Prizmabet

The Protocol: A Quantum Threat to Bitcoin?

Also: An Ethereum dev’s defection to Solana; Polygon’s big proving-system flex; crypto’s most influential

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk’s weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I’m Marc Hochstein, CoinDesk’s deputy editor-in-chief for features, opinion and standards.

In this issue:

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What does Google’s quantum computing chip mean for Bitcoin?
Dev’s defection highlights Ethereum’s growing Solana problem
OrdinalsBot inscribes largest-ever file on Bitcoin blockchain
Polygon touts speed of Plonky3 proving system
Crypto’s most influential techies of 2024

Network News

NEED FOR SPEED: Polygon Labs claims its newest proving system, Plonky3, is the fastest on the market. (Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s creator, apparently agrees.) A proving system is at the core of zero-knowledge rollups, and a crucial component for transactions that rely on cryptographic security. It is the main piece of technology that creates proofs that summarize off-chain transactions, which are then sent back to a base blockchain (in this case, Ethereum). “If a zkVM is a car, you could look at the proving system as being the engine, so Plonky3 is kind of what makes everything work,” Brendan Farmer, a co-founder at Polygon, tells CoinDesk’s Margaux Nijkerk. The quicker a proof is generated, the less computing time that must be paid for. “If we improve speed, then we’re improving costs,” Farmer said. “And so what this does is it makes ZK rollup really competitive in terms of costs.” In January 2022, Polygon released its previous proving system, called Plonky2, claiming then that it was the fastest one on the market. Plonky3, the new and improved version that has more flexibility, was released in July.

IN AWE OF THE SIZE OF THIS LAD: Bitcoin inscriptions project OrdinalsBot minted what it says is the largest file ever on the oldest and most valuable blockchain: the last in a collection of 1,500 “Pizza Ninjas.” It’s part of a phenomenon in the Bitcoin development community known as “four meggers,” which are files that take up an entire block on the network. They are called four meggers because they are almost 4 megabytes (MB) big (the maximum size of each block of transactions on Bitcoin). Ordinal collectors consider them valuable due to their visibility on the blockchain. “There’s more than just bragging rights behind wanting to have the largest file on Bitcoin,” said Toby Lewis, co-founder of OrdinalsBot. “Four meggers will be on the Bitcoin blockchain forever and they already hold significant market value.” Bitcoin inscriptions, similar to non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on Ethereum, were made possible by the Ordinals protocol. It allows data to be “inscribed” onto individual satoshis, or “sats” (the smallest unit of BTC at 1/100,000,000 of a full bitcoin), making each one unique and potentially valuable. Read more.

JUMPING SHIP: Ethereum’s place near the top of the crypto market is unquestioned from the perspective of market cap. Beneath the surface – at the product, developer and decision-making levels – the original smart contracts platform continues to take a beating from Solana, one of its closest competitors. Ethereum and its many closely-linked networks are still the most important, influential, and largest platforms for decentralized finance. That lead is beginning to erode, however, with many newcomers to crypto choosing Solana’s speed and low fees. The dynamic was further punctuated Monday with news that longtime Ethereum ecosystem developer Max Resnick was moving into Solana’s orbit, abandoning his job at the developer studio Consensys. “There’s just so much more possibility and potential energy in Solana,” Resnick said in an interview with CoinDesk. He framed the decision as rooted in his own career path, but noted “frustration” with Ethereum’s inability to adapt contributed to the move. Ethereum lacks a streamlined process for making quick changes. Some see that as a point of strength for a decentralized network, while others, like Resnick, see it as a hindrance for long-term success. Read more

MOST INFLUENTIAL: This week, for the tenth time, CoinDesk has selected the people who defined the year in crypto: Our Most Influential list. (Here was the first edition in 2015.) Most Influential highlights personal achievements in the last calendar year. People are chosen for their projects, ideas, leadership, personality, or notoriety. There is a top 10 of the most Most Influential – people we feel had outsize influence or led the most important projects. Then, we profile another 40 people who were only a little less influential. (Certain prominent people in crypto – Vitalik Buterin, say – would naturally be Most Influential every year. But we choose not to feature the same names each time.) Among the tech luminaries we highlighted in this year’s series were Solana’s Lilly Liu, Optimism’s Jin Yang, EigenLayer’s Sreeram Kannan, BitVM’s Robin Linus, Rootstock’s Sergio Lerner, TON’s Steve Yun, NEAR’s IIlia Polosukhin, Akash Network’s Greg Osuri; Bitcoin’s Taproot Wizards founders … and of course, Satoshi Nakamoto, whose secret identity remains a parlor-game topic after all these years. (Writing that last piece was downright cathartic for me.) Find all the profiles here.

