Bitcoin and the wider crypto market sold off as the Fed announced a 25 basis point rate cut to its benchmark policy rate and signaled that fewer rate cuts than initially planned could take place in 2025. 

Following Fed chair Jerome Powell’s post-rate cut presser, Bitcoin (BTC) price dropped 4.6% to $101,300, while Ether (ETH) fell 5.96% to $3,600.

Although market participants had anticipated a 0.25% rate cut, which ticks a box for most traders with bullish price expectations, Powell’s indicati

Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Synthetix has begun accepting multiple token types as collateral for leveraged perpetuals trading on Coinbase’s Base network, Synthetix said on Dec. 18. 

Launching so-called “multicollateral perps” on Base, one of Ethereum’s most popular layer 2 (L2) scaling networks, is part of a broader revamp of the DeFi protocol after a governance shakeup in October. 

Adding multi-collateral perps will allow users to post tokens such as Coinbase Wrapped BTC (cbBTC) and

Lens, a layer-2 blockchain developed by Avara, has raised $31 million in a funding round led by Lightspeed Faction. The funds will go to scaling the network infrastructure ahead of its mainnet launch early next year.

Plug-and-play social features

Lens is designed for SocialFi use cases. According to a description of its Version 3 developer preview, it has customizable plug-and-play features like Accounts, Usernames, Graphs, Feeds and Groups, as well as monetization capabilities, that developer

Eric Council Jr., the individual who allegedly hacked the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s X account in January and posted a message suggesting that Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) had been approved, will be allowed to travel for the holidays. 

In a Dec. 13 filing with the US District Court for the District of Columbia, Judge Amy Berman Jackson said Council could travel to North Carolina with a third-party custodian between Dec. 23 and Dec. 29. The judge said the alleged

Memes are crypto distilled to its essence: social trends, wry humor and the lure of ridiculous profits all wrapped up in a token that doesnt do anything. Its not for Warren Buffett, but it is for a huge range of ordinary people looking for fun, community and a lottery ticket out of the backwater they live in.

The meme is the alpha, says Danny Yang, founder of OnChainMonkey, referring to the insane returns against other metrics. Memecoins gamify the investment process as investors swoop in to fo

Debanking has been a major problem for crypto firms but is more pronounced for smaller projects lacking financial and legal resources.

Ledn co-founder Mauricio di Bartolomeo offered several affordable solutions for small crypto startups to avoid debanking while maintaining the regulatory compliance key to fostering relationships with financial institutions.

The Ledn co-founder told Cointelegraph that startups should seek cost-effective legal counsel from law firms that offer special startup pr

A federal judge sided with Coinbase in a hearing with BiT Global by saying she would not issue a temporary restraining order (TRO) to stop the exchange from delisting Wrapped Bitcoin.

In a Dec. 18 virtual hearing in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín said BiT Global’s legal team had failed to show “imminent irreparable harm” in its arguments over Coinbase delisting wBTC. BiT Global filed a lawsuit against the crypto exchange o

Grayscale’s newest Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF) pulled more than $1 billion in net inflows in 2024, Grayscale told Cointelegraph on Dec. 17. 

Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust manages a total of more than $4 billion as of Dec. 17, Grayscale said.

The asset manager spun out two new ETFs — Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust and Grayscale Mini Ethereum Trust — from its older BTC and Ether (ETH) funds in July. 

The spinoffs separated the low-cost Mini Trusts from Grayscale’s older and costlier B

Bitcoin's (BTC) price dropped below $105,000 after making a new all-time high of $108,365 on Dec. 17. The short-term drop occurred ahead of the United States Federal Reserves interest rate announcement on Dec. 18. Currently, the market anticipates a 25 basis point cut.

In spite of short-term volatility, one crypto analyst highlighted a bullish scenario taking shape, with Bitcoin long-term holders positioning themselves for future gains.

Bitcoin LTH profit-taking drops from $10 billion to $3 bi

In this week’s newsletter, read about non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea registering a foundation in the Cayman Islands and fueling rumors of a potential token airdrop. Animoca Brands chairman Yat Siu says that NFTs will be bigger than in 2021 and 2022, NFT project CyberKongz receives a Wells notice from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and Pudgy Penguins’ token plummets more than 50% after its launch. 

