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Michael Saylor’s MSTR to Be in Invesco QQQ ETF After Nasdaq-100 Inclusion

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MicroStrategy (MSTR) is set to soon be included in of the world’s largest exchange-traded funds after becoming the first bitcoin-centric company to win entry into the Nasdaq-100 Index.

The Nasdaq-100 Index tracks the 100 largest non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq exchange and is filled with dominant market names like Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Tesla and Costco.

The price of bitcoin (BTC) added modestly to earlier gains, topping $102,000 in the minutes following the Friday 8 pm ET press release from Nasdaq announcing the inclusion.

On Nov. 29, the day when the Nasdaq took a market snapshot in preparation for the index’s annual rebalancing, MicroStrategy had a market cap of roughly $92 billion. That would rank the Michael Saylor-led company as the 40th largest in the Nasdaq 100 and a likely weighting in the index of 0.47%, according to Bloomberg Intelligence senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas.

As comparison, Apple — prior to this year’s rebalancing — had the index’s largest weighting at just under 9%; Qualcomm had the 20th largest weighting at just above 1%.

The addition will exponentially increase the Nasdaq 100’s exposure to bitcoin (BTC), of which MicroStrategy owns about $42 billion worth, and expose MSTR to billions in passive investment. ETFs tracking the Nasdaq 100 have more than $550 billion in assets under management, said Balchunas. Easily the largest is Invesco’s QQQ Trust (QQQ) with more than $300 billion in AUM.

“The inclusion of MicroStrategy entering the Nasdaq 100 is possibly the second biggest story of 2024, after the launch of the US spot listed ETFs,” said James Van Straten, senior analyst at CoinDesk. “These funds are often buyers at any price level on a monthly basis which will add to another buyer of MSTR, when Michael Saylor continues to issue the at-the-market (ATM) offering, to dilute shareholders but will have a bigger base of buyers.”

Balchunas’ colleague James Seyffart cautions that there’s a chance that MicroStrategy’s inclusion in the index might be short-lived as the company could be re-classified as a financial firm in March since its value comes almost entirely from its bitcoin holdings and not the actual operating business. MicroStrategy founder and Executive Michael Saylor has even said previously that he plans to turn the company into a “bitcoin bank,” making it even less of a technology operation.

“The game theory now sees the SPDR S&P 500 Trust (SPY), the largest of all ETFs with about $650 billion in AUM, as maybe needing to include MSTR to rival their competitor,” van Straten added. “Millions of investors will now have indirect bitcoin exposure adding to the flywheel effect.”

The re-shuffling of the Nasdaq 100 and consequently the QQQ and related ETFs will go into effect on Dec. 23.





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DeFi

DeFi Protocol Usual’s Surge Catapults Hashnote’s Tokenized Treasury Over BlackRock’s BUIDL

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There’s been a change of guard at the rankings of the $3.4 billion tokenized Treasuries market.

Asset manager Hashnote’s USYC token zoomed over $1.2 billion in market capitalization, growing five-fold in size over the past three months, rwa.xyz data shows. It has toppled the $450 million BUIDL, issued by asset management behemoth BlackRock and tokenization firm Securitize, which was the largest product by size since April.

Market cap of Hashnote's USYC and BUIDL over time (rwa.xyz)

Market cap of Hashnote’s USYC and BUIDL over time (rwa.xyz)

USYC is the token representation of the Hashnote International Short Duration Yield Fund, which, according to the company’s website, invests in reverse repo agreements on U.S. government-backed securities and Treasury bills held in custody at the Bank of New York Mellon.

Hashnote’s quick growth underscores the importance of interconnecting tokenized products with decentralized finance (DeFi) applications and presenting their tokens available as building blocks for other products — or composability, in crypto lingo — to scale and reach broader adoption. It also showcases crypto investors’ appetite for yield-generating stablecoins, which are increasingly backed by tokenized products.

USYC, for example, has greatly benefited from the rapid ascent of the budding decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Usual and its real-world asset-backed, yield-generating stablecoin, USD0.

Usual is pursuing the market share of centralized stablecoins like Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC by redistributing a portion of revenues from its stablecoin’s backing assets to holders. USD0 is primarily backed by USYC currently, but the protocol aims to add more RWAs to reserves in the future. It has recently announced the addition of Ethena’s USDtb stablecoin, which is built on top of BUIDL.

“The bull market triggered a massive inflow into stablecoins, yet the core issue with the largest stablecoins remains: they lack rewards for end users and do not give access to the yield they generate,” said David Shuttleworth, partner at Anagram. “Moreover, users do not get access to the protocol’s equity by holding USDT or USDC.”

“Usual’s appeal is that it redistributes the yield along with ownership in the protocol back to users,” he added.

