Fortis cadere, cedere non potest - The brave may fall, but they cannot yield! (weekly crypto updates)

What happened in crypto the past 2 weeks? A lot to cover. Mainly, urban legends whispered in the dark corners of the internet may be proven to be true, as apparently there is a team that did most of the Solana scamming in the past few years. Lazarus Group maybe? And somebody, a very powerful somebody is selling a lot of BTC to keep the price down, even with investor inflows exercising constant pressure to boost the price up. What else? Read below:

• Bitcoin: There is an interesting theory lately that someone is actively selling BTC to keep the price down, as Strategy is buying more than what's being mined every day alone, and the math is not adding up. The question is, who got that much BTC to do this for so long? Japanese publicly-traded company Metaplanet sees $36M unrealized gain on BTC holdings, as they bought another 269 BTC, bringing its total to 2000. Strategy bought another $742M worth of BTC and it is planning to raise up to $2B in debt offering to expand its BTC holdings. GameStop is exploring investments in alternative asset classes, with a particular focus on BTC. According to the new US stablecoin regulations, Tether reserves are only 66% compliant under the STABLE Act, and 83% under the GENIUS Act, and they may need to liquidate a portion of its BTC reserves. JP Morgan claims that Tether might need to sell its Bitcoin, while Tether's response was that JP Morgan is envious as they do not own BTC yet. The Czech Central Bank Governor has reiterated his support for potentially incorporating BTC into the central bank reserves. South African firm Altvest adopted BTC as its primary treasury asset. As for the US trade wars impacting BTC, there is a key level of $93K, if Bitcoin breaks below this support, we will have $1.3B worth of leveraged positions getting wiped out. Exchange reserves for BTC plummeted to their lowest level in three years, with only 2.5M BTC left on the trading platforms. Mining is reaching once more a capitulation phase when it is becoming too expensive relative to the Bitcoin price. The trade war getting the Chinese-made mining equipment stuck at the US ports did not help either. Combine this with January's inflation numbers (3%), and you can see the issue.

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• Ethereum: Goldman Sachs ETH ETF holdings rose from $22M to $476M, as they also increased their BTC ETF holdings by 114%. CBOE has filed to allow the staking of ETH in the 21Shares ETP. Talking about surprises, ETH weekly inflows just outpaced the BTC ones, with $793M last week, as opposed to $407M for BTC. There is a massive Wall Street bet against ETH, as the hedge funds' short positions against ETH increased by 500%, and nothing will make me more happy than proving those fat cats wrong, as they got liquidated. Heavy bets are also made around $3K-$4K price range.

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• Altcoins and stablecoins: Litecoin and Cardano broke free from the market's sideways movement, with some impressive double digits increases. Arweave's computing platform goes live on Mainnet. Gold-backed crypto tends to go up as the major banks raise the gold price forecast. Grayscale filed to launch a Spot Cardano ETF. Franklin Templeton registered a trust in Delaware called Franklin Solana Trust, getting ready to launch a spot ETF too. MEMX filed to list 21Shares' XRP ETF as a commodity-based trust, in the same category as BTC and ETH ETFs. And just like that, the SEC acknowledged CBOE's request to list the 21Shares' XRP ETF. Stablecoins could bolster the dollar's role, as the Federal Reserve Governor C. Waller said. USDC reclaimed its $56B market cap, completely erasing its bear market losses, in a surprising comeback. Something is happening with BNB, as the BSC fees surged by 114%, since their new roadmap, focused on AI and enhancing transaction speed. Over 60 AI-related projects are expected to launch, from decentralized finance to AI-driven gaming apps. But the crazy stuff, CZ got a dog, and many many memecoins were made trying to get the dog's name right, in the end, the name was found - Broccoli and the corresponding memecoin exploded all the way up to the $400M market cap, before settling around $74M. And this is how CZ's dog saved the BNB ecosystem. BNB Chain just dethroned Solana in daily fees, with $5.8M in a single day, as opposed to $3.3M for Solana. SOL did take a hit dropping lower than December levels, after a few bad memecoin launches (LIBRA, HARRYBOLZ, VIGILANTE). Just a fun number, 600.000+ new tokens were launched in January 2025. Reeve Collins, the original Tether founder, announced Pi Protocol, a new stablecoin that is paying you for holding it, aiming to launch on both ETH and Solana.

