The U.S. Department of Justice approved the sale of $6.5 billion worth of seized Silk Road bitcoins.

Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon appeared in court in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on Wednesday, his second appearance, marking the entry of the high-profile and repeatedly delayed federal case into the discovery phase. If convicted of the TerraUST stablecoin collapse, he faces up to 130 years in prison. Wednesday's "initial conference" is intended to determine whether the U.S. case can be resolved without a trial and to determine other pre-trial details. U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer set the trial start date for January 26, 2026 and encouraged plea negotiations.

The NFT series backed by US President-elect Donald Trump has launched its first 160 pieces on the Bitcoin network using the Ordinals protocol, called "Trump Bitcoin Digital Trading Cards." Users who receive 100 NFT cards from the "Mugshot Edition" are eligible to claim them through the NFT marketplace Magic Eden after submitting their Bitcoin wallet. As of press time, users have minted 19 of the 119 available Ordinals, and the claim period will last until January 31.

As Trump will officially take office as the President of the United States on January 20, 2025, the world's attention is focused on how this unconventional politician will fulfill the ten new cryptocurrency policies he promised during his campaign.

Ethereum Layer2 network Blast announced on X Platform: "Blast's mobile platform will be launched later this month along with the token economics update. All Blast Dapps should ensure that points and coins are distributed to users before these changes. There will be no coin distribution in January. All users should also ensure that they log in to the Blast website with their own wallets. The official launch date will be announced soon."

The transition team of President-elect Donald Trump is looking for a crypto-friendly candidate to serve as the next Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) chair. The candidates competing for the position include current CFTC Commissioner Summer Mersinger, a16z Head of Crypto Policy and former CFTC Commissioner Brian Quintenz, and Kraken Chief Legal Officer Marco Santori.

Solana is stepping up testing of Firedancer, a software upgrade that promises to drastically increase the blockchain’s processing speed. According to messages in the Solana Technical Discord server, the Solana core development team hopes that by the end of the week, the “vast majority” of processing power in the on-chain low-stakes test network will be able to run Frankendancer, an early version of Firedancer. The call to action for Solana validators marks the biggest test Firedancer has faced to date. The upgrade has been in the works since the chain experienced frequent outages in 2022 and is seen as enhancing Solana’s stability and speed.

El Salvador has just purchased another 11 Bitcoins as its strategic reserve, worth over $1 million.

U.S. Senator Dusty Deevers of Oklahoma has submitted the "Bitcoin Freedom Act" numbered SB325, which will allow Oklahoma employees to choose to receive wages in the form of Bitcoin and allow suppliers to accept Bitcoin payments. The SB325 bill ensures that participation is completely voluntary, respects free market principles, and gives employees, employers, and businesses the right to choose the payment method that best suits them. The SB325 bill is eligible for consideration in the 60th legislative session that begins on February 3.

This feat of simultaneous launch on multiple platforms has made $SONIC the focus of the market, and its performance after the launch has been even more remarkable. The price has soared in a short period of time, with the highest increase exceeding 5000%+, attracting great attention from both inside and outside the industry.

On Wednesday local time, the Federal Reserve released the minutes of its December monetary policy meeting on its official website. The minutes showed that considering that inflation risks are still high, Federal Reserve officials have taken a new stance on interest rate cuts and decided to slow down the pace of interest rate cuts in the coming months. The minutes pointed out that participants said that the committee believed that the interest rate level was close to or at a time when it was appropriate to slow down the pace of interest rate cuts. They believed that the pace of interest rate cuts might be slowed down in the future and enter a more cautious operation phase.

UK fintech company Revolut has announced that it has become the first bank data publisher to join the multi-chain Pyth Network. Revolut will integrate its digital asset quotes and trading data into Pyth’s price oracle, supporting decentralized finance (DeFi) developers to apply real-time market data to decentralized applications (dApps).

Movement Labs, which focuses on Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain development based on the Move language, is approaching the completion of a $100 million Series B financing round led by CoinFund and Nova Fund (Brevan Howard’s digital asset division). Investors will receive shares in the company and its token Move, with the focus on the token form.

Ethereum Layer 2 project Starknet launched its development tool SN Stack to support developers in creating independent application chains (Appchain). SN Stack includes Starknet OS (blockchain operating system), CairoVM (smart contract execution), Blockifier (block building), and cryptographic proof and verification tools.

AI-driven encrypted data platform SoSoValue announced that it has completed a $15 million financing round, with a valuation of $200 million. This round of financing was led by Hongshan, SmallSpark, Mirana Ventures and Safepal.

On January 6, local time in the United States, the U.S. Congress counted the electoral votes and officially confirmed that former President and Republican presidential candidate Trump was elected president.