Top Stories of The Week

Hawk Tuah influencer speaks out after memecoin rug pull allegations

Haliey Welch, the influencer behind the viral Hawk Tuah video clip, has released a statement after a memecoin bearing her handle was pumped and dumped quickly after its December launch.

In a Dec. 20 X post, Welch said she was fully cooperating with lawyers who represented investors in the Hawk Tuah (HAWK) token.

The crypto users filed a lawsuit against the projects creators and partners Welch herself

Tai Mo Shan, a subsidiary of Jump Crypto, agreed to settle with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for $123 million on Dec. 20 for misleading investors about the stability of the TerraUSD (UST) algorithmic stablecoin before its collapse.

According to the SEC, Tai Mo Shan penned an agreement with Terraform to purchase Terra LUNA (LUNA) at a steep discount in 2021. Tai Mo Shan then purchased roughly $20 million in UST to maintain the algorithmic stablecoin's 1:1 peg with t

The entire crypto industry faced threats of debanking under Operation Chokepoint 2.0. Jason Lau — the chief innovation officer at crypto exchange and self-custody wallet provider OKX — told Cointelegraph that fostering relationships with banks and keyholders was a hedge against debanking.

Lau said the traditional financial world is heavily based on trust and that relationship-building with banking institutions, financial regulators, and other stakeholders was key to maintaining solid partnershi

Crypto wallet provider Trust Wallet announced that it had fixed a glitch that caused token balances to disappear and reappear, causing frustration among users. 

On Dec. 21, Trust Wallet users went on social media to report issues with their crypto balances disappearing. An X user said their balance would sometimes appear and disappear, while another community member said they almost had a heart attack after seeing their balance disappear.  

Community members reporting the glitch on X. Source:

Spacecoin XYZ has launched its first-ever satellite into orbit, marking the project’s first step toward bringing a fleet of satellites online that would allow blockchain networks to be secured in outer space. 

Speaking to Cointelegraph, Spacecoin XYZ co-founder Daniel Bar said the first officially standardized satellite was the first major milestone in bringing the “Spacecoin layer” online in Earth’s orbit. 

The satellite was launched as part of SpaceX Falcon Heavy, which lifted off at 3:34 am

Bitcoin (BTC) neared $100,000 on Dec. 21 after a “monster” BTC price bounce delivered snap upside.

BTC/USD 1-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

BTC price starts weekend with sudden rebound

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView followed BTC/USD as it gained $7,000 in under 24 hours.

After liquidating leveraged long positions with a trip back to December lows near $92,000, finally offered some relief as the weekend began.

Reaching highs of $99,500 on Bitstamp, the abs

Ethereum-based non-fungible token (NFT) collections surged last week, driving the overall digital collectible weekly sales volumes to $304 million. 

On Dec. 21, data tracker CryptoSlam reported that Ethereum NFTs experienced a 76% week-on-week increase, reaching $201 million in sales volume. This represents 66% of all NFT sales volume over the past seven days.

By comparison, Bitcoin-based NFTs recorded $40 million in sales, while Solana-based collections had $29 million. Mythos Chain, Immutabl

What are crypto liquidity pools?

Crypto liquidity pools, which facilitate decentralized trading and other financial operations in decentralized finance (DeFi), are collections of cryptocurrency funds secured by smart contracts. 

They enable users to trade directly against the pool’s liquidity, thus eliminating the need for traditional order books. Funds in the liquidity pools are supplied by participants known as liquidity providers (LPs). For contributing their assets, LPs earn rewards, usual

Google advertisements promoting digital asset exchanges and wallets in the United Kingdom must register with the country’s financial services regulator when a new Google policy update takes effect in January 2025. 

The search engine company said that starting on Jan. 15, 2025, advertisers offering crypto exchange products and services in the UK will be allowed to advertise if they meet certain requirements. 

For crypto exchanges and software wallets, Google said it would allow ads to promote t

Ethereum’s price may remain range-bound between two key psychological levels in the near term as it continues to face difficulty holding above the $4,000 price level, according to a crypto analyst.

“Ethereum continues to struggle with the psychological resistance of $4000,” pseudonymous crypto trader Rekt Capital said in a Dec. 20 market report. Over the past 30 days, Ether has climbed above $4,000 several times, with a peak of $4,077 on Dec. 6, but hasn't been able to hold the price level, acc

Tether, the issuer of the world’s largest stablecoin by market cap, has invested $775 million into Rumble, an alternative platform to YouTube known for not censoring content.

