It has been another bullish and eventful week for financial markets, with major US equity indices and Bitcoin both hitting record highs. BTC surged to nearly $93,000 amid a series of significant developments. President-elect Donald Trump announced the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), co-led by Elon Musk (CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and X) and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran as a Republican presidential candidate in the 2024 election before dropping out in January. The new department aims to “dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies,” according to Trump.
According to the statement by Donald Trump, the new department “will provide advice and guidance from outside of Government.” Musk has been outspoken about the need for a more entrepreneurial approach to improve efficiency with respect to federal bureaucracy. He referred to his approach as Department of Government Efficiency (or “DOGE”) over the past year. Musk, a well-known fan of the Dogecoin (DOGE) meme coin, previously drove its price to all-time highs of around $0.73 in the summer of 2021 through his social media posts. This week, DOGE became the sixth-largest cryptoasset with a market cap of $52.4 billion, briefly reaching even $62.5 billion. “DOGE is now officially part of the US government,” the token’s co-creator Billy Markus remarked Tuesday night on X. “I’m not sure this is real life.”
Meanwhile, Jay Clayton, who served as chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from 2017 to 2020 under Trump’s previous administration, has been nominated by Donald Trump to be the Attorney for the Southern District of New York. During his tenure at the SEC, Clayton guided the agency through the initial coin offering boom of 2017-18, leading high-profile lawsuits against major crypto projects such as Ripple. The Southern District of New York has presided over several notable crypto cases, including those involving former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.
In US Bitcoin ETFs, cumulative trading volume surpassed half a trillion dollars on Wednesday – less than a year after their launch. Buoyed by the recent price increase, spot Bitcoin ETFs now manage approximately $89 billion in assets, according to The Block’s Bitcoin ETF Tracker. BlackRock’s IBIT leads with $41.1 billion in AUM, followed by Grayscale’s GBTC ($19.6 billion) and Fidelity’s FBTC ($17.4 billion).
Market Overview
The global cryptoasset market capitalization currently amounts to roughly $3.05 trillion – up from $2.7 trillion last week, with bitcoin accounting for 57.3%. Among the Top 30 cryptoassets by market cap, Pepe (PEPE) and Dogecoin (DOGE) outperformed, gaining 90% and 84%, respectively, over the week. The price of bitcoin (BTC) rose by 16.5% to $88,378 while the price of ether (ETH) increased by 3.7% to $3,024. The total value locked (TVL) in DeFi is sitting at almost $107.5 billion, with Ethereum (excluding Layer 2s) accounting for about 55% of TVL. Arbitrum One remains the largest Layer 2 by value locked, accounting for about 36% of the $42 billion in assets.
This Week’s Headlines
- MicroStrategy acquires another 27,200 bitcoin for more than $2 billion
- Eighteen Republican attorneys general and the DeFi Education Fund sue the US SEC over its treatment of crypto
- FBI seizes Polymarket CEO’s phone and electronics, Bloomberg reports
- South Korea’s crypto exchange Upbit under probe for at least 500,000 KYC violations, according to a report by a local newspaper
- Bitfinex hacker Ilya Lichtenstein sentenced to five years in prison for attempting to launder 120,000 BTC
- Tether launches RWA platform to “allow the tokenization of anything”
- Franklin Templeton expands tokenized money market fund to Ethereum
- BlackRock‘s $500 million tokenized fund BUIDL expands to Aptos, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Optimism and Polygon
- Deribit options open interest reaches all-time high amid rising demand for bitcoin calls
- Bitcoin mining company MARA misses Q3 revenue expectations, increases reserves to 26,747 BTC
- NFT brand Doodles partners with McDonald’s for holiday-themed physical and digital collectibles
Notable Deals and Fundraising
- Crypto investment firms Arca and BlockTower intend to merge
- Ethereum-based solar project Glow raises $30 million in funding round led by Framework Ventures and USV
- Portal Ventures raises $75 million fund to invest in pre-seed crypto startups
- Crypto-AI startup 0G Labs raises $40 million seed and receives $250 million token purchase commitment
- Rollups-as-a-service provider Caldera acquires Hook for an undisclosed sum after recently raising $15 million in a Series A funding round
- Crypto compliance solutions provider Notabene raises $14.5 million in Series B Funding
- DeFi platform Folks Finance raises $3.2 million Series A at $75 million valuation
- Animoca Brands raises an additional $10 million to build out Mocaverse
- Brevis Network, a ZK coprocessor, raises $7.5 million in seed token round
- TAC raises $6.5 million to provide TON and Telegram users in-app access to EVM applications
- FanDuel founders launch crypto casino and sportsbook BetHog with $6 million seed round
- Eidon AI raises $3.5 million in a seed round led by Framework Ventures
- Investment Firm Sol Strategies (HODL) buys four validators, including Solana Network’s, for nearly $18 million
