The year 2025 is in full swing, and the cryptocurrency world continues to demonstrate its dynamic nature and unexpected twists. New technological innovations, significant political decisions, and notable market movements are all shaping the current landscape of the industry.

In this overview, we’ll explore the key events that influenced the cryptocurrency space in January and early February. From institutional moves by Japan’s Metaplanet to surprising political developments and the volatility surrounding Trump’s token. Let’s take a closer look at what happened in the markets.

Metaplanet: Japanese version of MicroStrategy gets attention

Do you know Metaplanet? Often referred to as the Japanese version of MicroStrategy, Metaplanet has followed the US tech giant's lead and started buying huge amounts of Bitcoin. Japan, known for its progressive cryptocurrency policies, is becoming an increasingly influential player in cryptocurrency investments.

Metaplanet's decision to hold bitcoin as a key part of its balance sheet is in line with MicroStrategy's long-term strategy of what is effectively leveraged bitcoin trading, where the collateral is actually its own securities. Metaplanet is planning for "only" 10,000 BTC this year. I say only, because compared to MicroStrategy and their already almost 500,000 BTC it's only a fraction, but what it does mean globally is that more and more companies are signing up for the "leveraged Long bitcoin" trade.

So, if you hold bitcoin, this is basically good news for you. In theory. It's also quite risky because these companies are essentially borrowing from investors to buy a volatile asset. After all, it's cryptocurrencies, you know.

Trump's inauguration and executive order: Shaping the future of cryptocurrencies

Donald Trump's inauguration brought a wave of regulatory changes. From the rather ridiculous ones, like renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the U.S. Gulf, Trump also signed an executive order that defines his vision for the future of digital assets in the U.S.

This order seeks to create a more effective regulatory framework that encourages innovation while ensuring national security. The impact of Trump's leadership could be transformative for the cryptocurrency industry and provide much-needed guidance amid the regulatory uncertainty that has long plagued the space. For now, though, it's all just "words" rather than any actual coherent doctrine and regulations.

After all, what's the point of regulations when, for now, he can do whatever he wants. See the next paragraph.

Trump Coin: The "New" Digital Asset

Trump Coin. A "new" digital asset that aims to reshape the way the former president's supporters engage with blockchain technology. Or maybe just a trick played on naive buyers and investors. The market potential of this coin is still in question (and the question is "Is it a scam?"), but it is clearly part of a broader strategy to connect political branding activities with the growing world of digital finance. It's just that the word "strategy" I'm not sure doesn't really belong more in parentheses.

The token was launched on the Solana blockchain. One billion coins were originally created; however, 800 million were actually kept by two Trump companies. After 200 million were released for sale, that brought the total market value of all coins to over $27 billion the day after launch, making Trump's holdings worth over $20 billion.

The price of the token experienced significant volatility, starting at $0.2 and the value surpassing $75 before dropping to around the current $25.

Three aspects of this are interesting to me.

It kind of looks like you could have made as much as 10,000% if you bought the token at the beginning. But that wasn't actually realistic. Especially if you're from Europe, you woke up a little later on Saturday, like I did, and at 9am at breakfast you read that Trump has a token and it's already worth $20. That means he just made that 10,000%. Well, then you have to make a decision. If you're going to buy a token that just went up a hundredfold in a matter of hours. How much upside potential does it have, given the selling pressure of those who have already made money? This is almost impossible to estimate.

You're thinking, well, what about someone who hasn't been asleep as long as you have? It's not that simple here either. The first major mention of this token is from Trump's Truth Social account.

But wouldn't you think it's more likely that his account was hacked than the president of the United States issuing his own token? A bit later, his Twitter account also mentions this token. Okay, two social networks, probably not a coincidence anymore. Or is it? You never know with Trump. That's why I think making money on this token was only possible with a dose of luck and a huge risk. And I don't even want to get into the fact that the day after, Melania Trump released her own token, which actually sucked liquidity away from Donald Trump's token.

