📈Weekly Recap: Bitcoin Consolidates Above $100,000

Happy weekend Defiers!

Institutional investors continue to pile into crypto ETFs despite digital assets posting a mixed performance this week.

Crypto ETFs hosted 11 consecutive days of inflows worth more than $4 billion, with Ether ETFs hosting their strongest weekly inflow on record with $855 million. The sustained inflows came despite the week opening with a sharp market downturn that drove a record $1.5 billion in crypto liquidations.

Quantum computing was top of mind after Google unveiled its quantum chip, Willow. While analysts say the technology is still a long way away from threatening the cryptography underpinning blockchains, Avalanche’s CEO warned that an outdated format may make Satoshi’s stash of 1.1 million BTC particularly vulnerable to quantum attack.

Trump continues to pick pro-crypto officials for key roles within his incoming administration. Brian Quintenz, the head of policy at a16z crypto, is reportedly a front-running contender to head the CFTC under Trump. In related news, French Hill, a pro-crypto congressman, will chair the House Financial Services Committee from next year.

The first governance proposal from World Liberty Financial, the upcoming DeFi project linked to the Trump family, was passed with near-unanimous support, paving the way for the deployment of an Aave v3 instance. World Liberty Financial’s multisig wallet was also spotted swapping more than $13.2 million in stablecoins for ETH, AAVE, and LINK.

Ripple continues to gain momentum, with the New York Department of Financial Services greenlighting the launch of its RLUSD stablecoin. XRP was the strongest performing top 10 cryptocurrency over the past week with a 4% gain amid the news.

Babylon, the booming Bitcoin staking protocol, opened its doors to deposits for just the third time. Users have already deposited more than $1.2 billion worth of BTC to the protocol over two days, with roughly five days to go.

Airdrop season remains in high gear, with Movement Labs and Magic Eden airdropping tokens to early adopters.

Ethena’s USDe is now the third-largest stablecoin after overtaking DAI with a $5.78 billion market cap. The token’s growth has been propelled by high yields from short funding rates.

The success of MicroStrategy is inspiring Bitcoin miners to finance BTC buys through debt issuance. Mara Holdings revealed it purchased 1,423 BTC after raising more than $800 million last week, while Hut 8 and Riot Blockchain announced plans to raise $500 million each.

A hacker knocked 69% of Dogecoin’s nodes offline after identifying a vulnerability in its code. The price of DOGE trended sideways in spite of the incident.

Plus, Azuki NFTs soar on ANIME speculation, Solana DEXes process $920 billion in cumulative volume, Sushi unveils 2025 roadmap, and FTX claws back $14.5 million from political donations.

Also, don’t forget to check out our podcast with the vice president and general manager of Robinhood Crypto, Johann Kerbrat.

Enjoy!

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PODCAST & INTERVIEWS

Robinhood Crypto's Roadmap: Johann Kerbrat on Expansion, Staking, and Blockchain Integration

In this week’s podcast, Cami Russo was joined by Johann Kerbrat, the vice president and general manager of Robinhood Crypto.

In this episode, Johann shares the journey of Robinhood Crypto, from its early days of launching in 2018, to its recent introduction of staking and self-custody wallets, and a possible shift towards a full-fledged crypto exchange. He discusses how Robinhood is leveraging blockchain to enhance efficiency, lower costs, and expand access to financial instruments, and shares Robinhood Crypto’s long-term vision.

Amplify: Bangkok by Axelar & SCB10X

Don’t miss the panel discussion on web3 interoperability hosted by Cami Russo at DISTRICT as part of the Amplify:Bangkok event.

The panel features Ed Felton, the co-founder and chief scientist of Offchain Labs, Georgios Vlachos, the co-founder and director of Axelar, Keone Hon, the co-founder and CEO and Monad, and Andy, the co-founder of The Rollup Ventures.

Humanity Protocol: The Solution to Digital Identity & Bot Protection?

Alp Gasimov walks you through Humanity Protocol, a Layer 2 network specializing in digital identity.

Friday

Austin Man Sentenced to Two Years in Prison for Underreporting $4M in Bitcoin Gains Frank Richard Ahlgren III's tax evasion case highlights the growing scrutiny of cryptocurrency transactions by the IRS.
Coinshares’ 2025 Crypto Trends Report Highlights L2 Adoption and Solana Upgrades The firm also expects favorable crypto regulation and increased Bitcoin adoption next year.
Uniswap Bounces Back From Slow Summer The leading DEX on Ethereum is experiencing a strong Q4.
Fartcoin is the Latest Truth Terminal Memecoin to Soar The memecoin inspired by the Truth Terminal AI agent closes in on flipping its parent coin.
Solana Surpasses Ethereum in New Developer Onboarding for 2024 For the first time since 2016, Solana leads Ethereum in developer adoption.
Pro-Crypto Congressman French Hill To Chair House Financial Services Committee French said he will prioritize addressing Operation Choke Point 2.0.
Cumulative Solana DEX Volume Approaches $1 Trillion Strong performances from Raydium, Orca, and Meteora amid memecoin mania are driving the volume surge.
World Liberty Financial’s Governance Approves Aave Deployment World Liberty Financial plans to launch an instance of Aave v3 supporting USDT, USDC, ETH, and WBTC.

