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FTC sues Deere over equipment repair costs for farmers

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John Deere booth signage is displayed at CES 2023 at the Las Vegas Convention Center on January 6, 2023 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

David Becker | Getty Images

The Federal Trade Commission has sued agricultural equipment giant Deere & Company, arguing it holds a monopoly on repair services that raises costs and creates delays for farmers, the agency announced Wednesday.

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The lawsuit alleges Deere has for decades hindered customers’ ability to repair their equipment, including tractors and combines, forcing them to rely on the company’s network of authorized repair providers. A Deere software tool called “Service ADVISOR,” which is only available to more expensive authorized dealers, is necessary to fully fix equipment, leaving farmers and independent repair providers unable to do it themselves, the FTC alleged.

The FTC said authorized dealers often use Deere-branded parts instead of less expensive generic ones for repair jobs, adding to Deere’s profits.

“Illegal repair restrictions can be devastating for farmers, who rely on affordable and timely repairs to harvest their crops and earn their income,” said FTC Chair Lina Khan in a news release. “The FTC’s action today seeks to ensure that farmers across America are free to repair their own equipment or use repair shops of their choice—lowering costs, preventing ruinous delays, and promoting fair competition for independent repair shops.”

The states of Illinois and Minnesota are also plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

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The lawsuit seeks to make Service ADVISOR and other necessary repair resources available to Deere customers and independent repair providers. Other manufacturing companies in the trucking and auto industries provide the required information for generic repair tool developers, the FTC said.

Deere didn’t immediately return a request for comment. Its shares fell less than 1% on Wednesday afternoon.

The lawsuit comes in the final days of President Joe Biden’s term in the White House and Khan’s tenure at the FTC, during which the agency has taken an aggressive approach to antitrust. It is unclear if President-elect Donald Trump’s administration will continue to pursue the suit against Deere.

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Bitcoin Long-Term Holders Officially Enter Into Greed Territory, Is This Good Or Bad For Price?

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Bitcoin Long-Term Holders Officially Enter Into Greed Territory, Is This Good Or Bad For Price?

Este artículo también está disponible en español.

In a recent development, crypto analyst Ali Martinez revealed that Bitcoin long-term holders have officially entered greed territory. This could benefit the price in the short term, although the long-term consequences could be severe. The greed phase suggests that long-term Bitcoin holders are now excessively optimistic about BTC’s future trajectory.

Bitcoin Long-Term Holders Officially Enter Into Greed Territory

In an X post, Martinez stated that long-term Bitcoin holders, having experienced every phase of the market cycle, are now letting greed take over. In terms of market sentiment, these holders have moved from capitulation to hope, optimism, and then belief and are now in the greed phase.

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This excessive optimism typically leads these investors to accumulate more BTC impulsively without considering rational analyses. In the short term, this greed phase is bullish for the Bitcoin price since this market sentiment could spark more buying pressure and drive the flagship crypto higher.

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BTC’s market dynamics in greed phase | Source: Ali Martinez on X

This buying pressure for Bitcoin already looks to be evident as on-chain analytics platform Santiment revealed that the number of wallets holding 100 to 1,000 BTC has broken an all-time high (ATH), rising to 15,777 wallets. The platform also mentioned that Bitcoin whales peaked up steam this week with the US inauguration and a new BTC ATH as transactions exceeding $100,00 surged to their highest level in six weeks. 

This greed phase is good for the BTC price, as it could continue to send the flagship crypto to new highs. However, in the long term, this excessive optimism could put BTC in overbought territory, eventually sparking a massive wave of sell-offs that would send the Bitcoin price tumbling. 

This greed phase among Bitcoin long-term holders looks to be sparked by optimism around Donald Trump’s pro-crypto administration and the strategic BTC reserve especially. This still poses a risk for the Bitcoin price since the flagship crypto could be trading well above its actual value if the BTC reserve isn’t eventually created. 

