ETH breaks through the $3400 mark

Medical-devices maker Semler Scientific (SMLR) tumbled as much as 15% after the close of U.S. trading on Thursday after saying it plans to sell $75 million of convertible senior notes and will use some of the funds to add to its bitcoin (BTC) holdings.The shares dropped as low as $51 as the company also said fourth-quarter revenue rose 3.3% to $12.5 million and income from operations added 8.8% to $3.7 million. The unrealized gain from the change in fair value of bitcoin holdings was about $29 million. A portion of the proceeds from the note sale, which includes an option for another $15 million, will be used to fund capped-call transactions to offset stock dilution from a potential note conversion, the company said. The notes mature in 2030, with interest paid semiannually. They can be converted into cash, company stock or both. Full terms of the offering have not been released.As of Jan. 17, Semler Scientific held 2,321 BTC, with an aggregate purchase price of $191.9 million and an average price of $82,689.

Foresight News reported that according to Spot On Chain monitoring, a giant whale address "0x373" spent approximately 664.5 ETH (worth approximately $2.38 million) in the past 2 hours to purchase approximately 1.167 million LDOs, with an average purchase price of $2.036. The address currently holds about 750 WETH (worth approximately $2.56 million) and continues to buy LDOs. In addition, the giant whale also holds approximately 2.987 trillion PEPEs (worth approximately $46.4 million, with a total profit of approximately $55.4 million) and approximately 10.24 million ENAs (worth approximately $9.12 million, with a total profit of approximately $3.82 million).

Crypto venture capital (VC) funding is expected to recover this year as regulatory clarity and more crypto-friendly policies emerge during the tenure of President Donald Trump, JPMorgan (JPM) said in a research report Wednesday.The Wall Street bank noted that venture funding for the industry has been subdued in recent years. This may have been due to enforcement actions by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the climate of regulatory uncertainty during the previous administration, analysts led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou wrote.The start of the EU's Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulations, which came into force at the end of December, is expected to "further bolster VC engagement," the report said.Still, the level of funding is unlikely to match previous peaks seen in 2021/22, JPMorgan said, as crypto venture capital firms face a number of challenges.Giants of traditional finance (TradFi) such as Blackrock (BLK) and Franklin Templeton are increasing their participation in the crypto market, and this leaves less market share for VC firms in stablecoins, tokenization and decentralized finance (DeFi), the bank said.Nascent crypto projects are avoiding large token sales to VCs and are increasingly turning to community-driven platforms to raise money, the report noted.High interest rates also present a challenge for VC funding, JPMorgan said.The growth of cryptocurrency exchange-traded fund (ETF) products is "inducing a trend towards passive investing," and this could be diverting capital away from VC firms, the report added.Crypto Venture Capital Market Remained Difficult in 2024, Galaxy Digital Says

According to official sources, OKX has fully upgraded its portfolio margin account model, merging perpetual contracts, delivery contracts, options, and spot contracts of the same underlying USDT standard, USD standard, and USDC standard into the same risk unit, aiming to achieve cross standard hedging, effectively reduce the required margin for users, and improve fund utilization. In addition, this upgrade also introduces a more scientific dynamic adjustment mechanism, reducing MR1, 6, and 7 through parameter adjustment, modifying the formula of MR4 to make it more reasonable, and adding MR9 margin. During the holding period, users can still flexibly switch trading modes to ensure more efficient and convenient adjustment of trading strategies.