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Bitcoin treasury company Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) acquired an additional 10,624 BTC for approximately $962.7 million at an average price of $90,615 per bitcoin between Dec. 1 and Dec. 7, according to an 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday — its largest purchase since July.

Strategy now holds a total of 660,624 BTC — worth around $60 billion — bought at an average price of $74,696 per bitcoin for a total cost of around $49.4 billion, including fees and expenses, according to the company's co-founder and executive chairman, Michael Saylor. To put that in perspective, the haul represents more than 3% of Bitcoin's total 21 million supply and implies around $10.6 billion of paper gains at current prices.

The latest acquisitions were made using proceeds from at-the-market sales of its Class A common stock, MSTR, and perpetual Stride preferred stock, STRD. 

Strategy's STRK, STRC, STRF, and STRD perpetual preferred stock's respective $21 billion, $4.2 billion, $2.1 billion, and $4.2 billion ATM programs are in addition to the firm's "42/42" plan, which targets a total capital raise of $84 billion in equity offerings and convertible notes for bitcoin acquisitions through 2027 — upsized from its initial $42 billion, "21/21" plan after the equity side was depleted.

STRD is non‑convertible with a 10% non‑cumulative dividend and the highest risk‑reward profile. STRK is convertible with an 8% non‑cumulative dividend, allowing equity upside. STRF is non‑convertible with a 10% cumulative dividend, making it the most conservative. STRC is a variable‑rate, cumulative preferred stock offering monthly dividends, with adjustable rates designed to keep it near par.

Saylor again hinted at its latest acquisitions ahead of time, sharing an update on Strategy's bitcoin acquisition tracker on Sunday, stating, "₿ack to Orange Dots?"

Strategy's bitcoin acquisitions. Image: Strategy.

Strategy's new $1.44 billion USD Reserve

Last Monday, Strategy announced it had purchased another 130 BTC for approximately $11.7 million at an average price of $89,960 per bitcoin — taking its total holdings to 650,000 BTC.

The firm also announced a $1.44 billion USD Reserve to support the payment of dividends on its preferred stocks and interest on its existing debt.

That cash reserve is enough to cover its commitments for a year and a half, according to Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan. With its first debt maturity also not due until February 2027, he said that Strategy is nowhere close to needing to liquidate its bitcoin to meet obligations right now, pushing back against a growing narrative.

However, CryptoQuant argued the reserve signaled that Strategy was preparing for a bear market, with Head of Research Julio Moreno predicting that bitcoin could trade between $70,000 and $55,000 next year.

Meanwhile, analysts at JPMorgan said Strategy's resilience was key to bitcoin's price direction in the near term.

Saylor, at least, remains confident in that resilience. In an interview earlier this year, he said Strategy's capital structure is designed to withstand a 90% drop in bitcoin that persists for four to five years, thanks to its mix of equity, convertible debt, and preferred instruments — though he acknowledged that shareholders would still "suffer" in such a scenario.

DAT struggle

According to Bitcoin Treasuries data, there are 190 public companies that have adopted some form of bitcoin acquisition model. MARA, Tether-backed Twenty One, Metaplanet, Adam Back, and Cantor Fitzgerald-backed Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company, Bullish, Riot Platforms, Coinbase, Hut 8, and CleanSpark make up the remainder of the top 10, with 53,250 BTC, 43,514 BTC, 30,823 BTC, 30,021 BTC, 24,300 BTC, 19,324 BTC, 14,548 BTC, 13,696 BTC, and 13,011 BTC, respectively.

However, the value of many of the cohort's shares is down significantly from their summer peaks as their market cap-to-net asset value ratios sharply contract — with Strategy itself down 61%, for example. Strategy's mNAV currently sits at around 0.86.

CoinShares Head of Research James Butterfill wrote in a recent report that while DATs were born from a sensible idea (corporates diversifying treasury reserves away from fiat currencies and toward digital assets), the rapid expansion of token treasuries, shareholder dilution, and the pursuit of token-per-share growth at all costs have diluted that purpose.

"As the bubble deflates, the market is re-evaluating which companies genuinely fit the DAT model and which were simply riding momentum," he said.

Strategy's stock closed down 3.8% on Friday at $178.99 and is currently up 2.4% in pre-market trading on Monday, according to The Block's Strategy price page. MSTR fell 2.2% last week overall, and is now negative to the tune of 40.4% year-to-date, compared to bitcoin's slight 1.5% 2025 loss.

Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.

© 2025 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Premier crypto venture capital firm Paradigm, which has invested billions of dollars in blockchain startups, has made its first investment in Brazil, a nation seen as having significant potential for digital asset adoption.

Paradigm said Monday it invested $13.5 million in a Series A funding round for stablecoin startup Crown, valuing the company at $90 million, according to a statement.

