Coin Bytes

Last year, all US public debuts reportedly underperformed due to cryptocurrency and AI-based IPOs, falling short of the tech-heavy index S&P 500. According to a Bloomberg study on Monday, shares of all companies that went public last year, excluding closed-end funds and blank-check corporations, gained 13.9% on a weighted average basis, falling short of the S&P 500’s comparable 16% gain. As the Trump administration provided Wall Street the confidence to invest billions of dollars in cryptocurrency startups, several of the largest participants in the market went public last year. But not every business was successful.

Over $21 million has been donated by two significant bitcoin exchanges to a PAC that backs U.S. President Donald Trump. The Gemini Trust Company gave the MAGA Inc. Super PAC $1,500,000 in liquidated USDC, while Foris Dax, the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com, gave two $10 million contributions, according to a Friday filing with the Federal Election Commission. As part of a digital asset treasury strategy, the exchange has strengthened its relationship with Trump’s media company since 2025. Additional contributions from the banking and cryptocurrency sectors included almost $4 million from JP Morgan Chase Bank, N.A. and $1 million from an executive at payment processing company Shift4. The money helped build up the PAC’s $294 million fund.

Bitcoin experiences a four-week high nearing $93,350 that has been characterized as risk-on throughout the crypto markets. The CME futures have opened and created a significant gap between $90,500 and $91,550. Although BTC attracted most traders’ attention, the performance of altcoins was still uneven, with only limited strength in tokens such as LIT and FET, while the others, including meme and metaverse assets, gradually weakened, thus revealing the existence of fragile liquidity and caution. The data from the derivatives market exhibited the price move led by Bitcoin, with $260 million in futures liquidations, mainly from short positions, and increasing open interest in BTC, BCH, XRP, and BNB. Meanwhile, the positioning in major altcoins remained constant to negative, and the average market RSI close to 58 indicates that the market conditions are becoming overbought; thus, the risk of a short-term pullback is increasing as traders book profits.

XRP has pushed past the $2.12 resistance, wiping out the sell wall, which was forceful during the last period, thereby showing that there is still a possibility for more buyers as the balances on exchanges got the lowest in many years. The action was an echo of constant institutional interest, as the reportedly $13.59 million in new investments this week in the U.S.-listed spot XRP ETFs helped in retaining the available supply during the period of consolidation. As a result of the reduced number of coins on the exchanges and the increase in the network transactions, the market conditions are speaking of a tightening supply, which has the capability to boost the upswing if the momentum does not fade. The traders are now looking at whether XRP can hold the $2.12–$2.13 range, which is significant since it might lead to the $2.20 zone in a short period of time.

In the fourth quarter of 2025, the volume of Ethereum stablecoin transfers exceeded $8 trillion, setting a new record, according to a Monday report from Token Terminal.
Token Terminal’s chart shows that the $8 trillion milestone is over twice the transfer volume statistic for the second quarter, which was little over $4 trillion. According to BlockWorks, stablecoin issuance on Ethereum grew by almost 43% in 2025, from $127 billion to $181 billion by year’s end. “This is not conjecture. “BMNR Bullz” posted on X, “This is global payments happening on-chain.” This is prior to the implementation of institutional rails, complete RWA tokenisation, and SWIFT-style interfaces.

Crypto executive Kain Warwick, who was among the market participants who underestimated the rate of Ether’s recovery following its October decline, is scheduled to pay out $50,000 after placing a wager that the cryptocurrency would reach $25,000 in 2025. According to CoinMarketCap, Ether fell 13.7% from its starting price at the beginning of the year to close the year trading at about $2,980. A $19 billion cryptocurrency market liquidation on October 10th contributed to a downward trend that saw Ether drop as low as $2,767 before gradually rising once more. The wager originated from a conversation in November between Warwick and Kyle Samani, the managing partner of Multicoin. Samani was skeptical of Ether’s ability to bounce back and reach $25,000 by year’s end.

The Flow Foundation is effectively moving forward with its multi-phase strategy that encircled the $3.9 million exploit of FLOW tokens. The EVM functionality is being restored sooner than expected, thus allowing dual running of Cadence and EVM recovery, with a very high percentage of user accounts (over 99.9%) likely to get complete access back. The second phase is all about verifying each account on an individual basis to get rid of the unwanted tokens, while the security measures on the EVM layer help in preventing the illicit activities. There might be some restrictions for suspicious accounts. The Foundation is also working closely with outside forensic companies to achieve precise remediation. The last actions are reestablishing cross-chain bridges and allowing exchange activity to take place only after network stability is confirmed.

A well-known crypto sentiment indicator is starting to look a little more positive. It got out of the “extreme fear” zone on Friday and hit its highest point in three weeks, even though Bitcoin is still trading below $90,000. The index rose to a “fear” score of 29, which is the highest level since December 12. At the time, Bitcoin was worth about $88,995. For a lot of people in the crypto community, the change is a good one. Some experts say that long periods of fear often happen right before the markets start to bounce back.

South Korean retail investors continue to pour money into BitMine Immersion Technologies, even after the U.S.-listed stock has fallen over 80% from its July peak. The company’s pivot from bitcoin mining to building an ether treasury previously sparked a 3,000% rally, drawing attention from high-risk investors. BitMine remains one of the most popular overseas equities among South Koreans, with $1.4 billion invested this year, and its leveraged ETF is also attracting speculative flows despite steep losses. Backed by billionaire Peter Thiel and led by crypto bull Tom Lee, the firm holds roughly $12 billion in ETH, making it the largest dedicated ether treasury company. For Korean retail, BitMine offers convex exposure, amplifying ETH’s price movements through stock volatility, which explains why buying persists even amid massive drawdowns.

Bullish predictions for XRP are coming back as Standard Chartered firmly supports its forecast of an $8 price by 2026, which means an upside of over 300% from the present levels. The bank cites the betterment of U.S. regulatory conditions and increased institutional involvement as the main factors, with about $1.25 billion in net investments into spot XRP ETFs since the launch being one of the indicators. At the time of writing, XRP is resting at around $1.87, where trading volume holds strong but price movement is tiny; such a situation indicates preparations rather than fear. The traders are watching the support area of $1.85 very closely and also the January escrow unlock event, which has the potential of being the cause for a big price shift.