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(Reuters) – Global grains merchant Archer-Daniels-Midland said on Monday it will acquire Revela Foods, a Wisconsin-based developer and manufacturer of dairy flavor ingredients and solutions, to bolster the company’s flavors portfolio.

ADM has been diversifying its traditional grain handling business into flavors and nutrition foods over the years, and has acquired multiple flavor companies since its acquisition of WILD Flavors for $3 billion in 2014.

“Our flavors business is an important pillar of our Nutrition growth strategy, and we are continuing to add to our flavors pantry to ensure we remain the partner of choice for customers around the globe,” said Ian Pinner, president of ADM’s Nutrition business.

The company said that with Revela’s projected sales of almost $240 million in 2023, it would add new capabilities to ADM’s global flavors portfolio in the $1.8 billion global dairy flavors segment.

The deal is expected to close in early 2024. ADM did not provide any financial details of its deal to buy Revela.

(Reporting by Tanay Dhumal in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri)

By Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A U.S. court entered an order against crypto exchange Binance and its former CEO, Changpeng Zhao, approving billions of dollars in fines for money laundering following a case brought by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the agency said on Monday.

Zhao will pay $150 million and Binance will pay $2.7 billion to the CFTC as a result, the agency said in a statement.

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois approved the previously announced settlement and entered a consent order of permanent injunction, civil monetary penalty, and equitable relief against Zhao and Binance, the CFTC said in its statement. The settlement was reached in late November.

The court imposed a $150 million civil monetary penalty personally against Zhao, and required Binance to disgorge $1.35 billion of ill-gotten transaction fees and pay a $1.35 billion penalty to the CFTC, according to the agency.

In November, Zhao stepped down and pleaded guilty to breaking U.S. anti-money laundering laws as part of a settlement resolving a years-long probe into the world’s largest crypto exchange.

At the time, Binance said the resolutions acknowledged the company’s responsibility “for historical, criminal compliance violations, and allow our company to turn the page.”

Binance broke U.S. anti-money laundering and sanctions laws and failed to report more than 100,000 suspicious transactions with organizations the U.S. described as terrorist groups, authorities have said.

The exchange also failed to report transactions with websites devoted to selling child sexual abuse material and was one of the largest recipients of ransomware proceeds, they added.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Stephen Coates)

By Samrhitha A, Stephen Nellis and Blake Brittain

(Reuters) -Apple said on Monday it would pause sales of its Series 9 and Ultra 2 smartwatches in the United States from this week, as it deals with a patent dispute over the technology that enables the blood oxygen feature on the devices.

The move comes after an order in October from the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) that could bar Apple from importing its Apple Watches after finding the devices violate medical technology company Masimo’s patent rights.

The decision is under review by President Joe Biden until Dec. 25, but Apple said it is taking steps to comply should the ruling stand. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the part of the Biden administration handling the case, said that Ambassador Katherine Tai “is carefully considering all factors in this case.”

If not vetoed, the ban would go into effect on Dec. 26.

The company said it would pause sales of the watches from its website starting on Dec. 21 and from Apple retail locations after Dec. 24. Other models that do not contain the blood oxygen sensor, like Apple’s lower-priced Apple Watch SE model, are unaffected by the dispute.

Ryan Reith, program vice president for research firm IDC’s mobile device tracking efforts, said that U.S. holiday sales of Apple Watches will not suffer and that the full impact of the ruling, if it stands, will come in January and February, typically some of Apple’s slowest sales months in the U.S.

“Apple has plenty of inventory of Watch 8 and SE so they will have products available during that time,” Reith said. “The bigger implication is around whether or not Apple can use the blood oxygen sensor technology that is in question on future devices, or if they’ll have to reach a settlement or come up with a new solution.”

Masimo CEO Joe Kiani told CNBC in October that he was open to negotiating a deal with Apple. In a statement on Monday, Masimo said the ITC decision “should be respected, protecting intellectual property rights and maintaining public trust in the United States’ patent system and encouraging US industry.”

Apple has about a quarter of the global smartwatch market, according to Counterpoint Research – a share that tends to rise to more than a third in the fourth quarter during the U.S. and European holiday sales seasons. Both the Series 9 and the Ultra 2 would remain available for purchase outside of the United States, including during the Lunar New Year season in Asia.

Apple said it believes the ITC’s finding was erroneous, should be reversed and that it intends to appeal the decision to the Federal Circuit.