What Needs To Happen For BTC To Stay Bullish

In another X post, Ali Martinez warned that the Bitcoin price needs to stay above $97,530 to remain bullish. According to him, this price level is the key support level to watch for BTC, as holding above it is crucial to maintaining the current bullish momentum. Bitcoin is currently consolidating around this range after hitting a new ATH of $109,000 earlier this week. 

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Meanwhile, crypto analyst Crypto Rover highlighted the $102,000 support area as the most important for the BTC price right now. His accompanying chart showed that the flagship crypto could drop to as low as $98,000 if it drops below this support level. 

At the time of writing, the Bitcoin price is trading at around $104,900, up over 2% in the last 24 hours, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Bitcoin
BTC trading at $105,375 on the 1D chart | Source: BTCUSDT on Tradingview.com

Featured image from Unsplash, chart from Tradingview.com

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S&P 500 Sees Best Start for a President Since 1985 | Bloomberg: The Close 1/24/2025

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Bloomberg Television brings you the latest news and analysis leading up to the final minutes and seconds before and after the closing bell on Wall Street. Today’s guests are Jerome Schneider, PIMCO, John Ketchum, NextEra Energy, Gregory Francfort, Guggenheim Securities, Mike Sabel, Venture Global, Kara Murphy, Kestra Investment Management, Chris Cain, Bloomberg Intelligence, Angelo Zino, CFRA, Rashad Bilal & Troy Millings, Earn Your Leisure, Kevin Cohee, OneUnited Bank, Rohit Chopra, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. (Source: Bloomberg)

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The AI industry’s pace has researchers stressed

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Hand squeezing yellow stress ball

To outside observers, AI researchers are in an enviable position. They’re sought after by tech giants. They’re taking home eye-popping salaries. And they’re in the hottest industry of the moment.

But all this comes with intense pressure.

More than half a dozen researchers TechCrunch spoke with, some of whom requested anonymity for fear of reprisals, said the AI industry’s breakneck pace has taken a toll on their mental health. Fierce competition between AI labs has fomented an isolating atmosphere, they say, while the rising stakes have ratcheted up stress levels.

“Everything has changed virtually overnight,” one researcher told me, “with our work — both positive and negative results — having huge impacts as measured by things like product exposure and financial consequences.”

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Just this past December, OpenAI hosted 12 livestreams during which it announced over a dozen new tools, models, and services. Google responded with tools, models, and services of its own in a dizzying array of press releases, social media posts, and blogs. The back-and-forth between the two tech giants was remarkable for its speed — speed that researchers say comes at a steep cost.

Grind and hustle

Silicon Valley is no stranger to hustle culture. With the AI boom, however, the public endorsement of overwork has reached troubling heights.

At OpenAI, it isn’t uncommon for researchers to work six days a week — and well past quitting time. CEO Sam Altman is said to push the company’s teams to turn breakthroughs into public products on grueling timelines. OpenAI’s ex-chief research officer, Bob McGrew, reportedly cited burnout as one of the reasons he left last September.

There’s no relief to be found at competing labs. The Google DeepMind team developing Gemini, Google’s flagship series of AI models, at one point stepped up from working 100 hours a week to 120 hours to fix a bug in a system. And engineers at xAI, Elon Musk’s AI company, regularly post about working nights that bleed into the wee hours of the morning.

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Why the relentless push? AI research today can have a sizeable impact on a company’s earnings. Google parent Alphabet lost some $90 billion in market value over the aforementioned bug, which caused Google’s Gemini chatbot to generate controversial depictions of historical figures.

“One of the biggest pressures is competitiveness,” Kai Arulkumaran, a research lead at AI services provider Araya, said, “combined with rapid timescales.”

Leaderboards above all

Some of this competition plays out very publicly.

On a monthly — and sometimes weekly — basis, AI companies gun to displace one another on leaderboards like Chatbot Arena, which rank AI models across categories like math and coding. Logan Kilpatrick, who leads product for several Google Gemini developer tools, said in a post on X that Chatbot Arena “has had a nontrivial impact on the velocity of AI development.”

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Not all researchers are convinced that’s a good thing. The industry’s velocity is such, they say, that they find their work at risk of being obsolesced before it can even ship.

