Good Morning,

Yesterday morning was just a quick scare. But it was a GM after that!

Here's a quick preview of today’s content: CPI data caused a short crash in the markets, Trump’s next CFTC Chair has been chosen, Cathie Wood makes bullish 2030 BTC prediction, BitGo eyes U.S. IPO, ZkLend hurt bad by exploit, Hong Kong makes bullish crypto-related decision on Investment Visa’s, and so much more.

Happy almost Friday, Let’s dive in.

Market Snapshot

As of 2/1/2025. Data per CoinMarketCap.

  • Crypto markets bounce back seeing green across the board Wednesday after CPI data rattles investors

    • BTC touches $98k after falling below $95k Wednesday morning

    • ETH crossed $2,750 for the first time in 6 days

    • BNB makes the largest move in the Top 50, up 12% Wednesday and up 25% the last 7 days

  • U.S. investors shaken as January inflation data was higher than estimates

    • US CPI rose:

      • 3% YoY (est. 2.9%)

      • .5% January (est. .4%)

    • Core CPI hits:

      • 3.3% YoY (est. 3.1%).

      • .4% January (est. .3%)

Headline Roundup
The major headlines driving crypto markets

  • Fed Chair Jerome Powell calls for a ‘fresh look’ at crypto debanking (BL)

  • Trump selects A16Z’s Brian Quintenz as next CFTC chair (BC)

  • Goldman Sachs now holds $1.6B worth of Bitcoin ETFs (DC) 

  • Cboe BZX Exchange files amendment for 21Shares Core Ethereum ETF to include staking (TB)

  • Crypto custodian BitGo, last valued at $1.75B in 2023, is planning a US IPO (TB) 

  • SEC's Hester Peirce believes many meme coins fall outside the agency’s jurisdiction (TB) 

  • State-level Bitcoin reserve bills could drive $23B in buying (TB)

  • CME reports a 300% increase in Q4 2024 crypto derivatives trading (CT) 

  • ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood predicts that Bitcoin could hit $1.5M by 2030 (CT) 

  • Trump releases the former operator of BTC-e exchange, Alexander Vinnik, to Russia in exchange for an American teacher (TB) 

  • Publicly traded crypto firms outpaced crypto market growth in January (DC) 

  • Plume Network partners with Mercado Bitcoin to tokenize $40M worth of Brazilian assets (TB) 

  • Franklin Templeton moves its Franklin OnChain US Government Money Fund to Solana (TB) 

  • Spark Liquidity Layer integrates with Fluid to deploy sUSDS liquidity on Base (TD) 

  • LinksDAO acquires its first US property, a golf course in Kansas City (GD) 

  • Lending protocol Liquity investigates a potential issue with V2 Stability Pools (TB)

Launches

  • Arbitrum launches Bounded Liquidity Delay dispute protocol for permissionless validation on L2’s (TB) 

  • Neiry Lab will launch a 'think-to-airdrop' campaign to reward users with meme coins for brainwave data (DC) 

  • Galoy launches Bitcoin-backed loan software Lana (BM) 

  • Crypto music streaming service Audius will distribute $3M of AUDIO tokens in airdrops and rewards (DC) 

  • BNB announces launch of BNB Hack AI, an ecosystem hackathon focused on bridging AI and blockchain capabilities (MI)

Venture Capital

  • Crypto investor Dan Tapiero’s 1RoundTable Partners is seeking to raise $500M for underfunded growth equity opportunities (PB)

  • Electric Capital, Maelstrom, Hashed and Mirana Ventures back defi abstraction startup Infinit with $6M investment (TB)

  • Gumi Cryptos Capital leads $5M pre-seed round for trading startup Blum (X)

  • Stablecoin banking startup Limited raises a $3M pre-seed round led by Third Prime (BW)

  • Revenue generation protocol Cabal completes $3M financing from Hack VC, Nascent and others (PN)

  • Variant Fund leads $1.3M pre-seed funding for Whetstone to launch their first product, Doppler (VF)

  • Hitachi Payment Services makes a strategic minority investment in asset tokenization platform Spydra Technologies (BT)

  • EstateX announces strategic investment from GD10 Capital for real estate tokenization (MD)

  • DWF Labs makes strategic investment in TON ecosystem startup Bidask Protocol (CC)

Regulation

  • Hong Kong is now recognizing Bitcoin and Ethereum as part of its Investment Visa program (WG)

  • Fed Chair Jerome Powell does not want regulators to get in the way of banks serving legal crypto customers (X)

Cybersecurity

  • ZkLend Total Value Locked crashes 90%+ to $1M following $9.5M exploit (NG)

  • Polter Finance partners with blockchain security firm FailSafe after recent $8.7M hack (CN)

  • World Liberty Financial co-founder Zach Witkoff has X account hacked and promotes fake Barron Trump token (TB)

  • Solana memecoin promoted on compromised CoinSwitch X account (CS)

  • Malicious MEV exploits have been the biggest barrier to crypto mass adoption (CCN)

Extra Reads

Chart of the Day

Market capitalization of altcoins has been devalued by ~ $240B in the last 2 weeks

Meme Dump

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