Former Pump.fun developer sentenced to 6 years in prison for stealing approximately $2 million SOL from employer

As of December 19, CME’s FedWatch Tool shows the U.S. Federal Reserve has a 26.6% probability of cutting interest rates by 25 basis points in January 2024, with a 73.4% chance of holding rates steady.

On December 19, U.S. stocks broadly advanced, with the Nasdaq up 2%, the S&P 500 gaining 1.4% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average rising 0.95%, per market data.

Dec. 19: Bitwise has filed an S-1 registration statement for a spot Bitcoin ETF with the U.S. SEC, per market reports.

December 19: Coinglass data shows total crypto liquidations across the network topped $484 million over the past 24 hours, with $336M in long positions and $148M in short positions.

On December 18, the Solana team announced that the NEAR token has been issued cross-chain on the Solana network.

**Binance Founder CZ Shares Insights in Year-End Q&A (Dec 18)** On December 18, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) discussed his work priorities, views on the BNB ecosystem, crypto market trends, key sector judgments, entrepreneurship advice, and investment focus during his year-end Q&A. ### Key Takeaways: 1. **Current Focus Areas**: CZ spends most of his time on four initiatives: Giggle Academy, YZi Labs, the BNB ecosystem, and pushing for national cryptocurrency adoption. 2. **BNB Chain Growth**: The chain saw strong 2023 growth—annual trading volume up ~600% year-over-year, daily active users topping 2 million. CZ emphasized it needs to keep creating value for actual builders, noting the ecosystem’s future scale will surpass any single business within it (including centralized exchanges and protocols). 3. **Stablecoin Sector**: A "better" stablecoin hasn’t scaled broadly yet; current options are 1.0/1.5 iterations (e.g., FDUSD, USD1). The market has massive untapped pot