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Asia Morning Briefing: Cooling BTC Pushing Up Altcoin Volumes

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Good Morning, Asia. Here’s what’s making news in the markets:

Welcome to Asia Morning Briefing, a daily summary of top stories during U.S. hours and an overview of market moves and analysis. For a detailed overview of U.S. markets, see CoinDesk’s Crypto Daybook Americas.

Bitcoin (BTC) is trading above $105K as Asia begins its business day, down 1%.

In a note, Paris-based digital assets trading firm Flowdesk wrote that the world’s largest digital asset was moving into a tactical posture with price consolidation.

«As BTC consolidates near all-time highs, altcoin volumes and liquidity have seen a continued meaningful shift upwards,» Flowdesk wrote.

Flowdesk notes that Bitcoin’s volatility continues to decline despite looming macroeconomic events that typically shake up markets.

With BTC consolidating near its all-time high, there’s a noticeable rise in call overwriting, Flowdesk observed, as traders seek to monetize potential upside without giving up core bitcoin exposure.

«The altcoin rotation continues, ETF inflows are back, and vol positioning reflects a transition to more tactical, yield-generating strategies,» Flowdesk concluded.

Meanwhile, CoinDesk’s Market Insight bot reported that BTC faces downside risks after hitting strong resistance near $108.8K, but ongoing institutional interest may provide support.

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(CoinDesk)

House Republicans Unveil New Crypto Bill Giving CFTC Key Oversight Role

U.S. House Republicans officially introduced the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, CoinDesk reported Thursday U.S. time, their latest push to regulate crypto markets.

This 236-page bill, a successor to the earlier FIT21 Act, gives the Commodity Futures Trading Commission primary oversight of digital commodity markets, establishes clear guidelines for crypto exchanges, and exempts certain decentralized finance (DeFi) services from Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) oversight.

Flowing parallel to this, the Senate remains focused on separate bipartisan stablecoin legislation, which is further along procedurally but faces ongoing debate. With committee hearings scheduled for next week, lawmakers will publicly discuss the new House bill, setting the stage for negotiations that could shape U.S. crypto regulation this session.

‘Crypto Mom’ Peirce Says Traders Need to Take Personal Responsibility

Hester Peirce, chief of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s crypto task force, urged crypto investors at Bitcoin 2025 to take personal responsibility for their losses rather than seek government bailouts, CoinDesk reported Thursday from BTC Vegas.

Peirce emphasized consistency among libertarian-minded crypto traders, arguing that those who demand freedom must also accept accountability for their financial outcomes, particularly when engaging in speculative ventures like memecoins.

Peirce highlighted ongoing efforts under Republican leadership to clarify the SEC’s jurisdiction, stating that most crypto tokens aren’t securities and thus don’t require SEC registration unless they are explicitly involved with securities. She remained neutral on companies holding digital assets on their balance sheets, provided proper disclosure. Despite the current strides in policymaking at the SEC, Peirce noted that establishing a federal crypto regulator for retail trading would necessitate clear legislative action from Congress.

Blockchain Founders Fund Surpasses 200 Investments

Blockchain Founders Fund (BFF), a Singapore-based venture capital firm focused on early-stage Web3 and blockchain startups, is set to announce Friday at Web Summit in Vancouver that it has surpassed 200 investments across more than 160 companies.

Founded in 2018, the firm is known for supporting projects such as Shardeum, an Ethereum-compatible blockchain platform utilizing dynamic state sharding, and Validation Cloud, an infrastructure company merging traditional enterprises with blockchain and AI technologies.

The fund announced in October that it had hit the 150 mark for investments.

Market Movements:

  • BTC: Bitcoin is trading at $105,713 as Asia begins its business day, having fluctuated between $105,682 and $108,927 over the last 24 hours, encountering resistance near the upper range and signaling potential bearish momentum.
  • ETH: Ethereum is up 6%, peaking at $2,784 before stabilizing near $2,650, as strong trading volumes and institutional optimism outweigh broader economic uncertainties.
  • Gold: Gold is up 0.4%, trading at $3,311, as the U.S. economy shrunk 0.2% on weaker spending, tariff impacts.
  • Nikei 225: Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped 1.55% as Asia-Pacific markets fell Friday amid U.S. economic slowdown, inflation concerns
  • S&P 500: The S&P 500 closed up 0.4% at 5,912.17 Thursday, boosted by Nvidia but restrained by investor caution amid developments surrounding Trump’s «reciprocal» tariffs.

