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Tim Scott Approves Crypto |
The crypto industry got a promise for action Tuesday from the Republican U.S. lawmakers who will have the authority to move digital assets legislation, with key members of the Senate and House of Representatives saying the sector will finally get what it's awaited for years.
The incoming Republican chair of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, Senator Tim Scott, and his counterpart on the House Financial Services Committee, Representative French Hill, were welcomed with enthusiasm by a Blockchain Association crowd in Washington, in sharp contrast to the uncertain tone of the same event last year. The two lawmakers said at the policy event that both chambers of Congress and the administration of President-elect Donald Trump will all be pulling in the same direction to make legislation happen. The two starting points, they said, will be the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT21) — the bill to establish comprehensive crypto market guardrails that cleared the House this year by a wide bipartisan margin — and a stablecoin bill that was close to a bipartisan deal but ground to a halt over a few sticking points around the role of the federal and state governments.
"Congress needs to do its job, find a compromise and put things right," Hill said, suggesting his aim is to get passage of crypto market-structure legislation — something "like FIT21" — in the first few months of the session. |
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A message from The Interchain Foundation |
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Cosmos is expanding: Skip joins the Interchain Foundation.
The Interchain Foundation has acquired Skip, one of the leading Cosmos teams, to bring their excellence in engineering, product strategy, and execution in-house and usher in an era of growth for Cosmos, and its vision for the interchain. Skip will rename to Interchain Inc. and become the ICF’s main subsidiary, concentrating product, vision, and go-to-market for the Interchain Stack and Cosmos, led by Skip co-founders Barry Plunkett and Maghnus Mareneck. This acquisition marks a departure from the ICF’s distributed product development model and starts a new growth-driven stage defined by the alignment between the Interchain Stack’s vision, and the vision for a Cosmos Hub that is at the center of the ecosystem, driving user and liquidity growth for the entirety of the Cosmos’ interchain ecosystem. |
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Stock Options Available for Semler |
Shares of Semler Scientific (SMLR), the small-cap medical device maker that adopted a bitcoin treasury strategy earlier this year, are now available for options trading. This comes after six months of share-price growth for the company driven by its bitcoin (BTC) pivot and capital-raising initiatives. Semler had requested approval on Dec. 5 from options exchanges to allow options trading as the company believed it met the eligibility requirements. Though no official announcement has been made, a check of brokerage accounts Tuesday morning U.S. hours showed the options as available to trade.
Options are financial contracts that give the investor the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell a stock at a specified price before a certain date. The introduction of options on a stock gives investors new tools to hedge risk and speculate on price movements.
Among the requirements needed for an options market to be granted are a minimum share price of around $3-$5, a minimum market capitalization of at least $75 million and sufficient trading volume of around 500,000 to 1 million shares per day. Additionally, a minimum number of publicly available shares and sufficient number of shareholders are required.
Semler's stock price has almost tripled to more than $74 as of Monday's close since making public its initial bitcoin purchases on May 28. It has a market cap topping $600 million. SMLR is ahead 5% in premarket action Tuesday to $78.20. The company recently filed a second prospectus supplement under its S-3 Shelf, which has seen an additional $50 million in share offerings under its existing at-the-market (ATM) program, increasing the total offering to $150 million. To date, the company has raised approximately $100 million in proceeds through ATM issuance.
Semler to date has acquired 2,084 bitcoin for $168.6 million, or an average price of about $81,000 each. Those holdings are worth about $222 million at bitcoin's recent price of roughly $106,500.
Semler may be looking to recreate the success mammoth bitcoin holder MicroStrategy (MSTR) has achieved through the issuance of convertible notes to raise capital for accumulating more tokens. By not causing immediate dilution of existing shares, convertible offerings can be a more attractive way than share offerings to raise cash. The active options market Semler is hoping for allows investors an easy way to hedge, thus making convertible paper more attractive to potential buyers. |
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Bitcoin’s Pumping. Memes Are Minting Millionaires. The bear market’s snoozing, and the bull run is here.
Consensus Hong Kong is where you level up, make moves and position yourself to win. Top global leaders will be there. Will you?
Prices rise Dec. 13 at 10 a.m. ET/ 11 p.m. HKT—save $700 and get an extra 15% off with code NODE15. Don’t miss out. Register today. |
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ESMA Issues MiCA Guidelines |
The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has released its final guidance on Tuesday to help member states implement the impending rules.
ESMA published its final report on reverse solicitation, systems, what crypto may constitute as a financial instrument and draft technical standards on market abuse prevention. The European Union's Markets in Crypto Asset (MiCA) rules - bespoke rules for the crypto sector - are meant to come into force by December 30 across the bloc of 27 nations. But some countries are yet to put in place legislation to implement MiCA.
