PA Daily | Sophon, Swellchain and Kraken L2 network Ink go online; Kelp DAO releases KERNEL token economics
Reprinted from panewslab
12/19/2024·6MToday’s news tips:
Fartcoin (FARTCOIN) Breaks Over $1, Hits All-Time High
World Liberty used 250,000 USDC to purchase 231,726 ENA
Powell: We are not allowed to own Bitcoin and don’t want the law to change
Kelp DAO releases KERNEL token economics, 55% allocated to community rewards and airdrops
regulatory news
Binance.US plans to resume its USD services in early 2025
According to Decrypt, Binance.US plans to resume U.S. dollar trading services in early 2025, which is the first major adjustment since suspending fiat currency trading in June 2023 due to SEC accusations. Interim CEO Norman Reed said that the restoration of fiat currency services is the most anticipated feature of users, and the platform is working with new partners to expand custody and wallet solutions. Despite regulatory pressure, Binance.US has supported trading in 160 cryptocurrencies and staking of more than 20 assets over the past 17 months, insisting that no wrongdoing has been discovered. The company's goal is to help develop the cryptocurrency industry and provide American users with more choices.
Osprey Funds launches first publicly traded U.S. BNB fund
Osprey Funds announced the launch of the Osprey BNB Chain Trust fund (ticker: $OBNB), listed for trading on the OTCQX market, which is the first publicly traded BNB-based fund in the United States. The fund provides U.S. investors with access to BNB through a traditional brokerage account or IRA account, one of the few ways to invest since BNB cannot be traded on centralized exchanges in the United States. BNB, as the native token of the BNB chain, is the basis for decentralized applications, DeFi protocols and smart contracts.
At 17, youngest ever Bitcoin Core contributor receives Chaincode Labs Bitcoin scholarship
According to Bitcoin Magazine, New York’s Chaincode Labs awarded 17-year-old Ishaana Misra the inaugural Bitcoin Scholarship, becoming the youngest core code contributor in the 15-year history of Bitcoin technology. Selected from 232 applicants from around the world, the scholarship covers her tuition for one year and is renewable annually, potentially supporting her entire undergraduate education. Misra started programming at the age of 12 and entered the Bitcoin field after reading the Bitcoin white paper before high school. She made the transition from running nodes to contributing to the Bitcoin Core code base by teaching herself C++. Misra said that the Bitcoin community focuses on work results rather than age, and this atmosphere is particularly friendly to young developers. Adam Jonas, CEO of Chaincode Labs, said that this scholarship aims to encourage young people to engage in Bitcoin open source development and provide them with experience and educational support.
According to Cointelegraph, El Salvador has reached a $1.4 billion loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and plans to receive financial support in the next 40 months. As part of the deal, the country will make merchant acceptance of Bitcoin payments voluntary while gradually reducing government involvement in Bitcoin-related projects, including phasing out management of state-backed wallet app Chivo. The IMF stated that this move will significantly reduce the potential risks posed by the Bitcoin project, while clearly limiting the public sector’s specific participation in Bitcoin economic activities. Additionally, taxes will only be paid in U.S. dollars, not Bitcoin. The agreement, which still requires approval by the IMF’s executive board, marks the end of four years of negotiations with the IMF since El Salvador adopted Bitcoin as legal tender in June 2021. The IMF has repeatedly warned that the speculative nature of Bitcoin may bring financial risks to the country. The agreement will also lead to additional financing from institutions such as the World Bank, bringing the total financing amount to more than $3.5 billion. Despite this, Max Keizer, the Bitcoin advisor to the President of El Salvador, expressed disdain on social media X, saying that the use of Bitcoin in the country “has never been more active and continues to grow.” However, the survey showed that 92% of Salvadorans do not use Bitcoin for transactions, an increase from 88% in 2023.
According to The Block, the California federal court ruled that Coinbase can delist wBTC (Wrapped Bitcoin) and rejected the request for a temporary injunction filed by BiT Global, a company related to Justin Sun. Coinbase previously announced that it would delist wBTC on December 19. This decision is related to its former custodian BitGo cooperating with BiT Global to manage US$14 billion in assets. BiT Global claimed that delisting wBTC would cause irreparable harm to it and sued Coinbase for violating competition laws and defamation. However, the court found that BiT Global’s claims lacked basis and supported Coinbase’s right to determine the platform’s asset list. Coinbase responded that BiT Global’s accusations were baseless and planned to impose sanctions on it or its law firm. Currently, wBTC is the second largest wrapped token by market value (nearly $14 billion), allowing Bitcoin to be used in the Ethereum ecosystem. The market value of cbBTC, a competing product launched by Coinbase, has exceeded US$2.1 billion since September. Coinbase emphasized that its platform accounts for less than 1% of wBTC trading activity and denied trying to monopolize the wrapped Bitcoin market.
