Midday Market Insights: US Financial Markets Accelerate On-Chain Shift! DTCC Announces Tokenized US Treasury Bonds
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Market and Policy
Global Indices
The Hang Seng Tech Index closed at 5389.30, down 68.65 points from the previous trading day, a decrease of 1.26%. The highest price was 5427.58, and the lowest was 5368.77. Trading volume was 18.078 billion.
Bitcoin price was $86,842.70, a 24-hour decrease of $265.56, or 0.30%.
Ethereum (ETH) price was $2837.30, a 24-hour decrease of $102.84, or 3.50%.
The US financial market is accelerating its shift to on-chain technology! DTCC Announces Tokenized US Treasury Bonds
① On Wednesday, local time, DTCC announced it will launch tokenized US Treasury bonds on its blockchain, with plans to expand to a wider range of assets in the future.
② DTCC CEO Frank LaSalla stated, "This collaboration sets a roadmap for bringing real-world, high-value tokenized use cases to market, starting with US Treasury bonds and eventually expanding to a broad range of DTC-eligible assets across network providers."
QCP: Fed Policy Flattens, AI Investment and Cryptocurrencies Face Structural Challenges
QCP released a briefing stating that the latest FOMC meeting released cautious signals, with a clearly flattened policy path. The market expects approximately 2.3 rate cuts next year. The policy remains "data-dependent," aiming to stabilize the labor market while controlling inflation. The Fed's $40 billion Treasury bond purchase program has lowered the repurchase rate by 25 basis points to 4%, alleviating some funding pressure. Meanwhile, the mismatch between investment and returns in the AI field is becoming increasingly prominent. Despite continued capital inflows into AI infrastructure, revenue growth is lagging, and if returns cannot be converted, it could trigger a broader stock market valuation adjustment. The cryptocurrency market faces new structural risks. MSCI is assessing the possibility of removing companies with more than 50% cryptocurrency exposure from its indices, potentially leading to passive capital outflows of up to $2.8 billion. While regulatory environments in regions like Japan are gradually improving, the balance between market resilience and vulnerability remains delicate.
Industry/Company News
"Physical AI First Stock" 51WORLD Launches IPO in Hong Kong
Physical AI company 51WORLD launched its IPO on December 18th. The company is offering 23.975 million shares globally at HK$30.5 per share. If the over-allotment option is fully exercised, it could raise up to approximately HK$841 million. Listing is expected on December 30th.
51WORLD has built a complete physical AI ecosystem covering data, models, and platforms. Its products have been commercialized in multiple fields, including autonomous driving and smart factories. The company's revenue has achieved a compound annual growth rate of 30% over the past three years and has received investment from industry and capital investors such as Moore Threads and Ge Weidong.
Alibaba's Qianwen App Integrates with Gaode Maps, More Alibaba Ecosystem Integrations Expected
Alibaba's Qianwen App has begun integrating with its first Alibaba ecosystem scenario—Gaode Maps—gaining physical world understanding and action capabilities. Through system-level integration, the Qianwen App can access Gaode Maps' underlying services, such as street sweeping rankings, to instantly generate visual decision cards containing restaurant and hotel recommendations, geographical locations, and travel plans. According to the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily, this is just the beginning; core business scenarios under Alibaba, such as consumption and payment, will be integrated successively in the future, accelerating the construction of a real-world service fulfillment network.
Volcano Engine Officially Releases Doubao Big Model 1.8 with Enhanced Multimodal Agent Capabilities
At today's Volcano Engine Original Power Conference, Volcano Engine President Tan Dai officially released Doubao Big Model 1.8. This model possesses enhanced multimodal agent capabilities, a 256K ultra-long context, native API context management, and excels at complex multi-step tasks.
Bitcoin Lightning Network Capacity Reaches All-Time High
Bitcoin Visuals data shows that the Lightning Network capacity reached 5.606 bitcoins, breaking the record set in March 2023. The analytics platform Amboss also reported that the Lightning Network capacity peaked at 5.637 Bitcoins, worth approximately $490 million. Data shows that after a year of declining capacity, the Lightning Network saw a surge in November and December, as more Bitcoins were added to the network, resulting in faster transactions and lower costs. Currently, the number of Lightning Network nodes is 14,940, down from the peak of 20,700 in March 2022; while the number of channels between nodes is 48,678, also down from the 2022 peak. The data indicates that while the amount of Bitcoin added to the Lightning Network is increasing, usage, measured by the number of nodes and channels, may not be growing accordingly.
Ethereum is expected to raise the gas cap to 80 million in January.
On December 18th, the Ethereum core developer conference revealed plans to increase the network gas cap from 60 million to 80 million after the BPO hard fork on January 7th, further increasing transaction throughput and reducing fees. Kim, VP of Research at Galaxy Digital, stated that Nethermind representatives believe developers are ready to push forward with this upgrade. However, Ethereum Foundation engineer Busa pointed out that two client-side optimizations need to be completed first: partial blob response at the execution layer and the maximum blob flag at the consensus layer. Increasing the gas limit can increase the number of transactions and smart contract operations processed per block. While it cannot match the speed of L1 blockchains like Solana, it can strengthen Ethereum's appeal as a secure settlement layer while maintaining its decentralized advantages. Ethereum has already increased the gas limit three times this year, and the developer community aims to reach 180 million by the end of 2026.
