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2024 Was the Year of Breaking Through

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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Nasdaq Tells SEC Precise Crypto Labeling Will Be Everything in Future Regulation

Nasdaq, the operator of one of the premier U.S. stock exchanges and a crypto index, is advising the U.S. regulators to carefully focus on defining digital assets in four buckets that will clearly determine which agency acts as referee, according to a 23-page letter sent to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s crypto task force.
«While a stock by any other word would still be a stock, the existing market ecosystem can readily absorb digital assets by establishing the proper taxonomy and calibrating certain rules to reflect what is truly new and novel about digital assets,» the letter argued in response to the invitation issued by the task force’s chief, Commissioner Hester Peirce, to weigh in on future regulations.
The four future categories of digital assets, in Nasdaq’s view, should be:
- financial securities (tokens tied to assets that are securities under existing definitions, like stocks, bonds and exchange-traded funds (ETFS), which Nasdaq said should be treated just the same as their underlying assets);
- digital asset investment contracts (tokenized contracts that check all the securities boxes under a «clarified version» of the Supreme Court’s so-called Howey test);
- digital asset commodities (meeting the U.S. definition of commodities)
- other digital assets (stuff that doesn’t fall anywhere else and shouldn’t have rules for securities or commodities imposed on it)
The securities categories belong in the hands of the SEC, which will be working with its cousin agency, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, that will handle the commodities. Those agencies — presumably directed at some point by a new crypto law hatched by Congress — will figure out the precise border between their jurisdictions.
The letter, signed by John Zecca, the company’s chief regulator executive, argued that «digital assets that constitute financial securities must trade as they do today.»
Nasdaq also suggested that the two agencies should formulate a kind of crossover trading designation for platforms that can handle digital asset investment contracts, commodities and other types of assets under one roof.
In the letter, Nasdaq underlined its digital-asset credibility, saying its «trading and clearing services, market and trading surveillance, and central securities depository technology support digital assets platforms on six continents.» It contended that the regulators should consider imposing safety measures or further constraints on firms that want to handle investors’ activity from top to bottom, which is the common approach of existing crypto firms.
Read More: SEC ‘Earnest’ About Finding Workable Crypto Policy, Commissioners Say at Roundtable
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Want to Have Dinner With the U.S. President? All You Would Need Is to Hold $420 Worth of TRUMP

The team behind the Trump memecoin said Thursday that the top 220 holders on its list, where the smallest wallet holds $420 worth of TRUMP, are eligible to win dinner with President Donald Trump, contrary to rumors that a six-figure token stash was required.
“We want to clarify a few things people seem confused by on X and in the Media,” the team’s X account posted. “You need $300K+ to participate (You Don’t); That we’re unlocking into this competition (We’re Not).”
TRUMP surged 70% this week, trading at around $12 as of Thursday, mainly driven by hype around the so-called “Dinner with Trump” event, according to CoinDesk’s earlier reporting.
Some users on X claimed that only holders with more than $300,000 in tokens could participate. Others speculated that the wallet ranked 220 on a blockchain explorer was the minimum cutoff.
The team dismissed both claims, stating that users must register via the official leaderboard and that only time-weighted holdings during the competition will count.
Currently, the leaderboard’s top wallet, under the pseudonym “Sun,” holds over 1.1 million TRUMP tokens, worth nearly $14 million. The 220th spot was held by “HAR,” with just 35.3 TRUMP tokens, or about $420 in dollar terms.
Twenty five wallets are listed as VIPs on the leaderboard, where the cut-off holder sits on over $400,000 worth of TRUMP.
The team also addressed concerns about token unlocks affecting the leaderboard, stating that both the cliff unlock and subsequent daily unlocks would remain inaccessible for 90 days, outlasting the competition itself.
“We want to say again that the tokens from the initial cliff unlock and the following 3 months of daily unlocks will remain locked, each for an additional 90 days,” it said.
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CoinDesk 20 Performance Update: SUI Surges 13.7% as Index Trades Higher from Thursday

CoinDesk Indices presents its daily market update, highlighting the performance of leaders and laggards in the CoinDesk 20 Index.
The CoinDesk 20 is currently trading at 2774.43, up 1.5% (+40.48) since 4 p.m. ET on Thursday.
Eighteen of 20 assets are trading higher.
Leaders: SUI (+13.7%) and BCH (+7.1%).
Laggards: POL (-1.9%) and ADA (-0.5%).
The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally.
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