Today's news tips:
1. HKEX releases 2024 review: Listing Asia’s first batch of virtual asset spot ETFs and launching a virtual asset index series
2. Asset management company GraniteShares applies for a cryptocurrency-related leveraged ETF to track companies such as MicroStrategy and Robinhood
3. Analysis: The community is concerned that Bitcoin may see a "God candle" trend near Trump's inauguration day
4. Microstrategy adds 3 new board members, including former Binance.US CEO
5. The President of El Salvador has increased his daily Bitcoin purchases, with a medium-term goal of buying another 20,000
6. Decentralized liquidity protocol THORChain releases V3
7. Wormhole DAO will be launched in the first quarter of next year
8. At least 10 companies are currently considering adopting MicroStrategy's Bitcoin strategy
9. This week, NFT transaction volume increased by 32.93% month-on-month to US$302.2 million, and the number of buyers increased by 92.39% month-on-month
Regulatory News
HKEX releases 2024 review: Listing Asia’s first batch of virtual asset spot ETFs and launching virtual asset index series
The Hong Kong Stock Exchange released a review of 2024. In terms of virtual assets, the exchange-traded products (ETP, including ETFs and leveraged and inverse products) market is growing. As of the end of November, the average daily transaction amount reached 18.7 billion yuan, an increase of about 34% over the same period in 2023. During the year, Hong Kong's first batch of covered call option ETFs and Asia's first batch of virtual asset spot ETFs were listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, further enriching the product diversity of the ETP market and improving market liquidity, leading to the listing of 36 new ETFs. In addition, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange announced plans to digitize and automate the physical subscription and redemption mechanism of ETPs to improve the efficiency of the ETP market and promote the continued growth of its secondary market activities.
In addition, HKEX launched the HKEX Virtual Asset Index Series to provide reliable benchmark prices for this rapidly emerging asset class, supporting Hong Kong's development into a leading digital asset hub.
Reuters: US plans to blacklist Bitmain-affiliated AI company Sophgo
The Biden administration plans to add Bitmain-affiliated artificial intelligence company Sophgo to the U.S. Department of Commerce's restricted trade list because the company's TSMC-made chips were illegally incorporated into Huawei's artificial intelligence processors, Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
Earlier news, Sophgo, an artificial intelligence company affiliated with Bitmain, said in a statement that it has never had any direct or indirect business dealings with Huawei. Sophgo has provided TSMC with a detailed investigation report to prove that Sophgo has nothing to do with the investigation into Huawei.
Study: Singapore tops global list of blockchain and cryptocurrency technology countries, US ranks fifth
A recent study by ApeX ranked the top 10 leading countries in blockchain and cryptocurrency technology, with Singapore at the top. The study evaluated countries using a composite index that reflects blockchain development and adoption through three core indicators: blockchain patents, blockchain technology jobs, and the number of cryptocurrency exchanges.
Singapore topped the list. The country has more than 2,400 jobs related to blockchain technology and is also home to one of the highest concentrations of cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, with 81 platforms in total.
Hong Kong ranks second in blockchain and cryptocurrency technology. Its financial infrastructure seamlessly integrates blockchain and is supported by more than 1,100 blockchain technology jobs and cryptocurrency exchanges.
Estonia ranks third with 95 blockchain patents, 149 blockchain-related jobs, and 52 cryptocurrency exchanges.
Switzerland ranks fourth. The country’s leadership in decentralized finance is due to 440 blockchain-related jobs and 32 cryptocurrency exchanges.
The United States ranks fifth, with 32,000 blockchain patents and more than 17,000 blockchain-related jobs, in addition to 166 cryptocurrency exchanges.
Canada ranks sixth. The country offers more than 1,200 blockchain-related jobs, 1,200 blockchain patents, and 32 cryptocurrency exchanges.
Australia ranked seventh. The country has developed 1,400 blockchain patents, has 573 blockchain-related jobs, and has 31 cryptocurrency exchanges.
South Korea ranks eighth. The country has 18,000 blockchain patents, the second-most among all countries studied. Its workforce is slightly smaller, with 121 blockchain-related jobs and 29 cryptocurrency exchanges.
The United Kingdom ranked ninth. The country has 95 cryptocurrency exchanges, 2,673 blockchain-related jobs, and 2,800 blockchain patents.
The United Arab Emirates ranks tenth. The country has 340 blockchain patents, 414 blockchain-related jobs, and nine cryptocurrency exchanges.
GraniteShares files for cryptocurrency-related leveraged ETF to track companies like MicroStrategy and Robinhood
GraniteShares, a New York-based asset management company with over $10 billion in AUM, has applied for new leveraged ETFs to track companies such as Riot Platforms, Marathon Digital, MicroStrategy and Robinhood. These funds will be both long and short. An ETF that is 2x long will generate twice the daily return of the corresponding stock.
