Crypto prices are experiencing a rocky Monday due to poor U.S. macroeconomic data and rampant profit-taking.

Bitcoin (BTC) has dropped 1.8% in the past 24 hours to $91,800, a price not seen since Dec. 5, the day it broke through $100,000 for the first time. The largest cryptocurrency has fallen more than 14% from its Dec. 17 record of $108,278.

Ether (ETH) has lost less, falling 0.7% to $3,320, though it’s now 17% below its December highs, and still has not surpassed the record $4,820 it hit i

In retrospect, it was inevitable.

Down more than 8% and holding just above $300 on Monday, MicroStrategy (MSTR) shares are now lower by about 30% since just after the announcement of their inclusion into the Nasdaq-100 index and nearly 50% from their late November record high.

The signs of at least a major short-term top in one-time barely known enterprise software company turned juggernaut Bitcoin Development Company MicroStrategy were everywhere.

First among those signals was the rocketing

The dead internet theory may not be in full swing just yet, but AI agents have already taken over much of Crypto Twitter.

Reply bots on X are populating posts on nearly everything, using artificial intelligence models to increase reach and blockchains to settle micro transactions or record data.

These bots are increasingly interacting with other bots, with pairs of such bots launching their own tokens. (While token issuance still requires humans, often the concept stems from whatever the AI bo

CoinDesk Indices presents its daily market update, highlighting the performance of leaders and laggards in the CoinDesk 20 Index.

The CoinDesk 20 is currently trading at 3254.32, down 1.8% (-60.38) since 4 p.m. on Friday.

Three of 20 assets are trading higher.

Leaders: SOL (+2.5%) and APT (+0.8%).

Laggards: XLM (-6.6%) and LINK (-6.2%).

The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally.

Disclaimer: The analyst who wrote this piece owns shares of MicroStrategy (MSTR)

MicroStrategy, the self-described bitcoin (BTC) development company, increased its holdings of the largest cryptocurrency for the eighth consecutive week.

The company, which already holds more bitcoin than any other publicly traded company, bought another 2,138 BTC for $209 million in the week ended Dec. 29, bringing its total holdings to 446,400 BTC.

Once again, Executive Chairman Michael Saylor teased the annou

Crypto scammers have finally found their thieving match: Themselves.

A new scam has been making the rounds mainly on YouTube that would make even the most cunning trickster tip their hat, security firm Kaspersky said in a security update last week.

"I have USDT stored in my wallet, and I have the seed phrase. How do I transfer my funds to another wallet?,” Kaspersky noted one such comment. The specific wallet held over $8,000 worth of stablecoins on the Tron blockchain. A seed phrase is a word

The U.S. is likely to hit the maximum it's legally allowed to borrow at some point between Jan. 14 and Jan. 23, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a Friday letter to the speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson. After that, the Treasury will take "extraordinary measures" to cut borrowing.

"I respectfully urge Congress to act to protect the full faith and credit of the United States," she wrote. In June 2023, Congress suspended the debt limit until Jan. 1, 2025.

Risk assets we

Layer-1 blockchain HyperLiquid, known for its decentralized derivatives exchange, opened up native staking for holders of its HYPE token, according to a Monday post on X.

Stakers can select which validator to stake tokens with and will accrue rewards in return for securing the network. At launch, HyperLiquid staked 300 million tokens ($8.4 billion), and another 7 million tokens were added by users in the first hour. The tokens are staked across 16 validators.

Locked tokens bound by a vesting s

Bitcoin (BTC), the world's largest cryptocurrency, is likely to reach new highs next year and will "test or best" $185,000 in the fourth quarter of 2025, Galaxy Research said in a report last week.

Ether (ETH), the second-largest crypto, is predicted to rise above $5,500 in the next 12 months, the report said.

"A combination of institutional, corporate and nation state adoption will propel bitcoin to new heights in 2025," wrote Alex Thorn, Galaxy's head of research.

Galaxy said it expects fiv

XRP led crypto losses on the second-last day of this year as a stronger dollar weighed down global currencies and assets including bitcoin, with Asian equity markets sliding lower on Monday.

XRP sunk more than 5% in the past 24 hours, with dogecoin (DOGE), Solana’s SOL, ether (ETH) and BNB falling as much as 2%. Overall market capitalization fell 3%, while the broad-based CoinDesk 20 (CD20), an index tracking the largest tokens, minus stablecoins, shed 3.5%.

