Today's news tips:
Fartcoin (FARTCOIN) breaks through $1, hits new all-time high
World Liberty purchased 231,726 ENA with 250,000 USDC
El Salvador reaches $1.4 billion loan agreement with IMF, Bitcoin payments will become voluntary
Powell: We are not allowed to own Bitcoin and we do not want to change the law
Kelp DAO releases KERNEL token economics, 55% allocated to community rewards and airdrops
Regulatory News
Binance.US plans to resume its USD services in early 2025
According to Decrypt, Binance.US plans to resume US dollar trading services in early 2025, which is the first major adjustment since the suspension of fiat currency trading in June 2023 due to SEC charges. Interim CEO Norman Reed said that the resumption of fiat currency services is the most anticipated feature by users, and the platform is working with new partners to expand custody and wallet solutions. Despite regulatory pressure, Binance.US has supported 160 cryptocurrency transactions and more than 20 asset pledges in the past 17 months, and insisted that no misconduct has been found. The company's goal is to help the development of the cryptocurrency industry and provide more options for American users.
Osprey Funds Launches First Publicly Traded U.S. BNB Fund
Osprey Funds announced the launch of the Osprey BNB Chain Trust Fund (code: $OBNB) and listed it on the OTCQX market, which is the first publicly traded BNB-based fund in the United States. The fund provides U.S. investors with the opportunity to access BNB through traditional brokerage accounts or IRA accounts, which is one of the few ways to invest in BNB when BNB cannot be traded on centralized exchanges in the United States. BNB, as the native token of the BNB chain, is the basis for decentralized applications, DeFi protocols and smart contracts.
17-year-old Bitcoin Core Contributor Wins Chaincode Labs Bitcoin Scholarship
According to Bitcoin Magazine, New York Chaincode Labs awarded the first Bitcoin scholarship to 17-year-old Ishaana Misra, making her the youngest core code contributor in the 15-year history of Bitcoin technology. The scholarship was selected from 232 applicants worldwide, covers her tuition for one year, and can be renewed annually, potentially supporting her entire undergraduate education. Misra started programming at the age of 12 and entered the Bitcoin field after reading the Bitcoin white paper before high school. She completed the transition from running a node to contributing to the Bitcoin Core code base by self-studying C++. Misra said that the Bitcoin community focuses on work results rather than age, and this atmosphere is particularly friendly to young developers. Adam Jonas, CEO of Chaincode Labs, said that this scholarship aims to encourage young people to engage in Bitcoin open source development and provide them with experience and educational support.
El Salvador reaches $1.4 billion loan agreement with IMF, Bitcoin payments will become voluntary
According to Cointelegraph, El Salvador has reached a $1.4 billion loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which plans to receive financial support over the next 40 months. As part of the agreement, the country will make merchants accepting Bitcoin payments voluntary, while gradually reducing the government's involvement in Bitcoin-related projects, including gradually withdrawing from the management of the state-backed wallet application Chivo. The IMF said the move would significantly reduce the potential risks posed by Bitcoin projects, while clearly limiting the public sector to specific participation in Bitcoin economic activities. In addition, taxes will be paid only in US dollars, not Bitcoin. The agreement still needs to be approved by the IMF Executive Board, marking the end of El Salvador's four-year negotiations with the IMF since it made Bitcoin a legal tender in June 2021. The IMF has repeatedly warned that the speculative nature of Bitcoin could pose financial risks to the country. The agreement will also facilitate additional financing from institutions such as the World Bank, with a total financing amount of more than $3.5 billion. Despite this, Max Keiser, a Bitcoin adviser to the President of Salvador, shrugged it off on social media X, saying that the use of Bitcoin in the country "has never been so active and continues to grow." However, the survey showed that 92% of Salvadorans did not use Bitcoin for transactions, an increase from 88% in 2023.
According to The Block, a federal court in California ruled that Coinbase can delist wBTC (Wrapped Bitcoin), rejecting a request for a temporary injunction filed by BiT Global, a company associated with Justin Sun. Coinbase previously announced that it would delist wBTC on December 19, a decision related to its former custodian BitGo's cooperation with BiT Global to manage $14 billion in assets. BiT Global claimed that delisting wBTC would cause it irreparable damage and sued Coinbase for violating competition laws and defamation. However, the court found that BiT Global's claims lacked basis and supported Coinbase's right to decide the platform's asset list. Coinbase responded that BiT Global's allegations were unfounded and planned to sue it or its law firm. Currently, wBTC is the second largest wrapped token by market value (nearly $14 billion), allowing Bitcoin to be used in the Ethereum ecosystem. Coinbase's competing product cbBTC has a market value of more than $2.1 billion since September. Coinbase stressed that its platform accounts for less than 1% of wBTC trading activity and denied trying to monopolize the wrapped Bitcoin market.
