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- Xmas MIRA-cle 🎄
Xmas MIRA-cle 🎄
Plus, 📊 Bitwise bids to join ETF club, 🫴 Strive follows suit,💥 Animoca X hack, and more!
Happy holiday Friday! I’m Tikta, a reporter at Unchained.
In today’s edition:
🏥 Solana memecoin raises $18 million for cancer research
🏦 Bitwise takes aim at Bitcoin ETF
🎲 Another ETF, this time from a MAGA booster
🔓 Hackers target Animoca founder’s X account
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What’s Poppin’?
By Tikta
Solana Memecoin MIRA Raises Millions for Cancer Research
Solana degens and magic internet money have delivered a Christmas miracle.
MIRA, a memecoin launched on Dec. 25 to support Mira Chen, a four-year-old girl diagnosed with a rare type of brain tumor, amassed $80 million in market cap in just a few hours following its debut.
It was created on Pump.fun by an anonymous user after Mira’s father, Siqi Chen, shared her story on social media and asked users to donate to the Hankinson Lab, a neurosurgery research center at the University of Colorado.
That anonymous user later identified themselves as X user Waddles, and sent 50% of MIRA’s supply to Chen. At one point, the value of his holdings was worth more than $18 million. After garnering support from the crypto community in X polls, Siqi liquidated a small portion of his holdings.
In an update posted on X, he said he plans to donate 100% of all proceeds directly to fund rare disease research.
“Starting in about 12 hours, I will be liquidating $1,000 worth of MIRA every 10 minutes, perpetually. No more and no less than that. If I change this schedule, I commit to announcing it 24 hours in advance,” Chen said.
“If you want to rug it to $0, go for it — at the end of the day we set out to raise $200K and we will end up with at least $1M towards rare disease research.”
At the time of writing, MIRA had a market cap of around $23 million and 16,300 holders, according to data from decentralized exchange tracker GeckoTerminal.
Bitwise Applies to Launch Bitcoin ETF
Crypto index fund manager Bitwise has submitted an application to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a new exchange-traded fund.
According to a Dec. 26 filing, its Bitcoin Standard Corporations ETF would provide exposure to shares of companies with at least $100 million in market cap that adopt the Bitcoin standard and hold at least 1,000 BTC among their financial assets.
Bitwise’s fund would assign a weight to those companies based on the market value of their Bitcoin treasuries rather than their individual market capitalizations. Firms with more BTC on their balance sheets would be assigned a greater weight.
More than 20 companies are expected to be eligible for inclusion in the proposed ETF.
Vivek Ramaswamy’s Strive Files for Bitcoin Bond ETF
Strive Asset Management, a self-styled “anti-woke” and “anti-ESG” investment firm founded by rightwing entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, has filed an application to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to launch a Bitcoin bond ETF.
The proposed Strive Bitcoin Bond ETF would aim to provide exposure to Bitcoin bonds — convertible securities issued by companies such as MicroStrategy that use the proceeds of their offerings to purchase Bitcoin.
The ETF would be actively managed, investing directly in those bonds and using financial products such as swaps and options.
The fund would target convertible bonds issued by companies that have invested significant portions of their capital in Bitcoin.
Animoca Brands Founder’s X Account Hacked to Promote Fake Token
Animoca Brands co-founder and Chair Yat Siu’s X account has been compromised in a cyberattack.
Hackers took control of his account to promote a fake token dubbed Animoca Brands (MOCA) on the Solana blockchain.
Animoca Brands responded quickly to the incident, confirming the hack and warning users that the company was not introducing an official token or NFT.
The hack is part of a broader phishing scam targeting crypto-related X accounts that has reportedly stolen around $500,000 in the past month.
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Daily Bits… ✍️✍️✍
💸 BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF saw its biggest single-day outflow on Dec. 24 as $188.7 million drained away, surpassing the previous record of $72.7 million set on Dec. 20.
🪙 Crypto exchange Bitget has announced a merger of its native tokens, Bitget Token (BGB) and Bitget Wallet Token (BWB), into a single ecosystem token for its centralized exchange and decentralized wallet.
🦛 The MOODENG token, named after a pygmy hippopotamus in a Thai zoo, rallied 70% after Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin donated more than $293,000 to the zoo to "adopt" the hippo, Moo Deng, which gained viral attention earlier this year.
🧑⚖️ Former FTX executives Caroline Ellison and Ryan Salame have received reduced prison sentences. Ellison is set to be released three months ahead of schedule, while Salame will be free more than a year before his original release date.
Today in Crypto Adoption...
🇹🇭 Thailand is considering a pilot Bitcoin payment project proposed by former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, to be tested in the resort town of Phuket as a sandbox focused on tourism.
⛏️ Around 18% of power generator Ethiopian Electric Power’s sales now come from bitcoin mining, thanks to the controversial Grand Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile, which channels unused power into mining the original cryptocurrency.
The $$$ Corner…
💰 Stablecoin issuer Tether has made its first crypto venture capital fund investment into Arcanum Capital’s Arcanum Emerging Technologies Fund II, which invests in blockchain technologies that enhance remittances, cross-border payments, privacy, and banking services to the unbanked.
What Do You Meme?
📈 Your Market Update 📉
BTC is up 1%, trading at $95,544
ETH is up 1.4%, trading at $3,407
BTC dominance: 54.4%
Crypto market cap: $3.52T
*All data as of today, 07:53 am ET. Source: CoinGecko
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