Ledger Laying the Groundwork for a US IPO

Find out our latest reports, listed below:

• Keep Calm and Carry Yen
  
  
• Bybit x Block Scholes: “2026: It's Different This Time?”

• Tokenised Markets on Bitget UEX: Unlocking Real-World Assets On-Chain for 24/7 Global Access

• DeepBook - “The Backbone of Sui DeFi Liquidity”

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Market Snapshot: Overnight Moves

Daily Updates:

• As concerns over geopolitical tensions fade, risk appetite has slowly begun to increase again in US equities, though not quite yet in cryptocurrencies. BTC has moved sideways around $90K over the past 24 hours, while ETH has struggled to meaningfully break out above the $3,000 mark. 
• The failure to recapture the key $90K and $3K zones respectively, could in part be due to weak Spot ETF flows. In the last four trading sessions, Spot Bitcoin ETFs have sold more than $1.6B worth of bitcoins. Spot Ethereum ETFs have not fared much better either — in the last three sessions, they’ve sold $559M worth of ether tokens. 
• On the other hand, the S&P 500 closed 0.55% higher in yesterday’s session, while both the Nasdaq-100 and Russell-2000 both gained 0.76%. 

• Two-year US treasury yields rose slightly yesterday following strong macroeconomic data from the US that has effectively cemented the likelihood of a pause from the Fed in its FOMC meeting next week (Fed funds futures show a 95% probability of a pause).
• According to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), gross domestic product increased at an annualised rate of 4.4%, slightly higher than the initially estimated 4.3%, and also the fastest pace since Q3 2023. 
• Consumer spending (which accounts for 2⁄3s of US economic activity) grew at an annualised pace of 3.5%, and alongside a smaller trade deficit was a key driver of the higher than expected GDP growth in the third quarter.

• Meanwhile, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge came in exactly as expected. The core PCE price index rose 0.2% in November from a month earlier and 2.8% from a year earlier. Headline PCE inflation also rose at a pace of 2.8% compared to November last year, in line with expectations. 

• The Bank of Japan voted to hold its benchmark borrowing cost steady at 0.75% in a near-unanimous decision, with only one governor voting against the decision (and instead opting for a 25bps rate hike to 1.0%). 
• Governor Kazuo Ueda warned that the BoJ is ready to intervene in the Japanese government bond (JGB) market if need be — "Long-term interest rates are rising at quite a fast pace... As we've been saying, we are ready to take nimble action to cope with exceptional moves that are different from usual. We will communicate closely with the government, and stand ready to play each of our roles."
• We covered here that yields on super-long dated JGB’s spiked to record highs earlier last week. 

• President Trump told reporters yesterday that he has finished his interviews for the next Fed Chair and reiterated that he already has a candidate in mind — “I’ll be telling you soon. I have somebody that I think will be very good but I’m not going to reveal it”. 
• He added that “It’s someone very respected, very, very well known, and will do, I think, a very good job”.
• According to Polymarket, traders assign the highest probability (44%) to former Fed governor Kevin Warsh. 

• Nasdaq has filed a proposal with the SEC to scrap the 25,000-contract position and exercise caps for options for a group of spot BTC and ETH ETFs – including BlackRock’s IBIT and ETHA, alongside products from Grayscale, Fidelity, Bitwise and ARK/21Shares.
• If implemented, those contracts would instead fall under Nasdaq’s standard ETF options limits, bringing crypto ETF options into line with how other heavily traded ETF options are regulated.

• SEC Chair Paul S. Atkins and CFTC Chair Michael S. Selig will hold a joint event on 27 January, at CFTC headquarters, focusing on harmonisation between the agencies and how they plan to coordinate oversight.
• The discussion is positioned as part of their efforts to deliver on President Trump’s promise to make the United States the “crypto capital of the world.”

• Laser Digital has launched a tokenised bitcoin yield fund designed to add an income layer to spot BTC exposure.
• Debuting yesterday, the BTC Diversified Yield Fund SP is targeting ~5% annualised returns on top of bitcoin’s price performance by combining long BTC holdings with market-neutral strategies such as arbitrage, lending and options overlays.
• Structured in the Cayman Islands and positioned as an upgrade to Laser’s 2023 Bitcoin Adoption Fund, the product is billed as the first natively tokenised Cayman-based bitcoin yield vehicle, using KAIO for tokenisation and Komainu for custody.
• The fund carries a $250,000 minimum subscription and is available to accredited investors in eligible jurisdictions.

• Ledger, the French crypto unicorn best known for its Ledger hardware wallets, is reportedly laying the groundwork for a US IPO that could value the business at more than $4B.
• The Financial Times says the company has approached bankers, including Goldman Sachs, Jefferies and Barclays, with a potential listing as soon as this year, although plans remain fluid.
• Ledger was last valued at around $1.5B in 2023, when it raised a $108M extension to its Series C and pushed total funding for that round to just under $500M.

• World Liberty Financial (WLFI), the Trump family–associated crypto project, announced a partnership with satellite startup Spacecoin to explore how DeFi and space-based internet connectivity could extend financial services to communities beyond the reach of traditional banking.
• Spacecoin said the collaboration includes a token swap between the projects and will test payments and settlement use cases for WLFI’s USD1 stablecoin in environments where conventional financial rails are limited.
• Spacecoin is building a low-Earth-orbit satellite network and says it has launched three satellites. 

• According to on-chain data, Bitmine staked an additional 171,264 ETH (approximately $503M), bringing its total staked amount to 1,943,200 ETH (approximately $5.71B).
• This represents 46.23% of its last published company's total crypto holdings, reported as 4,203,036 ETH as of Jan 19.

This Week’s Calendar:

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Charts of the Day: