According to the Fed's official website, in 2025, the Fed will welcome two "hawkish" voting members, one "dovish" voting member and one neutral voting member. Chicago Fed President Austan D. Goolsbee, Boston Fed President Susan M. Collins, St. Louis Fed President Alberto G. Musalem, and Kansas City Fed President Jeffrey R. Schmid will become new rotating voting members to replace the four rotating voting members in 2024: Richmond Fed President Thomas I. Barkin, Atlanta Fed President Raphael W. Bostic, San Francisco Fed President Mary C. Daly, and Cleveland Fed President Beth M. Hammack. Bloomberg analysis believes that in 2025, the positions of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) voting members will be more dispersed, and the neutrality will decrease, which may lead to more differences. Barron's believes that the rotating voting committee may make the Fed's decision-making in 2025 lean toward the "hawks". Reuters analysis believes that over time, Fed policymakers may find their differences again, especially when the labor market cools faster than inflation. The increase in hawkish voting members in the Federal Open Market Committee may increase the risk of disagreement, although this may not change the policy outcome. The Fed's official website shows that the Fed will hold a total of 8 meetings in 2025, in January, March, May, June, July, September, October and December. The dot plot released by the Federal Reserve in December 2024 shows that the Federal Reserve has lowered the number of future interest rate cuts, reducing the number of interest rate cuts in 2025 from 4 predicted in September to 2, and the median forecast for the interest rate has been raised from 3.4% in September to 3.9%.
Aave governance proposal to link Ethena’s USDe to USDT sparks community concerns
According to Protos, the Aave governance forum recently proposed a proposal to link USDe to Tether's USDT at a 1:1 ratio, a suggestion that has raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest, especially given the difference in decoupling risks between the two. The proposal, which is currently in the consultation stage, aims to replace the existing Chainlink USDe/USD oracle by hard-coding the USDe price to match the USDT price in the Aave pricing feed to ensure seamless integration and reduce disruptions caused by USDe price fluctuations. However, the two co-authors of the proposal are from ChaosLabs and LlamaRisk, risk management companies associated with Ethena, which has raised questions about conflicts of interest from MakerDAO community member "ImperiumPaper", who likened it to a real estate agent representing both buyers and sellers. In addition, Tether is (ostensibly) fully backed by off-chain assets, ensuring that USDT can be exchanged for dollars at a 1:1 ratio off-chain. In contrast, USDe is supported by a Delta neutral balance of long and short positions and faces the risk of "continuous negative funding rates", which could happen if market sentiment turns bearish. One user likened the move to an “aggressive growth proposal,” while another criticized the circular logic of acknowledging different risks and then treating assets as having the same value instead of taking appropriate action. In response, Ethena founder Guy Young denied any conflict of interest and highlighted the project’s risk committee, which is designed to “provide external discipline and accountability for the ongoing management of the product.”
Interactive Brokers is taking action to significantly reduce its exposure to MSTR
According to Bitcoin News, Interactive Brokers is tightening its exposure to MicroStrategy (ticker: MSTR) by gradually increasing margin requirements to a minimum of 50% on January 13, 2025. This is a clear sign that they are preparing for the upcoming large fluctuations.
Vitalik: Many crypto technologies can be used in the subject area of d/acc
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin shared his latest views on d/acc (decentralized acceleration) in his latest blog post, pointing out that there is actually an important connection between d/acc and cryptocurrency. d/acc extends the underlying values of cryptocurrency, such as decentralization, censorship resistance, and open economic and social concepts, to other technical fields. As early adopters, cryptocurrency users' communities naturally become testing grounds for d/acc technology. The community attaches great importance to practice rather than empty talk, making the cryptocurrency community an ideal incubator for d/acc technology, especially in group-oriented fields such as information and biodefense. Cryptocurrency practitioners are good at working together. In addition, cryptocurrency technologies such as blockchain and zero-knowledge proofs can be applied to the construction of d/acc's financial, governance and social media infrastructure, and to protect privacy. Today, many prediction markets are based on blockchain and are becoming more complex, decentralized, and democratized. Collaboration on cryptocurrency-related technologies, such as formal verification, hardware and software security, and adversarial robustness governance techniques, is beneficial to cryptocurrency projects and is key to the d/acc goal of enhancing the security and robustness of the Ethereum blockchain, wallets, and DAOs, while reducing vulnerability to cyberattacks (including the threat of superintelligent AI). In addition to these direct intersections, there is another critical common concern: funding mechanisms. This is another way that the cryptocurrency community can help d/acc: by carefully exploring these funding mechanisms and making them work in their own environment, preparing for the wider adoption of open source science and technology more broadly. There will be two major challenges in the coming decades: one is the rapid development of new technologies, especially artificial intelligence, which may bring positive or negative results, and the specific time is unknown; the other is the reduction of international cooperation and the pursuit of self-interest by many actors. But he also sees hope: first, we have powerful tools to accelerate the progress of work, such as artificial intelligence to help the development of other technologies, brain-computer interfaces to improve productivity, the Internet and social media to expand the scope of coordination, cryptocurrencies to enhance financial power, and information defense and collaboration tools to improve quality. In addition, there have been significant advances in cybersecurity technology, software writing, biodefense, and biotechnology. Second, broad alliances can recapture cherished principles. Cryptocurrencies have won global acceptance, and d/acc has the potential to do the same. Having tools means we can improve organisms and the environment, and the "defense" in d/acc ensures that this is achieved without infringing on the freedom of others. Liberal pluralism allows for diversity, and common human goals drive us to complete the task. Faced with the task of building a brighter 21st century, although it is daunting, he believes that humans are up to it.
