Plus: BTC is near ATHs… so why’s everyone sad?

GM. The market slipped on a banana peel - or maybe did a cartwheel. Either way, it’s giving something. Let’s unpack it.

🇬🇧 The UK's forcing full user data reporting for every crypto transaction.

🍋 News drops: fixing the Bitcoin network's spam issue, the co-founder of Blum getting arrested + more

🍍 Market flavor today

Find out more about the Fear & Greed Index here.

Crypto Market Cap: $3.26T -1.66% (24H)
Name		Price	24H	7D
	Bitcoin BTC	$102,975.98	-0.91%	-0.31%
	Ethereum ETH	$2,428.16	-3.89%	-4.81%
	XRP XRP	$2.32	-3.00%	-9.68%
	BNB BNB	$638.13	-0.98%	-5.22%
	Solana SOL	$161.46	-5.70%	-8.92%

Yeah... the chart’s looking a lot less green than it did last week.

Which explains why crypto Twitter is acting like we're back at $30K.

… Even though Bitcoin’s still this close 🤏 to its all-time high of $109K. So, what the hell? 🤨

Well, that's because it's not crypto-native trading driving this BTC rally - it's TradFi:

• BTC ETFs had $260.2M in inflows on Friday;

• Metaplanet bought $104.3M worth of BTC today;

• Strategy added another 7,390 BTC (worth nearly $765M) to their holdings.

Basically, not your average retail FOMO - that’s institutional money.

And trader Sykodelic says it's a good sign, because markets like to keep people guessing.

When everyone’s bullish and loud, it usually means a correction is right around the corner. But when the vibe is confused or cautious? That’s when we’re more likely to push higher.

So, what’s next?

Here's what Sykodelic expects before we go turbo mode:

• BTC to test support around $101K or $97.5K;

• ETH to drop to around $2,265;

• USDT dominance to climb to 4.90%, which is also where a death cross is about to form - a technical signal that means USDT is losing strength (= bullish, because it suggests traders are getting out of stablecoins and rotating back into assets like BTC and ETH).

All of these could hit at the same time, creating the perfect storm: a bit of fear and some leveraged wipeouts... right before the real breakout begins.

If all goes to plan, Sykodelic says we’ll be back at all-time highs by week’s end - or worst case, by the end of the month.

🥝 Memecoin harvest

Memecoins: making your 9-5 look like a hobby 😮‍💨

Data as of 06:10 AM EST.

Check out these memecoins and plenty more here.

🙄 Taxes...

If there's one thing tax regulators love, it’s tracking down literally anything you might own.

And yeah, crypto’s no exception.

Case in point: starting January 1, 2026, crypto companies in the UK will have to collect and report personal data for every single trade and transfer made by users.

What kind of data, you may ask? Everything.

Your full name, home address, tax ID number, what coin you used, and how much you moved - all of it gets logged.

Missing a report or submitting incorrect data could cost up to £300 (about $398) per user.

So yeah, maaaajor escalation in crypto surveillance.

Now, to be fair, this can be seen as something positive (don't shout please, lemme explain).

More transparency means fewer scams. That's good 😀👍

Plus, strict regulations can make TradFi institutions more comfortable working with crypto companies, which could possibly open up more partnerships and services = a W in terms of legitimacy and mainstream adoption.

It's also gonna be a good way to find out which crypto projects are actually decentralized.

But... here’s where things get messy.

Crypto’s not just about sending coins around - for a lot of people, it’s about privacy, freedom, and control over your own money.

So when every tiny transaction now has to come with your full legal identity, address, and tax info attached… It’s a direct hit to what made crypto appealing in the first place.

Users who care about privacy might move either to offshore platforms, peer-to-peer swaps, or fully non-custodial wallets where these rules don’t apply.

The result? The UK could end up regulating itself out of its own crypto market.

This brings us back to the same ole battle in crypto: compliance vs. freedom.

• On one side, you’ve got governments pushing for more oversight in the name of safety and regulation;

• On the other, you've got users who turned to crypto to get away from exactly that kind of surveillance.

The challenge now is finding a middle ground: one that allows crypto to integrate with the real world without losing what made it different in the first place.

Because if privacy dies out in the name of compliance, we’re not just regulating crypto - we’re undoing its entire reason for existing.

🍋 News drops

🗑 Saifedean Ammous - the guy who wrote The Bitcoin Standard - wants to help stop spam on the Bitcoin network. He said he’s willing to donate some BTC to support a dev working full-time on making spam harder and more expensive.

🚔 Hong Kong cops arrested 12 people for running a crypto-based money laundering operation. They used over 500 fake bank accounts to launder about $15M.

👮 Vladimir Smerkis, one of the co-founders of the crypto project Blum on Telegram, has reportedly been arrested in Moscow for fraud. He’s being accused of charges that could land him in prison for anywhere from 2 to 12 years.

💡 Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin suggested a new kind of node called a “partially stateless node.” Instead of having to store all the blockchain data, these nodes would only hold the parts they actually need - which could make running a node cheaper and simpler.

🧐 ChangeNOW is one of those no-KYC crypto exchanges - but is it any good? We took it for a spin and wrote up the details.

🍌 Juicy memes