Apple shares closed 0.9% lower on Monday.

Masimo has accused Apple of hiring away its employees, stealing its pulse oximetry technology and incorporating it into the popular Apple Watch.

A jury trial on Masimo’s allegations in California federal court ended with a mistrial in May. Apple has separately sued Masimo for patent infringement in a federal court in Delaware and has called Masimo’s legal actions a “maneuver to clear a path” for its own competing smartwatch.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejected Apple’s requests to review the validity of the patents at issue in the ITC decision earlier this year.

Engineers at Apple are moving to make changes to algorithms in the smartwatches, adjusting how the technology determines oxygen saturation and presents the data to customers, Bloomberg reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the work.

Apple is working on a range of legal and technical options, if the ban holds. It has begun preparing stores for the change, sending new signs to its retail outlets that promote the Apple Watch without showing photos of the Series 9 and Ultra 2 — two models targeted by the ban, the report added.

An Apple spokeswoman told Bloomberg that the company is working on submitting a workaround to the U.S. customs agency, which is in charge of approving changes to get a product back on the market.

“The patents in question cover hardware. Masimo believes that Apple needs to change the hardware,” a Masimo spokesperson told Reuters about the Bloomberg report, while Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

Apple did not comment on Bloomberg’s report but earlier on Monday said it was working on “technical options” to ensure Apple Watches are available to customers and that it would “take all measures” to get the devices back to shelves if the ITC order stands.

A presidential administration has not vetoed an ITC ruling since 2013, when President Barack Obama’s administration overturned an import ban on Apple’s iPhones and iPads from a patent dispute with Samsung.

The Biden administration in February chose not to veto a separate import ban on Apple Watches based on a patent-infringement complaint from medical technology company AliveCor. The ITC has placed the ban on hold for other reasons.

Apple’s wearables, home and accessory business, which includes the Apple Watch, AirPods earbuds and other products, brought in $8.28 billion in revenue during the third quarter of 2023, according to a company report.

(Reporting by Samrhitha Arunasalam in Bengaluru, Blake Brittain in Washington and Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Juby Babu in BengaluruEditing by Anil D’Silva, Deepa Babington and Matthew Lewis)

By Marius Zaharia

HONG KONG (Reuters) – China’s disappointing post-COVID recovery has raised significant doubts about the foundations of its decades of stunning growth and presented Beijing with a tough choice for 2024 and beyond: take on more debt or grow less.

The expectations were that once China ditched its draconian COVID rules, consumers would burst back into malls, foreign investment would resume, factories would rev up and land auctions and home sales stabilise.

Instead, Chinese shoppers are saving for rainy days, foreign firms pulled money out, manufacturers face waning demand from the West, local government finances wobbled, and property developers defaulted.

The dashed expectations have partly vindicated those who always doubted China’s growth model, with some economists even drawing parallels with Japan’s bubble before its “lost decades” of stagnation starting in the 1990s.

China sceptics argue Beijing failed to shift the economy from construction-led development to consumption-driven growth a decade ago, when it should have done so. Since then, debt has outpaced the economy, reaching levels that local governments and real estate firms now struggle to service.

Policymakers vowed this year to boost consumption, and reduce the economy’s reliance on property. Beijing is guiding banks to lend more to high-end manufacturing, away from real estate.

But a concrete long-term roadmap for cleaning up debt and restructuring the economy remains elusive.

Whatever choices China makes, it will have to account for an ageing and shrinking population, and a difficult geopolitical environment as the West grows wary of doing business with the world’s No.2 economy.

WHY IT MATTERS

China likely grew 5%-or-so in 2023, outrunning the global economy. However, beneath that headline is the fact China invests more than 40% of its output – twice as much as the United States – suggesting a significant portion of that is unproductive.

That means many Chinese don’t feel that growth. Youth unemployment topped 21% in June, the last set of figures before China controversially stopped reporting.

University graduates who studied for advanced-economy jobs are now taking up low-skilled positions to make ends meet while others have seen their wages cut.

In an economy where 70% of household wealth is parked in property, home owners are feeling poorer. Even in one of the few bright spots of the economy, the electric vehicle sector, a price war is causing pain downstream for suppliers and workers.

The national pessimism could present President Xi Jinping with social stability risks, analysts say. If China does slip into a Japan-style decline, it would do so before ever achieving the kind of development Japan did.

That would be felt widely as most global industries depend significantly on suppliers in China. Africa and Latin America count on China buying their commodities and financing their industrialisation.