WHAT DOES GOOGLE’S QUANTUM COMPUTING CHIP MEAN FOR BITCOIN?

Google’s new quantum computing chip could mean bitcoin (BTC) is finished.

That was the sentiment for some on Monday as the internet giant unveiled Willow, a quantum supercomputer that can perform certain computational tasks in just five minutes that would take classical supercomputers an astronomical amount of time—specifically, 10 septillion years (or one followed by 24 zeroes; a trillion trillion).

10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Such an amount of time is greater than the existence of the entire universe at 13.8 billion years.

In superficial theory, such a powerful computer could mean no passwords are safe, encrypted messages are intercepted, nuclear weapons codes are found out, and almost anything can be unlocked by brute-forcing combinations of numbers and letters.

But it isn’t all doom and gloom yet.

While quantum computing does indeed pose significant threats to current security systems, it’s not a master key to the universe, at least not right now. And there is no looming threat to Bitcoin, either.

Quantum computing leverages the principles of quantum mechanics, using quantum bits or qubits instead of traditional bits. Unlike bits which represent either a 0 or 1, qubits can represent both 0 and 1 simultaneously due to quantum phenomena like superposition and entanglement. This allows quantum computers to perform multiple calculations at once, potentially solving problems that are currently intractable for classical computers. Willow uses 105 qubits and demonstrates an exponential error reduction as the number of qubits increases. This is a critical step towards building a practical, large-scale quantum computer, said Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

Bitcoin uses algorithms like SHA-256 for mining and ECDSA for signatures, which might be vulnerable to quantum decryption. And the short answer is that quantum computers, even advanced ones like Google’s Willow, do not possess the scale or error correction capabilities needed to immediately decrypt widely used encryption methods like RSA, ECC (used in Bitcoin transactions), or AES (used in securing data).

If quantum computers like Willow reach a scale where they can easily factor in large numbers, they could potentially break these encryption schemes, compromising wallet security and transaction integrity. That would require quantum computers with millions or even billions of “qubits” with extremely low error rates, far beyond the current technology.

“Google claims to have demonstrated ‘below threshold’ error correcting capabilities with their latest quantum chip,” said Chris Osborn, founder at Solana ecosystem project Dialect, in a post on X (formerly Twitter). “‘Below threshold’ is industry jargon for turning physical qubits, which are noisy, s*itty quantum bits that are basically useless, into logical qubits, which are multi-qubit abstractions that correct for errors & let you actually perform real computation.” he added.

It takes roughly 5,000 logical qubits “to run Shor’s algorithm to break encryption. In other words, millions of physical qubits are needed to break encryption. Google’s chip today: 105 physical qubits,” Osborn noted.

Until then, cryptocurrencies (and other sectors) have time to develop quantum-resistant algorithms.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ARTICLE BY COINDESK’S SHAURYA MALWA

Money Center

Hole in the wallet

Magic Eden’s $5B Token Airdrop Raises Crypto Wallet Security Questions

Deals and grants

Binance Partners With Circle to Push USDC Stablecoin Adoption Across the Globe
Stablecoin Trading Startup Perena Tries Its Luck on Solana

Happy perp-day

As BitMEX Turns 10, the Market Is Still Thankful for the Perpetual Swap

Regulatory and policy

El Salvador and Argentina Regulators Sign Agreement to Help Develop Crypto Industry

Calendar

Dec. 4-5: India Blockchain Week, Bangalore
Dec. 5-6: Emergence, Prague
Dec. 9-12: Abu Dhabi Finance Week
Dec. 11-12: AI Summit NYC
Dec. 11-14: Taipei Blockchain Week
Jan 9-12, 2025: CES, Las Vegas
Jan. 15-19: World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland
January 21-25: WAGMI conference, Miami.
Jan. 24-25: Adopting Bitcoin, Cape Town, South Africa.
Jan. 30-31: PLAN B Forum, San Salvador, El Salvador.
Feb. 1-6: Satoshi Roundtable, Dubai
Feb. 19-20, 2025: ConsensusHK, Hong Kong.
Feb. 23-24: NFT Paris
Feb 23-March 2: ETHDenver
May 14-16: Consensus, Toronto.
March 18-19: Digital Asset Summit, London
May 27-29: Bitcoin 2025, Las Vegas.