Powell: We are not allowed to own Bitcoin and don’t want the law to change
The Federal Reserve announced its latest interest rate decision, cutting interest rates by 25 basis points as scheduled, and the federal funds rate target range dropped to 4.25%-4.5%. The latest dot plot shows that two interest rate cuts are expected in 2025, compared with four expected in September. According to a statement from the Federal Reserve, recent data show that economic activity has grown steadily, the labor market has eased, the unemployment rate has increased but remains low, and inflation is close to target but has increased slightly. The committee will continue to reduce the balance sheet. The resolution was supported by the majority of members. Beth Hammack voted against and advocated maintaining interest rates at 4.5%-4.75%. "With today's action, we have lowered the policy rate by a full percentage point from its peak, and our policy stance is now significantly less restrictive. As a result, we can be more cautious when considering further adjustments to the policy rate," Powell said. He said he would have to see more progress on inflation before cutting interest rates further. The language suggests that we are at or near a point where rate cuts will slow. Powell also said at the press conference that we are not allowed to own Bitcoin and do not want the law to be changed.
AI
Sources: Apple is in talks with Tencent and ByteDance to launch AI features in China
According to Reuters, Apple is in talks with Tencent and ByteDance to integrate their artificial intelligence (AI) models into iPhones sold in China. These negotiations are in their early stages. At present, many domestic companies have launched AI models, including Bytedance’s “Doubao”, Tencent’s “Hunyuan” and Baidu’s “Wenxin Yiyan”. In addition, Apple’s negotiations with Baidu over the use of its AI models have been hampered by technical issues, including disputes over the use of iPhone user data to train AI models. Apple is facing pressure from declining market share in China, especially as competition from domestic brands such as Huawei intensifies. Huawei recently launched the Mate 70 series, equipped with a self-developed large language model, and the AI function has become a selling point. In the third quarter, Apple’s smartphone sales in China fell by 0.3% year-on-year, while Huawei’s sales increased by 42%.
Sahara AI announced that the first phase of the data platform Beta version test network is officially launched. This event attracted more than 780,000 users to sign up, and eventually more than 10,000 users will successfully qualify to participate. Through the Sahara AI test network, ordinary users can not only contribute to the AI ecosystem through data collection, optimization and labeling tasks, but also participate in building the world's first decentralized AI collaboration platform while receiving rewards. The launch of the testnet is the first stage of the development of the Sahara AI ecosystem. Subsequently, Sahara AI will launch an AI data market and model center to further promote the tradability, traceability and decentralized collaboration model of AI assets. It is reported that Sahara AI has previously received US$43 million in financing from investment institutions such as Pantera Capital, Binance Labs, Polychain Capital, Sequoia Capital, and Samsung Next to promote the development of decentralized AI.
OpenAI: ChatGPT now supports interacting with users over the phone
According to an official announcement from OpenAI, ChatGPT now supports interaction with users over the phone. US users can dial the exclusive number 1-800-CHAT-GPT (1-800-242-8478), which supports landlines and old-fashioned mobile phones. This feature is also integrated with WhatsApp, and users can send message consultations through this number. The function is similar to the existing web and mobile versions. Currently, U.S. users can use 15 minutes of free voice calls per month. Specific rules and restrictions may be adjusted. OpenAI said that for a more comprehensive experience with more features such as search, higher limits, and more personalization, existing users should continue to use ChatGPT directly through their accounts.
