Weekly Report | Trump announced the launch of his personal meme coin TRUMP; the crypto wallet Phantom completed a US$150 million Series C round of financing at a valuation of US$3 billion; TikTok announced that it would suspend services in the United Stat
Reprinted from chaincatcher
01/19/2025·4days agoOrganized by: Luan Peng, ChainCatcher
"What important events happened this week (1.13-1.19)"
1.Tether executives purchased real estate in El Salvador and became its citizens
According to Protos, citing local media El Faro, Tether executives are spending a large amount of money to purchase real estate in El Salvador and become citizens of El Salvador.
The company's Chief Financial Officer Giancarlo Devasini, Chief Executive Officer Paolo Ardoino and Chief Operating Officer Claudia Lagorio purchased two parcels of land worth $1.7 million located in the Condominio Villanueva Golf Country Club, a luxury golf resort and residential neighborhood El Encanto. The deed shows that Ardoino and Lagorio have become naturalized citizens of El Salvador.
According to Bitcoin Magazine, BlackRock purchased $50 billion worth of Bitcoin in 2024, while MicroStrategy purchased $24 billion worth of Bitcoin.
3.Donald Trump Jr. serves as strategic advisor to prediction market Kalshi
According to Aggr News, Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., served as Kalshi’s strategic advisor to enter the prediction market.
According to the Washington Post, Trump is expected to issue an executive order on the first day of his presidency regarding debanking and repealing a controversial cryptocurrency accounting policy that requires banks holding digital assets to It is considered a liability.
"The Trump team has made it clear that this is a priority," the source said. These upcoming executive actions target cryptocurrency regulation and are intended to protect cryptocurrency investors from what Trump has called "the bureaucratic swamp in Washington." "Influence.
According to CoinDesk, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) led by Gary Gensler called Binance.US a “melting pot of fraud” and used its power and influence to cut off the company’s relationships with banks and U.S. dollar fiat currency access. Binance.US interim CEO Norman Reed said in an interview with CoinDesk that the SEC failed to provide any evidence in court to support its accusations.
After the SEC filed a lawsuit, Binance.US lost thousands of customers, suffered billions of dollars in losses, and was forced to lay off 70% of its employees.
Norman Reed, interim CEO of Binance.US, said: “USD fiat services are expected to be revitalized and live in the coming weeks; the company is preparing for a comeback, looking to cooperate with banks and once again talking to state regulators.”
The National Prosecutor General Conference held on January 13 emphasized that prosecutorial agencies will increase the intensity of punishing money laundering crimes and crack down on criminal activities that use virtual currencies to illegally transfer assets abroad in accordance with the law.
The meeting emphasized the need to severely crack down on financial crimes. Strictly crack down on illegal fund-raising, loan fraud, financial fraud, market manipulation and other financial crimes in accordance with the law, and always maintain a high-pressure posture in punishing financial crimes involving a wide range of people, and strive to build a solid bottom line for financial security and stability. Give full play to the role of the procuratorate in the China Securities Regulatory Commission, improve and implement the mechanism for handling securities crime cases, and promote the stable and healthy development of the capital market. We must work together to prevent and resolve financial risks. Actively promote and improve the connection mechanism between administrative law enforcement and criminal justice in the financial field, and strengthen the joint efforts to prevent risks, strengthen supervision, and promote development. (interface)
Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, forwarded an article on the social platform titled "Thailand's former Prime Minister is optimistic about the legalization of cryptocurrencies and online entertainment." The article stated that Thailand's former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said that stablecoin trading would be allowed. and other tokens backed by real assets “without risk.” He also urged regulators to legalize online entertainment to increase revenue sources.
ChainCatcher previously reported that according to Cointelegraph, former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said there is "no risk" in allowing trading of stablecoins and other tangible asset-backed tokens, and urged regulators to legalize online gambling to increase revenue. He pointed out that the Thai government currently loses about US$4 billion (100 billion baht) in online gambling tax revenue every year. Thailand’s cabinet has approved the draft Entertainment Complex Operations Act, which aims to legalize the casino and gaming industry.
According to an announcement issued by the Southern District of the U.S. Department of Justice, cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX was fined $100 million for violating the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA). BitMEX was accused of failing to establish and implement anti-money laundering (AML) and customer identification (KYC) programs and deliberately circumventing U.S. laws to obtain profits.
