said other countries in the region are also keen to hold talks with Thailand on cryptocurrencies, which he called an opportunity to inject money into the economic system. When asked about his recent remarks about inviting ASEAN countries to talks on the issue, Thaksin said such discussions are ongoing. He stressed that cryptocurrencies should be adopted quickly because delays could cause the best talent in the field to migrate to the United States. He noted that cryptocurrency should not be confused with gambling, calling it a new form of currency backed by assets such as gold or government bonds. He said these currencies, known as "stablecoins," are less risky than other currencies. He said Thailand would not accept high-risk cryptocurrencies and expected to launch a cryptocurrency sandbox involving the private sector in October.
TRUMP Coin Purchase Terms Include Class Action Waiver
According to the official website of TRUMP Coin, the purchase terms of TRUMP Coin include a class action waiver clause. The clause reads: To the extent permitted by law, investors participating in the purchase agree not to initiate, join or participate in any class action lawsuit against any insured person for any claim, dispute or controversy. Investors agree to enter injunctive relief to stop such lawsuits or remove you as a participant in the lawsuit. Investors agree to pay the attorney fees and litigation costs incurred by any insured person in seeking such relief. This clause prevents investors from initiating, joining or participating in class actions: (i) does not constitute a waiver of any rights or remedies for investors to file claims individually, nor does it constitute a waiver of class actions in the binding arbitration described above; (ii) is an independent agreement. Investors may opt out of these dispute resolution clauses by providing written notice of decision within thirty (30) days from the date of their first visit to the website.
Trump will be sworn in at 1 a.m. Beijing time on January 21
According to Jinshi, Trump will be sworn in by Chief Justice Roberts at 12:00 noon Eastern Time on the 20th (1:00 a.m. Beijing Time on the 21st) and will then deliver his inaugural address. The three richest men in the United States, Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg, attended the event together. Two sources said that Trump is preparing to issue a large number of executive orders and directives on the first day of his presidency, with a total of more than 100 items, covering immigration, energy production, etc. The cost of official activities comes from Trump's inauguration committee. Except for the cost of the swearing-in ceremony at the Capitol, which will be borne by taxpayers, all other expenses will be borne by the committee. Bezos, Zuckerberg, Cook and Altman promised to donate $1 million each to the committee. According to media reports, the Trump committee raised more than $170 million this time.
El Salvador added 11 BTC today, and its current holdings are worth over $600 million
On-chain data shows that 37 minutes ago, El Salvador added 11 BTC (US$1,113,508), bringing his total holdings to 6,043.18 BTC, worth US$608,264,513.
Italian Lawmakers Urge Country’s Banking Foundation to Buy Bitcoin
According to Decrypt, an Italian lawmaker is urging Italy's banking foundation to invest in Bitcoin, arguing that such investments could accelerate the country's support for the leading cryptocurrency. However, despite the United States' push for strategic Bitcoin reserves at both the national and state levels, he does not think Italy will establish similar reserves in the short term. Italian lawmaker Marcello Coppo said in an interview last Friday that banking foundations should allocate a small portion of their income to digital assets such as Bitcoin to potentially obtain a significant return on investment; the foundation's investment in Bitcoin could inspire public support for the cryptocurrency, which has long been an object of "excessive distrust" in Italy; we can start from a very low risk place, and any positive test can serve as a case study and example. Earlier on January 14, it was reported that Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo purchased 11 BTC for about 1 million euros.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed a lawsuit against Nova Labs, the creator of the Helium network, accusing the company of selling unregistered securities and misleading investors, The Block reported. This is the latest and possibly final enforcement action under outgoing Chairman Gary Gensler. The lawsuit, filed last Friday, targets three tokens associated with Helium: Helium Network Token (HNT), Helium Mobile Token (MOBILE) and Helium Internet of Things Network Token (IoT), which the SEC alleges are sold as unregistered securities. The lawsuit also accuses Nova Labs of misleading investors about multiple high-profile partnerships. Although the company told investors that companies such as Nestlé, Lime and Salesforce were using the network, the lawsuit claims that these companies were neither customers nor "users" of the network. "In fact, when Nestlé and Lime learned that Nova Labs had publicly boasted about their alleged relationship, each company sent a cease and desist letter to Nova Labs," the lawsuit states. The lawsuit calls for fines against the company and prohibits it from buying, offering or selling any crypto assets offered as securities. Haleem posted a provocative message on X on Sunday, calling the lawsuit "the last gasp of America's failed crusade against crypto companies." Haleem said: "The SEC wasted two years of our time and millions of our dollars pursuing any allegation they could think of... I don't get angry often, but this series of events is infuriating." Regarding the accusation that Helium misled investors, Haleem said: "We have addressed this issue in the past and worked with every company named in the complaint." Haleem concluded: "We will vigorously defend ourselves and continue the record of abject failures and blatant lies of the SEC led by Gensler. Not only for us, but for all DePIN projects. If the Helium hotspot is a security, then all DePINs are in danger. We will not let this happen."