Financing
According to The Block, Fraction AI, an encryption and artificial intelligence startup focusing on decentralized data annotation, completed $6 million in Pre-Seed financing. This round of financing was jointly led by Spartan Group and Symbolic Capital. Other investors include Borderless Capital , Anagram, Foresight Ventures and Karatage. In addition, angel investors such as Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal and NEAR Protocol co-founder Illia Polosukhin also participated and served as advisors. Founded in February 2024, Fraction AI is committed to reshaping the data annotation process through a decentralized approach, using a hybrid approach that combines human insights with AI agents. Its platform mainly includes three types of participants: stakers who receive rewards by staking ETH or liquid staking tokens (such as stETH), developers who create AI agents and participate in challenges, and reviewers who participate in evaluations through the native token FRAC (based on LLM that evaluates results against specific criteria). Fraction AI plans to launch the mainnet and native token FRAC at the end of the first quarter or the beginning of the second quarter of 2025. It has completed closed beta and is expected to launch an open beta next month. There are currently more than 60,000 test users. The company is currently developing based on Ethereum and plans to expand to NEAR and multiple Ethereum Layer 2 networks.
UTXO Stack completes new round of financing, valued at US$50 million
UTXO Stack announced the completion of a new round of financing led by UTXO Management, PAKA Fund and CMS Holdings, with a valuation of US$50 million. This financing will be used to accelerate the development of Lightning Network liquidity, introduce stablecoins into the Bitcoin ecosystem, and plan to launch airdrop incentives for Bitcoin liquidity providers in early January 2024, while conducting the first token generation event on the Lightning Network ( TGE).
According to Bloomberg, /dev/agents, a startup founded by former Google and Stripe executives, recently completed a $56 million seed round of financing, with a valuation of $500 million. The financing was led by Index Ventures and co-led by Alphabet's investment fund CapitalG. Participating investors also included Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora and OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy and many other well-known angel investors.
/dev/agents plans to create a new generation of cloud operating system that supports AI agents, aiming to simplify the development process, provide developers with a unified technical framework, and promote the widespread application of AI agents. The company's core team includes co-founders David Singleton, Hugo Barra, Ficus Kirkpatrick and Nicholas Jitkoff, who have extensive experience in Android, AR/VR and operating system development. The team is committed to developing interactive interfaces and AI agent computing infrastructure suitable for multiple devices to achieve seamless collaboration between users and AI agents.
Cross-border payment service provider Juicyway completes US$3 million in Pre-Seed round of financing
Juicyway, a stablecoin-based cross-border payment service provider, announced the completion of a US$3 million Pre-Seed round of financing, with participation from P1 Ventures, Ventures Platform Fund, and Future Africa. Juicyway mainly uses stablecoins and cryptocurrencies to simplify cross-border settlements and reduce transaction latency by bypassing traditional intermediaries. The new funds are intended to support its provision of accessible quasi-bank and crypto wallet services, enabling stablecoins to serve as bridges. Seamless deposit and withdrawal services that facilitate instant settlement and reduce reliance on highly volatile currencies.
AI software engineering platform Braintrust announced the completion of a $36 million Series A round of financing, led by Martin Casado of Andreessen Horowitz. Existing investors include Elad Gil, Greylock, Basecase and Datadog, Databricks Ventures, Guillermo Rauch (Vercel), Simon Last (Notion) , Bryan Helmig (Zapier) and others participated. This round brings Braintrust’s total funding to $45 million.
Braintrust is dedicated to solving challenges in large language model (LLM) development, such as non-deterministic models and the unpredictability of natural language input. The platform has cooperated with top teams such as Notion, Stripe, and Airtable to support users in improving the quality of AI products through continuous experiments. The Braintrust user team runs an average of more than 10 experiments per day. At the same time, Braintrust launched a new function "Functions", which allows users to create tools, prompts and scorers directly in the code base and upload them to the platform through simple commands, optimizing the experiment and deployment process and reducing infrastructure management time.
Project news
Re-staking platform Swell: Swellchain officially launched
Liquidity re-pledge platform Swell officially announced that the Optimistic Rollup Swellchain based on Optimism OP Stack is officially launched. As a chain with re-pledge assets as the core, it is built based on the "Proof of Restake" mechanism and is supported by Ethena Labs, EigenLayer, etc. Users can share 31,250,000 $SWELL rewards by holding assets across chains before December 31st, while exploring upcoming dApps such as Euler Finance and Ambient Finance. Swellchain also builds an ecosystem around $USDe and $sUSDe stablecoins to provide liquidity rewards for DeFi users.
