Crypto Daily — DeFi, NFT, Web3

Ⓜ️ Visa has launched a pilot service that allows companies to send payments in stablecoins to crypto wallets from fiat accounts.

🇦🇪 The Central Bank of the UAE conducted the first transaction with the digital dirham (CBDC) as part of a pilot project — the full launch is scheduled for the end of 2025 and will be phased.

💰 Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse stated that the company aims to become a full-fledged fintech provider using blockchain and the XRP coin for international settlements. Ripple is actively expanding through mergers and acquisitions — about $4 billion has been spent on them this year. Garlinghouse also called on the US authorities to establish clear rules for digital assets, otherwise the adoption of blockchain in banks will slow down.

🖥 The head of Marathon Digital stated that BTC mining profits are falling due to rising electricity prices and increased competition. According to him, only those with cheap energy or those switching to AI and computing services will survive. After the 2028 halving, many miners will find it difficult to operate profitably without an increase in fees or the BTC price.

🗽 JPMorgan launched JPMCoin — a token that allows users to send and receive money through a public blockchain, enabling payment processing in seconds and around the clock.

⚖ Chinese woman Zhimin Qian was sentenced in London to 11 years in prison for large-scale fraud and money laundering — 61,000 BTC worth over $6 billion were confiscated from her. From 2014 to 2017, she ran a pyramid scheme in China, deceiving more than 120,000 investors, and then fled abroad under a false identity. The trial lasted seven years, and the fate of the confiscated bitcoins is still unresolved.

🐈 In China, a mining center suddenly stopped — not due to a breakdown, but because of stray cats that, attracted by the warmth from the devices, settled down to sleep on the equipment and blocked the cooling system.

🇦🇷 The Argentine court has frozen the assets of the creator of the LIBRA shitcoin Hayden Davis and two of his partners due to suspicions of bribery to President Javier Milei. According to the investigation, an hour after publishing a joint photo with Milei, Davis sent $500,000 through the Bitget exchange, which could have been a form of reward for promoting the token. After the scandal, LIBRA plummeted by 90%, and the president deleted all posts about the project and stated that he was not aware of the details.

🇨🇦 The Mayor of Vancouver pays for a drink using BTC via the Lightning Network.

🇨🇳 China accuses the USA of stealing 127,000 BTC, stolen as a result of a hacker attack on a Chinese mining pool in 2020. On December 29, 2020, the LuBian mining pool was hacked, the coins remained untouched for almost four years, which is unusual for ordinary hackers. In June 2024, they suddenly moved to wallets that Arkham marked as belonging to the US government.

PERP DEX LIGHTER RAISES $68M AT A $1.5B VALUATION: FORTUNE

💰 Circle printed about 1,000,000,000 USDC in the last 24 hours.

💰 After recent market volatility, the Binance exchange has shown good resilience — the platform's total reserves have recovered and reached $120 billion, just 17% below the all-time high of $144 billion. USDT (ERC20) reserves hit a record, rising to $42.8 billion, and BTC holdings amount to about 548,000 coins — the second largest figure among all exchanges. Analysts from CryptoQuant stated that the exchange's reserves have recovered by $4 billion over the past few weeks, indicating a return of user activity after the recent "stress test."

📊 More than 60% of organizations plan to increase cryptocurrency purchases, despite the October crash — Sygnum

🧬 Analyst Willy Woo proposed a temporary way to protect Bitcoin from the hypothetical threat of quantum computers — by storing coins at SegWit addresses and not touching them for about 7 years, until a quantum-resistant protocol appears. According to him, such addresses hide the public key until the moment of transaction, making them less vulnerable. However, some experts believe that SegWit does not provide real protection and the network requires a full upgrade. Overall, according to Woo’s estimate, the threat of quantum attacks will become relevant no earlier than 2030, and work on protection standards is already underway.

💰 The payment company Square, owned by Jack Dorsey, has launched a BTC acceptance feature for merchants, enabling more than 4,000,000 stores worldwide to accept cryptocurrency. Merchants can choose the settlement method — BTC to BTC, BTC to fiat, fiat to BTC, or fiat to fiat. No fees will be charged until 2027, after which they will be 1%, still lower than standard card fees.

🗽 US senators published a bill on the structure of the crypto market, where CFTC becomes the key regulator in the spot digital assets market coordinating with the SEC.

💸 The user paid a $105,831 fee for transferring 1 BTC to the Kraken exchange.

💰 Tether printed another 1,000,000,000 USDT.

💸 Stablecoin issuers actually take the lion's share of income in the crypto industry — sometimes their profit reaches about 75% of the total daily earnings of all protocols. In other words, stablecoins today are the main revenue generator in the market.