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Bitcoin Going to $200K, Coinbase to Join S&P 500: Bitwise’s 10 Predictions for 2025

This year was good for crypto, but 2025 might turn out even better for the sector, according to Bitwise Asset Management.

With the highly successful introduction of spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds, the U.S. crypto regulatory situation looking much rosier now that former President Donald Trump has been elected for a second term, and the bullish price action, it’s undeniable that 2024 was a big year for crypto.

But things could get even crazier in 2025, according to Bitwise Asset Management, a firm which specializes in developing crypto investment products. The company laid out 10 crypto predictions for the year to come in a report released Wednesday, penned by the firm’s chief investment officer, Matt Hougan, and its head of research, Ryan Rasmussen.

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First among the predictions is that all major cryptocurrencies will see new record highs. Bitcoin will push to $200,000, said Bitwise, while ether will hit $7,000 and solana will more than triple to $750.

Bitcoin’s rise will be fueled by even bigger ETF inflows than in 2024, Bitwise said. That’s a strong statement given their success already, but the team noted that it’s not unusual fo ETFs to take in larger flows in year two versus year one. They also remind that major wirehouses are only now finishing up their due diligence on the products and investors are feeling more comfortable increasing their exposure to bitcoin.

There’s also the possibility that the U.S. Department of Labor won’t be so adversarial towards the sector anymore, which according to Bitwise could enable tens of billions of dollars to flow into crypto assets from 401(k) plans.

And a potential bitcoin arms race — kicked off by U.S. politicians’ plans to constitute a strategic bitcoin reserve — would certainly help move the price upwards. Bitwise predicted that the number of countries holding bitcoin will double in 2025 from nine to eighteen.

Other possibilities for 2025

Stablecoins will likely benefit from clear legislation in the U.S. and fintech integrations, as well as rising prices, and double their market capitalization to $400 billion, according to Bitwise.

Tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), meanwhile, could see their value shoot past $50 billion as Wall Street keeps wading deeper into the sector.

And the 2025 memecoin mania could even top this year’s, as AI agents are making it easier than ever to launch tokens.

Crypto companies will also have a good year, Bitwise predicted. A host of them could launch IPOs, Bitwise said, with stablecoin issuer Circle, crypto lending firm Figure, on-chain data company Chainalysis, crypto exchange Kraken and crypto custodian Anchorage Digital as the most likely to do so.

Already public for several years, crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN) could see its stock top $700 per share, or more than double the current level, Bitwise said, meaning it would surpass Charles Schwab as the most valuable brokerage in the world.

Further, suggests Bitwise, it could mean that Coinbase could be included in the S&P 500. Coupled with MicroStrategy’s likely inclusion into the Nasdaq 100, there’s a chance that almost every U.S. investor will have exposure to crypto through these investment vehicles.

LINK, AAVE Rocket 30% as Trump’s World Liberty Financial Buys $2M Tokens

The AAVE token purchases came as a proposal to float a World Liberty Financial instance on Aave met quorum.

Crypto wallets connected to the Trump family-supported World Liberty Financial project purchased millions of dollars worth of various major tokens early Thursday, causing their prices to rocket.

World Liberty Financial is a unified platform where users can borrow and lend cryptocurrencies, create liquidity pools and transact with stablecoins. WLFI serves as a governance token for the platform.

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President-elect Donald Trump is “chief crypto advocate” of the project. Two of his sons, Eric and Donald Trump Jr., are “web3 ambassadors,” while Barron holds the title of “DeFi visionary.”

Data shows the project purchased $10 million in ether (ETH), and $1 million each in aave (AAVE) and Chainlink’s LINK tokens early Thursday. ETH prices surged 7% in Asian morning hours after the purchases, while AAVE and LINK prices surged 30% on the bullish sentiment.

Trump's World Liberty(@worldlibertyfi) is buying $ETH, $LINK and $AAVE!

