The biggest crypto news and ideas of the day |
Were you forwarded this newsletter? Sign up here. Don't want this newsletter? Unsubscribe |
|
|
The price of Ethereum's ether (ETH) broke above the $4,000 mark on Friday for the first time since March.
The second-largest cryptocurrency is up 2.4% in the last 24 hours and 8.4% in the last seven days, outperforming bitcoin (BTC) in both timeframes. The move comes as spot ether exchange-traded funds saw record inflows on Thursday. As of writing, ether is trading for $4,033, just 2% away from setting a fresh 2024 high. It's also a mere 20% away from its all-time high of $4,868. The ETH/BTC ratio, which has been getting hammered since September 2022, has reached 0.04 again — a level that marked a brief top for ether in relation to bitcoin on Nov. 10.
The Coinbase premium on ether also continues to expand — meaning that ether is trading for a higher price on the exchange than on the most liquid crypto exchange, Binance. Coinbase premiums are generally seen as a sign of demand among U.S. institutional investors as well as retail participants. TradingView data shows a slight increase in ether's price on Coinbase relative to Binance, suggesting the market is driven by activity from the U.S., which coincided with the U.S. market opening around an hour ago. That's not all. Glassnode data shows that active addresses on Ethereum have shot up on a 7-day moving average from 368,000 to 523,000 from Sept. 24 to Dec. 5, indicating an expansion of on-chain activity, which in turn ends up benefitting ether by constraining its the token’s supply through the "burn" mechanism. |
|
|
Welcome to XION, the first walletless layer-one blockchain purpose-built for consumer adoption — no wallets, no keys, no hassle — just innovation. With XION, developers can build, launch, and scale products that are ready for the masses, thanks to novel Chain Abstraction infrastructure. All it takes to join the crypto revolution? An email. Ready to take the leap? Explore XION today at xion.burnt.com |
|
|
DYdX Surges on Sacks Appointment |
President-elect Donald Trump has named David Sacks as the White House's AI and Crypto Czar, announcing the appointment in a TruthSocial post Thursday night.
"David will guide policy for the Administration in Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrency, two areas critical to the future of American competitiveness. David will focus on making America the clear global leader in both areas," Trump posted.
Sacks is a limited partner in MultiCoin Capital, having come on board in March 2018, in addition to being a general partner and co-founder at Craft Ventures, which counts BitGo and Bitwise as portfolio companies.
In the hours after the news, dYdX, the native token of the decentralized crypto exchange by the same name, surged over 30%. Sacks' Craft Ventures was an early investor, participating in a Series A round that raised $10 million.
Trump said that one of Sacks' responsibilities will be to "safeguard Free Speech online, and steer us away from Big Tech bias and censorship."
"[Sacks] will work on a legal framework so the Crypto industry has the clarity it has been asking for, and can thrive in the U.S," Trump said.
Sacks is the former chief operating officer of PayPal, where he worked alongside Elon Musk. Sacks is part of the "PayPal Mafia," a group of former employees of the payment processor who went on to create or lead major technology companies like Tesla, LinkedIn, Palantir and YouTube.
The news comes a day after Trump named former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins as his pick to head up the securities regulator when he takes office next month. Atkins works with The Digital Chamber, an industry lobbying group and is an adviser to Reserve and Securitize. |
|
|
Bitcoin’s Pumping. Memes Are Minting Millionaires. The bear market’s snoozing, and the bull run is here.
Consensus Hong Kong is where you level up, make moves and position yourself to win. Top global leaders will be there. Will you?
Prices rise Dec. 13 at 10 a.m. ET/ 11 p.m. HKT—save $700 and get an extra 15% off with code NODE15. Don’t miss out. Register today. |
|
|
Markets See Trump Bump - Citi |
Bitcoin (BTC) reached an all-time high above $100,000 earlier this week as a number of tailwinds fueled a post-U.S.-election rally in the world's largest cryptocurrency, Citi (C) said in a research report on Thursday.
"The nomination of digital asset-friendly Paul Atkins to chair the SEC provided the final boost," that saw bitcoin break through $100,000 to record highs, analysts led by Alex Saunders wrote. Bitcoin continues to be bolstered by exchange-traded fund (ETF) flows and other buying as adoption grows, the bank noted.
The macro environment is also constructive for digital assets. Loose financial conditions and resilient growth are positive for crypto tokens, Citi said.
"Other digital assets likely have more to gain from a more permissive regulatory environment," the authors wrote, noting that bitcoin's dominance has fallen. Citi said it hasn't seen a notable rise in on-chain activity.
Over the longer term, the bank said a network's utility or value will be linked to its usage, macro correlations and production costs.
A new, more benign regulatory system could unlock more and wider use cases for blockchain assets, the report added.
