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Here's a quick preview of today’s content: Former Terraform Labs CEO and co founder founder faces reality as trial is set for early 2026, Movement Labs closes a massive Series B, HyperLiquid faces scrutiny over decentralization criticism, Trump hints at purchasing Greenland which could be optimal for BTC mining, and more

Happy almost Friday, Let’s dive in.

Market Snapshot

• Bitcoin dropped nearly -10% in two days, erasing nearly all its early 2025 gains, while Cardano's ADA, Render's RNDR and Aptos' APT led losses in the CoinDesk 20 Index

  • Strong U.S. economic data, surging bond yields, and concerns about inflation and a hawkish Federal Reserve drove the risk-off sentiment, exacerbated by uncertainty around President-elect Trump's tariff policies

  • Analysts suggest Bitcoin may consolidate before resuming its upward trajectory, with economic data releases and Donald Trump's upcoming inauguration likely influencing its trajectory

• Leaders: XRP (+2.0%) and XLM (+1.7%)

  • The XRP gain came after a picture was posted by Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse after a dinner with his Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty and President-elect Donald Trump

• Laggards: APT (-5.1%) and NEAR (-5.1%)

Market Predictions

• Traders on Kalshi are currently predicting if Bitcoin will be legalized in China this year

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Headline Roundup
^{_{The major headlines driving crypto markets}}

• Do Kwon’s fraud trial set for 2026 due to massive trove of evidence (CD) 

• Quantum computing stocks fell of a cliff after CEO of Nvidia Jensen Huang had very harsh criticisms, see full statements here

• A federal judge has ruled in favor of the DOJ to allow the sale of approximately 69,370 Bitcoins, seized from the Silk Road, valued at around $6.5B (X)

• Purchasing Greenland could be a huge boost for US Bitcoin mining (BM) 

• The share of bitcoin reserves held by U.S. entities is now 65% greater than those of non-U.S. entities, according to CryptoQuant data (TB)

• MicroStrategy's trading volume rivals that of the top seven US tech stocks (CD)

• Ripple believes an XRP ETF could soon be approved (CD) 

• Judge freezes SEC’s lawsuit against Coinbase (DC) 

• XRP partners with Chainlink to push RLUSD stablecoin adoption (TD) 

• HyperLiquid faces decentralization criticism as HYPE Token Drops 15% (CD) 

• Sol Strategies, publicly traded holding company, makes play to become the 'Microstrategy of Solana' (SF)

• Pyth Network partners with Revolut to bring digital banking data into DeFi (CD) 

• Finnish police seize $2.6M of luxury watches from Hex founder Richard Heart (DC) 

• Mad Lads Solana NFT prices jumps 19% after parent company Backpack acquired FTX Europe (DC) 

• Bhutan's Gelephu Mindfulness City has announced the inclusion of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Binance Coin into its strategic reserves (X)

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Launches

• Phala, a Polkadot-based parachain and computation platform, has launched a new Layer 2 network on Ethereum (TB)

• Thailand to launch a pilot program for crypto payments in Phuket (TD) 

• L2 StarkWare launches appchains on Starknet with its new SN Stack toolkit (CD)

Venture Capital

• Movement Labs is nearing a $100M Series B round, co-led by CoinFund and Nova Fund, at a $3B valuation (TB)

• Crypto market data provider SoSoValue raises $15M at a $200M valuation in a Series A round co-led by HongShan and SmallSpark.ai (TB)

Regulation

• Republican state senator in Oklahoma filed legislation allowing employees and residents in the state to opt to receive salaries in Bitcoin and enable vendors to accept BTC payments (CT)

• South Korea set to lift its ban on institutional crypto trading (DC) 

• A major Portuguese bank suspends fiat transfers to crypto platforms (CP)

Cybersecurity

• Crypto scammers stole $494M through wallet drainer attacks in 2024 (BTN) 

• Kazakhstan shut down 36 illegal crypto exchanges in 2024 to fight money laundering (CT) 

• AI agent platform Virtuals Protocol’s Discord was hacked (CT) 

Photo of the Day

This pretty much sums it up…

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