Its founders and executives had previously pleaded guilty, and the company pleaded guilty in July 2024 and was sentenced to a fine and two years of probation on January 15, 2025.
According to the preliminary briefing document submitted by the SEC, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission appealed the Ripple case, focusing on the ruling on whether the sale of XRP constituted a securities offering. The SEC argued that the trial court erred in its interpretation of securities laws in part of its decision and asked the appeals court to review the relevant ruling.
10.VanEck submitted an on-chain economic ETF application to the US SEC
Asset management company VanEck submitted an application for an “Onchain Economy” exchange-traded fund (ETF) to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on January 15. According to the document, the fund will invest in cryptocurrency companies across the industry, including software Developers, mining companies, cryptocurrency exchanges, infrastructure builders, payment companies and other businesses in the cryptocurrency space.
The asset manager defines these companies as "digital transformation companies," writing: "Digital transformation companies are selected based on fundamental analysis, market trends, the company's strategic positioning in the digital asset ecosystem, and valuation." The fund It will also invest in digital asset instruments such as commodity futures contracts, but will not invest directly in digital assets by holding cryptocurrencies.
According to the official announcement, Binance Financial Management, one-click currency buying, flash swap, leverage, and contracts are now available on Sonic (S). Binance will launch the S 1-75x U-margined perpetual contract at 18:00 on January 16, 2025 (Eastern Eighth District time).
Crypto wallet Phantom completed a $150 million Series C round of financing at a valuation of $3 billion. Sequoia Capital and Paradigm co-led the investment, with participation from a16z and Variant.
Since its launch in 2021, Phantom has reached 15 million monthly active users and manages $25 billion in self-custody assets.
According to RootData , Phantom is a friendly crypto wallet that allows users to safely and easily store, buy, send, receive, trade tokens and collect NFTs on the Solana blockchain.
13.OKX Jumpstart will launch ANIME (Animecoin) staking mining on January 20
The OKX Jumpstart staking mining activity will start at 14:00 (Beijing time) on January 20, 2025. OKB and BTC holders can mine ANIME tokens in return by staking OKB and BTC. The event will last until 14:00 on January 23.
The total OKB prize pool for this event is 53,333,334 ANIME, and the total BTC prize pool is 26,666,666 ANIME. There is no minimum limit for personal staking. The upper limit for OKB pledge is 600 OKB and the upper limit for BTC pledge is 0.3 BTC. Staking and unstaking are supported at any time. ANIME token is expected to be launched for online trading on January 23, and the specific time will be notified separately.
Gary Gensler seemingly posted a farewell message on the Believing that capital markets, competition, and common-sense rules benefit both investors and issuers, which is why the SEC and its staff play a critical role in overseeing the markets and ensuring compliance with the common-sense rules of U.S. securities laws:
- We reduce costs and risks and strengthen the integrity of our two largest markets—the nearly $60 trillion equity market and the $28 trillion Treasury market;
- We help improve the transparency and integrity of corporate governance at public companies, including by implementing new cooling-off periods and other conditions before company insiders who may possess material non-public information trade in their company's securities;
- We have established rules requiring regulated broker-dealers and investment advisers to notify clients of data breaches that may put personal information at risk;
- We set the stage for important debates about the growing use of artificial intelligence in finance;
- We updated the rules of the stock market and treasury bond market and shortened the settlement cycle;
- We have returned more than $2.7 billion to injured investors.
Trump announced on his truth social social account that he will launch his personal meme currency TRUMP. Users need to visit the website with the domain name "gettrumpmemes" to obtain the meme. The possibility of being stolen is not ruled out, so users should be cautious.
According to the official website of “Trump’s official meme coin” TRUMP, Trump Memes are intended to express support and participation in the ideals and beliefs embodied in the “$TRUMP” symbol and its related artworks, and are not intended to be an investment opportunity or investment opportunity. The subject of a contract or security of any kind. This meme is not political and is not associated with any political campaign or any political office or government agency.
It is worth noting that CIC Digital LLC and Fight Fight Fight LLC, affiliates of the Trump Organization, jointly own 80% of TRUMP, but are subject to a 3-year unlocking plan. CIC Digital LLC and Celebration Cards LLC, owners of Fight Fight Fight LLC, will receive trading revenue generated from TRUMP trading activity.
