Trump doesn’t “know much about memecoin.” Ross Ulbricht, Silk Road’s founder, pardoned

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Some interesting crypto news and events have occurred this week. Let’s explore them in this digest 👇

quick weekly news

Trump’s meme coin whipsaws after President says he doesn’t ‘know much about it’

As the main event of this week has been Donald Trump’s inauguration, let’s start this digest with news directly related to him 😉

On January 22, 2025, Donald Trump gave an interview to journalists following his inauguration. When asked about his opinion on the recently launched memecoin, Trump responded that he “doesn’t know much about it,” except that he had launched it successfully but doesn’t monitor its current status.

To provide context, on January 18, 2025, Donald Trump unexpectedly launched his own memecoin on Twitter, suggesting it as a way to celebrate his victory as U.S. President just two days before his inauguration. While the launch garnered significant attention not only from seasoned crypto enthusiasts but also from beginners, it raised questions about the tokenomics. Notably, 80% of the total $TRUMP supply was allocated to the team behind it – The Trump Organization.

Despite these fundamental concerns, the token surged to a peak market capitalization of $15B, entering the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market cap. However, just a few days after the launch, there were no further mentions of the $TRUMP memecoin by Donald Trump himself, leading to a correction in the coin’s price. It began trading in the $40–$50 range. On January 22, 2025, it became evident that $TRUMP had passed its peak of popularity when Trump stated, “he doesn’t know much about it.”

Following this news, the $TRUMP token fell 16% to $40.29 almost immediately, with its current price hovering around $35 per coin. Another factor drawing liquidity away from $TRUMP has been the launch of the $MELANIA memecoin, which debuted the day after $TRUMP’s launch. The $MELANIA token currently has a market cap of approximately $488.47M, potentially pulling some funds away from Trump’s token.

However, with Trump’s recent comments, it appears the hype around $TRUMP has already peaked. This assumption is supported by a recent report from Chainalysis, which revealed that 94% of the major holders of both $TRUMP and $MELANIA are whales with holdings of $10M or more.

Trump pardons imprisoned Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht

Following the “Trump news” wave, it is also important to note Donald Trump’s pardon of Ross Ulbricht, founder of Silk Road. To recall the context, Silk Road was an online marketplace that could only be accessed via the anonymous web browser Tor, utilizing Bitcoin as the main tool for purchasing goods.

Its core idea was to allow users to buy anything on the internet completely anonymously, without sign-up details. Such a belief was at least presented by Silk Road’s founder, Ross Ulbricht, who believed in “liberty, privacy, and free markets,” which eventually led him to discover and adopt Bitcoin for his online marketplace.

However, despite the good intentions behind creating such a platform, it turned out that the marketplace was often used for purchasing illegal goods, such as heroin, cocaine, and more, frequently delivered directly to the customer’s door. Eventually, this led Silk Road to receive the title of a “dark web” marketplace and attracted significant attention from federal authorities, who arrested Ulbricht in 2013 in a San Francisco library.

As a result, he spent the next two years in jail before receiving two life sentences plus 40 years for seven charges, including distributing narcotics, engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, conspiring to commit computer hacking, and conspiring to commit money laundering. Interestingly, due to the use of Bitcoin on his platform, the crypto community dubbed Ross Ulbricht a “Bitcoin Jesus” and actively campaigned for his release or sentence reduction.

It seems the crypto community was finally heard by Donald Trump, who signed a pardon for Ulbricht’s imprisonment.

US court overturns Tornado Cash sanctions in pivotal case for crypto

What’s more positive for the US crypto market this week is a US court’s overturning of Tornado Cash sanctions declared by the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control in August 2022, which accused the company of facilitating over $455M in money laundering by the North Korean Lazarus Group.

This led to the arrest of Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev, who was found guilty by Dutch judges at the s-Hertogenbosch Court of Appeal on May 14, 2024, and sentenced to five years and four months in prison. However, the US District Court for the Western District of Texas has now investigated the case and decided to reverse the OFAC sanctions.

“It is ordered and adjudged that the judgment of the district court is reversed, and the cause is remanded to the district court for further proceedings in accordance with the opinion of this court,” the court said in a Jan. 21 filing.

Notably, the decision regarding the Tornado Cash CEO’s imprisonment hasn’t been reversed yet, but such a positive development in the case makes such a turn of events possible. In a moment, the Tornado Cash token surged to the price of $23 per token, currently trading near the level of $16.

Source: CoinMarkerCap

US asset managers file for TRUMP, DOGE ETFs

Finally, asset managers Osprey Funds and REX Shares on January 21st, 2025 applied for exchange-traded funds (ETFs) for $DOGE, $TRUMP, and $BONK, while another crypto fund Bitwise filled for a $DOGE spot ETF the day after. The main reason companies applied for these investing assets was the growing demand among investors for those tokens.

Interestingly, on the same day of the $DOGE ETF launch by Bitwise, the logo of the famous cryptocurrency $DOGE appeared on the website of Elon Musk’s Department of Governance Efficiency (D.O.G.E). However, it wasn’t the first time the new department implicitly promoted $DOGE, as Elon Musk, the famous US billionaire and head of “D.O.G.E”, had been promoting the coin on Twitter before, even naming the department abbreviation similarly to Dogecoin’s symbol “D.O.G.E”, which often led to the token’s surge.

As before, $DOGE pumped from $0.346 to $0.39 per coin (12.7% gain) but now seems to have retraced to its previous level.

Source: GoodCrypto

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