What happened in crypto the past 3 weeks? Bitcoin is teasing us with the $100K level. Ethereum shows potential. Lots of ETFs, one more innovative than the previous. Stablecoins are getting interesting. FTX will pay you back in January. The altcoin season is here. What else? Read below:
Bitcoin: Some fun from the UK, where Craig Wright received a 12-month sentence, suspended for two years, for violating a court order that told him to stop filing lawsuits about being Satoshi Nakamoto. The UK judges are not a joke. As I write, Bitcoin went above $100K, again. And then under $100K, again. The steepest decline in three months, since Trump won the presidential election, had Bitcoin falling more than 7%. BlackRock advocates for 1-2% BTC allocation in traditional portfolios. Amazon's shareholders are pressing the company to allocate Bitcoin as a reserve. Meanwhile, Microsoft shareholders rejected the proposal to add BTC to the company's balance sheet. Metaplanet sees its first operating profit since 2017 thanks to adding Bitcoin as a treasury asset and they even look to raise another $60M to buy more BTC. Cryptocurrency miners are adopting a Bitcoin accumulation strategy similar to that of MicroStrategy. MicroStrategy is set to join the Nasdaq 100 Index along with the software firm Palantir, as Axon, Illumina and Moderna will be removed from the Index. A Texas lawmaker introduced a bill to establish a state-run strategic Bitcoin reserve. MicroStrategy has acquired an additional 21550 BTC for $2.1B and planned to issue additional shares to get funds to buy even more BTC. Marathon Digital bought 40.435 BTC worth $3.9B, making them the second-largest public BTC holder after MicroStrategy, on top of them being the first mining company to hit 50 exahashes per second in mining power. A Russian lawmaker proposed a strategic BTC reserve, similar to the traditional currency reserves. JPMorgan analysts have raised their price targets for several Bitcoin mining firms. VanEck believes that the crypto market will boom in 2025, with Bitcoin potentially reaching $180K. The Bitcoin's ratio against gold has surged to a new high, with one Bitcoin now being able to buy 37.3 ounces of gold. The sport BTC ETFs weekly inflows averaged 1911 BTC while Bitcoin was above $100K, with $680M outflows last Thursday alone, when it dropped under $100K, the largest single-day outflows ever seen. Israel approved 6 BTC mutual funds. Still, the little fish are buying, while the whales are selling, is another crash on its way, so the big players buy all your hard-earned BTC at a discount? All the public miners are loading up on Bitcoin like never before.
Ethereum: Spot Ethereum ETFs in the US have seen 10 straight days of net positive inflows, the longest streak since their launch. Bitcoin futures in the exchanges saw volumes rise 72%, while ETH futures rose 122% too, both recording new highs. The US regulators are soliciting public comments on the proposed Bitcoin and ETH ETF listing. The SEC did approve two new spot BTC and ETH ETFs from Hashdex and Franklin Templeton. Trump-backed crypto project scoops up to $5M in ETH, with data showing that the project now holds over $50M worth of ETH. Something is happening, as three Wall Street giants just bought half a billion in ETH in two days. Two of them are probably BlackRock and Fidelity. We did have Ethereum crossing the $4000 this month. Ethereum's largest wallets now hold 57% of its total supply, the highest since its 2015 launch.
Altcoins and stablecoins: We are experiencing a massive surge in altcoins performance. The stablecoins sector has reached a new milestone above the $200B mark market cap and the stablecoin trading activity is on track for a yearly high. A Lisk airdrop is ongoing, with 77 days remaining to climb up the leatherboard (feel free to use my referral 0fRpWD if needed). You can use Velodrome for the daily transactions. I did have some fun with Intract, where you do quests for NFT and even win some crypto in contests. I do not know if I was just lucky, but I did get some juicy rewards. Binance and Circle formed a strategic partnership to boost USDC adoption. USDC experienced a 6.7% increase in market capitalization, reaching $42B, the highest level since 2022. Solana surpassed Ethereum in the total number of new crypto developers. Ripple launched its RLUSD stablecoin on December 17 aiming for a $2 trillion market cap by 2028. That's 14 times more than the actual Tether market cap. What can go wrong? I got some $200 out of it, so I am happy. Jupiter, Solana's leading decentralized exchange, is set to distribute 700M JUP tokens, worth $4.58B, in January. We have a Solana staking ETP by Bitwise, with 6.48% APY, letting you earn SOL while you sleep. Uniswap's new Ethereum Layer-2 blockchain is set to launch public mainnet in early 2025. We have a stablecoin - USDtb, by Ethena, 90% backed by BlackRock's massive BUIDL fund. We had some drama with the Hawk Tuah memecoin going from zero to $491M and then back to zero within hours, and twelve investors claim they lost over $151K, taking the creators to court. Talking about jokes, Fartcoin memecoin has become a billion-dollar asset.