Sophon mainnet is online, with no network fees in the initial stage
Sophon, a modular blockchain based on ZKsync that has received investment from Binance Labs, has now been launched on the mainnet and its token SOPH (currently non-transferable) has been deployed. Users can enjoy free network fees in the initial stage. Node holder rewards will begin to accumulate on January 1, 2025, and full transferability of tokens is expected to be open in the first quarter of 2025. Sophon is committed to creating an intuitive and easy-to-use blockchain ecosystem for high-throughput consumer applications through automatic account creation, gas-free architecture and instant transaction confirmation. Related reading: A quick look at the super chain Sophon based on ZKsync
Kelp DAO releases KERNEL token economics, 55% allocated to community rewards and airdrops
Ethereum liquidity re-pledge platform Kelp DAO announced the details of KERNEL token economics, 55% of which will be allocated to community rewards and airdrops (20% for airdrops, 35% for future community rewards), and 5% will be allocated to the ecosystem and Partners, 20% will be used for private sales, and 20% will be allocated to the team and advisors (the team and private sales tokens have a 6-month lock-up period and are unlocked within 24 months). In addition, 20% of KERNEL tokens will be distributed through three airdrops: • First airdrop: allocate 10% of the total supply, with a snapshot date of December 31, 2024; • Second airdrop: allocate 5% of the total supply %, the period is from January 1 to April 30, 2025; if you pledge again before January 15, 2025, you can get an additional 15% loyalty reward; • Follow-up airdrop: The remaining 5% will be allocated, and the plan is to be determined. KERNEL tokens will be used in scenarios such as governance, re-pledge to provide economic security, liquidity mining, and ecosystem revenue repurchase. The Token Generation Event (TGE) is expected to be completed in early Q1 2025.
Kraken L2 network Ink officially launched on the mainnet, months ahead of schedule
According to Ink’s official announcement, the Kraken L2 network Ink has officially launched on the mainnet, several months ahead of schedule. Ink becomes part of the Optimism super chain, aiming to further shorten the distance between users and DeFi developers by providing bridge tools.
Trump family encryption project WLFI announces it is seeking long-term cooperation with Ethena Labs
According to The Block, the Trump family encryption project World Liberty Financial (WLFI) and Ethena Labs announced that they are seeking "long-term cooperation," which will begin with the implementation of Ethena's revenue token sUSDe. According to a statement, “As a first step in the collaboration, Ethena and WLFI will explore the potential implementation of sUSDe as the first new token available as collateral on the WLFI protocol, which is powered by Aave. The introduction of sUSDe to WLFI is coming soon “World Liberty Financial’s governance will vote on this measure this week.” "If WLFI's Aave instance is not approved by governance, or sUSDe is not approved as a collateral asset, WLFI and Ethena will continue to explore collaboration opportunities and intentionally seek integration points," the companies said. Wednesday's announcement is according to the statement Posted after World Liberty Financial purchased $600,000 in ENA tokens. A spokesman for World Liberty Financial said the purchase of ENA tokens “is not directly related to this partnership, but demonstrates WLFI’s confidence in the long-term viability and success of the Ethena network.”
point of view
Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer of Bitwise, published an analysis that the Federal Reserve announced a 25 basis point interest rate cut and cut its forecast for next year's interest rate cuts from four to two, triggering a sharp correction in risk assets. The S&P 500 fell 3%, the Russell 2000 small-cap index fell 4.4%, and the price of Bitcoin fell from about $106,000 to below $99,000 before recovering slightly. At the same time, approximately $600 million in leveraged long positions in the crypto market were liquidated, exacerbating market volatility. Matt Hougan believes that this pullback is only a short-term fluctuation and has not changed the long-term bullish trend of the crypto market. He noted that the Fed’s influence on the crypto market has weakened, while the push within the crypto space is stronger, including a shift in Washington policy to support crypto, increased institutional investment and ETF inflows, government and corporate purchases of Bitcoin, and blockchain A major breakthrough in technology. In addition, he mentioned that Bitcoin’s 10-day exponential moving average (about $102,000) is still higher than the 20-day exponential moving average (about $99,000), an indicator that the market trend is still positive. Overall, he believes that the crypto market is in a multi-year bull market and short-term interest rate adjustments will not change this trend.