Later in the news, Vitalik proposed to implement a global "soft pause button" at the hardware level to replace the dangerous AGI race .
Artificial Superintelligence Alliance plans to burn 5 million FET tokens on January 10
The Artificial Superintelligence Alliance announced on the X platform that it plans to carry out the first destruction of 5 million FET tokens on January 10, thereby creating deflationary pressure in its ecosystem. This milestone is also part of the ASI Train model in its roadmap.
Caixin: Bitcoin, FAAMNG and Cocoa are the top performers in the global market in 2024
According to Caixin.com, 2024 will be a bull year for both Chinese stocks and bonds. Among global assets, virtual currencies and U.S. technology stocks have performed well. The strong dollar has put pressure on global exchange rates. In terms of global market performance in 2024, the first tier is mainly scarce assets: cocoa (NYBOT futures price), which has the highest increase, has increased by 169.36% throughout the year, Bitcoin (BTC) has increased by 133.83%, and FAAMNG (the six U.S. technology giants: Facebook; Amazon; Apple; Microsoft; Netflix; Google) has increased by 60.77%. In addition, Ethereum has increased by 53.41% throughout the year, NYMEX natural gas has increased by 45.49% throughout the year, and the Nasdaq index has increased by 30.78%. The annual increase of these assets has exceeded 30%.
Nick Tomaino, founder of 1confirmation, posted on the X platform that it is likely that countries will soon compete to try to adopt MicroStrategy's "Bitcoin script": issuing government bonds of different maturities (5-year, 7-year, 10-year, etc.); using bonds to purchase cryptocurrencies; repaying loans on time according to the loan term. Nick Tomaino added that the question now is not whether countries will do this, but what kind of cryptocurrency they will buy, which may start with BTC, but the next one will be ETH, and any currency with sufficient decentralization can participate in it, and the government bond market is larger than the stock market.
Michael Saylor, founder of MicroStrategy, released information about Bitcoin Tracker for the ninth consecutive week, but this time it was different from the previous ones. He said: "Something is not quite right on the website." (Note: Every time MicroStrategy bought BTC, the website would mark a green dot on the corresponding date, and the BTC price trend line would be blue.) According to previous rules, MicroStrategy always increased its holdings of Bitcoin the day after the relevant news was released.
According to Tribune, a bizarre case of a cryptocurrency trader being kidnapped in a police car occurred in Pakistan. It is reported that the cryptocurrency trader was kidnapped by five men in a police car and forced to transfer $340,000 from his mobile phone at gunpoint. The perpetrator claimed to be a policeman. At present, the local police have filed a case on the matter and have transferred it to the Anti-Violent Crime Team (AVCC) for further investigation. It is reported that the victim claimed that the suspect had contacted him for cryptocurrency transactions before, but he refused. According to police sources, evidence has been collected about the police's mobile phone and the officers involved.
GSR Markets has deposited 6 million FLOCK tokens into CEX
According to @ai_9684xtpa, GSR Markets is the market maker for the AI infrastructure project $FLOCK. Five days ago (the first day of the token launch), GSR address 0x113…2320b received 6 million FLOCK tokens distributed by the project's multi-signature address for market making, accounting for 4.65% of the total circulation (0.6% of the total tokens). Currently, all tokens have been recharged to Gate / MEXC / Bybit exchanges.
Bitcoin network transaction volume exceeds $19 trillion in 2024, more than double that of 2023
According to a post and chart shared by Riot Platforms vice president of research Pierre Rochard, in 2024, the Bitcoin network completed more than $19 trillion worth of BTC transactions, more than double the $8.7 trillion in 2023. The surge marks a major reversal after two consecutive years of declining transaction volumes since 2021. During the 2021 bull run, Bitcoin transaction volume peaked at $47 trillion, but plummeted sharply in the following two years.
Token Unlocks data shows that APT, MOVE, KAS and other tokens will be unlocked in large amounts next week, including:
- Movement (MOVE) will unlock approximately 50 million tokens at 8:00 pm Beijing time on January 9, accounting for 2.22% of the current circulation and worth approximately US$53 million;
- io.net (IO) will unlock approximately 3.22 million tokens at 8:00 pm Beijing time on January 11, accounting for 2.50% of the current circulation, with a value of approximately US$11.8 million;
- Kaspa (KAS) will unlock approximately 182 million tokens at 8:00 a.m. on January 6 (GMT+8), accounting for 0.72% of the current circulation and worth approximately $22.7 million.
- Axie Infinity (AXS) will unlock approximately 815,000 tokens at 9:10 pm Beijing time on January 12, accounting for 0.52% of the current circulation and worth approximately US$5.6 million;
- Aptos (APT) will unlock approximately 11.31 million tokens at 9:59 am Beijing time on January 11, accounting for 2.03% of the current circulation and worth approximately US$110 million;
- Ethena (ENA) will unlock approximately 12.86 million tokens at 3:00 pm Beijing time on January 8, accounting for 0.42% of the current circulation, with a value of approximately US$16.2 million;
- Optimism (OP) will unlock approximately 4.47 million tokens at 4:00 a.m. Beijing time on January 10, accounting for 0.33% of the current circulation, with a value of approximately US$9.3 million;
- Delysium (AGI) will unlock approximately 33.59 million tokens at 8:00 am Beijing time on January 6, accounting for 2.45% of the current circulation and worth approximately US$5 million;
- Eigenlayer (EIGEN) will unlock approximately 1.29 million tokens at 3:00 a.m. Beijing time on January 8, accounting for 0.61% of the current circulation and worth approximately US$5.2 million.