“This makes many question their work’s value,” Zihan Wang, a robotics engineer working at a stealth AI startup, said. “If there is a huge probability that someone goes faster than me, what is the meaning of what I’m doing?”

Other researchers lament that the focus on productization has come at the expense of academic camaraderie.

“One of the underlying [causes of the stress] is the transition of AI researchers from pursuing their own research agendas in industry to moving to work on [AI models] and delivering solutions for products,” Arulkumaran said. “Industry set up an expectation that AI researchers could pursue academic research in industry, but this is no longer the case.”

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Another researcher said that — much to their consternation and distress — open collaboration and discussions about research are no longer the norm in industry, outside of a few AI labs that have embraced openness as a release strategy.

“Now there is increasingly a focus on commercialization, closed-source scaling, and execution,” the researcher said, “without contributing back to the scientific community.”

Running the grad gauntlet

Some researchers trace the seeds of their anxiety to their AI grad programs.

Gowthami Somepalli, a PhD student studying AI at the University of Maryland, said that research is being published so rapidly, it has become difficult for grad students to distinguish between fads and meaningful developments. That matters a lot, Somepalli said, because she has seen AI companies increasingly prioritize candidates with “extremely relevant experience.”

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“A PhD is generally quite an isolating and stressful experience, and a machine learning PhD is particularly challenging due to the field’s rapid progression and the ‘publish or perish’ mentality,” Somepalli said. “It can be especially stressful when many students in your lab are publishing 4 papers while you’re publishing only 1 or 2 papers a year.”

Somepalli said that, after the first two years of her grad program, she stopped taking vacations because she felt guilty about stepping away before she’d published any studies.

“I constantly suffered from impostor syndrome during my PhD and almost dropped out at the end of my first year,” she said.

The path forward

So what changes, if any, could foster a less punishing AI work environment? It’s tough to imagine the pace of development slowing any — not with so much cash at stake.

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Somepalli stressed small but impactful reform, like normalizing voicing one’s own challenges.

“One of the biggest problems … is that no one openly discusses their struggles; everyone puts on a brave face,” she said. “I believe [people] might feel better if they could see that others are struggling, too.”

Bhaskar Bhatt, an AI consultant at professional services company EY, says the industry should work to build “robust support networks” to combat feelings of isolation.

“Promoting a culture that values work-life balance, where individuals can genuinely disconnect from their work, is essential,” Bhatt said. “Organizations should foster a culture that values mental well-being as much as innovation, with tangible policies like reasonable work hours, mental health days, and access to counseling services.”

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Ofir Press, a postdoctoral student at Princeton, proposed fewer AI conferences and weeklong “pauses” on paper submissions so that researchers can take a break from tracking new work. And Raj Dabre, an AI researcher at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology in Japan, said researchers should be reminded in gentle ways of what’s really important.

“We need to educate people from the beginning that AI is just work,” Dabre said, “and we need to focus on family, friends, and the more sublime things in life.”

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Bitcoin Price Prediction: Why is BTC Going Up Today?

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Bitcoin Price Prediction: Why is BTC Going Up Today?

The market is showing signs of recovery in the third week of January after enduring a sharp downturn in late December, triggered by the Federal Reserve’s hawkish stance.

Key events, including the CPI report, the FOMC meeting on January 29, and the impact of Trump’s inauguration on January 20, could heavily influence Bitcoin’s trajectory and push it forward.

New projects like PlutoChain ($PLUTO) may also draw attention. With advanced Layer-2 solutions and faster transaction capabilities, PlutoChain could address some of Bitcoin’s current limitations and activate new functionalities.

Bitcoin Price Prediction – Trump’s Inauguration Could Start Another Major BTC Rally Going Into February 2025

Currently, Bitcoin (BTC) is trading at approximately $103,900, with a 1.05% decrease from the previous close.

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The Relative Strength Index (RSI) for Bitcoin is currently at 65.045, suggesting that the asset is approaching overbought conditions.

In terms of moving averages, Bitcoin’s 50-day Simple Moving Average (SMA) stands at $99,416.28, while the 200-day SMA is at $96,330.46. The 50-day SMA is above the 200-day SMA, which shows a bullish trend.