“Tether deeply believes in the fundamental values of freedom of speech and financial freedom,” Tether CEO Paolo Ardonio said in a Dec. 20 X post.

Independence and resilience — 2 key factors for Tether CEO

“Our strategic investment in Rumble greatly underscores Tether’s focus in supporting technology and companies that em

Decentralized applications (DApps), also known as Web3 applications, tend to be slower than their Web2 counterparts because they have to organize blockchain data from multiple sources.

Maxim Legg, CEO of Pangea — a decentralized data indexing solution — told Cointelegraph that data indexing will fix the speed bottleneck for Web3 applications.

Legg said data from RPC nodes, smart contracts, and other blockchain infrastructure can be hundreds of terabytes on high-throughput chains. Indexing is t

With the end of the year in sight, Asia Express looks back at some of the most significant developments for Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in the region in 2024.

MicroStrategys Bitcoin blueprint 

MicroStrategy has become the poster child for Bitcoin, snapping up 439,000 BTC, according to BitcoinTreasuries.NET around 2% of the entire supply.

Across Asia, Saylors Bitcoin blueprint has inspired several firms to bet their future on Bitcoin, with more expected to follow suit.

As Asia Express reporte

Artificial intelligence agents will transform Web3 in 2025, with cryptocurrency staking and onchain trading emerging as early use cases, industry executives told Cointelegraph. 

Agentic AIs — machines pursuing complex goals autonomously — are already reshaping the digital economy, building Web3 applications, launching tokens, and interacting with humans autonomously. 

In 2025, “AI agents are expected to take on a more prominent role within decentralized communities,”  J.D. Seraphine, Web3 AI d

Layer-1 blockchain protocol Injective and Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) blockchain Sonic are launching the Smart Agent Hub, a crosschain artificial intelligence platform. The hub will allow AI agents built on the SVM to integrate into the decentralized Injective ecosystem, and developers will be able to monetize their AI agents through tokenization and fractionalized ownership.

Hub starts with Solana

Injective expects to deploy the initial Smart Agent Hub testnet in the first quarter of 2025 wi

Bitcoin’s (BTC) daily chart has produced three consecutive red candles for the first time since the first week of November, which coincidentally was the lead-up period to Donald Trump’s US election victory.

Another similarity between the last time three or more red candles were observed on the daily chart was that Bitcoin retested the 50-day EMA level.

Bitcoin 1-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

With BTC's price dropping by more than 15% since its all-time high, one analyst said th

Restaking protocol EigenLayer’s slashing testnet went live on Dec. 20, with a mainnet launch pending approval of EigenLayer Improvement Protocol-002 (ELIP-002).

The potential slashing upgrade will introduce Unique Stake Allocation for node operators and Operator Sets for Actively Validated Services (AVS) on EigenLayer.

EigenLayer’s Actively Validated Services are projects that leverage the security of the Ethereum layer-1 network to validate offchain services.

More specifically, staked Ether

Digital banking and blockchain platform Metallicus recently announced the acquisition of fintech service company Bonifii, a credit union service operator (CUSO) connected to 70 credit unions. 

The partnership will purportedly establish a separate CUSO for credit union partners that establish and deploy on The Digital Banking Network (TDBN), a multilayer blockchain network servicing the fintech and financial services industry. 

According to a blog post from Bonifii, the organization is currentl

Net inflows into Ether (ETH) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are gaining momentum and could outperform Bitcoin (BTC) ETFs in 2025, analysts say. 

As of Dec. 16, Ether ETFs have seen seven straight weeks of net inflows, including a record-breaking $2.2 billion in the week of Nov. 26, according to data from CoinShares. 

Analysts expect this uptrend to continue into 2025, especially if strong spot ETH price performance enhances ETF returns and regulators allow the funds to generate yields from staki

Bitcoin (BTC) extended its pullback for the third consecutive day, but lower levels attracted solid buying by the bulls. The cooler-than-expected United States inflation data likely fuelled the bounce. The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation metric, the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index, came in at 2.4% versus economists’ expectations of 2.5%.

That helped improve sentiment, which turned bearish after the Fed chair Jerome Powell forecasted the likelihood of two rate cuts in 2025, d