This editorial is from last week’s edition of the Week in Review newsletter. Subscribe to the weekly newsletter to get the editorial the second it’s finished.
Bitcoin smashed past $90,000 this week, spurred by fresh institutional investments and optimism of positive regulatory changes from the incoming Trump administration. Calls for $100k bitcoin by year’s end suddenly don’t seem as crazy as they did two weeks ago. There are record inflows into bitcoin ETFs, a strategic bitcoin reserve is still on the table, and indicators like the MVR-Z score are still pretty low.
When King Corn pumps, it usually means the rest of the market holds is negative, or flat at best. However, this week several prominent meme coins, not low caps, pumped from news events.
First up was an announcement from the Trump administration announcing that Elon Musk would indeed be given the power to cut government excess. On November 13, 2024, after Trump officially announced the formation of the DOGE department, Dogecoin’s value surged by nearly 20%. Since Election Day, DOGE’s price has increased over 150%, outperforming Bitcoin’s 30% increase during the same period
Pepe (PEPE) also experienced a surge in its market activity, driven by new listings on the major centralized exchanges, Robinhood and Coinbase. Following its listings, PEPE’s price skyrocketed by approximately 77%. This is probably a sign that prominent exchanges will start listing popular meme coins.
I attended Devcon this week. Devcon, unlike the business-centric Token2049, adopted a developer-first approach with its collaborative and interactive setup featuring whiteboards, chalkboards, and bulletin boards for idea-sharing, alongside numerous workshops and open spaces to encourage spontaneous collaboration and building. However, this focus came with challenges around networking and marketing. The devs were focused on building, and the business development and marketing people were present less. In this way, Devcon felt like a microcosm of Ethereum and the Ethereum ecosystem.
