The rise of AI agents is reminiscent of the beginning of the corporation era two centuries ago, says a crypto executive.

“I think it perfectly parallels to the 19th-century advent of the corporation: able to enter contracts itself, hire humans, own things, and outlive people,” Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley said in a Dec. 30 X post reflecting on the current state of AI agents:

“Corporations were feared and now number in the millions. We all work for them, and they produce everything we use and con

Memecoins have become a ubiquitous part of crypto culture and saw a massive year in 2024, with the tokens now amassing a total market cap above $60 billion, rising from around $23 billion at the start of the year.

Platforms like Pump.fun on Solana have made memecoin creation easier than ever, and making tokens about short-lived viral moments has become a crypto norm.

Many celebrities and high-profile figures have launched tokens this year, too — but here, Cointelegraph is re-running some of th

The Chinese government has denied responsibility after a threat actor breached employee workstations at the US Treasury earlier this month, allowing it to remotely access certain “unclassified” documents.

United States Treasury officials told lawmakers in a Dec. 30 letter that they were informed of the “major incident” by a third-party software service provider BeyondTrust on Dec. 8, according to reports.

“Based on available indicators, the incident has been attributed to a Chinese state-spons

A South Korean court has issued an arrest warrant for President Yoon Suk Yeol, who has since been impeached and suspended from office following his attempt to impose martial law on the country in early December. 

The Seoul Western District Court approved the warrant on Dec. 31, marking the first time a sitting South Korean president has faced an arrest warrant granted by a court, according to a report from Korea Herald. 

Investigators requested the warrant after President Yoon failed to report

Shares in Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy (MSTR) fell over 8% after its latest $209 million Bitcoin buy, with some observers starting to share concerns about its “leveraged” play.

MSTR made the purchase just an hour before the trading day began on the Nasdaq stock exchange, which opened at 2:30 pm UTC. Within an hour, its shares fell 5.3% from $318.89 to $302.09.

Despite a partial recovery during the session, it ended the day at $302.96, according to Google Finance data, and then fell another 3

Stablecoin issuer Tether moved nearly $780 million worth of Bitcoin into its corporate Bitcoin reserve in its largest move since March.

Arkham Intelligence shows wallets tagged for Tether’s Bitcoin (BTC) reserve as having received separate transfers of around 7628.9 BTC and 775.6 BTC on Dec. 30, totaling just under 8404.5 BTC.

The latest BTC additions are worth a total of $777.4 million, with Bitcoin hovering around $92,500. It brings Tether’s total holdings to 83,759 BTC, worth just under $7.

Blockchain Bandit, a notorious hacker who stole 51,000 Ether mostly by successfully guessing weak private keys, has consolidated the funds into a single wallet after nearly two years of dormancy.

The entire 51,000 Ether (ETH) was transferred from 10 wallet addresses to multi-signature address “0xC45…1D542,” blockchain investigator ZachXBT said in a Dec. 30 Telegram post.

The funds were transferred in mostly 5,000 Ether batches between Dec. 30 at 8:54 pm UTC and 9:18 pm UTC.

Before that, the s

A New York judge has delayed the start of a trial in a case between the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Gemini Trust Company, first filed in 2022.

In a Dec. 30 filing in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Alvin Hellerstein pushed the start date of the CFTC v. Gemini civil trial from Jan. 13 to Jan. 21, adding that “no further adjournments will be granted.”

The delay moves the start date of the trial under a new presidential admi

Bitcoin price has been in a slump since hitting $108,353 on Dec. 17 and BTC’s recent drop below $92,000 has put many analyst on alert due to the looming confirmation of a bearish head and shoulders chart pattern. 

A few daily closes below the pattern’s neckline at $92,000 could be followed by a decline to the pattern’s target at $79,500. 

Chartered market technician Aksel Kibar has also set a (BTC) price target at $80,000 if the head and shoulders pattern is confirmed. 

If the pattern acts as

The United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued regulations requiring brokers to report digital asset transactions, expanding on existing requirements to include platforms like decentralized exchanges (DEXs).

Once the rules take effect in 2027, brokers will be required to disclose information about taxpayers involved in digital asset transactions. The brokers will also be required to report their gross proceeds from crypto and other digital asset sales. 

