The Block
Quick Take Sky voted to maintain the pivot away from the protocol’s original Maker brand following some backlash from community members. The rebranding is part of Rune Christensen’s Endgame strategy, which involves launching new stablecoins and establishing “subDAO” to build their own crypto apps and infrastructure.
Quick Take Detroit would become the largest U.S. city to accept cryptocurrency payments. Three U.S. states — Colorado, Utah and Louisiana — accept crypto for state payments.
Quick Take The Degen team is in disputes with the third-party service provider, Conduit, which used to launch its Layer 3 network following an allegedly unannounced upgrade that stalled the chain. Degen is looking to switch service providers but claims Conduit won’t hand over the multi-signature keys needed to migrate, a claim the company denies.
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said that it has changed its processes, and the results of the German regulator’s investigation “largely” pertains “to outdated operations and technologies that have been replaced in 2024.”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.
