Legal woes and market highs: Binance, OpenAI, Trump memecoins and Bitcoin

Today is another special episode of the Rise'n'Crypto podcast because it marks both the end and the start.

After 312 episodes, 1,586 stories, and 396,836 words, Rise’n’Crypto is coming to and end. But, this isn’t a sad day, because Rise’n’Crypto isn’t dead, it’s evolving. 

At Cointelegraph, we asked ourselves: how can we turn Rise’n’Crypto into something more. And now, we know. This daily show is moving to an hour-long live Space on X, where every day, Cointelegraph’s managing editor, Gareth Jenkinson, and I will tackle the breaking news in crypto, joined by the best names in the industry as guests. What’s more, the floor will be wide open for questions that we will dedicate time to answering every episode.

The future of crypto news is live. So, for the biggest stories, the biggest names, and your biggest questions, join the conversation every day on X, with me, Robert Baggs and Gareth Jenkinson. 

Bitcoin dominance is the talk of the town again as traders wonder just how high it would need to go to reach a ceiling and then start making way for altcoins. One trader even suggested that "altseason" came and went, it was just underwhelming. Elsewhere, MicroStrategy has rebranded to Strategy, adding the Bitcoin logo to its own new logo. Then, in an earnings call, Strategy reported $670M in net losses for Q4 2024, but it's all part of the plan, and that plan is — unsurprisingly — Bitcoin. In a follow-up to yesterday's story, we speak to attorneys about the SEC's proposed token relief and who might benefit. And finally, Solana app revenues soar, but for how long can this momentum continue?

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It was another day of volatility in crypto, and traders, analysts, and market commentators began to sound alike, saying that this bull cycle no longer resembles bulls of the past. But why? After we look at that, it’s on to some major US political moves that will affect crypto, from SEC “relief” to crypto regulation proposals from lawmakers. Finally, we’ll look at ZachXBT's latest investigation that suggests Coinbase users are being scammed out of $300 million per year!

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As we move further from the weekend’s crypto bloodbath, we are getting a better sense of the scale of the event; the Bybit CEO said liquidations weren’t around $2 billion, but more like $10 billion! Nevertheless, yesterday saw a sizeable rebound across Bitcoin and altcoins, so there’s much to unpack. MicroStrategy finally put a halt on selling its stock for Bitcoin after 12 consecutive weeks of purchases, and Ethereum rallied as Eric Trump claimed it was a great time to buy ETH. Still, the Trump family crypto platform, World Liberty Financial, was reportedly trying to sell more of its WLFI token, which was swiftly denied.

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It was an utter bloodbath of a weekend for Bitcoin, spilling into Monday. The cause? Most point to US President Donald Trump, whose trade tariffs have wreaked chaos both inside and outside crypto. To begin today’s episode, I will go through exactly how Bitcoin was affected and what it might mean going forward. Then we’ll look at Binance being investigated in France on allegations of money laundering and drug trafficking, India’s hostile attitude toward crypto that may be changing and how one lucky maniac made the best part of $50 million in profit from a 50x leveraged short play on Ether!

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Bitcoin is seeing a clear divergence in strategy between retail investors and whales — something that isn’t uncommon but is interesting. Outside of Bitcoin, it’s chaos as always. The parents of FTX’s former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, are looking into getting a pardon for their son from President Donald Trump, Pump.fun was hit with a class-action lawsuit claiming all memecoins from the platform are securities, Elon Musk’s dad has his own a memecoin and Ross Ulbricht's wallet loses $12 million in a memecoin misstep.

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