News

BlockBeats News, December 30th: The prediction market Kalshi shows that the Democratic Party has about a 75% probability of winning a majority of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2026. Against this backdrop, Maxine Waters, a senior Democratic member of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee, has raised sharper criticism of the cryptocurrency asset regulation policies of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Paul Atkins. In a letter to Committee Republican Chair French Hill, Waters stated that the SEC has terminated or suspended several key enforcement actions against the cryptocurrency industry involving entities such as an exchange and Justin Sun. She pointed out that the Committee has not yet conducted a thorough review of the reasons for the SEC's abandonment of these cases and how to prevent fraud and manipulation in the market targeting a large number of retail investors in the future. Waters also mentioned that some companies involved in the cases publicly announced the termination of the cases before a formal SEC vote, questioning Atkins' team's "unusually proactive" role in the case settlements. She believes that the SEC's recent policy shifts have mainly been advanced through staff statements rather than formal rulemaking, which may circumvent Administrative Procedure Act requirements, weaken public comment solicitation, and congressional oversight. Therefore, she has requested Atkins to attend a hearing to provide explanations. Reports indicate that since the Trump administration took office and completed leadership changes, the SEC has abandoned several lawsuits against the cryptocurrency industry. Atkins has also repeatedly stated publicly that he will support the development of the U.S. cryptocurrency industry as a regulatory focus, a stance that has become a continued focus of attention and questioning from the Democratic Party.

Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Brett Knoblauch predicted in his latest report that bitcoin may be in the early stages of a crypto winter, with prices likely to remain under pressure for several months and possibly even test Strategy's average cost price of around $75,000. He stated that this round of correction may not be accompanied by large-scale liquidations or systemic collapse, as institutional participants are shaping the market landscape. The gap between token price performance and real progress in areas such as decentralized finance, asset tokenization, and crypto infrastructure is widening.

Foresight News reported, according to LatePost, that Meta has acquired Butterfly Effect, the company developing the AI application Manus, for several billions of dollars. After the acquisition, Butterfly Effect will continue to operate independently, and its founder Xiao Hong will serve as Vice President of Meta. Liu Yuan, partner at ZhenFund and angel investor in Butterfly Effect, stated that the acquisition negotiations were completed in a very short period, taking just over ten days. For the new generation of young entrepreneurs in the AI era, this will be a tremendous encouragement. "The era belonging to this generation of young Chinese entrepreneurs has arrived."Manus is an Agent product capable of orchestrating different tools to solve complex problems, and in mid-December this year, it announced that its annual recurring revenue had surpassed 100 million US dollars.