If you see startups mashing two of the hottest tech trends together – AI and crypto – you might be forgiven to think they’re merely riding the buzzword wave. But is there something of actual substance at that intersection?

In this last edition for the year, we will do a whirlwind tour of what changed this year, on-chain. We will explore how the Bitcoin, Ethereum, Derivative, and Stablecoin landscapes have evolved in 2023, and how this sets up the space for an exciting road ahead.

According to the latest "Digital Asset Fund Flow Weekly Report" released by CoinShares on December 18th, digital asset investment products recently experienced a small-scale capital outflow of a total of $16 million, ending the trend of continuous capital inflows for 11 weeks. However, trading activity is still far higher than the average level this year, with a total trading volume of $3.6 billion last week.

1.Hong Kong Stock Exchange: Current CEO Ou Guansheng will not renew his contract, and co-operating director Chen Yiting’s replacement has been approved by the Hong Kong Securities Regulatory Commissio

Continued inflows at US$43m, Blockchain equities see largest inflows on record

The L7 Crypto Card, introduced by the Web3 digital asset management platform L7, made its official debut on December 7, 2023. This universally accessible card is designed for practical applications, including consumer payments, one-click payments, and ATM withdrawals using cryptocurrencies.

Flowdesk, a French encrypted financial service company, announced that it has been appointed by Forge, a subsidiary of Societe Generale, as the new market maker for the Euro stablecoin EUR CoinVertible (EURCV). Flowdesk will be responsible for providing liquidity for EURCV-EUR and EURCV-USDT trading pairs on Bitstamp and other platforms, and is one of the selected entities authorized by SG-FORGE to trade EURCV.

On December 5th, Phoenix Group, a cryptocurrency mining company, completed a $371 million IPO on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX) and rose 50% on the same day. The IPO attracted $12 billion in funding, oversubscribed by 33 times. In addition, it was reported that International Holding Co., the largest enterprise group in Abu Dhabi controlled by important members of the UAE royal family, purchased 10% of Phoenix's shares in early October.

On December 4th, asset management company abrdn announced a partnership with cryptocurrency trading platform Archax, aiming to tokenize traditional finance (TradFi) assets and strive for a leading position in this emerging field. They plan to develop a regulatory framework for tokenizing and trading various assets. This move marks the integration of traditional finance and blockchain technology, which may completely change the way assets are processed and traded.<br>Early next year, Archax will launch trading pairs for abrdn Money Market Fund (MMF) tokens and Bitcoin (BTC). In other words, users can exchange Bitcoin for US dollar MMF tokens, instead of exchanging BTC for US dollars or USDC. The obvious next step (although the company has not yet publicly discussed this) is to use MMF ownership tokens as collateral.<br>As previously reported by BlockBeats, in November last year, digital asset trading platform Archax completed a $28.5 million Series A financing round, led by abrdn.

Dragonfly Capital transferred 21,079,914 RBN tokens (worth $7.67 million), 1,870,37 LDO tokens (worth $4.63 million), and 150 ETH tokens (worth $330,000) to Coinbase Prime. The RBN tokens were unlocked from a Ribbon Finance contract 5 hours ago, while the LDO tokens were purchased from the Lido treasury on May 7, 2021, using 404 ETH tokens (worth $1.4 million) at a price of $0.75 per token.