Trump Family Adds $1.4B From Crypto
Bitcoin vs Gold: Quantum Risk | Pendle Replaces vePENDLE With sPENDLE
Marco Manoppo & Karon Pangestu
January 21, 2026
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Good Morning.
Crypto payment cards are moving out of the niche and into real usage. The surge in transactions shows people are not just holding crypto anymore, they are spending it, with cards quietly turning DeFi balances into something usable in daily life.
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In Today's Email:
What Matters: Trump Family Adds $1.4B From Crypto 🇺🇲
Case Study: Bitcoin vs Gold: Quantum Risk Is Becoming a Real Narrative 🔢
Governance & Features: Pendle Replaces vePENDLE With sPENDLE 🔎
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Narratives: Quantum Overhang
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TOGETHER WITH
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Zama is an open source cryptography company building fully homomorphic encryption for blockchain, focused on making private computation practical at scale.
If you care about fundamentals, fairness, and serious crypto infrastructure, this sale is worth paying attention to.
WHAT MATTERS
Trump Family Adds $1.4B From Crypto
IMG: NBC
State of play: According to Bloomberg, President Donald Trump and his family generated about $1.4B in crypto related wealth during the first year of his presidency. That figure now represents ~20% of the family’s total net worth.
Despite the large crypto gains, the Trump family’s overall net worth has remained ~$6.8B.
Bloomberg notes that profits from digital assets were largely offset by the decline in the value of Trump Media & Technology Group Corp..
The biggest contributors to the crypto windfall were the Trump backed DeFi project World Liberty Financial and the president’s official memecoin.
While more than $1B has been realized, the family still holds founder tokens worth an estimated $3.8B at current prices.
These holdings are not included in Bloomberg’s wealth calculation because they remain locked.
Why it matters: World Liberty Financial continues to expand, at the same time, the project has drawn criticism over potential conflicts of interest due to the Trump family’s direct involvement while Donald Trump is in office.
Our take: Most of the $1.4B is unrealized and locked, so the real story is not profits. It is how political capital and crypto rails now mix easily, for better or worse.
For builders and investors: Brand driven projects can scale quickly, yet they carry higher regulatory and headline risk. Long term value still comes from products people use when the hype dies down.
CASE STUDY
Bitcoin vs Gold: Quantum Risk Is Becoming a Real Narrative
IMG: @Batsoupyum
Christopher Wood, global head of equity strategy at Jefferies, has removed Bitcoin entirely from his “Greed & Fear” model portfolio. The full 10% allocation was reallocated into physical gold and gold mining equities.
Wood argues that advances in quantum computing introduce a long term existential risk to Bitcoin’s store of value thesis, even if near term price impact looks limited.
He points to a 2025 study by Chaincode Labs estimating that 20% to 50% of circulating BTC could be vulnerable to future quantum enabled key extraction, particularly tied to reused addresses.
This move is notable because Wood was previously an institutional supporter of Bitcoin as a digital alternative to gold during the pandemic era, once custody infrastructure matured.
Commentators including Nic Carter argue that Bitcoin’s recent underperformance versus gold is largely driven by this quantum risk narrative. The claim is that markets are pricing it in faster than protocol developers are addressing it.
Other analysts note that financial advisors are responding to this research by keeping client Bitcoin exposure low or at zero.
At the same time, governments and crypto projects are starting to react.
Examples include El Salvador adjusting its Bitcoin strategy and new startups raising capital to harden crypto networks against potential future quantum threats.
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INSIGHTS
Source: The Block
State of play: Crypto native payment cards are seeing rapid adoption, with daily transactions rising 22x from late 2024 to nearly 60,000 by mid January 2026, according to data from The Block.
These cards allow users to spend crypto directly at merchants by converting assets to fiat at the point of sale.
Daily transaction volume now sits near $4M, highlighting growing demand for real world crypto spending.
Etherfi currently leads the sector, accounting for roughly half of all card transactions.
Issuers are still experimenting with business models, with wide variation in fees and incentives.
Many cards boost appeal by offering DeFi based yields on balances, allowing users to earn returns while retaining spending flexibility.
FEATURES & GOVERNANCE UPDATE
Pendle Replaces vePENDLE With sPENDLE Liquid Staking
Pendle has retired vePENDLE multi year lockup model and launched sPENDLE, an LST with a 14 day withdrawal period. Up to 80% of it’s revenue will be used for buybacks, while an algorithmic emissions model is expected to cut total emissions by ~30%.
Pendle said the change addresses structural issues in vePENDLE, including complex vote to earn mechanics and reward concentration.
Despite generating over $37M in revenue in 2025, only around 20% of PENDLE supply was locked in vePENDLE, the lowest participation rate among comparable veToken models.
Internal data also showed more than 60% of markets were unprofitable due to concentrated voting power and manual gauge allocation.
sPENDLE is fungible, composable, and can be deployed across approved DeFi integrations while remaining eligible for rewards.
Existing vePENDLE holders will receive boosted sPENDLE balances, with multipliers of up to 4x based on remaining lock duration.
These boosts decay linearly and expire after two years.
sPENDLE staking went live on Jan 20, while new vePENDLE locks will be paused on Jan 29, when the updated incentive structure officially takes effect.
Other notable feature updates:
Tria has launched “Earn”.
Lighter is rolling out LIT staking.
Fogo updated $FOGO tokenomics.
Markets.xyz launched a new perps platform.
World Liberty Financial launched World Liberty Markets.
Aster is now powering perpetuals trading on Binance Wallet.
Trove Markets reversed its earlier decision to extend the ICO.
QUICK BITES
Strategy buys another 22,305 BTC for $2.1B.
Galaxy Digital plans $100M hedge fund with crypto focus.
Vitalik floats proposal to boost Ethereum security and decentralization.
CFTC Chair unveils 'Future Proof' initiative to upgrade crypto oversight.
Crypto payment cards hit inflection point as daily transactions surge 22x.
Prediction markets on pace to smash monthly vol record after $814M day.
Solana Mobile launches SKR token airdrop for Seeker phone users and devs.
Bitcoin, ether ETFs report combined $713M in outflows amid market turmoil.
Trumps add $1.4B in crypto-related assets to family fortune since inauguration.
NOTEWORTHY READS & MEME
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