A Hard New Year's Eve for Orbit 🛸
In today’s edition: 📚 SBF charges reduced, 💻 Vitalik unveils roadmap, 🎉 Avalanche rides meme wave, 💼 OKX drops privacy tokens, and more!
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What’s Poppin’?
by Sage Young and Brandy Betz
Avalanche Foundation Jumps on the Memecoin Wave
The nonprofit organization announced plans to purchase joke and humor-based tokens for a $100 million portfolio “to recognize and encourage the culture and fun symbolized by meme coins.”
Privacy Coin Prices Tumble as OKX Plans Delisting
The crypto exchange will delist eight tokens for failing to meet its listing criteria, including privacy tokens XMR, DASH, ZEC and ZEN.
Why The Spot Bitcoin ETF Is a Big Deal
Spot Bitcoin ETFs, possibly arriving by January 10th, offer a new way to invest in Bitcoin’s value, potentially boosting institutional involvement and regulatory clarity in crypto.
As 2023 nears its end, the crypto community is abuzz with speculation: will the relentless crypto winter give way in 2024? Crypto OG Arthur Hayes is confident that crypto is on an upswing. According to Hayes, these market cycles are historically recurrent, indicating a potential bull run in the near future.
In this episode, Hayes offers his insights on a range of compelling topics, from what he believes will be a resurgence of central bank money printing between 2024 and 2027 to the effect spot Bitcoin ETFs will have on crypto markets.
He also shares his views on the post-FTX blockchain landscape, the dynamics of Ethereum and memecoins, and why he thinks Tether won’t last.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Pandora, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Or watch it on YouTube.
The Chopping Block: How Jito Helped Put Solana on the Map Again
This week, Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, and Tarun Chitra are joined by Lucas Bruder, co-founder and CEO of Jito Labs, an infrastructure provider that mitigates the impact of maximum extractable value (MEV) on Solana — specifically spam and wasted block space. He and the gang discuss how the Jito airdrop this month helped rejuvenate Solana; how Jito differs from Flashbots, its counterpart on Ethereum; Solana’s potential scalability; and how Solana believers have been vindicated by the developments of the last few months.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Pandora, Castbox, Google Podcasts, TuneIn, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Or Watch it on YouTube.
Daily Bits…✍️✍️✍️
🚨 Orbit Chain's cross-chain bridge was reportedly hacked, resulting in the theft of $81.5 million in various cryptocurrencies and stablecoins.
⚖️ U.S. prosecutors dropped remaining charges against Sam Bankman-Fried, including foreign bribery and bank fraud, focusing on his original trial's outcomes.
🛣️ Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin shared an updated roadmap for 2024, focusing on enhancements like the Merge, Surge, and other key developments.
📉 A U.S. judge ruled against Terraform Labs and its founder, declaring four crypto assets as unregistered securities and revealing the Chai payments app didn't use blockchain.
📊 The SEC is expected to notify approved ETF issuers soon, potentially ahead of a January 10 launch, with firms like Ark Investments and 21Shares awaiting decisions.
🏦 BlackRock and Valkyrie, both applying for spot bitcoin ETFs, appointed authorized participants including J.P. Morgan and Jane Street for ETF management.
✈️ Binance founder Changpeng "CZ" Zhao's request for international travel was denied again by a U.S. judge due to flight risk concerns.
⛏️ Bitcoin miners offloaded $129 million worth of BTC in a day, pushing their reserves to the lowest level since May.
🎣 Crypto phishing scams affected over 324,000 victims in 2023, leading to losses of nearly $300 million in digital assets, as reported by Scam Sniffer.
🎨 As the year-end tax deadline loomed, there was a notable increase in NFT tax loss harvesting, with services emerging to help traders sell worthless NFTs for tax benefits.
🔍 India's Bharat Web3 Association urged action against offshore crypto entities, leading to government-issued notices and potential regulatory measures.
What Do You Meme?
Recommended Reads
Unchained: What Is Decentralized File Sharing And How Does It Work?
DL News: Fraud vs innovation: How Asia’s crypto watchdogs will struggle to strike a balance in 2024
The Block: Looking back at eyeball-scanner Worldcoin's tumultuous year
📈 Your Market Update 📉
BTC is down .8%, trading at $42,769
ETH is down 1.4%, trading at $2,367
BTC dominance: 47.56%
Crypto market cap: $1.76T
*All data as of today, 06:10 am ET. Source: CoinGecko
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