The General Office of the Shanghai Municipal People's Government issued the "Shanghai Implementation Plan to Promote the High-Quality Development of Digital Trade and Service Trade", which proposes the layout of high-performance computing infrastructure. Build high-energy cloud computing data center clusters, open computing power platforms and computing power interconnection platforms.
Build high-quality data infrastructure such as blockchain and corpora, build urban blockchain infrastructure, create a blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) platform and universal cross-chain functions, facilitate the trusted cross-border flow of data, and promote high-quality corpus data Element construction.
Vitalik posted on social platforms that things the Ethereum Foundation (hereinafter referred to as EF) will avoid in the future include:
- Execute some kind of ideological/climate shift
- Start aggressively lobbying regulators and powerful politicians (especially in the US, but really everywhere, especially big countries), risking damaging Ethereum’s status as a neutral platform globally
- Become an arena for vested interests
- Become a highly centralized organization, even more like the "protagonist" in Ethereum
Vitalik emphasized that these things are not done by EF and that will not change. People seeking a different vision are welcome to create their own organizations.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said in response to the discussion that "Ethereum-related companies need to proactively contact funds, institutions and countries to let them buy ETH", "I very much support contact with funds, institutions and countries, and I also support the willingness to Discuss ETH from an asset perspective. ETH, as an asset, is an important part of the social organism of Ethereum. I don’t think the Ethereum Foundation (EF) is necessarily the best person to do this.
The world is big, Ethereum is big, and a more effective approach is to support various local organizations (including large enterprises) everywhere because they have a deeper understanding of their local situations. "
20.Trump: “Probably” will give TikTok a 90-day grace period on the day he takes office
According to Xinhua News Agency, U.S. President-elect Trump said in an interview with NBC on the 18th that he would "probably" give the short video social media platform TikTok a 90-day grace period on the day he takes office on the 20th to temporarily Prevent it from being banned in the United States.
Trump said that although a final decision has not yet been made, he is considering asking TikTok parent company ByteDance to delay the deadline for selling TikTok to non-Chinese companies by 90 days. He said that was one option being considered, with "an extension of 90 days being the most likely option as that is appropriate". If he decides to do so, he will announce it on the day he takes office on the 20th.
21.OKX will launch TRUMP (OFFICIAL TRUMP) spot trading
According to official news, OKX will launch TRUMP (OFFICIAL TRUMP) spot trading at 1:00 pm (UTC+8) on January 19.
According to a report by Jinshi citing IT House, after TikTok announced that it would suspend its services in the United States, an inquiry found that the overseas version of CapCut, also owned by ByteDance, had also been suspended simultaneously.
CapCut’s official announcement stated: “We regret to inform you that a U.S. law banning the use of CapCut will take effect on January 19, which will force us to temporarily be unable to provide services. We are working hard to resume services in the United States as soon as possible, thank you for your support Support. Please stay tuned.”
23.Coinbase includes TRUMP in its currency listing roadmap
According to official news, Coinbase has included Official Trump (TRUMP) in its currency listing roadmap.
24.Binance will list TRUMP and open TRUMP/USDC and TRUMP/USDT trading pairs
According to the official announcement, Binance will list OFFICIALTRUMP (TRUMP) at 16:30 on January 19, 2025 (UTC+8) and open TRUMP/USDC and TRUMP/USDT spot trading pairs. Users can deposit 2 hours before the start of the transaction, and withdrawals will be open at 16:30 (UTC+8) on January 20, 2025. TRUMP will have a seed tag, and users will need to pass the corresponding quiz and accept the terms of use before trading.
25.TikTok cannot be downloaded from the Google App Store in the United States
According to Jinshi, TikTok cannot be downloaded from the Google App Store in the United States, and the website no longer displays videos.
"What are some exciting articles worth reading this week (1.13-1.19)"
1.Understand BNBChain’s AI landscape and dismantle the AI First business philosophy in one article
Last week, Binance, the world’s largest exchange, launched three AI track tokens: AIXBT (Aixbt), CGPT (ChainGPT) and COOKIE (Cookie). It is worth noting that both CGPT and COOKIE come from the BNBChain ecosystem, which makes the encryption community begin to focus on AI projects in the BNBChain ecosystem.
In 2024, BNBChain proposed the strategic vision of "AI First (AI First) Chain", aiming to integrate AI into every aspect of business decision-making and ecological development, and strive to build BNBChain into an innovative place where AI and Crypto are deeply integrated.