So, the winner of this whole escapade in the short term was the Solana blockchain on which these tokens were run. The tokens sucked liquidity from other blockchains and projects, and the destination for this liquidity was the Solana blockchain. Typically, the liquidity then stays in the ecosystem for at least some time.

The loser in the long run then is all of us crypto-addicts around the world.

Even without Trump, crypto is already considered by many to be synonymous with a quick buck, a scam. Well, now the US president has cemented this with his activity, basically showing that he too is using crypto essentially for get-rich-quick purposes. (Not that he hasn't done it before. See Trump NFT). This cynical and exploitative approach to his supporters will thus cause more problems than good.

DeepSeek: Lessons for investors

The cryptocurrency market has recently been rocked by the DeepSeek-related issue. DeepSeek is a Chinese tech startup that was founded in 2023 and quickly gained significant attention for its new artificial intelligence assistant, which became the most downloaded free app on iPhones.

The startup's advances have raised concerns in the U.S. tech industry because the company developed its AI apps using lower-performance Nvidia H800 chips, which significantly cheapens development costs. This issue, known as the "DeepSeek scare", highlights how much caution investors should have when evaluating new technology projects.

Czech National Bank: Theoretical shift towards Bitcoin

In an unexpected twist, the head of the Czech National Bank (CNB) has suggested the possibility of diversifying the country's reserve assets by allocating perhaps as much as 5% of reserves to Bitcoin. While this is a theoretical proposal, the idea has gained attention as a signal that central banks are beginning to think more seriously about Bitcoin as a store of value.

If implemented, this move could be a significant shift in how national financial institutions view digital assets and could put the Czech Republic at the forefront of Bitcoin adoption within Central and Eastern Europe.

Market downturn: Huge liquidations

Over the weekend, Donald Trump announced significant tariffs: 25% on imports from Canada and Mexico and 10% on Chinese goods, effective Tuesday. The move led to a sharp drop in cryptocurrency markets. The price of bitcoin fell by around 15% to a low of USD 91 229 and Ethereum saw a similar drop, falling to USD 2 814 before recovering slightly.

The first announcement of the tariffs strengthened the US dollar, contributing to the decline in cryptocurrencies and Asian stock markets. After Trump's decision to suspend tariffs on Mexico and Canada, bitcoin recovered above $100,000. But the announcement of the suspension came after billions of dollars were flushed out of the market in rigged deals. If you want to learn what Trump's tariffs may or may not actually bring, I recommend this tweet.

What about our portfolio?

Strategies in futures and spot trading

In January, we focused on two areas of our trading. Short term active trading in futures and also accumulating spot positions including increasing our altcoin portfolio positions.

In terms of futures trading, the market has clearly defined the inauguration of Donald Trump to the Oval office as the turning point. After all, it was also the moment around which the launch of Trump's token was set.

But the market priced the inauguration itself ahead (generally, events that are known to occur are priced ahead by the market) and did not go any further up. In fact, it can be said that the market has been in a certain price range of about $90,000 to $110,00 per coin since Trump won the election. We have been trying to capture these moves within the range with short-term futures trades, but they didn't do well in January and more often than not ended up on stop-losses last month. Therefore, futures trading ended slightly in the red in January.

The second area we focused on was the accumulation of our spot positions. We have been gradually increasing allocations both in majors (BTC, ETH and SOL) and also in quality altcoins. The market drop during the first week of February helped us with this as well. Some altcoins dropped 20% or more. This has brought prices for some to pre-Donald Trump election levels. We consider this area for quality altcoins (emphasis on the word "quality") to be interesting for accumulation, so we try to buy them as cheaply as possible.

Historically, February is not the strongest month, so these positions are more of a medium-term nature in the order of months. With positions like this it is important not to rush anything and focus on averaging the value of the position down as much as possible. This will then bear fruit when the market heads upwards.

Since we didn't do so well on the futures and didn't close out any of the spot positions, the return for January was produced by the December Earnio. And that's not a small contribution. It clearly shows that the product setup, where Earnio sends part of its earnings to StayKing, works.

December Earnio contributed $134,436, so we're distributing 5,339,060 PBX this month.