Coingecko: How did Trump impact the crypto market in January?

The market has been struggling to shake off a post-Christmas/New Year hangover at the start of 2025. Since January 15, the cryptocurrency market's movements have been driven primarily by Donald Trump's bold moves during his inauguration as the 47th President of the United States. We expect Trump's active involvement in cryptocurrencies to increase mainstream attention to cryptocurrencies, but also cause market volatility every time he makes certain statements.

On Inauguration Day, Bitcoin jumped to an all-time high of $108,786, compared with $93,508 at the start of the year, and remained above $100,000 for the rest of the month. Most major cryptocurrencies also rose sharply during this period, though they now appear to be in the midst of a correction.

Without further ado, let’s take a look at some of the key highlights from January!

1. “Official” Presidential Memecoins

The president-elect’s launch of the memecoin two days before his inauguration was a watershed moment for the industry. Trump’s inner circle has made a number of cryptocurrency initiatives in the past with varying degrees of success, but this one resonates strongly with the current crypto zeitgeist. $TRUMP surged to a peak market cap of $14.5 billion (peak FDV of $72 billion) in just 24 hours, briefly becoming the second-largest memecoin behind Dogecoin.

The launch of $TRUMP may have won over his most ardent fans, but the launch of $MELANIA, the official memecoin of the First Lady, just two days later, irked most people as it began to spark concerns that these tokens were just blatant money-making schemes. $MELANIA’s token economics were also designed to be more shady, with 89% of all tokens held in a single wallet. $MELANIA reached a peak market cap of $1.9 billion immediately after launch, but quickly collapsed and is now down about 90% from its peak.

While $TRUMP’s market cap has fallen to around $3.5 billion at the time of writing, it remains the largest memecoin on Solana and the fourth largest across all chains. Despite the president’s attempts to reignite enthusiasm for the coin since taking office, $TRUMP appears to have lost steam, though we wouldn’t expect it to die completely.

2. It is actually an official action of the President

After taking office, Trump exercised his presidential powers to fulfill some of his earlier campaign promises to the industry. The first was the pardon of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht on January 22, followed by the issuance of Executive Order No. 14178 (EO14178), which formally established the President's Digital Asset Markets Working Group, chaired by David Sacks, the President's Senior Advisor on Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrency. The task force is to propose a federal regulatory framework for the issuance and operation of digital assets and to evaluate the possibility of establishing and maintaining a national digital asset reserve.

EO14178, coupled with Trump's appointment of more pro-crypto people to key government positions, has created a more friendly environment for the crypto industry in the United States. More regulatory clarity will benefit crypto businesses that want to operate legally in the United States, and may also trigger a surge in new crypto companies and crypto talent in the United States. The proposal will be submitted to the President in 6 months, and we are sure that there will be a lot of contact between industry representatives and the working group in the meantime. As we speak, a new stablecoin bill has been introduced in the Senate.

Meanwhile, everyone is eagerly watching whether the U.S. will establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve (the task force is currently only tasked with evaluation), although the mere potential of such a development in the world’s largest economy has some U.S. states, and even other countries, considering the same idea. While the merits of such a reserve remain unclear, crypto enthusiasts are understandably dismissing it as “just #pumpourbags.”

3. Some other things we are watching

• In January, US spot ETFs continued to flow in, and applications for new ETFs began to pile up: At the beginning of this year, the number of US crypto ETF applications surged, and issuers hoped to take this opportunity to promote the crypto wave. Bloomberg has tracked more than 30 applications under review by the SEC, including some memecoins. We will be very interested to see how US regulators and institutional providers negotiate the issue of memecoins in ETFs, and whether they will have a place in the TradFi field.

• The “Made in America” and Real World Asset (RWA) categories also rose with Trump: these sectors seem poised to benefit the most from regulatory clarity in the US. The development of tokenization and RWA work is one of the most interesting things to me, as we have seen many TradFi companies announce that they will bring their products to blockchain. We firmly believe that “everything that can be tokenized will be tokenized” - will this be a case of “gradually, then suddenly”?

• Binance announced a partnership with Circle to integrate $USDC into their products: This was a surprising announcement, as Coinbase is a minority shareholder in Circle and Binance has always wanted its own stablecoin (BUSD), or at least one that is closely tied to it (TUSD, FDUSD). Since the announcement, $USDC has seen a $15 billion increase in market cap. It’s no secret that Circle is considering an IPO in the near future, and this partnership with the world’s largest exchange could help USDC challenge Tether’s current monopoly on the USD stablecoin market, while also boosting its valuation.

• AI Agents x DeFi = DeFAI? The Crypto x AI story is still ongoing, but it’s also been very interesting to see these AI agents (like GRIFFAIN and ANON) slowly being integrated into more on-chain protocols and gaining greater utility and becoming more useful to users. This is firmly built on one of the key principles of crypto and DeFi — composability — and we can’t wait to see what builders come up with in the future!

• New Year, New Blockchain: There is no shortage of new blockchain launches (you can always keep track of the latest on GeckoTerminal). While Sonic launched in late December and Abstract in January, more high-profile chains will be launched starting in February, such as Berachain, MegaETH, Monad, and Story Protocol, to name a few. With expectations rising, these new chains will need to compete not only with each other, but also with existing players for users and capital in order to succeed. It remains to be seen what will continue to attract users, beyond the promise of generous airdrops.