Markets Flat, an Industry Buoyant

Markets-wise, crypto was flat this week. Bitcoin was rangebound ($83,000 to $84,000). And the CoinDesk 20, which tracks about 80% of the market, stayed at about 2,600. Crypto prices suffered from being increasingly correlated with the wider financial markets, which are down on tariff worries and decreased corporate earnings. Some even said the bitcoin bull market was over.

But markets, of course, only tell part of the crypto story. There was a ton of stuff happening and much of it was positive for the industry’s future.

On the regulatory front, Washington agencies are gearing up for an historic “market structure” bill in Congress, Jesse Hamilton reported. Paul Atkins, someone who knows crypto intimately, is nearing confirmation as SEC Chair, as is OCC pick Jonathan Gould. Congress continues hearings on a stablecoin bill, as Tether continues to show its systemic importance (Kris Sandor reported). EU officials are fussing about USD hegemony of stablecoins, and are readying plans for a digital euro or CBDC (Jamie Crawley).

Eric Trump joined Metaplanet, Japan’s answer to Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy, as the Trump family continues to bet privately and publicly on crypto’s success.

Our reporters did some great deep-dives on protocol projects. Oliver Knight lifted the lid on Cardano’s price surge following ADA’s (sort of) inclusion in a putative national crypto reserve. Interestingly, that project doesn’t measure success in total value locked (TVL), an otherwise universal metric, preferring real-world use cases.

Danny Nelson looked at Pump.fun’s aspirations to dominate DeFi trading on Solana DeFi (following its domination of Solana’s memecoin issuance).

Meanwhile bitcoin miners are feeling the pinch of lower hashrates and declining transaction fees, which has erased post-election gains, Tom Carreras reported.

Jamie Crawley explored the efforts of bitcoin developers to introduce zero-knowledge proofs to that blockchain. (TLDR: it’s hard to soft-fork blockchains with decentralization as good as bitcoin’s).

Our Asia team continued to kill it, particularly in markets coverage. Resident technical analysis wiz, Omkar Godbole, correctly reported on the Fed ending QT as well as highlighting how the Turkish lira’s flash crash led to a surge in bitcoin volume in that country.

Shaurya Malwa continued his strong reporting on XRP, writing about Ripple boss Brad Garlinghouse’s comments on XRP’s chances of being added to the strategic reserve and on Ripple’s IPO plans. Malwa also reported on Raydium’s plan to start a pump.fun rival.

Sam Reynolds, who is based in Hong Kong, covered North Dakota passing a crypto ATM bill as well as reporting on how the man who stabbed Haru Invest CEO could face over a decade in prison.

And lastly, Parikshit Mishra’s swift coverage of Kraken buying NinjaTrader for $1.5 billion trumped most of the competition.

It was one of those weeks when a lot happened under the hood. Prices may be in a plateau. But the industry continued to move forward on lots of fronts.