Standard Chartered Bank to Partner with Coinbase to Expand Institutional-facing Cryptocurrency Brokerage Business

On December 12, The Raise Network’s team announced at the Solana Breakpoint Conference that its Raise Smart Cards project has selected Solana as the infrastructure to build an on-chain gift card and loyalty ecosystem. The on-chain smart gift card system will support loyalty rewards for brands including Uber and Fanatics, leveraging Solana’s high-performance capabilities.

On December 12, Binance issued an update on its collaboration with Pakistan to advance digital asset innovation and regulatory development. Binance has secured Anti-Money Laundering (AML) registration under Pakistan’s Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (PVARA) framework— a key milestone toward securing a full Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) license and local registration in the country. As part of a phased rollout, Binance will offer cross-border services under its AML registration prior to securing the full VASP license, while strictly complying with Pakistan’s regulatory roadmap requirements. Binance remains committed to supporting South Asia’s digital economy growth and looks forward to ongoing collaboration with regional regulators and stakeholders to build a robust, transparent, inclusive virtual asset ecosystem.

On December 12, cryptocurrency wallet Phantom announced the launch of Phantom Prediction Markets—a Kalshi-powered prediction market. Users will be able to trade predictions across sectors including sports, crypto, and culture. The service is set to roll out to eligible users next week.

December 12: Key takeaways from the 171st Ethereum Consensus Layer Core Developer Meeting (ACDC), per Christine Kim’s summary, include: - Retaining trust-minimized payments as part of the embedded Proposal-Builder Separation (ePBS) in the Glamsterdam upgrade, while formally eliminating the Fork Option Chain Inclusion List (FOCIL) feature. Separately, the Fusaka upgrade went live successfully on the Ethereum mainnet on December 3. This was followed by the activation of the blob parameter hard fork on December 9, with the network operating smoothly. The meeting also covered proposals such as EIP 7688, EIP 8061, and EIP 8080. Developers plan to begin outlining the Heka upgrade in January 2024, while exploring a replacement star name that meets International Astronomical Union (IAU) standards.

December 12th — Bloomberg reported Thursday that Tether plans to raise up to $20 billion via a stock offering, with the company weighing tokenizing the shares after the offering wraps up. Sources familiar with the matter said Tether executives are exploring multiple options, including stock buybacks, and intend to tokenize the firm’s stock by storing it digitally on the blockchain post-offering. Previously, at least one existing shareholder had aimed to sell shares at a price well below Tether’s $50 billion valuation, prompting the company to intervene and block the plan. Management is concerned such sell-offs by current investors could undermine future large-scale financing efforts.

On December 12, Builder Codes launched a framework that lets developers build custom terminals, tools, and apps atop Grvt—with ongoing revenue from order flow. This lets Grvt focus on its core matching and settlement system, while the ecosystem team innovates in parallel using the same technical foundation. Built on ZKsync Atlas, Grvt offers developers a higher-performance, lower-cost unified liquidity environment. Its first batch of partners includes professional terminal provider Tealstreet, institutional-grade OEMS Tread.fi, and additional firms.