Resistance levels to monitor include the psychological barrier at $100,000 and the important $106,000 level.

Bitcoin’s price has surged back to $100,000 after dipping to around $90,000 earlier this month, with rumors that Trump’s actions could disrupt the market once again.

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The upcoming CPI report remains a major event, with positive inflation data potentially driving Bitcoin’s price higher. 

Other factors, such as the resurgence of institutional investors, increased stablecoin minting, and renewed inflows into spot Bitcoin ETFs, could provide additional support.

Major crypto firms, including Ripple, Coinbase, Kraken, Robinhood, and Circle, have collectively contributed over $10 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.

Executives are gathering in Washington as the president-elect prepares to take office, with speculation mounting over executive orders set to change crypto policy. 

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Trump, known for his pro-crypto stance, is expected to issue directives on January 20, one of which could potentially ignite a Bitcoin price boom.

Galaxy Digital’s CEO has made a bold prediction, suggesting Bitcoin could soar to $500,000 if a reserve system is implemented.

At the same time, Crypto Rover says that his prediction is $280,000 after Trump’s inauguration.

Meanwhile, analyst VirtualBacon forecasts Bitcoin reaching $200,000 by year’s end, citing factors such as increased Federal Reserve liquidity, pro-crypto policies, rising ETF inflows, and the possibility of an altcoin season fueling the surge.

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Is PlutoChain’s Hybrid Layer-2 Approach the Key to Activating BTC’s Full Potential in 2025?

PlutoChain ($PLUTO) is a powerful Layer-2 solution designed to potentially improve Bitcoin’s functionality for DeFi, NFTs, and advanced blockchain applications.

Bitcoin’s network often struggles with slow transactions, high fees, and congestion – but this might come to an end soon.

PlutoChain may resolve these challenges by creating a hybrid Layer-2 network to reduce traffic, cut costs, and boost scalability.

With block times of just 2 seconds—compared to Bitcoin’s 10-minute intervals—PlutoChain could bring faster, more efficient smart contract execution while maintaining the trusted Bitcoin infrastructure.

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EVM compatibility is also a feature and it might enable developers to port Ethereum-based projects to PlutoChain seamlessly. 

This could unlock new opportunities for DeFi, NFTs, and AI applications, expanding Bitcoin’s use beyond being merely a store of value.

In the testnet phase, PlutoChain processed 43,200 transactions in a single day without congestion, showcasing its potential for real-world applications.

Security remains a priority for PlutoChain. The platform has undergone audits by SolidProof, QuillAudits, and Assure DeFi.

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Ongoing code reviews, stress tests, and adherence to international standards ensure reliability. Additionally, PlutoChain fosters community engagement and transparency by allowing users to vote on upgrades, partnerships, and features via its official Discord channel.

The Bottom Line

As Trump’s inauguration approaches, optimism surrounding Bitcoin’s future is growing. Speculation about rising institutional interest and potential regulatory changes could drive the crypto leader to new heights in the coming months.

Meanwhile, PlutoChain ($PLUTO) might play a pivotal role in addressing Bitcoin’s long-standing challenges.

The potential mainnet launch is coming soon, so it might be a good idea to keep an eye on PlutoChain and see whether it could gain traction. 

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Disclaimer: This is a sponsored article and is for informational purposes only. It does not reflect the views of Crypto Daily, nor is it intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, or financial advice.

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Trump is ‘forcing everyone to up their game’ — Brian Armstrong

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Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong says that most of his conversations at the World Economic Forum centered around Trump’s plans for crypto.

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These 2 tokens under $0.2 could turn $250 into $8,000

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These 2 tokens under $0.2 could turn $250 into $8,000

Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.

Small crypto investments, starting at $250 in coins valued at $0.20, can potentially grow to $8,000 with high-return assets.

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One of the best ways to gain significantly in the crypto market is to invest money into several cryptocurrencies. Still, small investors can invest as little as $250 and get as much as $8000 by choosing coins with great potential for high returns. With the lowest coins value of $0.2, these could be the leading choices to boost $250 investment to $8000.