Usual offers yield and ownership of the protocol through its stablecoin and governance token (Usual)

Usual offers yield and ownership of the protocol through its stablecoin and governance token (Usual)

The protocol, and hence its USD0 stablecoin, has raked in $1.3 billion over the past few months as crypto investors chased on-chain yield opportunities. Another significant catalyst of growth was the protocol’s governance token (USUAL) airdrop and exchange listing on Wednesday. USUAL started trading on Binance on Wednesday, and vastly outperformed the shaky broader crypto market, appreciating some 50% since then, per CoinGecko data.

BlackRock’s BUIDL also enjoyed rapid growth earlier this year, driven by DeFi platform Ondo Finance making the token the key reserve asset of its own yield-earning product, the Ondo Short-Term US Government Treasuries (OUSG) token.





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Chainlink price double bottoms as whales accumulate

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Chainlink formed a double-bottom pattern, pointing to a potential rebound, as signs showed that some whales were accumulating the token.

Chainlink (LINK), the biggest oracle provider, bottomed at $20.12 on Friday and rebounded to $22.50 on Sunday, Dec. 22. Still, the coin remains about 27% from its highest point this month, meaning that it is in a bear market.

A potential catalyst for the LINK token is that whales are accumulating it. According to LookOnChain, nine new wallets withdrew 362,380 coins from Binance in the last two days. These coins are now valued at over $8.19 million.

Crypto.news reported last week that another whale accumulated 65,000 LINK coins valued at $1.8 million.

These whales bought Chainlink a week after World Liberty Financial (WLFI), the DeFi platform launched by the Trump family, bought over 78,300 LINK tokens valued at over $1.7 million. It’s worth noting that President-elect Trump and his family mostly own WLFI tokens.

Chainlink, known in the crypto industry for its fundamentals, is the biggest oracle in the sector with over $35 billion in total value secured. That figure is higher than its biggest competitors like Chronicle, Pyth, Edge, and Redstone.

Chainlink’s ecosystem will likely grow as more chains and networks embrace its technology. Justin Sun’s Tron, the most recent chain to use its oracles, has switched from WINKLink to Chainlink.

Chainlink has also formed major partnerships in the Real World Asset tokenization industry, including by companies like Coinbase, Emirates NBD, SWIFT, and UBS. 

LINK, like other cryptocurrencies, has dropped sharply in the past few days as concerns about the Federal Reserve remained.

The token has remained above the 50-day moving average on the daily chart. Most importantly, it has formed a double-bottom chart pattern at $20.12. This pattern happens when an asset fails to move below a specific price two times. It is one of the most bullish reversal patterns in the market.

LINK has also formed an inverse hammer pattern, a popular reversal sign. Therefore, the coin is likely to bounce back in the next few days as investors target the key psychological at $30, which is about 35% above the current level.

On the flip side, the bullish view will become invalid if the coin drops below the double-bottom point at $20.12. 

Chainlink Price
LINK price chart | Source: crypto.news





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Dog Memecoins Rebound as Bitcoin Reaches $98,000

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Solana-based bonk (BONK) led growth among dog-themed memes Saturday as bitcoin staged a recovery rally to above $98,000, a day after Friday’s bloodbath that pushed it near $93,000.

BONK surged 30%, CoinGecko data shows, with dogecoin (DOGE), shiba inu (SHIB), dogwifhat (WIF) and floki (FLOKI) surging as much as 20%. The dog-themed token category gained 8% on average in the past 24 hours, beating a market-wide jump of 4.5% as tracked by the broad-based CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index.

Memecoins are known for their high volatility and tend to outperform major tokens during price rallies, serving as a leveraged bet on the overall crypto market sentiment.

However, in this case, fundamentals are helping back gains and sentiment among some memecoins. FLOKI was named alongside ether (ETH) and Avalanche’s AVAX as a utility token in a Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) meeting last month.

The derivatives regulator proposed in a Global Markets Advisory Committee (GMAC) a new class of assets termed utility tokens, which fulfill six criteria that include providing their holder “immediately available, non-incidental consumptive use” in a crypto platform without including “governance and voting abilities.”

“FLOKI was recently highlighted by the CFTC’s Global Markets Advisory Committee as a case study of a utility token, which is a big deal and validates Floki’s utility-first approach,” Floki lead developer B told CoinDesk in a Telegram message. “Floki’s Valhalla metaverse game will go live in early Q1 2024, and the recently released Floki Trading Bot has generated over a million dollars in fees.

“This puts Floki on an entirely different level from other memecoins, especially when the market turns and people start to pay attention to fundamentals again,” B added.

Elsewhere, interest in BONK comes as a host of activities intend to deflate token supply gain traction among users — a move that has historically contributed to higher prices.

BonkDAO, a decentralized group of bonk believers that maintain the token, burned 100 billion tokens from the circulating supply in November and targeted a trillion token burn in December. This could increase the token’s value due to scarcity.

The feat could meet its target in the weeks ahead, observers say.





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