Trakx Weekly Update: May 12, 2025

Key Crypto Market Figures

CTIs Weekly Performance

Last week saw digital assets regain positive price momentum. All of our crypto indices ended up in the green while our flagship Top10 Crypto CTI gained an impressive 20%. As often occurs during bullish moves like this, it was the higher beta Meme CTI that recorded the strongest weekly gain, rallying over 35%. Also in keeping with historic norms, last place in the performance rankings was taken by the typically defensive Digital Inflation Hedge CTI, after it rose 2.4% over the past seven days.

US-China Tariff Timeout

A major catalyst for improved crypto sentiment was geopolitical. Over the weekend, US and Chinese officials met in Geneva and agreed to a 90-day pause in their ongoing tariff battle. They committed to cutting reciprocal tariffs by 115 percentage points, a partial rollback of the tit-for-tat measures introduced over recent weeks. While tariffs remain elevated compared to pre-Liberation Day levels (still 10% for the US and 30% for China), the truce sends a strong signal: both nations are intent on avoiding a damaging economic “decoupling”, a potentially very negative macro tail event.

Pectra Upgrade

In more crypto-specific news, one of the largest boosts to the value of our large cap Top10 Crypto CTI came from Ethereum. The second largest token rallied almost 40% after the Pectra upgrade was successfully rolled out on mainnet. Included in the upgrade was EIP-7702 which allows externally owned accounts to adopt smart-contract behaviour temporarily, permitting the batching of transactions, the ability to pay gas fees in tokens other than ETH, and a fund recovery mechanism when a private key is lost. The other significant change introduced by the Pectra upgrade was the raising of the validator stake limit from 32ETH introduced back in 2022 when Ethereum transitioned from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake (aka The Merge), to 2,048 ETH. Such a substantial increase makes the node management process much easier for larger stakers and hence makes the Ethereum blockchain more institution-friendly.

Bitcoin Controversy

Also in the headlines for code changes was Bitcoin after Core announced their next update would relay and mine transactions whose OP_RETURN output exceed 80 bytes. Originally, the 80-byte cap was meant to discourage use of Bitcoin for arbitrary data storage via the OP_RETURN script, as these data-heavy transactions, while unspendable and excluded from the UTXO set, could still bloat the blockchain. However, because large data inscriptions are already occurring on the Bitcoin blockchain, Core developers have decided to align their node software with actual usage patterns. Of course, this being Bitcoin, the decision proved controversial. While some in the community supported the change, others were critical amid concern that it would increase the cost of running a full node due to “chain bloat”, as well as detracting from Bitcoin’s primary function as a financial tool. That said, the tension did not stop the seminal cryptocurrency from retaking the psychologically-significant $100,000 level and moving to within five percentage points of January’s all-time high of $109,225.

Sources: Trakx, Coingecko, Alphavantage

Market Trends

• Bitcoin Eyes Record High Above $109K as U.S. Cuts Tariffs on Chinese Goods to 30% From 145%: CoinDesk
• Ethereum developers activate Pectra upgrade with 11 changes to improve UX, validator ops and Layer 2 scaling: TheBlock
• Bitcoin Core to unilaterally remove controversial OP-Return limit: Cointelegraph
• Treasury Secretary Bessent Blasts Senate for Blocking GENIUS Stablecoin Bill: Decrypt
• Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky receives 12-year sentence: Protos

​Trakx News

• Trakx is organizing a French language webinar for CGPs on May 20. To register for this event please click here.

Sources: Coingecko and AlphaVantage

*Return of bitcoin is calculated since 01/05/2020, while CTIs performances were calculated since their respective launch date.
**Includes simulated performance.
***The risk signal is determined according to the historical volatility level, the higher the riskier.

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Disclaimers: No Investment Advice. Index returns and statistics are for illustration only. Index returns do not reflect any transaction costs or expenses. Past performance does not guarantee future results. The information provided in this newsletter does not constitute investment advice, financial advice, trading advice, or any other sort of advice and you should not treat any of the newsletter content as such. Trakx.io does not recommend that any cryptocurrency should be bought, sold, or held by you. Readers shall conduct their own due diligence and consult their financial advisors before making any investment decisions.