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This Week in Bitcoin: New High Price, Multi-Million Dollar Projections, and Trump Frees Ross Ulbricht
Published
4 weeks agoon
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Bitcoin is again hovering around $105,000 per coin, barely budging since this time last week. Investors shouldn’t complain, though, after an action-packed start to the week led the coin to hit a new high.
The price of the biggest coin by market cap broke a new record of $108,786 Monday ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration. It has since dropped by nearly 4%, CoinGecko shows.
And despite President Trump not explicitly declaring plans for a Bitcoin strategic reserve in his first crypto executive order, the coin is still sitting comfortably above the $100,000 mark.
Bitcoin soared above $100,000 following Trump’s November election; the President promised to slash regulation and help the digital asset industry. And he is keeping his crypto promises—albeit while annoying some hardcore Bitcoiners in the process.
ETF movements
Money continued to flow into the crypto investment vehicles this week, after investors threw billions at the funds last week ahead of the inauguration.
But it didn’t stop, with $802.6 million hitting the funds on Tuesday alone, data from Farside Investors shows. By the end of the week, over $1.75 billion worth of assets had entered the Bitcoin ETFs.
The bullishness comes as Donald Trump is expected to be a net positive for the industry. The Republican campaigned on a promise to help the industry and now buying Bitcoin has never been easier thanks to the funds.
The spot bitcoin ETFs quietly on fire to start year, with $4.2b in flows which is 6% of all ETF flows. Now at +$40b net since launch with aum at $121b and return of 127%. For context they just passed ESG ETFs in assets ($117b) and have about same as gold spot. pic.twitter.com/GADOomLXD4
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) January 24, 2025
Ross freed
Bitcoiners had been waiting for it for years. And on Tuesday, President Donald Trump kept his campaign promise to pardon Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht.
The Bitcoin enthusiast and founder of the dark web e-commerce site—mainly used for buying drugs using Bitcoin—was released shortly after and expressed enormous gratitude to President Trump. The crypto community flooded his digital wallets with BTC donations, too.
But Ulbricht—who went to prison in 2013—might already just be sitting on a goldmine: Untouched Bitcoin wallets linked to Ross Ulbricht and Silk Road now hold over $47 million worth of the asset.
Ulbricht has long been considered a hero in the Bitcoin community for creating one of the first marketplaces to accept the cryptocurrency. And though it still can’t be verified that the wallets do indeed belong to him, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility.
Where’s Bitcoin?
Ahead of Donald Trump’s shock November 5 win, the President had promised plans for a Bitcoin strategic reserve. But after signing his first crypto executive order on Thursday, which touched on the possibility of a crypto stockpile, Bitcoiners noticed one thing—there was no mention of their beloved orange coin, just “digital assets.”
“The Working Group shall evaluate the potential creation and maintenance of a national digital asset stockpile and propose criteria for establishing such a stockpile, potentially derived from cryptocurrencies lawfully seized by the Federal Government through its law enforcement efforts,” the order read.
The news has angered ardent Bitcoiners, who have been hurling the usual insults about “shitcoinery,” and who think it may lead the government to building up a stash of other digital coins.
Emergency Press Conference: Ripple is undermining American prosperity, freedom, and Bitcoin.
Ripple is actively lobbying to stop a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve in the U.S. while pushing their centralized, corporate-controlled token.
We will not stand for it. pic.twitter.com/EHldJHxyR9
— Jack Mallers (@jackmallers) January 24, 2025
MicroStrategy moves
Software company MicroStrategy shareholders are seemingly all-in on the firm’s Bitcoin strategy: They on Tuesday voted for a 30x increase to the number of authorized Class A common shares so that the company could have more resources to buy the cryptocurrency.
The news came as the company announced its latest Bitcoin buy, bringing its holdings to 461,000 Bitcoin—worth over $48 billion. And on Friday, the firm said that it would redeem over $1 billion worth of its existing debt accumulated early while building up the stash.
Soaring projections
Elsewhere, British multinational bank Standard Chartered, which has come out with very bullish predictions in the past, said in a Wednesday note that Bitcoin would continue to soar as pension funds enter the space.
Analysts at the bank forecasted that institutions enthusiasm for the asset could mean the coin hits $200,000 by the end of 2025.
But there were even bigger price predictions for Bitcoin from major players this week. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said that growing adoption could push the price of the asset to $700,000, while Coinbase founder and CEO Brian Armstrong projected a price in the “multiple millions” at some undetermined point in the future.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
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Bitcoin Reaching $100K Is Start of ‘Massive Wave’ of Institutional Interest: Samson Mow
Published
3 days agoon
February 19, 2025By
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Bitcoin’s ascent past $100,000 might have felt like the culmination of a long-promised milestone, but according to industry veterans, what we’re witnessing is the beginning of real institutional adoption—a trend that could fundamentally transform how global capital markets work.
“Previous Bitcoin bull runs were usually muted because exchanges needed to onboard and were backlogged for months,” explains Samson Mow, CEO of Jan3, a company focused on accelerating Bitcoin adoption. “But with ETFs, now there’s no barrier to TradFi capital flowing directly into Bitcoin.”
Speaking from the Consensus 2025 conference in Hong Kong on Wednesday, Mow acknowledged that the “torrent of capital” hasn’t “poured in” just yet for Bitcoin, with institutional investors such as sovereign wealth funds merely “dipping their toes” in the still muddy waters of crypto and only investing “a droplet of what they have.”
Mow was responding to Adam Back, CEO of Blockstream, who pointed out earlier in the talk how peculiar market dynamics have been at play for Bitcoin.
“ETF inflows are a multiple of Bitcoin mined every day. MicroStrategy and other companies are buying two times plus Bitcoin mining per day,” Back said.