Powell: We are not allowed to own Bitcoin and we do not want to change the law
The Federal Reserve announced its latest interest rate decision, cutting interest rates by 25 basis points as expected, and the target range of the federal funds rate fell to 4.25%-4.5%. The latest dot plot shows that two interest rate cuts are expected in 2025, compared with four in September. According to the Fed's statement, recent data show that economic activity has grown steadily, the labor market has eased, the unemployment rate has risen but is still low, and inflation is close to the target but slightly higher. The committee will continue to reduce its balance sheet, and the resolution was supported by most members. Beth Hammack voted against it and advocated maintaining interest rates at 4.5%-4.75%. Powell said: "With today's actions, we have lowered the policy rate by a full percentage point from the peak, and our policy stance has now become much less restrictive. Therefore, we can be more cautious when considering further adjustments to the policy rate." He said that more progress must be seen in inflation before further interest rate cuts will be made. The wording suggests that we are at or close to a moment of slowing interest rate cuts. Powell also said at the press conference that we are not allowed to own Bitcoin and do not want to change the law.
AI
Sources: Apple is in talks with Tencent and ByteDance to launch AI features in China
According to Reuters, Apple is in talks with Tencent and ByteDance to integrate their artificial intelligence (AI) models into iPhones sold in China. These negotiations are still in the early stages. At present, several companies in China have launched AI models, including ByteDance's "Doubao", Tencent's "Hunyuan" and Baidu's "Wenxin Yiyan". In addition, Apple's negotiations with Baidu on the use of its AI models have been hindered by technical issues, including disputes over the use of iPhone user data to train AI models. Apple is under pressure from a decline in market share in China, especially with increasing competition from domestic brands such as Huawei. Huawei recently launched the Mate 70 series, equipped with a self-developed large language model, and AI features have become a selling point. In the third quarter, Apple's smartphone sales in China fell 0.3% year-on-year, while Huawei's sales increased 42%.
Sahara AI announced that the first phase of the data platform Beta version test network is officially launched. This event attracted more than 780,000 users to sign up, and more than 10,000 users will eventually be qualified to participate. Through the Sahara AI test network, ordinary users can not only contribute to the AI ecosystem through data collection, optimization and labeling tasks, but also participate in building the world's first decentralized AI collaboration platform while receiving rewards. The launch of the test network is the first stage of the development of the Sahara AI ecosystem. Subsequently, Sahara AI will launch an AI data market and model center to further promote the tradability, traceability and decentralized collaboration model of AI assets. It is reported that Sahara AI has previously received US$43 million in financing from investment institutions such as Pantera Capital, Binance Labs, Polychain Capital, Sequoia Capital, Samsung Next, etc. to promote the development of decentralized AI.
OpenAI: ChatGPT now supports interacting with users over the phone
According to the official announcement of OpenAI, ChatGPT now supports interaction with users over the phone. US users can call the exclusive number 1-800-CHAT-GPT (1-800-242-8478), which supports landlines and old mobile phones. This feature is also integrated with WhatsApp, and users can send information consultations through this number, which is similar to the existing Web and mobile versions. Currently, US users can use 15 minutes of voice calls for free each month, and specific rules and restrictions may be adjusted. OpenAI said that in order to get a more comprehensive experience and use more features (such as search, higher limits, and more personalization), existing users should continue to use ChatGPT directly through their accounts.
