🥶 Do What With Satoshi’s Coins?! 😮

Good Tuesday! I’m Juan Aranovich, managing editor of Unchained.

In today’s edition:

• 🧊 Emin Sirer calls for freeze of Satoshi’s BTC for security

• 📊 Microstrategy buys 21,550 BTC for $2.1B

• 🔍 Speculation swirls around pick for next CFTC chair

• 📉 Longs lose big as Bitcoin retreats

• 🧑‍💻 Post-election fraud spike tests Coinbase’s systems

• 💵 USDT wallets outpace Bitcoin holders 2-to-1

Earn 20%+ APR on ETH with High Growth Vault by Kelp

High Gain is your tokenized solution for generating the highest rewards on ETH in 1 click– while keeping you liquid with hgETH.

What’s Poppin’?

By Sage D. Young, Veronica Irwin and Tikta

Freeze Satoshi’s Bitcoins, Says Avalanche Founder

Emin Gün Sirer, co-creator of the Avalanche blockchain and CEO of Ava Labs, the company overseeing its development, has a controversial suggestion for members of the Bitcoin community: Freeze Satoshi Nakamoto’s coins.

Sirer made his comments in specific regard to advances in quantum computing that could potentially open a window of opportunity for attackers if they gain access to the technology.

“Satoshi's early minded [sic] coins used the very old Pay-To-Public-Key (P2PK) format, which reveals the public key and gives the attacker time to grind, for the mother of all cryptography bounties,” Sirer said in an X post, referring to the 1.1 million BTC sitting in Satoshi’s multiple wallets.

“So, as [quantum computing] gets threatening, Bitcoin community might want to look into freezing Satoshi's coins, or more generally, provide a sunset date and freeze all coins at P2PK [unspent transaction outputs].”

Sirer’s remarks come after Google unveiled a new quantum computing chip named Willow that takes just five minutes to complete tasks that would take some of the world’s most sophisticated computers up to 10 septillion, or 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, years.

Bitcoin May Have Dipped to $97K but Bullish Signs Persist

Even though Bitcoin hit an all-time high of $103,000 last week and has since sunk to as low as $94,355 in the past 24 hours, U.S. interest in BTC remains strong.

On Monday, Microstrategy co-founder Michael Saylor announced that the software development firm had not only sold an aggregate of 5,418,449 shares between Dec. 2 and Dec. 8 for roughly $2.1 billion, but had also picked up an additional 21,550 BTC worth $2.1 billion.

New Top Contender for CFTC Chair Emerges

Now that president-elect Donald Trump has announced his pick of Paul Atkins to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission, and David Sacks as his A.I. and crypto czar, the last major nomination that could have a big impact on crypto is Trump’s choice for the chairmanship of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Hardly anybody is willing to make a call on when Trump’s choice of candidate may be announced, and there isn’t a particularly strong consensus on who the top contenders are. However, some candidates’ names are generating chatter in lobbying and policy circles, mostly former and current commissioners and staff of the agency.

In fact, one name that was previously discounted has now become a top contender.

$1.7B Liquidated From Crypto Markets

The past few weeks have seen a series of cascading liquidations as bitcoin struggles to maintain support above the $100,000 mark.

Data from crypto futures trading and information platform CoinGlass show that around $1.72 billion was liquidated across crypto markets as bitcoin dropped to an intraday low of $94,355 during the 24 hours before press time. More than 90% of all liquidations over the period were from long positions alone.

Bitcoin has since recovered to trade above $97,900, but altcoins — which saw a much steeper selloff — are yet to recover. Ether was down 5% on the day, while XRP was trading 11% lower and SOL was down 6.4%.

The scale of the negative altcoin price action was shown by the fact that $568 million worth of liquidations came from low market-cap altcoins.

Coinbase Tells ‘Restricted’ Users It Isn’t Ignoring Them

Crypto exchange Coinbase has attempted to set the record straight after reports that it had been restricting certain customer accounts.