Binance released a global user survey report yesterday, in which 27,230 respondents shared their views on the current encryption market and their expectations for 2025. Data shows that nearly 45% of participants will enter the crypto space in 2024, with 24.52% joining within the past six months and 20.60% within the past year. Although there are many new users, trading activity is still high, with 31.09% of users trading every day. The survey also showed that users’ expectations for the crypto market in 2025 focus on more regulation (19.39%), AI tokens dominating market growth (23.89%), and wider application of blockchain technology (16.51%). In terms of holdings, the most popular asset among respondents is Memecoins (16.1%), followed by Bitcoin (14.44%) and BNB (14.23%). Binance Spot trading is the most popular product, chosen by 25.89% of users, followed by Binance Earn (25.34%) and Binance Convert (17.33%).
Primitive Ventures investor: 2025 will usher in more integration of encryption and AI
Primitive Ventures investor Marco Manoppo shared his experience of missing out on a 100-fold investment opportunity in Virtuals Protocol on X. Marco reflected that although he came into contact with the project early, he failed to invest in time due to misjudgment of the trend of combining encryption and AI. He emphasized that the Virtuals team achieved rapid iteration through Southeast Asia's cost advantages and stood out in the market with its pragmatic business orientation. Marco predicts that 2025 will usher in more integration of encryption and AI, especially innovations in the fields of AI agent tokenization, consumer applications and payment. Related reading: Exclusive interview with Virtuals Protocol Lianchuang: Benchmarking Bittensor, the AI Agent counterattack behind the 100-fold increase in market value
important data
FTX/Alameda has sold most of its 25 million WLD holdings, leaving only 334,000
According to Ember Monitoring, the 25 million WLD held by FTX/Alameda has been basically sold. There are currently only 334,000 WLD left (approximately $800,000). Data shows that the FTX/Alameda address transferred a total of 21.856 million WLD (approximately US$58.77 million) to 5 BitGo custody wallets today and half a month ago, and may be sold to large investors or institutions through OTC. In addition, since August, they have also transferred 2.809 million WLD to Binance at a weekly frequency.
Data: The premium of USDT against the Korean won on Upbit reached 3%, the highest in 26 years
CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju tweeted that Korean won whales are accumulating USDT in large quantities. Currently, the premium of USDT on the Korean won trading pair on Upbit exchange is about 3%, and the USDT price is 1,559 Korean won. It is worth noting that this unofficial exchange rate level is similar to the level during the IMF financial crisis in 1998, which was the highest in 26 years.
Fartcoin (FARTCOIN) Breaks Over $1, Hits All-Time High
According to GMGN.AI market data, the Meme project Fartcoin (FARTCOIN) on the Solana chain exceeded US$1, rising 25.1% in 24 hours, and is currently quoted at US$1.05, a record high, with a market value of more than US$1 billion. According to previous news, Binance Alpha announced the second batch of projects: CKP, GEAR, SD, SYRUP and FARTCOIN.
The Mt. Gox wallet address transferred 816.3 BTC, worth approximately US$82.12 million.
On-chain data shows that the Mt. Gox wallet address transferred 816.3 BTC, worth approximately US$82.12 million.
According to on-chain data monitored by Lookonchain, Marathon Digital (@MARAHoldings) has accumulated a total of 1,627 BTC in the past 8 hours, worth approximately US$166 million.
World Liberty purchased 231,726 ENA 4 hours ago with 250,000 USDC
According to Onchain Lens monitoring, 4 hours ago, the Trump family encryption project World Liberty used 250,000 USD in USDC to purchase 231,726 ENA and exchanged 103 cbBTC (worth approximately 10.36 million USD) for WBTC. World Liberty has conducted a number of large-scale on-chain transactions this month, including purchasing 8,105 ETH with $30 million USDC, purchasing 103 cbBTC with $10 million USDC and exchanging it for WBTC, and $2 million USD. C purchased 78,387 LINK, $1.91 million USDC to purchase 6,137 AAVE, $750,000 USDC to purchase 741,687 ENA, and $250,000 USDC to purchase 134,216 ONDO.
U.S. stocks close: Nasdaq drops 3.5%, Dow sets record for longest one-day losing streak in 50 years
U.S. stocks closed on Wednesday, with the Dow initially closing down 2.58%, setting a record for the longest single-day losing streak since 1974 (the 10th consecutive trading day of declines); the S&P 500 closed down 2.95%, and the Nasdaq closed down 3.6%. Tesla (TSLA.O) fell 8.28%, and Nvidia (NVDA.O) fell 1.14%. The panic index VIX rose as much as 78.0% during the day and was temporarily at 28.32 after the U.S. stock market closed. Blockchain concept stocks all fell sharply.
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