Financing
According to The Block, Fraction AI, a crypto and artificial intelligence startup focusing on decentralized data annotation, has completed a $6 million Pre-Seed financing round, which was co-led by Spartan Group and Symbolic Capital. Other investors include Borderless Capital, Anagram, Foresight Ventures and Karatage. In addition, angel investors such as Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal and NEAR Protocol co-founder Illia Polosukhin also participated and served as advisors. Founded in February 2024, Fraction AI is committed to reshaping the data annotation process in a decentralized manner, using a hybrid approach that combines human insight with AI agents. Its platform mainly includes three types of participants: stakers who receive rewards by staking ETH or liquid staking tokens (such as stETH), developers who create AI agents and participate in challenges, and reviewers who participate in evaluations through the native token FRAC (LLMs based on specific standard evaluation results). Fraction AI plans to launch the mainnet and native token FRAC at the end of the first quarter or the beginning of the second quarter of 2025. It has completed closed beta testing and is expected to launch public beta testing next month. At present, there are more than 60,000 test users. The company is currently developing based on Ethereum and plans to expand to NEAR and multiple Ethereum Layer 2 networks.
UTXO Stack Completes New Round of Financing, Valuation Reaches $50 Million
UTXO Stack announced the completion of a new round of financing led by UTXO Management, PAKA Fund and CMS Holdings, with a valuation of US$50 million. The financing will be used to accelerate the development of lightning network liquidity, introduce stablecoins into the Bitcoin ecosystem, and plan to launch airdrop incentives for Bitcoin liquidity providers in early January 2024, while conducting the first token generation event (TGE) on the lightning network.
According to Bloomberg, /dev/agents, a startup founded by former Google and Stripe executives, recently completed a $56 million seed round of financing, with a valuation of $500 million. The financing was led by Index Ventures and co-led by Alphabet's investment fund CapitalG. Other well-known angel investors who participated in the investment included Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora, and OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy.
/dev/agents plans to build a new generation of cloud operating system that supports AI agents, aiming to simplify the development process, provide developers with a unified technical framework, and promote the widespread application of AI agents. The company's core team includes co-founders David Singleton, Hugo Barra, Ficus Kirkpatrick, and Nicholas Jitkoff, who have extensive experience in Android, AR/VR, and operating system development. The team is committed to developing interactive interfaces and AI agent computing infrastructure for multiple devices to achieve seamless collaboration between users and AI agents.
Cross-border payment service provider Juicyway completes $3 million Pre-Seed round of financing
Juicyway, a cross-border payment service provider based on stablecoins, announced the completion of a $3 million Pre-Seed round of financing, with participation from P1 Ventures, Ventures Platform Fund, and Future Africa. Juicyway mainly uses stablecoins and cryptocurrencies to bypass traditional intermediaries to simplify cross-border settlements and reduce transaction delays. The new funds are intended to support its provision of accessible quasi-bank and crypto wallet services, enabling seamless deposit and withdrawal services with stablecoins acting as a bridge, promoting instant settlements and reducing reliance on highly volatile currencies.
AI software engineering platform Braintrust announced the completion of a $36 million Series A financing round, led by Martin Casado of Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from existing investors Elad Gil, Greylock, Basecase and Datadog, Databricks Ventures, Guillermo Rauch (Vercel), Simon Last (Notion), Bryan Helmig (Zapier), etc. This round of financing brings Braintrust's total financing to $45 million.
Braintrust is committed to solving challenges in the development of large language models (LLMs), such as non-deterministic models and the unpredictability of natural language input. The platform has worked with top teams such as Notion, Stripe, and Airtable to support users in improving the quality of AI products through continuous experimentation. The Braintrust user team runs more than 10 experiments per day on average. At the same time, Braintrust launched a new feature "Functions", which supports users to create tools, prompts, and scorers directly in the code base and upload them to the platform with simple commands, optimizing the experiment and deployment process and reducing infrastructure management time.
Project News
Swellchain officially launched
Liquidity re-pledge platform Swell officially announced that Optimistic Rollup Swellchain based on Optimism OP Stack is officially launched. As a chain with re-pledged assets as the core, it is built based on the "Proof of Restake" mechanism and supported by Ethena Labs, EigenLayer, etc. Users can share 31,250,000 $SWELL rewards by cross-chain and holding assets before December 31, while exploring upcoming dApps such as Euler Finance and Ambient Finance. Swellchain also builds an ecosystem around $USDe and $sUSDe stablecoins to provide liquidity rewards for DeFi users.
