America HODLs

1️⃣ Trump Establishes Bitcoin Reserve

On Thursday, Donald Trump signed an executive order to establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve using tokens already held by the government via seizures. The market dumped BTC prices, in part disappointed that the government would not be buying additional bitcoin, but also just selling the news of the signed order.

It was a perplexing week for the crypto reserve after Trump dropped some "truths" on his social media platform first mentioning XRP, SOL, and ADA as targets for the crypto reserve. After some confusion and backlash, he later added, “And, obviously, BTC and ETH." The inclusion of so-called "America coins" in the reserve was to the chagrin of many in the crypto space, even including Solana's founder.

2️⃣ SEC Drops More Crypto Cases

The SEC continues to back down from enforcement actions against crypto companies. This week, the SEC dropped its case against one of the biggest centralized exchanges, Kraken. Kraken was sued by the SEC back in November of 2023 alleging that they were acting as an unregistered securities exchange. The SEC also dropped cases against Cumberland and Yuga Labs. Cumberland was sued by the SEC only last year alleging that they were operating as an unregistered securities dealer. Yuga Labs has been going at it with the SEC a bit longer, over three years. The SEC opened a probe into Yuga Labs to try and determine if specific NFTs were securities. The total number of cases dropped by the SEC over the past month is now up to 11.

3️⃣ Reddit Co-founder Eyes TikTok Buyout

On Tuesday, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian announced his interest in acquiring TikTok and putting it onchain. While Ohanian won’t be making the bid himself, he has joined Project Liberty as a strategic advisor to support what he calls “The People’s Bid.”

Ohanian envisions bringing TikTok onchain through Frequency, a blockchain designed for decentralized social applications built on top of Polkadot’s infrastructure. This would give users full ownership of their data, an issue that has plagued platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

4️⃣ Aave Unveils Revenue Distribution Plan

Aave’s governance forum recently published an update to AAVE’s tokenomics, with the biggest highlight being changes to revenue distribution and token buybacks. First, Aave will begin buying back $1M worth of AAVE per week for six months. The tokens will be sent to the ecosystem reserve, where governance can later decide how to allocate them.

5️⃣ New Tether CFO Pushes for Full Audit

After its previous CFO stepped down, Tether has opted to appoint Simon McWilliams as its new CFO. McWilliams has made completing a full audit of Tether a top priority. So far, Tether has only published quarterly attestations, broad financial overviews rather than full audits. Calls for greater transparency have been growing in the crypto space, as Tether has promised a full audit since 2015 but has yet to deliver. While McWilliams appears confident in his ability to see it through, this may just be another way for Tether to buy itself more time.