WHAT IT MEANS FOR 2024

China’s problems give it little time before it has to make some tough choices.

Policymakers are keen to change the structure of the economy, but reform has always been difficult in China.

A push to boost welfare for hundreds of millions of rural migrant workers, who could – by some estimates – add 1.7% of GDP in household consumption if they had similar access to public services as urban residents, is already stalling due to worries about social stability and costs.

China’s efforts to resolve its property and debt problems come up against similar concerns.

Who pays for their bad investments? Banks, state-owned firms, the central government, businesses or households?

Any of those options could mean weaker future growth, economists say.

For now, however, China appears hesitant to make choices that would sacrifice growth for reform.

Government advisers are calling for a growth target of around 5% for next year.

While that’s in line with its 2023 target, it won’t have the same flattering year-on-year comparison with the slump caused by the 2022 lockdowns.

Such a target might push it into more debt – the type of fiscal looseness that prompted Moody’s to cut China’s credit rating outlook to negative this month, pushing Chinese stocks to five-year lows.

Where that money gets spent will tell us if Beijing is changing its approach or doubling down a growth model many fear has run its course.

(Writing by Marius Zaharia. Editing by Sam Holmes)

BEIJING (Reuters) -Nissan Motor said on Sunday it would sell China-developed electric vehicles (EVs) globally as it struck a deal with the country’s top university to leverage local resources to accelerate research and development on electrification.

The Japanese automaker is considering exporting the line-up of existing internal combustion engine vehicles and upcoming pure electric and plug-in hybrid cars manufactured and developed in China to overseas markets, Masashi Matsuyama, vice president of Nissan Motor and president of Nissan China, told reporters in Beijing.

Nissan is considering aiming at the same markets as Chinese rivals such as BYD, he said.

The company is joining foreign brands including Tesla, BMW and Ford that are expanding their exports of China-made cars to exploit the country’s lower manufacturing costs and increase the capacity utilisation of their factories.

China accounted for just over a fifth of Nissan’s worldwide sales of about 2.8 million vehicles over the first 10 months of the year, down from over a third for the same period last year.

Japanese automakers have faced a severe sales challenge this year in China, the world’s biggest auto market, due to the popularity of domestic brands and heavy price competition amid a rapid shift to EVs.

Nissan announced it would establish a joint research centre with China’s leading Tsinghua University next year, focussing on research and development of EVs, including charging infrastructure and battery recycling.

“We hope that this collaboration will help us gain a deeper understanding of the Chinese market and develop strategies that better meet the needs of customers in China,” Nissan President and Chief Executive Makoto Uchida said in a statement.

The launch of the research centre is an extension of joint research efforts the company has had with Tsinghua since in 2016 that focussed on intelligent mobility and autonomous driving technology.

(Reporting by Zhang Yan in Beijing and Daniel Leussink in Tokyo; Editing by Antoni Slodkowski and William Mallard)

By Francesca Landini

ROME (Reuters) -Oil and gas should not be demonised in the medium-term, Elon Musk, the founder of electric car maker Tesla, said on Saturday, but he also said it was important to reduce carbon emissions to preserve the planet.

Musk, speaking at a right-wing political gathering organised by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party said: “Climate change alarm is exaggerated in the short term,” adding that the environmental movement may have gone too far, causing people to lose faith in the future.

At this month’s COP28 climate summit, representatives from nearly 200 countries agreed to begin reducing global consumption of fossil fuels to avert the worst of climate change, signalling the eventual end of the oil age.

Musk said he considers himself an environmentalist and added that it is important that, in the long run, industries reduce the billions of tons of carbon they take from the earth and release into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels.

“We should not demonise oil and gas in the medium term,” he added.

Asked whether his companies would invest in Italy, Musk said he was worried about the country’s declining birth rate.

“I think Italy is a great place to invest, but I do want to emphasise that I worry about a low birth rate. If the workforce declines than who will work in the country?” he said.

He called for the Italian government to create incentives for families to have more children, adding that a country could not rely only on immigration flows to fill the gap.

Italy has earmarked around 1 billion euros ($1.09 billion) in next year’s budget to tackle the country’s demographic crisis. Births in Italy last year fell for the 14th year in a row and were the lowest since the country’s unification in 1861.

Speaking about social media site X, Musk played down concerns about a fall in advertising on the platform.

The platform is “already seeing advertisers return”, he said.

