“Bitcoin breaches 100k price after Atkin’s nomination, Chip war in Asia persists as China responds with mineral export ban, NFTs see a rebound in December.”
TradFi & Global Market News
Global Market: S&P 500 & NASDAQ
Since the election, US stocks have rallied continuously. The S&P500 and NASDAQ composite observed a 3.7% and 6.32% increase from November 15 to a high of 6090 and 19860, respectively, on December 6. However, as of Monday, all stocks fell slightly despite a 1% jump in oil and gold prices following the collapse of the Syrian government at rebel hands as key market driver Nvidia saw its shares drop by 2.5% following Chinese market regulators’ investigation into it for antimonopoly violations.
As Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger resigns, the technology sector may be poised for a shake-up. New management will be forced to fire 15% of its workforce to generate savings and double down on pivoting the company towards a manufacturing-heavy business model. This risk strategy places it in direct competition with TSMC following poor performance. Meanwhile, OpenAI has opened discussions to remove the AGI clause from its agreement with Microsoft to raise more investment capital. This clause initially barred Microsoft from accessing OpenAI’s more advanced models should the company create this autonomous system that is set to be more efficient than humans at economically productive work.
Meanwhile, while most Asian economies expect to be affected by Trump’s insular economic plans, Singapore has risen above the crowd. The Straits Times Index performs the best among Asian indices due to its high composition of stable blue-chip stocks, making it a great risk adjustment tool.
Global Market: FTSE100
The UK economy’s heavy energy focus has been a big beneficiary of the oil price hikes from the Syrian news story. Shell and BP rose by 1.1% and 2%, respectively, helping the FTSE100 climb to a one-month high of 8352.08 at Monday’s closing. Companies across the UK mining sector have also seen a recent boost of 2.5% to 4% as Chinese officials signal increased fiscal spending in the coming year, which will generate demand for minerals in the UK.
However, the UK has other concerns that need to be addressed. Data has reported the lowest demand for staff in the last four years, reflecting recent Budget tax increases, making businesses pessimistic about cutting headcount to meet new national insurance increases. While UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has come out to speak on these issues with his “Plan for Change” speech, the response is lukewarm, with some calling for bolder action instead of new promises.
Semiconductor News: China
China recently announced export bans on essential minerals for military applications, such as gallium, germanium, and antimony, to the US. These minerals are dual-use materials, as they have commercial uses beyond military applications, such as building high-voltage components in electric vehicles.
China describes their actions as responding to the US’s December 2 crackdown on the Chinese chip sector. The US added 140 chip supply chain companies to a trade restriction list to curb Chinese high-tech development and protect its semiconductor strategy. Additionally, China is looking to enforce new extraterritorial foreign direct product development rules over semiconductor-manufacturing equipment like high-bandwidth memory chips, a crucial component for AI applications destined for China that use US technology. While the world is concerned over the implication of these narrowing supply chain constraints on international chip transactors, Japanese companies are seeing an opportunity to strengthen their existing semiconductor ventures in China. In early 2025, Restar is looking to position itself in Singapore through WPG Holdings, a company with strong ties to Chinese chipmakers, to grow its chip supply chain network. Additionally, Ryosan has started to leverage its venture with EV company IAT Automobile Technology to facilitate two-way chip exchange between suppliers and manufacturers across Japan and Chengdu.
DeFi & Digital Assets News
Cryptocurrency Market: Bitcoin & Ethereum
With worries of cooling hype around Bitcoin, investors were hit with a miracle as Bitcoin finally hit the fabled 100,000 valuation mark on December 5, rising 6.1% from the previous day to an all-time high of around 103800. Compared to the previous election hype rallies, this jump seems isolated to Bitcoin as Ethereum and Dogecoin, a previous big winner at the elections, increased at a more muted rate, even if the former did manage to break the 4000 barrier. Since then, markets have self-corrected downward following a 6.31% shrinking of the cryptocurrency market due to a collective $1.5billion liquation of crypto derivative positions as Bitcoin now sits just under the 100,000 line.