NFTs and blockchain games: Pudgy Penguins launched the native Pengu token through a massive airdrop, with a 50% drop hours after its launch. On Splinterlands, we are getting ready for a new card collection, with some cool summoners that are now auction-only, yet it seems quite expensive. I am a bit disappointed with the PayPal integration on Splinterlands, as I cannot buy Credits with an error saying that the associated information does not match the KYC provided. It can't be helped by the system, apparently. Check my Holozing article to learn about a new blockchain game that looks full of potential. I am also playing Golemancer on Hive, and it is quite profitable, I would say, with some great updates lately. Crazy days, the PEPE memecoin jumped over Uniswap in market value.
Good news: Kucoin has a brilliant referral program if you are good at this stuff. Crypto wallet provider Exodus made its debut on NYSE American last Wednesday. Crypto.com launched an institutional custody service in the US. Crypto over-the-counter trading volumes surged after Trump's election victory, with more than 220%. Bitwise wants to launch an ETF tracking Bitcoin-rich firms. Starting from January 3, your FTX money is coming back, with the ones having $50K or less being the first to be paid with 118% of their claim value.
Bad news: Crypto advocates have sent thousands of emails opposing the renomination of the US SEC commissioner Caroline Crenshaw, urging lawmakers to reject the reappointment. Coinbase cleared the way to delist tokenized Bitcoin WBTC, despite Bit Global attempt to stop them over unfair business practices. Coinbase only mentioned the unacceptable risk that control of WBTC would fall into the hands of Justin Sun, known for trying to take control over other blockchains, like Steem for example. Crypto exchange Hyperliquid has seen its largest single-day outflow amid North Korean hacking concerns. There are more and more talks about Operation Choke Point 2.0, as regulators contributed to Silvergate Bank's collapse, just because they provided banking services for many big crypto players, including FTX. Coinbase released redacted letters from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), supporting the claims of a coordinated effort by regulators to limit crypto firms' access to banking services. Some predicted a massive crypto dump on Trump's first day as president. Remember the date, January 20, 2025. HEX founder on Interpol's Most Wanted list, for all the wrong reasons, such as tax fraud and assault against a minor. And some of the worst hacks of 2024 were DMM, losing 4500 BTC, WazirX, losing $235M, and exchanges such as BingX, Indodax and Radiant Capital with $43M, $22M and $50M.
Joke of the week: This clown's world is just a global circus. El Salvador's BTC investments have made $300M in unrealized gains, as the country now has over $600M worth of Bitcoin. In the next 2-3 weeks, El Salvador is expected to reach an agreement with the International Monetary Fund, on a $1.3B loan program, contingent on some changes. The proposed agreement, which requires approval from the IMF board, wants El Salvador to drop legal requirements for businesses to accept BTC as payment, making it entirely voluntary, to reduce the budget deficit by 3.5% over three years, pass an anti-corruption law and increase reserves from $11B to $15B. Funny idea, nobody said what reserves, they can get more BTC, right? Just imagine that, to use the loan from the IMF to buy more crypto!
All the best, George
Why not...
...have fun and win rewards on my favourite blockchain games (Splinterlands- Hearthstone-like card game) (Golemancer - GamiFI NFT platform, great to accumulate more Hive) (Upland - real-life virtual land) (Holozing - Pokemon-like game)and (Rising Star - Music creators game).
...get crypto while writing on the Publish0x blog, using the Presearch search engine to maximize your income with PRE tokens. Use Torum instead of Twitter. I am also writing for crypto on Grill and Hive.
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