OpenSea Cayman Islands registration fuels token airdrop rumors

Bitcoin (BTC) stayed below $105,000 on Dec. 18 as markets awaited the next US Federal Reserve interest rates decision.

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

Bitcoin traders see Fed rate cut confirmation

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC price support retests characterizing the landscape around the day’s Wall Street open.

Due at 2:30 pm Eastern Time, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announcement on rates will be followed by a speech and p

Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Ethena announced a strategic partnership with Donald Trump-backed World Liberty Financial on Dec. 18. 

The partnership aims to integrate Ethena’s sUSDe token — a staked version of its USDe “synthetic dollar” — with World Liberty Financial’s Aave instance, enabling users to deposit USDe and receive rewards in both sUSDe and World Liberty’s WLF token. 

Ethena Labs announced the partnership on X.com. Source: Ethena Labs

Per an announcement posted to X.com:

Stani Kulechov, CEO and founder of Avara, the parent entity for the suite of Aave companies, recently backed a proposal to drop support for Polygon markets from the Aave platform. 

The proposal to drop Polygon followed an early-stage Polygon improvement proposal (PIP) from Allez Labs and Morpho to use stablecoins in Polygon's proof-of-stake Portal bridge to generate yield.

According to Kulechov, the suggested Polygon improvement proposal posed an unacceptable safety risk to Aave, as bridge exp

The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) has more than doubled the ranks of approved virtual asset trading platforms (VATPs) with the addition of four firms.

A rigorous licensing process

Accumulus GBA Technology (Hongkong), DFX Labs, Hong Kong Digital Asset EX and Thousand Whales Technology (BVI) received licenses on Dec. 18. They joined HashKey, OSL and HKVAX. According to an SFC announcement, the new exchanges were approved under the agency’s swift licensing procedure for deemed

Bitcoin (BTC) has pulled back after making a new all-time high above $108,000 on Dec. 17, indicating that the bears have not given up and are selling on rallies. BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes wrote in his “Trump Truth” blog post that the crypto markets are likely to dump following United States President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2025. Hayes said that selling will occur after market participants realize that any crypto policy changes will take about a year to enact.

In contr

Kim Nam-kuk, a member of South Korea’s National Assembly, could be sentenced to six months in prison for allegedly not reporting all his cryptocurrency holdings to the government.

According to a Dec. 18 report from South Korean news outlet Dong-A Ilbo, prosecutors in Kim’s case requested a six-month prison sentence for the lawmaker, who is currently on trial in Seoul.

Kim allegedly reported his total assets at 1.2 billion won — roughly $834,356 at the time of publication — in 2021, despite own

Tokenization startup Plume Network has closed a $20 million funding round to support the development of its real-world assets ecosystem. 

According to a Fortune report on Dec. 18, the investment round was led by Brevan Howard Digital, Haun Ventures, Lightspeed Faction, and Galaxy Ventures. Previous investors in the startup included SV Angels and Portal Ventures. 

The funding follows Plume’s testnet launch in July in partnership with Celestia. The company is developing a tokenization ecosystem

HashKey Chain, a public blockchain developed by Hong Kong-based HashKey Group, officially launched its Ethereum layer-2 mainnet on Dec. 18.

The mainnet launch follows a month-long successful testnet period during which more than 860,000 wallet addresses were registered, a reported 24.72 million transactions were recorded, and over 300,000 community members participated. 

Hashkey Group announced the mainnet launch on X.com. Source: Hashkey HSK

According to a blog post from Hashkey Group, a tot

Opinion by: Daniele Bernardi, Founder of DIAMAN

Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy, recently made an interesting statement regarding Bitcoin. His company holds a significant amount of Bitcoin in its treasury, second only to BlackRock, the world’s most prominent asset manager, which has launched a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF). 

According to Saylor, Bitcoin (BTC) will grow at an average annual interest rate of 29% over the next 21 years, and by 2045, in his best-case scenario, Bitcoin wi

Cryptocurrency market commentators and observers have predicted positive market trends associated with United States President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, but BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes has a different perspective.

Hayes cautioned against the high expectations of quick crypto policy changes promised by Trump, highlighting a gap between market expectations and the realities of policy implementation.

In his “Trump Truth” blog post published on Dec. 17, Hayes said his i