The biggest news is of course Bakkt, launching its services on December 12th. If you've been living under a rock, Bakkt is the new upcoming cryptocurrency trading platform backed by ICE, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange. While Bakkt is primarily focusing on institutional investors, it will supposedly be open to retail traders as well. Bakkt is not just a trading platform, it also provides custody and other services, but the most anticipated product is the Bakkt Daily Futures Contracts. This is the first physically settled Bitcoin futures product. Bakkt will not allow margin trading on the platform. ICE is still waiting for regulatory approval but I have little doubts they will get it.

Can Bakkt trigger a good old fashioned Santa Claus rally on the crypto markets? We will see, but I think the chances are reasonably high.

NEO announced yesterday that KPN, the Dutch telco giant is going to operate one of the NEO consensus nodes, which secure the whole ecosystem. EOS and NEO are fast and secure blockchains, but neither of them are very decentralized. We know 17 of the 21 consensus nodes in the EOS ecosystem are controlled by the same organization, Huobi, either directly or through backroom deals. This is very unhealthy and raises uncomfortable questions about the project. NEO is even more centralized, as it only has 7 consensus nodes. Before the announcement, all 7 of these nodes were controlled by the NEO Foundation, and this is now changing. And I think it is important to recognize that NEO is doing it right.

The latest news from China are either scary as hell or hilarious, depending on your point of view. Under proposed new rules, companies and entities operating in China that provide blockchain-based information services will have to ask users to register their real names and national identification card numbers, censor content deemed to pose a threat to national security and store user data to allow inspection by authorities.

This story is eye-opening in two ways. First, it shows you how insecure dictatorships are. Something they can't control just creeps the hell out of them because they know it poses a lethal threat to their power. Second, it shows what is the ultimate benefits of blockchain technology are: immutability, censorship-resistance and equal access.