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Happy Friday! Ed here.
Something just changed in crypto.
That was the vibe this week after Donald Trump’s election victory triggered a rally for the ages.
Bitcoin’s price climbed more than 17% in the last seven days, and notched a series of all-time highs north of $85,000.
Analysts and money managers fell over themselves setting new price targets. Matt Hougan, the chief investment officer at Bitwise, said a $500,000 Bitcoin price was achievable in 2025.
And Arthur Hayes, the co-founder of BitMEX and influencer, forecasts Bitcoin will hit $1 million thanks to the US’ penchant for deficit spending.
No surprise, memecoins captured the zeitgeist by recording a 127% surge in market value over the last week.
As Osato Avan-Nomayo reported, retail investors piled into Dogecoin, Pepe, Shiba Inu and other joke coins. It didn’t hurt that Robinhood and Coinbase have started listing more memecoins.
Meanwhile, DeFi appeared to be missing the party.
To be sure, Ethereum rallied more than 9% in the last seven days. But at $3,115 Ether is still a way off from its 2021 all-time high of $4,878.
Moreover, the market value for the top 100 coins in DeFi increased 6.3% in the last seven days, according to CoinGecko. That’s less than half as good as the 16% hike in the crypto market’s overall value of $3.1 trillion.
Could consolidation be in order as fintechs and stronger crypto ventures go shopping for bargains in the months to come?
Unlike Silicon Valley or Wall Street, the crypto space has yet to experience a proper season of mergers and acquisitions activity.
Seems so.
Liam Kelly reported that expectations that Trump will replace scourges such as Gary Gensler with crypto-friendly regulators is poised to spur deal action.
Sidenote: Gensler heavily hinted this week that he is about to take a bow from his role as chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Indeed, one name already making the rounds is Dan Gallagher, an SEC vet and Robinhood exec. Tim Craig reported that Gallagher would go into the embattled agency with “a pretty lengthy list” of changes.
While Bitcoin may have tapered its runup toward the end of the week — profit-taking, anyone? — crypto’s to-do list is indeed pretty lengthy.
For now, investors seem content to revel in the action. As Pedro Solimano reported, investors are basking in “the euphoria zone.”
And you can bet they are going to savour the moment.
The Onion has bought Infowars, the conspiracy site founded by Alex Jones — seen above impersonating an angry thumb. In a surprise twist, the satirical publication said it will start to accept Bitcoin from fans of Infowars.
Crypto trading can be a tough nut to crack, but one trader successfully squirrelled away more than peanuts by trading a memecoin based on a sciuridae that hit the interwebz days before the election.
Brian Armstrong took a break from enjoying the bliss of his recent nuptials this week to imply that the FBI raid on Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan’s home was politically motivated. However, he quickly changed his tune.
Post of the week
While crypto pumpers and industry insiders are bullish about what Trump’s presidency will mean for their bags, others are more sceptical about what his governmental picks will mean for the rest of us.
Trump still has the sauce. No one else could have made picks like these. Every selection is like drafting a kicker in the first round but the kicker has a Wikipedia section titled Allegations and is also not really a kicker
— noah kulwin (@nkulw) November 13, 2024