Other companies have launched other types of cryptocurrency-focused ETFs. In addition to leveraged funds, YieldMax has launched covered call ETFs for several cryptocurrency companies. The company launched the Coin Option Income, MARA Option Income, and MSTR Option Income ETFs. These ETFs use a covered call strategy to provide monthly income to investors. In a covered call, the fund invests in stocks, sells call options, and collects a premium, which is distributed to investors every month.
Project News
Financial Times: Crypto funds such as Brevan Howard and Galaxy Digital have annual returns far exceeding traditional funds
According to the Financial Times, Trump's victory has driven a strong rebound in Bitcoin, allowing some cryptocurrency hedge funds to "make a fortune". According to data disclosed by data provider Hedge Fund Research, funds using encryption strategies rose 46% in November, with an annual return rate of 76%. The return rate of these fund companies far exceeded the industry average (10% in November).
Among them, Brevan Howard Asset Management and Galaxy Digital, a cryptocurrency investment management company founded by billionaire Mike Novogratz, are the biggest winners in the recent crypto boom. Brevan Howard's crypto fund, which has $35 billion in assets, has risen 51% so far in 2024; Galaxy has risen 90%, with assets more than doubling to $4.8 billion. However, Brevan Howard Asset Management and Galaxy have declined to comment on the performance of their crypto funds.
Swiss Bitcoin platform Relai increased its holdings by 13 BTC, and the current total holdings reached 30 BTC
Swiss Bitcoin platform and self-custody application Relai announced on the X platform that it has increased its holdings of 13 BTC at a price of $1,222,523.85, with each BTC priced at $94,040.29. As of now, the company's total Bitcoin holdings have reached 30 BTC. In addition, Relai also mentioned Microsoft in this message, apparently calling on it to adopt a Bitcoin strategy.
Earlier news, Bitcoin trading and self-custody application Relai announced the completion of a US$12 million Series A financing round, led by Ego Death Capital, which contributed US$4 million, with participation from Plan B Bitcoin Fund, Timechain and Solit Group.
Yuga Labs co-founder: Sold some Fartcoins, but still one of the top ten holders
Yuga Labs co-founder Wylie Arnow (Gordon Goner) posted on the X platform: "Those who dismissed Fartcoin during this rally are now gloating over its pullback during the market downturn, as if it confirms their suspicions. But in my opinion, this reaction just shows that Fartcoin still has market dominance. On BAYC, every decline will be met with remarks like "I told you so a long time ago", and when BAYC rises again, people will be incredible. Fartcoin's ability to attract attention under bullish or bearish conditions shows that it is still the focus of the broader narrative of financial nihilism, and this narrative will not disappear (in my opinion). When Fartcoin reached a market value of $1 billion, I sold some to make up for the entry loss. Apart from that, I am still holding and am still a top ten holder. Maybe I'm wrong? Often. I'm happy anyway. If you are tired of me posting Fartcoin-related posts, please forgive me. Trading is just an effort I can make when I'm sick, and Fartcoin is very interesting to me now."
Earlier news, Binance announced the launch of FARTCOINUSDT, KMNOUSDT and CGPTUSDT 1-75x USDT perpetual contracts.
Next week's macro outlook: Christmas season may be fraught with dangers, beware of liquidity shortages that amplify market volatility
This week, the Federal Reserve finally confirmed the long-awaited "turnaround" of the market. The central bank's statement this week and the update of its economic forecasts had a huge impact on the market. Market participants currently expect the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates by about 40 basis points by December 2025, and U.S. Treasury yields rose in response. Bitcoin fell from its all-time high earlier this week. Bitcoin continued its decline in European trading on Friday and once approached $95,000. Earlier, Bitcoin had just set a record high of more than $108,000. This round of decline in the currency circle has a greater impact on altcoins such as Ethereum and Dogecoin. In addition, U.S. exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that directly invest in Bitcoin also ended 15 consecutive days of inflows this week, setting a record of $680 million in outflows, highlighting the shift in market sentiment.
Due to the coming of Christmas, the market will be relatively quiet next week, but there are still some relatively influential data, but due to thin liquidity, market volatility may become large. The following are the key points that the market will focus on in the new week:
Monday 23:00, US Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index for December;
At 21:30 on Thursday, the number of initial jobless claims in the United States for the week ending December 21st will be released.
As for the US dollar, with the overall hawkish bias within the Federal Reserve, it is not expected to easily lose the throne it has gained this year, although the low trading volume during the holiday season may cause some unnecessary volatility. In general, if there is any market turmoil during the holiday season, it is more likely to hit US stocks and US bonds. The Fed's hawkish stance has not been welcomed by Wall Street, and the sell-off may intensify as US Treasury yields continue to climb.
