"Tether's $13B Profit Surge as EU Delists USDT; Crypto Market Rebounds"

Tether, the issuer of the world's largest stablecoin, USDT, has reported a staggering $13 billion in profits for the year 2024. This remarkable figure comes as the company's holdings of US bonds have reached an all-time high, reflecting the growing confidence in the stablecoin market.

The positive news for Tether is that various crypto exchanges have announced the delisting of the stablecoin for non-compliance in the EU following the implementation of the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation. This move is seen as a sign of increased regulatory scrutiny and a shift towards greater compliance in the crypto industry.

The crypto market has shown signs of recovery in January, with Bitcoin (BTC) rebounding from a sharp drop below $98,000. While BTC has struggled to break past $106,000 and Ethereum (ETH) has been constrained below $3,500, small-cap tokens have shown notable gains.

Ethereum price rose to highs of $3,437, gaining by more than 5% at one point, likely due to on-chain data showing World Liberty Financial had purchased $10 million of ETH. However, the price has since fallen back below $3,350 and hovers near the $3.3k level, with open interest for ETH at $32.9 billion.

FLOKI, one of the meme coins that has struggled in recent months, rose more than 10% to $0.0001448 before shedding the gains as BTC and ETH also traded lower. The token rose following Coinbase's announcement of support for Gigachad (GIGA), Turbo (TURBO), and FLOKI for New York residents.

Cronos (CRO), the native token of the Cronos chain by Crypto.com, was down 1.3% despite a major integration with LayerZero. Cronos Labs announced earlier that LayerZero was live on Cronos EVM and Cronos zkEVM, enabling interoperability with 115 blockchains, including Ethereum and Solana. The CRO price hovered around $0.13 but could flip bullish amid the positive network development.

Across the altcoin market, Sonic (S),