North Dakota Takes First Steps Towards State Bitcoin Reserve

Senator Cynthia Lummis anticipates a pivotal year for Bitcoin and crypto in 2025, with proposed policies and key government positions converging to drive change. The Boosting Innovation, Technology, and Competitiveness Through Optimized Investment Nationwide Act, or the “Bitcoin Act,” aims to establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve funded by reallocating existing Federal Reserve assets.

Ohio State Representative Derek Merrin has introduced House Bill 703, the Ohio Bitcoin Reserve Act, to allow the state treasury to invest in Bitcoin. The bill aims to protect public funds from devaluation and strengthen the state's financial position through cryptocurrency investments.

The U.S. Treasury Department has sanctioned individuals linked to a crypto money laundering network allegedly tied to North Korea. The sanctioned individuals had their assets frozen, and Americans are prohibited from doing business with them or their company.

Hailey Welch, known as the “Hawk Tuah” girl, has been silent for almost two weeks after the disastrous debut of her meme coin, HAWK. OverHere, a group involved in the token's creation, is now clarifying their role in the troubled rollout.

Republican U.S. lawmakers, including Senator Tim Scott and Representative French Hill, are set to push for comprehensive crypto legislation, aiming for bipartisan support in Congress. The Senate and House committees plan to focus on bills like FIT21 and stablecoin regulation to establish market guardrails.

PENGU, the new token on Solana, quickly entered the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap, with a trading price of $0.0335 and a market cap of nearly $2.1 billion. The token experienced a 51% price drop on its launch day.

Fuel, a layer-2 network on Ethereum, will open airdrop claims for its native token on Dec. 19, with 10% of the total supply allocated to over 200,000 eligible wallets. The claim window will last for one month, with different allocations for pre-depositors, Fuel bridge users, and NFT enthusiasts. Fuel boasts high transaction speeds and low costs through parallelization and state minimization.

Bitcoin reached a new all-time high of over $108,000 before experiencing a sharp drop. XRP and Stellar also saw gains, with XRP surging over 6% after the launch of Ripple's stablecoin RLUSD.

ENS Labs chose Linea's technology, a zero-knowledge rollup by Consensys, to build its upcoming layer-2 network, Namechain. The decision was based on values alignment and the need for speed in transaction processing.

Nearly 800 suspects were arrested by the Nigerian EFCC in connection to cryptocurrency investment fraud and romance scams. The suspects, including foreign nationals, were involved in a sophisticated operation targeting victims worldwide through phishing and impersonation tactics.