($1 = 0.9179 euros)

(Reporting by Francesca Landini; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Jane Merriman)

Amazon Confirms $10B Internet Satellites Investment Push

Amazon’s business empire just got bigger with the e-commerce giant venturing into the internet-beaming business as part of a new $10 billion investment push. After launching its first internet satellites in October, the company has confirmed plans to use laser links to ensure they beam robust and reliable broadband coverage to its users. The push is part of the company’s bid to strengthen its edge in the highly competitive sector dominated by big careers, including Verizon and AT&T.

Amazon Project Kuiper

Project Kuiper is an Amazon push that uses key speed-boosting technology to offer strong and reliable internet connections. In most cases, satellites used in beaming internet connections have limited coverage, which reduces their effectiveness. Amazon intends to bypass this challenge by leveraging laser links that can connect satellites, providing internet connections regardless of location.

The use of laser links to beam internet should allow Amazon to deliver internet connections in the middle of the ocean on a cruise ship, even if a spacecraft is not in the range of a ground station. The links could improve both the latency and speed of the connections. This will be made possible by laser-passing requests for an internet connection to a nearby satellite. Amazon has successfully tested the technology using optical inter-satellite links.

Amazon’s latest push is part of a drive that seeks to draw more customers into its robust ecosystem dominated by an e commerce platform and cloud computing services. The use of satellites on the internet should allow the company to keep hold of maritime or air customers as it can beam internet connection to any location. In return, it should be able to sell other services and products to them.

The tech giant intends to operate a constellation of over 3,000 satellites 9n the next few years as it seeks to be a big player in the sector. The company has already ordered 97 rocket launchers to be used in deploying the satellites in the first half of next year. In the long run, the company is ready to spend up to $10 billion to make Project Kuiper a success. Plans are underway to start testing the satellite network next year. Prototypes of the network have already shown that the threat can transmit data at 100 gigabits per second over a distance of 1,000km.

Cheaper Internet Connections

Nevertheless, Amazon is one of many companies to leverage satellites to offer internet connections. Elon Musk linked Space X’s Starlink, which already operates one of the largest constellations of satellites, to beam internet connection to various parts of the world. This is made possible by a network of about 5,000 satellites.

Amazon is banking on the expertise of former employees of Facebook to hit the ground running with its latest salvo of satellite internet connections. Facebook was one of the companies that had plans to offer cheap internet services using its satellites to keep people engaged in its social networking apps. However, it abandoned the plans after embarking on an aggressive restructuring plan that resulted in a shift of focus to the multi-billion advertising business.

By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Fadi Shana

CAIRO/GAZA (Reuters) -A U.S. security envoy discussed with Israeli officials on Thursday how to better protect civilians during their war against Hamas in Gaza and President Joe Biden appealed for lives in the Palestinian territory to be saved.

Israel pounded the 25-mile (40-kilometer) length of Gaza, killing families in their homes as the more than two-month-old conflict raged across the entire enclave, causing a humanitarian catastrophe with little end in sight.

“It will last more than several months – but we will win and we will destroy them,” Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told visiting White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

Sullivan said in an Israeli TV interview that he spoke to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about when Israel will shift from high-intensity military operations to a more precise, more targeted phase.

Sullivan did not provide a specific timeline or elaborate on what such operations would look like, although he said Israel was expected to continue its military campaign for some time.

“The issue really is, when does Israel shift from the high-intensity military operations that are under way today to a different phase of this conflict. One that’s more precise, more targeted,” Sullivan said on Israel’s Channel 12 television.

The occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip need to be connected under a “revamped and revitalized” Palestinian Authority government, Sullivan said.

On Friday, Sullivan would discuss revamping the Palestinian Authority and holding “extremist” Jewish settlers accountable for violence against Palestinians when he visits Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, a U.S. official said.

U.S. President Joe Biden, asked whether he wanted Israel to scale back its assault on the Gaza Strip by the end of the year, said: “I want them to be focused on how to save civilian lives, not stop going after Hamas but be more careful.”

Washington has been pushing Israel for weeks to do more to protect civilians in Gaza’s population of 2.3 million.

Israel launched its campaign in retaliation for a rampage by Hamas, the Iran-backed group that rules Gaza, whose fighters killed 1,200 Israelis and seized 240 hostages in a cross-border raid on Oct. 7.

Since then, Israeli forces have besieged the coastal strip and laid much of it to waste, with nearly 19,000 people confirmed dead, according to Palestinian health officials, and thousands more feared buried under the rubble.

