Weekly Market Update: The Trump Show Continues

We’re trying hard not to let the US dominate our thinking and events, however, at this time it is nigh on impossible as the Trump administration has unleashed a blitzkrieg of change. Most of it, from a crypto perspective, was positive. 

So far, the US has established a crypto task force, released Ross Ulbricht, removed sanctions on Tornado Cash and rescinded a directive stopping banks from holding crypto. 

Elsewhere, Hong Kong is looking to license stablecoin issuers, Circle is moving into tokenised assets and someone has filed for a DOGE ETF.  Lordy, lordy. 

In wider economic news, markets were sideswiped by the launch of AI disruptor DeepSeek.  Nvidia lost something like $500 bn in market capitalisation. 

In a quiet news week for the US, PMIs showed manufacturing picking up but services pulling back. 

Similarly, in Europe, composite PMI actually tipped into expansion, however, Manufacturing is still on struggle street. 

Turning to APAC, Japan’s inflation rose unexpectedly and the BoJ lifted rates to a 17-year high of… 0.5%. China’s PMIs went backwards, while India continues to expand at a healthy clip. 

In Australia, their PMI showed some signs of growth, however, consumers are showing signs of strain. Their Q4 CPI data is out showing it has moderated to 2.4%. 

In New Zealand, job adverts are way down on last year, as is net immigration. Arrivals are down and departures are up.  

Market sentiment has pulled back slightly over the last week and now sits in greed territory.

Highlights this week: 

• After a pretty exuberant run last week, nearly all the top 30 assets posted declines this week. 
• We saw a bifurcation in trading strategies this week. Our higher spending customers had a bias for buying while our general customers were in sell mode. 
• SOL volume is particularly high at present, most of it profit taking. XRP is also trading at higher than normal volumes. 
• At the time of writing XRP was down 2%, BTC and BNB down 4% and ETH 6%. SOL gave back a chunk of last week’s gains to be down 10%.   
• JUP is our best performer this week on its buy back news, up 27%. 
• TRUMP is down 34% to claim the worst performing slot.   

View all top gainers: Visit the top gainers page to find out more. 

Highlights from the crypto space

The US crypto news …

• The SEC has established a Crypto 2.0 task force led by Hestor Pierce who’s known to be pragmatic about crypto. 
• President Trump kept his election promise and freed Ross Ulbricht, the SilkRoad founder.   
• Sanctions have been lifted on TornadoCash as well. 
• There is a definite ramp-up in the discussion of Bitcoin as a strategic reserve in the US too. 
• The SAB 121 directive, which effectively stopped banks from custodying crypto, has been rescinded. 
• Why memecoins?  Well, somewhat perversely, memecoins, even though they are speculative as hell, are actually safer to launch legally as they are in no way securities.  

Elsewhere in the world, Hong Kong is debating a stablecoin bill that requires issuers to get a license. 

Circle has acquired Hasnote, a company that tokenises government bonds.  They have a partnership with Cumberland DRW too. 

French authorities are probing Binance for money laundering, tax evasion and drug trafficking. 

Bitwise has filed for a DOGE ETF. If approved by the SEC, these ETFs could mark a pivotal moment for Dogecoin, potentially unlocking new streams of institutional investment and solidifying its position in the market.

Ripple has secured money transmitter licenses in New York and Texas. 

SOL outperformed both Bitcoin and ETH in January! 

ETH…well, it’s struggling. The DeFi report is an interesting read, the takeaway is that Ethereum disrupted itself with Blobs and has lost commercial momentum and needs a catalyst. 

Jupiter is rejigging its tokenomics and will include a JUP buyback. 

🌎 Macro news TLDR: …AI disruption causes chaos.

Wondering what happened to the market?  Well, the AI-driven frenzy had the wind taken out of its sails by a disruptor from… China. DeepSeek has effectively turned the AI market on its head. 

The announcement of a low-cost AI model by DeepSeek has sent shockwaves through the tech sector, leading to a nearly $600 billion drop in Nvidia’s market value.

Analysts also suggest that the market may have overhyped expectations around Trump’s crypto executive orders. 

U.S. economic news

Flash PMIs for January painted a picture of expanding manufacturing, (the first time in a while), but a significant pullback in services. Consumer confidence has also dropped. 

Over in Europe….

Manufacturing PMI for Europe was ‘less bad’, with manufacturing up to 46.1 from 45.1 in January. Composite PMI tipped over the magic 50.  

A German industry association is saying Germany is in an economic crisis and about to post its 3rd year of declining GDP. 

And in Asia Pacific…

Japanese inflation jumped to 3.6% in December. In response, the BoJ delivered on the signaled rate increase with a 25 bps hike, taking rates to 0.5%. 

China’s official PMI for January went backward and was way lower than expected.  India on the other hand is showing solid expansion according to its PMIs. 

Australia’s PMIs also showed some signs of growth. The consumer looks to be hurting though with Westpac research showing that the tax cuts are being saved not spent.

Business confidence remains negative. Australian Q4 CPI is out showing a continued moderation of the headline rate as it fell from 2.9% to 2.4%. Core inflation (the trimmed mean) was 3.2%.  Those electricity rebates are still helping. 

Seek reports that Job ads are down 22% in the year to December. Stats NZ report that filled jobs ticked up marginally in December and that net migration is down significantly. 

Here’s the rub, year-on-year arrivals are down 32%, with departures up 28%.  Demographics are destiny. 

That’s a wrap for this week!

Stay tuned for the next update.

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