Crypto in January 2025: Memecoins, the Inauguration, and a New SEC
2025-02-01
January 2025 set the tone for the wildest political-crypto crossover the market had ever seen. A US president launched a memecoin three days before taking office, Bitcoin printed a fresh record on inauguration day, and the regulatory posture in Washington reversed almost overnight. This is our recap of how the month unfolded.
The Memecoin That Ate the Weekend
On January 17, the official $TRUMP Solana memecoin launched near $6.50 and ripped to roughly $73 by Sunday, January 19, briefly implying a multi-billion-dollar valuation with around 80% of the supply held by Trump-affiliated entities. Then, late on the 19th, the $MELANIA token launched near $7 -- and the dilution cratered TRUMP back below $40 within hours. By inauguration afternoon the two coins carried a combined market cap near $9.5 billion. It was a vivid lesson in how quickly attention -- and liquidity -- rotates in memecoin markets.
Bitcoin's Inauguration-Day Record
On January 20, Bitcoin tagged a new all-time high near $109,350 intraday on inauguration optimism, then did exactly what experienced traders expected: it sold the news, sliding a couple of percent to the mid-$103,000s by that afternoon. Ethereum spent the month range-bound between roughly $3,000 and $3,400, already lagging Bitcoin's momentum.
A Regulatory U-Turn
The bigger structural story was in the agencies. Gary Gensler departed as SEC Chair on January 20, with Commissioner Mark Uyeda stepping in as acting chair. The very next day, the SEC launched a Crypto Task Force led by Commissioner Hester Peirce, and on January 23 it rescinded the controversial SAB 121 accounting rule -- removing the requirement that banks book custodied crypto as a balance-sheet liability.
That same day, January 23, Trump signed an executive order, "Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology," which banned a US central bank digital currency, unwound Biden-era crypto directives, and created a President's Working Group on Digital Asset Markets chaired by crypto czar David Sacks.
What It Meant for Traders
January was a month where narrative moved faster than fundamentals. Memecoins demonstrated extreme reflexivity, the inauguration "buy the rumor, sell the news" played out on schedule, and a friendlier SEC reset expectations for the year ahead. For systematic traders, the lesson was the value of models that price volatility and momentum rather than headlines.
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