In the past 9 hours, the World Liberty Multisig wallet spent 10M $USDC to buy 2,631 $ETH at $3,801, 1M $USDC to buy 41,335 $LINK at $24.2, and 1M $USDC to buy 3,357 $AAVE at $297.8.https://t.co/mtD0c2tvvo pic.twitter.com/B11KvcwRJQ

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) December 12, 2024

The wallet has additionally spent $30 million to buy 8,105 ETH at an average price of $3,700 in the past 12 days, per Spot on Chain.

Well-followed crypto trader @TheFlowHorse speculated that the tokens were likely part of bigger plans in the coming months: “Trump’s account is buying the crypto pairs that are set to benefit heavily from his plans.”

World Liberty Financial uses data provider Chainlink’s services for better integrating with the wider crypto ecosystem. Chainlink supports the platform by providing crucial pricing data and cross-chain interoperability infrastructure, per a November report.

Last week, the platform’s DAO proposed deploying a World Liberty Financial Aave v3 instance. This instance will be managed through external risk managers, built on the existing Aave v3 infrastructure, and released on Ethereum.

An instance refers to a specific deployment or version of a protocol, application, or service on a blockchain network.

The vote has already met quorum ahead of its end date on Dec. 13, governance data shows, and key objectives include attracting first-time users to the platform as well as sharing a piece of revenues with those who provide liquidity.

Solana Was the Biggest Draw for New Crypto Developers in 2024: Electric Capital

Ethereum remained the blockchain with the most devs, and the overall population of software builders in crypto was flat, the VC firm said in its annual survey.

The ranks of cryptocurrency developers held steady in 2024, as some recent entrants left the industry while veterans mostly stuck around, according to a report released Thursday by Electric Capital.

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The total developers working in crypto worldwide was basically flat, declining a statistically insignificant 7% from a year earlier, and the number of monthly active developers went to 23,613 in November, the report said.

Meanwhile, the Solana ecosystem, ground zero for the memecoin craze, was the most popular blockchain among new developers, an 83% increase in its ecosystem compared to a year earlier. In July, this community became the first since 2016 to bring on board more devs than Ethereum. Solana attracted 7,625 new developers in 2024, the most of any chain and a little over 1,000 more than Ethereum.

The results underscore the challenge Ethereum faces as rival smart contract platform Solana’s low fees and fast transactions attract investment and talent.

According to Maria Shen, a general partner at Electric Capital, the share of developers who have worked in crypto for more than two years grew in 2024. Among those who left the industry, the largest group were relative newcomers.

“These are people who effectively joined during the bear market, and haven’t really seen anything since then,” Shen told CoinDesk in an interview.

The stability of the developer population is an auspicious sign, Shen said.

“When we look at the sector of established developers, it’s growing and looking very healthy,” she said. “When we look at full-time developers .. this had the least amount of declines, very small, like [a] 4% decline year over year. So overall, I would say, [the population is] looking very healthy, but it’s flat, and mainly because of the losses from people who joined less than a year ago and then less than two years ago.”

Solana has momentum, Ethereum remains dominant

Despite Solana’s momentum and massive increase in new developer talent, its main competitor, Ethereum, is still ahead.

“Ethereum absolutely dominates,” said Shen “Ethereum has very, very deep network effects, and you can see that through the data.”

The number of monthly Ethereum developers shrank by 17% over the last year, to 6,244, but Shen said this blockchain still has the biggest developer ecosystem by far.

“Ethereum dominates by overall developers everywhere, in every continent of the world. But Solana is currently number two,” Shen said.

Growth in Ethereum development can mainly be attributed to the vast number of layer-2 networks that have popped up, with Base, Optimism, and Arbitrum seeing many developers working on their chains. Slightly more than half – 56% – of Ethereum developers are working on the layer-2s on top of it, Electric Capital found.

Furthermore, Eigenlayer, the main restaking protocol on Ethereum, brought in a period of massive developer innovation for its ecosystem as protocols deployed their Actively Validated Services (AVS) in the ecosystem. Eigenlayer was the fastest growing developer ecosystem in 2024, with a 167% increase by monthly overall developers, the report said.

Developers are global

Electric Capital’s report also showed that crypto is becoming more global, as Asia became the continent with the biggest number of blockchain developers, and North America dropped from first place to third. However, the U.S. remains the number one country for now for developers, with a 19% share.

