US Stocks Extend Gains, Nasdaq Rises 2%

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.

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

On December 18, The Block reports that Intuit has inked a multi-year partnership with Circle to integrate USD Coin (USDC) payments into its core products—including TurboTax and QuickBooks—aimed at modernizing the fund flows of the financial software giant’s platforms. Under the deal, Intuit will leverage Circle’s stablecoin infrastructure to enable faster, lower-cost payment processes for tax refunds, business payments and other financial services.