Financing/Acquisition
OSL Completes Acquisition of Japanese Cryptocurrency Exchange Coin Best
OSL, a Hong Kong-listed company, issued a voluntary announcement, announcing that it has completed the acquisition of Coin Best, a licensed Japanese crypto asset trading platform. Coin Best will become an indirect subsidiary of OSL Group.
According to official news, the blockchain-based animation platform Oshi announced the completion of a $12.5 million financing, led by Polychain Capital and Superscrypt, with participation from Folius Ventures, Sfermion, The Spartan Group, Nomad Capital, CMT Digital, etc. According to reports, Oshi is an open animation platform based on blockchain. Through Oshi, fans can directly support the animation projects they love and get exclusive offers. The platform's IP licensing infrastructure enables IP owners to maintain control of their works while establishing connections with dedicated global partners.
Project News
Binance Futures will launch MELANIAUSDT 1-25x USDT perpetual contracts
According to the official announcement, Binance Futures will launch the MELANIAUSDT perpetual contract at 17:30 (ET8) on January 20, 2025, with a maximum leverage of 25 times.
Robinhood announces listing of TRUMP token
Robinhood announced on the X platform that OFFICIAL TRUMP (TRUMP token) is now available for trading on Robinhood.
Trump family crypto project WLFI buys yatogame.eth and two other ENS domain names
Information on the chain shows that the multi-signature address of the Trump family's crypto project World Liberty (WLFI) has bought two ENS domain names, 9290.eth and yatogame.eth, again in the past hour. Earlier today, it was reported that WLFI bought four ENS domain names, WorldLiberty.eth, trumpcoin.eth, erictrump.eth, and barrontrump.eth.
The additional 5% supply of WLFI has started selling, and the price per piece has increased to $0.05
According to the official website, the Trump family's crypto project World Liberty Financial (WLFI) has started selling an additional 5% supply of 5 billion WLFI, with the price of each coin increased to $0.05, while the price in the previous sale was $0.015. Currently, about 550 million of this 5% supply has been sold, worth $27.5 million.
Solana restaking platform Solayer said on X platform: "We received over $57.24 million in subscriptions through the $10.5 million community Emerald debit card sale and the first LAYER distribution. With over 40,000 participants and 200,000+ registered users, the public distribution of LAYER is now complete. Emerald debit cards are being distributed."
Network3 will take a snapshot on January 21
According to official news, the decentralized Edge AI infrastructure Network3 announced that it will take a snapshot of users at 8:00 am UTC on January 21 (4:00 pm Beijing time on January 21). Users who have completed registration and bound their wallets before that are eligible to receive airdrops in the future. After the snapshot is completed, the software and hardware nodes will switch to produce N3C computing power tokens, which can be exchanged for the main network $N3 tokens. According to previous news, Network3 token $N3 will start spot trading on Bybit, Gate.io, and BingX on January 22. Currently, Network3 is holding a Pre-TGE airdrop event, and 50 million tokens will be rewarded to the community and node users. Users can log in to the Network3 official website to complete the specified tasks to get a free airdrop quota of 40,000 points. Network3 announced on July 23, 2024 that it had completed a pre-seed & seed round of financing of US$5.5 million. Investors include well-known VCs such as Borderless, EV3 Labs, IoTeX, SNZ, Bing Ventures, Waterdrip Capital, and Web3port Foundation.
