CoinDesk 20 Performance Update: APT and FIL Gain 6.8% as All Assets Trade Higher Chainlink (LINK) joined Aptos (APT) and Filecoin (FIL) as a top performer, gaining 6.7% from Monday.

Crypto Daybook Americas: Massive Selloff Doesn’t Stop Bitcoin Institutional Adoption Your day-ahead look for Jan. 14, 2025

Bitcoin Bull Tom Lee Sees BTC Reaching as High as $250K by Year-End Fundstrat’s head of research, Tom Lee, calls for a potential short-term drawdown but remains bullish regarding the end-of-year target.

Options Tied to BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF Surge to Nearly 50% of Deribit’s BTC Open Interest in Two Months Options linked to BlackRock’s spot bitcoin ETF (IBIT) began trading on Nov. 19 and have since grown to half the size of Deribit’s BTC options market.

Middle East-Based Sigma Capital Unveils $100M Fund to Accelerate Web3 Innovations The fund will focus on DeFi, tokenization, and blockchain infrastructure by managing a portfolio of liquid tokens

One of Italy’s Largest Bank Buys $1M Worth of Bitcoin: Report Banking giant Intesa Sanpaolo, which has a market cap of $73 billion, has made its first crypto purchase.

Sony’s Layer-2 Blockchain ‘Soneium’ Goes Live The 78-year-old technology giant is the latest big name company to release a blockchain using Optimism’s OP Stack.

Is Bitcoin Bottom In? BTC’s Price Action is Inverse of December Peak Above $108K BTC’s latest price action seems to contrast sharply with the uptrend exhaustion observed at record highs above $108K in mid-December.

Binance.US Chief: The SEC Called Us a Cauldron of Fraud, Without Any Evidence The debanking of Binance.US is Operation Chokepoint in action, said the exchange’s interim CEO Norman Reed.

Crypto Bank Sygnum Gets Unicorn Status With $58M Round The Zug and Singapore-based lender closed the oversubscribed “strategic growth round,” which was led by BTC-focused venture capital firm Fulgar Ventures

Company Behind Illicit $24B Telegram Marketplaces Launches Stablecoin Huione’s stablecoin is “not restricted” by regulatory agencies.

U.S. Judges Demand SEC ‘Explain Itself’ for Rebuffing Requests for Crypto Rules In another 11th-hour court loss for Chair Gary Gensler’s tenure, judges in a Coinbase case again call the SEC’s crypto position “arbitrary and capricious.”

MoonPay Buys Crypto Payment Processor Helio for $175M MoonPay’s acquisition of Helio is reportedly valued at $175 million.

Why Investor Protection and Enforcement Still Matters Public-private forensics partnerships are necessary to ensure that scams don’t rise with crypto prices this cycle, says Nick Steegmans, VP of Training and Investigations, Crystal Intelligence.

Why 2025 Will Be a Year of M&A in DeFi Recent M&A activity suggests we’re entering an era where finance is finally a unified ecosystem combining traditional and decentralized finance, says Mona El Isa, co-founder of Enzyme Finance.

Stacks’ Muneeb Ali: Let the Bitcoin L2s Bloom Fresh off completing significant technical upgrades, Ali is now laser focused on growing Stacks’ user base.

Global Investment Giant Capital Group Reaches 5% Stake in Bitcoin Holder Metaplanet Capital Group is also the second-largest shareholder in MicroStrategy, trailing only Michael Saylor.

Azuki Announces Native ANIME Token, Related NFTs Rise 9.1% The majority of the token’s supply has been allocated to the community.

Jamie Dimon Still Sees ‘No Value’ in Bitcoin The crypto’s main uses are for sex trafficking, money laundering and ransomware, claimed Dimon, a longtime foe of bitcoin.

U.S. Banking Should Ease Path for Crypto, Republican Taking Reins at FDIC Suggests FDIC Vice Chairman Travis Hill is set to become acting chairman at the start of the next administration, and he’s critical of the FDIC’s digital assets stance.