The important indicator of retail market demand for Bitcoin in the U.S.—the Coinbase premium index—recently fell to its lowest level in 12 months. Analysts warn that this could pose challenges for a short-term rebound in Bitcoin prices.

CryptoQuant analyst Burakkesmeci noted in the analysis report on December 31:

The increasing selling pressure in the U.S. market has significantly impacted the Coinbase premium index, leading to a new low for this indicator.

The Coinbase premium index is intended to measure the demand for Bitcoin among U.S. retail investors. An increase in this index indicates rising buying pressure, while a negative value suggests that selling pressure is dominating the market. According to data from CryptoQuant, this index dropped to a low of -0.23 on December 31, 2024. On the same day, the price of Bitcoin briefly fell to $91,479, marking its lowest level since November 27, 2024. Burakkesmeci attributed this drop to 'insufficient market liquidity at the end of the year.' The last time this index reached this level was in January 2024, shortly after the launch of the U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF.

Original text: (My 2025 Crypto Predictions)

Author: Dragonfly Managing Partner Haseeb Qureshi

Translated by: Zombit

I may either be a prophet or a fool with these predictions, but one thing is certain: I will anger many 'holders'. This time, I will divide my predictions into six parts: L1/L2, token issuance, stablecoins, regulation, 'AI agents' (oh dear), and Crypto x AI.

1. L1s/L2s

The distinction between L1 and L2 is gradually fading. Users no longer perceive the difference between L1 and L2 (did they ever know the difference?). The entire blockchain ecosystem, including L1 and L2, has become overcrowded in the market and will face a massive reshuffling. This consolidation will not revolve around technical advantages but rather how to find a unique positioning in the market and establish lasting user stickiness through market strategies (GTM).

As 2024 approaches its end, MicroStrategy (MSTR), the publicly traded company with the largest Bitcoin holdings in the world, is facing unprecedented market pressure.

MicroStrategy's significant decline

According to the latest report from 10x Research, MicroStrategy's stock price has fallen over 45% from its peak, indicating a significant shift in investor attitudes towards its leveraged Bitcoin investment strategy.

Analysts point out that market investors have gradually realized that the cost of indirectly holding Bitcoin through MicroStrategy is far higher than direct purchases, making its 'leveraged Bitcoin investment tool' narrative increasingly unappealing. Data shows that the implied price for investors holding Bitcoin indirectly through MicroStrategy has reached as high as $200,000 or more per coin, while the cost of directly purchasing Bitcoin in the market is far lower than this figure. This obvious valuation mismatch has led the market to return to rationality, and investors are no longer willing to pay a premium for this indirect holding.

Bitcoin stabilizes, altcoins rebound

Bitcoin has recently stopped its decline and stabilized above $95,000 after dropping below $92,000 on December 30. However, Bitcoin's market share fell by 0.85% yesterday, and the trend over the past two weeks indicates that the current market is still relatively favorable for altcoins.

Overall, Bitcoin has not yet broken the downward trend, the market environment remains unclear, and there are just over two weeks left until Trump's inauguration (January 20). During this time, important economic data such as unemployment rate, non-farm payrolls, and consumer price index will be announced, creating uncertainty in the market. Trading recommendations should focus on spot trading or low leverage, and it is not advisable to recklessly increase leverage.

As 2024 comes to a close, Binance Labs reflected on the investment achievements of the past year in a post on X, looking forward to 2025, emphasizing continued focus on infrastructure and long-term value, and ongoing efforts to drive innovation in the crypto industry.

2024 Investment Results Review

This year, Binance Labs has invested in 46 projects globally, of which 14 projects are from the MVB program focusing on the BNB chain or cross-chain incubation programs, and an additional 32 projects come from direct investments. The investment distribution between infrastructure and application layers is 50:50, demonstrating a balanced development strategy under a long-term vision.

After announcing the purchase of $209 million in Bitcoin last night, MicroStrategy's stock price (MSTR) caused considerable fluctuations in the market, closing down more than 8% on the day, showing investors' concerns about its highly leveraged Bitcoin investment strategy. . MicroStrategy funded the purchase this week by selling 592,987 shares, according to official filings.

MicroStrategy shares fall below $300

MicroStrategy announced this latest Bitcoin purchase just an hour before the Nasdaq exchange opened. However, within just one hour of the day's opening, MSTR shares fell from an opening price of $318.89 to $302.09.

