The Block
Quick Take The price of bitcoin touched the $93,900 level for the first time ever on Tuesday. BlackRock’s IBIT saw nearly $2 billion in notional exposure traded.
Quick Take The United States Internal Revenue Service has finalized a controversial tax rule requiring ‘DeFi brokers’ to collect user trading information. Bojan Božović, Montenegro’s Minister of Justice, signed Do Kwon’s extradition to the U.S. Bitcoin holds above $96,000 while investors look to AI and DeFi tokens for growth opportunities. The following article is adapted from The Block’s newsletter, The Daily, which comes out on weekday afternoons.
Quick Take President-elect Donald Trump has nominated the crypto-friendly Howard Lutnick to lead the U.S. Department of Commerce. Shares in the Japanese investment firm Metaplanet gained more than 15% on Tuesday after the company announced its latest bitcoin acquisition. Tokenization firm Securitize has introduced the “sToken,” a new way to gain liquidity from real-world assets while still earning a yield, using the ERC-4626 token standard. The following article is adapted from The Block’s newsletter, The
Quick Take Forta has launched Firewall, a new web3 security tool designed to identify and prevent smart contract exploits. Forta raised $23 million in 2021 and is backed by a16z, Coinbase Ventures and others.
Quick Take If Paxos’ bid to acquire Finland-based regulated electronic money institution Membrane Finance is approved by regulators, the company would have access to the entire E.U. trading bloc.
Quick Take Howard Lutnick, CEO of global financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald, was one of the names tapped to lead the Treasury Department. Lutnick’s firm has served as a custodian for Tether since 2021.
Quick Take iAgent deploys OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other large language models so that users can command the AI agent to complete Injective-based tasks. Users can create numerous, independent agents to accomplish individualized goals, such as one that tracks market data while the other enacts trades.
Quick Take The exchange said it will delist the token in December, though users will still be able to move the wBTC off the exchange. In August long-time custodian BitGo announced it was ceding partial control over the wBTC protocol in a “strategic partnership” with Justin Sun and the TRON ecosystem. Coinbase’s version of wrapped bitcoin, cbBTC, has seen its market cap grow to nearly $1.5 billion in a matter of months.
Quick Take Key names, including former SEC Commissioner and Robinhood Chief Legal Officer Dan Gallagher, former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins and partner at Willkie Farr & Gallagher Robert Stebbins, could all be reportedly tapped to lead the SEC. As of Tuesday morning, a person familiar with SEC chairmanship talks said that Trump’s team had not yet made a decision.
Quick Take BlackRock’s IBIT, the largest Bitcoin ETF with nearly $45 billion AUM, was the first to be approved for options trading. Firms have been looking to list and trade options for their spot Bitcoin funds following the SEC’s approval of 11 BTC ETFs in January.