Rexas Finance: Changing real-world assets 

Rexas Finance is creating waves with its creative approach to tokenizing real-world assets (RWA). The platform breaks down assets into fractional units. As a result, small investors can own assets that were once reserved for the wealthy.

Such assets include real estate, intellectual property, and artworks. Rexas Finance’s main feature is the Rexas Token Builder, which allows users to tokenize their assets easily. Owners can convert their holdings into digital tokens representing fractional ownership, whether a small parcel of land or an art piece. For instance, if someone owns property and needs funds, they can tokenize part of it and sell shares to investors worldwide. This removes complex paperwork and democratizes asset ownership.

Additionally, the Rexas Launchpad facilitates fundraising for tokenized assets. Assets owners can find investors on the platform, making it easy to raise funds. If they need capital to renovate a luxury apartment, they can offer fractional ownership through Launchpad. Investors gain a stake in high-value assets while they secure the resources they need.

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The platform also shines with Rexas Estate, changing real estate investment. Typically, owning real estate requires significant capital, but Rexas Estate enables fractional ownership via digital tokens. This makes investing in commercial buildings or luxury condos possible without needing millions. 

Furthermore, these tokens are tradeable, offering liquidity similar to stocks. Rexas Finance extends beyond tokenization with decentralized finance (DeFi) utilities, including staking and yield farming. RXS token holders can stake or provide liquidity, earning rewards over time. These features encourage long-term holding and allow users to grow their investments passively. 

Its presale phase has already been a huge success, and it is currently in its eleventh presale stage after selling over 408 million out of 425 million RXS tokens. It is trading at $0.175, and crypto experts speculate it will hit $8 after its launch — about a 3,900% rise from its current price — which is more than enough to turn $250 to $8000.

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Floki Inu: A rising meme coin 

Floki Inu is another coin under $0.2 with great potential to turn $250 into $800. Top analysts, including Master Kenobi, predict a significant rally for FLOKI this month. The coin currently sits at $0.0001650, and Kenobi identifies $0.00021 and $0.00028 as key levels to watch before it reaches its all-time high (ATH) of $0.00035. 

From there, FLOKI could skyrocket to $0.0011, offering a stunning significant return.  Technical indicators and ecosystem updates back FLOKI’s momentum. Analysts like Bluntz note that the coin has completed an ABC correction, a bullish signal often triggering a five-wave upward trend. 

Furthermore, the coin mirrors PEPE‘s past price pattern, which saw a 588% gain in 2024. This historical similarity suggests FLOKI could follow suit, riding a delayed but powerful wave of market interest. FLOKI is also gaining momentum because of its ecosystem developments. Its flagship metaverse game, Valhalla, is set to launch soon. 

The game will introduce play-to-earn features that could drive user adoption. Additionally, FLOKI is on track to release an Exchange-Traded Product (ETP) on the SIX Swiss Exchange in Q1 2025, making it only the second meme coin after Dogecoin to achieve this milestone. This ETP is expected to attract institutional investors, further fueling price rallies. With FLOKI showing strong support levels and increasing mid-term holders, it is poised for a breakout. Whether through retail interest or ecosystem growth, this coin could transform small investments into substantial returns.

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Conclusion 

Rexas Finance and Floki Inu are two coins below $0.2 that have the potential to grow a $250 investment into $8,000. Rexas Finance stands out because it is a new cryptocurrency. It has the potential to surge after its launch and yield significant returns for early investors who adopt the coin.

For more information about Rexas Finance, visit their website, giveaway, X, Telegram.

Disclosure: This content is provided by a third party. crypto.news does not endorse any product mentioned on this page. Users must do their own research before taking any actions related to the company.

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Monster Hunter Wilds beta release date

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A Hunter braces for impact as a herd of Doshaguma charge towards them

The Monster Hunter Wilds beta will let players try out the game ahead of its release later this year. There’s a variety of missions to take on, from a small slice of a story mission to repeatable monster hunts. All in all, it looks set to give players a good opportunity to experience some of the new weapon mechanics and see the new environments in action.

