鏈新聞 Abmedia

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) released an investigation report this morning on 12/11, stating that from 2020 to 2023, the nine major banks in the United States have implemented account closures or restrictions on financial services for several politically controversial industries, including the cryptocurrency industry. The OCC pointed out that some banks continue to distinguish between compliant industries, requiring additional scrutiny or directly limiting transactions, which involves unreasonable discrimination. In the future, they will hold these behaviors accountable and ensure that illegal account closures do not continue.

Banks have raised service thresholds for specific industries, and the OCC accuses them of unreasonable discrimination.

The AI platform Surf, designed for the cryptocurrency industry, announced today that it has secured $15 million in funding from Pantera Capital and Coinbase Ventures to accelerate the launch of the next-generation model Surf 2.0. Given the high error rates of general-purpose AI in the cryptocurrency field, the market is experiencing a new wave of innovative integration of AI and blockchain research and trading.

Breaking the AI Illusion: Surf Becomes the 'Most Understanding AI Brain in Cryptocurrency'

Surf founder Ryan Li revealed in an interview with Fortune magazine that his motivation for founding Surf came from observing the phenomenon of mainstream AIs like ChatGPT or Perplexity repeatedly experiencing hallucinations in the cryptocurrency field, pointing out that misinformation could lead to significant losses for traders.

The pioneer of Bitcoin reserve strategy, MicroStrategy, wrote to MSCI expressing protest against its qualification test for the indicator that 'excludes companies with digital assets accounting for more than 50% of their balance sheet,' arguing that this move is 'misleading and harmful,' and would have a negative impact on the market, innovation, and U.S. policy.

MSCI considers excluding DAT from the index

One of the world's largest index providers, MSCI, initiated a consultation in October aimed at excluding digital asset financial companies (DAT) such as MicroStrategy, MARA Holdings, and Riot Platforms from the index, as DAT may exhibit characteristics similar to investment funds and do not meet the qualification for MSCI indices. MSCI recommended excluding companies with cryptocurrency holdings accounting for more than 50% of their total assets from the MSCI Global Investable Market Index.

Japanese listed company Metaplanet has become the new focus of the global Bitcoin capital market. In just one year, the company's Bitcoin (BTC) holdings surged from 1,000 coins to 30,000 coins, making it the fourth largest in the world and the largest enterprise-level Bitcoin holder in Asia. Metaplanet's president Simon Gerovich and Bitcoin strategy chief Dylan LeClair fully revealed the company's transformation from the hospitality industry to becoming Japan's representative Bitcoin portal in a public forum, explaining why Japan will be the ideal incubation location for the next wave of Bitcoin financial innovation.

The prediction market is growing rapidly, but the most fundamental problems remain unsolved. Capital is locked up, unable to generate returns, and it is also difficult to become an effective hedging tool. However, based on the DeFi protocol for prediction markets, Gondor announced the completion of a $2.5 million pre-seed fundraising round, attempting to rewrite the financial foundation of the prediction market and enhance capital efficiency through lending and leverage services.

Gondor completes $2.5 million fundraising, filling the financialization demand of the prediction market.

Gondor recently announced the completion of a $2.5 million pre-seed financing round, with investors including Prelude, Castle Island Ventures, Maven11, and support from the Polymarket ecosystem. This fundraising is closely related to the launch of its public beta, aiming to create core financial infrastructure that has long been lacking in the prediction market, namely capital efficiency tools such as 'lending and leverage'.

Tether launched a new platform called QVAC Health on 12/11, venturing into the health technology field, emphasizing that all data analysis is completed on the user's device without relying on cloud servers. The platform can integrate data from multiple wearable devices and health and fitness apps, utilizing device-side AI to analyze metrics such as activity, diet, sleep, and recovery.

Introducing QVAC Health, with local AI computing and offline operation without uploading to the cloud.

QVAC Health is a health data platform that integrates multiple fitness trackers, nutrition apps, and various wearable devices, where all data is aggregated into an Encrypted Dashboard. The platform's biggest feature is that all analysis is done locally on the user's device, and data is not uploaded to the cloud, allowing the system to operate offline, even supporting the downloading of AI models via P2P.

US President Trump officially launched the controversial "Trump Gold Card" program, allowing wealthy foreigners to obtain US residency directly for $1 million, while companies applying for residency for their employees must pay $2 million. The government also announced the upcoming "Platinum Card," priced at $5 million, which would allow holders to stay in the US for 270 days annually and be exempt from foreign income tax. This policy, while strengthening the deportation of illegal immigrants, also opens a simple, paid pathway for the wealthy, sparking widespread debate.

Trump launches Gold Card program, offering US visas for millions of dollars.

