According to news from CoinWorld, Binance Research has released the latest research report summarizing recent trends and developments in the cryptocurrency market. In December 2024, the cryptocurrency market experienced a historic surge, with the market capitalization briefly surpassing a record $3.91 trillion, setting a new market peak. This surge was mainly attributed to optimistic sentiment in the regulatory environment, the continued entry of institutional investors, and new highs in Bitcoin prices. Bitcoin broke the $108,000 mark in December 2024, reaching an all-time high. Factors driving this surge include MicroStrategy's successful inclusion in the Nasdaq 100 Index and the company's continued massive purchases of Bitcoin. However, the optimistic sentiment in the market was dampened at the end of December. The Federal Reserve announced a 0.25% interest rate cut in December while reducing the number of rate cuts planned for 2025 from four to two, triggering a sharp market correction that caused the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies to evaporate by over $500 billion in just a few days. Bitcoin performed remarkably well, with a year-end market capitalization growth of over 123%. Despite market turbulence, 2024 was still a notable year for Bitcoin. The annual market capitalization growth of Bitcoin was approximately 123.4%, making it the seventh-largest asset globally, surpassing traditional large assets like Saudi Aramco and silver. Bitcoin's performance in 2024 was one of the brightest among the top ten global assets, second only to Nvidia. Analysts believe that Bitcoin's strong performance is due to several factors, including the Bitcoin halving event, the approval of spot ETFs, changes in monetary policy, and market expectations for a more favorable regulatory environment. If this trend continues into 2025, Bitcoin's market position is expected to further improve. USDe surpasses DAI to become the third-largest stablecoin. Another remarkable performance came from Ethena's stablecoin USDe. USDe's market capitalization rapidly grew in 2024, surpassing $5.9 billion, becoming the third-largest stablecoin by market cap, overtaking DAI. The success of USDe can be attributed to its high-yield staking mechanism and the inclusion of sUSDe as collateral in the Aave protocol in November 2024. Decentralized trading volumes reach new highs, and the DeFi ecosystem continues to expand. In December 2024, the trading volumes of decentralized spot and perpetual contracts reached historical highs of $326 billion and $356 billion, respectively, indicating strong demand for decentralized trading. The trading volume of decentralized perpetual contracts grew by over 370% year-on-year, with platforms like Hyperliquid being major drivers. Additionally, the total value locked (TVL) in lending protocols and liquid staking protocols reached new highs of $55 billion and $71 billion, respectively. The rapid growth of the DeFi (Decentralized Finance) sector is also closely related to the supportive policies for cryptocurrencies from the incoming Trump administration. Experts expect that with the arrival of favorable policies, the DeFi ecosystem is likely to see larger-scale expansion. The rise of AI agents as an emerging force in the crypto market. Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents have also begun to emerge in the cryptocurrency market, becoming a new investment hotspot. Several leading AI agent platforms and individual agents have seen their token market capitalizations exceed billions of dollars, with daily exposure nearing 100,000 times. Major AI agent platforms include Virtuals and ai16z (the development team behind the Eliza framework), which provide users with tools to create and operate their own AI agents. In terms of individual agents, aixbt has become one of the most well-known agents in the market, providing in-depth analysis of the cryptocurrency market daily. As AI technology continues to advance, more diverse and widely applicable AI agents are expected to emerge in the future crypto market, including affiliate agents and trading agents.

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