Here are the key crypto stories for the week of December 12, 2024, with some important updates and market developments.
First, Bitcoin hit a new milestone, closing the week of December 8, 2024, at around $101,000. This is the first time Bitcoin has closed a week above $100,000. However, the market also experienced significant volatility. Bitcoin had a swing from a high of $104,000 to a low of $92,000, opening at $97,000 and closing at $101,200. Throughout the week, a record $1.8 billion in liquidations occurred, mostly from long positions, as the market continued to adjust to shifting price movements.
In addition, the broader crypto market faced a selloff, with Ethereum dropping 10% to $3,590. According to a report from Coindesk, exchange volumes are declining, and long-term holders are increasingly taking profits. Industry analysts, like 10x Research and QCP Capital, predict that the market will soon enter a brief consolidation phase, with sideways price action expected to continue until the end of this year.
Another huge development this week was BlackRock's IBIT ETF, which made headlines by purchasing $398.6 million in Bitcoin on December 9. This move is significant as IBIT passed $50 billion in assets under management in just 230 days. It did this five times faster than any other ETF in history!
In other news, Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin was officially approved by the New York Department of Financial Services on December 10. This over-collateralized stablecoin, which will initially run on XRPL and Ethereum, will be used primarily by institutions. It’s worth noting that Ripple is rumored to be in talks with Charles Hoskinson from Cardano for potential future partnerships.
El Salvador made headlines by discovering $3 trillion worth of unmined gold. This discovery is interesting as El Salvador is negotiating changes to its Bitcoin law as part of an agreement with the IMF. The country may make Bitcoin adoption voluntary for merchants rather than mandatory in exchange for additional loans and financial aid.
And lastly, Google’s new Willow chip, which is capable of solving problems in minutes that would take a supercomputer billions of years, has raised concerns about Bitcoin’s security. However, experts reassure that Bitcoin’s encryption is not at risk. Willow, with only 105 qubits, is far below the estimated 13 million qubits required to break Bitcoin’s encryption. Bitcoin relies on two types of encryption: CDSA 256, which would require over 1 million qubits to crack, and SHA-256, which is even more secure and would need millions of qubits to pose a real threat.