Over the past decade, the Internet industry has successfully achieved a strategic transformation from "Web First" to "Mobile First", reshaping the lifestyle and consumption habits of a generation. Today, as the fourth wave of industrial revolution in human history, AI is reshaping the face of human society and the new business landscape with unprecedented power, driving the transition from "Mobile First" to the "AI-First" era. The Great Migration.
Kaifu Lee once predicted that the wave of technological revolution brought by AI will be 10 times greater than that of the mobile Internet. All kinds of apps we are familiar with today will be reconstructed by AI.
At present, Solana and Base have produced a large number of AI assets, but the AI track is by no means a zero-sum game. As the trend of AI becomes increasingly clear, the entire industry is working together to promote the deep integration and substantial application of AI in the Crypto field and capture a potential market with a valuation of up to trillions.
On this long and wide "snow track", the snow is abundant, providing a good opportunity for those participants who are patient and insist on long-termism to make a big snowball.
Under this background and judgment, BNBChain’s “AI First” development philosophy came from this.
2.Muneeb Ali, co-founder of Stacks: Let Bitcoin L2 flourish
On January 2, Muneeb Ali, co-founder and CEO of Stacks, a leading Bitcoin second-layer network (L2) project, changed his X (original Twitter) profile from “Founder @Stacks” to “Wartime Founder @ Stacks". This change shows that Ali realizes that 2025 is a critical year for Stacks to shift from technological upgrades in 2024 to market expansion and user growth. Last year, Stacks completed the long-awaited Nakamoto Upgrade, which significantly increased the project’s speed and enabled 100% finality of all transactions on Bitcoin.
Ali believes that this strategic adjustment of Stacks is particularly important as the crypto market ushered in a bull market due to the election of Donald Trump as president and developed in a more favorable policy environment.
“Changing the profile is a signal to the community that ‘we realize these are different times than before and we need to move faster and be more aggressive,’” Ali told CoinDesk in an interview. "It's not that there won't be product upgrades in 2025, but it can be said that products will no longer be the core focus of the work."
Here, Ali shares what decisions he would have made differently if the Satoshi upgrade could be reimagined; his candid take on the Lightning Network’s slow progress in powering Bitcoin payments; and his expectations for where Bitcoin’s price will go in 2025 ; and his ultimate goal of getting one billion people on the chain through Stacks. In addition, Ali will speak at the Consensus Hong Kong Conference in February.
Recently, there has been an increasing amount of news regarding public sales of crypto projects. It is worth noting that the public sales of these crypto projects did not choose the early ICO platform Coinlsit as the sales platform, but turned to the new generation of ICO platforms that emerged in a low profile, such as Echo, Legion, Buidlpad, etc., and these platforms have already Established influence in the overseas crypto community.
Many well-known crypto projects such as Ethena, Usual, Monad, Initia, MegaETH, Fuel, Solayer, etc. have used these platforms to raise funds for the community. Many overseas crypto community users admit that participating in the financing activities of these emerging ICO platforms has become their main way to obtain income.
On January 18, Solayer (LAYER), the first public sale project on the IC0 platform Buidlpad founded by former Binance executives, ended its sale, and the final raised funds were as high as US$57.3 million, 545.24% more than the original plan of US$10.5 million.
On January 13, Cobie, the founder of the Echo platform, revealed an interesting phenomenon: some VCs are putting pressure on crypto projects in an attempt to prevent them from providing discounts to investors or conducting community sales through platforms such as Echo. In this regard, Legion, an ICO platform incubated by Delphi Labs, expressed sympathy and confirmed that there are indeed cases where VCs prevent projects from being publicly sold.
Although VCs try to resist the participation of encryption projects in ICO, this exactly reflects that these ICO platforms have already had a certain influence and have occupied an important position in the hearts of encryption projects and communities. For a long time, the crypto community has been troubled by VC coins with "high valuation, high FDV, and low circulation", but these platforms provide users with early opportunities to participate in projects.
On the same day, Buidlpad stated that due to the large number of registered users participating in Solayer's public sale, its website was shut down and KYC was temporarily paralyzed, and the sale had to be postponed.
These seem to indicate that the crypto ICO field is expected to usher in the dawn of recovery.
4.Public chain Lego: Connecting layer 1 and layer 0 blockchains to reshape the market structure
In the past few cycles, whenever Ethereum fell into a "performance" dilemma, there was always an "Ethereum killer" popping up. The “Ethereum killer” refers to the Layer 1 blockchain, and the competitor is the Layer 2 solution proposed by Ethereum.