India, however, brought on board more new crypto developers in 2024 than any other country, with 17% of the new developer share.

“Anecdotally, there’s a lot of education programs and developer education programs, there’s a lot of hackathons in India,” Shen said.

The geographic diversification of developers is another salubrious trend, Shen said.

“The idea that the U.S. and North America continues its dominance is not only unlikely, but I would say, kind of undesirable,” she said. “You do want to see more global diversity in crypto, and to be borderless, and I think there’s a lot of great engineering talent outside of the U.S.”

Bitcoin Traders Now Target $120K as Bullish ‘Santa Claus Rally’ Gains Steam

Data from the past eight years shows that bitcoin ended December in the green six times since 2015, running at least 8% to as much as 46% (in the outlier year of 2020).

Bitcoin (BTC) set a fresh record above $106,000 earlier Monday, with traders now targeting the $120,000 level as the asset moves into the second half of a seasonally bullish December.

Recent catalysts that have supported growth in BTC include increased speculation of U.S. president-elect Donald Trump creating a federal bitcoin reserve, and crypto companies such as Riot Platforms and MicroStrategy purchasing billions worth of the asset in past weeks.

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Optimism in U.S. policies are driving bitcoin ETFs inflows higher, contributing to increased prices, some point out.

“TradFi inflows now dominate all sentiment and price action in BTC unlike any other prior crypto cycle before,” shared Augustine Fan, head of insights at SOFA, in a Telegram message to CoinDesk. “This influence will only grow as more and more traditional firms finally need to have a digital asset policy given the immense revenue opportunities and sea-change in the political environment.”

Recent price action has shown bitcoin forming higher lows, indicative of a sustained uptrend. The formation of a bull flag or a bullish continuation pattern after recent highs could signal further upward movement.

This month tends to be historically bullish for bitcoin in a move that’s colloquially termed the “Santa Claus Rally.” Data from the past eight years shows that bitcoin ended December in the green six times since 2015, running at least 8% to as much as 46% (in the outlier year of 2020).

Seasonality is the tendency of assets to experience regular and predictable changes that recur every calendar year. While it may look random, possible reasons range from profit-taking around tax season in April and May, which causes drawdowns, to the generally bullish November and December, a sign of increased demand ahead of holiday season.

Meanwhile, some traders are now targeting the $120,000 level and above for BTC in the coming year.

“We think bitcoin still has tremendous upside potential and could easily hit the $125k mark by the end of 2025,” Jeff Mei, COO at crypto exchange BTSE, said over Telegram. “While some say the upside has already been priced in over the last month or so, we think the rally is just getting started.”

“This is because it takes time for institutions, family offices, and high-net-worth individuals to warm up to the idea of allocating 1%-3% of their portfolios to bitcoin and crypto as a whole. Once that happens, crypto inflows could skyrocket. And given Trump’s pro-crypto appointments, continued rate cuts, and stimulus spending from China, there are a lot of reasons to be bullish,” Mei added.

Cardano’s ADA Leaps to 2.5-Year High of 90 Cents as Whale Holdings Exceed $12B

On-chain activity shows the involvement of large investors and institutions, indicating that the price surge could have staying power.

As bitcoin (BTC) gets closer to the $100,000 mark for the first time — it crossed $99,000 earlier Friday — capital is rotating into alternative cryptocurrencies, creating a buzz in the broader crypto market.

Amid the excitement, proof-of-stake smart-contract blockchain Cardano’s native cryptocurrency ada (ADA) is having its moment. The token has surged 10% in the past 24 hours, trading at 90 cents early Friday on Coinbase and other exchanges. That’s the highest price since May 2022, according to CoinDesk Indices data.

The price has risen 22% this week, taking the month-to-date gain to 152%. That has raised the token’s market capitalization to $30.85 billion, making it the world’s 10th-largest digital asset. In contrast, the CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20), a measure of the broader crypto market, has advanced 14% this week and 58% this month.

ADA’s rally is accompanied by continued accumulation from whales, hefty crypto addresses with more than $10 million in the token. According to Tagus Capital, whales now hold over $12 billion in ADA.

On-chain activity confirms the involvement of whales and institutions, indicating that this rally could have staying power. Data from analytics firm IntoTheBlock shows the number of large transactions involving ADA has skyrocketed by 300% in two weeks.