More permissive crypto policies should broaden the asset class, Citi said, but bitcoin, which has already been classified as a commodity, and has both a spot ETF and a futures contract, has less to gain than other tokens. |
Successful Trading Takes More Than a Bull Market Choosing the right exchange is crucial throughout the business cycle. This has been a very, very good month to trade in crypto. People who regularly read CoinDesk are making money just by checking their phone alerts. And yet, this environment isn’t as kind to the exchanges. Continue reading here. |
A heavyweight from the once-hot NFT era is now getting into the cryptocurrency issuance game. Pudgy Penguins launched three years ago as a set of 8,888 NFTs depicting colorful and comical birds. Now, the team behind the project tells CoinDesk that they will release a token called PENGU this year on the Solana blockchain.
Nearly a quarter — 23.5% — of the 88 billion PENGU tokens will be reserved for owners of the project's NFT collections like Pudgy Penguins, Lil Pudgys, Pudgy Rods and more. A further 22.02% will be available to the Solana and Ethereum communities, while 12.32% are set aside to provide liquidity on decentralized exchanges.
"With $PENGU, the millions of Pudgy Penguin fans and the hundreds of millions of people who see and share the Pudgy Penguin every day now get the opportunity to align themselves with the character and become a part of The Huddle," the team shared in a statement.
Pudgy is among the rare collections that managed to stay culturally relevant in the otherwise dreadful NFT business following the price crash from the 2021-2022 bull market. Many NFTs lacked real utility beyond being a digital brag. It was also difficult to fully realize gains after price bumps — as market liquidity was often inadequate to fill orders.
The pivot comes as fun tokens and memecoins, unlike NFTs, have taken off and flourished in the last two years. Liquidity, relative cheapness, virality and ease-of-use are key reasons why people have flocked to these latest hot asset classes — even though fun tokens and memecoins fundamentally represent the same idea as NFT collections did: belonging to a passionate community. Official Pudgy Penguins channels have over 3 million followers across Instagram, X, TikTok and YouTube, and videos involving the characters have notched 32 billion views on Giphy.
One of the brand's TikTok accounts is focused on spreading good vibes under the "Pudgy Kindness" moniker — popularizing it as a feel-good service in the mainstream, outside of crypto circles. |
The Takeaway: Proof of Chokepoint 2.0 |
By Ben Schiller
So, now we know. Operation Chokepoint 2.0 was real. There really was a co-ordinated federal government effort to de-bank crypto following the collapse of three mid-sized crypto-friendly lenders (Signature, Silvergate and Silicon Valley Bank) in March 2023.
The crypto industry, led by VC-commentator Nic Carter, has long suspected and railed against de-banking. But, until today, we didn’t have much documentary evidence.
Friday morning, internal communications at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp were released after a research firm (History Associates Inc.) hired by Coinbase sued to get them uncovered.
“The heavily-redacted documents emerged on Friday, showing the banking regulator slamming the brakes on lenders offering or considering products and services in the digital assets sector,” CoinDesk’s Jesse Hamilton wrote in his report today. "We respectfully ask that you pause all crypto asset-related activity," the FDIC wrote in one of 23 internal letters released by Coinbase. "The FDIC will notify all FDIC-supervised banks at a later date when a determination has been made on the supervisory expectations for engaging in crypto asset-related activity."
The FDIC and other regulators have long denied they pressured the three struggling banks to stop banking crypto companies, many of which were suffering following the collapse of FTX and others in late-2022. "The letters show that this was no conspiracy theory at all, that this was not just rank speculation or the musings of a paranoid industry," Grewal told Hamilton. "There was a concerted plan on the part of the FDIC that they carried out — without any reluctance — to deny banking services to a legal American industry. That should give everyone great pause." Debanking has been a hot issue recently, after mega-VC Marc Andreessen discussed Operation Chokepoint 2.0 on Joe Rogan’s podcast. The House Committee on Financial Services heard testimony from several crypto leaders this week attesting to difficulties gaining banking services.
The heavily redacted letters show FDIC demanding onerous compliance information while being unclear as to what was actually required of the banks before they could approve the provision of financial services to the businesses. Hamilton writes that some letters show the “agency wasn't yet sure what regulatory filings would even be required before it could green-light crypto business.” Grewal said Coinbase will petition the court to allow the documents to be released unredacted. Aside from hurting the crypto industry, critics argue financial services are a fundamental right and that the federal government should not be able to effectively outlaw legal businesses. Operation Chokepoint 2.0 is a reference to an official Obama Administration policy to restrict financial services to payday lenders, gun sellers and other “undesirable” businesses. It’s now clear that de-banking was as much a matter for crypto as it was for porn, which says a lot about the current administration’s attitude towards it. |
|
|
|
