Best of the Week: It’s All Happening!

CoinDesk’s coverage this week took in a memecoin juggernaut, major changes in the SEC’s approach to crypto, an executive order on digital assets, and heated debate over Ethereum’s future. Meanwhile, Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht finally stepped free, as Trump followed through a big promise to the crypto community. Updated Jan 24, 2025, 6:54 p.m. UTCPublished Jan 24, 2025, 6:51 p.m. UTC

It was a big week for crypto following the inauguration of Donald Trump to a second term Monday.

The White House issued an executive order on digital assets, calling for a friendly approach to crypto across the administration and the creation of a “digital asset stockpile” (which may, or may not be, a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve). Regulatory editors Nik De and Jesse Hamilton were all over the news, as usual.

The SEC withdrew a controversial crypto accounting rule, started a crypto taskforce headed by Hester Peirce (aka “Crypto Mom”), and named crypto-friendly Commissioner Mark Uyeda as acting chair.

Senator Cynthia Lummis, arguably crypto’s most loyal friend in Congress, was named to head the Senate Banking Committee’s new digital assets panel, Hamilton also reported.

We dissected the fallout from the (very) controversial memecoins dropped by the Trump family on the eve of Monday’s swearing in. CoinDesk’s Shaurya Malwa reported that 60 Solana Whales made off with at least $10 million each (many others gained a lot less). Reporting from Tom Carreras on Monday showed that the paper wealth generated by these surprise tokens was, frankly, staggering, even absurd.

Still the memecoins were a great success, encouraging filings for memecoin ETFs, Helene Braun reported. Helene also broke the story about how CME leaked information about XRP and SOL futures ETFs by mistake, which sank those tokens and weighed on the broader market.

Ross Ulbricht, who created Silk Road about 12 years ago, educating thousands on bitcoin for the first time, went free after serving ten years in prison. His freedom was a key promise of the Trump team on crypto. Sam Reynolds had the news.

And the news kept on coming. In fact, it was hard to remember a week when more stuff of importance happened in crypto. Amid it all, the Ethereum community hotly debated its future (particularly that of the Ethereum Foundation). Parikshit Mishra and Sam Kessler followed the story.

Stay tuned for more big stuff happening next week.