However, since Ethereum completed the Cancun upgrade this year, the narrative volume of Ethereum Layer 2 has been higher than that of Layer 1, and has even replaced Layer 1 as the mainstream narrative. On the one hand, the competitive landscape of Layer 1 has not changed. From the perspective of market value, (excluding BTC) ETH, BNB and Solana have formed a tripartite situation, with ETH being the dominant player. On the other hand, there is a problem, that is, here Why are there almost no new Ethereum killers emerging in this cycle?
Interestingly, Ethereum also seems to be stuck in Layer 2 troubles. Token Terminal data shows that ETH Layer1 revenue has declined sharply, down 99% since March 2024. At the same time, in August this year, Multicoin Capital bombarded Ethereum Layer 2 on Bankless’s program. Later, Ethereum Foundation researchers stated in an AMA that Ethereum is still exploring Layer 1, rather than relying entirely on Layer 2.
Problems that had been obscured by the Layer 2 boom began to surface.
"Trade Anything Any Where" is Orderly's mission.
Artela Network is the first high-performance public chain that supports full-chain AI. On-chain scalability, flexible block space, parallel execution and modular architecture make Artela the "natural choice" infrastructure for developing decentralized AI agents. Artela makes AI behavior highly verifiable and scalable, making a complex, independent, and transparent AI possible.
The community uses "an unkillable monkey" to refer to such an AI agent that can live forever across devices. On January 16, 2025, the Artela mainnet will be launched. Every developer will have the opportunity to create an "unkillable monkey". monkey".
ChainCatcher is fortunate to have Jerry, CEO of Artela Network. Jerry has rich engineering and development experience. He was the former R&D director of Apple China and the former chief architect of Ant Chain. With the pursuit of innovation as his career main line, he decided to leave Ant in 2022, bringing with him the technical experience and deep cultivation in the industry. Insight and build a new high-performance public chain.
In this interview, we talked with Jerry about the technical details of Artela, the development process of star AI agents on the Internet, and the development prospects and hidden dangers of AI agents.
Looking back at history to summarize the XRP pull pattern.
In 2024, Memecoin has become the biggest hot spot in the Crypto world. The market value of Memecoin has soared rapidly from US$20 billion in 2023 to over US$100 billion in 2024. Memecoin has not only consolidated its position in the encryption market, but its performance has far exceeded the Benchmark index of mainstream cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Become the most dazzling asset class this year.
In this trading craze, a large number of "krypton gold" players have emerged. They paid huge fees in Memecoin transactions, which directly promoted the prosperity and development of public chains such as Solana, and also made Memecoin infrastructure platforms such as Raydium, Jito, and Pump.fun make a lot of money.
Recently, ChainCatcher, together with Memecoin intelligent trading platform Tesa and Memecoin project Evan the Hobo, jointly released the "2024 Memecoin Annual Consumption Report". This report deeply analyzes the consumption data of Memecoin players with transaction amounts exceeding US$1,000 among the approximately 4 million user addresses on the Solana chain in 2024. Starting from the distribution of handling fees, it comprehensively presents the consumption behavior of Memecoin users and the performance of each platform this year. Benefit situation.
9.Xterio TGE Suspicion: Many players lost all their money. What happened to the former star project?
“This is the first time I’ve seen someone lose zero money by brushing their hair.” Crow (pseudonym) commented in the Xterio rights protection group.
Web3 game R&D and operation platform Xterio was once a star project in the market. With its strong team background and abundant capital support, it attracted many investors to invest with real money. A netizen named "Little Man" wrote on On one occasion, I had a meal with someone from Xterio, and then we came back to share our positions. This meal was so expensive, I wanted to cry.”
However, what awaits investors is the reality of widespread losses. On January 8, Xterio launched a token generation (TGE) event. Investors’ dissatisfaction due to losses continued to rise. As KOLs participating in Xterio continued to break the news and display loss data, the community’s dissatisfaction suddenly aroused, and various The Xterio rights protection group is brewing vigorously.
Loss, fraud, humiliation... The dream of wealth was shattered, and the once dazzling star project seemed to have fallen from the altar.
TRUMP can fly to 20B and become the king of MEME. What makes all this happen is the deterministic opportunity of presidential currency issuance, which is fundamentally different from most MEME in the market.
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