Source: Coingecko; Translated by: Wuzhu, Golden Finance

At the beginning of 2025, the market has been difficult to get rid of the hangover after Christmas/New Year. Since January 15, the cryptocurrency market has been driven primarily by bold moves by Donald Trump during his tenure as the 47th President of the United States. We expect Trump’s active participation in cryptocurrencies will increase mainstream attention to cryptocurrencies, but it will also cause market volatility every time he makes certain remarks.

On the day of the inauguration, the price of Bitcoin jumped to an all-time high of $108,786, while the price at the beginning of the year was $93,508, and the remainder of the rest of the month was basically above $100,000. Most major cryptocurrencies also rose sharply during this period, but now it seems to be in adjustment.

No further ado, let's take a look at some of the main highlights of January!

The president-elect launched memecoin two days before the inauguration, which is a watershed for the industry. Trump's core circle has taken some cryptocurrency initiatives in the past and achieved varying degrees of success, but this move resonates strongly with the current cryptocurrency era spirit. $TRUMP soared to its peak market cap of $14.5 billion in just 24 hours (peak FDV of $72 billion), once becoming the second largest memecoin after Dogecoin.

The launch of $TRUMP may have won the support of his most enthusiastic fans, but just two days later, the launch of the first lady’s official memecoin $MELANIA made most people feel unhappy , because it began to cause concerns that these tokens were just blatant means of making money. $MELANIA's token economics design is also worse, with 89% of the tokens placed in one wallet. $MELANIA hit its peak market cap of $1.9 billion immediately after its launch, but quickly collapsed and is now down about 90% from its peak.

While $TRUMP's market cap has dropped to about $3.5 billion at the time of writing, it remains the largest memecoin on Solana and the fourth largest memecoin of all chains. Although the president has tried to rekindle enthusiasm for the token since his inauguration, $TRUMP seems to have lost momentum, but we won't expect it to die completely.

Trump exercised presidential powers after his inauguration, fulfilling some of his earlier campaign promises to the industry. First, the pardon of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht on January 22, followed by the issuance of Executive Order No. 14178 (EO14178) to formally establish the President’s Digital Asset Marketing WorkThe group, chaired by David Sacks, senior adviser to the President’s artificial intelligence and encryption. The task force is to propose a federal regulatory framework for issuing and operating digital assets and to assess the possibility of establishing and maintaining digital asset reserves.

EO14178, coupled with Trump’s appointment of more supportive crypto in key positions, has created a more friendly environment for the U.S. crypto industry. More clear regulation will benefit crypto companies that want to operate legally in the United States, and may also trigger a surge in new crypto companies and crypto talents in the United States. The proposal will be presented to the President in 6 months, and we are sure that a lot of contact will take place between industry representatives and the working group during this period. Just as we were speaking, the Senate had introduced a new stablecoin bill.

At the same time, everyone is eager to watch whether the United States will establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve (the task force is currently only an assessment), although this development potential of the world's largest economy alone makes some American states, even others are considering the same idea. While the advantages of this reserve are still unclear, it is understandable for crypto enthusiasts to think that "just #pumpourbags".

In January, US spot ETFs continued to flow in, and applications for new ETFs began to pile up: At the beginning of this year, the number of applications for US crypto ETFs surged, and issuers hope to take this opportunity to drive The wave of encryption. Bloomberg has tracked over 30 applications being reviewed by the SEC, including some memecoin. We will be very interested in how U.S. regulators and agency providers negotiate memecoin issues in ETFs and whether they will have a place in the TradFi space.

The “Made in America” and Real-World Assets (RWA) categories also rose with Trump: these industries seem to be expected to benefit the most from U.S. regulatory transparency. Tokenization and the development of RWA work is one of the most interesting things to me, as we have seen many TradFi companies announce their products on the chain. We firmly believe that "everything that can be tokenized will be tokenized" - will this be a "gradual, then suddenly" situation?

Binance announced a partnership with Circle to integrate $USDC into their products: This is a surprising statement because Coinbase is a minority shareholder in Circle, and Binance has always wanted its own stability Coins (BUSD), or at least stablecoins (TUSD, FDUSD) with close ties. Since its announcement, $USDC's market cap has increased by $15 billion. It’s no secret that Circle is considering an IPO in the near future, and this collaboration with the world’s largest exchanges could help USDC challenge Tether’s current monopoly on the dollar stablecoin market, and also improve its valuation.

Artificial Intelligence Agent x DeFi = DeFAI? The story of Crypto x AI continues, but seeing these AI agents (such as GRIFFAIN and ANON) slowly being integrated into more on-chain protocols and gaining greater utility, more useful for users, and very interesting. This is firmly built on one of the key principles of cryptocurrencies and DeFi – composability – and we can’t wait to see what builders will come up with in the future!

New Year New Blockchain: The launch of the new blockchain will never be absent (you can track the latest on GeckoTerminal at any time). While Sonic was launched in late December and Abstract was launched in January, starting in February, more highly-watched chains will be available, such as Berachain, MegaETH, Monad and Story Protocol, among others. As expectations grow higher, these new chains need not only compete with each other, but also compete with existing players for users and capital in order to succeed. Apart from the promise of generous airdrops, it remains to be seen what will continue to attract users.