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2024 Was the Year of Breaking Through

Published

4 месяца ago

16 декабря, 2024

I will remember 2024 as the year blockchain broke through. The transformations started early and just kept coming. What’s astounding to me is that at no time during this year did the overall direction or the market change. The only thing that happened was constant acceleration.

At the end of 2023, we already knew that 2024 was looking likely to turn out well. The European Union’s Markets in Crypto Assets (MICA) act was going to come into effect. This created a legal framework for crypto-assets, real-world assets and stablecoins in Europe. We were already seeing business turn up across the region in anticipation of this transformation.

And then as we entered 2024, the hits just kept on coming. The first Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) decision to officially approve the Bitcoin ETF came 10 days into the year, followed by Ethereum in May. By the middle of the year, the conversation shifted from one of two cool things happening to a more general vision of global regulatory convergence: everywhere around the world, crypto, digital assets and stablecoins are becoming legally accessible to individuals and enterprises.

As if things were not going well enough, a string of regulatory and legal successes in the U.S. was capped off by an election that, among many other things, has sealed the direction and fate of this industry. It is not an exaggeration to say that on the morning of Nov. 6, the world of blockchain looked vastly different.

What was a gradual shift towards regulatory approvals, public blockchains and legalized digital assets has become a sprint. Most importantly, permissioned blockchains, tokenized deposits and other aspects of the blockchain ecosystem that existed solely because they were seen as more acceptable to regulators than public blockchains have all lost their market value and position. Clients that were cautious in October now suddenly worry that they are losing an intensely competitive race.

Two months ago, the U.S. was a laggard in global regulatory convergence. Today, the prospects are that the U.S. will accelerate significantly and, possibly, leave other parts of the world behind in a rapid path towards acceptance and scaling of digital assets. Early cabinet picks and appointments in Trump’s administration announced already, show a strong pro-crypto and digital assets bias, though none of these will take effect until 2025.

Furthermore, on Nov. 26, a federal appeals court rejected efforts by the Treasury Department to sanction Tornado Cash, a piece of privacy software used to make anonymous payments. The Treasury alleges that this technology was used to launder money for North Korea. Advocates for crypto technology did not dispute that but argued that the Treasury should go after individuals or entities responsible rather than a particular piece of software, especially one that operates on a decentralized network with no specific owner or operator. The U.S. and Europe are still pursuing cases against individuals who are deemed responsible.

Privacy technology is going to be especially important in driving future adoption of blockchain technology among enterprises and institutions. Tornado Cash was never an attractive option for business users, as it intertwined two different concepts: privacy and anonymity. Business users are not looking for anonymous payments and transfers, but they do, however, need to keep details from their competition. A favorable court ruling on privacy generally will make business users feel more comfortable leveraging privacy technologies on-chain.

It would be great to end the story of 2024 here. A happy ending. But there are storm clouds on the horizon and there’s no sense in ignoring them. The blockchain industry has traditionally always delivered, often around the holidays, a series of “gifts” for the industry’s critics. Usually this is in the form of spectacular frauds, thefts, or business collapses.

This year, though we haven’t yet had the kind of collapse that will push politics off the table at holiday gatherings, we do seem to be speed-running the traditional crypto business cycle.

If you’ve been following pump.fun, you will have seen the casino-like atmosphere that’s taken hold. People have been chaining themselves to toilets and inventing memes to create tradeable tokens and make money. It’s all (sometimes) very funny until someone loses their child’s college fund.

Don’t let a few clouds on the horizon spoil the good end of year vibes. 2024 was an exceptional year for blockchain. We didn’t change direction, but we started moving a lot faster. 2025 will see revolution by acceleration and plenty of sunshine.

Disclaimer: These are the personal views of the author and do not represent the views of EY.

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Bitcoin Whales Return in Force, Buy the BTC Price Rally, On-Chain Data Show

Published

8 минут ago

25 апреля, 2025

admin

The price of bitcoin (BTC) price has recovered to $94,000 since hitting lows under $75,000 early this month. The surge is characterized by crypto whales, large investors with substantial capital, snapping up coins from the market, in activity seen as confirming the rally.

The renewed demand from whales is evident in Glassnode’s proprietary Accumulation Trend Score, which reflects the relative size of entities actively soaking up new coins on-chain. A score of 1 indicates that, on aggregate, the entities are accumulating, while a value close to zero suggests otherwise.

