Crypto weekly is authored by maaria and david blumenfeld
January 3rd was the 16th anniversary of the first ever bitcoin transaction. The technology and ideals behind bitcoin and modern day cryptocurrency can be traced back to the infamous cypherpunk listserve in the 1990s, whose contributors included crypto pioneers like Hal Finney and Adam Back. In honor of this cypherpunk community, we have made an archive of the listserve emails available here.
2024 PRICE CHANGE
- Crypto Market Cap ($3.40T): +92%
- BTC ($93,508): +120%
- ETH ($3,336): +46%
- SOL ($189): +86%
- UNI ($13.22): +81%
- POL ($0.45): -53%
- Tether Mkt Cap ($139B): +51%
- USDC Mkt Cap ($43.9B): +79%
2025 PRICE CHANGE: WTD/YTD
- Crypto Market Cap ($3.66T): +8% / +8%
- BTC ($98,345): +5% / +5%
- ETH ($3,637): +9% / +9%
- SOL ($213): +12% / +12%
- UNI ($15.23): +15% / +15%
- OP ($2.08): +19% / +19%
- Tether Mkt Cap ($137B): -1% / -1%
- USDC Mkt Cap ($45.6B): +4% / +4%
- BTC / ETH Dominance: 53% / 12%
Note: Optimism's OP token is replacing Polygon's POL token
2024 YEAR IN REVIEW
January
- The SEC officially approved 11 applications for bitcoin spot ETFs. Link. Link. Tweet.
- The SEC had its Twitter account compromised this week due to not having two-factor authentication enabled, despite the SEC and chairman Gensler promoting the security practice. Link. Link. Tweet. Tweet.
February
- Solana DEX aggregator Jupiter registered nearly $1.4 billion in daily trading volume after its token launch and airdrop. Link.
- Yuga Labs CEO Daniel Alegre stepped down less than a year after joining the company, with Yuga Labs co-founder Greg Solano stepping into the CEO role. Link. Link.
March
- Prediction markets estimated a 30% likelihood of a spot ethereum ETF by May 31st, down from 70% in early January. Link.
- Former president Donald Trump said he could “live with” Bitcoin at a town hall. He said the currency has “taken a life of its own” but would still require some regulation. Link. Clip.
- Ethereum developers successfully completed its Dencun upgrade, most notable for enabling proto-danksharding via EIP-4844. The upgrade is expected to reduce transaction costs across Layer 2s. Link. Link.
- The SEC issued subpoenas to US companies who worked with the Ethereum Foundation, the non-profit that oversees the protocol. The investigation into ethereum reportedly began in 2022 shortly after the blockchain’s shift to proof-of-stake. Link. Link.
April
- The bitcoin halving took place on April 19th, reducing the mining-reward in half to 450 BTC per day and 3.125 BTC per block. Bitcoin undergoes a halving roughly every 4 years, as part of a reduced emissions schedule as it reaches its supply cap of 21 million. Link. Link.
- Consensys, the crypto company behind Metamask and other ethereum infrastructure, sued Gary Gensler and the SEC in an effort to get the courts to rule that ethereum is not a security. Consensys received an SEC Wells Notice alleging it offered unregistered securities to users. Link. Link. Lawsuit.
- Decentralized exchange Uniswap received a Wells Notice from the SEC, indicating the regulatory agency plans to sue the DeFi platform for operating as an unregistered exchange and broker dealer. Link. Link. Tweet. Blog Post.
May
- The SEC green-lit 8 spot ethereum ETFs pending approval of S-1 registration statements. The agency had previously suggested that all tokens outside of bitcoin were securities. Link. Link. Link. Link.
- More than 20% of voters in battleground states considered crypto to be a key issue in the U.S. elections, with 55% expressing concerns about policymakers stifling innovation. Link. Link. Press Release.
- President Joe Biden vetoed a repeal of SEC Staff Accounting Bulletin 121, an accounting rule that would force crypto custodians to treat cryptocurrencies as liabilities on their balance sheets. Link. Link.
- Binance founder CZ was sentenced to four months in prison and a $50 million fine for violating US anti-money laundering laws. Link. Link.
- Robinhood’s crypto arm received a Wells Notice from the SEC for allegedly offering unregistered securities. Link.
June
- Coinbase debuted its much anticipated smart wallet which leverages passkeys instead of 12-24 word seed phrases and allows gasless transactions. Link. Announcement.
- The SEC ended its investigation into ethereum for violations of securities laws with its transition to proof-of-stake. Link.
July
- 5 ethereum spot ETFs received the greenlight from the SEC to begin trading including funds from Fidelity and VanEck. Bitcoin spot ETFs have accumulated over $54 billion in AUM since launching in January. Link. Link. Link. Link.
- The GOP cited key crypto issues, including the right to self-custody, in its official party platform for the 2024 general election. Link. Platform.
- Donald Trump vowed to fire SEC Chairman Gary Gensler on his first day in office and make bitcoin a part of his Treasury policy. Trump also vowed to turn the US into a “bitcoin superpower” and commute the sentence of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht. Link. Link. Link. Link.
- Solana’s DEX ecosystem had higher trading volume than ethereum’s, driven by 2 million weekly active addresses and $24 billion in trading volume from leading DEX Raydium. Link.
August
- Gas on ethereum mainnet reached an all time low of 3 gwei (roughly 5 cents). Link.
- Solana memecoin platform pump.fun passed $100 million in cumulative revenue since launching in January. Link.
- NFT marketplace OpenSea received a Wells Notice from the SEC, indicating the regulator’s intention to sue the company. The SEC alleges the NFTs sold on OpenSea’s platform are unregistered securities. Link. Link. Link. Tweet. Blog Post.
October
- US Bitcoin ETFs amassed $70 billion in net assets since launching in January, more than half the net assets held by US Gold ETFs. Link.
November
- The crypto industry spent $135 million during the 2024 election cycle to back more than 50 pro-crypto candidates, with nearly 100% of those candidates winning their races. Most notably, anti-crypto Democrat Sherrod Brown, who was Chairman of the Senate banking committee, lost the Ohio Senate race to Republican Bernie Moreno. Link. Link. Link. Tweet. Stand with Crypto Results.
- Over $3.6 billion was bet on the election outcome on decentralized prediction marketplace Polymarket, with odds of Trump's victory growing well before the election was called by official outlets. Link. Link.
- The FTX estate expects to start repaying customers in March. FTX recovered $16.5 billion, or 119% of the cash value of customer’s deposits the day the exchange went bankrupt in 2022. Link.
December
- Solana was the top ecosystem for new crypto developers in 2024, beating ethereum for the first time in 8 years. Ethereum remained the most popular overall. Link. Link. Report.
- Microstrategy will be added to the Nasdaq-100 on December 23rd after its stock rallied nearly 500% YTD. Microstrategy is currently the largest corporate owner of Bitcoin, holding over 2% of all Bitcoin supply. Link. Link.
- The FDIC asked banks in 2022 and 2023 to pause cryptocurrency-related activity according to heavily redacted letters obtained in a lawsuit brought by Coinbase. Banking regulators have been accused of conspiring to “de-bank” industry participants in what crypto proponents call “Operation Chokepoint 2.0”. Link. Tweet.
- President-elect Donald Trump selected former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins to replace Gary Gensler as chair of the SEC. Atkins served as Commissioner from 2002-2008. Link. Link.