CMC Market Pulse delivers actionable market insights, giving you all the key narratives and developments you need in under 5 minutes.
Market Overview 📉
This week saw Bitcoin (BTC) continue to bleed from last week’s FOMC news with BTC tapping the mid $92K level. Christmas Eve and Christmas day saw a steady grind upwards to $99K before bears reclaimed control to send the price back down. The total crypto market cap fell this week, with a decrease of just under 1% to $3.6T this week.
Bitcoin (BTC) fell 2.50% across the week, while Ethereum (ETH) continued its underperformance against it, dropping 3.86% from the previous week.
Daily liquidations this week stayed relatively balanced with the largest liquidations on the previous Friday, where $655M in longs were liquidated. Short liquidations remain largely flat, with an average of under $150M liquidated per day. Funding rates across the board largely remained low, likely due to lack of demand for leverage as the year came to a close..
📌 Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy acquires another 5,262 BTC for $561M at an average price of $106,652 over the past week. - Link
📌 Donald Trump appoints Robert “Bo” Hines for the Executive Director of the Crypto Council, headed by White House AI & Crypto Czar, David Sacks. - Link
📌 MicroStrategy has announced a Special Meeting for shareholders to vote on key proposals designed to accelerate the 21/21 Plan, including increasing authorized Class A and preferred shares for future fundraising purposes and more. - Link
Why does it matter?
This week continued the bearish sentiment from the prior week, with most cryptocurrencies falling across the board. Despite a minor bullish move on Friday and again around the Christmas period, markets were quickly dragged back down amidst the low liquidity environment. Traditional markets did not show much action this week as well but showed a bit more strength, with the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq both rising 1.68% and 1.65% respectively.
Bitcoin started the week strong with BTC dominance rising before it reset to end the week flat at 58.54%. Notable outperformers among altcoins include AI agent infrastructure project, GAME by Virtuals (GAME), MEV-protected DEX, CoW Protocol (COW), NFT marketplace, Magic Eden (ME), and Pudgy Penguin token, PENGU.
Join us in showcasing the cryptocurrency revolution, one newsletter at a time. Subscribe now to get daily news and market updates right to your inbox, along with our millions of other subscribers (that’s right, millions love us!) — what are you waiting for?
Narrative of the Week 📰
Hyperliquid is the focus of this week, for all the wrong reasons, after on-chain transactions show DPRK-linked addresses interacting with the project, hinting at something more ominous.
📌 Ethereum OG, Taylor Monahan, highlights the activity of DPRK-linked wallets interacting with popular perpetual DEX protocol, Hyperliquid, implying that the group is likely testing for vulnerabilities. - Link
📌 0xCygaar highlights the risks currently faced by Hyperliquid, namely that the bridge is secured by only four validators, all of which are controlled by Hyperliquid. He also highlights that in the event of a hack, Circle and Arbitrum can also take action to stop the hack, although others have pointed out the low likelihood of action from either party. - Link
📌 The Hyperliquid team addresses the situation through their Discord server, confirming there has been no known exploit at the moment. - Link
Why does it matter?
With Hyperliquid quickly rising to become one of the largest projects in the space with a total value locked (TVL) of over $2.2B, it is no surprise that the project has become a target for hackers all around the world, including those from the DPRK. While the response from the Hyperliquid team seems to have appeased the Hyperliquid bulls, many have criticised the team for a lack of a bug bounty program publicly listed on their webpage. Several other security experts in the space have also advised for a consultation with Taylor, especially with her known track record in the space for her work on DPRK-related exploits. Nevertheless, it is also known that the Hyperliquid team is working to increase the validator set to 16, which should also help to mitigate the risk.
Major Project Updates 🗓️
📌 Oracle network, Chainlink, introduces Smart Value Recapture, which seeks to capture non-toxic MEV to return value to protocols and users which generated the MEV opportunity. - Link
📌 Mantle will be transitioning from an Optimistic rollup to a zero-knowledge rollup (ZK-rollup), in collaboration with Succinct Labs. The testnet launch is slated for Q1 2025. - Link
📌 Uniswap’s L2, Unichain, announces that it will be launching mainnet in early 2025, with permissionless fraud proofs to be live from day one. - Link
📌 Aptos co-founder, Mo Shaikh, steps down from his position as the CEO of Aptos Labs, in a move which some speculate is a hostile ousting of the former CEO by other shareholders. - Link
📌 Kraken’s L2, Ink, has gone live on mainnet as part of the Optimism Superchain. The chain will progress toward Stage 1 decentralization with permissionless fraud proofs in January 2025. - Link
📌 Sonic (formerly Fantom), announces their upgraded tokenomics based on four successful governance proposals, including the distribution of 200M S tokens for the initial airdrop, among others. - Link
📌 RWA L1, Mantra, puts up a governance proposal for updated tokenomics which include decreasing on-chain inflation and extending the cliff and vesting period for team and core contributors. - Link
📌 Parallel EVM L1, Sei Network, introduces Giga, which seeks to increase the throughput on Sei to ~250K transactions per second to enable blockchains to meet the needs of major Web2 applications. - Link
Why does it matter?
Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) has always been a problem for Ethereum and its users, with users losing millions a year to MEV attacks from MEV searchers. With the introduction of Chainlink’s Smart Value Recapture (SVR), some of this value, specifically from liquidations on lending protocols, will be returned to the respective protocols. Recapture of MEV also provides an additional revenue stream to Chainlink and the respective DeFi protocols. Currently, Chainlink is looking to integrate SVR with Aave, which is undergoing a governance proposal.
DeFi Brief 🏦
📌 Securitize, BlackRock’s integration partner for their BUIDL tokenized fund product, has put forth a proposal for Frax Finance to include BUIDL as a backing asset for the upcoming relaunch of Frax’s frxUSD stablecoin. - Link
📌 Solana-based payment infrastructure project, Sphere Labs, partners with RWA platform, Ondo Finance, to allow idle assets to be put to work in a capital efficient and flexible cash management system. - Link
📌 Cross-chain infrastructure layer, Wormhole, announces that the Wormhole DAO will go live in Q1 2025. Users who wish to participate will need to stake their W tokens for governance. - Link
📌 Multichain settlement layer, Thorchain, introduces Thorchain V3, which brings to the chain additional interoperability with the rest of the Cosmos ecosystem, smart contract functionality direct to the chain, improved block finality times, and more. - Link
📌 Decentralized stablecoin infrastructure project, M^0, partners up with Usual Money to utilize their infrastructure as an alternative collateral structure to Usual products. - Link
📌 GRVT, licensed and compliant DEX, launches its mainnet alpha on their privacy-focused Validium powered by the ZK stack, as part of ZKSync’s Elastic Network, and saw over $15M in volume in its first hour of trading. - Link
Why does it matter?
Tokenized RWAs and yields on stablecoins continue to be a core focus for DeFi projects building this cycle, tapping on the lucrative yields from US Treasury Bills. As more and more projects adopt such yield-bearing stablecoins, new stablecoin projects are now expected to all include some form of yield-bearing mechanism to keep up with the competition to stay relevant. However, with rate cuts ongoing and rate cutting expected to continue into 2025, it remains to be seen if tokenized RWA yields can continue to stay competitive.
Meme Coins 🚀
📌 Twelve plaintiffs who invested in HAWK, the token launched by the “Hawk Tuah Girl”, Hailey Welch, have filed a lawsuit against the team behind the token for alleged securities law violations. - Link
📌 Vitalik Buterin officially adopts pygmy hippo Moo Deng as part of the Wildlife Sponsorship Program, sparking a MOODENG memecoin rally. - Link
Fundraises 💰
📌 Stablecoin issuer, Tether, announces a $775M strategic investment in video-streaming platform, Rumble, in a move to boost decentralized and community-owned media platforms. - Link
📌 Stablecoin protocol, Usual Money, raises $10M in a Series A funding round led by Binance Labs and Kraken Ventures, with support from Ethena Labs, Galaxy, Ondo Finance, OKX Ventures, and more. - Link
📌 Perpetuals exchange, Valhalla Perps, raises $1.5M in a pre-seed round led by Robot Ventures, with support from GSR, Kronos Research, Hash3, and more. - Link
📌 Bitcoin-focused omnichain liquidity layer, Avalon Finance, raises $10M in a Series A funding round led by Framework Ventures, with participation from Kenetic Capital, UXTO Management SNZ Holding, and more. - Link
Airdrops Abound 🎁
📌 Social data platform, Kaito AI, announces the next Yap initiative, which distributes 150 ETH across the top 1000 ranked “Yappers” on their platform. Users must connect their wallets to the platform by January 1 to participate. - Link
📌 NFT marketplace, Opensea, teases a potential upcoming token with the launch of a new X account, Opensea Foundation. - Link
Tweet of the Week 📝
Source: @0xLouisT
Merry Christmas CT, the season of giving!
This article contains links to third-party websites or other content for information purposes only (“Third-Party Sites”). The Third-Party Sites are not under the control of CoinMarketCap, and CoinMarketCap is not responsible for the content of any Third-Party Site, including without limitation any link contained in a Third-Party Site, or any changes or updates to a Third-Party Site. CoinMarketCap is providing these links to you only as a convenience, and the inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement, approval or recommendation by CoinMarketCap of the site or any association with its operators. This article is intended to be used and must be used for informational purposes only. It is important to do your own research and analysis before making any material decisions related to any of the products or services described. This article is not intended as, and shall not be construed as, financial advice. The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s [company’s] own and do not necessarily reflect those of CoinMarketCap.
