Another action-packed weekend for Bitcoin, and the price of the coin is sitting comfortably above $100,000 again—despite substantial swings fueled by the news cycle.
CoinGecko indicates that after a volatile week, the largest digital asset currently sits at $101,880. That's a drop of nearly 3% over the past week.
After DeepSeek, a Chinese startup in artificial intelligence released an open-source large-language language model the week prior to the launch of the new crypto currency market was a rocky start.
The powerful model and its cost-effectiveness led investors to sell off their crypto and AI companies in the United States. On Monday, Bitcoin’s price dropped to as low as $98.380.
After Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell hinted at the possibility of another interest rate reduction if inflation continues to slow, the asset recovered rapidly and soared above $100,000. The optimism was also fuelled by his comments about banks’ ability to provide crypto services.
But then on Friday, word that President Donald Trump's tariffs against Canada, Mexico, and China will begin Saturday helped push Bitcoin and other assets down again. After nearly touching $106,000 on Friday morning, BTC plunged below the $102,000 mark that afternoon—and remains there as of this writing.
ETF Flows
Last week was a big week for Bitcoin, with money flowing hard and fast into the new Bitcoin exchange-traded funds—largely thanks to crypto-friendly President Donald Trump's inauguration. Bitcoin ETFs saw assets worth nearly $1.6billion last week.
Farside Investors’ data indicates that this week things have slowed. Investors pulled nearly $458m out of their funds on Monday.
By Thursday, over half a billion had entered the vehicles—but that's pretty slow going compared to last week, when investors pumped over $800 million into the ETFs on Tuesday alone.
Bitcoin and Tether
Tether, the stablecoin company that is based in New York City, announced digital dollars for the Bitcoin network. On Thursday, the company behind said its native USDT token would soon be available across both Bitcoin's base layer and the Lightning Network.
USDT is the world's top stablecoin, and Bitcoin is the world's biggest crypto network. Elizabeth Stark is the CEO of Lightning Labs. The company that built the integration. "millions of people will now be able to use the most open, secure blockchain to send dollars globally."
Ripple and the Bitcoin reserve: Which is better?
Hardcore Bitcoiners are going after fintech Ripple, as the company—whose founders made XRP—get chummy with President Trump.
Last week, the President signed an executive order on crypto, but it didn't specifically mention Bitcoin—despite his campaign promise to stockpile the orange coin.
Now, Bitcoiners are alleging that Ripple is pushing to have XRP, the third-biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, in the new administration's "digital asset stockpile."
Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, responded in a post on Monday to the accusations made by X. He wrote that "if a [government] digital asset reserve is created… it should be representative of the industry, not just one token."
Some thoughts on maximalism… let me say this as clearly as I can – the crypto industry has a real shot, here and now, to achieve the many goals we have in common, IF we work together instead of tearing each other down. It is never and will not be a zero sum game.
• I own…
— Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) January 27, 2025
Trump's new fintech eyes Bitcoin
Meanwhile, the President's Trump Media and Technology Group said it would launch a financial services and fintech arm called Truth.Fi. According to the company's announcement, Truth.Fi may buy "Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies or crypto-related securities."
But the wording was vague, and the $250 million cash that the fintech wanted to allocate to crypto will be in the hands of Charles Schwab—who would invest it via ETFs.
While some of Trump's recent moves come in his official capacity as president and others are from his personal companies or licensees, they may be causing mixed messages for Bitcoiners who supported him during the campaign.
Andrew Hayward is the editor