The Block
Quick Take Solana, which has seen strong on-chain activity over the past few months, climbed above the $200 mark to trade at $201 at one stage today. The U.S. stock markets closed at record highs on Thursday.
Quick Take X co-founder Jack Dorsey’s payment firm Block said it will increase investment in its bitcoin mining business. Block said it will cut back investments in music streaming app Tidal and wind down the decentralized web platform developer team at TBD.
Quick Take MARA, the largest publicly-listed miner in the U.S., acquired 15,574 BTC for about $1.53 billion. Hut 8, the eighth-largest public miner by market cap, acquired 990 bitcoin for approximately $100 million.
Quick Take A German regulator, the Bavarian State Office for Data Protection Supervision, ordered World, the human-verification project previously known as Worldcoin, to delete biometric data collected from scanning people’s eyeballs. World said that it has changed its processes, and the results of the German regulator’s investigation “largely” pertains “to outdated operations and technologies that have been replaced in 2024.”
Bitcoin’s market cap has reached 14% of gold’s market cap, marking a new all-time high.Additionally, bitcoin ETFs have surpassed gold ETFs in AUM.
Quick Take Ark Invest offloaded 13,780 Coinbase shares on Wednesday — worth $3.9 million — as the investment firm rebalanced its fund weightings. Coinbase stock closed at $279.86 on Dec. 18, down over 10% following Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s hawkish speech.
Quick Take The Securities and Futures Commission said it approved licenses to four additional exchanges under its “swift licensing process.” The newly approved exchanges were HKbitEX, Accumulus, DFX Labs and EX.IO.
Quick Take El Salvador has reached a deal with the IMF to limit various bitcoin-related activities in exchange for a loan of $1.4 billion. Specific requirements of the deal include limiting the public sector’s bitcoin purchases, and the wind-down of public bitcoin wallet Chivo.
Bitcoin fell below the $100,000 mark on Wednesday following Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell’s comments.Powell spoke against the idea of a U.S. national bitcoin reserve, while giving a hawkish 2025 outlook.
Quick Take A California judge has ruled that Coinbase can delist wrapped bitcoin while denying BiT Global’s request for a temporary restraining order. Coinbase announced it would remove the tokenized bitcoin product after its custodian partnered with the Hong Kong-based firm with ties to Justin Sun. A Coinbase representative said the exchange may look to sanction the plaintiffs for bringing a spurious lawsuit.