PEOPLE JAMMED IN MAKESHIFT TENTS

In the Rafah area, jammed with people in makeshift tents on Gaza’s southern edge, people wept at a morgue near bodies wrapped in bloodied shrouds.

Residents picked forlornly through the rubble of the adjacent homes of the Abu Dhbaa and Ashour families where Gaza health authorities said 26 people had been killed.

Neighbour Fadel Shabaan rushed to the area after the bombing. “It was difficult because of the dust and people’s screams,” he said. “This is a safe camp, there is nothing here, the children play soccer in the street.”

With Europe on alert for Islamist threats linked to the war, authorities in Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands said seven people, including four suspected Hamas members, were arrested on suspicion of planning attacks on Jewish institutions.

Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri denied Hamas members were arrested, saying the reports were meant to erode support for Palestinians in Europe.

In further possible international fallout from the war, Danish company Maersk said a cargo ship was targeted by a missile off Yemen. A Maersk spokesperson said the vessel was not hit, denying a claim by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi movement that the militia made a drone strike on a Maersk vessel sailing towards Israel.

Maritime security company Ambrey said a Malta-flagged, Bulgarian-owned bulk carrier was reportedly boarded in the Arabian Sea near the Yemeni island of Socotra.

Yemen’s Houthi group, which has warned cargo ships in the Red Sea to avoid travel toward Israel, has attacked vessels and fired drones and missiles at Israel since the Gaza war began.

Nearly all of Gaza’s residents have been forced from their homes, many several times.

The U.N. Palestinian Refugee Agency said hungry people were stopping trucks and eating food aid immediately. “We meet more and more people who haven’t eaten for one, two or three days,” its head Philippe Lazzarini told reporters in Geneva.

People in Gaza described begging for bread, paying 50 times more than usual for a single can of beans and slaughtering a donkey to feed a large family.

‘REVENGE’

Israel has extended its ground campaign from the north to the south this month.

In the main southern city Khan Younis, where advancing Israeli forces reached the centre this week, a whole city block was bombed overnight to dust. Though most people fled after Israeli warnings, neighbours digging with a hand shovel believed four people were inside. One body was recovered.

“May God take revenge on them,” said Nesmah al-Byouk, returning to the ruins of the home she had fled three days ago. “We came and saw everything destroyed … Where we can we go to now?”

In the north, fighting has escalated even after Israel announced its troops had largely completed their military objectives last month.

The Israeli military said its troops had dismantled a Hamas operating site in a school in the Shejaia area and destroyed two tunnel shafts, a rocket launch pit and a weapons storage facility in Khan Younis.

Elsewhere in the north in Jabalia, Gaza’s health ministry said Israeli forces had stormed a hospital, detaining and abusing medical staff and preventing them from treating wounded patients, at least two of whom had died.

Israel’s military said fighters had been operating inside the hospital, 70 of whom had surrendered.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo; Fadi Shana and Mohammed Salem in Gaza, Dan Williams, Ilan Rosenberg and Frank Jack Daniel in Jerusalem, Andrea Shalal in Washington and other Reuters bureaux;Writing by Peter Graff, Andrew Cawthorne and Grant McCool; Editing by Angus MacSwan, Mark Heinrich, William Maclean, Sharon Singleton and Cynthia Osterman)

By Granth Vanaik

(Reuters) -Costco Wholesale topped Wall Street estimates for quarterly sales and profit on Thursday, as more customers turned to its stores to shop for cheaper groceries and essentials, sending its shares up about 2% after the bell.

Costco has increased its sales and market share thanks to its strategy of maintaining low prices on basic essentials as well as a devoted membership base that benefits from incentives offered like a yearly 2% reward on qualified purchases at its warehouses.

The company has also seen sales surge for its consumable categories like fresh food and sundries as well as private-label brand Kirkland Signature, as persistent inflation and higher borrowing costs pinches household budgets.

CFO Richard Galanti on a post-earnings call said the company saw some non-food categories like televisions and appliances show an improvement during the quarter.

Galanti also said that Costco saw better-than-expected Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, echoing sentiment from other retailers like Foot Locker that have signaled optimism over holiday season sales.

“Costco’s performing very well relative to the rest of the retail sector,” Telsey Advisory Group analyst Joseph Feldman said, adding that it is well positioned in the market by catering to middle-to-upper-income consumers.