The main driver of this recent push comes from Trump’s nomination of Paul Atkins as the new SEC Chair once Gensler steps down on 20 January. Paul fits the identity of the saviour crypto-enthusiasts are heralding. He has a pro-innovation and pro-free market regulatory stance with experience in the SEC, where he served as a commissioner between 2002 and 2008. He runs his own financial services consultancy, Patomak Global Partners, which provides regulatory advisory and serves as the co-chair of the Token Alliance, an industry-led entity within the US Chamber of Digital Commerce that helps steer the development of the digital assets industry. Meanwhile, Trump continues to build his pro-crypto ‘superteam’ as he appoints ex-PayPal COO David Sack to be his “AI & crypto czar”, a position he promised will help guide the shaping of innovative policymaking moving forward and lead the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
Infrastructure News: Non-Fungible Token (NFT)
The mini Ethereum rally this past quarter has sparked a blast from a pandemic past as NFTs were at a quarterly high trade volume of $187million in the first week of December. Ethereum made the most immense contribution with a 44.7% increase in trade volume to $92 million compared to the last week of November as Pudgy Penguin NFTs led the rally as floor prices jumped from 13ETH to 20.9ETH as of Monday. CryptoPunks falls just behind Pudgy Penguins in trade volume of $16million compared to the latter’s $25million, but it commands a higher floor price of around 40ETH.
Besides Ethereum, Bitcoin has also seen increased trade volume at around $44million compared to the collective trade volume of other blockchains at $47million. While trading has surged, companies like Yuga Labs, developers of the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT, capitalise on opportunities to innovate by acquiring the tech team of the Web3 tokenisation service, Tokenproof, in a bid to strengthen their own NFT infrastructures and increase its NFTs’ utilities without sacrificing security needs. While NFTs have been out of the mainstream eye for some time, technology enthusiasts should keep an eye out for its return under the pro-digital assets Trump regime in a more innovative form than its first push.
Asia News: Southeast Asia
A report by Consensus, a community for Web3, digital assets and blockchain ecosystem players, revealed that the APAC region is adopting digital assets at a rate 3 times higher than the global average. In the 2024 report, digital asset ownership is the highest in Thailand, with 44% of respondents owning digital assets, while Asian Web3 policy leaders Singapore and Hong Kong are at 23% and 24%, respectively. Meanwhile, established economy giants China and Japan have the lowest regional adoption rates at 17% and 12%, respectively. These trends unpack the growing trend of digital assets as a financial connectivity tool for new investors in developing regions like Southeast Asia, hence their higher adoption rates.
We can look at the localised rivalry between Singapore and Hong Kong to further justify the region’s encouraging stance towards digital assets. Despite being known for its stringent regulatory environment, the Singapore Monetary Association of Singapore has granted the Major Payment Institutional License to digital asset service provider BitGo, and its product was officially launched in late November for institutional developers. BitGo can expect to tap into Singapore’s resources, talent, and strong institutional client pool to innovate more secure and efficient products while having a first-mover advantage in growing the APAC digital asset ecosystem. Meanwhile, Hong Kong is encouraging digital adoption to bolster its strong wealth management identity by promising to waive taxes on investment gains from cryptocurrencies and alternative investments for hedge funds, private equity firms and even some family offices.
In Other News…
Short Updates:
Omnicon – The traditional advertising industry is greatly shaken by the agreed stock-for-stock acquisition of IPG by Omnicon, which is touted to create around $750million in cost savings and sharpen its competitive edge in innovation against technology giants’ in-house advertising tools. Should it stand, this merger will make the world’s largest advertising company, usurping Publicis, who just celebrated this position with a collaboration with rapper Snoop Dogg a week ago.
Apple – The smartphone giant has invested $1 billion in Indonesia to set up local manufacturing plants for smartphone component production. This will lift the government’s ban on the iPhone 16, as Apple currently fails to meet the country’s industrial policy requirement that 40% of content sold in Indonesia must be made locally.
Riverlane – After raising a $75million Series C round in August this year, the UK-based quantum computing start-up has announced increased R&D in product development to improve quantum error correction. By 2026, it will upgrade its chip capacity by 10x to 10,000 qubits, which would significantly enhance the commercial viability of quantum computing by breaking down the substantial barriers to scaling up the manufacturing of these devices.
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