Bitcoin ETFs Bleed, Metaplanet Reject Allegations: Hodler’s Digest

Top Stories of The Week

Metaplanet CEO rejects claims it hid details of BTC trades

Metaplanet CEO Simon Gerovich pushed back against accusations that the company misled investors about its Bitcoin strategy and disclosures.

Critics on X have argued that Metaplanet delayed or withheld price‑sensitive information about large Bitcoin purchases and options trades funded with shareholder capital, obscured losses from its derivatives strategy and failed to fully disclose key terms of its BTC‑backed borrowings.

In a detailed X post on Friday, Gerovich argued that Metaplanet promptly reported all Bitcoin purchases, option strategies and borrowings, and that critics were misreading its financial statements rather than uncovering misconduct.

Bitcoin ETFs shed $166 million in bad start to year

Selling pressure in US-listed spot Bitcoin ETFs continued Thursday, with analysts noting the cryptocurrency is on track for one of its worst yearly starts.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs saw $165.8 million in outflows Thursday, bringing weekly losses to $403.9 million, according to SoSoValue data.

The redemptions moved the funds closer to a possible five-week outflow streak, with year-to-date losses totaling $2.7 billion.

Trading activity continued to shrink, falling 21% over the week and reaching its lowest levels since late December, signaling weakening investor activity.

White House floats limited stablecoin rewards

The US White House has held another meeting between representatives from the cryptocurrency and banking industries on a market structure bill under consideration in the US Senate, seeking to iron out differences on stablecoin yield provisions, among other issues.

In a Thursday Fox News interview, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said that the company’s chief legal officer, Stuart Alderoty, attended the meeting with White House officials earlier in the day.

The White House reportedly refocused talks between crypto and bank lobbyists on limiting how stablecoin rewards should be paid.

It was the third meeting in 16 days to discuss stablecoin provisions that have stalled the crypto bill.

No agreement was reached on Thursday, but executives at Coinbase and Ripple said progress was made, as one of the White House’s crypto advisers urged a trade-off that would let third parties, such as exchanges, offer stablecoin rewards only on transaction activity, not on balances.

Passed by the US House of Representatives in July, the CLARITY Act has faced several delays as it moves through the Senate and its relevant committees.

These included two government shutdowns (the longest in the country’s history, spanning 43 days in 2025), concerns from Democratic lawmakers about conflicts of interest, and groups pushing for provisions on decentralized finance, tokenized equities, and stablecoin yield.

Quantum fears aren’t behind Bitcoin’s 46% drop, says dev

Bitcoin’s recent sell-off isn’t due to quantum computing fears, because if that were the case, Ether would be soaring, says Bitcoin developer Matt Corallo.

“I strongly disagree with the characterization that Bitcoin’s current price is materially because of some kind of quantum risk,” Corallo told journalist Laura Shin on the Unchained podcast on Thursday.

“If that were true, then Ethereum would be up substantially on Bitcoin,” he added. Ether is down 58% since a major crypto market crash in early October, trading at $1,957 at the time of publication.

Corallo’s comments come as several Bitcoiners have argued that fears of quantum computing affecting the blockchain are partly to blame for Bitcoin’s 46% drop from its October all-time high of $126,100 to its current price of $67,162, according to CoinMarketCap.

Winners and Losers

At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) was at $68,004, Ether (ETH) at $1,972, and XRP at $1.42. The total market cap is at $2.33 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap.

Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are Stable (STABLE) at 19.62%, Morpho (MORPHO) at 13.05% and Injective (INJ) at 10.99%.

The top three altcoin losers of the week are Humanity Protocol (H) at 27.34%, Chiliz (CHZ) at 19.60% and Arbitrum (ARB) at 19.54%. For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis.

Most Memorable Quotations

“I strongly disagree with the characterization that Bitcoin’s current price is materially because of some kind of quantum risk.”