Sophon mainnet is launched, network fees are waived in the initial stage
Sophon, a modular blockchain based on ZKsync that was once invested by Binance Labs, has now launched its mainnet and deployed its token SOPH (currently non-transferable). Users can enjoy free network fees in the initial stage, node holder rewards will begin to accumulate on January 1, 2025, and full token transferability is expected to be opened in the first quarter of 2025. Sophon is committed to creating an intuitive and easy-to-use blockchain ecosystem for high-throughput consumer applications through automatic account creation, gas-free architecture and instant transaction confirmation. Related reading: A quick overview of the super chain Sophon based on ZKsync
Kelp DAO releases KERNEL token economics, 55% allocated to community rewards and airdrops
Kelp DAO, the Ethereum liquidity re-staking platform, announced the economic details of KERNEL tokens, of which 55% will be allocated to community rewards and airdrops (20% for airdrops and 35% for future community rewards), 5% to the ecosystem and partners, 20% for private sales, and 20% to the team and advisors (team and private sales tokens have a 6-month lock-up period and are unlocked within 24 months). In addition, 20% of KERNEL tokens will be distributed through three rounds of airdrops: • First round of airdrops: 10% of the total supply will be allocated, with a snapshot date of December 31, 2024; • Second round of airdrops: 5% of the total supply will be allocated from January 1 to April 30, 2025; re-staking before January 15, 2025 will receive an additional 15% loyalty reward; • Subsequent airdrops: the remaining 5% will be allocated, and the plan is to be determined. KERNEL tokens will be used for governance, re-staking to provide economic security, liquidity mining, and ecosystem revenue repurchase scenarios. The Token Generation Event (TGE) is expected to be completed in early Q1 2025.
Kraken L2 network Ink officially launched the mainnet, several months ahead of schedule
According to the official announcement of Ink, Kraken L2 network Ink has officially launched the mainnet, several months ahead of schedule. Ink has become part of the Optimism superchain, aiming to further narrow the distance between users and DeFi developers by providing bridge tools.
Trump family crypto project WLFI announces long-term partnership with Ethena Labs
According to The Block, the Trump family's crypto project World Liberty Financial (WLFI) and Ethena Labs announced that they are seeking a "long-term collaboration" that will start with the implementation of Ethena's yield token sUSDe. According to a statement, "As the first step in the collaboration, Ethena and WLFI will explore the potential implementation of sUSDe as the first new token that can be used as collateral on the WLFI protocol, which is supported by Aave. The introduction of sUSDe to WLFI's upcoming Aave instance will enable the instance to benefit from Ethena's total locked volume (TVL) and user base." World Liberty Financial's governance will vote on this measure this week. The two companies said: "If WLFI's Aave instance is not approved by the governance, or sUSDe is not approved as a collateral asset, WLFI and Ethena will continue to explore cooperation opportunities and intend to find integration points." According to the statement, Wednesday's announcement came after World Liberty Financial purchased $600,000 in ENA tokens. A spokesperson for World Liberty Financial said the purchase of ENA tokens “is not directly related to this partnership, but demonstrates WLFI’s confidence in the long-term viability and success of the Ethena network.”
Viewpoint
Matt Hougan, chief investment officer of Bitwise, published an analysis that the Federal Reserve announced a 25 basis point rate cut and reduced its expectations for rate cuts next year from four to two times, triggering a sharp correction in risky assets. The S&P 500 fell 3%, the Russell 2000 small-cap index fell 4.4%, and the price of Bitcoin fell from about $106,000 to below $99,000, and then recovered slightly. At the same time, about $600 million of leveraged long positions in the crypto market were liquidated, exacerbating market volatility. Matt Hougan believes that this pullback is only a short-term fluctuation and has not changed the long-term bullish trend of the crypto market. He pointed out that the Federal Reserve's influence on the crypto market has weakened, and the driving force within the crypto field is stronger, including Washington's policy shift to support crypto, increased institutional investment and ETF fund inflows, government and corporate purchases of Bitcoin, and major breakthroughs in blockchain technology. In addition, he mentioned that Bitcoin's 10-day exponential moving average (about $102,000) is still above the 20-day exponential moving average (about $99,000), an indicator that the market trend is still positive. Overall, he believes that the crypto market is in a multi-year bull market, and short-term interest rate adjustments will not change this trend.
Binance released a global user survey report yesterday, with 27,230 respondents sharing their views on the current crypto market and their expectations for 2025. Data shows that nearly 45% of participants will enter the crypto field in 2024, of which 24.52% have joined in the past six months and 20.60% have joined in the past year. Despite the large number of new users, trading activity remains high, with 31.09% of users trading every day. The survey also showed that users' expectations for the crypto market in 2025 focus on more regulation (19.39%), AI tokens leading market growth (23.89%), and wider application of blockchain technology (16.51%). In terms of holdings, the most favored assets by respondents are Memecoins (16.1%), followed by Bitcoin (14.44%) and BNB (14.23%). Binance Spot trading is the most popular product, with 25.89% of users choosing to use it, followed by Binance Earn (25.34%) and Binance Convert (17.33%).
