Crypto

Open interest rose above $1.5 billion, indicating futures traders' continued exposure.

Technical analysis suggests a defensive market stance, with XRP struggling to reclaim resistance levels and momentum indicators showing oversold conditions.

Widespread protests took place in Iran’s capital after the rial slid to record lows, prompting Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley to argue Bitcoin could help Iranians protect their savings. Protests erupted across Iran’s capital of Tehran on Monday as the rial hit record lows against the US dollar, a currency collapse that locals blame on the central bank’s poor fiscal policies as they watch the value of their life savings evaporate. While there’s no single solution to the economic hardship that Iranians are facing, Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley suggested that Bitcoin (BTC) is a way for people around the world to protect themselves from plunging currency values. “Economic mismanagement — The story of the past, present, and future,” Bitcoin is a new way for the people to protect themselves,” Horsley said in a post to X Monday. Read more

Analysts are split on whether Bitcoin’s typical four-year cycle has ended in 2025, with institutional ETFs and regulatory shifts cited as key factors. A wave of institutional crypto participation spurred by exchange-traded funds, an easing of regulations in the US, an increase in global liquidity, and a Federal Reserve leadership change are just some of the reasons why analysts think the typical four-year crypto cycle is broken. The four-year cycle is tied to Bitcoin (BTC) halving events, which cut miner rewards in half, reducing the supply of new Bitcoin entering circulation.  Historically, this was seen as the catalyst for a predictable pattern: accumulation, a post-halving bull run that peaked around 18 months later, followed by a sharp correction and multi-year bear market. Read more

The venture capitalist argues 2026 will favor proven crypto infrastructure, while several fast-growing segments reshape how the industry expands.

An Investigation from ZachXBT traced the suspect through posts gloating on social media and Telegram activity. An alleged scammer posing as a Coinbase help desk worker has reportedly stolen around $2 million in crypto from users of the exchange, according to blockchain sleuth ZachXBT.  In a Monday X post, ZachXBT claimed that he had managed to pinpoint the identity of the alleged scammer after cross referencing Telegram group chat screen shots, social media posts and wallet transactions.   ZachXBT alleged that the “Canadian threat actor” had “stolen $2M+ via Coinbase support impersonation social engineering scams in the past year blowing the funds on rare social media usernames, bottle service, & gambling,” Read more

Dragonfly’s Haseeb Qureshi predicts Big Tech and Fortune 100 companies will start building in crypto in 2026, but that corporate L1s will fail to challenge Ethereum and Solana. A Big Tech company will integrate a crypto wallet in 2026, and more Fortune 100 companies will start their own blockchains, crypto VC firm Dragonfly’s managing partner Haseeb Qureshi has predicted. He also tipped that fintechs launching L1s to compete with public chains like Ethereum and Solana will fail to attract enough users. In a post to X on Monday, Qureshi said much of the Fortune 100 adoption is likely to come from the banking and fintech sectors, with many leveraging the Avalanche blockchain and existing crypto toolkits like OP stack, Orbit, and ZK Stack. The setup would enable these networks to more private and permissioned while remaining connected to a public blockchain. A number of Fortune 100 firms in the financial services industry have already built private blockchains, including JPMorgan, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs,...

XRP is ending 2025 with one of the most paradoxical profiles in the crypto market, thanks to record-breaking institutional inflows colliding with one of the weakest price charts. According to CoinShares data, XRP investment products attracted approximately $70.2 million in net new money in the final trading week of December. This pushed its monthly inflow […] The post XRP is quietly forming a “spring-loaded” supply setup that frustrated retail traders are completely ignoring appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Viral “U cards” are quietly onboarding Chinese users to crypto, and the digital yuan can now earn depositors interest at banks. Asia Express. Stablecoins are finding an indirect path into China via payment cards going viral on social media. Locally referred to as U cards, overseas Visa or Mastercards linked to stablecoin balances such as USDT, have surged in popularity on Chinese social platform Xiaohongshu, also known as Little Red Book. Posts explain how to obtain the cards with ease and use them for everyday overseas payments, such as subscriptions to services. Such cards allow users to spend dollar-denominated stablecoins while merchants receive fiat currency, meaning Chinese businesses never directly touch crypto. Conversion is handled by overseas banks or licensed payment institutions, placing the transaction outside Chinas domestic financial rails. Read more

Nearly a quarter of all stablecoins are now sitting on exchanges, largely unused and waiting for direction.

