Bitcoin and S&P 500 Year-End Bull Run Loading? Vol Metrics Say Yes

[PDAX: Tokenized Asset Market in the Philippines May Reach $60 Billion by 2030] The Philippine Digital Asset Exchange (PDAX) reports that the tokenized asset market in the Philippines is expected to reach $60 billion by 2030. A jointly released white paper indicates that blockchain tokenization will cover government bonds, stocks, mutual funds, and other investment products. Currently, over 14% of Filipinos hold cryptocurrencies, while the proportion of those holding stocks and bonds is 2.4% and less than 1%, respectively.

[South Korea's Financial Services Commission Chairman Announces Expansion of Crypto Travel Rule Regulations] On November 28 local time, South Korea's Financial Services Commission Chairman, Lee Bok-hyun, stated at the Financial Intelligence Unit's '19th Anti-Money Laundering Day' ceremony that the scope of the 'Travel Rule' regulations will be expanded to include transactions below 1 million Korean won (approximately $680). He emphasized a strict crackdown on money laundering activities conducted through virtual asset transactions. He also announced a ban on virtual asset transactions with overseas exchanges that pose high money laundering risks and plans to establish a rigorous review mechanism to comprehensively examine the criminal records, financial status, and social credit of major shareholders in virtual asset businesses.

[Two South Korean Police Officers Indicted for $186 Million Cryptocurrency Money Laundering Case] Two South Korean police officers have been indicted for allegedly participating in a $186 million (approximately 249.6 billion KRW) cryptocurrency money laundering case. Prosecutors accuse the two of accepting bribes from illegal cryptocurrency exchange points, providing investigative intelligence to criminal groups, assisting in unfreezing accounts, introducing lawyers, and contacting other law enforcement personnel. South Korean authorities have frozen approximately $1.1 million (1.5 billion KRW) in related assets. The money laundering group, led by the main perpetrator and CEO 'A,' operated disguised 'gift voucher shops' as cash-to-crypto exchange points in areas such as Yeoksam-dong, Gangnam District, Seoul, from January to October 2024. They converted funds obtained through voice phishing scams into the stablecoin USDT. To conceal their illegal activities, the shops displayed signs warning against 'voice phishing scams.'

[Infinex Founder States Relaunching ICO Aims to Combat 'Low Circulation, High FDV' Model] On November 28, Infinex founder kain.mega posted on social media, stating that the original intention of relaunching the ICO was not to ensure profits for everyone, but to eliminate the fraudulent system of 'low circulation, high fully diluted valuation,' under which almost no one benefits except for three venture capital firms.

[CME Market Disruption Impacts Trading of Certain Bybit TradFi Products] Due to a complete outage in the CME Globex futures and options market, underlying market data has stopped updating, and all liquidity providers are unable to offer real-time quotes for products such as U.S. indices. Certain Bybit TradFi products have been affected. The impacted products include specific indices and crude oil, which currently cannot provide real-time quotes. Functions such as opening positions, closing positions, and modifying orders are temporarily unavailable, and risk control instructions like stop-loss may not be triggered until the market data is restored. XAAmericaD (gold) remains unaffected and can be traded normally. Bybit is closely monitoring the situation with CME, and trading for the affected products will resume once CME operations return to normal. CME has not yet provided an estimated recovery time.