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Here's a quick preview of today’s content: Bitcoin broke multiple all time highs in what felt like a never ending day reaching a new all time high of $89,604.50 USD, FTX is battling Binance in the court room, Peter Schiff wants people to buy his Bitcoin NFTs, Snowden has more choice words for Solana, Bitcoin Fog operator gets sentenced, and more.

Special shoutout to today’s sponsor Gemini - go where dollars won’t

Let’s dive in.

Before The Bell

Market Snapshots

• Bitcoin started off the day at $80k and soared throughout the day all the way past $89k a coin. With a new ATH of $89,604.50 USD Bitcoin, and a market cap of $1.75 Trillion, many could argue that this was the single greatest price action day for Bitcoin ever.

  • After Bitcoin briefly spiked above $89k during the early hours of trading in Asia, but then pulled back to around $87k in a highly volatile session.

  • Despite the fluctuations, the cryptocurrency extended its 7-day gains to more than 32%. The intense price swings led to nearly $700M in liquidations on crypto futures, affecting both long and short positions—$380M from bearish bets and $290M from bullish ones.

  • These combined losses represent the largest since early April, when BTC briefly surpassed its previous high of over $73k.

• Bitcoin miner stocks $MARA closed up 29% and $RIOT closed up 16%.

• Coinbase $COIN close up 19% and spent most of the day as the #2 app in the finance category of the app store (flipping Venmo).

Headline Roundup
^{_{The major headlines driving crypto markets}}

• MicroStrategy bought $2B worth of additional Bitcoin (BBG) 

• FTX sues Binance and CZ for $1.8B over ‘fraudulent’ transfers from SBF (DH)

• A former SEC official expects SEC chair Gary Gensler to resign before President-elect Donald Trump enters office (DH)

• FTX affiliate Alameda Research sued Waves and its founder Aleksandr Ivanov to recover $90M (TB)

• Famous ‘Gold Bug’ Peter Schiff urges traders to buy his ordinals amid Bitcoin surge (DC)

• DWF Labs partnered with the UCLA on a new educational initiative focused on tokenized securities (CT)

• Blockchain data provider Nansen said it will provide analytics to Bitcoin layer-2 Bitlayer (CD)

• Total cryptocurrency market cap surpasses $3 Trillion (WG)

• The Conflux Foundation plans to invest $500M to support the growth of PayFi, a Web3 payments solution (CT)

• Stablecoin company Agora introduced its AUSD stablecoin as the native currency for Polygon’s AggLayer (CT)

• ENS Labs, the team behind Ethereum Name Service, is the latest team in the Ethereum ecosystem to commence development on a Layer 2 network (TF)

• Connectivity layer Mesh has entered into a partnership with Reown for wallet ownership verification (CN)

• Former Alameda Co-CEO Sam Trabucco agrees to forfeit $70M, yacht, apartments to FTX creditors (CD)

• Canaan Creative Global, a subsidiary of Bitcoin miner manufacturer Canaan, entered into a purchase agreement with HIVE Digital for its Avalon A1566 miners (TB)

• Cardano Founder Charles Hoskinson confirms plans to collaborate with US government under Donald Trump (BT)

• Snowden once again critiques Solana again, slams that VC funding is a problem for the network (DC)

• Bitcoin ETFs on track to overtake gold ETFs within 2 months (CS)

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M&A Announcements

• Blockchain analytics company Dune acquired a16z-backed blockchain simulation company smlXL to expand real-time blockchain data (TB)

Launches

• Avara, the parent company behind Aave, launched a non-custodial Ethereum wallet (TF)

• Polymer has officially launched Polymer Hub, a real-time interoperability for Ethereum rollups (DH)

Venture Capital

• Brevis Network, a ZK coprocessor, raises $7.5M in seed token round co-led by Polychain Capital and Binance Labs (TB)

• TON network extension TAC raised $6.5M in a seed round led by web3 VC Hack VC and Symbolic Capital (TB)

Regulation

• Bipartisan crypto legislation more likely to pass under Trump, but ‘will not be an initial priority’ (TB)

• Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed establishing a digital asset investment platform for developing markets (CS)

• The TRON blockchain has partnered with Digital Sovereignty Alliance (DSA) to promote US crypto legislation in the US (CN)

Cybersecurity

• The founder of a cryptocurrency mixing service known as Bitcoin Fog was convicted of money laundering $400M and gets 12.5 years (BBG) 

• The DeltaPrime protocol was exploited for $4.8M worth of crypto assets (TV)

• A crypto user accidentally lost $25M by sending Renzo restaked ether tokens to their safe module instead of their safe wallet (TB)

• A Ukrainian man fell victim to a “$5 wrench attack” after being robbed of 250K in USDT (DC)

• OpenEden’s biz dev contractor was the founder of Braq - a community that’s still wondering where its NFTs went (TB)

• Lending protocol Delta Prime suffers second exploit in two months, bringing losses above $10M (TB)

Extra Reads

• Co-Founder of Blockworks Jason Yanowitz gave an excellent thread on the different phases of a bull market. Read here. 

Chart of the Day

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