Hello! Eric here. 

Bitcoin’s going to go to $250,000 in 2025, according to Arthur Hayes. 

The BitMEX founder and chief investment officer at Maelstrom shared his prediction with Pedro Solimano last week. 

His argument? That Donald Trump’s policies will devalue the dollar, which will catapult Bitcoin to a record. 

His prediction capped a choppy week for the top crypto. Bitcoin blasted through the $100,000 barrier last Monday for the first time since the holidays, but crashed below $93,000 on Wednesday — dampening hopes that the rally will recover. 

It fell below $91,000 over the weekend.

The Federal Reserve can take some of the blame, as Osato Avan-Nomayo reported. 

The US central bank looks unlikely to cut interest rates as rapidly as investors hope due to uncertainty around Trump’s policies. A surge in nonfarm payrolls data sent Bitcoin’s price even lower, as signs of a strong US economy lower odds of a Fed interest rate cut.

That’s not the end of the rally though, according to experts. Their takeaway is basically that the market is just waiting for Trump's inauguration on January 20. 

Once he takes office, the industry expects him to rubber stamp a smattering of pro-crypto policies that will drive the market to new heights. 

He already made several pro-crypto nominations for key spots — including Paul Atkins for chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and David Sacks as AI and crypto czar — that signal the inbound president’s ambition to support the industry. 

The powerful crypto lobby did, after all, fund campaigns that helped put him and the Republican Party in control of the White House and both chambers of Congress. 

Lawmakers on the Hill cosying up to the industry will, in turn, embolden venture capitalists to back blockchain projects to the tune of $18 billion in 2025, a PitchBook analyst told Liam Kelly and me.

Then there’s the spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds. On Friday, it was one year since Gary Gensler’s SEC approved 11 Bitcoin ETFs. 

In that time, they’ve seen over $35 billion in total inflows, a number Bernstein expects to balloon to $70 billion this year. 

It’s clear why experts seem eager to brush up Bitcoin’s choppy trading as just a hiccup.

Arthur Hayes turns up the ‘risk dial’ on these seven DeSci tokens

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Do Kwon gets US fraud trial date for $40bn Terra collapse

Almost four years after the $40 billion failure of the Terra blockchain, its co-founder, Do Kwon, will face a judge and jury in the US.

Ripple kicks off hiring spree as ‘Trump effect’ drives XRP up 10%

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Post of the week

Cardano co-founder, crypto lobbyist and sometimes alien-hunter Charles Hoskinson waded into Trump’s Greenland controversy with customary eloquence last week.

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