Analysis: Bitcoin may see a "God candle" near Trump's inauguration day
According to News.bitcoin, the cryptocurrency market has been as unpredictable as the shutdown of US government agencies in recent days. There are reports that the US government is about to shut down due to a stagnation in spending negotiations, which has historically affected the market in various ways. Due to the disillusionment of market participants' short-term expectations, Arthur Hayes believes that the cryptocurrency market will see a "dismal decline" near Trump's inauguration day, but the crypto community is holding its breath to see whether Trump's inauguration will trigger a legendary "God candle" trend (Note: God candle refers to a sharp increase in prices in one day, which eclipses the surrounding activities on the price trend chart), which means that the current market downturn is only a temporary calm, a bear market stage in a larger bull market cycle, and if the United States solves the 2025 budget problem and Trump implements multiple Bitcoin-focused strategies to encourage the market, Bitcoin may see a huge recovery.
Of course, the immediate price trend of Bitcoin remains unclear. It is uncertain whether Trump's inauguration as US president will usher in the expected boom in the crypto market.
Vitalik: I support building intelligence enhancement tools for humans, not creating super intelligent life
Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin posted on the X platform: "My definition of AGI (general artificial intelligence) is that AGI is artificial intelligence that is powerful enough that if all humans suddenly disappear one day and the AI is uploaded into a robot body, it will be able to continue civilization independently. Obviously, this is a very difficult definition to measure, but I think this is the core of the intuitive difference between "the AI we are used to" and "AGI" in many people's minds. It marks the transition from a tool that constantly relies on human input to a self-sufficient life form. ASI (super artificial intelligence) is another matter entirely - my definition is when humans no longer add value to productivity in the cycle (like in chess games, we have actually only reached this point in the past decade.) Yes, ASI scares me - even AGI as I define it scares me because it brings obvious risks of runaway. I support focusing our work on building intelligence-enhancing tools for humans, rather than building super-intelligent life forms. "
Microstrategy adds 3 new board members, including former Binance.US CEO
Microstrategy added three new board members to its board of directors, bringing the total to nine, shortly before it was added to the Nasdaq 100 stock index, according to the latest filing. New board members include Brian Brooks, Jane Dietze and Gregg Winiarski, all of whom have experience working at large companies dealing with digital assets, according to the filing. Each board member will receive $2 million worth of equity, half of which will be options and the other half will be RSUs, which will vest over four years.
Brian Brooks served as CEO of Binance.US, the U.S. arm of the global Binance exchange, from May to August 2021. Brooks also served as Coinbase’s chief legal officer from September 2018 to March 2020.
Jane Dietze has served as Brown University’s chief investment officer since July 2018, overseeing the Ivy League school’s $7.2 billion endowment. Since February 2022, Dietze has also served on the board of directors of Galaxy Digital, the digital asset firm founded by Mike Novogratz.
Gregg Winiarski has served as chief legal officer for sports apparel and collectibles company Fanatics since February 2023. Winiarski served as a senior counsel at Fanatics from August 2021 until February 2023 when he took on the top legal position.
The President of El Salvador has increased his daily Bitcoin purchases, with a medium-term goal of buying another 20,000
Max Keiser, a senior Bitcoin advisor to the President of El Salvador, said that President Bukele has increased his daily Bitcoin purchases, with a medium-term goal of purchasing another 20,000 Bitcoins.
Arthur Hayes withdrew 7.85 million USDC from Binance. It is estimated that the 7 million ENA transferred to Binance yesterday have been sold.
According to on-chain analyst Ember’s monitoring, about 30 minutes ago, Arthur Hayes withdrew 7.85 million USDC from Binance. It is estimated that the 7 million ENA transferred to Binance last night have been sold at an average price of US$1.12.
Decentralized liquidity protocol THORChain releases V3
The decentralized liquidity protocol THORChain released version V3. This update provides advanced interoperability and smart contract capabilities, including upgrading to Cosmos SDK v0.50, switching from Tendermint to CometBFT, introducing Cosmos ecosystem compatibility, joining the Rujira application layer, etc.
Wormhole DAO will be launched in the first quarter of next year
Cross-chain protocol Wormhole said that Wormhole DAO will be launched in the first quarter of 2025. To participate in the first vote, W holders need to stake for governance. The Wormhole Staking Rewards Program (SRP) is ongoing across all chains (EVM + Solana), with a minimum of 50 million W tokens allocated in the first reward pool.
According to previous news, Wormhole launched the W token staking plan with a minimum reward of 50 million tokens.
Important data
Over 4.5 million ETH has been destroyed since EIP-1559 was activated
Since the activation of EIP-1559, 4,523,479.74 ETH has been permanently destroyed, worth over $15.3 billion. On-chain transfers account for about 8.17% of the total ETH destroyed, while Opensea NFTs account for about 5.08% of the total ETH destroyed. Decentralized exchange (dex) platform Uniswap destroyed 225,723.78 ETH, accounting for 4.99% of the total ETH destroyed. Meanwhile, Tether (USDT) transactions on the Ethereum network resulted in the destruction of 205,458.95 ETH, accounting for 4.54% of the total ETH destroyed. The network's inflation rate is currently at a moderate 0.820%, and the ETH in circulation has increased by 3,245,017.99 since the hard fork.
