Cryptocurrency Market Performance

Currently, the total cryptocurrency market capitalization is $3.64 trillion, with BTC accounting for 55.15%, which is $2.01 trillion. The stablecoin market capitalization is $201.1 billion, with a 7-day increase of 2.66%, of which USDT accounts for 69.46%.

This week, the price of BTC has shown a fluctuating upward trend, with the current price at $102,182; ETH has shown range-bound fluctuations, with the current price at $3,934.

CoinMarketCap's top 200 projects, most have declined, and a small portion have increased, among which: BGB has a 7-day increase of 42.07%, BabyDoge has a 7-day increase of 93.46%, and SUSHI has a 7-day increase of 34.97%.

This week, the net inflow of the US Bitcoin spot ETF was $2.174 billion; the net inflow of the US Ethereum spot ETF was $846.1 million.

The "Fear & Greed Index" on December 14th was 83 (lower than the previous week), and the sentiment this week was 5 days of greed and 2 days of extreme greed.

According to CME's "Fed Watch", the probability of the Fed maintaining the current interest rate in December is 3.3%, and the probability of a 25 basis point rate cut is 96.7%.

Market forecast: Stablecoins will continue to be issued, ETFs will see net inflows, and with the expectation of Fed rate cuts, BTC may show fluctuating upward trends, and the AI track can be focused on.

Understanding the Present

Review of the Week's Major Events

1. On December 9th, Trump: There are no plans to ask Powell to resign as Fed Chair at this time;

2. On December 9th, according to Scam Sniffer monitoring, the stolen DEXX funds are currently being transferred to Tornado Cash, with about 1,000 ETH deposited so far;

3. Morgan Stanley: Expects the Fed to cut rates by 25 basis points in December and January;

4. On December 11th, Solana announced the launch of the first Solana AI Hackathon, aiming to build AI agents and tools on Solana, supported by SEND AI and leading teams in the Solana ecosystem. Prizes range from $5,000 to $30,000, to encourage serious Crypto x AI projects that can attract venture capital or launch their own tokens. Submissions will open on December 15th through a form where project teams can provide all project details, including GitHub code repositories, a 2-minute demo/pitch video, and a 10-page pitch document;

5. On December 11th, according to the voting results, Microsoft's major shareholders on Tuesday rejected the company's Bitcoin investment proposal.

The Microsoft board had earlier urged shareholders to reject a proposal from the National Center for Public Policy Research, which suggested the company invest 1% of its total assets in Bitcoin to hedge against inflation.

At the annual meeting, MicroStrategy founder Michael Saylor gave a three-minute speech trying to convince Microsoft shareholders to support the proposal. Data shows that Microsoft's largest shareholders are institutional investors, including Vanguard and BlackRock;

6. On December 11th, Ripple Labs CEO Brad Garlinghouse posted on social media that the Ripple stablecoin RLUSD has received final approval from the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS). You will hear the news first from Ripple when RLUSD goes live on exchanges;

7. On December 13th, according to TheBlock, CNBC's Jim Cramer asked Trump in a TV interview today, "Are you still embracing cryptocurrencies, considering building a Bitcoin strategy reserve in the crypto space?" Trump replied, "I think so, we want to do some great things with cryptocurrencies, because we don't want other big nations to be leading the way, other countries are embracing it, and we want to be the leader."

Macroeconomics

1. On December 12th, according to a public document, the US SEC is seeking public comments on the proposed Bitwise Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs to be listed on the NYSE. The Bitwise Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF is a proposed spot cryptocurrency index fund consisting of BTC and ETH;

2. On December 12th, according to Cointelegraph, Coinbase is preparing to delist Tether's USDT stablecoin in Europe. Coinbase said it will evaluate the re-enablement of stablecoin services at a later time to achieve MiCA compliance. As the European cryptocurrency regulation deadline approaches, European cryptocurrency trading platforms are preparing to delist non-compliant stablecoins in the region;

3. On December 13th, Musk revealed that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has issued a settlement demand to him, requiring him to accept a fine within 48 hours, or face multiple charges related to "Twitter share purchases, sales and disclosures". The SEC is investigating whether Musk engaged in securities fraud prior to his acquisition of Twitter (now X) in 2022, including whether his sale of Tesla stock and purchase of Twitter shares violated disclosure obligations;

4. On December 13th, according to CME's "Fed Watch", the probability of the Fed maintaining the current interest rate in December is 3.3%, and the probability of a 25 basis point rate cut is 96.7%.

ETF

According to statistics, during the period of December 9th to December 13th, the net inflow of the US Bitcoin spot ETF was $2.174 billion; as of December 13th, GBTC (Grayscale) has a total outflow of $20.99 billion, currently holding $21.484 billion, and IBIT (BlackRock) currently holds $54.051 billion. The total market value of the US Bitcoin spot ETFs is $116.868 billion.

The net inflow of the US Ethereum spot ETF was $846.1 million.

Envisioning the Future

Event Preview

1. CoinDesk will hold Consensus Hong Kong from February 18-20, 2025 in Hong Kong.

Project Progress

1. Avalanche9000 will launch the mainnet on December 16th;

2. The Bitcoin scaling solution Stacks announced that it will deploy sBTC in two phases, with the first phase launching the mainnet on December 16, 2024, opening up Bitcoin deposit functionality;

3. The zkEVM network Kakarot based on Starknet has abandoned the deployment of Starknet, and the Kakarot on the Starknet Sepolia testnet will be shut down on December 16, 2024;

4. Swan Chain will launch the SWAN token TGE on December 16th, with a total supply of 1 billion SWAN tokens, of which 20% will be allocated to early users and future community airdrop rewards, 20% to investors, 20% to the DAO treasury, 25% to the ecosystem fund, and 15% to key developers and team members;

5. The Ethereum L2 Taiko Season 2 will run from September 17, 2024 to December 16, 2024, providing 6 million TAIKO token rewards, of which 5 million are for participants and 1 million for DApps;

6. The modular blockchain Sophon will launch the mainnet on December 18th. In October this year, Binance Labs announced an investment in Sophon, with the specific amount undisclosed.

Important Events

1. Hong Kong will submit the "Stablecoin Bill" to the Legislative Council for its first reading on December 18th. According to the proposed licensing regime, any person engaging in the following activities must first obtain a license from the Monetary Authority: issuing fiat-backed stablecoins in the course of business in Hong Kong; issuing stablecoins that claim to be pegged to the Hong Kong dollar in the course of business; or actively promoting the issuance of their fiat-backed stablecoins to the Hong Kong public. To effectively implement the regime, the bill also proposes to empower the Monetary Authority with necessary regulatory, investigative and enforcement powers.

Token Unlocking

1. Fusionist (ACE) will unlock 3.33 million tokens on December 18, worth approximately $9.62 million, accounting for 2.26% of the circulating supply;

2. Polyhedra Network (ZKJ) will unlock 15.5 million tokens on December 19, worth approximately $31.03 million, accounting for 1.55% of the circulating supply;

3. Pixels (PIXEL) will unlock 53.55 million tokens on December 19, worth approximately $12.81 million, accounting for 1.07% of the circulating supply.

4. Bittensor (TAO) will unlock 216,000 tokens on December 21, worth approximately $125 million, accounting for 1.03% of the circulating supply.