The firm's Ricardo de Arruda, a native Brazilian who serves as an investment and research partner at Paradigm, said Crown's leadership and past experience working with both fintechs and institutional clientele played an important role in the VC's decision to make Crown its first investment in Brazil. But so too did Crown's early success in scaling. 

“The liquidity network effects that you build when you are the main stablecoin of a currency are extremely strong. That's why Tether and Circle are doing so well,” de Arruda told The Block. “That's why we expect Crown to do so well, because Crown is already way far ahead in terms of liquidity than any other of the BRL stablecoins.”

Crown, the creator of the BRLV stablecoin, which is pegged to the Brazilian real (BRL), said its token has become the world's largest emerging market stablecoin. BRLV is fully backed by Brazilian government bonds.

Brazilian stablecoin's early success

Crown is co-founded by John Delaney and Vinicius Correa, the latter of whom has a tech background and previously worked at the successful fintech Nubank. Delaney is a New York lawyer who moved to Brazil about 15 years ago before becoming interested in crypto and “arbitraging Bitcoin” in the early 2010s.

Delaney said founding Crown was rooted in his belief that stablecoins have massive potential in Brazil, but only if two issues can be resolved.

“Interest rates in Brazil are really high, today the base interest rate is 15%, and you have Tether that gives zero percent of yield to any of its partners, and that has worked for them,” Delaney told The Block. “In the Brazilian real market, it's very unlikely that anyone's going to be able to get away with that. So we built our architecture to solve that problem, number one.”

Secondly, Delaney said that as most stablecoin flows are institutional, he knew larger firms would require “institutional grade safety and security.” The CEO says Crown has met that challenge and that's a major reason for their growth after launching the token about a year and a half ago.

BRLV has over R$360 million (roughly $66 million) in subscriptions, according to Crown. For now, BRLV is available exclusively to institutional customers who, according to Crown, gain exposure to Brazil’s high interest rates by holding BRLV. Crown earns yield from the government bonds it holds to back BRLV.

“Where we're seeing a lot of demand is on the sort of institutional access to the Brazilian interest rate, so just like a carry trade,” said Delaney. “This is like a version of the real that can deliver the interest natively.”

In Brazil, the fifth largest crypto market globally, and where more people have invested in digital assets than equities, according to Crown, the stablecoin firm expects exponential growth on both the institution and retail side, although Delaney said the latter segment will likely be a “long tail phenomenon” as his firm initially focuses on institutional demand.

“Our North Star is ambitious. It's one trillion reais in BRLV circulating in ten years,” said Delaney. “We project that that's a high single-digit percentage of the Brazilian money supply.”

Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.

© 2025 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Robinhood wants to attract more advanced, high-volume crypto traders in both the U.S. and EU and is unveiling new features to do so, including lower fees and added leverage for altcoin futures, the company said Monday.

Hoping to woo sophisticated traders away from rival exchanges, the stock and crypto trading platform has in the U.S. expanded the number of available fee tiers from three to seven, “offering rates as low as 0.03% for high-volume traders,” Robinhood said in a statement. In the EU, users who want to trade perpetual futures will now have access to new trading pairs for XRP, SOL, DOGE, and SUI with eligible customers able to trade with up to 7x leverage.

“For a very long time Robinhood was kind of categorized for crypto to be a bit more for small-volume traders, or for people who just want some exposure [to] crypto but then they would need to go to a different platform to get more advanced features,” Robinhood's SVP and GM of Crypto Johann Kerbrat told The Block.

Kerbrat admits Robinhood's lack of services and options high-volume traders expect or demand has, in the past, been a competitive disadvantage. But now, with lower fees for U.S. customers and broader futures access in the EU, he believes Robinhood will be positioned to win over more sophisticated traders.

“We've been able to attract a bit more [of] this advanced customer segment [over the past year],” Kerbrat told The Block. “We are continuing to focus on that.”

Since focusing more on servicing cryptocurrency-focused customers in recent years, Robinhood has been able to consistently grow its transaction revenue. In the third quarter of this year, Robinhood reported overall transaction revenue grew 129% year-over-year, “primarily driven by cryptocurrencies revenue of $268 million, up over 300%,” the company said.

Kerbrat said market shocks like October's flash crash are causing traders to migrate from other exchanges to Robinhood in a “flight for safety.”

“The issue with a lot of these platforms is that they're not regulated … and you don't know what happens when something goes wrong," he said.

Other features Robinhood also unveiled on Monday include ETH and SOL staking for New York customers and, starting Dec. 22, U.S. customers will be able to “manually add cost basis for crypto deposits to keep their tax lots, profit & loss, and average cost up to date.”

In the EU, Robinhood will provide access to money market funds by partners like J.P. Morgan. The company also said that soon eligible European customers will be able to choose from more than 1,000 stock tokens.

Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.

© 2025 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, secured a triple license under the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), a move that further positions the exchange as a leader in the crypto industry. 