Portugal's central bank even told CoinDesk on Monday that it is yet to figure out which national competent authority will be responsible for the rules since legislation has not passed. A part of what caused delays for national competent authorities was the short period between ESMA releasing its final technical standards in October and the implementation date, industry trade associations told CoinDesk.
"Looking ahead, as the transitional period progresses, we will continue to provide guidance and work with all [National Competent Authorities] NCAs to ensure the smooth implementation of MiCA and to support a level playing field through supervisory convergence actions,” Verena Ross, ESMA Chair, said. |
Sapien: Is AI Work the Future of the Gig Economy? Step aside, Uber – there’s a new gig in town. They said AI would take your jobs, but instead, it’s creating one of the fastest-growing gig opportunities we’ve ever seen. Despite the notion that AI will replace most jobs in the future, the shift from human to automated work may push the gig economy into overdrive in the next few years. Companies are already investing a significant portion of their budgets in AI training, spending up to 80% of both time and financial resources on data labeling alone. Continue reading here. |
Coinbase Explains wBTC Delisting |
Coinbase delisted wBTC "due to the unacceptable risk" that the top bitcoin stand-in on Ethereum "would fall into the hands of Justin Sun," the exchange said Tuesday in response to a lawsuit over its decision. Market observers had previously read between the lines of Coinbase's November nixing of wBTC. At the time, the exchange cited its listing standards as the reason for the move without elaborating. Last week, wBTC's issuer BiT Global filed a wide-ranging suit accusing Coinbase of improperly favoring its competing asset, cbBTC. But in a 25-page response, Coinbase said the decision had everything to do with Justin Sun, the crypto billionaire and founder of the Tron blockchain, who is also accused of fraud and market manipulation in the United States. Sun became associated with wBTC via a partnership announced in August, according to Coinbase's filing. "Coinbase—like many others in the industry—had serious questions about whether BiT could be a reliable steward given Mr. Sun’s involvement," the exchange said. Coinbase initiated a review of wBTC after the partnership's unveiling. It asked BiT questions about its ownership and Sun's suspected involvement, but the firm "refused" to answer them, Coinbase's filing said. "At the conclusion of its diligence, Coinbase concluded that Mr. Sun’s affiliation with—and potential control over—wBTC presented an unacceptable risk to its customers and the integrity of its exchange," the filing said. |
The Takeaway: Ansem's Big Memecoin Year |
This profile, by Danny Nelson, is part of CoinDesk's Most Influential 2024 package. For all of this year's nominees, click here.
Adherents of the Soviet school of boxing embrace a hyper-standardized training regime. No frills, no personalization; just mash through the same playbook like everyone else. That's how an Uzbek boxing trainer put it on a chilly Wednesday morning in a gym in deep Brooklyn. He'd been hired weeks earlier to prepare the crypto trader Ansem (real name Zion Thomas) for a fight for the influencer ages: Ansem, one of crypto Twitter's current main characters, against Bitboy (Ben Armstrong), the gregariously controversial Youtuber and token shill machine. Lanky Ansem might have longer arms to land punches on Bitboy's divorced dad bod, but betting markets still had the 28-year-old as underdog. Let them think he's the lesser, coach Timor Ibragimov grunted. He told me not to take videos of Ansem training, lest Bitboy's entourage (and his UFC trainer… for a boxing match? The fool!) learn what's waiting. Meanwhile, Ansem danced around the ring trading punches with his sparring partner. He was plenty strong, Ibragimov said. And his technique had improved immensely since beginning the two-a-day Soviet training sessions. Gone was the mess of a fighter trounced in his April amateur debut. This new man was disciplined, fast and smart. It was not enough to beat Bitboy at Crypto Fight Week in Dubai Dec. 6. But it wasn't enough to lose to him, either. The two fighters sparred to an unsatisfactory draw over four messy rounds, both completely gassing the other. The crowd booed as the announcer read the results. Winning and losing is one thing. Being in the main event is possibly more important. At the least, it's the moneymaker for the current wave of social media-savvy wannabe boxers. Jake Paul made $40 million from Netflix just for showing up against Mike Tyson, Ansem told me. Why couldn't he? All traders are driven by the relentless search for profit, in crypto, stocks or otherwise. Ansem's no different. This cycle he's ridden Solana and a series of memecoins up for major paydays (how much he wouldn't say.) Somewhere along the way he became The Memecoin King: the personification of traders' desire to get rich quick on ridiculous crypto tokens. His tweets on tokens to watch garner hundreds of thousands of views on X. And his bullposting on Solana have earned him titles like "Solana guy." All of this is supremely funny to Ansem because, he told me, he doesn't really think of himself as either. Sure, he's long Solana, but not because he believes it's the One True Coin. He just thinks it's among the best bets right now. And his biggest bets don't ride on memecoins at all. Instead, they're on swing trading: longing and shorting BTC, ETH and other assets.
Read the full article here. |
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