“We’ve seen a surge of new users and old users re-activating their accounts post-[U.S. presidential] election,” Coinbase said in a statement on X. “Along with this surge, as is typical with surges, we’ve seen a 2-3x increase in fraudulent attempts.”

The exchange said the increase in restricted account numbers had arisen because its fraud prevention systems were working as expected, and it urged users not to believe everything on X.

“That said, if you are restricted, we’re not ignoring you; we’re working hard to respond asap,” the Coinbase team said.

A number of supposed users responded to Coinbase’s post claiming that their accounts had been restricted for several years and that they had received no help from the team since.

109 Million Onchain Wallets Hold USDT in Q4: Tether

At the start of the fourth quarter of this year, the number of onchain wallets holding Tether’s stablecoin, USDT, was more than twice the number of wallets holding Bitcoin, according to Tether.

Tether’s head of economics, Philip Gradwell, noted in the firm’s latest Insights report that the 109 million onchain wallets holding USDT in Q4 was close to the 128 million wallets holding Ethereum, officially making USDT one of the most widely held digital assets.

Gradwell estimates that at least 56 million users who have ever held USDT are likely to reactivate their holdings, adding to the tens of millions of users who hold USDT on centralized platforms.

“USDT continues to dominate the stablecoin market with four times more wallets than all other stablecoins combined,” he said.

Unlock zero trading fees, up to 5.1% APY on USDC, boosted staking rewards and more with Coinbase One. 

Try it free for a month with code UNCHAINED.

Daily Bits… ✍️✍️✍

• 📈 Ethena’s USDe has surpassed DAI as the third-largest stablecoin, with a market capitalization of $5.5 billion, following increased demand driven by its integration with Aave and a 27% staking yield.

• 🇸🇻 El Salvador is preparing to amend its Bitcoin law to make bitcoin acceptance optional for merchants as part of an agreement to secure $3.3 billion in loans from international financial institutions.

• 📊 Jupiter DAO yesterday approved an $860 million JUP airdrop for January 2025, implementing stricter criteria to prioritize long-term users and exclude airdrop farming activities.

• 🚀 Movement Network has initiated its mainnet beta and native token, featuring infrastructure built using the Move programming language and designed for secure transaction finality and compatibility with Ethereum.

• 🇺🇸 Bitget is evaluating partnerships with U.S. firms to re-enter the American market while continuing its global expansion, supported by a pro-crypto stance from the incoming Trump administration.

• ⚙️ Consensys developer and Ethereum gadfly Max Resnick has left Consensys to join Solana-focused project Anza.

• ⚡ Circle announced the upcoming launch of CCTP V2 in early 2025 to enable faster USDC transfers with low-latency settlements across Ethereum, Base, and Avalanche, with plans for broader blockchain integration.

What Do You Meme?

📈 Your Market Update 📉

• BTC is down 1.1%, trading at $97,063

• ETH is down 3.8%, trading at $3,697

• BTC dominance: 52.02%

• Crypto market cap: $3.65T

*All data as of today, 07:48 am ET. Source: CoinGecko

Recommended Reads

1. Stablecoin Payments: Who Actually Wins? by Rob Hadick, a partner at crypto-focused investment firm Dragonfly

2. The Progressive Bitcoiner: Bitcoin is more than just Number Go Up Technology

3. Forbes: Sam Bankman-Fried Is Shopping His Prison Diary – Here’s A Peek Inside

We Are Hiring!

1. A Part-Time Sponsorships Manager to generate and manage sponsorships across Unchained’s platforms. See the details and apply here. 

2. A Bitcoin Reporter to cover all things Bitcoin. See the details and apply here. 

3. An Audience Development Director to broaden the reach of the publication’s content, whether through the web, social media, newsletters, podcast platforms, or videos. See the details and apply here.

🔝 Are you hiring and want to promote the postings in the Unchained newsletter? Let us know!

Thank you for reading Unchained. This post is public so feel free to share it. 📩📤