With the new rules, DEXs could

Grayscale has added several artificial intelligence platforms and decentralized finance (DeFi) applications to its list of the top 20 tokens to watch in the first quarter of 2025, the asset manager said in a Dec. 30 research note. 

The Q1 2025 watch list, which Grayscale updates quarterly, now includes Hyperliquid (HYPE), Ethena (ENA), Virtuals (VIRTUAL), Jupiter (JUP), Jito (JTO), and Grass (GRASS). 

Each new addition benefits from one of three industry trends: a friendlier United States regu

Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Hyperliquid has launched native staking on its mainnet, allowing holders to receive rewards for securing the network. 

According to a Dec. 30 announcement, users can pick validators to stake tokens based on different metrics, such as uptime, commission, reputation, and community contributions. The featured debuted with 16 validators.

The Hyperliquid protocol offers decentralized trading for crypto assets. According to DefiLlama, it has amassed over $12 bil

Bitcoin (BTC) has started the last week of the year on a soft note, indicating that the bulls are not hurrying to buy the dip. Analysts are divided about Bitcoin’s short-term price action. Some expect a strong rally leading into United States President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, while others anticipate the volatility to increase. BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes voiced a contrarian view in his blog post on Dec. 17, where he said the markets are likely to witness a “harrowing dum

MoonPay reported receiving approval to operate as a licensed crypto business in the Netherlands under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) bill. 

In a Dec. 30 notice, MoonPay said the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets had issued the crypto firm a license in accordance with MiCA regulations. The regulatory framework, first adopted in 2023, was fully enforceable for crypto asset service providers operating in the EU as of Dec. 30.

MiCA approval. Source: MoonPay

According

Agentic artificial intelligence platform ai16z is mulling launching its own layer-1 (L1) blockchain network as part of a broader tokenomics overhaul.

The project is considering creating a platform similar to pump.fun for launching AI agents, according to a post in its governance forum. It is also contemplating “[p]ositioning ai16z as an L1 blockchain for AI,” the post said.

Contributors of ai16z envision the AI agent launchpad as “the primary way to implement ‘flywheel’ tokenomics that drive v

Business intelligence firm and Bitcoin investor MicroStrategy has acquired 2,138 Bitcoin for $209 million, boosting its total holdings of the cryptocurrency.

On Dec. 30, MicroStrategy announced that it added 2,138 BTC to its holdings between Dec. 23 and Dec. 29. The company said it used $209 million in cash to purchase the coins at an average price of about $97,837 per BTC. 

According to a filing, MicroStrategy funded the acquisition by selling 592,987 shares during the same week.

MicroStrate

Opinion by: Pavan Kaur, partner at Gunnercooke

Conventional wisdom would make you believe that the United Kingdom outside the European Union economic bloc is a minnow relative to comparable markets such as China and the United States. Indeed, in traditional trade negotiations, the market size decides the scale and quality of terms that can be negotiated. 

In cryptocurrency markets, however, the rules are far from set, and the UK has several overlooked and misunderstood advantages relative to o

The Hanoi City Police Department in Vietnam has prevented 300 potential victims from investing in an elaborate crypto scam that had already defrauded 30 billion Vietnamese Dong ($1.17 million) from approximately 100 businesses and 400 individuals.

Hanoi police apprehended individuals connected to Million Smiles, a company that orchestrated an illegal and fraudulent crypto investment scheme targeting Vietnamese citizens, according to VTV, the national television broadcaster of Vietnam.

Million

Decentralized exchanges (DEXs) set a record high in December, with monthly trading volumes soaring to $462 billion, according to decentralized finance (DeFi) data platform DefiLlama. 

Data released on Dec. 30 showed that December was the highest-ever month for DEX volumes, continuing momentum from November. 

Monthly decentralized exchange volume. Source: DefiLlama

Last month, the DeFi space saw a monthly volume of $374 billion, driven by anticipation of a more favorable regulatory regime in t

Crypto culture was born on the internet — and Crypto X (once known as Crypto Twitter) has again delivered its fair share of memorable moments this year. 

Here are some of the seven most memorable X posts of 2024, some of which had a huge impact on markets, shaping policy — or were just plain good laugh.

The SEC’s fake Bitcoin ETF approval

To set the scene, it was Jan. 9 — just one day before the date predicted by Bloomberg’s ETF analysts for the United States Securities and Exchange Commissio