Best of the Week: Everything Happens!

It’s been a big week for crypto following the inauguration of Donald Trump for a second term on Monday.
The White House issued a executive order on digital assetswhich calls for a crypto-friendly approach throughout the administration and the creation of a “digital asset stockpile” (which may, or may not, be a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve). Regulations editors Nik De and Jesse Hamilton are all over the news, as usual.
The SEC revoked a controversial crypto accounting rulestarted a crypto taskforce led by Hester Peirce (aka “Crypto Mom”), and named crypto-friendly Commissioner Mark Uyeda as acting chair.
Senator Cynthia Lummis, arguably crypto’s staunchest friend in Congress, is named to lead the Senate Banking Committee’s new digital assets panelHamilton also reported.
We took the fallout from the (very) controversial memecoins dropped by the Trump family on the eve of Monday’s inauguration. CoinDesk’s Shaurya Malwa reports that 60 Solana Whales earned at least $10 million each (many others earned less). Reporting from Tom Carreras on Monday showed that the wealth of paper generated by these surprise tokens is, frankly, surprising, even absurd.
Still memecoins are a great success, which encourages filing for memecoin ETFsHelene Braun reported. Helene also broke the story about how CME leaked information about XRP and SOL futures ETFs by mistakewhich sunk in those tokens and weighed in wider market.
Ross Ulbricht, who created Silk Road about 12 years ago, teaching thousands to bitcoin for the first time, has been released after serving ten years in prison. His freedom is a key commitment of the Trump team to crypto. Sam Reynolds has news.
And the news keeps coming. In fact, it’s hard to remember a week when more important things happened in crypto. In the midst of it all, the Ethereum community is hotly debating its future (especially that of the Ethereum FoundationParikshit Mishra and Sam Kessler follow the story.
Stay tuned for more big things happening next week.