admonhh

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It appears that U.S. President Donald J. Trump woke up in the new year and decided to remind everyone that he can move markets like no one else. Venezuelans, Maduro, and antagonistic countries definitely took notice. So did markets, which have responded positively to this surgical strike.

With Maduro out, the mainstream is focused on who gets the oil, while people in crypto wonder who gets his (potentially) vast sum of Bitcoin? Many people also wondered about a highly suspicious bet on Polymarket less than 24 hours before Soon after that show of military force, Trump signaled that the U.S. government is going to spend a lot of money on defense, but wants to curtail non-performing U.S. defense companies. These two messages whipsawed U.S. defense stocks.

Trump made comments on social media about stopping corporations from buying up single family homes. As is common with President Trump, the details might be sub-optimal, but at least we’re having the conversation, said Mike Green.

Trump instructed unnamed government organs to buy $200 billion in MBS (Mortgage Backed Securities), a move that injects liquidity into markets, a kind of stealth QE. Bitcoin and crypto are arguably the most liquidity sensitive assets.

Trump, or his family members, have also quietly started a bank designed specifically to manage the USD1 stablecoin.

Meanwhile, Iran has erupted in protests. Citizens are storming the capital as I write this. Rumors abound about Ali Khamenei.

What a week, and we’re not even done yet!

This week Bitcoin pushed up against the $94-$95K resistance of the last 30 days, and was rejected for the third time. Joe Consorti notes that Bitcoin has traded in a narrow range, its 10 day volatility is low, possibly indicating a bottom.

In other bullish news, MSCI announced that for the time being they would keep DATs (Digital Asset Treasuries) in its global benchmarks. Michael Saylor and company breathed a sigh of relief.Morgan Stanley filed for spot Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana ETFs.

Ethereum appears to be having a moment. Vitalik Buterin opened the year with a couple of banger posts. First, he's declaring Ethereum has reached a turning point in performance while maintaining its world-class decentralization.

Second, he made it clear that the game Ethereum (and by extension, all so-called decentralized blockchains) is playing to win is to become a trustless, censorship resistant, neutral, world computer. Not a slower version of web2. Mr. Buterin analogized Ethereum to BitTorrent and Linux.

Whether intentionally jabbing at Solana or not, Mr. Buterin’s posts definitely miffed some Solana folks. Also, the fact that apparently Solana's anthem, IBRL, is being threatened by the real world actions of self-interested validators, is potentially upsetting. It remains to be seen how big of an issue this is.

In conjunction with Vitalik’s ideological or philosophical Ethereum support, this week also had Ethereum’s number one price cheerleader Tom Lee stacking ETH like a madman. Mr. Lee predicts that metals are likely foreshadowing a crypto rally.

In a new essay, Arthur Hayes agrees that a crypto rally is imminent, saying, “Maelstrom entered 2026 with almost maximum risk.” Mr. Hayes believes that DeFi will outperform Ethereum, and privacy will outperform Bitcoin. It should be noted that Mr. Hayes has massive Zcash bags.

Speaking of Zcash, the leading privacy coin dumped hard on poorly communicated news that a developer team devoted to Zcash resigned from their company and reconstituted into a new one. It appears the negative price action is based on groundless fears.

TON also suffered some FUD this week, although to be fair, TON was relentlessly down only to the tune of 70% in 2025. The FT reported rather sensationally that nearly 10% of TON’s circulating supply was sold in 2025, but this was rebutted in later posts.

All altcoins are struggling to justify their token prices. Hence the ascendance of the revenue narrative. HYPE was the exemplar of this narrative in 2025, but that hasn’t stopped it from falling more than 50% from its ATH.

This fall has started a discussion on token buybacks. Last week Jordi Alexander posted on how the mechanical, straightforward buyback model by projects like HYPE is suboptimal. Mr. Alexander advised looking into Keyrock's article on designing token buybacks. Then, Felix of Forward Guidance came out with a great X article on token buybacks.

Finally, the last news story is also the scariest. Ledger, one of the most popular purveyors of hardware wallets, massively fucked up this week. If you've bought a Ledger directly from the company, it's probably best to assume your home address is compromised.

The always great Hasseb Qureshi wrote a lengthy post addressing the question of whether the rate of physical violence against crypto users is increasing. To quote:

“* Wrench attacks seem to be increasing

* They're becoming more violent

* Some of this is just population effects because there are more people who hold crypto now, so the risk per user has not increase
d as much as it might seem”

Stay safe out there, everyone.

-David Sencil
Maduro was taken.