That’s all setting the stage for a “massive wave of maybe 10, 20 years of bullish” price action for Bitcoin as institutions embrace it, according to Mow.
The panel discussed how roughly 1.1 million Bitcoin—worth approximately $110 billion at current prices—has been absorbed by buyers between September and October of 2024, even as prices climbed 50% from $60,000 to current levels.
This unprecedented supply absorption has occurred despite what Mow describes as “manufactured” trading ranges.
“If you look at the price movement, we kind of peak, and then we stay steady and chop sideways,” Mow observed. “It’s good to say it’s consolidation, but it just looks very manufactured. There’s a very tight range in which we’re trading at. It just doesn’t look natural at all.”
Mow’s observation is a response to how Back suggested that previous structural sellers, including bankrupted firms and miners who needed cash during the bear market, have largely cleared the market.
“If we’re talking about last year, after the DeFi contagion and bankruptcies, there were some structural sellers who were sort of ‘false sellers’ and miners who were restructuring or replacing fleets or going through a less profitable period,” Back said.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.
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CZ Donates 150 BNB to Libra Scam Victims—Ends Up With More Than He Gave
Published
4 days agoon
February 19, 2025By
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What started as an act of goodwill by Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) to help victims of the LIBRA meme coin scam took an unexpected turn when Zhao received more crypto than he originally donated.
On Tuesday, Zhao pledged 150 BNB—worth approximately $100,000—to support those affected by the collapse of the controversial LIBRA coin after a college student, EnHeng, began raising funds to assist the victims.
But Zhao’s decision to publicly share his donation address led to an influx of additional crypto in the same, surpassing his initial contribution.
EnHeng, moved by the devastating losses caused by Argentina President Javier Milei–promoted LIBRA crypto, which wiped out more than 40,000 investors and resulted in over $4 billion in damages, announced their own donation of $50,000.
“When you try to make quick money, you often lose,” Zhao quipped on X. “When you give money away, you get more back.”
Despite the increased donations, Zhao made it clear that he would not keep any of the additional funds.
“I won’t be keeping a satoshi of it,” Zhao clarified in his tweet, saying he would donate the extra crypto to further support the victims, specifically those affected by other meme coins like TST and Broccoli, the latter being inspired by CZ’s pet dog.
Zhao also warned his followers not to misinterpret his actions as an endorsement of the tokens involved.
The LIBRA Scam: A Presidential Endorsement Leads to Financial Chaos
Last Friday, the LIBRA token’s launch stirred controversy after Argentine President Javier Milei publicly endorsed it on his X account.
The promotion caused the coin’s value to surge, reaching a market cap of over $4 billion within hours of its debut.
Milei initially promoted LIBRA as a project to help fund small Argentine businesses and boost the national economy, linking it to the “Viva La Libertad” initiative.
But the excitement was short-lived. Just hours later, the token crashed by over 91%, causing massive losses for investors—with some losing their life savings.
After the coin’s collapse, Milei deleted his post and disavowed any involvement with the project, claiming he had been misinformed and had no knowledge of its full details.
Fraud charges were filed against Milei and the team behind the token, accusing them of being complicit in a large-scale fraud scheme.
On-chain analysis showed that a single entity controlled 82% of LIBRA’s supply, fueling suspicions about market manipulation.
Platforms such as Jupiter and Meteora, which provided technical support for LIBRA, are under fire, with Meteora’s co-founder Ben Chow resigning amid allegations of insider trading and misconduct following the token’s collapse.
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair
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Crypto User Burns $7 Million Ethereum to Warn of ‘Mind Control’ Through Brain Chips
Published
5 days agoon
February 18, 2025By
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A man identifying himself as an “ordinary programmer and entrepreneur” has burned and donated approximately $7 million worth of Ethereum as a form of protest and a personal statement against what he describes as a long-standing experience of being monitored and manipulated by a “brain-control organization.”
Now, Crypto Twitter users are trying to get what’s left of his money.
The user, who identified himself as Hu Lezhi, has sent around 2,553 ETH (worth approximately $7 million) through multiple transactions over the past week.
Of that amount, 603 ETH ($1.65 million) was permanently removed from circulation by sending it to an unspendable blockchain address, 0x00000—also known as the ETH burn address.
Hu has also inscribed a variety of unusual messages on the blockchain.
“Since October 2022, I have realized that I have been monitored and manipulated by a brain-control organization since birth,” Hu wrote on-chain. “When I became aware of the existence of this organization, they intensified their harm against me.”
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“The past two years have been extremely painful, and I have now reached a point where I have completely lost my dignity as a human being,” he wrote.
One of the transactions carried messages accusing executives at Chinese hedge fund WizardQuant Capital Management of using “brain-computer weapons” to control employees.
The quant firm, founded by Wall Street veterans and based in Shanghai and Beijing, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment by Decrypt.
Before burning his tokens, Hu donated more than 700 ETH (a bit under $2 Million) to Wikileaks address and other wallets like nda.eth, sharing more details about his supposed relationship with WizardQuant.
“There is a new mode of crime in which the victim is gradually deprived of his senses of desire until he becomes a complete slave to the digital machine, and if one day I become a victim of the final stage, I will leave the world,” the programmer inscribed on the blockchain in one of the transactions.
Some crypto Twitter users have been trying to prey on Lezhi and get him to send them any funds he has left. “Please help me, I am being persecuted too, send ETH,” wrote one user in two different transactions to Lezhi’s address.
The last transaction from Lezhi’s wallet occurred on February 17 at 7:13:35 AM UTC, when he sent another message to WikiLeaks about being “monitored and manipulated” since birth.
“I have decided to leave this world and hope that this ugly world will be destroyed soon,” he wrote.
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair and Josh Quittner
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