Bobby’s Crypto Aggregate (Jan 2025): All About Trump

GM frens,

We started 2025 slowly, as the market struggled to shake itself awake from a post-Christmas / New Year hangover. Since January 15, crypto market movements have been largely driven by Donald Trump's bold moves around his inauguration as the 47th President of the United States. We expect Trump's active engagement with crypto will heighten mainstream attention around crypto, but also generate market volatility each time he makes certain pronouncements.

The price of $BTC jumped to a new all-time high of $108,786 on inauguration day, after starting the year at $93,508, and largely stayed above $100k for the rest of the month. Most major cryptocurrencies also saw big gains during this period, though we seem to be in the midst of a correction now. 

Without further ado, let’s jump into some of the key highlights of January!

1. “Official” Presidential Memecoins

A president-elect launching a memecoin two days before his inauguration was a watershed moment for the industry. The Trump inner circle has made some crypto moves in the past to varying degrees of success, but this was a move that firmly resonated within the current crypto zeitgeist. $TRUMP rocketed to $14.5B in peak market cap (peak FDV of $72b) within slightly more than 24 hours, making it the second largest memecoin behind Dogecoin at one point. 

The launch of $TRUMP may have garnered the support of his most ardent fans, but the launch of $MELANIA, the official memecoin of the First Lady, just two days later, left a sour taste in the mouth for most, as it began to spark fears that these tokens were just blatant cash grabs. $MELANIA also had a much more egregious tokenomics design, with 89% of the tokens sitting in a single wallet. $MELANIA reached a peak market cap of $1.9B right after launch but collapsed just as quickly, and is now ~90% down from its peak.   

While $TRUMP has since fallen off to ~$3.5B market cap at time of writing, it still is by far the largest memecoin on Solana, and fourth largest memecoin across all chains. Though the President has tried to reignite enthusiasm for the token since his inauguration, $TRUMP seems to have lost momentum for now, though we wouldn’t count on it being completely dead just yet. 

2. Actually Official Presidential Actions

Wielding the powers of the presidency post-inauguration, Trump did make good on some of his earlier campaign promises to the industry. The first was the pardon issued to Ross Ulbricht, founder of Silk Road on January 22, followed by Executive Order 14178 (EO14178), which formalizes the creation of a Presidential Working Group on Digital Asset Markets, chaired by David Sacks, the President’s Senior Advisor for AI and Crypto. The Working Group is directed to propose a Federal regulatory framework for issuing and operating digital assets, as well as evaluate the potential creation and maintenance of a national digital asset stockpile. 

EO14178, coupled with Trump’s more pro-crypto appointments at key government positions, has set the tone for a more welcoming environment for the crypto industry in the US. Greater regulatory clarity will benefit crypto businesses wanting to operate legally in the US, and could perhaps usher in an explosion of new crypto companies and crypto talent based in the United States. The proposal is due to the President in 6 months, and we’re sure that there will be much engagement between industry representatives and the working group during this time. As we speak there’s already a new stablecoin bill being introduced in the Senate.  

Meanwhile, everyone will be eagerly watching whether the US will establish a strategic bitcoin reserve (the working group has been tasked to just evaluate for now), though even just the potential of such a development from the World’s largest economy has some US states, and even other countries also considering the same idea. While the merits for such a reserve remains murky, cryptobros can be forgiven for thinking “just #pumpourbags”.  

3. Some Other Things We’re Watching

• US Spot ETFs continue to see inflows in January, and applications for new ETFs start piling up: The start of the year kicked off a whole slate of new US crypto ETF applications, as issuers aim to ride the pro-crypto wave. Bloomberg is already tracking >30 applications pending at the SEC, and with some memecoins in the mix, We'll be watching with great interest to see to see how US regulators and institutional providers negotiate the question of memecoins in ETFs, and whether there will be a place for them in the TradFi space. 
• “Made in USA” and Real World Assets (RWA) categories also rally with Trump: These are the sectors that seem poised to benefit the most from regulatory clarity in the US. Developments in tokenization and RWA efforts are one of the most interesting for me, as we have seen many announcements from TradFi firms bringing their products on-chain. We strongly believe that “everything that can be tokenized, will be tokenized” - is it going to be a case of “gradually, and then suddenly”? 
• Binance announces partnership with Circle to integrate $USDC across their products: This is a surprising announcement as Coinbase is a minority shareholder in Circle, and Binance has always wanted its own stablecoin (BUSD), or at least one that it has close ties with (TUSD, FDUSD). Since the announcement, $USDC has added $15B in market cap. It’s no secret that Circle is eyeing an IPO in the near future, and such a partnership with the world’s largest exchange could help USDC challenge Tether’s current stranglehold over the USD stablecoin market, while also boosting its valuation.
• AI Agents x DeFi = DeFAI? The Crypto x AI narrative rolls on, but it’s also super interesting to see these AI Agents such as GRIFFAIN and ANON, slowly being integrated into more on-chain protocols, and gaining greater utility to become more useful to users. This builds firmly on one of the key tenets of crypto and DeFi - composability - and we can’t wait to see what builders come up with in the future!
• New Year New Chains: There’s never a shortage of new chains being launched (you can always track the latest on GeckoTerminal). While Sonic launched in late-December, and Abstract came in January, there is a broader slate of hyped chains coming online February onwards, such as Berachain, MegaETH, Monad, and Story Protocol just to name a few. With expectations flying high, these new chains will need to contend not just amongst themselves, but also current incumbents for users and capital in order to be successful. Other than promising generous airdrops, what will consistently attract users remains to be seen. 

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