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• NFTs and blockchain games: I am big on playing Golem Overlord lately on Hive, and it is quite profitable, I would say, with some great updates lately. Check this article I wrote about: Link and this one too: Link. On Splinterlands, we are getting ready for a new card collection, with some cool summoners that are now auction-only, yet it seems quite expensive. Check my Holozing article to learn about a new blockchain game that looks full of potential. I am also playing some cute little game called Chain of Legends, which reminds me of Heroes of Might and Magic, even if the overlap is not 100%. The SEC is set to close the investigation into NFT Marketplace OpenSea, as they tried to classify NFTs as securities. All that as OpenSea is hinting at a potential token airdrop.

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• Good news: RobinHood reported a 700% increase in crypto-related revenue. Coinbase posted a record $2.3B revenue for the 4th quarter, double the previous one. Pump.fun launches a mobile app for Solana-based token creation. The wallet provider Blockchain.com has taken a new step toward a potential IPO, appointing 2 new seasoned executives with financial and operational expertise. FTX announced the next round of creditor repayments starting on May 30, as they paid users with claims under $50K on February 18. All the crypto industry giants (Coinbase, a16z, Paradigm, Kraken, Uniswap and dozens of others) are asking Congress to overturn the DEFI broker rule as the technology was fundamentally misunderstood. Binance US restored USD deposits and withdrawals after a two-year break. Arkham Intelligence is set to launch spot crypto trading for its users in 17 US states, competing with Coinbase and Cryptodotcom. Indian authorities cracked open the BitConnect scam, unravelling a network that spread across 95 countries and took $2.4B from more than 4000 investors. Standard Chartered, Animoca Brands, and HKT are teaming up to create the Hong Kong dollar stablecoin.

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• Bad news: An urban legend has proven true, as some of the Bybit ETH ended up on Solana, being sent into wallets linked to most of the previous memecoins scam, could that be that there is one team, such as Lazarus Group, doing all the scamming on Solana, using a copy/paste model. Are you into memecoins? All crypto dipped when Trump announced the steel and aluminium tariffs. Crypto custodian BitGo was exploring a potential initial public offering (IPO). The Argentinian president Javier Milei may face impeachment threats over his Libra cryptocurrency endorsement, as the price dropped by 85%. Now he said that he just mentioned the token, without endorsing it, and that he ordered an internal investigation. This is a bit funny, as before its launch, the Libra co-creator claimed that he could control the Argentine President. After this one, Mark Cuban started to say "memecoin bad, me not into it anymore" kind of distancing himself from all this drama. Yet, no one complains about the Trump token. As the Fed Chair promoted a cautious stance on rate cuts, digital asset investment products saw major outflows, with $415M leaving the market. The European Central Bank has announced a plan to establish a payment system to settle transactions in central bank money in a two-pronged approach. Only 10 companies got the green light to issue stablecoins under the new European MICA framework and USDT was not one of them. The new Microsoft Quantum Leap computing chip reignited discussions about Bitcoin's potential vulnerability to quantum computer attacks. The second-largest exchange by market share, Bybit, was hacked Friday, and $1.4B worth of ETH was stolen. The attack is linked to the North Korean Lazarus Group, well known for other major crypto hacks. A 10% bounty was promised to whoever could steal the funds back.

• Joke of the week: I do not know if this is good or bad, but it seems that Elon Musk's DOGE Agency is setting its sights on the SEC. This is happening as the SEC is accusing him of underpaying Twitter investors by over $150M, a charge that Musk dismissed. Meanwhile, SEC Commissioner Hester Pierce just declared that memecoins fall outside the SEC's jurisdiction, right as investors face $2B in losses from TRUMP's dramatic 80% price drop. Meanwhile, Donald wants to make ICOs great again. Questions? And then we have Coinbase asking Congress to hand over crypto market oversight to the CFTC, reducing the SEC's power over digital assets.

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All the best,

George

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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 maximize your income with PRE tokens. Use Torum instead of Twitter. I am also writing for crypto on Hive.

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