Lo! The pattern repeats itself, as cyclical as the moon’s phases. In 2020, when the markets trembled like a jilted lover, gold and silver waltzed into the ballroom, leaving Bitcoin to polish its crown in the antechamber. Only after the metals’ grand finale did crypto’s king ascend the throne-though one suspects he forgot to RSVP.
Welcome to the brave new world where you can borrow money and wink at blockchain! Sberbank-Russia’s biggest bank-has just laid down the gossamer trail of its crypto dreams and reality by pioneering the first crypto-backed loan. The lucky recipient? Surprise, surprise, it was none other than the Bitcoin power-drooling entity, Intelion Data. It’s not just a loan; it’s a bat signal calling all digital asset concepts from wherever they were snoozing.
Bitcoin $50,000 in 2026? Nah, darling, we’re going to $10,000. 🚀➡️🪨
2025 was apparently Bitcoin’s peak. Gold has three competitors? Cute. Bitcoin has millions of crypto rivals now. Good luck, sweetie. 💅✨
Key Takeaways (Or Should We Say, Key Head-Scratchers? 🤔)
After years spent wading through the mire of digital asset regulation and sustainability, I confess, I hadn’t expected to be writing about this. Especially not alongside my editor, the unflappable Yakubowski, who – bless his patience – continues to tolerate my stylistic eccentricities. But here we are. 2025 witnessed the rather daring notion of an “orbital cloud” – a term that conjures images of fluffy data – actually taking form. Prototypes, you understand. Early deployments. It’s all terribly experimental.
So, market analyst CryptoOnchain just dropped a truth bomb on us via CryptoQuant, and it’s not pretty. Picture this: the XRP price is painting a picture on its weekly chart that would make a Picasso weep. 🎨😱 While it’s waving at recent highs like a contestant on a talent show, its momentum is more like a sad trombone. Womp womp!
frictions, contradictions, and the lurking truth that this ain’t a rebellion anymore – it’s a business plan. The new readers? Banks, regulators, builders, and users who’d trade ideological purity for a functioning API endpoint. Talk about a cold shower. ❄️
XRP hit a peak price-wait, what?-$1.877 today. Just when I was getting used to $1.86, it tanks and then rebounds like that time when I thought my stand-up career was over but then got a gig at a dive bar. Seems like whatever happened on Dec. 21-25, which might as well have been my childhood fantasy of world peace, traders got too cautious just before the holidays. Everyone’s afraid of their presents not being good enough, huh?
Meanwhile, Bitcoin, that digital… thing… is looking a bit glum. It had its moment, briefly touched the sky, and then remembered it doesn’t have wings. It’s currently shuffling its feet, looking at a slightly embarrassing loss for the year. Which begs the question: what is going on?
In 2025, TRM Labs, that vigilant sentinel of blockchain virtue, declared: over $2.7 billion vanished into the void. North Korean hackers, ever the patriotic entrepreneurs, boosted their take by 51% (from $1.4B to $2.02B). One wonders if they’ll fund a new ice hockey rink with the proceeds. 🏒