The Federal Reserve (Fed) announced this morning (12/11) a rate cut of 0.25%, lowering the benchmark interest rate to 3.5%–3.75%. Chairman Powell stated that inflation remains high and employment is weakening, making policy decisions more challenging. The current interest rate has returned to a 'broadly neutral range,' and whether to cut rates further will depend on data. He emphasized that inflation caused by tariffs is temporary, and the overall economic outlook still leans towards strengthening. After the announcement, U.S. stocks and the bond market rose simultaneously, but the cryptocurrency market reacted mildly, with a total market value dropping by 0.3% in the past 24 hours. Bitcoin remains in the 91K–92K range, while Ethereum fluctuates between $3,200 and $3,300.

The Federal Reserve (Fed) conducted its third rate cut of the year as the market expected, but the internal divisions behind this policy adjustment are unprecedented. The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) passed the rate cut of 0.25 percentage points with a vote of 9 to 3, lowering the benchmark interest rate range to 3.5% to 3.75%. Although this is seen as a 'hawkish rate cut', the Fed simultaneously released a highly cautious stance towards further easing in the future, and market expectations for rate cuts next year are rapidly cooling.

Three officials opposed the resolution, revealing internal fissures within the Fed.

The voting results of this meeting marked the first time since September 2019 that three officials cast dissenting votes, reflecting a high level of inconsistency regarding the policy direction. The 'dove' position held by board member Stephen Miran supported a 0.5 percentage point rate cut, while the steadfast 'hawk' position was represented by Kansas City Fed President Jeffrey Schmid and Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee.

Blockchain Sei announced a partnership with Chinese mobile device giant Xiaomi (XiaoMi). In the future, the new Xiaomi smartphones sold outside of China and the United States will come pre-installed with the Sei cryptocurrency wallet and application. The stablecoin payment feature is expected to launch in the second quarter of next year in countries with stablecoin regulations, such as the European Union and Hong Kong, and in the future, it is expected that stablecoins can be used to purchase Xiaomi phones and electric vehicles.

The new Xiaomi phone will come with an embedded Sei cryptocurrency wallet

According to the partnership announcement, the Sei cryptocurrency wallet will be pre-installed on all new Xiaomi smartphones sold outside of mainland China and the United States. Initial promotions will focus on regions with higher cryptocurrency acceptance, including Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa, where Xiaomi's market share is quite significant. This collaboration will provide millions with their first access to cryptocurrency, especially in Xiaomi-dominant mobile markets like Greece (36.9%) and India (24.2%).

Aster invited 70 human traders and 30 AI models to participate in a trading competition, with each starting with $10,000 in capital and a prize pool of $200,000. The competition runs from December 9 to December 23, with live broadcasts on Aster's event page. Currently, the first place is held by the well-known trader Aoying Capital, who tripled their position in just one day. Statistics show that human traders consistently rank in the top 20, while also occupying the bottom 20 in performance. AI is concentrated in the middle to upper and middle to lower segments.

The AI trader segment currently leads with a profit of $618 using Alibaba's Qwen (extremely conservative version), outperforming various versions of Ernie 4.5 aggressive, Gemini 3 aggressive, and Claude Sonnet 4.5, which are the worst-performing models. Looking at trading volume and number of positions, AI adopts a strategy of small positions spread out, while humans tend to close positions or concentrate on a single position. Human PNL standard deviation: 4875.0. AI PNL standard deviation: 224.8. This indicates that the performance volatility of humans is more than 20 times that of AI.

During Binance Blockchain Week in Dubai, ChainNews conducted an exclusive interview with Catherine Chen, Head of VIP and Institutional Business at Binance. Her expertise reveals a complete picture beyond the familiar "Binance exchange," and also unveils the potential role the Binance empire will play in the emerging digital finance era.

Binance's "VIP Team" is actually a global financial infrastructure department.

Binance is often viewed as a retail exchange, but on the institutional side, its role has expanded to include a global crypto infrastructure provider. Catherine, Head of VIP and Institutional Business at Binance, stated in an interview that the VIP department goes far beyond business and customer service; it's a comprehensive product and technology center responsible for assisting global financial institutions in accessing crypto assets. She explained, "Our mission isn't to cater to large clients, but to build the entire infrastructure so that financial institutions can securely enter the crypto world."

Chip investment expert Gavin Baker delves into the differences between NVIDIA GPUs (Hopper, Blackwell) and Google TPUs in a recent interview, analyzing from the perspectives of technology, performance, cost, and collaboration. He notes that while Google TPUs have a temporary advantage in the short term, NVIDIA's GPU ecosystem still possesses stronger monopolistic power in the long run.

GPUs are full-stack platforms, while TPUs are single-point ASICs.

Baker stated that the divergence of AI accelerators has already emerged from the fundamental design philosophy. NVIDIA's GPUs, from Hopper and Blackwell to the future Rubin, emphasize being a full-stack platform, covering everything from the GPU itself, the GPU bidirectional interconnect technology NVLink, network cards, switches, to software layers like CUDA and TensorRT, all managed by NVIDIA. Once enterprises purchase GPUs, they essentially obtain a complete environment that can be directly used for training and inference, without needing to assemble networks or rewrite software themselves.

