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Good Morning,

Here's a quick preview of today’s content: Fed rate cuts came in and the market tanked, Deutsche Bank is thinking about building building onchain, Saylor wants a seat at Trump’s table to be head of crypto, AngeList wants to lend a hand to crypto VCs, Kraken launches a new L2, and more

Happy almost Friday, Let’s dive in.

Market Snapshot

• The Federal Reserve has cut its benchmark fed funds rate by 25 basis points to the 4.25%-4.50% range.

  • The "dot-plot" projects the Fed lowering rates to 3.9% next year, signaling fewer cuts than in its September projection

  • The Fed's PCE inflation expectation for 2025 also rose to 2.5%

  • Fed Chair Jerome Powell said that the projected slower path of further rate cuts reflects hotter inflation readings in previous months and higher inflation expectations

• Bitcoin slipped to $101,000, down nearly -5%, while altcoin majors XRP, Cardano's ADA, Litecoin's LTC were around -10% lower over the past 24 hours

• Fartcoin (FARTCOIN) just keeps rising and is up +18% over the last 24 hours and dipping slightly after climbing to a new all-time high price above $0.95 on Wednesday morning and at one point crossed a $1B market cap

• Altcoin losers over the past 24 hours were

  • Dogwifhat WIF $2.25, with a -16.92% decline, Bonk BONK

    $0.00003101, down -15.24%, and Theta Network THETA

    $2.28, falling -14.84%

Market Predictions

• Traders on Kalshi are currently predicting whether Chainlink, Ripple, or Bitcoin (and several others) will perform best in 2025

• You can trade this market by checking out Kalshi

• Get a $20 bonus when you deposit $100 or more with code “LIT” on signup

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

• Deutsche Bank is building its own Ethereum L2 (BB) 

• Powell says Fed cannot hold bitcoin, not seeking to change that (RT)

• Andreessen Horowitz could've bought 20% of Pudgy Penguins for $5M, but instead gave Moonbirds $50M a month later, see clip here

• Michael Saylor is willing to serve as a crypto advisor for Trump’s administration (TS) 

• NFT market is showing signs of recovery according to Galaxy Research (CD)

• 19% of US voters traded, invested in, or used crypto (CT) 

• Solana reaches new ATH in network activity with 66.9M daily transactions (CD) 

• Polygon's community rejects proposal to deploy $1.3B in stablecoins into DeFi incentives program (TD) 

• Total market capitalization of tokenized real-world assets surpasses $14B (TD) 

• AngelList partners with Bitwave to streamline digital assets management for venture funds (GN) 

• Bitcoin L2 BOB takes step toward integrating with Bitcoin staking protocol Babylon (CD) 

• Crypto custodian Taurus partners with Temenos to allow banks to create crypto wallets (CD) 

• Binance mistakenly posts list of five ‘alpha watchlist tokens’ to Telegram channel (CD) 

• Judge will not block Coinbase from delisting Wrapped Bitcoin (CT) 

• Bitcoin stacking firm Metaplanet expects first operating profit in 7 years (CT) 

• Gmoney’s 9dcc Black Box NFT collection sells out in under 1 minute (TD) 

• Defi protocol Synthetix Synthetix now supports multi collateral trading on Coinbase’s Base network (CT) 

• Memecoins HODLlers outnumber Bitcoin, Binance survey says (CT)

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Launches

• Crypto exchange Kraken launches Ink, its own Ethereum L2 network (CD) 

• Solana DEX aggregator Jupiter launches Jupiterz for gasless swaps and 0% slippage (TD) 

• Bitwise launches Solana staking program in Germany (DC)

• Sonic Labs launches its Sonic mainnet, a next-gen EVM-compatible L1 blockchain (BW)  

Venture Capital

• Avara’s L2 blockchain Lens raises $31M in a funding round led by Lightspeed Faction (CT) 

• RWA-focused blockchain Plume Network raises $20M in a Series A round led by Brevan Howard (CD) 

• Crypto-AI startup Fraction AI raises $6M in a pre-seed funding round co-led by Spartan and Symbolic (TB) 

Regulation

• Member of South Korea’s National Assembly faces 6 months in prison for hiding crypto holdings (CT )

• ZBD, a well-known payment company, is first to get approved for the EU’s new crypto license under MiCAR 'Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation' (CS)

• Hong Kong approves four more crypto exchanges under tightened regulations (CS)

• Ohio state representative presents a bill to establish state Bitcoin reserve (DC)

Cybersecurity

• Europol seizes $26M worth of crypto from drug traffickers (DC)

Extra Reads

• How Wall Street’s relationship with Bitcoin will transform in 2025: 5 Predictions
  
  Read Full Breakdown Here

• Luca Netz, founder of Pudgy Penguins, breaks down his projects massive web3 success and future of PENGU coin

  
  Watch interview here

Chart of the Day

The CoinDesk 20 reacts to the Fed decision as you will see below

Meme Dump

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