According to Coinbase researcher David Duong, decentralized platforms and shifting trader behavior have pushed perpetual futures into a more central market role. Crypto derivatives activity picked up sharply in 2025 as traders increasingly turned to onchain perpetual futures, according to Coinbase researcher David Duong. By late in the year, decentralized exchanges were processing more than $1 trillion in monthly perpetual futures volume, underscoring the growing role of onchain derivatives markets. In a post published Monday on X, Duong said the trend was driven in part by the absence of a traditional altcoin season, which led traders to seek higher returns through leverage rather than spot markets. He added that the “unprecedented degree of leverage” available in perpetual futures allowed traders to amplify exposure with relatively small amounts of capital. Duong noted that the surge in activity has been driven mainly by decentralized trading platforms, with onchain venues such as Aster and Hyperliquid acco...

This week started with a sensational screenshot shared across hundreds of breathless posts on X, and a claim designed to hit every financial nerve ending at once. A “systemically important” US bank, a silver margin call, liquidation by the exchange in the middle of the night, the Federal Reserve allegedly “forced” to pump billions into […] The post “Major US bank blows up from Silver trade” headlines hide the $675M margin shock currently hitting traders appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin trades near $87K as a symmetrical triangle tightens. Key support holds while a $90K breakout could target $95K as momentum resets. The post Bitcoin Price Prediction: $87K Triangle Tightens – Is a $95K Breakout Next? appeared first on Cryptonews.

Maxine Waters, the top Democrat who may lead the House Financial Services Committee again if Democrats prevail, has a crypto bone to pick with SEC's Atkins.

With nearly $615 million reportedly withdrawn in Q4 alone and close to $1 billion in lifetime revenue, critics accuse PumpFun of draining value from users. The post PumpFun’s $615M Q4 Profit Sparks “Extraction” Debate: Is the Backlash Justified? appeared first on Cryptonews.

Although recovery of assets affected in a $3.9 million exploit of the Flow blockchain isn't guaranteed, many users responded positively to a change in the remediation plan. The Flow Foundation, behind addressing a remediation plan following a $3.9 million exploit of the blockchain, has scrapped a proposal that would involve rolling back the layer-1 Flow chain after community criticism. In a Monday X post, Alex Smirnov, founder of bridge provider deBridge, said there would be “no rollback” and no reorganization of the blockchain as part of an updated recovery. Flow released a technical implementation plan, saying it had already temporarily restricted accounts affected by the exploit and Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) operations were read-only as part of phase one of the recovery. “There will be no chain reorganization,” said Flow. “All legitimate transactions that occurred prior to the halt remain valid and will not require resubmission or reconciliation.” Read more

This year delivered a full-on ninja and samurai takeover, with a wave of new releases offering more katana-heavy action than ever before.

Tokenized stocks have surged to a $1.2 billion market, with insiders comparing their growth to stablecoins and DeFi’s early boom in 2020. Demand for tokenized equities has accelerated since their mainstream debut earlier this year, pointing to this emerging asset class as a potential early signal of broader blockchain adoption beyond Bitcoin and stablecoins.  The combined market capitalization of tokenized stocks has climbed to a record $1.2 billion, according to data from Token Terminal, driven by strong growth in September and December. “Tokenized stocks today are like stablecoins in 2020,” Token Terminal said, underscoring how early the market remains. Stablecoins were still in their infancy in 2020, but they have since grown into a $300 billion sector this year. Read more

Gold and silver reaching new highs again is being framed as a liquidity signal rather than a risk-off warning.

With just a couple of days left in 2025, there is not much worth mentioning happening in the Cardano ecosystem, unless you count Charles Hoskinson’s random tweets as updates.ADA’s current price pretty much reflects the state of the Cardano blockchain right now. Daily active addresses are sitting at around 22k, which is a huge drop […] The post Cardano Price Prediction: Can the ADA Price Push Above $0.40 Before End of 2025? appeared first on Cryptonews.