Students for Trump denies fraud allegations after selling half supply of meme coin 'TIKTOK'
According to The Block, conservative activist and co-founder of Students for Trump Ryan Fournier has faced strong criticism from Meme Coin traders for selling half of the supply of Meme Coins created to celebrate the lifting of the TikTok ban. Fournier said in X Space on Sunday night that he came up with the idea of a TikTok-themed Meme Coin with a Meme Coin trader (presumably X user "Asta") after TikTok was relaunched in the United States. According to the two traders, Asta created the coin and sent half of the supply to Fournier. The coin's value quickly soared, with a market value of more than $90 million. However, when the price began to fall, Fournier admitted to selling his reserves. A wallet previously confirmed by Fournier exchanged 505 million TIKTOK tokens for SOL worth about $700,000 at 20:28 UTC on Sunday. "All of a sudden Asta sold and then I sold so I don't know what happened... I think that guy is a scammer and he scammed me and I did the same," Fournier said. Although Asta's wallet does not show any record of sales of TIKTOK tokens, Fournier claims that Asta has been buying the token from other accounts. Fournier denied profiting from the sales in X Space and repeatedly insisted that he was scammed by the token creator, claiming that he was "almost at a loss" after buying and then selling the tokens. He said: "We will correct the mistake, no matter what I do, if I have to give you $50,000 in cash, I will find a way to do it. I am very ashamed of what happened today." Fournier also posted on X that he would stay away from cryptocurrency in the future "until I have a better understanding of who to trust" as he looks forward to working for President Trump's new administration. However, in Space, he boasted about his connection to Trump's cryptocurrency adviser.
Justin Sun: TRON DAO invests an additional $45 million in Trump family crypto project WLFI
Justin Sun posted on the X platform: "TRON DAO is continuing to increase its investment in the Trump family's crypto project World Liberty Financial (WLFI), adding an additional $45 million, bringing the total investment to $75 million."
Jupiter: The system is currently under extreme load and is working hard to recover.
Solana Ecosystem Decentralized Exchange Jupiter said on the X platform: "All our systems are currently under extreme load and are working hard to restore normal services as soon as possible. Things worth knowing: We have increased the priority fee and dynamic slippage in automatic mode to help users complete transactions. If you want to try to trade with lower fees/slippage, please use manual mode, but please note that the transaction may be difficult to complete. On Solana, if the transaction fails, the gas fee will still be deducted, so please trade with caution. Especially for perpetual contracts, you can increase the chances of successful transactions by opening long positions with underlying assets such as SOL/BTC/ETH or short positions with USDC."
Phantom said on the X platform that it is seeing a surge in requests per minute, exceeding 8,000,000. While it works to stabilize the platform, transactions may not complete smoothly on the first try.
Trump's wife issues Meme coin MELANIA, with a current market value of about $6.4 billion
Trump's wife Melania said on social media in the early morning that people can now buy the Meme coin MELANIA. According to gmgn data, the market value of MELANIA is currently about 6.4 billion US dollars. Trump forwarded the information. He had previously issued his own exclusive cryptocurrency TRUMP. The coin plunged after his wife announced the issuance of MELANIA, briefly fell below $40, and then rebounded. It has now risen to $46.
Viewpoint
Matrixport said in a statement that the launch of $TRUMP coin over the weekend triggered a trading frenzy, and major centralized exchanges quickly followed suit and launched the coin. However, the $SMELANIA coin that followed quickly fell in price after a brief boom, causing heavy losses to buyers on Sunday. This dramatic market volatility has driven a surge in global trading volume, with Binance's weekend trading volume soaring from $15 billion to $50 billion. Matrixport believes that the surge in trading volume is related to multiple factors, including the dovish tone of the Federal Reserve meeting last week and President Trump's active support for cryptocurrencies. These factors have laid the foundation for the upward volatility of the market, and it is expected that 2025 may continue or even surpass the booming crypto industry in the past few years.
According to WOOX Research market observation, BTC entered a correction state after reaching $106,422. If the correction does not fall below $97,000, it will be considered a normal range, and $89,256 may become the bottom of this round of adjustment. The current market share of BTC is 58.49%.
Gautham Santhosh, co-founder of Polynomial, warned that the continued demand for Ethereum Layer 2 is rapidly exhausting the mainnet blob capacity, with 55% of blobs currently occupied by BASE and World Chain. Since November last year, the blob base fee has exceeded $50 several times, causing a sharp increase in user transaction costs. The Pectra upgrade, which will be launched in March, will increase the blob limit per block to 9, but Santhosh believes that this can only temporarily alleviate the problem, and long-term expansion still requires more solutions.
Dovey Wan, founder of the cryptocurrency fund Primitive Crypto, said that although the market is in a bull market, only a few tokens have hit new highs, reflecting the maturity of the industry and the exhaustion of upper-level funds. She warned that when the market is overly dependent on a few people or projects, sustainability will be challenged. In addition, she emphasized that understanding personal strengths and focusing on areas that suit you are the key to long-term success.
Zack Guzmán, founder of crypto media Coinage, wrote on the X platform: “There is a very important reason why the Trump family launched TRUMP so quickly before the inauguration, and now MELANIA. The fact is that if Trump waits another day, he may face the risk of violating the Constitution and being impeached (again). According to the Constitution, no president may abuse his power for personal gain. Specifically, the Emoluments Clause prohibits the president from obtaining profits or benefits from foreign governments.”
