Morning Crypto Report: Ex-Ripple CTO Reveals Unknown XRP Story From 2013, Shiba Inu (SHIB) Rockets 30% in $12 Billion Meme Coin Comeback, Legendary Trader Suddenly Becomes Bitcoin Cash Bull

The first full week of January opens with risk returning to the riskiest corners of the crypto market. Meme coins like Shiba Inu (SHIB) are catching bids, XRP gets a credibility flashback from a real security heavyweight, and Bitcoin Cash is pushing into a weekly ceiling co-signed by Peter Brandt.

TL;DR

• Meme coins are back in risk-on mode with $12 billion added in four days as a 30% pump makes the Shiba Inu coin hit $0.000009.
• XRP gets a trust boost as ex-Ripple CTO Schwartz says Kaminsky did a deep 2013 review and the main debate was UNL coordination, not a broken design.
• Bitcoin Cash is at a make-or-break level, while Brandt backs the move as the price tests $650 on the weekly.

Shiba Inu (SHIB) leads $12 billion meme coin comeback with 30% price rise

Shiba Inu coin was the star of the show this week, as meme coins bounced back in a big way, one of their most impressive performances since early 2023. In just four sessions, the sector added almost $12 billion in total market value, pushing the group’s cap up to almost $48 billion and driving daily volume to over $8 billion. SHIB added about 30% during the move before dropping back to the $0.0000086 range.

It was not news, partnerships or tweets that triggered it. It was structural positioning. CryptoQuant keeps an eye on a ratio that measures how many meme coins there are in the altcoin market. It compares the market caps of meme assets to the rest of the altcoin basket. In November 2024, this metric hit 0.11. By late December 2025, it hit around 0.032. That level was the sector’s lowest share of attention and liquidity in over a year.

In the past, this kind of collapse has often led to a meme rotation. So, when meme coin dominance drops too far, even small flows can look oversized on thin liquidity. Traders see the imbalance and start rotating in — not because of new believers, but because of reflexive setups and liquidity math.

SHIB was the most recognizable and the most liquid coin, which really helped it out. It briefly hit $0.000009 before getting rejected, closing near $0.00000868 for the day.

The big question now is whether dominance and volume keep climbing. If they do, SHIB can stay volatile and in the news. If they fade, the rotation stalls and the move turns into a spike-and-dump replay. But the capital already moved, and that alone changes the week.

Kaminsky’s 2013 XRP review story revealed by ex-Ripple CTO

XRP is not seeing a price surge right now, but it just got a credibility boost that could end up being more valuable in the long run than a sudden price spike. David Schwartz, who was Ripple’s CTO for over a decade, revealed this week that the late Dan Kaminsky — a top-tier security researcher known for exposing flaws in the internet’s DNS system — reviewed the XRP Ledger codebase in 2013.

Schwartz says Kaminsky spent “dozens of hours” studying the system, gave feedback on the code and architecture and concluded that the main point of concern was validator coordination — specifically, the need for nodes to agree on their Unique Node List, or UNL.

This is not some small detail. Most people who do not like XRP say the network’s main weakness is its consensus model and its reliance on pre-agreed validator trust lists. Kaminsky was not dismissing that model. He just said it was a known and fixable trust layer, not a major issue. Kaminsky has a reputation, and this story shows that the “nobody serious ever reviewed XRP” narrative is just that, a narrative. It has been around for years and years, but it is time to move on.

It also changes the way future debates will go. When the next regulatory headline or scalability complaint comes down the pike, this audit detail will almost certainly be quoted. It’s not that it rewrites the protocol, but it shows that one of the most respected names in internet security took XRPL’s trust assumptions seriously and did not dismiss them as broken.

For people who have held XRP for a while, this is a rare positive story. For critics, it forces a change in how they think about it. You cannot just dismiss Kaminsky’s opinion. He was important, and still is.

Bitcoin Cash hits ceiling, and Brandt is the one calling the shots

Bitcoin Cash is back in the news, and not because of the usual forks or drama. This time, it is a technical setup, and legendary trader Peter Brandt is on it.

The trading pro posted on X that “BCH is leading the charge,” pointing out the chart right when the token is approaching a key weekly resistance near $650. It is on par with the previous caps set in mid-2022 and again in 2023. Now it is back in play for Bitcoin Cash.

Brandt does not usually comment on altcoins directly. When he does, it is usually because the chart is textbook, and this one is. BCH has been stuck in a range for months and just had its second weekly test of the $650 zone. If it breaks through and holds that level into the close on Friday, it shifts out of range and into trend mode. If it fails, the whole move unwinds fast and becomes just another failed breakout.

That is the reason it matters. BCH is not making progress on the fundamentals. It is not attracting new users. But traders love clear invalidation lines and wide expansion zones above resistance. Brand’s mention did not cause the price to rise, but it did make people focus more on it.

A lot of big-name traders are keeping an eye on the same chart, with a surge in volume on Binance and Bybit. BCH perpetuals also saw a spike in open interest, with short liquidations triggering above $640.

Crypto market outlook

What’s next is that if the meme volume stays the same and the dominance goes up, SHIB could lead a sector-wide rebound, with DOGE and FLOKI following the trend. XRP’s Kaminsky audit quote gives it some serious protection before any governance debate. BCH is binary at $650 — hold and $900 comes into view, fail and the setup dies.

• Shiba Inu (SHIB): $0.000009 is the pivot, if it is reclaimed, it confirms the continuation, but the overall structure is reactive to the meme coin’s volume.
• XRP: Kaminsky audit quote repositions validator debate ahead of any narrative reactivation.
• Bitcoin Cash (BCH): $650 is the breakout line, and Peter Brandt’s attention increases the noise around the level.