Trump appoints former U.S. college football player Bo Hines as executive director of the Presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Assets that will be chaired by incoming crypto czar David Sacks.
The global cryptocurrency market cap has dropped over 12% in the past 5 days between Dec 17 when BTC reached its all-time high of over $108,000 and Dec 22, going from $3.9 tn to $3.4 tn.
On Dec 23, Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer at Bitwise Asset Management, attributed the recent pullback in the cryptocurrency market to the natural clearing of leverage, saying "long term drivers are still intact, we're still in a strong bull market".
Nexo, a digital assets wealth platform, and 7RCC Global, a crypto asset management firm, introduce an ESG-centric Bitcoin ETF, comprising of 80% Bitcoin and 20% carbon credit futures. The initial registration form for the approval of this ETF has already been submitted to the SEC.
This morning at 09:00 CET, 20,000 ETH (over $66 million) were transferred from Binance to an unknown wallet.
Tron founder Justin Sun has been heavily offloading his ETH holdings. Over the past 7 days, Sun has offloaded another 50% of his holdings worth $143 million, which he redeemed from liquid staking platforms Lido Finance and EtherFi, and deposited the entire amount into the exchange HTX. According to SpotOnChain, 42,904 ETH (worth $139 million) are still being unstaked from Lido Finance, potentially signaling more selling in the upcoming week.
In the past month, BTC long term holder (LTH) supply has decreased by 1 million BTC, going from 14.2 million in Sep 22 to 13.2 million BTC in Dec 22. On Thursday Dec 19, the LTH supply dropped by almost 68000 BTC, the fourth-biggest one-day sell-off this year. Earlier, between Dec 4 and Dec 6, the LTH supply dropped by over 239800 BTC. On the other hand, short term holder (STH) supply increased by approximately 1.3 million.
Jump Crypto has agreed to pay a $123 million settlement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over its involvement in stabilizing UST in 2021. The settlement, announced on Dec 20, 2024, comes after an investigation into actions that the SEC claims created a false impression of the coin's stability. In May 2021, TerraUSD (UST) experienced a depegged from its $1 value, triggering fears about its stability. Tai Mo Shan, working as part of Jump Crypto, bought over $20 million UST, which appeared to stabilize the coin temporarily.
According to data from Hedge Fund Research, cryptocurrency-focused hedge funds achieved year-to-date returns to 76% in November, outpacing the broader hedge fund industry, which recorded a more modest 10% gain in the first 11 months of 2024.
Tokyo-listed Metaplanet has made its largest-ever Bitcoin acquisition, purchasing 619.7 BTC for approximately $60.6 million. This brings the company's total Bitcoin holdings to 1,761.98 BTC ($168 million). This acquisition places Metaplanet 12th among public companies in terms of Bitcoin holdings, just behind medical technology firm Semler Scientific. Despite short-term fluctuations, Metaplanet’s shares have surged over 2,100% YTD, largely driven by its Bitcoin adoption strategy. The firm may consider using bonds convertible into common stock as part of its fundraising strategy in the future.
