Bitcoin retreats from record high Monday

Bitcoin retreated from a record high on Monday as Donald Trump was sworn in as 47th president of the United States, his second presidential term, following a weekend during which his own newly launched digital token rattled crypto markets.

The original digital asset peaked to $109,241 early on Monday, but pared back gains to hover around $100,952 as of 12:45 p.m in New York. The earlier rally came after Trump and his wife, Melania, unveiled memecoins, with Trump’s reaching a market capitalization of more than $15 billion on Sunday before declining sharply.

Trading in other tokens such as Ether and XRP was mixed, as Trump once again assumed control of the White House. Bloomberg News previously reported that he’s considering an executive order designating the asset class a “national priority.”

The new Trump tokens initially blindsided crypto markets by diverting investment flows from other tokens, and drew sharp criticism even from some industry executives. Yet investors eventually embraced the notion that Trump’s move will give him further incentive to embrace crypto-friendly policies.

Trump became an ardent supporter of the digital-assets industry on the campaign trail, after once having branded Bitcoin a scam.

Trump sued over cost-cutting DOGE

A union representing hundreds of thousands of federal employees sued the Trump administration over its signature cost-cutting effort led by billionaire Elon Musk, kicking off a high-stakes legal clash over the new president’s plans to slash government spending.

The lawsuit from the American Federation of Government Employees and government watchdog groups Public Citizen and State Democracy Defenders Fund was one of three cases filed as Trump was being sworn in Monday, challenging the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE. The AFGE case claims the initiative violates a 1972 U.S. law requiring checks on conflicts of interest, ideological balance and transparency for groups with a direct line to the White House.

The federal employees union wrote in its case that the Federal Advisory Committee Act features “guardrails” to stop groups “from turning into vehicles for advancing private interests in the federal decision-making process and secretly influencing federal officials’ exercise of policymaking discretion.”

Meta to use fact-checkers outside U.S.

Meta Platforms will continue to use its fact-checkers outside of the U.S. “for now” even as the Instagram and Facebook owner does away with the practice at home, the company’s head of global business Nicola Mendelsohn said.

Meta, which said it will replace third-party fact- checkers in the U..S with a community notes system, will see how the change plays out before deciding about a transition in other regions, Mendelsohn said Monday.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said this month that he decided to pull back on the practice, which was set up almost a decade ago to combat viral hoaxes spreading on the platform, because the complex systems were making “too many mistakes” and unfairly censoring users. That will be more difficult outside of the U.S. where there are more stringent laws regulating how digital services police misinformation.

Compiled from Bloomberg reports.