Weekly Update: 11th of December
What happened between the 4th and the 11th of December?
- Donald Trump nominates Paul Atkins to replace Gensler as Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair and names David Sacks as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and crypto czar. Read more
- Jerome Powell, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, states Bitcoin is a competitor to gold, not the U.S. dollar. Read more
- Volatility in the digital assets market increases as Bitcoin and Ethereum finally break the $100,000 and $4,000 resistance levels, additionally, liquidations rose above $1.6 billion. Read more
Meet the new bosses of digital assets
On December 4th, President-elect Donald Trump nominated Paul Atkins to replace Gary Gensler as Chair of the SEC. This news was positively received by the digital assets market. But who is Atkins? Paul Atkins is a career regulator who has been active at the SEC since 1990. Most importantly, he is an advocate for digital assets. Earlier this year, Atkins gave a speech stating that the lack of clear rules for digital assets was a fundamental issue regulators needed to address. Expectations are high that under his leadership, the agency will establish a clearer regulatory framework.
On December 6th, Trump appointed David Sacks, a technology venture capitalist, as the AI and crypto czar. Sacks is highly respected in the tech industry due to his experience during PayPal’s early days alongside Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, as well as his investments in companies such as Airbnb, Twitter, Facebook, and more. Additionally, he has been investing in Bitcoin since 2012.
His main objectives include developing a legal framework to provide the digital assets industry with the clarity it has long sought, enabling it to thrive in the U.S. According to Trump, Sacks will also work to “safeguard” online speech and “steer us away from Big Tech bias and censorship.”
Powell names Bitcoin a competitor to gold
On December 4th, Jerome Powell spoke at the New York Times DealBook Summit and gave Bitcoin an additional push upward. During the summit, Powell stated, "Bitcoin is just like gold, only it’s virtual, it’s digital. It’s highly volatile. It’s not a competitor for the dollar; it’s really a competitor for gold.”
This statement came as a surprise to many market observers, as leading agencies typically avoid such comparisons. Nevertheless, for traders and investors, it provided a sense of legitimacy for Bitcoin, helping drive its price up by 3%. Additionally, Powell clarified that he does not and cannot own any Bitcoin himself.
Volatility increases in the digital assets market
During the week of December 4 to 11, the digital assets market finally saw Bitcoin break the historic $100,000 mark, reaching a new all-time high above $104,000 on December 5. As upward momentum accelerated, Ethereum managed to surpass the $4,000 resistance level, a milestone it hadn’t reached since March.
With the re-emergence of strong upside volatility, the market also experienced downward swings. During the evenings of December 5 and 6, Bitcoin underwent a flash crash, dropping from approximately $103,500 to $90,500. However, this correction was quickly recovered, with Bitcoin trading back at around $99,000 by the end of the day.
On Monday, December 9, liquidations reached a three-year high as over $1.6 billion in assets were liquidated. It’s important to note that the market will continue to experience corrections, as markets cannot move upward indefinitely. A similar pattern was observed in 2021, when Bitcoin faced corrections of over 20% on its way to new all-time highs.
In other digital assets news
- Digital asset manager Grayscale files to convert its Solana trust into Solana spot ETF, becoming the fourth asset manager to file for this financial instrument.
- US Bitcoin spot ETFs collectively hold more Bitcoin than its creator Satoshi Nakamoto.
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