The Crypto Roundup: 13 December 2024

Latest price and news from the crypto space

Latest price from our hand picked list of digital assets

The developer population in the cryptocurrency space declined by a modest 7% from a year ago, with the total number of active developers dropping to 23,613 in November. The Solana ecosystem has emerged as the most popular platform for new developers, experiencing an 83% rise in developer activity.

The world’s largest asset manager BlackRock has advocated for a 1% to 2% allocation in Bitcoin on the traditional 60/40 portfolio, composed of a larger portion of equities than bonds, drawing parallels to exposure to the “magnificent seven” stocks.

A new bill introduced in Texas seeks to establish a state-run strategic Bitcoin reserve, with Texas Republican Rep. Giovanni Capriglione saying he filed House Bill 1598 in a bid to establish such a Bitcoin reserve within the state treasury of Texas.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

Solana Surpasses Ethereum in New Crypto Developers
BlackRock Advocates for 1-2% Bitcoin Allocation in Traditional Portfolios
Texas Lawmaker Introduces Bill to Establish State-Run Strategic Bitcoin Reserve
Crypto Market Movers — HBAR, CRV, XRP

Solana Surpasses Ethereum in New Crypto Developers

The network surpassed Ethereum in the metric in July. IT attracted 7,625 new developers over the year, the most of any chain and over 1,000 more than the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization Ethereum.

Ethereum’s developer count dropped by around 17%, according to a recent report from Electric Capital, which details that despite Solana’s growth Ethereum is still ahead in developer talent, as its deep network effects help it maintain the biggest developer ecosystem.

Over half of Ethereum’s developers are working on Layer-2 networks built on top of it, including Arbitrum, Base, and Optimism. The report has also shown that the cryptocurrency developer community is becoming increasingly global, with Asia surpassing North America as the continent with the highest number of developers.

BlackRock Advocates for 1-2% Bitcoin Allocation in Traditional Portfolios

These stocks including tech giants Amazon and Apple, which according to BlackRock’s Chief Investment Officer for ETFs and Index Investments Samara Cohen provide an “example of single portfolio holdings that account for a comparatively large share of portfolio risk” and while they differ from BTC, these factors “make them a useful starting point for assessing the risk of a single holding.”

BlackRock’s report notes Bitcoin has historically a low correlation with traditional markets and has potential as a valuable diversifier. This low correlation, it adds, has been evident since June 2022 and is attributed to factors including declining confidence in traditional banking systems and growing geopolitical tensions.

Per BlackRock’s research, a 1% allocation contributes approximately 2% to overall portfolio risk, while a 2% allocation to Bitcoin increases it to 5%.

Higher allocations, the firm warns, significantly simplify risk. Cohen warned that future price appreciation may become more difficult as the return characteristics of BTC are “likely to change significantly once we reach a target state where potentially the portfolio allocation is much more tactical like gold.”

Texas Lawmaker Introduces Bill to Establish State-Run Strategic Bitcoin Reserve

The reserve would be funded through donations and held for up to five years in the Texas state treasury, with the state currently being the eighth-largest economy in the world. The move comes after President-elect Donald Trump vowed to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve.

Other states have introduced bills to invest in the flagship cryptocurrency, with Pennsylvania lawmakers last month introducing one to allow the state’s treasurer to invest in cryptocurrencies.

Crypto Market Movers — HBAR, CRV, XRP

Several tokens are leading the charge in the last 7-day period. Some of these are well-known cryptocurrencies with more liquid trading pairs, so we’ll be focusing on these over low-cap cryptos that may have higher percentage changes.

Hedera Hashgraph (HBAR) — Hedera Hashgraph is a public, open-source, proof-of-stake network created by a team led by co-founders Dr. Leemon Baird and Mance Harmon. HBAR is the native, energy-efficient cryptocurrency of the network, used to pay application transaction fees and protect the network from attack. The network achieves 10,000 HBAR cryptocurrency transactions per second, with transaction fees of around $0.0001 USD.

Curve DAO Token (CRV) - CRV is the governance token of the Curve Finance protocol, used to incentivize liquidity providers and engage more users in the governance of the protocol. CRV is used for voting, staking, and boosting, allowing users to acquire voting power and earn a boost of up to 2.5x on the liquidity they provide. CRV holders can stake their CRV to receive trading fees from the Curve protocol, and 50% of the trading fees are distributed to veCRV holders.

XRP (XRP) - XRP is a highly efficient cryptocurrency built on the XRP Ledger, a decentralised blockchain designed to facilitate fast, affordable transactions across borders. Its primary use case is in bridging currencies for global payments, with additional applications in decentralised finance, tokenization, and everyday transactions.

State of the Crypto by Top Tier Exchange Volume

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