Trump's Stablecoin Address, Kraken's $1.5B Shopping Spree and Bitmain's Proxy Buy

Another week, another flurry of bitcoin headlines.

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Trump’s conference address heavy on stablecoins

President Trump gave an uncharacteristically brief (and remote) address to Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit yesterday. He used the two minute, forty-one second remark to boast that the U.S. will “dominate” crypto and become the “undisputed Bitcoin superpower,” sprinkling jabs against the Biden administration’s crypto policies throughout the talk. He also touted his long-anticipated strategic bitcoin reserve executive order. But – surprise, surprise, everyone! – stablecoins got the last word.

“I’ve also called on Congress to pass landmark legislation creating simple, common sense rules for stablecoin and market structure…with the dollar-backed stablecoins, you’ll help expand the dominance of the U.S. dollar and for many, many years to come it will be at the top, and that’s where we want to keep it–we only want to keep it at the top, always.” - link

Our Take: And there it is. A sitting U.S. president wants to expand dollar dominance. Gasp. Who could have seen this coming?

If this surprises you, or you feel blindsided by “the first Bitcoin president” (!) pledging allegiance to dollar dominance, well, I don’t know what to tell you. With stablecoins, the United States has an unprecedented opportunity to export synthetic dollars via a low-friction, cost-effective, and (mostly) organically adopted digital medium, bolstering demand for U.S. Treasury bonds in the process. 

To collateralize their coins in circulation, the top two stablecoins, Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC, collectively hold some $161 billion in U.S. treasuries as of the beginning of 2025. Tether alone purchased $33.1 billion in treasuries last year, making it the seventh largest buyer behind Great Britain and ahead of Canada. If Tether were a country, its $113 billion treasury portfolio would make it the 19th largest foreign holder of these bonds. 

Trump may have won the hearts of some Bitcoiners with his campaign promises – so far fulfilled – to be pro-Bitcoin, but he’ll win the minds of crypto skeptics in The Swamp with his embrace of stablecoins.

Kraken acquires NinjaTrader for $1.5 billion

Kraken signed an agreement to acquire NinjaTrader, a retail futures brokerage and trading platform, in one of the largest US crypto deals to-date. The deal adds charting, analytics, and futures trading features to Kraken’s offerings - link

OUR TAKE: Crypto companies are acquiring tradfi companies. This is the largest crypto-tradfi deal from one of the oldest US exchange titans. Ninjatrader is a CFTC-registered Futures Commission Merchant, and the buyout appears to be a move to augment Kraken’s market position as it pursues a public listing, likely this year. Kraken has always played second fiddle to Coinbase domestically, but 2025 could be a major year as the company continues to strengthen itself during the first crypto friendly regulatory environment it’s seen.

Bitmain (indirectly) seeks Cango takeover

Cango, originally an auto financing platform that pivoted to Bitcoin mining, is positioned to become an explicit proxy for Bitmain via its strategic partner Antalpha. Enduring Wealth Capital Limited—led by directors who also serve at Antalpha—has proposed acquiring a controlling stake in Cango and selling off its auto finance business to focus solely on mining - link

OUR TAKE: It’s no surprise that Bitmain, arguably the most important company in bitcoin mining, wants to make a big move into the US mining business. As we reported last year, Cango burst onto the scene overnight to be the third largest miner in the USA by hashrate at the time.

To untangle the web of ownership, Bitmain Cofounder Micree Zhan owns 78% of Great Simplicity, Great Simplicity owns 100% of Antpool, Antpool owns 100% of Antalpha, and Antalpha has signed a letter of intent to take control of Cango.

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Ledger engineer Salvatore Ingala introduces new BIP

It’s BIP season. Salvatore, well known in Bitcoin’s technical community for his work on Merkle trees, published a draft for OP_CHECKCONTRACTVERIFY. This would allow Bitcoin UTXOs to carry state, or more expressive smart contract-like Bitcoin features - link

Eric Trump becomes advisor to “Japan’s Microstrategy”

Eric Trump is the most active in crypto among Donald Trump’s progeny, so perhaps it’s not surprising that he’s an advisor to the next corporate bitcoin treasury moonshot: Metaplanet. Originally a small Japanese hotel management company, Metaplanet started acquiring bitcoin via Strategy-inspired finance vehicles last year - link

Solana fee revenue is down 97% as memecoin craze dies

According to data from DefiLlama, the Solana network’s weekly revenue collapsed to $1.7 million last week, the lowest since summer 2024. Perhaps the days of pump.fun are over, but that’s not stopping Solana DEX giant Raydium from announcing that it’s working on its own pumpfun analog - link