On Monday, Dec. 8, Binance’s founder Chanpeng Zhao took to X to disclose the major milestone, revealing that Binance has officially become the first cryptocurrency exchange in the world to receive a full suite of global licenses under the ADGM regulatory framework.

Binance achieves three licenses from FSRA

Following this major milestone, Binance has achieved three separate licenses from the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) of ADGM. 

As such, Binance will operate three different licensed entities, which includes Nest Services Limited, Nest Clearing and Custody Limited, and BCI Limited.

Notably, the approved licenses offer Binance the opportunity to operate under the most comprehensive regulatory frameworks with which any global crypto platform has ever operated.

With these, Binance has become a step ahead to building the most secure, transparent and trustworthy cryptocurrency exchange across the globe.

Apart from Binance, the approval also marks a crucial milestone for the broad crypto ecosystem. Binance’s CEO Richard Teng explained this, emphasizing that the approval provides the regulatory clarity and legitimacy needed to support Binance’s global operations, giving users worldwide greater confidence in the exchange’s long-term stability.

Binance expands its global footprint 

According to the announcement, the ADGM regulatory framework is globally respected across the the traditional and digital global markets. Hence, the license propels Binance for further expansion as it allows the exchange to seamlessly access multiple markets across the global space.

With Binance now holding an FSRA license under the Abu Dhabi regulatory framework, the exchange is considered to have duly met the highest international standards in governance, risk management and consumer protection.

Interestingly, the announcement has come shortly after the exchange celebrated hitting a massive 300 million users across the globe. Thus, Binance has continued to establish its foothold as a leader among all cryptocurrency exchanges in the world.

Ripple’s $500 million share sale last month included investor protections that effectively guaranteed profits for participants, including Citadel Securities and Fortress Investment Group, according to Bloomberg.

The deal granted investors the right to sell their shares back to Ripple after three or four years at an annualized return of 10%, unless Ripple goes public beforehand, Bloomberg reported on Monday, citing people with knowledge of the matter.

Ripple retained the option to repurchase the shares at the same intervals, but would need to offer investors a 25% annualized return if it chose to do so, the report said. Also, the sale included a liquidation-preference clause giving new investors priority over existing shareholders in the event of a sale or bankruptcy.

The report estimated that Ripple would need $732 million to repurchase the investor group’s shares after four years at a 10% annualized return.

Funds affiliated with Marshall Wace, Brevan Howard, Galaxy Digital, and Pantera Capital also participated in the round, which valued the XRP Ledger-related firm at $40 billion, reportedly negotiating safeguards that ensured a minimum upside despite crypto’s notoriously volatile asset prices.

Investor documents apparently revealed that participating funds assessed that at least 90% of Ripple’s net asset value derived from XRP, the crypto token closely tied to the company. In other words, investing in Ripple was also regarded as a bet on XRP's performance.

Ripple held $124 billion worth of XRP as of July, much of it locked up or released gradually over time, the report stated. The token is down more than 40% from its mid-July high, and has fallen around 16% since Oct. 31, shortly before the deal was announced, The Block’s price page shows.

Meanwhile, a comparable investor-protection mechanism appeared earlier this year in Brevan Howard’s investment in Berachain. That deal included a $25 million “refund right” giving the hedge fund recourse under certain conditions — another example of traditional finance applying downside protection to crypto allocations.

Aside from its affiliations with XRP and the XRP Ledger, Ripple’s digital payments business operates RLUSD, a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin with a circulating supply of roughly $1.3 billion, according to CoinGecko.

In November, the company also launched a digital asset prime brokerage for the U.S. market following its $1.25 billion acquisition of Hidden Road. The rollout was part of a broader effort to diversify revenue streams beyond XRP-related business lines.

The Block reached out to Ripple for comment.

Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.

© 2025 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Argentina is considering allowing local financial institutions to engage more directly with cryptocurrencies in a move that would mark a significant shift from its previous restrictive stance, according to a local media report.

According to a Friday report by local news outlet La Nacion, Banco Central de la República Argentina (BCRA), Argentina’s central bank, is considering allowing traditional banks to trade cryptocurrencies. The story cited “sources close to the organization,” and Cointelegraph has not independently verified the claims.

The BCRA stepped in to ban financial institutions from offering crypto trading just days after two of the country’s largest banks signaled they were opening up to digital assets back in May 2022. The BCRA said that such initiatives pose risks to users and “to the financial system as a whole.”

New cryptocurrency rules are reportedly being drafted, though La Nación’s sources did not specify when they might be finalized or implemented. Representatives of a locally operated exchange suggested to the outlet that the measure could be approved as early as April 2026.

Rumors about a potential shift have circulated for some time among crypto exchanges, bankers and people close to regulators, the report said. A representative of local crypto exchange Lemon told the outlet that the company believes “that a more open financial ecosystem will be a key driver for the mass adoption of digital assets in Argentina.”