It’s a sign of “heightened interest from institutional investors,” Tagus Capital said in a daily newsletter, noting the spike in large transactions. “Some of this momentum is sentiment-driven, as previously noted, with Cardano’s founder, Charles Hoskinson, hinting at potential collaborations with the Trump administration for crypto-friendly policies.”

Coinbase App Gets Left Behind as Memecoin Craze Drives Traders On-Chain

Phantom, a crypto wallet with a steeper learning curve, is ahead of exchange giant Coinbase in the Apple App Store rankings.

It’s long been a cryptocurrency maxim that Coinbase’s (COIN) ranking in app store downloads signals how much retail traders are participating in a bull market. Well, the bull run’s here, and Coinbase isn’t climbing charts like it used to.

Instead, Phantom, a harder-to-use crypto wallet, has leapfrogged the better-known centralized exchange. At press time, Phantom was in seventh place among free applications — between Temu and Google — on Apple’s U.S. App Store, well ahead of Coinbase at 27th.

The flip is challenging expectations of what mainstream traders can tolerate during their first days in crypto. While the bitcoin community in particular has always emphasized “being your own bank,” other parts of the cryptoverse, like Coinbase, have bet on a more accessible experience.

Memecoin mania is blowing that up. Coinbase and other established exchanges don’t list the bottom-of-the-barrel, hours-old, exceptionally risky yet sometimes tremendously lucrative (if you don’t lose your shirt, as most do) joke tokens that new traders want to bet on. To get those, they gotta go on-chain with something like Phantom.

“Traditional centralized exchanges can’t keep up with all of the new on-chain paradigms fast enough,” said Phantom CEO Brandon Millman in an email.

Chill Guy, TikTok

In the past week, one memecoin in particular, Chill Guy, caught plenty of attention on TikTok and even more bids on-chain. Bolstered by a coordinated social media marketing campaign, CHILLGUY — whose mascot is, well, a chill-looking dog — soared in days from a market cap of basically nothing to as high as $500 million.

Buying CHILLGUY and other fresh memecoins requires a bit more effort than, say, buying bitcoin (BTC) on Coinbase. Traders must navigate decentralized exchanges and learn to futz with finicky order settings just to get the prices they want. It’s a clunky setup with a high learning curve compared to the exchanges.

Whether TikTok is primarily responsible for driving newcomers on-chain is an open question. The video app’s exceptionally niche crypto scene doesn’t have any truly standout videos racking up millions of views, as those de rigueur dance routines often do. More common are the oodles of low-viewership crypto bros crowing about their gazillionaire designs. A handful also teach their followers how to download Phantom.

Coinbase is onboarding memecoins, to be sure. In the past week, it greenlit FLOKI and PEPE, as well as WIF for German traders. Those tokens have been around a relatively long time and accrued market caps in the billions of dollars, making them more stable (relatively speaking) than, say, DIDDYOIL, a memecoin only accessible to traders who operate on-chain.

“Our mission is to increase economic freedom in the world, and we know we can’t do it alone,” a spokesperson for Coinbase said. “We believe a rising tide raises all boats, and we are thrilled to see more people engaging on-chain and with crypto over the last few weeks.”

While the Coinbase exchange itself is only tiptoeing into the memecoin space, the company at large is attempting to foster — and capture — such activity with its layer-2 network, Base. Base’s memecoin scene isn’t at the level of Solana (SOL), but it still sees millions of dollars worth of volume each day.

“We’re focused on making on-chain faster (transactions anywhere across the globe in seconds), cheaper (with typical Base fees of less than 1 cent) and easier to use, so on-chain technology is accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world,” the spokesperson said.

“We’re looking forward to bringing a billion people on-chain.”

Bitcoin Going to $140K Says Trio of AIs Managing $30M Investment Fund

Intelligent Alpha’s investment committee is composed of three AIs and the fund’s CEO tries to stay out of their way.

There’s a $30 million fund that, for all intents and purposes, leaves all investment decisions to be made by artificial intelligence (AI).

The firm’s name: Intelligent Alpha. Its staff includes founder and CEO Doug Clinton, a few programmers and contractors, and a trio of AIs — OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude.

The AI triumvirate makes up the firm’s investment committee and so far, it’s doing a stellar job.