Stablecoin issuer Tether conducted its largest Bitcoin purchase of the year on December 30, transferring nearly $780 million worth of Bitcoin (BTC) into its corporate reserves, demonstrating strong confidence in Bitcoin's long-term value.

8,404 Bitcoins transferred into reserves

According to data from the blockchain data analysis platform Arkham, wallets labeled as Tether corporate reserves received two Bitcoin transfers on December 30, totaling approximately 8,404.5 Bitcoins, with individual transfers of 7,628.9 and 775.6 Bitcoins. Calculating based on the Bitcoin price at the time ($92,500), the total value of this batch of assets reached $777.4 million.

According to information shared by Spot on chain, Justin Sun's wallet address deposited 29,153 ETH (worth approximately $96.7 million) and 249,868 EIGEN (about $884,000) to HTX 11 hours ago.

Justin Sun (@justinsuntron) deposited 29,153 $ETH ($96.7M) and 249,868 $EIGEN ($884K) to #HTX 11 hours ago. Since Nov 10, he has deposited 227K $ETH ($807M) to HTX at ~$3,556. Most of these $ETH were accumulated at ~$3,036 in the first half of 2024. He has also requested to… https://t.co/7bHisjhMeV pic.twitter.com/gDvumtebrZ

The notorious hacker 'Blockchain Bandit', who stole a large amount of cryptocurrency by successfully guessing weak private keys, has recently attracted attention again.

50,000 hacked Ether transferred

According to a Telegram post by blockchain investigator ZachXBT on December 30, the hacker transferred 51,000 Ether (ETH) from 10 different wallet addresses to a multi-signature address '0xC45...1D542'.

This substantial amount of funds was transferred in batches of about 5,000 Ether between 8:54 and 9:18 PM (UTC) on December 30. Prior to this, these funds had remained inactive in 10 different wallets since being transferred on January 21, 2023, for nearly two years. Meanwhile, the hacker also transferred 470 Bitcoin (BTC) at the beginning of 2023.

According to a report by The Block, the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) ai16z, based on AI agents, is exploring adjustments to its token economics and may launch a Layer 1 blockchain. The team has engaged in preliminary discussions with contributors to improve its token value accumulation mechanism. The latest governance considerations for ai16z include a phased comprehensive reform of its token economics.

However, it should be emphasized that although the DAO plays an important role in the governance of ai16z, the operations of ai16z are not entirely managed by the DAO. The core development team still holds significant influence over the direction of ai16z, but developers emphasize that the project adopts a collaborative and open-source development model.

The Securities Commission of Malaysia (SC) has taken enforcement action against cryptocurrency exchange Bybit and CEO Ben Zhou, due to the platform operating a cryptocurrency asset trading platform without proper registration.

According to The Block, regulatory authorities issued an announcement on Friday, ordering Bybit to suspend its website, mobile application, or any other digital platform in Malaysia. The company must complete the relevant operations within 14 working days starting from December 11. Additionally, Bybit has also been required to stop any advertising activities directed at Malaysian investors and close its Telegram support group for Malaysian users. The regulatory authorities stated in their announcement:

IntoTheBlock, an on-chain data analytics platform, shared a chart of the percentage of long-term holders of Bitcoin and Ethereum over the past year in its latest tweet.

Data shows that the current proportion of long-term holders of Bitcoin is 62.31%, while the proportion of long-term holders of Ethereum is 75.06%. Although the proportion of long-term holders of Bitcoin among all holders has declined, the proportion of long-term holders of Ethereum has declined. The proportion of coin holders has increased, surpassing Bitcoin since the beginning of the year.

However, some analysts believe that this trend is due to the poor price performance of Ethereum, resulting in a lack of exit opportunities for long-term holders, rather than the market being more bullish on Ethereum than Bitcoin.

Recently, a16z Crypto regulatory chief Michele Korver issued a statement strongly opposing the U.S. Treasury's (USTreasury) recently released new broker reporting rule, arguing that this rule will bring enormous uncertainty and legal risks to DeFi technology developers, potentially stifling innovation and driving DeFi businesses and technology developers to relocate to other more inclusive jurisdictions.

We @a16zcrypto believe that DeFi will make financial services and the digital economy more accessible, efficient, interoperable, dependable, and consumer-focused. However, yesterday, the @USTreasury issued a 'midnight' broker reporting rulemaking that is a direct threat to that...