From what we’ve seen so far, and from what we played in our Monster Hunter Wilds preview, the game is primed to push the series forward, with evolving landscapes and more complex monster behaviors. This time around, you can bring multiple weapons into hunts with you, a huge change that’ll likely allow for more build experimentation. It’s changes like these that make us hopeful that Monster Hunter Wilds will end up on our best crossplay games list by the end of the year.

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MoonPay Enhances User Experience with the Comprehensive Bitcoin Price Page

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MoonPay Enhances User Experience with the Comprehensive Bitcoin Price Page

[PRESS RELEASE – London, United Kingdom, January 24th, 2025]

MoonPay, a leading global cryptocurrency payments platform, is excited to announce the launch of its enhanced Bitcoin price pages, offering users real-time data and in-depth insights into Bitcoin’s market dynamics.

Accessible at the Bitcoin Price, the page provides live updates on Bitcoin’s current price, 24-hour trading volume, market capitalization, and circulating supply. The data is refreshed every 1 to 5 minutes, ensuring users have access to the most recent market information.

Key features of the Bitcoin price page include:

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  • Live Price Data: Users can view the latest Bitcoin price, along with percentage changes over various time frames, including 1 hour, 24 hours, 7 days, 14 days, and 30 days.
  • Market Statistics: Detailed metrics such as market cap rank, all-time high and low prices, and 24-hour price ranges offer a comprehensive view of Bitcoin’s market position.
  • Historical Context: An informative section on Bitcoin’s history, covering its inception in 2009 by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, the evolution of its price over the years, and significant milestones in its development.
  • Educational Resources: For those new to cryptocurrency, the page provides explanations of fundamental concepts like blockchain technology, Bitcoin mining, and the Proof of Work consensus mechanism.

In addition to these features, MoonPay has recently introduced a ‘Recurring Buys’ option, allowing users to automate their cryptocurrency purchases. This feature enables consumers to schedule regular Bitcoin acquisitions, facilitating portfolio growth without the need for constant market monitoring. By selecting a fixed amount to purchase at regular intervals, users can implement a dollar-cost averaging strategy, reducing the impact of market volatility.

MoonPay’s commitment to user security and convenience is evident through its robust compliance and security measures. The platform employs AES-256 encryption and is PCI-DSS compliant, ensuring that users can transact with confidence. With over 20 million verified accounts and partnerships with industry leaders like PayPal and Mastercard, MoonPay continues to be a trusted choice for cryptocurrency enthusiasts worldwide.

By offering these comprehensive Bitcoin price pages and innovative features like Recurring Buys, MoonPay aims to empower users with the tools and information they need to navigate the dynamic world of cryptocurrency effectively.

For more information, visit https://www.moonpay.com/price/bitcoin.

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Frankfurt’s Skyline Darkens As Old Office Buildings Sit Vacant

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In one of Frankfurt’s most central neighborhoods, a stone’s throw from the city’s main train station, a 19-story highrise once occupied by DZ Bank’s Union Investment unit has been vacant for more than four years.

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State of Crypto: Trump’s Second First Week

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(Tabrez Syed/Unsplash)

Donald Trump is officially the 47th President of the United States, and the U.S. government is going in some different directions from the last administration.

You’re reading State of Crypto, a CoinDesk newsletter looking at the intersection of cryptocurrency and government. Click here to sign up for future editions.

The narrative

U.S. President Donald Trump was sworn into office on Monday and quickly signed a flurry of executive orders. While it took him a few days to get to crypto-specific items, we’ve seen a number of actions from his administration already — not to mention the broader Republican Party.

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Why it matters

These agencies and Congressional bodies’ initial actions set the tone for what we can expect as the new Congress and administration really get going this year.

