SOL breaks through the $200 mark

It was a busy week in crypto featuring important product launches, fevered debate around Ethereum, movement on stablecoin legislation, and high-profile Congressional hearings on “debanking.”David Sacks, the Crypto and AI Czar, held a high-profile press conference with Senate leadership, as Senator Hagerty, of Tennessee, introduced a new stablecoin bill. The proposal, which outlines an oversight regime for stablecoin issuance, builds on a bill that passed the House last year but fell in the Senate. It’s more likely to pass this year, now that Republicans are in control. CoinDesk’s Jesse Hamilton had the news.The Senate also held hearings on the co-ordinated policy of institutions like the FDIC to deny financial services to crypto companies during the Biden years (aka debanking). Nathan McCauley, CEO Anchorage Digital, an institutional custodian, testified (and also wrote about his experience on CoinDesk). Consensys founder Joe Lubin said his company had been debanked twice as well, Ian Allison reported.Ondo Finance introduced a new tokenization blockchain, in readiness for an expected wave of institutional interest in RWAs. Kris Sandor and Helene Braun had the story. Trump-backed World Liberty Financial immediately bought $470,000 worth of ONDO, the platform’s governance token. Kris Sandor and Francisco Rodrigues reported on that.The week’s other big launch came from Berachain, which debuted a mainnet and a 79 million-strong airdrop, Shaurya Malwa reported. At the time of writing, BERA’s market cap was already more than $800 million. Shaurya also provided a prescient analysis of XRP price, well ahead of its decline by analyzing trading patterns. Meanwhile, Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy rebranded, dropping the “Micro” but not the commitment to purchasing as much bitcoin as possible. Soon, James Van Straten reported that BlackRock had taken a 5% ownership in the company.News around Ethereum was less rosy, as has been the case for a few months now. JPMorgan said ether has underperformed because of competition from rivals like Solana, and because it lacks a compelling narrative (like bitcoin), Will Canny reported. But Ethereum did move forward on its Pectra upgrade and its cheerleaders run deep, even on Wall Street, Margaux Nijkerk said. So better days may be ahead (Eric Trump certainly tweeted an endorsement).Bitcoin is called "digital gold" by some, but outside of it, the actual precious metal moves cryptocurrencies too. Gold's historic run has seen prices outperforming the traditional market, taking gold-backed crypto with it. Francisco Rodrigues highlighted how and why tokens like PAXG and XAUT were among the best-performing tokens this year, outperforming even the "digital gold," due to the bullion's rally. Finally, in an important case for internet privacy, Alexey Pertsev, one of the developers of Tornado Cash, an Ethereum mixer, was released from jail pending an appeal. He had been sentenced to 64 months inside last year. Happy weekend, all.

The current total position of OKX BTC options contract is 22818.06 BTC, with a 9.42% decline in the past 24 hours, indicating a decrease in the activity of the options trading market. Data for reference only Interpretation: Option holding refers to the total number of unexercised option contracts in the market, which can reflect the current market's views and expectations on the future price trend of a certain underlying asset. Data for reference only

Standard Chartered’s Geoff Kendrick and 21Shares’ Matt Mena see current market conditions as supportive for bitcoin, given that 10-year U.S. Treasury yields remain below 4.50%.If yields hold at these levels through the weekend, Kendrick suggests bitcoin could break past $102,500 and potentially reach a fresh all-time high above $108,000 in February.

BlockBeats news, on February 8th, according to Fox Business reporter Eleanor Terrett, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is planning to hold a CEO forum to discuss the CFTC's digital asset market pilot program for tokenized non cash collateral, such as stablecoins. The participants include leaders from Circle, Coinbase, (Crypto.com), and Ripple, a cryptocurrency pilot program, and the concept of expanding non cash collateral through distributed ledger technology proposed by current CFTC Acting Chair Caroline Pham.

Caroline Pham, who is running the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission on an acting basis, is pursuing a stablecoin-backed tokenization pilot program, and an upcoming summit will include the heads of Coinbase, Ripple, Circle, Crypto.com and other digital assets firms.Pham had suggested the idea for a so-called regulatory sandbox on tokenization through her advisory committee, the Global Markets Advisory Committee, in the past but that hadn't been embraced by the agency's previous leadership.See all newsletters“I’m excited to announce this groundbreaking initiative for U.S. digital asset markets,” Acting Chairman Pham said in a statement on Friday. “I look forward to engaging with market participants to deliver on the Trump Administration’s promise of ensuring that America leads the way on economic opportunity.”The idea, based in what Pham called "responsible innovation," would push into the use of non-cash collateral "through distributed ledger technology," according to the agency.A date and further details for the forum of digital assets CEOs hasn't yet been set.As acting chairman, Republican Commissioner Pham has made some dramatic changes at the U.S. derivatives watchdog in just a few weeks after she began standing in for the previous Chairman Rostin Behnam, a Democrat appointed by former President Joe Biden. Those changes have included a wide-ranging replacement of senior officials at the agency, and one personnel matter involving a former human-resource chief sparked an unusually open and detailed response on Thursday from the CFTC. Spokespeople for the regulator argued that "false allegations" had been made against Pham by "disgruntled individuals" the agency linked to internal misconduct investigations.Trump's CFTC Pick Clears Top Ranks of Key US Crypto Regulator