Costco saw its total paid household members rise by 7.6% in the quarter, while its membership fee revenues jumped 8.2% to $1.08 billion.

“We’re happily surprised that we are continuing to drive people in on an increasing basis,” Galanti said.

The company’s gross margins rose 43 basis points to 11.04% as it saw shipping costs ease from their peak last year.

The membership-only retailer also announced a special cash dividend on its common stock of $15 per share payable on Jan. 12.

Total revenues rose 6.1% to $57.8 billion in the first quarter, compared with analysts’ estimates of $57.72 billion, according to LSEG data.

Costco reported a per-share profit of $3.58, above expectations of $3.42.

(Reporting by Granth Vanaik in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)

(This Dec. 12 story has been corrected to fix the spelling of Kelvin Koh’s name in paragraph 3)

By Medha Singh and Lisa Pauline Mattackal

(Reuters) – If 2022 was the year that “broke bitcoin”, 2023 has been the year of trauma recovery.

Bitcoin has bounced pluckily in the face of depressed crypto prices, low trading volumes and tough economic conditions. It even found a second wind in October following a summer slump.

“We’ve had a nice recovery, but we’re just in the cusp of the new cycle,” said Kelvin Koh, co-founder and managing partner at investment firm Spartan Group.

Indeed, 2023 has been a surprisingly good year for bitcoin.

The king of cryptocurrencies has leapt 164% since Jan. 1 and is trading above $40,000. It has outpaced traditional assets, including gold which has risen 10% and the S&P 500 which has gained 20%.

Bitcoin also increased its share of the total cryptocurrency market, from 38% to above 50%, according to CoinGecko data. The overall crypto market cap has swelled to $1.7 trillion from $871 billion at the end of 2022, with ether’s price jumping 95%.

Much of bitcoin’s gains came later in the year as a potential U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) and hopes of easier monetary policy renewed investor energy.

Trading volumes have picked back up too, with the combined spot and derivatives trading volume on centralized exchanges hitting $3.61 trillion in November, up from about $2.9 trillion in January, according to CCData.

Meanwhile, stablecoins – cryptocurrencies whose value is pegged to a real world asset like the dollar – have also grown. Tether, the largest such coin, has seen its market cap soar to an all time high of over $90 billion.

FALL OF TITANS

After a torrid 2022 saw the downfall of FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried, 2023 has seen more crypto giants come a cropper.

Binance chief Changpeng Zhao, plead guilty to breaking U.S. anti-money laundering laws, most notably, part of a multi-billion dollar settlement with regulators. The co-founder of Voyager Digital also found himself on the wrong end of American regulatory action, while Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky was arrested in the U.S. in July, pleading not guilty to criminal counts including securities fraud.

And not forgetting SBF – after a whirlwind trial, the former industry poster child was convicted of fraud in November.

On a brighter note, Ripple’s XRP token clocked gains of 82% for the year after a key legal victory for the industry when a U.S. judge ruled Ripple Labs’ sales of the token on public exchanges did not violate securities law.

BITCOIN IN 2024

Most of bitcoin’s 55% run in the fourth-quarter has been attributed to bets that a spot bitcoin ETF will be approved in the U.S. and pull in money from retail and institutional investors alike on the ease of gaining exposure to the digital asset on a regulated stock exchange.

Asset management giants like BlackRock and Fidelity are among the 13 companies that have submitted applications to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for the multi-billion dollar product.

Such a fund is expected to pull in as much as $3 billion from investors in the first few days of trading and billions more thereafter.

Not everyone is as bullish though.

J.P.Morgan expects the crypto market recovery to continue through the expected approval in early 2024, however, remains skeptical of the magnitude of success in adoption that broader market is pricing in.

JPM expects the bitcoin ETFs to pull in assets in the low or low to mid-single digit percentage range of the $1.7 trillion crypto market compared with some optimistic outlooks of 10%.

If adoption falls short of investor expectations of around 10%, crypto markets could reverse their recent gains, it said.

To some market watchers, though, it looks like the current bitcoin recovery is still in early stages.

The net dollar-denominated realized profit locked in by bitcoin investors has reached $324 million per day, which remains an order of magnitude below the peaks experienced during the later stages of the 2021 bull market, which eclipsed $3 billion a day, according to analytics platform Glassnode.

This suggests bitcoin’s current performance remains very much within the bounds of an early rather than a late-stage bull market, Glassnode said.

(Reporting by Lisa Mattackal and Medha Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Pravin Char)