- Of the cryptocurrencies tracked by CoinMarketCap, the best performer for the week was Peanut the Squirrel, rising 1,517%.
- Bitcoin’s record-breaking rally took the digital asset to $90,000 for the first time this week and lifted the overall value of the crypto market above its pandemic-era peak, writes Bloomberg. This comes as traders bet on a boom under President-elect Donald Trump. Bitcoin jumped about 32% since the election as Trump vowed friendlier crypto rules.
- Billionaire Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy will lead a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), reports Bloomberg, tasked to “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies,” President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday.
Weaknesses
- Of the cryptocurrencies tracked by CoinMarketCap, the worst performing for the week was Monero, down 13.09%.
- Bitcoin’s stellar run is finally showing signs of losing steam. The cryptocurrency looks set to head lower as momentum players see similarities with the bearish setup from early August. The trigger looks to be Jerome Powell’s comment that the Fed doesn’t need to hurry to cut interest rates, according to an article published by Bloomberg.
- Michael Novogratz said there is a low likelihood that the U.S. will set up a Bitcoin strategic reserve as proposed by President-elect Donald Trump. “I still think it’s low probability,” Novogratz said during an interview Wednesday on Bloomberg Television.
Opportunities
- Bitcoin options traders buoyed by Donald Trump’s election victory are already eyeing a landmark price of $100,000 for the popular cryptocurrency. Investors are lining up bets that Bitcoin will pass the milestone as soon as the end of the year, writes Bloomberg.
- Intesa Sanpaola SpA is expanding the remit of its digital assets desk to handle spot trades with cryptocurrencies, the latest move deeper into the new market by a traditional bank. While the spot trading isn’t yet up and running, the desk has had the necessary internal approval and technical systems in place for about a month, Bloomberg reports.
- An ally of Donald Trump in the U.S. Senate has a plan for filling up the president-elect’s proposed strategic Bitcoin stockpile without adding to the government deficit, reports Bloomberg. The plan: Sell some of the Federal Reserve’s gold. Republican senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming plans to push forward with a bill to do exactly that when the new Congress is seated next year.
Threats
- Sam Trabucco, one of Sam Bankman-Fried’s inner circle friends, has agreed to hand over properties, including his yacht, to creditors of the FTX exchange. The former co-CEO of Alameda purchased the 53-foot boat for $2.51 million just before leaving the hedge fund in March 2022, Bloomberg writes. He has also agreed to give up legal title of his two apartments in San Fransisco that he purchased for $8.7 million.
- Roger Ver AKA Bitcoin Jesus is charged with evading more than $48 million in taxes for selling $240 million in tokens. It’s the most prominent case dealing solely with tax fraud and digital-asset sales, according to Bloomberg.
- An Ohio man who laundered more than $300 million of Bitcoin on behalf of drug traffickers and other criminals was sentenced to three years in prison after a judge granted him leniency for helping the U.S. prosecute other cryptocurrency cases. His helix services helped hundreds of drug dealers to operate for years with greater impunity and eased the movement of hundreds of millions of dollars, writes Bloomberg.