Breaking it down

There’ll be time to go more into detail on some of these later, but for now:

White House/Administration

Donald Trump signed a highly-anticipated executive order on crypto. Among its provisions are items that:

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  • Create a working group composed of Cabinet officials, White House advisers and others tasked with identifying regulations that address crypto and recommending whether they be changed. AI and crypto czar David Sacks will chair this working group.
  • Task the working group with evaluating a digital asset stockpile.
  • Ban any central bank digital currency, with a somewhat broad definition of a CBDC.
  • Revoke former President Joe Biden’s executive order on crypto, which mostly just directed his Departments to craft reports about various aspects of crypto and consumer protections.

Trump also announced that Sacks would co-chair his President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, now operating under Acting Chair Mark Uyeda, formed a crypto-focused task force headed up by Commissioner Hester Peirce. Trump previously named Paul Atkins as his pick to serve as the agency’s chair, once he’s confirmed by the Senate.

One of the SEC’s first moves was to rescind Staff Accounting Bulletin 121, which directed publicly traded companies holding crypto for their clients to mark those holdings on their own balance sheets. SAB 121 was strongly opposed by the crypto industry, which argued that it made it more difficult for banks to provide certain crypto services.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is now operating under Acting Chair Caroline Pham. Pham named CFTC Senior Policy Advisor Harry Jung as the regulator’s lead for crypto industry engagement. Trump has not yet named a nominee to take over as permanent chair.

Trump pardoned Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht, saying on Truth Social that he did so “in honor of [Ulbricht’s mother] and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly.” Ulbricht was convicted on criminal enterprise, narcotics distribution and various conspiracy charges and sentenced to double life in prison and 40 years with no parole.

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Trump announced he would rename the existing U.S. Digital Service as his Department of Government Efficiency, the entity headed up by Elon Musk (Vivek Ramaswamy, who was previously a co-head, has now left to run for Ohio governor). Initially, the entity’s website just had the Dogecoin logo on it. Companies are also filing for dogecoin exchange-traded funds now.

Trump spoke with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele shortly after signing his crypto executive order, though an official readout of the call did not mention crypto in any form.

Senate

The Senate Banking Committee has confirmed the creation of a subcommittee focused on digital assets, led by Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.). The subcommittee’s other members include freshmen Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), who unseated former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) with $40 million worth of support from crypto political action committee Fairshake, Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), who received $10 million worth of support and Dave McCormick (R-Pa.), among others.

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The Banking Committee is also holding a hearing on Feb. 5, though the specific time and witness list have yet to be announced.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) introduced a joint Congressional Review Act resolution alongside House Rep. Mike Carey (R-Ohio) to overturn the IRS’ recent crypto broker rule. The rule, finalized late last month, defines the term “broker” for IRS tax reporting purposes, but has already drawn a lawsuit from the Blockchain Association. The industry lobbyists argue the final rule “puts unlawful compliance burdens on software developers.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the new lead Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, is also asking the U.S. Office of Government Ethics to look into the TRUMP token. She sent an open letter co-signed by Massachusetts Representative Jake Auchincloss.

House of Representatives

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The House Oversight Committee sent out a letter announcing it would investigate whether banks de-banked crypto companies at the government’s behest.

The House Financial Services Committee has already scheduled two hearings on crypto next month. The first, on Feb. 6, 2025, will focus on the aforementioned debanking. The second, set for Feb. 11, is titled “A Golden Age of Digital Assets: Charting a Path Forward.”

The leading Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Gerry Connelly, asked the panel’s leading Republican, Rep. James Comer, to probe Trump’s issuance of the TRUMP coin and his ties to World Liberty Financial.

SoC 012125

Tuesday

  • 16:00 UTC (9:00 a.m. MT) The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in Custodia Bank’s ongoing case against the Federal Reserve.
  • (Sam Curry) Some security researchers discovered they could track and control certain Subaru cars (i.e. ones connected to the internet). The vulnerability has been patched, per the writer of this.
  • (Bloomberg) Walgreens spent $200 million replacing refrigerator doors with screens whose vendor is now in a legal fight with the pharmacy/convenience store chain.

If you’ve got thoughts or questions on what I should discuss next week or any other feedback you’d like to share, feel free to email me at nik@coindesk.com or find me on Bluesky @nikhileshde.bsky.social.

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You can also join the group conversation on Telegram.

See ya’ll next week!

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