Bitcoin Price: US$42,869.03 (+3.32%)
Ethereum Price: US$ 2,260.16 (+2.57%)
A federal judge in the Delaware Bankruptcy Court, John Dorsey, took steps to expedite the resolution of the FTX bankruptcy case, scheduling a hearing for early next year to calculate the cryptocurrency exchange’s debt to the IRS. Resolving the IRS claim is crucial for victims of FTX to recover their losses. FTX’s largest creditor, the IRS, claims the crypto firm owes $24 billion in unpaid taxes. The judge emphasised the need to conclude the case more quickly and urged collaboration between the IRS and FTX to avoid going to trial. In another development, Bitcoin bounced over $43,000 following the Federal Reserve’s indication of potential rate cuts in 2024, leading to a rally in the cryptocurrency market and related stocks. The CoinDesk Market Index (CMI) was up 3.8% over the past 24 hours, and crypto-related stocks like Coinbase and MicroStrategy saw significant gains. The Federal Reserve held its benchmark fed funds rate steady at 5.25%-5.50% but adjusted its rate outlook for 2024 to 4.6%, suggesting potential rate cuts next year.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has proposed an idea to bring some functions back onto the Ethereum main chain, specifically introducing an “enshrined zkEVM” (zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine). The proposal suggests leveraging the increasing power of “light clients” to use zero-knowledge cryptography to fully verify transactions on the layer-1 chain, effectively creating a built-in zkEVM on the Ethereum network. This idea could disrupt existing layer-2 projects, such as ZK-rollups, which have invested heavily in fulfilling the earlier roadmap. Meanwhile, Turkey’s two major banking groups, Akbank and Garanti BBVA, have announced crypto initiatives, indicating a growing interest in the crypto sector despite impending regulatory changes. Additionally, Bitwise’s senior research analyst predicts Bitcoin will reach $80,000 in 2024, stablecoins surpassing Visa in terms of settlement volume, and Ethereum’s revenue doubling with the implementation of the EIP-4484 upgrade. Bitwise also anticipates a successful launch of the first spot Bitcoin ETF and a strong year for Coinbase, forecasting 100% growth in revenue for the exchange.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has extended the deadline for its decision on the Invesco Galaxy Ethereum spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) to February 6, 2024. This ETF proposal, submitted by Invesco and Galaxy Digital, is one of many being considered by the SEC, which has never approved an ETF with direct exposure to Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. The extension allows more time for the SEC to review the proposal. In another development, the Interchain Foundation (ICF), the core developer behind the cross-chain communications protocol Cosmos, announced a budget of $26.4 million for ecosystem development in 2024. The funds will be allocated to various aspects of the Cosmos ecosystem, including the Cosmos software development kit and the native inter-blockchain communications protocol. Meanwhile, Iota, an open-source blockchain developer, has integrated its Shimmer Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible chain with Fireblocks, targeting institutional demand for asset tokenisation. This integration will allow Fireblocks customers to custody tokenised assets on ShimmerEVM and initiate transactions on the chain directly from the Fireblocks console and API.
Source:
https://cointelegraph.com
https://coindesk.com
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