US equities declined on Friday and

It is the last Friday of 2024, so naturally there's a 115-page Internal Revenue Service final rule to dig through. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act mandated the IRS better define the word "broker" as it relates to digital asset services. The IRS published a document which creates definitions and rules around these activities.

You’re reading State of Crypto, a CoinDesk newsletter looking at the intersection of cryptocurrency and government. Click here to sign up for future editions.

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Terraform creator Do Kwon will be extradited to the U.S., Montenegrin Justice Minister Bojan Božović said Friday.

The U.S. and South Korean governments have both sought to take custody of Kwon to face criminal charges related to the collapse of the algorithmic stablecoin Terra/Luna system in 2022, which kicked off a series of high-profile collapses including that of FTX.

Kwon, who was arrested in Montenegro in March of 2023 and sentenced to a few months in prison over passport forgery charges,

The dominant crypto narrative for 2024 has been institutional adoption. From the U.S. approval of spot bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds to the burgeoning number of companies pledging to buy the largest cryptocurrency for their treasuries, crypto has entered, more than ever before, the mainstream conversation.

Bitcoin has increased almost 130% this year, breaking record highs on several occasions. It is currently hovering near the psychological threshold of $100,000. The ETFs approved in Janu

Stalled bitcoin (BTC) and crypto prices may not be bringing festive cheer to traders, but some with money are trying to spread the goodwill around.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said he'd accepted an invitation to be the “adoptive father” of pygmy hippo Moo Deng when she grows up. He is also donating 10 million Thai baht ($300,000) to the Khao Kheow Open Zoo near Bangkok where the five-month-old lives, he said in a Thursday posting on X.

The donations, made in Moo Deng’s name, will be us

South Koreans are paying a full 3% more to buy bitcoin (BTC) than their U.S. counterparts as they seek protection from the plummeting won, CryptoQuant data show.

Priced in won, the largest cryptocurrency is valued at 145,000,000 ($98,600) on the country's largest crypto exchange, Upbit. That compares with about $96,700 on Coinbase (COIN).

The move follows a vote by the South Korean parliament to impeach Han Duck-soo, the prime minister and acting president, just weeks after impeaching Presiden

A Pump.Fun memecoin zoomed from zero to an $80 million market capitalization on Thursday after a father’s plea for donations into a research study for his daughter’s rare brain cancer attracted swathes of crypto traders.

The token’s prices have since fallen 80% since a Thursday peak and trade at just over a cent as of Friday. But while late buyers are sitting on losses, the effort still raised over $1 million for the cause.

In an X post on Thursday, Runaway founder Siqi Chen said his daughter

Regulatory overhaul in America and a thawing of crypto antagonism globally in 2025 will usher in a new generation of decentralized capital formation, which was first popularized in 2017 as “ICOs” (initial coin offerings).

During the 2010s, crypto hadn't settled on a productive use case for Bitcoin and altcoins until Ethereum smart contracts enabled early-stage teams to raise capital from supporters dispersed around the world. We saw Ethereum bootstrap a global decentralized computer which spawn

The X account of Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu, one of CoinDesk's Most Influential 2024, was compromised and used to promote a fictitious token, the company said in a post on the social media platform.

Animoca, a metaverse and gaming venture capital firm, posted a warning on its own account at 01:36 UTC on Thursday saying Siu's account had been compromised and the company was not introducing an official token or non-fungible token (NFT).

The exploit was probably perpetrated through a phish

CoinDesk Indices presents its daily market update, highlighting the performance of leaders and laggards in the CoinDesk 20 Index.

The CoinDesk 20 is currently trading at 3333.82, down 5.0% (-176.57) since 4 pm ET on Wednesday.

None of the 20 assets are trading higher.

Leaders: ETH (-3.7%) and BTC (-3.7%).

Laggards: HBAR (-8.2%) and APT (-7.4%).

The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally.

With much of the globe celebrating Christmas, bitcoin (BTC) quietly appeared set to retake the $100,000 level after having fallen to below $93,000 just ahead of the holiday.

The rally, however, stalled at just above $99,800 as Asia opened for business on Thursday morning and declined rapidly to roughly $95,000 only a few hours later.

Bitcoin at press time was trading at $95,300, down 3.1% over the past 24 hours.

The broader CoinDesk 20 Index was lower by 4.2% over the same time frame, with ET