During the Binance Blockchain Week in December 2025, Binance co-founder He Yi announced she would become the co-CEO of Binance. Interviews that week revealed she would take on the responsibility of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, attempting to lead Binance towards a sustainable vision through organizational reform, technology integration, and value investment concepts. Below is a summary of some interview content.

Why did Binance activate a co-CEO? A new management structure of '1+1>2'

Under the new personnel arrangement, CEO Richard Teng leverages his compliance background and global regulatory communication, while He Yi focuses on corporate culture, human resources, and user experience. She stated that such a dual leadership system has precedents in traditional financial institutions like JPMorgan Chase, achieving professional division of labor and institutional efficiency.

US President Trump announced on Truth Social that he approved NVIDIA to export AI processors H200 to China, with an additional 25% fee on each H200 sale, which must undergo a complete review by the US Department of Commerce. This chip's performance far exceeds the export threshold set by the US in the past, making it the first high-end AI processor approved for export since the upgrade of export restrictions in 2022. However, it is still uncertain whether China will allow enterprises to procure H200, and the overall policy adjustment is seen as an important turning point in US-China technology regulation.

Trump approves H200 for export to China, with an additional 25% fee.

Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis outlined DeepMind's research direction, advancements in technologies such as multimodal and world models, and discussed the development of AI agents and related risks during the closing conversation at the 'AI+SF Summit' held by Axios in San Francisco. He also evaluated the US-China AI competitive landscape and rarely provided a timeline estimate for AGI, believing that it is about 5 to 10 years away from 'AI systems with human cognitive abilities'.

Nobel aura blessing, scientist thinking dominates DeepMind

At the beginning of the event, host Mike Allen introduced Hassabis as a chess prodigy at age 5 and a Nobel Prize winner at age 48. Hassabis admitted that even after winning the award, it still feels surreal, but the actual impact is very evident.

Tensions between Japan and China have escalated again. Japan's Ministry of Defense recently announced that a J-15 fighter jet, which took off from a Chinese naval aircraft carrier, illuminated a Japan Air Self-Defense Force F-15 with radar, raising concerns about the increased risk of military conflict. Against the backdrop of ongoing diplomatic tensions, China has reacted strongly to Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's remarks on Taiwan, further exacerbating bilateral opposition.

Pivot program host Chisa Koshimizu interviews Professor Nahoko Eto of the Faculty of Law at Gakushuin University, an expert in East Asian international politics, to deeply analyze the underlying structure and possible directions of the deterioration of Japan-China relations. Eto pointed out that the current situation is no longer merely an extension of a single diplomatic incident but is characterized by China's desire to reshape its international image, packaging itself as a proponent of international pacifism, strategically utilizing past and present contradictions with Japan. Below are the highlights of the interview video.

Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) track privacy chain Octra announced it will launch an ICO on Sonar with a fully diluted valuation (FDV) of 200 million USD, selling 10% of tokens and raising 20 million USD. However, there is intense discussion about whether its valuation and fundraising pace are sufficient to benchmark against the current track leader Zama. Meanwhile, Zama will also hold a token auction in January next year, with both competing against each other, making it hard to maintain wallets.

Sonar re-launches ICO: Octra raises 20 million USD with a 200 million USD FDV

Octra announced that after experiencing a 4 million USD pre-seed financing from Finality Capital, Big Brain Holdings, Cogitent Ventures, and Outlier Ventures, the team turned to conduct two rounds of community-style private placements (totaling 4 million USD) on Echo, bringing its total fundraising amount to only 8 million USD.

The prediction market is expected to grow rapidly in the near term, but the research organization 10x Research warns that most retail investors in the market are actually more like gamblers participating in sports betting, pursuing dopamine stimulation far more than strategic analysis. This allows the few 'elite traders' who effectively use data and understand risk hedging to profit from information gaps, turning the prediction market into a new battleground for elite traders to target retail investors.

The prediction market becomes a battleground, elite traders target retail investors seeking stimulation.

10x Research indicates that the prediction market is becoming a battleground between 'well-informed elite traders vs. retail investors seeking dopamine stimulation.'

Nicholas Financial Corporation, a U.S. wealth management company (abbreviated as Nicholas Financial), recently submitted an application to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), planning to launch an innovative Bitcoin ETF financial product called 'After Dark.' The main feature of this ETF is that it skips the U.S. stock trading hours, only holding Bitcoin BTC during the night in the U.S., and switching to invest in U.S. Treasuries or cash and other low-risk assets during the day, which sounds quite magical.

According to the application document, the operation process of AfterDark (officially named Nicholas Bitcoin and Treasuries AfterDark ETF (NGTH) is as follows: After the U.S. stock market closes at 4 PM Eastern Time, the fund will buy Bitcoin, hold it until just before the opening of the U.S. stock market the next day (around 9:30 AM Eastern Time), and then sell the Bitcoin, instead investing in short-term U.S. Treasuries, cash, and other assets. In other words, during daytime trading hours, the fund does not hold Bitcoin.