Primitive Ventures investor: 2025 will see more integration of encryption and AI
Marco Manoppo, an investor at Primitive Ventures, shared his experience of missing out on a 100-fold investment opportunity in Virtuals Protocol at X. Marco reflected that although he was exposed to the project early on, he failed to invest in time due to misjudgment of the trend of combining encryption and AI. He emphasized that the Virtuals team achieved rapid iteration through cost advantages in Southeast Asia and stood out in the market with a pragmatic business orientation. Marco predicts that 2025 will usher in more innovations in the integration of encryption and AI, especially in the fields of AI agent tokenization, consumer applications and payments. Related reading: Exclusive interview with Virtuals Protocol co-founder: Benchmarking Bittensor, the AI Agent counterattack behind the 100-fold increase in market value
Important data
FTX/Alameda has sold most of its 25 million WLD holdings, leaving only 334,000
According to Ember's monitoring, the 25 million WLD held by FTX/Alameda have been basically sold. Currently, only 334,000 WLD (about 800,000 US dollars) are left. Data shows that FTX/Alameda addresses transferred a total of 21.856 million WLD (about 58.77 million US dollars) to 5 BitGo custodial wallets today and half a month ago, which may be sold to large investors or institutions through OTC. In addition, since August, they have also transferred 2.809 million WLD to Binance at a frequency of one transaction per week.
Data: USDT premium against Korean won on Upbit reaches 3%, the highest in 26 years
Ki Young Ju, CEO of CryptoQuant, tweeted that Korean won whales are accumulating USDT in large quantities. Currently, USDT is trading at a premium of about 3% against the Korean won on the Upbit exchange, with the price of USDT at 1,559 won. It is worth noting that this unofficial exchange rate level is similar to the level during the IMF financial crisis in 1998, the highest in 26 years.
Fartcoin (FARTCOIN) breaks through $1, hits new all-time high
According to GMGN.AI market data, the Solana chain meme project Fartcoin (FARTCOIN) broke through $1, up 25.1% in 24 hours, and is now quoted at $1.05, a record high, with a market value of more than $1 billion. Earlier news, Binance Alpha announced the second batch of projects: CKP, GEAR, SD, SYRUP and FARTCOIN.
816.3 BTC were transferred out of the Mt. Gox wallet address, worth about $82.12 million
On-chain data shows that the Mt. Gox wallet address transferred 816.3 BTC, worth approximately US$82.12 million.
Marathon Digital has accumulated 1,627 BTC in the past 8 hours, worth about $166 million
According to on-chain data monitored by Lookonchain, Marathon Digital (@MARAHoldings) has accumulated 1,627 BTC in the past 8 hours, worth approximately US$166 million.
World Liberty used 250,000 USDC to purchase 231,726 ENA 4 hours ago
According to Onchain Lens, 4 hours ago, the Trump family crypto project World Liberty used $250,000 USDC to purchase 231,726 ENA and exchanged 103 cbBTC (worth about $10.36 million) for WBTC. World Liberty has made several large on-chain transactions this month, including $30 million USDC to purchase 8,105 ETH, $10 million USDC to purchase 103 cbBTC and exchange them for WBTC, $2 million USDC to purchase 78,387 LINK, $1.91 million USDC to purchase 6,137 AAVE, $750,000 USDC to purchase 741,687 ENA, and $250,000 USDC to purchase 134,216 ONDO.
U.S. stocks closed: Nasdaq fell 3.5%, Dow Jones hit the longest single-day losing streak in 50 years
At the close of the US stock market on Wednesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average initially closed down 2.58%, setting a record for the longest single-day decline since 1974 (the 10th consecutive trading day of decline); the S&P 500 closed down 2.95%, and the Nasdaq closed down 3.6%. Tesla (TSLA.O) fell 8.28%, and Nvidia (NVDA.O) fell 1.14%. The VIX index rose as much as 78.0% during the day, and temporarily reported 28.32 after the US stock market closed. Blockchain concept stocks all fell sharply.