Matt Corallo, Bitcoin developer and open source engineer at Spiral

“Lack of Privacy may be the missing link for crypto payments adoption. Imagine a company pays employees in crypto onchain. With the current state of crypto, you can pretty much see how much everyone in the company is paid by clicking the ‘from’ address.”

Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, co-founder and former CEO of Binance

“To look at this as a movie trailer and what’s ahead for Bitcoin and quantum. Just the preview here. It’s a two-step process. We’re going to upgrade and chill. That’s it. That’s the process.”

Matthew Roszak, chairman of Bloq and co-founder of Hemi

“When the Treasury ramps up Treasury bill issuance, it is financing spending that flows into the real economy, and eventually into risk assets like Bitcoin. When Treasury bill issuance falls or turns negative, that fiscal tailwind fades.”

Amir Hajian, researcher at Keyrock

“There’s people in this room that were probably on the opposite side of us, that were canceling bank accounts for us, that were kicking us out of their big banks for no reason other than the fact that my father was wearing a hat that said, ‘Make America Great Again.’”

Eric Trump, son of US President Donald Trump

“Post FTX DeFi spot lending leverage never really came back in the same way; it changed, morphed into something we understood less.”

Will Sheehan, founder of Parsec Finance

Top Prediction of The Week

Bitcoin’s catalyst could be AI stocks turning “silly big”: Lyn Alden

Bitcoin’s next major leg up could hinge on artificial intelligence stocks becoming excessively overvalued in the eyes of investors, according to macroeconomist Lyn Alden.

“It could be that the AI stocks eventually just peak; they get so silly big that they can’t get realistically much higher,” Alden told Natalie Brunell on the Coin Stories podcast published to YouTube on Thursday.

When an asset’s price rises to a level where further gains are harder to justify, capital often moves into other opportunities with more potential upside.

Top FUD of The Week

Uniswap founder slams scam crypto ads after victim “lost everything”

Hayden Adams, founder and CEO of the decentralized exchange Uniswap, has warned users about fraudulent ads impersonating the platform, highlighting a case in which a victim reportedly lost everything.

January saw the highest amount of money stolen in crypto scams in 11 months.

“Scam ads keep returning despite years of reporting,” Adams said in an X post on Friday. “There were scam Uniswap apps while we waited months for App Store approval.”

Scammers are increasingly buying ads on popular search engines targeting keywords like “Uniswap,” so when crypto users search for it, the top result looks official.

Unsuspecting users may then connect their wallets and approve a transaction, allowing scammers to drain their entire funds.

Tennessee judge issues injunction blocking state move against Kalshi

A US federal judge in Tennessee temporarily blocked the state from enforcing its gambling laws against prediction-market operator Kalshi’s sports-event contracts.

The ruling, issued by Judge Aleta Trauger of the US District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee on Thursday, allows Kalshi to continue offering sports-related event contracts to users in the state while its lawsuit against Tennessee regulators proceeds.

Trauger found that Kalshi is likely to succeed on the merits of its claim that federal commodities law preempts Tennessee’s attempt to regulate its sports markets as illegal gambling.

South Korean authorities under fire over Bithumb Bitcoin error

South Korean lawmakers are stepping up pressure on financial regulators after crypto exchange Bithumb mistakenly credited customers with Bitcoin it did not hold, an error that briefly sparked a rush to sell and renewed questions about oversight of the country’s fast-growing digital-asset market.

Lawmakers said the Financial Services Commission failed to detect critical flaws in Bithumb’s internal systems despite at least three inspections since 2022, The Korea Times reported Thursday.

Representative Kang Min-guk of the main opposition People Power Party said the incident was more than a technical mishap, claiming structural weaknesses in the crypto market, including gaps in regulation and oversight.

Bithumb mistakenly credited 2,000 Bitcoin per user instead of 2,000 Korean won ($1.40) during a promotional event on Feb. 6, distributing a total of 620,000 BTC that the exchange did not actually hold.