Balaji Srinivasan, former CTO of Coinbase, wrote on the X platform that Meme coins are a zero-sum lottery. It does not create wealth. Every buy order is simply matched with a sell order. After the initial surge, the price will eventually plummet, and the last investor to buy will lose everything. If the platform also takes a commission, it is actually a negative-sum game. If you want to gamble moderately for entertainment, no problem. If you are a professional trader, no problem. But most people should buy assets that will maintain their value in the long term. Sometimes you can add use cases for Meme coins, or maintain their value indefinitely by keeping them hot. But in general, don't invest money you can't afford to lose. I agree that there are indeed some Meme coins that have withstood the test and successfully built communities. I would further point out that many of the top 100 cryptocurrencies are actually "ghost chains" and de facto Meme coins. But in a highly political environment, a rapid surge in prices is likely to bring trouble. A lot depends on what happens after the first big price drop.
Trump takes credit for surge in US stocks and recent all-time highs for Bitcoin
According to The Block, in his last speech before taking office, US President-elect Donald Trump attributed the credit for the stock market surge and Bitcoin's recent record highs. Donald Trump said at the rally: "You have seen results that no one expected. Since the election, the stock market has soared and small business optimism has soared 41 points to a 39-year high. Bitcoin has broken all-time highs again and again. This is the Trump effect." Over the past year, the US stock market has continued to rise, reaching a high in early December shortly after the election. The S&P 500 reached a peak valuation of 6,090 points on December 11, while the Nasdaq reached a high of 20,204 points on December 16. As for Bitcoin, it also peaked in early December, setting a record high of $107,000 on December 17. In the following weeks, it fell to $90,000 before rebounding to over $100,000. However, in the past few hours - with the launch of MELANIA - the price of Bitcoin has fallen below $10,000. His speech came hours after his wife, Melania Trump, launched her own meme coin, MELANIA, with a fully diluted valuation of $5 billion (with a market cap of about $500 million, given that only 10% of the supply is currently in circulation). However, this came at a cost, drawing attention and money from Donald Trump’s own meme coin, Official Trump, which has almost halved in value. Official Trump was launched on January 17 and had a market cap of $14.5 billion at one point — a fully diluted valuation of $72 billion — before falling dramatically to its current market cap of $8.8 billion. Trump did not mention his meme coin or Melania’s in his speech, nor did he mention the resulting drop in the price of Bitcoin.
Important data
According to @ai_9684xtpa, the market value of $BARRON tokens has exceeded 300 million US dollars, and it has soared 456% in 1 hour. Smart money HYWo7...Q1ENp liquidated nearly 17 million tokens 20 minutes ago, investing 109,000 in 7 hours and making a profit of 1.78 million US dollars, with a return rate of 1629.9%.
According to Ember's monitoring, one address has earned up to $59.57 million in $MELANIA transactions, with a multiple of 87 times. The address purchased 5.203 million $MELANIA at 2,500 SOL (about $680,000) in the second minute after $MELANIA went online, with an average purchase price of only $0.13. Subsequently, as the price of $MELANIA rose sharply, the address sold 2.703 million pieces in succession, making a profit of $30.4 million, with an average selling price of $11.25. Currently, the address still holds 2.5 million $MELANIA, now worth about $29.85 million, and its total income (realized and unrealized) has reached $59.57 million.
BTC breaks through $109,000, up 3.95% on the day
The OKX market data shows that BTC has just broken through $109,000 and is currently trading at $109,080.00 per coin, with a daily increase of 3.95%.
According to The Data Ner, a smart money address (insider) spent $800,000 to buy 3.838 million MELANIA (average price $0.21). After that, he sold 1.92 million tokens for $13.14 million. Currently, he still holds 1.92 million tokens (about $24.9 million), with a total estimated profit of about $37.24 million and a return on investment of 46.5 times.
According to Lookonchain monitoring, the whale that purchased 5.2 million MELANIA for $680,000 earlier today sold 203,000 MELANIA for 2.14 million USDC, leaving 5 million MELANIA worth $64.9 million.
According to SolanaFloor data, Solana's DEX trading volume in January has exceeded $158 billion, breaking the $140 billion record set by BNB Chain in May 2021 - the highest record among all blockchains. Solana is also the first blockchain to break $150 billion, achieving this goal in just 20 days, with 11 days left.
According to Onchain Lens monitoring, 2 hours ago, a whale bought 5.2 million MELANIA at a price of US$680,940. The current floating profit is about US$39 million, and no tokens have been sold yet.
