Bitcoin Dominance Fuels $585 Million Crypto ETP Inflows In 2025

You've certainly heard that Bitcoin (BTC) miners require a lot of energy to operate, but they also give off a lot of heat. Wall Street crypto miner Canaan (NASDAQ: CAN) decided to take advantage of this by introducing a combination of miners with… home heaters!

The same device that keeps your toes toasty could now be secretly hustling to fill your crypto wallet. Talk about a warm welcome to the future!

Heat Your Home While Mining Bitcoin

Bitcoin mining firm from Wall Street Canaan unveils dual-purpose mining heaters at CES 2025, marking a significant shift in home cryptocurrency mining technology. The company introduced two new devices - the Avalon Mini 3 and Nano 3S - that combine Bitcoin mining capabilities with practical home heating functionality.

The Avalon Mini 3 delivers 37.5Th/s hashrate while functioning as a home heating system, featuring app-controlled operation and quiet performance. Its companion product, the Avalon Nano 3S, offers 6Th/s hashrate in a portable, energy-efficient design.

"We are committed to making Bitcoin mining accessible to everyone," said NG Zhang, CEO and founder of Canaan. "The Avalon Mini 3 and Avalon 3S represent our vision of user-friendly, practical mining solutions for the modern individual. We're reimagining how technology can create value while minimizing environmental waste. The Avalon Mini 3's ability to generate cryptocurrency while heating your home is a perfect example of our vision for sustainable, multi-purpose technology."

The devices are available for preorder until February 2025, with the Nano 3S priced at $249 and the Mini 3 at $899. The flagship Avalon Mini 3 delivers 37.5 TH/s hashrate while consuming 800W of power. The unit measures 760 x 104 x 214mm without packaging and operates within a temperature range of -5 to 40°C. Operating noise levels are maintained at 55dB, and the device supports universal voltage input of 110-240V.

The entry-level Nano 3S provides 6 TH/s hashrate, representing an upgrade from its predecessor. It features a compact form factor designed for portability and individual users.

Canaan Raises $30 Million

The move comes two months after the China-based computing solutions provider entered into a securities purchase agreement to sell up to 30,000 Series A-1 Preferred Shares at $1,000 each to an institutional investor. The deal is expected to raise $30 million to support the expansion of digital mining sites and equipment in North America.

This development follows a Series A financing round completed in September 2024, during which Canaan sold up to 125,000 Series A Convertible Preferred Shares. The company has also made progress in product development, with strong demand for its Avalon A15-194T miners. Additionally, Canaan signed a follow-on purchase agreement with HIVE Digital Technologies to supply 5,000 Avalon A15 miners in the first quarter of 2025.

Bitcoin plunged below $95,000 on Wednesday after shedding almost 8% over the past day. Amidst heightened volatility, investors appear to have positioned themselves cautiously.

But prominent entrepreneur and investor Robert Kiyosaki believes the latest “crash” is great. Here’s why:Opportunity in Crisis

Kiyosaki took to X to express his optimism about Bitcoin despite its recent price decline. Best known as the author of the best-selling personal finance book Rich Dad Poor Dad, Kiyosaki referred to the cryptocurrency’s downturn as “great news,” describing it as an opportunity to purchase it at a lower price and portraying it as being “on sale.”

He reiterated his belief in the investment strategy of “buying low and holding” long-term. Highlighting Bitcoin’s limited supply, Kiyosaki noted that fewer than two million BTC remain to be mined.

Kiyosaki has been a vocal proponent of Bitcoin and frequently advises investors to consider it an effective inflation hedge. In a recent New Year forecast, the financial guru predicted that Bitcoin could soar to $175,000-$350,000 by 2025. This optimistic outlook isn’t out of place, as it closely matches the rangeforecastedby several other financial experts.

Bernstein analysts, for one, set a price target of $200,000 for Bitcoin by late 2025, restating a previousstatement. Their projection is part of a larger perspective on the crypto industry, which they believe is transitioning into an “Infinity Age” defined by mainstream acceptance and integration with the global financial system.“Temporary Pause”

Weighing on the latest price action, QCP Capital stated that Bitcoin has retreated towards the $95,000 support level following unexpectedly strong US labor market data. The JOLTS job openings report revealed 8.1 million vacancies, which exceeded the forecast of 7.74 million.

This labor market resilience triggered risk-off sentiment, which, in turn, drove a sell-off in risky assets as long-term bond yields surged. The sharp decline in Bitcoin’s price led to liquidations totaling $206 million in just one hour.

The ripple effects of the sell-off extended to equities, with the Nasdaq and S&P 500 reflecting broader market weakness, trading near 21,200 and 5,900, respectively. Meanwhile, Bitcoin ETF inflows have dwindled by 94%, falling to $52.9 million from a previous $987 million.

