The biggest crypto news and ideas of the day |
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Already the largest gainer among major cryptos since the U.S. November presidential election, Ripple's XRP outperformed even more on Wednesday after Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty dined with President-elect Donald Trump. "Great dinner last night … Strong start to 2025," wrote Garlinghouse on X alongside a picture of him and Alderoty with Trump. The token is higher by about 2% over the past 24 hours versus roughly 2.5% declines for bitcoin and the broader CoinDesk 20 Index. Since the Trump victory, it's skyrocketed more than 300%, easily outpacing all of the other major cryptos. Another massive beneficiary of the election, dogecoin (DOGE), for instance, has "only" about doubled. Crypto investors are looking for new developments to “fuel the bull,” said Aurelie Barthere, principal research analyst at Nansen. This would include news that U.S. inflation and the labor markets are cooling, or directions on the Trump administration's future policies. Until there's further clarity, though, she expects markets will be choppy. “We expect ongoing softening in the U.S. labor market that should put a lid on U.S. rates and help crypto, including the XRP price, that is participating in the same move. [...] “Ripple's CEO meeting Trump before his inauguration is definitely a bullish sign,” according to Barthere. |
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$560M Long Positions Liquidated |
Dogecoin (DOGE) led losses among crypto majors as bitcoin (BTC) slid to nearly $96,000, a dump attributed to fresh economic data that sent U.S. treasury yields soaring.
DOGE plunged 10%, with Solana’s SOL, Cardano’s ADA, BNB Chain’s BNB and ether (ETH) down at least 7%. Bitcoin fell 5.5%, while the broad-based CoinDesk 20 (CD20), a liquid index tracking the largest tokens by market cap, fell 7.1%. Crypto-tracked futures betting on higher prices saw liquidation of $560 million, data shows, setting a relatively high level at the start of the year.
Losses in crypto tracked those in U.S. stocks. The latest Institute for Supply Management (ISM) report on U.S. service providers was stronger than anticipated, with the prices-paid measure reaching its highest point since early 2023.
Concurrently, U.S. job openings rose more than forecasted. These developments led to a decline in Treasury securities across various maturities, pushing the 10-year Treasury yield to its highest since May.
A liquidation occurs when an exchange forcefully closes a trader's leveraged position due to the inability to meet the margin requirements. When many traders are forced to sell at the same time due to long liquidations, it creates a cycle where falling prices lead to more liquidations, which in turn causes prices to drop more. As such, market watchers consider Tuesday’s drop to be a blip in the long term.
“Markets took a hit yesterday, with Bitcoin and Ethereum dropping hard, mostly because stronger-than-expected U.S. job data dimmed hopes for more rate cuts this year,” shared Vince Yang, CEO and cofounder of zkLink in a Telegram message. “It’s the kind of broader sentiment shift we’ve seen before, nothing unusual for crypto.” |
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An XRP exchange-traded fund (ETF) could soon become a reality as favorable U.S. crypto regulations bear well for local businesses, Ripple President Monica Long said in a Bloomberg interview.
“I think we will see one very soon,” Long said. “I think that we will see more crypto spot ETFs this year coming out of the US, and I think XRP is likely to be next in line after bitcoin and ether.” “We think, especially with the administration change, the approvals of those filings will accelerate,” she added.
Long added that Ripple’s new RLUSD stablecoin will be available on more exchanges “imminently” and expects it to become a major part of the firm’s payments and money businesses.
RLUSD was rolled out to the broader public on Ethereum and XRP Ledger in December and has a $72 million market capitalization as of Wednesday. It adopted some of Chainlink's services on Tuesday to boost utility across decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, as reported.
In October, Bitwise, the asset manager, submitted an S-1 filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an exchange-traded fund tied to XRP. Later, Canary Capital, WisdomTree and 21Shares separately filed for offering XRP ETFs, but a decision on any is yet to come. |
Hyperliquid Faces Criticism |
HyperLiquid, the layer-1 blockchain known for its derivatives exchange, has responded to criticism over an apparent lack of decentralization and issues around validators.
The concerns were initially published by Kam Benbrik, an employee at ChorusOne which operates several nodes across different blockchains. Many of the issues stemmed from HyperLiquid using "closed-source code," which Benbrik claims "jails" node operators. HyperLiquid also controls 81% of the staked HYPE and this portion of control has the potential to spur a series of negative outcomes.
"If a single entity controls 1/3 of the stake, they can halt the chain. If they control 2/3 of the stake, they control the network entirely," Benbrik wrote.
HyperLiquid wrote its response on X, addressing the decentralization fears by stating that there will be a "Foundation Delegation Program" that will support high-performing validators thus enhancing decentralization.
On the closed-source code topic, HyperLiquid added: "The node code is currently closed source. Open sourcing is important. Projects open source once development is in a stable state. Hyperliquid ships at orders of magnitude faster than most projects. The scope is orders of magnitude larger than most projects as well. Code will be open source when it’s secure to do so." |
The Takeaway: Aethir's Mark Rydon |
By Sam Reynolds: Aethir’s decentralized Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) network began as a solution for cloud gaming, but co-founder Mark Rydon says the company is now focused on artificial intelligence — an industry where soaring demand for compute power is driving up GPU value and colliding with U.S.-China geopolitics. Aethir, founded in 2022, is one of the most talked about protocols in the Decentralized Physical Infrastructure (DePIN) space because of its real-world utility. DePIN protocols are networks where people collaborate to offer a service in exchange for a token. In the last year, the space has become extremely hot, with CoinGecko giving DePIN coins a $33 billion market cap. Hundreds of DePINs are appearing for every vertical imaginable from flight tracking data to mapping. Aethir is one of the prominent projects in decentralized compute, showing that AI can be powered by distributed computing as well as large, centralized data centers. GPUs were once the sole domain of gamers. Companies like Nvidia and AMD raced to make their GPU chips more powerful so that gamers could enjoy their virtual worlds with greater fidelity and resolution.
And then, sometime around 2006, researchers at Nvidia discovered that the GPUs’ strength of parallel computing – which makes graphics better and better – was also good for crunching massive amounts of data and could accelerate traditional computing workloads.
Read the full interview here. |
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