What happened in crypto in the past week?Bitcoin is entering into the bear market. Solana and XRP get a lot of attention. A lot of memecoins and AI tokens are going down the drain. I found a way to expose myself to BTC via BlackRock, using Freetrade. Feel free to check them. What else? Read below:
Bitcoin: Some are talking about a new way to suppres BTC prices and how the whales are doing it, writing covered calls and hedging on it. At the opposed end, we have the Vangiard's global head of quantitative equity comparing BTC with plush animals, one week after Vanguard opened crypto trading to its 50M clients, letting them to buy BTC, ETH, SOL and XRP ETFs. Marcus Thielen noticed that Bitcoin is still suporting the four-year pattern, but not on halving, it is on the US elections time instead. Strategy bought almost a billion worth of BTC (well, 980M), even as its own stock plunged. Spot Bitcoin ETFs got $457M last Wednesday, with Fidelity getting $391M and BlackRock $111M, so does that means that the institutions are quietly loading up on BTC again? With BTC estimated to hit over $1M by 2035, I know why they do it. Yey, it seems that Bitcoin is officially in bear market, since early October. I cannot wait the bull market again, if this is the bad time. There is also the issue with no quick fix to make BTC quantum resistant, as this may take years to solve. Do we have the time for it? Trump Media shuffled $174M worth of BTC across multiple wallets, sparking speculation about a potential sell-off. So, BTC finished the week up 0.61%.
Ethereum: JPMorgan launched MONY, a tokenized money-market fund on ETH paying yield while you hold the token. Bitmine added another 102K of ETH worth $321M reaching a total of 3.97M tokens (3.2% if the total circulating ETH) worth $12.5B. Trend Research bought another 46.379 ETH this week, becoming the third largest holder. ETHZilla sold 24.291 ETH for $74.5M, using the proceeds to pay off redemption of their senior secured convertible notes. ETH underperformed BTC, increasing only by 0.06% this week.
Altcoins and stablecoins: With Bitcoin price drop, the alts are getting destroyed, if you compare 26% drop for BTC with 36% drop for ETH, AI tokens 48% and memecoins 56% down in the same period. Something interesting, talking about potential, SOL is 55% down from its January peak, yet we just had 7 days of consecutive inflows on ETFs. VISA launched a USDC settlement for US banks on Solana (Cross River and Lead Bank are already live). Solana also tested quantum proof transactions on a testnet. PancakeSwap launched Probable, a prediction market platform exclusively on BNB Chain with zero fees. Hyperliquid proposed a validator vote to permanently lock $1B in Hype tokens sitting in the Assistance Fund.
NFTs and blockchain games:GameFi trading exploded 100%+, with MetaArena going up 25%, even if Ronin activity seems to decrease lately, as Axie popularity declined. I have enjoyed playing Golem Overlord lately on Hive, and it is quite enjoyable, I would say, with some significant updates lately. On Splinterlands, we have had the Land NFT new update and improved tokenomics, and the new rewards cards from the Conclave collection are up and running.
Good news: UK has passed a law officialy recognizing crypto and NFT as property, giving digital assets a defined legal status for the first time, letting crypto to be clearly owned, recovered in case of theft or fraud, and included in bankruptcy proceedings. I use Freetrade to buy BlackRock in UK, works quite well, and they also have UK Treasury bills, so, quite happy to build a £10K portfolio here, to test how it is working. The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation received the SEC approval to put US Treasury securities in the Canton Network. A national bank just launched its own crypto dollar called SofiUSD. We also have Klarna, Western Union and Stripe working on their own stablecoin too. Exodus is launching a fully reserved, USD-backed stablecoin in partnership with MoonPay, to let users send and spend without relaying on centralized exchanges. FDIC has proposed its first rule under the Genius Act, outlining how insured banks can apply to issue stablecoins through subsidiaries. Crypto hacks hit a record low, 'only' $3.3B in 2025, as the number of attacks fell sharply. About $2B stolen crypto ended up in the hands of the North Korean hackers. A pro crypto candidate, Michael Selig, has been officially sworn as the 16th chairman of CFTC. Visa is expanding its stablecoin settlement program to US banks, allowing partners to settle transactions using USDC on Solana. Coinbase added stocks and prediction markets in their bid to be everyone exchange. Good try! We will never forget how conveniently Coinbase is blocking your crypto during crypto crashes. Intuit partnered with Circle to embed the USDC stablecoin across its financial platforms.
Bad news: UK crypto ownership dropped from 12% to 8%, but the remaining holders are stacking more per total. Mark Koh downloaded what looked like a legitimate game launcher for MetaToy, and within the next 24 hours every wallet connected to his browser extensions was drained. Be careful and check twice if needed. Japan rising interest rates to a 30-year high may kill the whole crypto rally. Trump Media merged with a nuclear fusion company, TAE Technologies, and the stock surged 25%. Why? Russia is working to let anyone buy crypto, once they pass a test and stick to a purchase cap. Hong Kong, on the other side, just made crypto licensing mandatory.
Joke of the week: XRP take over social media, as now it has the 7th highest number of positive comments all year round, and it is showing it, with nineteen straight days of inflows. Ripple also expanded its stablecoin RLUSD to layer-2 networks such as Optimism, Base, Ink and Unichain. RLSUD just hit over $1B in supply since launching last December. Some really believe in this token, as VivoPower bought $300M Ripple shares instead of XRP. How about that?
All the best,
George
Why not...
...have fun and win rewards on my favourite blockchain games (Splinterlands- a Hearthstone-like card game) (Golem Overlord - a Play2Earn game on Hive) (Upland - a real-life virtual land) (Holozing - a Pokemon-like game)and ( Chain of Legends - with a hint of Heroes of Might and Magic).
...get crypto while writing on the Publish0x blog, using the Presearch search engine to maximise your income with PRE tokens. Use Torum instead of Twitter. I am also writing for crypto on Hive.