As markets await the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) and Non-Farm Payroll (NFP) reports later this week, these developments are expected to shape Bitcoin’s next moves. Despite the pullback, QCP Capital added that it anticipates this dip to be a temporary pause, with optimism building for a bullish rally ahead.

Ethereum Layer 2 project Starknet now enables developers to launch appchains using its software offering, SN Stack, marking a move towards increased modularity within its ecosystem. Appchains are independent blockchains tailored to specific applications.

Starknet noted that its appchain stack incorporates essential components like Starknet OS for blockchain operations, CairoVM for smart contract execution, Blockifier for block construction, and cryptographic provers and verifiers.

SN Stack is offered in three distinct variants to cater to different developmental needs: Madara, which provides a flexible, open-source modular framework; Dojo, a platform optimized for gaming and advanced on-chain applications; and finally, StarkWare Sequencer, which delivers Starknet’s entire infrastructure for dapps requiring high performance.

“From now on, projects will be able to build appchains using the gold-standard ZK-STARK cryptography with the ease and low cost that has only been possible with optimistic rollups,” said Eli Ben-Sasson, co-founder and CEO of Starknet’s core developer StarkWare.

An appchain called Paradex has been running as a design partner for the current SN Stack introduction.

2024 marked a significant year for Ethereum’s Layer 2 ecosystem. Building on the momentum from previous years, the number of rollups, or Layer 2 chains, surpassed 100, a threefold increase from the end of 2023. This exponential growth has been driven by increasing demand for scalable solutions and the availability of many development tools.

The emergence of modular Layer 2s is supported by developers increasingly using software stacks offered by popular projects such as Optimism, Arbitrum, ZKsync, Linea, and now Starknet.

Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.

© 2024 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Appchains are launching on Starknet, the layer-2 blockchain on Ethereum known for its embrace of zero-knowledge (ZK) cryptography. StarkWare, the primary developer of Starknet, shared the news on Wednesday, telling CoinDesk that its "SN Stack" will let developers easily build blockchains tailored to specific crypto use cases.

StarkWare originally announced in July 2023 that it was building a customizable stack for developers to create their own blockchains. The announcement followed similar releases from several of StarkWare's competitors—other layer-2 blockchains that scale Ethereum's capacity by offering users side lanes to transact quickly and cheaply.

StarkWare, founded in 2018, was one of the first layer-2 scaling solutions to adopt ZK cryptography — an encryption technique that's rapidly become one of the core technologies undergirding many next-generation blockchains. Compared to "optimistic" layer-2 networks — the rollup technology used by most Ethereum scaling chains — ZK-based chains like StarkWare are viewed as more advanced and secure, albeit more difficult to build, more expensive and harder to scale to generalized use cases.

“From now on, projects will be able to build app-chains using the gold-standard ZK-STARK cryptography with the ease and low cost that has only been possible with optimistic rollups,” StarkWare co-founder and CEO Eli Ben-Sasson said in a statement shared with CoinDesk.

The SN stack has various options meant to cater to different kinds of developers. According to a press release shared with CoinDesk, “developers can choose between Madara, an open-source and modular framework built for flexibility, Dojo, optimized for gaming and on-chain applications, or the StarkWare Sequencer, which provides the full, high-performance infrastructure of public Starknet.”

Read more: StarkWare’s ‘Starknet Stacks’ Could Add to Growing Field of Blockchain-in-a-Box Offerings

2025 is shaping up to be the year of the Frog, if presales for Wall Street Pepe ($WEPE) are anything to go by. They’re just dollars away from hitting the $45M mark, which suggests that this is the meme coin that could outperform all others this year.

Obviously, we can’t predict anything for sure. If we could, we’d be sitting at our beach resort in Cancun with our cocktails with the little umbrellas in it. But our expert opinion, after careful analysis, is that Wall Street Pepe is in pole position to hit 100x in 2025.

Why Has Wall Street Pepe Done So Well So Far?

Ripple president Monica Long expects its Ripple USD (RLUSD) stablecoin to be listed on major crypto exchanges “imminently.”

In a Jan. 7 interview with Bloomberg, Long confirmed that Ripple is actively pursuing additional exchange listings for RLUSD.

“We are continuing to expand distribution and availability of Ripple dollars on other exchanges. So I think you can expect to see more availability, more announcements coming soon… imminently,” Long said. She declined to provide specifics when asked about RLUSD listings on major platforms like Coinbase.

Currently, RLUSD is available on Bitso, MoonPay, CoinMina, Bullish, Mercado Bitcoin B2C2, Keyrock, Archax, Independent Reserve and JST Digital, according to the Ripple website.

Ripple launched RLUSD on Dec. 17 as a stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the United States dollar. At the time of publication, the stablecoin boasts a market cap of $71.8 million, according to CoinGecko.