As of Thursday, wallets holding over 10,000 BTC had an accumulation score of 0.90, and those with 1,000 BTC to 10,000 BTC scored 0.7. Smaller wallets were pivoting to accumulation with a trend score 0.5.

«So far, large players have been buying into this rally,» Glassnode noted on X.

BTC holders' accumulation trend score by holding size. (Glassnode)

Meanwhile, data from CryptoQuant revealed the highest BTC outflow from centralized exchanges in two years when analyzed using the 100-day moving average.

«A review of historical patterns suggests that this could imply re-accumulation of assets by investors,» commentators at CryptoQuant said.

Outflows from centralized exchanges are taken to represent investor preference for direct custody of their coins, a sign of long-term holding strategy.

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ARK Invest Raises 2030 Bitcoin Price Target to as High as $2.4M in Bullish Scenario

Published

48 минут ago

25 апреля, 2025

admin

ARK Invest raised its decade-end bitcoin (BTC) price target to as high as $2.4 million apiece after revising its assumptions on active supply, which excludes lost or long-held coins. The largest cryptocurrency by market value was recently trading around $94,000.

The bull-projection figure, 60% more than its January 2024 estimate, reflects a 72% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from last December through the end of 2030. The base case estimates a BTC price of $1.2 million — a 53% CAGR — while the bear case projects $500,000, equating to a 32% CAGR.

David Puell, an analyst at the Cathie Wood-led investment company, used a model based on total addressable market and projected market penetration across several sectors. These include institutional investment, bitcoin’s role as «digital gold,» its use as a haven in emerging markets, adoption for nation-state and corporate treasury holdings and on-chain financial services built on the bitcoin network.

In November last year, Puell targeted $104,000-$124,000 by year-end. Bitcoin ended December at $93,440 en route to hitting a record high of $109,000 in January before slumping to lows around $74,500 earlier this month.

The rally since then is partly driven by declining exchange balances, which indicate that more BTC is being withdrawn into private wallets, a sign of long-term holding behavior. According to Glassnode data, exchange-held BTC has fallen from approximately 3 million in November 2024 to 2.6 million, reinforcing the growing bullish sentiment around the cryptocurrency.

Exchange Balance (Glassnode)

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Stacks’ STX Is Week’s Best Performer as Bitgo Link Seen Boosting Institutional Use

Published

2 часа ago

25 апреля, 2025

admin

STX, the native token of Bitcoin layer-2 protocol Stacks, has surged 56% in seven days to become the week’s best-performing of the 100 biggest cryptocurrencies amid hopes for institutional adoption.

The token hit a two-month high of 92 cents on Friday after gaining more than 21% in the past 24 hours to become the day’s biggest advancer, according to CoinDesk data.

Stacks is the world’s leading layer 2 for running smart contracts and decentralized applications on the Bitcoin blockchain. On Tuesday, BitGo, the digital asset custody and infrastructure provider and a backer of the wrapped bitcoin (WBTC) token, opened the door for its customers explore yield-generating opportunities on Stacks by integrating sBTC, a synthetic derivative that represents bitcoin (BTC) in a 1:1 ratio on the Stacks blockchain.

“SBTC opens the door to programmable, decentralized financial products without compromising Bitcoin’s core principles — and we’re just getting started,» said Abishek Singh, a product manager at BitGo. «With over $3 trillion in processed transactions and more than $48 billion in staked assets, BitGo is uniquely positioned to help institutions tap into this new era of Bitcoin utility.»

STX plays several roles in the Stacks ecosystem, including enabling connection between the parent blockchain and Bitcoin, supporting smart-contract creation and enabling network governance. It’s also used to pay transaction fees and plays a key role in the proof-of-transfer consensus mechanism that allows holders to earn BTC by locking their STX.

The sBTC token allows holders to participate in Stacks’ DeFi ecosystem while keeping the price peg to their underlying bitcoin. The sBTC withdrawal facility, expected to be implemented April 30, will allow institutions to move seamlessly between BTC and sBTC, opening doors for creating new applications encompassing Stacks’ smart contract features and Bitcoin’s security.

Ecosystem liquidity improving

Liquidity in the Stacks-based decentralized finance ecosystem is improving, the protocol announced on X early Friday, pointing to an over 400% surge in the stablecoin supply in the first quarter, the third-largest behind Morph and Cronos.

The total stablecoin supply in the ecosystem was nearly $7 million, up from around $1 million in early January, according to data source DefiLlama.

Stacks' post X.