“Some of the AI’s best calls have been shorts,” Clinton told CoinDesk in an interview. “It was short on Boeing earlier this year, before that door blew off the 737 MAX [in January]. And AI was actually short on the stock for that reason — because it thought there would be quality issues with the plane.”

While the firm has focused on traditional finance so far and mostly kept away from crypto, Clinton said he started experimenting with bitcoin (BTC) specifically in the last five months. The objective: for AI to set useful targets to trade the world’s top cryptocurrency.

“In the bull case — which was a Trump win and a more favorable regulatory environment — AI saw that bitcoin could maybe go to $140,000,” Clinton said. “Maybe that’s the scenario we’re working toward right now.”

How it works

A lot of firms now use AI to enhance human processes, to help analysts process data and think in different ways. But Clinton’s method is to give responsibility to the AI trio, and stay out of its way as much as possible when it comes to investment decisions.

The process is relatively simple. If, for example, Intelligent Alpha is looking to build a large cap U.S. equity portfolio, the fund will curate a bunch of data about U.S. companies with large market capitalizations, like historical revenue and earning projections, and feed it to the AIs.

The next step is to give a philosophical framework for the AIs to use. Clinton asks the AIs to step into the shoes of some of the most famous investors in the world — Warren Buffett, Stanley Druckenmiller, Cathie Wood — and apply their way of thinking to the portfolio at hand.

The triumvirate then produces a portfolio, which a human must double-check to make sure there aren’t any “hallucinations,” in Clinton’s words. For example, the AI may accidentally include a stock that was recently acquired, or the stock of a company with a small market cap.

“Other than that, we try not to really mess with the portfolios,” Clinton told CoinDesk. “As a human, I’ll sometimes look at the portfolios and think ‘Oh, this pick seems like a terrible idea.’ Other times I’ll see something really interesting and try to understand the logic. It’s kind of fun.”

The process involves the three AIs explaining their reasoning to Clinton. Not only does it help him ascertain that the investments are aligned with the portfolio’s goals, but he says that models provide better portfolios when they’re forced to explain why they like specific stocks.

It often happens for the AIs to disagree. And their way of thinking changes as updates get rolled out. “It used to be the case that Claude was the most contrarian model in terms of the outputs, when we first started testing,” Clinton said. “Now I would say it’s ChatGPT.” And while Clinton has tested other AIs such as Grok or Lama AI, keeping the investment committee down to three AIs has proved to be the most efficient set-up.

Predicting the future

Investors can gain exposure to Intelligent Alpha’s strategy through an exchange-traded fund, the Intelligent Livermore ETF, which launched in September and uses AI to build a global equity portfolio. More such funds are on the way, Clinton said.

For the Livermore ETF, every financial quarter the models review world events and try to make predictions for the next three to six months. Five or six areas of opportunities are then identified (following the investment philosophies of the greats like Druckenmiller) and the portfolio gets built around these sectors.

Having competing philosophies means the portfolio usually ends up being quite balanced. “In many cases they’re looking at idiosyncratic opportunities,” Clinton said. “We haven’t seen big issues where [the investment philosophies] are at odds, but even then, it would be like hedging.” The AIs themselves make the decisions on how to weigh the various philosophies found in the portfolio, depending on the areas they’re the most confident in.

“AI has been, at least so far, really good at seeing forward,” Clinton said. “Right before we launched, it made a big bet on Asian stocks, specifically Chinese stocks, and that was right before [billionaire hedge fund manager] David Tepper went on CNBC in September and said that China was his biggest bet, that they were bringing out the bazooka for stimulus. And you know, Chinese stocks went crazy.”

Another memorable trade: chipmaker giant Nvidia has been AI’s top pick since the experiment began in summer of 2023. “Back then, I was like, ‘Oh, my God.’ Nvidia had run so much at that point,” Clinton said. “But it’s up now like 400% from the moment the AI picked it.” The lesson in there, he says, is humans will react to charts emotionally, whereas AI “just doesn’t care. It says ‘No, this is going to go higher.’”

Not that every bet has been a slam dunk, but so far, the mistakes have been on the margin, according to Clinton. The AI is building a good track record on macro events especially, he said. For one thing, it predicted that former President Donald Trump would be re-elected.

And crypto?

One of the reasons Intelligent Alpha doesn’t focus too much on crypto is simply lack of data. Their trades may have happened on-chain, but there’s no easy way to go back and find the kind of trading setups and investment philosophies used by famous crypto investors like Cobie or GCR. Most of the time, all you can do is go off of their posts on X — and it’s hard to know whether the posts reflect reality.

