Recent developments in the crypto world have been quite eventful at the start of the year.

**Market Overview**

As of 6 PM today, Bitcoin is at $90,876, up 0.92% in the past 24 hours. Although the increase isn't large, this price level is significant—amid the backdrop of the US taking military action against Venezuela and geopolitical tensions, BTC holding steady above the $90,000 key support level demonstrates strong resilience.

Ethereum is currently at $3,145.78, with a market cap of $379.68 billion, and a 24-hour trading volume of $12.52 billion. The overall trend remains steady. On-chain data is quite interesting: in the $87,000 range, there are 822,000 BTC stacked, with fierce long and short position battles. Additionally, BTC's closing price has broken through the downtrend line (the previous high of $90,588), signaling a clear rebound.

**Institutional Moves Never Stop**

Ark 21 Shares and World Funds Trust, two major players, have entered the ETF race one after another. The former submitted a Form 8-A for securities registration, while the latter went even further, applying for six Bitcoin-related ETFs, including leveraged long and short products. The SEC's ETF approval process seems to be countdown mode, and these institutions have been eager for a while.

Interestingly, a former Citibank executive has also come out with a Bitcoin depositary receipt (similar to ADRs), aiming to bypass US regulations and attract global institutional investors. While this move is somewhat unconventional, it also reflects traditional finance's desire to allocate to Bitcoin.

Additionally, the $675 million token airdrop from decentralized exchange Lighter has just settled, becoming the tenth-largest airdrop in crypto history, with community discussion skyrocketing.

**Risk Events Hit Several Projects**

In the Ethereum ecosystem, Gamma Strategies was found to have a security vulnerability, with hackers stealing about $3.4 million. The project team responded quickly, suspending all deposit activities and issuing a bounty to recover assets, but users are naturally worried.

The Celsius bankruptcy case is even more explosive. On January 4th, a judge ruled that the $4.2 billion in user assets deposited with Celsius belong entirely to the platform, meaning roughly 500,000 depositors are pretty much out of luck. The New York Attorney General has already initiated litigation, aiming to ban Celsius founders from engaging in business activities and seeking compensation. This incident has dealt a heavy blow to the industry’s trust.

**Good News on the Technical Front**

The testnet schedule for Ethereum's Dencun upgrade has been set. Three test networks will sequentially activate hard forks: Goerli (January 17), Sepolia (January 30), and Holesky (February 7). The mainnet upgrade is expected to be completed by the end of February.

The highlight of this upgrade is EIP-4844, which introduces the Blob data structure. In simple terms, it can significantly reduce L2 transaction costs and increase transaction throughput. Mainstream L2 ecosystems like Arbitrum (which now accounts for nearly half of Ethereum Rollup TVL) and Optimism are expected to directly benefit from this wave of improvements. The future of L2 looks quite promising.