Mt. Gox Creditors Reportedly Receiving Repayments

Creditors of the defunct Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, which ceased operations in February 2014, have reportedly begun receiving fiat repayments, nearly a decade later. Unconfirmed reports on Reddit suggest that Japanese Yen payments are being distributed via PayPal. Users have shared screenshots and experiences, indicating partial repayments of their Bitcoin claims. These repayments are being issued in various tranches. 

The process follows trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi’s announcement in November about starting cash repayments in 2023. Despite an initial delay in the repayment schedule, some creditors are receiving funds earlier than the extended October 2024 deadline. Confirmation from Mt. Gox is awaited.

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Bitcoin’s Futures Share Drops as Altcoins Lure Traders

Bitcoin’s dominance in the crypto futures market has notably decreased, now constituting only 38% of the market-wide notional futures open interest, valued at $30.45 billion. This marks a significant drop from nearly 50% just two months prior, as per data from Coinalyze. This shift indicates a growing interest among traders in altcoins as 2023 approaches its end. 

Bitcoin has seen a substantial rise of over 60% to $43,100 since October, fueled by lower Treasury yields and expectations of potential U.S. SEC approval for Bitcoin ETFs. Despite Bitcoin’s year-to-date growth of 161%, Ethereum and other altcoins are gaining traction, with Ethereum maintaining a steady near 21% market share and other altcoins increasing their share from 32% to 41%.

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zkSync Restored After 5-Hour Christmas Outage

On Christmas Day, the zkSync network experienced a five-hour outage due to a bug that erroneously triggered a security protocol. The issue was announced by the zkSync team on social media at 7:36 am UTC, and by 10:52 am UTC, they confirmed the network was fully operational again. 

This incident adds to a series of disruptions faced by blockchain networks in 2023, including Solana’s four-hour downtime from a DDoS attack in January, Polygon’s 11-hour shutdown in March due to a hard fork bug, and Ethereum layer-2 Arbitrum’s 78-minute outage on December 15 caused by a burst of inscription minting.

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Metis Climbs 50% with $360M Ecosystem Grant Incentives

Metis, the native cryptocurrency of the Metis layer 2 network, witnessed a 50% surge in price over 24 hours, boosting its 30-day gains to over 240%. This rise in interest and value followed the MetisDAO Foundation’s announcement of a 4.6 million METIS Ecosystem Development Fund, worth around $360 million, to support the network’s development and adoption. 

The fund’s disbursement is slated for early 2024, coinciding with the release of Metis’s decentralized sequencer. Consequently, the total value locked in Metis-based projects escalated from under $100 million to over $500 million, with ecosystem tokens like Maia and Hermes also experiencing significant gains.

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Other breaking news

• Bitcoin Hash Rate Peaks, Profitability Dips
• FTX Debtors Suggest Separate Deal with Bankman-Fried for Embed Acquisition
• 2023 Sees 68% Drop in Crypto Venture Capital Funding
• Telcoin Hit by $1.2M Exploit Linked to Polygon Wallet
• Asia’s Crypto Regulations Shift in 2023, Led by Hong Kong

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