What happened in crypto in the past week? Bitcoin shows weakness as trade equities and metal prices are surging. Quantum resistance: Bitcoin - No, Ethereum - Yes. I found a way to expose myself to BTC via BlackRock, using Freetrade. Feel free to check them. Prediction markets can be heavily manipulated if you have the money to do it. What else? Read below:
- Bitcoin: Michael Saylor said the danger for Bitcoin is not quantum of government crackdowns, it is unfortunate protocol changes such as adding NFT to it. BTC ETFs lost $1.33B in just four trading days, the worst since February 2025. Well, retail still sells, to buy gold and silver, while Bitcoin whales added 36.322 BTC to their stashes. Public companies hold nearly 1M BTC, and 90% of it sits in the US hands. A US winter storm knocked down 10% of BTC's hashrateat first, reaching 40% a bit later, as miners saved power during extreme weather. BlackRock files to launch an iShares Bitcoin Premium Income ETF. We do have some strange ones, like Citrea, launching its mainnet with backing from Peter Thiel, a Bitcoin lending platform, introducing ctUSD, a Treasury backed stablecoinissued by MoonPay. And now Bitcoin hits year-low, $77K, 39% down, as gold is tanking too. Around 63% of the BTC investors now have a average cost of $88K for their Bitcoins. Metaplanet approved raising up to $137M to buy more Bitcoin.
Ethereum: ETH goes the other way, with a dedicated post-quantum security team, starting to develop multi-client quantum resistant networks. Some even exchanged BTC into ETH hearing this piece of news. BitMine just added 40.302 ETH to its treasury, reaching 4.24M (3.52% of the supply). Ethereum announced the imminent launch of ERC-8004, which enables AI-to-AI interactions onchain. Remember that guy who made $200M shorting crypto before Trump's tarrif crash in October? He just lost $250M on a single ETH position leaving the account with just $53. Justice at last. Or maybe was told that too many are thinking that he has insider information and his account was heavily under scrutiny. We had some record liquidations, over $2.5B in just 24 hours. Crazee!
Altcoins and stablecoins: We got a memecoin called Penguin, with Trump holding hands with a penguin exploding on Solana. Will that help to buy Greenland? Sharps Tech shared its Solana performance, as they generate 7% annualy with staking, via active network participation. Also on Solana, the ETF assets are approaching 1-1.5% of the market cap. Europe gets Solana staking product via 21Shares, paying double yield, while America waits still. AI sector bleeds $1.6B as agents defy gravity. Zcash went up 9% despite the leadership meltdown, as people still believe in its mission. HYPE surged 24% at first, then up to 60% by the end of the week, as traders went wild of silver futures. On top of that, Hyperliquid launched prediction markets too. Tether launched USAT, a dollar-backed token built for the American market, with Bo Hines, former Trump crypto advisor, as CEO.
- NFTs and blockchain games: Axie Infinity shows sharp swings. Some cute game called World of Trinity, I had some fun playing it, you get some gold to buy few packs, and then you build a deck, with support cards too, with a simple enough math behind it. Try it! I have also enjoyed playing Golem Overlord lately on Hive, and it is quite enjoyable, I would say, with some significant updates lately. On Splinterlands, we have had the Land NFT new update and improved tokenomics, and the new rewards cards from the Conclave collection are up and running.
- Good news: Fidelity is launching its own stablecoin, Fidelity Digital Dollar. Why? Wisdom Tree moved its entire suite of tokenised funds to Solana, betting on speed, as previously operated on ETH, ARB, AVAX, BASE and OP. South Dakota proposed 10% public fund Bitcoin allocation. CBOE is building a yes-or-no options product mimicking prediction markets.
- Bad news: Regulatory delays could cap crypto valuations. Standard Chartered estimates $500B will drain from the US banks by 2028 as stablecoins pull deposits away. I know, that's why they are afraid! Chinese networks laundered 16 billions in crypto, 20% of all the crypto laundering activity, mostly through Telegram and guarantee platforms like Huione and Xinbi. Digital asset funds flipped into the red for 2026 after $1.7B in weekly outflows.
- Joke of the week: Colombia opens Bitcoin to pension investors. How long until USA will steal their presidents? Meanwhile, Tether is buying more Gold than entire countries, two tons per week, stored in a Swiss nuclear bunker. Well, they do have that XAUT stablecoin backed by physical gold. Yet, the funniest one is World Libery Financial, as its USD1 stablecoin crossed $5B in under one year, while the memecoin collapsed 93% from its peak. Really strange! Even Bitcoin closed four straight red months.
All the best,
George
Why not...
...have fun and win rewards on my favourite blockchain games (Splinterlands- a Hearthstone-like card game) (Golem Overlord - a Play2Earn game on Hive) (Upland - a real-life virtual land) (Holozing - a Pokemon-like game)and ( Chain of Legends - with a hint of Heroes of Might and Magic).
...get crypto while writing on the Publish0x blog, using the Presearch search engine to maximise your income with PRE tokens. Use Torum instead of Twitter. I am also writing for crypto on Hive.