Today’s Top Crypto Headlines: Bitwise CEO Says Bitcoin 4 Years Cycle End, Texas Accounts for 17% Bitcoin Hashrate, Bloomberg Expert on $Xrp Spot ETF, Swiss Bank Tested Physical Gold Sell via Ethereum Blockchain Layer-2 Network

Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan shared his opinion on the traditional four-year Bitcoin cycle and said that it’s now ended, but simultaneously, he added that 2025 is different & strong. He indirectly said that the current bull phase for Bitcoin will remain active forever.

The latest report by Luxor estimates that the USA accounts for nearly 36% of the world’s total Bitcoin hash rate. Interestingly, Texas alone is responsible for 17% hashrate. The report noted that cold weather for the last few weeks helped the Bitcoin mining companies to reduce expenditures.

Over the past couple of weeks, it was cold weather in the United States which moved hashrate markets.

Forward hashrate markets anticipated the negative difficulty adjustment in advance, adjusting forward hashprice accordingly. pic.twitter.com/Iy8gw7A0eh

— Hashrate Index 🟧⛏️ (@hashrateindex) January 31, 2025

Bloomberg expert shared his opinion on the $XRP spot ETF application and predicted that chances for approval for this application is before the end of 2025 but claimed that the Litecoin spot ETF may get approval before the XRP ETF because of the legal dispute between XRP & the SEC body.

Kraken crypto exchange generated nearly $1.5 billion in revenue in 2024. This big earning is a 128% increase from last year. By year-end, Kraken held $42.8 billion in cryptocurrencies and had 2.5 million funded accounts. Also, this crypto exchange accounts for 40% of stablecoin-to-fiat trading among major crypto exchanges.

Today, Kraken released financial highlights for the first time. In 2024:

✅ $1.5B revenue (+128% YoY)
✅ $42.8B in assets on platform
✅ Total trading volumes: $665B

We’re also committed to expanding our reach, scaling sustainably for decades to come. https://t.co/zGVEpYhzuK pic.twitter.com/oM1hFaOvTo

— Kraken Exchange (@krakenfx) January 31, 2025

A Crypto project LLM framework swarms stated that the project team only retained 2% of the total token supply at launch & they called it a very big mistake, as many malicious holders and crypto exchanges manipulated the trade price. To fight against the price manipulation challenge, Swarms planned to launch a proposal to increase the team’s holding of tokens to 10%.

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So, we’re pushing a proposal to increase the team allocation to 10% to deter market manipulation and enable us to keep accelerating like never before.

This proposal will ensure we have the resources to keep fueling our agent infrastructure projects and protect it from…

— $swarms (@swarms_corp) January 31, 2025

Swiss banking giant UBS tested its UBS Key4 Gold product on Ethereum’s L2 blockchain network ZKSync to allow customers to directly purchase physical gold. It was an experiment to find a way to expand the supply of gold while protecting privacy.

.@UBS, Switzerland’s largest bank, is modernizing digital gold investments on @ZKsync.

In a PoC for UBS Gold, they tested ZKsync Validium. The goal: To address scalability, privacy, and interoperability for global expansion.

Let’s dive in👇 pic.twitter.com/4SW2xOfRlS

— ZKsync (∎, ∆) (@zksync) January 31, 2025

Read also: Vitalik Buterin’s Portfolio: Less Focussed on BTC, $ETH?