Crypto weekly is authored by maaria and david blumenfeld

PRICE CHANGE: WTD/YTD
- Crypto Market Cap ($3.82T): +10% / +12%
- BTC ($104,996): +11% / +12%
- ETH ($3,423): +4% / +3%
- SOL ($271): +43% / +43%
- UNI ($14.47): +5% / +9%
- OP ($1.90): +6% / +9%
- Tether Mkt Cap ($138B): +1 / 0%
- USDC Mkt Cap ($48B): +5% / +9%
- BTC / ETH Dominance: 55% / 11%

THIS WEEK IN CRYPTO

- President-elect Donald Trump’s meme coin $TRUMP launched on Solana and saw its market cap soar to over $12 billion in 24 hours. Major exchanges like Coinbase and Binance said they intended to list the token on their platforms. Memecoin trading platform Moonshot, the coin’s launch partner, said it processed over $400 million in volume and brought 200k+ new people onchain. Link. Link. Link. Link.

- Bitcoin surged this week as risk assets rallied more broadly following US inflation data that has markets betting on further interest-rate cuts. Link. 

- Senator Cynthia Lummis threatened to bring legal action against the FDIC over alleged destruction of crypto documents related to “Operation Chokepoint 2.0” and the agency’s efforts to limit banking services to the crypto industry. Link. 

- President-elect Donald Trump plans to release an executive order making crypto a national policy priority. He also plans to create a crypto council to advocate for policy priorities. Link. 

- Stablecoins accounted for 63% of illicit crypto transaction volume in 2024 according to a new report from Chainalysis. Link. Report. 

- A federal court ordered the SEC to offer a full explanation for why the agency refused to offer clear rules for crypto securities. The ruling comes in the final week of SEC Chair Gary Gensler’s tenure, likely leaving the response to his successor, Paul Atkins, who is expected to change the regulator’s stance on digital assets. Link. Link. Link. 

- Crypto investment firm Multicoin has published a proposal to change Solana’s current inflation model from fixed emissions to market-oriented that are more dynamic and variable. The goal is to reduce the inflation of SOL. Link. Proposal. 

- Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade is scheduled for March 2025. The hard fork will include improved wallet UX and account abstraction as well as an increase in the maximum amount that can be staked from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH. Link. 

- A class action lawsuit was filed against Solana meme coin launchpad Pump.fun, alleging the platform is selling unregistered securities. The law firm representing the plaintiff filed a similar suit against the team that launched the Hawk Tuah memecoin. Link. Filing.

- Treasury secretary nominee Scott Bessant said in his confirmation hearing that he does not see the necessity for a central bank digital currency in the US. Link. 

- Coinbase launched bitcoin backed lending this week with DeFi protocol Morpho, enabling Coinbase users to borrow USDC against their Bitcoin. Link. 

- XRP, the token linked to Ripple Labs, reached all-time highs and is up over 60% so far this year. Ripple Labs secured a major victory in its lawsuit with the SEC last year, when the judge ruled that XRP was not a security when sold to retail investors. Link.

- Crypto wallet provider Phantom raised $150 million in funding leed by Sequoia and Paradigm, valuing the company at $3 billion. Link.

- Crypto friendly trading platform E-toro plans to go public this year at a targeted $5 billion valuation. The company previously tried to go public via SPAC in 2022 at a $10 billion valuation. Link. 

- NFT trade volume and sales counts in 2024 hit their lowest levels since 2020 according to a new Dapp Radar report. Link. Report.

- Sony’s Ethereum L2 Soneium launched its mainnet this week,  The launch received criticism after multiple meme coins were removed from the blockchain for violating its terms and conditions. Link. Link. 

- Investment firm Digital Currency Group (DCG) agreed to settle and pay $38 million to the SEC over allegations that it misled investors via its lending subsidiary Genesis and the health of its balance sheet. Link.

- Blockchain data analytics platform Chainalysis acquired AI fraud detection startup Alterya for $150 million. Link. 

- Crypto on-ramps provider MoonPay acquired Helio, a Solana-powered crypto payment processor, for $175 million. Link.