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Good Morning,

Here's a quick preview of today’s content: Bitcoin is back above $100,000 AGAIN, “rich single women” AI deepfake scammers caught in Hong Kong, Sam Altman casually states that OpenAI is close to cracking AGI, the top fed regulator (who wasn’t very pro crypto) bounces out of office before Trump takes over, XRP could get a massive boost from Japanese banking, Canadians hope for a new Prime Minister that is crypto friendly after yesterday’s resignation, and more

Happy Tuesday, Let’s dive in.

Market Snapshot

• Bitcoin climbed to near $102,000 on Monday, reclaiming its six-digit price for the first time since December 19 and starting 2025 strong following the holiday lull

  • 10x Research noted that the crypto bounce will likely extend into Trump's inauguration, but momentum may falter towards month-end as the hawkish Federal Reserve remains a key risk

• The broad-market benchmark CoinDesk 20 was up +3.5% during the same period, with all the twenty crypto majors posting positive returns

  • Ethereum's ether (ETH) climbed +2.8% to $3,700, while Solana's SOL advanced +4.5% to above $220

Market Predictions

• Traders on Kalshi are currently predicting if there will be a recession in 2026

• So far 24% say YES while 79% are betting NO

• You can trade this market by checking out Kalshi

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

• Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau resigns and Pierre Poilievre, who is expected to succeed Trudeau, is a vocal supporter of DeFi and crypto championing Bitcoin as a hedge against inflation (BL)

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman casually states that they are confident they can build AGI and has a prediction for the future of workforce - read full statement here

• Bitcoin surpasses $100K for the first time in 2025 (DC)

• MicroStrategy now holds $44.3B of Bitcoin after buying another $101M worth (BBG) 

• Global crypto funds record $44.2B of inflows in 2024 (TD) 

• Michael Barr, the Federal Reserve's Vice Chair for Supervision, resigns (DC)

• MicroStrategy plans to raise $2B via a preferred stock issuance (TB) 

• Terraform Labs’ founder Do Kwon’s victims could exceed $1M (CT) 

• Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin proposes temporary global AI hardware restrictions (CT) 

• Bitcoin miner MARA Holdings is lending 7,377 Bitcoin to third parties (CD) 

• Centralized exchanges see $227M inflow of Solana (CD) 

• Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs add $585M of assets in 2025 (DC) 

• Pump.fun responsible for 70% of Solana token launches in the past two days (DC) 

• Trader turns $2K into $3.2M with newly launched Hyperfy metaverse token (CT) 

• CleanSpark mined 668 Bitcoin in December and 7,024 Bitcoin in 2024 (CT) 

• Gemini settles with the FTC for $5M over allegations of misleading the regulator (BC) 

• Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is liquidating millions of dollars worth of memecoins to fund his Kanro charity (TB)

• Five crypto firms secure MiCA licenses in the Netherlands and Malta (BC) 

• Coinbase L2 Base may soon host Coinbase stock trading (DH)

• Twitter and Cash App founder Jack Dorsey’s new bitcoin wallet Bitkey is now available on Amazon (X)

• A crypto forum moderator and father of four claims to have been forced into hiding after falling victim to an alleged kidnapping and torture attempt to steal his bitcoin - full report here

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Launches

• Solana products Seeker and Firedancer are expected to launch in 2025 (BW) 

• Sonic SVM will launch its SONIC token today and airdrop 7% of supply to TikTok gamers (DC) 

• South Korea’s Jeju Island is launching NFT-based tourist cards (CCN)

Venture Capital

• DeFi platform BIO Protocol raises $64.4M in a public sale (CDX)

Regulation

• Integration into Japanese banking could boost XRP’s market cap by $64B (FM)

• GSR becomes first liquidity provider to secure dual regulatory approval in UK and Singapore (CT) 

Cybersecurity

• Hong Kong police have intercepted over HK$35M (US$3.37M) in scam proceeds as part of an elaborate operation targeting victims through the use of AI deepfakes that pretended to be rich single women (DC)

• Solana's latest proposal introduces a new "lattice-based" hashing system that could eliminate computational bottlenecks while maintaining security (DC)

Extra Reads

• Pythagoras' Alpha Long Biased Strategy generated a return of 204% last year, outperforming BTC's 121% rise

Here’s how they did it

Chart of the Day

Bitcoin hash rates have only sky rocketed in the past few years

Meme Dump

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