Cryptocurrency update: expect December rally for bitcoin

Good Thursday morning. News.band getting you up to date with the latest bitcoin and crypto news.

Last 24-hour crypto market snapshot – Thursday morning
Bitcoin (-2%) $56,217
Ethereum (-4%) $4,522
Cardano (+6%) $1.67
Luna (+12%) $64.74

Ups and downs 

Cryptocurrency prices are painting a mixed picture this morning, with bitcoin trading lower while some smaller coins make massive gains.

The bitcoin price is down by around 2% and moving further from the closely-watched $60,000 level. Meanwhile, ethereum has also moved lower after surging toward its all-time highs yesterday. Ethereum and its biggest rival Binance’s BNB are both down around 4%.

Further down the rankings, solana and cardano are both on the up, rising 2% and 6% respectively. Ripple’s XRP and polkadot are both down around 5%. Tesla billionaire Elon Musk’s latest dogecoin endorsement boosted the memecoin earlier this morning but doge has since fallen back.

Outside the top ten, terra’s luna is soaring, up 12%.

Welcome to December, the month of bitcoin new all-time highs. Last year, bitcoin broke through the previously set record of around $20,000—three years to the month since it last nudged the level.

The traditional market Santa rally, referring to the stock market’s tendency to surge through the last weeks of December into the new year, has become a regular event in crypto markets and expectations are already building that December 2021 will produce another bitcoin all-time high.

Bitcoin’s off to a bad December start, however, trading down around 1% on this time yesterday, even as ethereum, Binance’s BNB and polkadot all climb by about 2% on Tuesday. Solana is soaring, meanwhile, up 6% on Tuesday.

Further down the rankings, the meme-based dogecoin and its main rival shiba inu are struggling, down 5% and 15% respectively after a Kraken listing-induced rally over the last couple of days. Crypto.com’s cro is surging after the trading platform announced an acquisition-fuelled U.S. expansion.

Crypto news update

The fintech giant Square, led by former Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey, has announced a major corporate rebrand that puts its bitcoin, crypto and blockchain ambitions in focus. Square is reorganizing under the umbrella Block, effective December 10, and will see the company’s various products—including music streaming service Tidal, Cash App, TBD, and Square itself—move under one brand. Square Crypto, a separate part of the company “dedicated to advancing bitcoin,” will become Spiral.

The announcement comes just days after Square founder and CEO Jack Dorsey stepped down from Twitter and sees the company follow Facebook (now Meta) in reorganizing its various business interests under a unified corporate brand. “We built the Square brand for our Seller business, which is where it belongs,” Dorsey said in a press release. “Block is a new name, but our purpose of economic empowerment remains the same. No matter how we grow or change, we will continue to build tools to help increase access to the economy.”

Last year, Square bought $50 million worth of bitcoin and has also been considering creating a bitcoin hardware wallet. The TBD division last month released a white paper detailing a new decentralized protocol for exchanging digital and other assets called tbDEX.

The bottom line: Dorsey sparked wild speculation he’d be spending more time working on bitcoin, crypto, blockchain and the decentralized web3 when he threw in the towel at Twitter and Square’s rebrand to Block is a clear indication that assumption was correct.

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