Who gets the bird, the hunter or the dog? (weekly crypto updates)

What happened in crypto in the past week? End of December we had the Fear and Greed Index at 30/100 only to jump way to quick to 42 this week. Bitcoin is looking hopeful at 2026, while XRP is not that much desired. ETH got mixed feelings. I found a way to expose myself to BTC via BlackRock, using Freetrade. Feel free to check them. What else? Read below:

• Bitcoin: BTC dominance is at 58.88%. Spot BTC ETFs lost over $1.1B over past week in the longer withdrawal streak since early fall. There are voices telling us that Bitcoin's next ten years will be a grind upward, with strong, but not spectacular returns. But this cycle we had only a 30% drop from its $125K peak instead of the 60% in the previous cycles. Still, many believe that we will be above the six-figure at the end of this cycle. Yet some hold more pesimistic views, talking about a $70K risk, with a $56K deeper stress zone. Even $25K is miners are selling and ETFs outflows go mad. Strategy bought another 1229 BTC last week, reaching a total of 672.497 BTC. MetaPlanet also bought 4279 BTC, reaching 35102 BTC. Fun fact, Metaplanet pays just 4.9% on yen loans, while Strategy pays 10-12% on dollar-denominated debt. Talking about USA offering the worst deal! Wallets holding 1000 to 10000 BTC are the consistent buyers since late November, while retail sells. Another sign to buy, right?

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• Ethereum: ETH is the Wall Street tokenization pick, with BlackRock and RobinHood, both building on Ethereum. But emerging markets seems to adopt tokenization faster than developed countries. At the bulish end some predict a $5-7K early 2026, with even a potential $20K possible. Most agreeing for a $7.5K, but there are some thinking that no ATH will be set this year. Good, as I still want to buy a bit of ETH.

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• Altcoins and stablecoins: Altcoin season index is down to 19. We are told that XRP will consolidate during 2026, so not many chances for a rally, with the whales selling at every corner when they can. There are some seeing HYPE at $200. BNB Chain had some interesting updates, sorting out a few of its problems, and it shows potential in 2026. Do a quick check of the news related to LIT, Raydium, Lifinity and Ranger Finance. Solana whales are buying the dip. I want some more SOL this year too. PEPE jumped over 30% Friday, with POPCAT and MOG gaining nearly 20% too.

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• NFTs and blockchain games: Some cute game called World of Trinity, I had some fun playing it, you get some gold to buy few packs, and then you build a deck, with support cards too, with a simple enough math behind it. Try it! I have also enjoyed playing Golem Overlord lately on Hive, and it is quite enjoyable, I would say, with some significant updates lately. On Splinterlands, we have had the Land NFT new update and improved tokenomics, and the new rewards cards from the Conclave collection are up and running.

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• Good news: UK has passed a law officialy recognizing crypto and NFT as property, giving digital assets a defined legal status for the first time, letting crypto to be clearly owned, recovered in case of theft or fraud, and included in bankruptcy proceedings. I use Freetrade to buy BlackRock in UK, works quite well, and they also have UK Treasury bills, so, quite happy to build a £10K portfolio here, to test how it is working. Tokenized treasuries surpassed the DEX volume, becoming DEFI's fifth-largest category. Tokenized US Treasuries are driving the surge. Crypto ETFs hit $2trillion in cumulative trading on January 2.

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• Bad news: NK was behind more than half of the crypto hacks in 2025. Strategy stock fell for six consecutive months, if we count December. Coinbase launched in Argentina in January 2025, and now they are shutting down the local peso operations.

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• Joke of the week: China will to pay interest for is CBDC, starting from January 1, 2026, as a move to gain traction, because the digital yuan struggled to gain traction despite the government support since the official pilot in 2019. Trump Media announced plans to distribute crypto tokens to its shareholders, in a partnership with CryptoDotCom. Asia's new stablecoins are replacing the dollar, as it is the case in Japan and South Korea.

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All the best,

George

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Why not...

...have fun and win rewards on my favourite blockchain games (Splinterlands- a Hearthstone-like card game) (Golem Overlord - a Play2Earn game on Hive) (Upland - a real-life virtual land) (Holozing - a Pokemon-like game)and ( Chain of Legends - with a hint of Heroes of Might and Magic).

...get crypto while writing on the Publish0x blog, using the Presearch search engine to maximise your income with PRE tokens. Use Torum instead of Twitter. I am also writing for crypto on Hive.

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