Bitcoin yesterday climbed to a fresh record as the US prepared to inaugurate US President Donald Trump to his second presidential term, following a weekend during which his own digital token rattled crypto markets.
The original digital asset gained as much as 5.5 percent to US$109,241 yesterday. The rally came after Trump and his wife, Melania, unveiled memecoins, with Trump’s reaching a market capitalization of more than US$15 billion on Sunday before declining sharply.
Bitcoin and other major tokens such as ether and xrp rose rapidly yesterday morning in London, with traders counting down the hours until Trump once again assumed control of the White House.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Bloomberg News previously reported that he is considering an executive order designating the asset class a “national priority.”
The new Trump tokens initially blindsided crypto markets by diverting investment flows from other tokens, and drew sharp criticism even from some industry executives. Yet investors eventually embraced the notion that Trump’s move would give him further incentive to embrace crypto-friendly policies.
The tokens debuted by Trump and his team have further accelerated bitcoin’s momentum as retail traders look for his administration to “prioritize and reaffirm his commitment to the crypto industry,” cryptocurrency exchange HashKey Global managing director Ben El-Baz said.
Memecoins are a kind of cryptocurrency with questionable intrinsic value and high volatility that rely on social media tailwinds to drive up their price.
An 80 percent share of the Trump token is owned by a Trump Organization affiliate called CIC Digital LLC, and a related entity called Fight Fight Fight LLC — whose name echoes the words Trump mouthed after a bullet grazed his ear during the campaign trail.
Their holdings are to be unlocked over a three-year period.
Major exchanges such as Coinbase Global Inc and Binance Holdings Ltd at the weekend said that they intend to list the token on their platforms. Robinhood Markets Inc yesterday announced on social media that it too had listed the token.
Jonathan Yark, senior quantitative trader at crypto market maker Acheron Trading, said the memecoin “confirmed that digital assets and, most importantly, bitcoin will have the backing of the US which presents significant opportunity.”
South Korea’s equity benchmark yesterday crossed a new milestone just a month after surpassing the once-unthinkable 5,000 mark as surging global memory demand powers the country’s biggest chipmakers. The KOSPI advanced as much as 2.6 percent to a record 6,123, with Samsung Electronics Co and SK Hynix Inc each gaining more than 2 percent. With the benchmark now up 45 percent this year, South Korea’s stock market capitalization has also moved past France’s, following last month’s overtaking of Germany’s. Long overlooked by foreign funds, despite being undervalued, South Korean stocks have now emerged as clear winners in the global market. The so-called “artificial intelligence
Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek’s (深度求索) latest AI model, set to be released as soon as next week, was trained on Nvidia Corp’s most advanced AI chip, the Blackwell, a senior official of US President Donald Trump’s administration said on Monday, in what could represent a violation of US export controls. The US believes DeepSeek will remove the technical indicators that might reveal its use of American AI chips, the official said, adding that the Blackwells are likely clustered at its data center in Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region of China. The person declined to say how the US government received
‘SEISMIC SHIFT’: The researcher forecast there would be about 1.1 billion mobile shipments this year, down from 1.26 billion the prior year and erasing years of gains The global smartphone market is expected to contract 12.9 percent this year due to the unprecedented memorychip shortage, marking “a crisis like no other,” researcher International Data Corp (IDC) said. The new forecast, a dramatic revision down from earlier estimates, gives the latest accounting of the ongoing memory crunch that is affecting every corner of the electronics industry. The demand for advanced memory to power artificial intelligence (AI) tasks has drained global supply until well into next year and jeopardizes the business model of many smartphone makers. IDC forecast about 1.1 billion mobile shipments this year, down from 1.26 billion the prior
FORTUNES REVERSED: The new 15 percent levies left countries with a 10 percent tariff worse off and stripped away the advantage of those with a 15 percent rate In a swift reversal of fortunes, countries that had been hardest hit by US President Donald Trump’s tariffs have emerged as the biggest winners from the US Supreme Court’s decision to strike down his emergency levies. China, India and Brazil are among those now seeing lower tariff rates for shipments to the US after the court ruled Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose duties was illegal. While Trump subsequently announced plans for a 15 percent global rate, Bloomberg Economics said that would mean an average effective tariff rate of about 12 percent — the lowest since
RSS