From the bear market low of $15,487 in November 2022, Bitcoin has surged more than 573%, and its price is up 130% so far this year. The current bull run reflects strong institutional demand, led by ETFs and spot accumulation. Historical data suggests that we are in the middle of the cycle, after the halving in April 2024, and the market may peak around Q3-Q4 2025, about 450 days after the halving.

Riot Platforms announced that it used the proceeds from the recent issuance of $594 million, 0.75% convertible bonds to purchase 667 bitcoins at an average price of $101,135 per bitcoin (spending approximately $67.457 million). This acquisition increased its total bitcoin holdings to 17,429, with a total market value of approximately $1.8 billion based on the current market price of $17,429 per bitcoin. Through this acquisition and mining production so far this year, Riot's return per BTC is 36.7% quarter-to-date and 37.2% year-to-date.

Stablecoin issuer Ethena announced that it has publicly launched a new stablecoin product called USDtb in partnership with real-world asset tokenization company Securitize. USDtb’s reserve funds are invested in BlackRock’s USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL).

According to MicroStrategy's latest 8-K filing, MicroStrategy announced that between December 9, 2024 and December 15, 2024, the company has sold a total of 3,884,712 shares under the Sales Agreement, generating a total of approximately $1.54 billion in net proceeds (after deducting sales commissions). As of December 15, 2024, there are still approximately $7.65 billion of shares available for issuance and sale under the Sales Agreement.

The Aave community received a proposal from contributor team Aave Chan to withdraw its lending services from Polygon's Proof of Stake (PoS) chain. This action is in response to another proposal from the Polygon community, which plans to use more than $1 billion in bridge assets for yield generation. Aave is the largest decentralized application on Polygon by total locked value, with more than $466 million in deposits on the PoS chain.

Michael Saylor, co-founder and executive chairman of Microstrategy, said on the X platform that MicroStrategy spent about $1.5 billion (about $100,386 per bitcoin) to increase its holdings of 15,350 bitcoins, and achieved a quarterly total return (QTD) of 46.4% and an annual total return (YTD) of 72.4%. As of December 15, 2024, MicroStrategy holds 439,000 bitcoins, which were acquired at a price of about $61,725 per bitcoin, worth about $27.1 billion.

Binance HODLer airdrops are now live for Phase 4 and 5 projects - Simon's Cat (CAT) and Pudgy Penguins (PENGU). Between 08:00 on December 9, 2024 and 07:59 on December 13, 2024 (ET), users who subscribe to the regular and/or current products on the HODLer platform with BNB will receive the airdrop allocation. HODLer airdrop information is expected to be available within twelve hours, and the new tokens will be distributed to users' spot wallets 1 hour before trading begins.

Richard Teng, CEO of crypto exchange Binance, said on X platform that as interest increases and fear of missing out (FOMO) spreads, many of my friends are asking if now is the best time to invest in cryptocurrencies. Here is a reminder: please do your own research (DYOR) and make sure you understand the field before getting involved. In the long run - we are still in the early stages.

The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said in a document on its upcoming cryptocurrency regulatory regime on Monday that the UK intends to ban the public offering of cryptocurrencies. The government will introduce laws to ban the public sale of cryptocurrencies, which will draw on the UK's promotion rules to prohibit unregistered cryptocurrency companies from approaching UK customers. Only crypto asset trading platforms and products that meet the exemption conditions will be exempt from this restriction.

Cosmos shared its "Plan for Reforming Cosmos and Cosmos Hub Ecosystem Growth" on the X platform: The growth of liquidity within Cosmos and Cosmos Hub will become Interchain Inc.'s top priority in 2025, with the goal of increasing Cosmos' liquidity 10 times in the first 12 months. Two specific strategies include: 1. Building and investing in a "world-class" ecosystem growth team; 2. Unleashing the Cosmos Hub to drive ecosystem growth.

Binance will launch VANA 1-75x U-margin perpetual contracts at 21:30 (ET) on December 16, 2024. In addition, Binance Finance, One-Click Coin Buying, Flash Exchange Trading Platform, Leverage, and Fixed Investment Platform will also launch Vana (VANA).

The mainnet of Vana, a decentralized AI data liquidity network, is now live, with the launch of VANA staking. Testnet community rewards include: users who participated in the early DataDAO pre-mining through Aurora Cohort (as a Data Hero or directly); community builders on Vana Discord; V on vana NFT holders. The snapshot was completed on December 13, 2024, and airdrop eligibility query is now open.

Binance announced that the launch of Vana (VANA) originally scheduled for 18:00 Beijing time today will be postponed to 19:30 today.

Digital asset investment products continued to attract inflows last week, totaling $3.2 billion, the tenth consecutive week of inflows. Year-to-date, inflows have totaled $44.5 billion, more than four times the amount in any other year. ETPs trade an average of $21 billion per week, accounting for 30% of all Bitcoin traded on trusted exchanges. Bitcoin is highly liquid on trusted exchanges, averaging $8.3 billion per day this year, double that of the FTSE 100. Regional flows saw inflows across all regions, with sentiment generally positive, with the most notable inflows coming from the United States, Switzerland, Germany, and Brazil, at $3.1 billion, $36 million, $33 million, and $25 million, respectively.

Can HKEX’s new index bring stability and confidence to the Asian crypto market?