The Daily: Trump nominates pro-bitcoin Lutnick for Commerce Secretary, Metaplanet shares jump 15% after latest BTC acquisition and more

Happy Tuesday! In today's newsletter, Donald Trump nominates bitcoin-backer Howard Lutnick to lead the U.S. Department of Commerce rather than the Treasury, Metaplanet shares jump 15% after its latest bitcoin acquisition, Securitize introduces a new way to get DeFi liquidity from real-world assets and more.

Meanwhile, Wall Street giants are loading up on MicroStrategy shares as MSTR outperforms bitcoin year-to-date.

Plus, competing AI agent tokens within the ai16z community spur debate as prices whipsaw.

Let's get started.

Trump nominates pro-bitcoin Lutnick to lead Commerce Department, not Treasury

President-elect Donald Trump has nominated the crypto-friendly Howard Lutnick to lead the U.S. Department of Commerce, according to a statement on Truth Social.

• Lutnick, CEO of global financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald, is known for his bitcoin advocacy, confirming in a recent interview "I have hundreds of millions of dollars of exposure to bitcoin and it will be billions."
• "My view is bitcoin, like gold, should be free to trade everywhere in the world," Lutnick said at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville this summer. "As the largest wholesaler in the world, we are going to do everything in our power to make it so."
• Cantor Fitzgerald has served as a custodian for Tether since 2021. Lutnick is vocal in his support of the stablecoin issuer, saying USDT is backed one-to-one and holds reserves in U.S. Treasuries, bitcoin, and gold.
• However, the potential appointment will disappoint some who favored Lutnick as Trump's pick for Treasury Secretary instead.
• As Commerce Secretary, Lutnick would focus on job creation, economic growth and innovation, according to the department's mission statement, with the role requiring Senate confirmation.

Japan's Metaplanet shares jump 15% after latest bitcoin acquisition

Shares in the Japanese investment firm Metaplanet closed up more than 15% on Tuesday after the company announced its latest bitcoin acquisition.

• The Tokyo-listed firm purchased another 124.1 BTC ($11.3 million) at an average price of $91,266 per bitcoin, bringing its total holdings to 1,142.2 BTC, worth approximately $105 million.
• Metaplanet's stock has surged 1,180% year-to-date, per TradingView, appreciating rapidly since the firm announced plans to adopt bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset in May, mirroring MicroStrategy's playbook.
• MicroStrategy remains the largest public corporate bitcoin holder, with 331,200 BTC, worth over $30 billion, according to the company's latest SEC filing.

BlackRock's BUIDL token first to go live on Securitize's new platform

Tokenization firm Securitize has introduced the "sToken," a new way to gain liquidity from real-world assets while still earning a yield, using the ERC-4626 token standard.

• BlackRock's BUIDL token, backed by short-term U.S. Treasuries, is the first asset to be integrated into Securtitize's "deUSD RWA Institutional Program," launched in collaboration with Elixir.
• The process involves wrapping the RWAs into sTokens, which are then used to mint deUSD, Elixir's synthetic dollar, while the underlying RWAs remain intact and continue to generate yield.
• This helps address some of the current regulatory and composability challenges in DeFi, with plans to expand to other funds like Hamilton Lane's SCOPE.

BIT Mining settles with DOJ, SEC for $10 million over bribery charges

BIT Mining, which rebranded from online sports lottery service 500.com in 2021 to focus on cryptocurrency mining, will pay a $10 million criminal penalty to resolve a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into an alleged bribing scheme.

• In a parallel action, the firm also agreed to pay a $4 million civil penalty to settle similar U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charges, credited against the DOJ figure.
• The company admitted to paying Japanese government officials $1.9 million in bribes between 2017 and 2019 to secure a casino resort bid in Japan, which it ultimately lost.
• Former CEO Zhengming Pan was also charged with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and BIT Mining entered into a deferred prosecution agreement, committing to cooperate with authorities, improve its compliance programs and report remediation efforts during its three-year term.

Coinbase set to delist wBTC amid Justin Sun's involvement and launch of cbBTC

Coinbase will suspend trading in wrapped bitcoin on Dec. 19, citing its routine asset reviews, but users can still withdraw their wBTC tokens after delisting.

• BitGo, the longtime custodian of wBTC, ceded partial control to BiT Global, which has ties to Justin Sun and the TRON ecosystem, through a strategic partnership in August, sparking security concerns.
• Coinbase's alternative wrapped token, cbBTC, has rapidly grown to a $1.5 billion market cap since its September launch, placing it in direct competition with wBTC.

In the next 24 hours

• UK CPI inflation figures are released at 2 a.m. ET on Wednesday. U.S. mortgage data are due at 7 a.m.
• ECB President Christine Lagarde will speak at 8 a.m. U.S. FOMC member Michelle Bowman follows at 12:15 p.m.
• The European Web3 Summit gets underway in Brussels. Blockchain Africa 2024 kicks off in Johannesburg.

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