BTC falls below the $98000 mark

Czech President Petr Pavel signed a bill on Thursday exempting crypto users from paying taxes on long term gains, a spokesperson from the country's Ministry of Finance told CoinDesk on Thursday.See all newsletters"The principle is if cryptoassets are held for more than three years, their sale will not be taxed, or transactions up to CZK 100,000 [$4,136] per year will not be obliged to report in the tax declaration, similar to securities," the spokesperson said.The Czech Republic's Digitalization of the Financial Markets Act is now at the final stage of the legislation process and will take a week or two to be officially published. The country is a member of the European Union (EU).One week ago, a proposal by Czech National Bank Governor Aleš Michl that the central bank consider adding additional assets, like bitcoin, to its reserves was approved by the bank board.The move was not well received by the president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, who said she's confident bitcoin won't be entering the reserves of any of the EU central banks.

Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) is set for a $12.75 billion boost to its balance sheet after adopting new FASB fair value accounting rules for its bitcoin holdings, analysts at research and brokerage firm Bernstein said.Ether’s share of the total crypto market cap has now dropped to a four-year low, and Ethereum will continue to face “intense competition” from rival Layer 1 blockchains like Solana as well as lower-fee Layer 2 networks, JPMorgan analysts led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou said.

A wallet identified as belonging to World Liberty Financial, the decentralized finance (DeFi) platform backed by President Donald Trump and his family, has deepened its investment in Ondo Finance, the second-largest issuer of tokenized Treasuries.The address scooped up about 342,000 ONDO, the platform's governance token, for $470,000 USDC on the CoW Protocol, according to data from Arkham Intelligence. It first bought ONDO two months ago, worth $245,000 at the time, before sending the tokens to Coinbase Prime earlier this week.See all newslettersThe transaction happened as Ondo today announced that it will introduce its own layer-1 blockchain designed for tokenized assets.ONDO is trading at $1.298, down 3.7% in the last 24 hours amid a wider market downturn that has seen the CoinDesk 20 Index drop 3.1%.Along with ONDO, the Trump family-backed DeFi project has also been accumulating TRX and wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC).

Sentiment is bearish and former SEC Chair Gary Gensler putting pressure on Ethereum is the biggest reason for its underperformance versus bitcoin and Solana.“Most of the market cap of Ethereum right now is store of value, but what got people there is a narrative about this is going to be web3,” said Novogratz.

Czech President Petr Pavel has signed the bill exempting capital gains taxes on crypto held for more than three years, a largely symbolic act that officially makes it the law of the land.The tax exemption bill was unanimously approved by the country’s parliament in early December.