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MicroStrategy’s Dismal December Still Keeps It at Top of 2024 Bitcoin-Tied Asset Rankings

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Disclaimer: The analyst who wrote this piece owns shares of MicroStrategy (MSTR)

It’s been a tough month for MicroStrategy (MSTR), the software developer turned bitcoin (BTC) accumulator. Its stock has tumbled almost 50% since November, when it joined the Nasdaq 100 index and peaked at a 600% gain since the start of the year.

That still leaves the Tysons Corner, Virginia-based company a whopping 342% ahead in 2024, the biggest return among the highest-profile crypto-linked assets in traditional finance (TradFi).

It’s been a volatile year, packed with geopolitical and technological developments to rattle financial markets. The continuing wars in eastern Europe and the Middle East, elections across the globe, the unwinding of the yen carry trade in August and the growth of artificial intelligence (AI) have all left their marks.

MicroStrategy’s gain is almost double that of Nvidia (NVDA), the chipmaker whose production of integrated circuits needed for AI applications fueled a 185% return, the best among the so-called magnificent seven tech stocks. The next best, Meta Platforms (META), turned in 71%.

Bitcoin itself rose 100% in a year that included April’s reward halving and multiple record highs. Demand for the largest cryptocurrency was driven by the January approval of spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the U.S. Bitcoin outperformed two of its biggest competitors, ether (ETH), up 42%, and Solana (SOL), up 79%.

Among the ETF’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) also returned over 100% and became the fastest ETF in history to hit $50 billion in assets.

Bitcoin mining companies, on the whole, disappointed. Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI), a proxy for mining stocks, rose just under 30%. That’s despite demand for the miners’ computing capabilities and power supply agreements from artificial intelligence and high-performance computing (HPC) companies. Still, individual companies benefited, in particular, Bitdeer (BTDR),which added 151%, and WULF (WULF), which gained 131%.

Nevertheless, the miners’ gains beat the broader equities market. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 Index (NDX) added 28% while the S&P 500 Index (SPX) rose 25%. The S&P 500 also trailed behind gold’s 27% increase. The precious commodity has now topped the equity gauge in three of the past five years.

Concerns about U.S. inflation and the country’s budget deficit added to the geopolitical uncertainties to prompt a massive rise in U.S. treasury yields, which move in the opposite direction to price.

The yield on the 10-Year Treasury added 15% to 4.5% over the course of the year, and surprisingly gained a full 100 basis points since the Federal Reserve started cutting interest rates in September.

The iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT), which tracks bond prices, dropped 10% this year and has lost 40% in the past five years.

The dollar, on the other hand, showed its strength. The DXY Index (DXY), a measure of the greenback against a basket of the currencies of the U.S.’ biggest trading partners, rose to the highest since September 2022.

West Texas Intermediate (USOIL), the benchmark oil price in the U.S., ends the year little changed, up less than 1% to around $71 a barrel. But it was a bumpy ride, with the price rising to almost $90 at some points in the past 12 months.

As we head into the new year, all eyes will be on the debt ceiling discussion, the policies of President-elect Donald Trump and whether the U.S. can continue with its impressive growth story.

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CoinDesk 20 Performance Update: SUI and POL Rise 7.5%, Leading Index Higher

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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 2556.62, up 2.1% (+52.39) since 4 p.m. ET on Monday.

Fifteen of 20 assets are trading higher.

9am CoinDesk 20 Update for 2025-04-22: chart

Leaders: SUI (+7.5%) and POL (+7.5%).

Laggards: FIL (-4.5%) and XLM (-1.6%).

The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally.

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DAO Infrastructure Provider Tally Raises $8M to Scale On-Chain Governance

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Tally, a leader in on-chain governance tooling, has secured $8 million in Series A funding aimed at scaling its governance technology to more crypto-native decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).

Tally is best known for the Tally Protocol, which powers infrastructure to help leading protocols conduct effective on-chain governance of their DAOs, including Arbitrum, Uniswap DAO, ZKsync, Wormhole, Eigenlayer, Obol and Hyperlane.