This week, NFT transaction volume increased by 32.93% month-on-month to US$302.2 million, and the number of buyers increased by 92.39% month-on-month.
CryptoSlam data shows that the total NFT transaction volume this week reached $302.2 million, a month-on-month increase of 32.93% compared to $224 million last week. The number of NFT buyers increased by 92.39% to 349,972, and the number of NFT sellers increased significantly by 77.18% to 207,672.
Ethereum network NFT transaction volume soared to $199.9 million. It has increased by 73.56% in the past seven days. Bitcoin network NFT ranked second, with a transaction volume of 23% down to $39.7 million. However, the network's user engagement grew well, with the number of buyers reaching 38,987. The Solana network consolidated the third position with a transaction volume of $29.9 million, a month-on-month increase of 5.14%, and a total of 104,958 buyers, a month-on-month increase of 108.45%.
Pudgy Penguins' transaction volume almost doubled to $53.9 million, an increase of 90%. LilPudgys ranked second with a transaction volume of $19.4 million and a growth rate of 53.57%. Azuki ranked third with a transaction volume of $16.9 million and a growth rate of 108.19%. Doodles entered the top five with a transaction volume of $13.4 million, a growth rate of 226.08%, and BRC-20 NFTs ranked in the top five with a transaction volume of $9.2 million.
Notable deals this week include:
Pudgy Penguins#4611sold for $493,925 (125 ETH)
CryptoPunks#6036sold for $444,019 (110 ETH)
Pudgy Penguins#7891sold for $395,140 (100 ETH)
Azuki#6872sold for $380,659 (108 ETH)
Azuki#6536sold for $372,866 (95.4774 ETH)
A whale/institution redeemed about 1.27 million EIGEN since last night and sold them on the chain
According to on-chain analyst Ember’s monitoring, whales/institutions that spent 32.45 million USDC to purchase 8.917 million EIGEN at an average price of $3.64 through 21 addresses in October have begun to redeem EIGEN and sell it on the chain since last night.
Since 7pm last night, 4 addresses have redeemed 1,270,507 EIGEN ($5.02 million) from the EigenLayer staking contract and are selling them on the chain for ETH or USDC. 4 addresses have redeemed EIGEN and transferred them for sale. When EIGEN rose to $5.6 a few days ago, they made a profit of $17.65 million from these 8.917 million EIGEN. But now it has fallen back to the cost line.
A smart money who once made a profit of $4.92 million by swing trading PEPE opened a position of 475.3 billion PEPE four hours ago
According to the monitoring of on-chain analyst @ai_9684xtpa, "smart money that has made a profit of $4.92 million through the PEPE band in the past six months" has opened a position of 475.3 billion PEPE four hours ago, worth $8.2 million, with an average price of $0.00001724, and has currently made a floating profit of $142,000. In December, 5 whales "placed a heavy bet" on PEPE. The other 4 whales are:
The whale who bought $PEPE at a low price and sold it at a high price made a profit of $6.24 million. On December 21, he re-established a position of 250 billion PEPE at a cost of $0.00001697
Address 0x53A...63F4A first opened a position of 230.1 billion PEPE on December 16, costing $0.00002455
Smart money with 85% winning rate in ETH wave opened a position of 788.2 billion PEPE on December 15, with an average price of 0.00002394 USD
"PEPE band winning rate 100% whale" once again added 3.68 million US dollars of PEPE. The current PEPE holding is 1.129 trillion, with an average cost of 0.00001647 US dollars
At least 10 companies are currently considering adopting MicroStrategy's Bitcoin strategy
At least 10 companies are currently adopting or considering MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin strategy, including:
Artificial intelligence company Genius Group: Earlier this month, the company bought 194 bitcoins at an average price of $92,728 and currently holds 294 BTC;
Pickup truck solutions provider Worksport: The company's board of directors previously passed a resolution approving the first purchase of $5 million worth of BTC and XRP. The company announced that it would invest 10% of its remaining operating cash into this corporate transformation.
Amazon: Shareholders propose that the company's board of directors evaluate the potential benefits of adding Bitcoin to its financial strategy;
MicroStrategy: currently holds 439,000 BTC;
MARA Holdings: currently holds 44,394 BTC;
Tesla: currently holds 9,720 BTC;
Coinbase: Currently holds 9,480 BTC as part of its reserves;
Hut 8 Mining Corp: currently holds 10,096 BTC;
Block Inc.: currently holds 8,027 BTC;
OneMedNet: Currently holds 34 BTC.
