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	Good Wednesday morning. Billy Bambrough here with what's driving the day in the world of bitcoin and crypto. 🚨🚨 Check out the new Forbes Digital Assets Dashboard where you can follow along with the latest news, research and events from the Forbes team.


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24-hour crypto market snapshot

$47,022

$3,739

$173.58

$1.37

Brace brace brace 💥


	Cryptocurrency prices are still under pressure this morning with bitcoin slipping further from the closely-watched $50,000 per bitcoin level. Bitcoin's down 4% on this time yesterday, along with ethereum and Binance's BNB. Ethereum rivals solana and cardano are leading the major market lower, both down around 10% over the last 24 hours. Despite the the larger loses seen by smaller cryptocurrencies, bitcoin dominance fell under 40% over the last week. Looking ahead, Adrian Kenny, senior sales trader at the U.K.-based digital asset broker GlobalBlock, wrote in a note this morning that the expiry of almost 130,000 options contracts, worth just over $6 billion, on New Year's Eve could be fuelling overall wary sentiment for the short term. Now read this: Here’s how much money you’d have if you invested $1,000 in 4 of the top cryptocurrencies this year

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Elon on Satoshi 💫



	Tesla billionaire Elon Musk is one of the most influential people in the world of crypto Getty Images for TIME


	Step forward: Tesla billionaire Elon Musk has weighed in on the mystery of bitcoin's creator Satoshi Nakamoto, arguing the bitcoin inventor's true identity isn't as important as the evolution of ideas that led to it—and naming crypto pioneer Nick Szabo as driving that evolution. Read the full story on Forbes. Feature or bug? "You can look at the evolution of ideas before the launch of bitcoin and see who wrote, you know, about those ideas," Musk told podcaster and artificial intelligence researcher Lex Fridman who had asked if it's a feature or a bug that Satoshi Nakamoto's identity is unknown—"It's an interesting kind of quirk of human history that there is a particular technology that is a completely anonymous inventor." Watch the full marathon 2.5 hour chat here. Why it matters: Elon Musk, the Tesla billionaire who has both boosted and crashed the bitcoin price this year, has become one of the most influential people in crypto. Millions of followers hang on his every tweet, many of which move markets without him even meaning to. Last week, Musk boosted the price of a handful of tiny dogecoin rivals when he posted an image of his shiba inu dog Floki to Twitter. Web3 war: In the latest skirmish in the web3 war, Musk also told Fridman he doesn't understand ethereum-based smart contracts—blockchain-based, self-executing contracts that run when certain, preprogrammed conditions are met. "I never quite understood how this whole smart contract thing, you know," said Musk, joking, "I'm too dumb to understand smart contracts" and saying: "My general approach to any kind of like deal or whatever is just make sure there's clarity of understanding." Last week, former Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey, who left the social media company he cofounded in December, sparked a war between so-called bitcoin maxis and the ethereum-led web3 concept that believers think will see a decentralized crypto and blockchain-based version of the internet replace the Silicon Valley-centric web 2.0. Catch up here. Doge to the moon: Musk went on to predict that the meme-based bitcoin rival dogecoin, or perhaps some other cryptocurrency, will eventually become the official currency of Mars—something Musk has previously hinted at with a proposed project to use his rocket company SpaceX to "put a literal dogecoin on the literal moon." "I think Mars itself will need to have a different currency ... I don't know if Mars would have a cryptocurrency as a thing, but probably it seems likely, but it would be kind of a localized thing on Mars," Musk said, adding: "The future of Mars should be up to the Martians." Good to know: Meta’s Oculus was the U.S.’s most-downloaded app on Christmas

🛡️ Defense bill removes cryptocurrencies


	✍️ The new U.S. $770 billion defense bill, signed by president Joe Biden after it passed the House and the Senate earlier this month, will no longer include language explicitly describing cryptocurrency, it was first reported by Forbes' contributor Jason Brett. 📑 The updated bill removes a section that contains the phrase "so-called cryptocurrencies," replacing it with, "a discussion of and data regarding trends in illicit finance, involving evolving forms of value transfer." 🪖 It also directs the Department of Defense to develop a means of incorporating emerging technologies, including distributed ledger technologies, by April 1, 2022, it was first reported by The Block.

	Billy Bambrough
	Forbes Senior Contributor

I am a journalist with significant experience covering technology, finance, economics, and business. I write about how bitcoin, crypto and blockchain can change the world.

Follow me on Twitter or email me.

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