Elsewhere in Crypto:

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Trump’s Memecoin Dinner Questioned by Top Democrat on House Judiciary Committee

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A senior Democrat in the House of Representatives, Jamie Raskin, joined his name to lawmakers seeking answers about President Donald Trump’s recent dinner for top investors in his memecoin, sending questions directly to Trump.

Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has been a vocal critic of the president and becomes the latest of many from his party to probe details about the event, which they’ve called out as evidence of White House corruption. Because Raskin is in the minority party, his demands are unlikely to lead to further congressional action unless they regain the House or Senate in next year’s elections.

«I write today to demand that you release the names of all the attendees at this dinner and provide information about the source of the money they each used to buy $TRUMP coins, so that we can prevent illegal foreign government emoluments from being pocketed without congressional consent,» Raskin wrote this week to the president, joining many counterparts in the Senate in seeking the information, including Senators Elizabeth Warren, Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal.

«We deserve to know who is paying for access to our president, and what steps you took to ensure that the funds you receive are legitimate and legal, rather than the proceeds from foreign states or monarchs or illegal activities,» Rasking said, specifically highlighting Tron founder Justin Sun, a guest who was a major early investor in Trump’s family crypto operations.

Read More: Democrats Threaten Lawsuits, Join Protests Ahead of Trump Memecoin Dinner

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FTX Repayments May Have Positive Market Impact: Coinbase

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The FTX Recovery Trust will begin distributing over $5 billion in cash and stablecoins to creditors starting on Friday, with funds expected to land in accounts within the next three business days via BitGo and Kraken.

And there’s a chance this wave of repayments will help lift the crypto market, analysts at Coinbase wrote in a report on Friday.

It’s the second major round of repayments following the exchange’s collapse. The first, which began on Feb. 18, returned roughly $7 billion to creditors with claims under $50,000. That did little to lift broader crypto markets at the time, which remained under pressure from macro headwinds.

This latest wave of distributions comes as investor sentiment has shifted, the analysts said. Payments will arrive in stablecoins, offering recipients immediate on-chain liquidity, instead of cash and crypto. That could influence whether the funds are reinvested.

There’s also a broader sense of optimism in crypto markets, thanks in part to a rally in major assets and increased political clarity around regulation. Institutional players, in particular, may feel more comfortable acting on incoming funds, especially as Congress moves closer to passing legislation that would define the roles of U.S. regulators overseeing digital assets.

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Judge Declines to Order DOJ to Review Records in Roman Storm Case

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The federal judge overseeing Roman Storm’s prosecution declined to order the Department of Justice to review its records for any materials it might have missed that would help the Tornado Cash developer at the end of a 30-minute hearing Friday morning, though she told the government it should not have any disclosure issues.

Judge Katherine Polk Failla also ruled that there were no Brady violation concerns with the Department of Justice’s conversations with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) about whether mixers needed to register as money transmitters — the conversation that prosecutors pursuing Samourai Wallet developers had with FinCEN officials, but not the prosecutors on Storm’s case — one of the DOJ representatives said in the phone conference on Friday.

If the judge had found that prosecutors had withheld information, it could affect the case moving forward.

«I’m not going to require a further review based on the representations made that there’s no additional material of this type, and based on my views that I don’t believe the material was exculpatory,» she said.

«There’s a difference between ‘this is something I’d like to know’ and ‘this is a Brady violation,'» the judge said, referring to a Supreme Court precedent that requires prosecutors to share any and all information that might help a defendant with the defendant’s team.

Storm’s defense attorneys argued during the hearing that they needed to know when the prosecutors in their case learned about the FinCEN conversation.

«They do plan to say they’re charging a conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitter,» said defense attorney Brian Klein. «My question is who are they supposed to be licensed with? … this is all in the same issue. They’ve only dropped one subpart … but they’re still going to say they’re charging an unlicensed money business.»

Thane Rehn, a prosecutor who worked on the DOJ case against Sam Bankman-Fried, said that his team wouldn’t argue that Tornado Cash needed to secure a license.

«The word ‘license’ doesn’t apply here and the jury won’t be instructed on licensing issues … what we intend to prove at trial is the defendant knew they were transmitting funds derived from criminals,» he said.

The judge did at multiple points ask the prosecutors if they planned to change any other theories or charges in the weeks leading up to the trial, saying doing so might be unfair to the defense. The trial is supposed to kick off in less than two months.

Read more: DOJ Will Still Pursue Roman Storm Case Despite Blanche Memo, Prosecutors Say

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