Thursday

AI Agents are Becoming This Crypto Bull Market’s New Breakout Product The rise of AI Agent tokens has sparked a migration of AI-native builders towards crypto and DeFi experimentation.
OnChain Heroes NFT Mint Leads GameFi Rally The collection of 1,000 genesis NFTs rallied over 13x from its mint price in a single day.
Dogecoin Network Hit by Vulnerability, 69% of Nodes Crashed A flaw in the Dogecoin network, exploited by a hacker, led to a significant crash of its nodes.
BlackRock and Fidelity Make ETH Purchase Worth $500 Million in Two Days The asset management giant are buying ETH as demand for Ethereum ETFs rises.
Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs Continue Winning Streak Spot BTC ETFs recorded $223 million in inflows on Tuesday, while ETH ETFs pulled in $102 million.
SUSHI Rallies on 2025 Roadmap Release Head Chef Jared Grey outlined five potential product launches for the new year.
Babylon Chain Surpasses $3.7 Billion in Bitcoin Deposits Deposits have increased by 58% over the past week after Binance added support for staking BTC with Babylon.
Google’s Quantum Computing Chip Raises Questions About Bitcoin’s Security While experts say fears are overblown, some speculate that quantum computers could even affect the security of the global financial system.
Avalanche Closes $250M Private Token Sale Ahead Of Upgrade The raise comes as the project readies to ship its Avalanche9000 upgrade on Monday.
A16z Policy Lead Emerges As Contender To Chair CFTC Under Trump Brian Quintenz, the head of policy at a16z crypto, previously served as a CFTC Commissioner.
Trump-Linked World Liberty Financial Accumulates ETH, AAVE, and LINK World Liberty Financial converted $12 million USDC into other assets.
FTX Debtors Retrieve $14.5M of Political Donations The recovered funds mark another step forward in the defunct exchange’s effort to repay creditors.
Frog-Themed Memecoins Rally as Markets Rebound PEPE, Based Pepe, Froge, and Ski Mask Pepe are among the top performers.

Wednesday

Hyperliquid Soars to $16 Billion Valuation The decentralized exchange and Layer 1 network is growing at a parabolic pace after its airdrop.
Synthetix to Offer Leveraged Tokens in 2025 after TLX and Kwenta Acquisitions The recent acquisitions are part of Synthetix’s plans to become a category leader among derivative exchanges.
Travala to Launch Bitcoin Treasury Reserve After $100M Milestone The crypto-powered travel platform’s plan hopes to strengthen long-term stability and drive expansion.
Ripple’s RLUSD Stablecoin Gets Approved by NY Regulators The US dollar-pegged token will be available on both the Ethereum and Ripple blockchains.
Altcoins and Crypto ETFs Attract Dip Buyers After Record Liquidations The digital asset markets are bouncing back after leveraged traders suffered $1.5 billion in liquidations.
Venture Capital Firms Pile Into CryptoAI The AI meta is likely to be one of the hottest crypto narratives in 2025.
Circle Inks Partnership With Binance and Expands MENA Operations Binance will leverage USDC for its corporate treasury operations as part of the deal.

Tuesday

Binance Offers BTC Staking Through Babylon Babylon features self-custodial capped staking pools for BTC.
Bitmain Launches U.S. Facility Amid Escalating U.S.-China Trade Tensions The move aims to strengthen Bitmain’s presence in North America, which now accounts for nearly half of the global Bitcoin hash rate.
Eric Trump Predicts Bitcoin Could Reach $1 Million The president-elect’s son expressed strong confidence in Bitcoin’s long-term prospects at MENA 2024 in Abu Dhabi.
Starknet Extends $50 Million ‘DeFi Spring’ Campaign Up to 90 million STRK tokens have been allocated to protocols and users contributing to Starknet’s DeFi ecosystem.
Crypto Market Rocked By Record Liquidations Topping $1.5 Billion Bitcoin & Ethereum were hit hardest with $171 million and $250 million of liquidations.
Magic Eden Launches Native Ecosystem Token and Airdrop The $ME token aims to boost Magic Eden’s user engagement and support cross-chain activities.
Flashbots Migrates To Decentralized Block Production Software, BuilderNet Two block proposers account for 88% of Ethereum blocks.
Optimism Introduces New Superchain Token Standard SuperchainERC20 enables secure cross-chain asset transfers within the Superchain through native burning and minting.
Move Network Unveils Token and Airdrop The token launch comes after the composability platform rolled out its Mainnet beta.
Bitcoin Conviction at All-Time High As Corporate Investments Rise Bitcoin’s appeal as a reserve asset has never been higher.

Monday

Azuki NFT Collection Soars as Traders Anticipate ANIME Token Traders are attempting to frontrun Azuki’s ANIME token after Pudgy Penguins pumped 50% on PENGU announcement.
Ethena's USDe Flips DAI to Become Third-largest Stablecoin A $250 million increase of the sUSDe supply cap on Aave was filled almost instantly on Dec. 8.
SocialFi Dapp Farcaster Plans to Launch its Own Chain to Improve Scalability Snapchain, an Ethereum Layer 2 using the OP stack, promises scalability, enhanced user experience, and a flat annual fee.
Incoming Crypto Czar Calls Out Operation Choke Point 2.0 David Sacks said regulatory efforts to debank the crypto sector should face scrutiny.
Think Tank Says Amazon Should Invest 5% Of Its Assets Into Bitcoin The National Center for Public Policy Research argued that buying Bitcoin will allow Amazon to hedge against inflation.
Avalanche Founder Suggests Freezing Satoshi’s BTC Holdings To Protect Against Quantum Attack The CEO of Ava Labs warns that Saotshi’s Bitcoins were mined using an outdated format that exposed his public keys to the network.