Author: Galaxy Research

Translated by: Deep Tide TechFlow

Forecasts for 2025 from @glxyresearch cover price trends for Bitcoin and Ethereum, ETHBTC ratio, Dogecoin and DOGE, stablecoins, DeFi, L2 solutions, policy, venture capital, and more. Here are the forecasts we just shared with @galaxyhq clients and partners:

The price of Bitcoin is expected to exceed $150,000 in the first half of 2025, reaching or exceeding $185,000 in the fourth quarter.

Adoption at institutional, corporate, and national levels will be the main driving force behind Bitcoin's price reaching new highs in 2025. Since its inception, Bitcoin has appreciated faster than all other asset classes, particularly the S&P 500 and gold, and this trend is expected to continue in 2025. Bitcoin's market cap is projected to reach 20% of the total market cap of gold.

Bitcoin’s sustainable energy usage rate reaches 56.76%

As the Bitcoin mining ecosystem continues to develop, the proportion of clean energy used has increased significantly. According to data from Woocharts,

Since April 2021, Bitcoin’s clean energy usage has shown a steady growth trend, with data covering a variety of energy sources such as wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear power. The share of these sustainable energy sources has exceeded the 50% milestone and reached 56.76%, which is of great significance to the Bitcoin industry.

In addition, this data caused the community to post messages on the platform, demanding that Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s earlier promise to “restore Tesla’s acceptance of Bitcoin payments” be fulfilled.

MicroStrategy founder Michael Saylor once again published tweets related to the SaylorTracker data statistics platform last night, marking his eighth consecutive week of doing so. In the past, he has chosen to release these on Sundays and announce additional Bitcoin purchases by MicroStrategy the following day (Monday).

Disconcerting blue lines on https://t.co/Bx3917zMqi. pic.twitter.com/xPl4GTKU3E

— Michael Saylor (@saylor) December 29, 2024

Since Michael Saylor first released the SaylorTracker data, MicroStrategy has increased its holdings by approximately 192,000 Bitcoins. According to previous reports from Zombit, there are community rumors that MicroStrategy is about to enter a quiet period before its financial report, which could prevent MicroStrategy from selling shares for 4 to 6 weeks and affect its consecutive weeks of Bitcoin acquisition plans.

As 2024 draws to a close, Bitcoin's market share is gradually recovering to nearly 60%, but prices are also stagnating. Many traders are starting to believe it's time to shift investment strategies from accumulating Bitcoin to altcoins.

Market sentiment is shifting towards altcoins.

According to a report by Cointelegraph, well-known cryptocurrency trader Dyme posted on X (formerly Twitter) on December 27, stating:

"At this stage, altcoins offer a more ideal risk/reward (R/R) ratio compared to Bitcoin. The time for Dollar-Cost Averaging (DCA) Bitcoin has passed, and it is not suitable for this operation in the next 1.5 years."

First Investment in Cryptocurrency Fund

According to Cointelegraph, stablecoin issuer Tether recently announced the completion of its first "cryptocurrency venture capital fund" investment, injecting $2 million into Arcanum Capital's Arcanum Emerging Technologies Fund II. This fund is a tokenized investment vehicle focused on decentralized Web3 projects, aiming to promote the application of blockchain technology in remittances, cross-border payments, privacy protection, and among unbanked populations.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino stated that anti-censorship and promoting open communication are the core goals of Tether's investment in this fund.

Recently, Strive, an asset management company co-founded by cryptocurrency asset management firm Bitwise and Vivek Ramaswamy, head of the Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E), submitted an application to U.S. regulators to launch an ETF focused on 'Bitcoin-related bonds.' The fund will invest in convertible bonds issued by MicroStrategy and other companies that plan to allocate most of their funds to purchasing Bitcoin.

Bitcoin Bond ETF: A New Investment Tool

According to the application documents, Strive's Bitcoin Bond ETF will be actively managed by a professional team and will gain exposure to Bitcoin bonds through direct investments or the use of financial derivatives such as swap contracts and options. The fund aims to provide investors with an indirect opportunity to participate in the growth of the Bitcoin market while mitigating the risks associated with directly holding cryptocurrencies.

The year 2024 is set to be a breakthrough year for the cryptocurrency industry. With Donald Trump elected as President of the United States and the approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs, the total market capitalization of the crypto market reached $3.4 trillion, nearly double that of last year. Citigroup analysts have compiled six key factors that could influence the direction of the cryptocurrency market in 2025 in their latest report.

1. Support from the Macroeconomic Environment

Citigroup analysts pointed out that the current macroeconomic backdrop will still support the performance of risk assets at the beginning of 2025. However, the subsequent market trend will depend on the economic policies of the Trump administration and stock market volatility.