«We’ve built this complete stack of software for operating these on-chain organizations,» Dennison Bertram, CEO and co-founder of Tally Protocol, said in an interview with CoinDesk. «We can take you from your idea to launching your token, to distributing your membership or ownership, all the way to the value accrual for your protocol.»

The platform began as a DAO governance tool and has evolved into the most widely adopted software stack for on-chain organizations across the Ethereum and Solana blockchains, it said in a release.

«On-chain governance and capital formation could, in theory, dramatically reduce the complexity and cost of forming and operating organizations by moving these processes entirely into software rather than traditional jurisdictions guided by platforms like Tally,» Bertram said.

One day, on-chain organizations might be seen as a way to compete with nation states, he argued, referencing the costly and lawyer-intensive process of registering foundations and other legal entities typically used for crypto.

«Whoever embraces crypto really fully might actually be embracing fully the future,» he said.

Fixing vote turnout for better governance

One issue that Tally aims to tackle with funding from the Series A is low voter participation and apathy in DAO governance, which has led to sometimes controversial outcomes.

Last year, for example, a group of CompoundDAO token holders, called Golden Boys, successfully passed a controversial proposal to create a yield-bearing product called goldCOMP.

Despite initially gaining traction, the proposal faced significant controversy due to perceived irregularities, low voter turnout and a lack of widespread community engagement.

Ultimately, the Golden Boys agreed to cancel goldCOMP, which highlighted the broader issue of governance apathy within DAOs rather than any technical exploit or malicious intent.

«Many of the people that you should expect to vote ‘no’ on something like this didn’t show up,» Bertram said in an earlier interview. «What it shows is that the democratic process of governing a DAO is imperfect and needs improvement.»

To address this, Tally has developed staking mechanisms designed to reward active governance participants economically. Users can stake their governance tokens to receive Tally Liquid Staked Tokens (tLSTs), earning passive, auto-compounding yields while retaining voting rights within DAOs.

“This fundraise is really about leaning into the original vision,” Bertram said. “Now that we’ve proven that this works, that you can have these large organizations, it’s time to really scale it up.”

Institutions are getting involved in DAOs

Bertram also emphasized that recent regulatory clarity and shifts in attitude toward crypto governance in the U.S. have opened the door for increased institutional participation in DAOs.

“With this clarity, we’re going to get a lot more participation, not necessarily from average Joe token holders, but actually from large organizations that depend on the infrastructure they’re building on,” he said. “These organizations are going to need and want the ability to actually govern the infrastructure that they operate on.”

Ultimately, Bertram sees Tally’s role as pivotal in advancing decentralized governance and unlocking greater economic value for token holders by directly rewarding active, informed participants.

«Given the new acceptance of crypto as a key driver of future value in America, it’s time to scale it beyond crypto and make it a core primitive for creating new organizations,” he said.

The round was led by Appworks and Blockchain Capital with participation from BitGo amongst others.

Tally previously raised $7.5 million in 2021 across two funding rounds.

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Dutch Bank ING Said to Be Working on a New Stablecoin With Other TradFi and Crypto Firms

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Dutch bank ING is working on a stablecoin, looking to take advantage of Europe’s new cryptocurrency regulations that came into force last year, according to two people with knowledge of the plans.

ING’s stablecoin project could take the form of a consortium effort involving other banks and crypto service providers, both people said.

“ING is working on a stablecoin project with a few other banks. It’s moving slow as multiple banks need board approval to set up a joint entity,” one of the sources said.

ING declined to comment.

Europe’s Markets in Crypto Assets regime [MiCA] requires stablecoin issuers across EU member countries to hold an authorization license, while promoting the potential of euro-denominated stablecoins (the vast majority of the stablecoins in circulation are pegged to the U.S. dollar).

MiCA’s stablecoin rules, which also require issuers to maintain significant reserves in banks based in Europe, have strengthened compliant offerings like Circle’s euro stablecoin EURC over its main rival Tether, according to a note early this year from JPMorgan.

Banks like ING entering the European stablecoin space means French lender Société Générale, the first big bank to offer a stablecoin through its SG Forge innovation division, will soon have some competition.

Read more: Stablecoin Market Could Grow to $2T by End-2028: Standard Chartered

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