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ChainCatcher reported that Washington state regulators have ordered bitcoin ATM operator Coinme to cease operations and return over $8 million in unclaimed funds to customers, accusing the company of treating unredeemed vouchers as revenue in violation of money transmission regulations. The Washington State Department of Financial Institutions (DFI) stated in a temporary cease and desist order and statement of charges that Coinme's cryptocurrency purchase voucher system violated the state's Uniform Money Services Act. Between January 2023 and December 2024, Coinme allegedly treated $8.37 million in unredeemed customer vouchers as company revenue. Regulators are seeking to revoke Coinme's money transmission license, impose a $300,000 fine plus a $375 investigation fee, and ban the company and its CEO Neil Bergquist from participating in any money transmission business for ten years. Coinme has 20 days to request a hearing, otherwise the temporary cease and desist order will automatically become permanent.

On December 4, according to The Block, Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan refuted claims that Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) might be forced to sell its bitcoin holdings. He stated that this premise is "completely incorrect," emphasizing that neither index adjustments nor market pressure require the company to sell its bitcoin. In a report, Hougan responded to a large number of recent inquiries he received, mainly focusing on two questions: whether Strategy will be removed from the MSCI index, and whether such an adjustment would force the company to unwind its multi-billion dollar bitcoin holdings. Hougan acknowledged that MSCI is indeed considering excluding digital asset treasury companies from its investable indices and plans to make a decision on January 15. JPMorgan recently estimated that if Strategy is removed, it could trigger up to approximately 2.8 billions USD in passive fund sell-offs of its stock. Hougan also assessed that the probability of Strategy being excluded is about 75%. However, Hougan pointed out that historical experience shows that index inclusions and exclusions have a much smaller impact on prices than investors generally fear. He mentioned that when Strategy was included in the Nasdaq 100 index last year, passive funds were forced to buy about 2.1 billions USD worth of stock, but "the stock price barely fluctuated." He added that the decline in Strategy's stock price since October 10 is likely the market pricing in the possibility of exclusion in advance, and he does not expect to see "significant two-way volatility" in the future.