Top Stories of The Week
Bitcoiners accuse JPMorgan of rigging the game against Strategy, DATs
Members of the Bitcoin community and supporters of Strategy, the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, are criticizing JPMorgan’s proposed Bitcoin-backed notes, accusing the bank of spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt about Strategy and other crypto treasury companies.
JPMorgan’s notes are a leveraged investment product tied to the price of Bitcoin. The product tracks BTC but amplifies the outcome, giving holders 1.5 times the gains — or the losses — through December 2028. The notes are slated for a December 2025 launch, according to an SEC filing.
The move drew sharp criticism from the Bitcoin community, with many saying that JPMorgan is now a direct competitor to BTC treasury companies and has an incentive to marginalize companies like Strategy to promote its own structured financial product.
Animoca bets on altcoin upside to lure investors as it plans for IPO
Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu aims to position his company as a vehicle for investors to gain exposure to broader crypto projects and the altcoin market, as the company plans to go public through a reverse merger next year.
“We believe that altcoins, ultimately, over the largest space, are going to outperform Bitcoin as a collective,” Siu said during an interview with Cointelegraph on Wednesday.
Siu compared Bitcoin to gold, saying that while no single company is bigger than gold’s market capitalization, all public companies combined are “roughly five to six times gold.”
He said that while these companies may not have the same longevity as gold, they can go “up and down as a whole.”
Tom Lee cools on $250K Bitcoin call, year-end ATH now just a ‘maybe’
BitMine Immersion Technologies chair Tom Lee has seemingly eased off his widely promoted $250,000 year-end Bitcoin forecast, now only giving a “maybe” to the notion that Bitcoin can reclaim its October all-time high of $125,100 before the end of the year.
“I think it’s still very likely that Bitcoin is going to be above $100,000 before year-end, and maybe even to a new high,” Lee said during an interview with CNBC on Wednesday.
This appears to be the first time Lee has publicly softened his $250,000 year-end Bitcoin price target, which he initially floated earlier in 2024 and continued to reiterate through early October.
Lee’s prediction was one of the more bullish. Other crypto executives, including Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz, warned around October that “crazy stuff” would need to happen for Bitcoin to reach that level.
Conor McGregor calls out Khabib over NFTs, gets shut down by ZachXBT
UFC star Conor McGregor criticized former rival Khabib Nurmagomedov for his non-fungible token (NFT) drop on Telegram, which featured digital “papakhas” — a traditional hat worn in Nurmagomedov’s native country of Dagestan.
“There is just no way good guy Khabib used his late father’s name, as well as Dagestan’s culture, to scam his fans and fire sell a bunch of digital NFTs online,” McGregor wrote in a now-deleted X post.
Onchain sleuth ZachXBT responded to McGregor, pointing out that McGregor attempted to launch his own celebrity memecoin in April called REAL.
Thailand tells Sam Altman’s World to delete 1.2M iris scans over data risks
Authorities in Thailand have officially requested World, a Sam Altman-backed digital identity project, to suspend operations and delete all user identification data.
Thailand’s Economic and Social Development Board, the country’s strategic planning agency, ordered World to delete iris scans of 1.2 million local users, according to a statement by the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society on Monday.
The order said World’s iris scanning in exchange for its Worldcoin token violated Thailand’s Personal Data Protection Act, which governs the collection, use and disclosure of personal data.
The suspension came weeks after Thai authorities raided one of World’s iris scanning locations in October amid allegations of potential digital asset law violations.
Most Memorable Quotations
“The bottom line is institutions have arrived. New financial infrastructure is taking shape now, and US Bank, PwC, and SDF are working to unlock the next wave of digital banking.”
The Stellar Development Foundation
“I think we’ll be at 100% when you have those kinds of pie charts to show the percentage of client money or institutional capital that is in a DeFi system versus a TradFi system.”
Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of Chainlink
“I think it’s still very likely that Bitcoin is going to be above $100,000 before year-end, and maybe even to a new high.”
Tom Lee, chairman of BitMine Immersion Technologies
“With liquidity returning, quantitative tightening (QT) ending December 1st, and monetary policy…
cointelegraph.com