The Block

Quick Take Expectations and intrigue ran high as Worldcoin officially launched in 2023, sparking regulatory scrutiny from various nations. Worldcoin signed up about 2.5 million people despite predicting the project would likely sign up tens of millions during its first year in operation.

Quick Take Orbit Chain’s cross-chain bridge has reportedly been hacked for $81.5 million in cryptocurrencies and stablecoins. The exact nature of the hack is unknown.

Quick Take December 31 is the last day to sell NFTs for a loss in order to offset capital gains in 2023. Various services which help users offload their worthless NFTs have seen a major uptick in traffic over the past few days as the deadline approaches. The IRS’s criminal investigation division is increasingly probing crypto tax evasion related cases, according to Bloomberg.

Quick Take A judge has ruled that four assets related to the Terra/Luna ecosystem are unregistered securities, deciding against defendants Terraform Labs and its founder Do Kwon in summary judgment. In the decision, Judge Rakoff also detailed evidence that the Chai payments platform, often touted as an example of a real-world use case for the Terra/Luna ecosystem, merely mirrored payments made through traditional means on the Terra blockchain.

Quick Take Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has shared an updated 2024 roadmap for the blockchain, with “relatively few changes” from the 2023 version.

Quick Take The SEC may notify the 14 asset managers vying to issue a spot Bitcoin ETF that their applications are approved as early as Tuesday or Wednesday of next week, ahead of a possible Jan. 10 launch, according to a report in Reuters.

Quick Take Dan Tapiero explains how the Q4 market rally has impacted crypto’s secondary market and why he remains bullish on the multi-trillion dollar growth potential of the industry.

Quick Take Fidelity said Friday that its proposed spot bitcoin ETF would have a sponsor fee of just 0.39%, potentially setting off a race for the cheapest fund.

Quick Take JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has been notorious for his dismay of crypto over the years and has said before that people should stay away from bitcoin. More recently during a Senate Banking Committee this month, he told Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., that he would shut down crypto if he was the government.

Quick Take VanEck unveiled a video on social media on Friday that teased the terms “Buy Bitcoin” and “Born to Bitcoin.” The post came the same day the asset manager filed an updated a S-1 form with the Securities and Exchange Commission for its proposed spot bitcoin ETF.