That being said, the crypto community’s reliance on X means that Grok could end up playing a role in Intelligent Alpha’s triumvirate someday for crypto purposes, Clinton mused, since that model is trained and fine-tuned with data from the social media platform.

“The question that we’re exploring here is, what can we do with AI that would maybe be unique and different and stand out a little bit,” Clinton said. “To find a unique way to use AI to identify breakout crypto projects, that would be a really cool way to use the tech.”

Trump Reportedly Plans to Name Pro-Crypto Hedge Fund Manager Scott Bessent as Treasury Secretary

If the Senate confirms Bessent, the next person whose signature is on the front of paper U.S. currency will be a fan of digital assets created to replace the conventional financial system.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is close to naming hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, a cryptocurrency enthusiast, as his pick for Treasury Secretary, according to Bloomberg and other media outlets.

If the Senate confirms him, the next person whose signature adorns U.S. paper currency will be a fan of the digital currency ecosystem set up to replace the conventional financial system.

Bessent runs Key Square Group, a macro investing firm. He worked for prominent investor George Soros three decades ago and was, according to The Wall Street Journal, “one of the driving forces” behind Soros Fund Management’s famous bet — that netted a more than $1 billion profit — that the British pound would collapse.

Bitcoin (BTC) and crypto as a whole are now in his sights.

“I have been excited about [Trump’s] embrace of crypto and I think it fits very well with the Republican Party, the ethos of it. Crypto is about freedom and the crypto economy is here to stay,” he said in an interview with Fox Business in July. “Crypto is bringing in young people, people who have not participated in markets.”

Polymarket traders had bet that he was a frontrunner. At one point, Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick was viewed as one, too, but he was ultimately picked as Commerce Secretary. Lutnick has also dabbled in digital assets, helping stablecoin issuer Tether manage the giant stockpile of U.S. Treasuries that back its USDT stablecoin since 2021.

Crypto.com Overtakes Coinbase to Dominate North American Crypto Trading, Data Shows

The crypto exchange’s volume has nearly quadrupled between mid-year and September.

Digital asset trading on Crypto.com has exploded this year, pushing the crypto exchange’s volumes in North America well ahead of Coinbase (COIN).

Crypto.com’s monthly spot trading volume soared to $134 billion in September from $34 billion in July, according to data from The Block. Overall trading volumes on North American crypto exchanges was $183 billion in September, in which Coinbase handled $46 billion.

Crypto.com first overtook Coinbase in July and continues to lead so far in October. So far this month, the exchange saw $112 billion trading volume out of the overall $173 billion traded on exchanges in the region, The Block data shows. Kraken, the third-largest exchange, way behind in October with just under $10 billion in trading activity.

A key reason for Crypto.com’s popularity could be the wide range of tokens on offer. It lists over 378, ranging from mainstays bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) to memecoins, such as book of meme (BOME), to ecosystem tokens such as Jupiter’s JUP and deBridge. Coinbase and Kraken, in contrast, are more selective, offering fewer than 290 tokens each.

BTC and ETH trading dominate Crypto.com, accounting for more than 85% of all trading activity across Tether’s USDT stablecoin and U.S. dollar pairs, CoinGecko data shows.

Some 26% of the exchange’s web traffic comes from the U.S., Kaiko Research said earlier this month, with most users active during U.S. trading hours.

A Citigroup report earlier this month partly attributed this dominance to the crypto ETFs that have been extremely successful in 2024.

Matthew Sigel, head of digital assets research at VanEck, said in an X post in September that Crypto.com’s “average BTC trade size on Crypto dot com has 3x YTD” coinciding with Cboe Global Markets, a U.S.-based exchange, closing its spot crypto division.

“Liquidity has kept pace with trade volumes, suggesting market makers are also more active on the platform,” Sigel said at the time.

Meanwhile, the bump in volumes comes amid ongoing legal drama for Crypto.com. Earlier this month, the exchange filed suit against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to “protect the future of the crypto industry in the U.S.,” shortly after it received a Wells notice from SEC staff.

Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek said the firm brought the case to limit the SEC’s “unauthorized overreach and unlawful rulemaking,” as CoinDesk reported.