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Grok makes X more truth-friendly as it often challenges users’ assumptions instead of confirming them, says Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. X’s artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, makes the social media platform more truth-friendly with responses that oppose users who turn to it to confirm political biases, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said. “The easy ability to call Grok on Twitter is probably the biggest thing after community notes that has been positive for the truth-friendliness of this platform,” Buterin said on Thursday. ”The fact that you don't see ahead of time how Grok will respond is key here,” he added. “I've seen many situations where someone calls on Grok expecting their crazy political belief to be confirmed and Grok comes along and rugs them.” Read more
Bitcoiners wanting to focus on short-term factors should be “fairly methodical and mathematical,” says Strategy CEO Phong Le. Bitcoin’s market fundamentals have stayed strong in 2025, despite the asset’s price and sentiment declining toward the end of the year, says Strategy CEO Phong Le. “The fundamentals of the market this year for Bitcoin couldn’t be better,” Le told the “Coin Stories” podcast on Tuesday, emphasizing that he doesn’t care too much about its short-term performance. Bitcoin (BTC) reached an all-time high of $125,100 on Oct. 5, but has since declined nearly 30%, trading at $87,687 at the time of publication, according to CoinMarketCap. AMeanwhile, the Crypto Fear & Greed Index, which measures overall market sentiment, has shown “Extreme Fear” since Dec. 12. Read more
The non-fungible token project owned by Luca Netz appeared on the Sphere’s exterior screens, with the animated display going live on Christmas Eve. Pudgy Penguins ran an animated display on the Las Vegas Sphere during Christmas week, projecting its penguin characters across the venue’s exterior screens. In a post on X, Pudgy Penguins said its animations went live on Christmas Eve on the exterior of the Las Vegas Sphere, a popular domed venue wrapped in high-resolution LED panels designed to display large-scale visuals visible across the Las Vegas Strip. Pudgy Penguins is an NFT project founded in 2021 and acquired in April 2022 by entrepreneur Luca Netz for $2.5 million in Ether (ETH). As NFT revenue declined, Netz drew on his consumer products background to expand the project beyond digital collectibles and into physical toy production to generate cash flow. Read more
Headlines move crypto fast, but liquidity decides what lasts. Data from ETFs, stablecoins and onchain flows shows what really drives prices. Crypto markets are often explained through narratives. Political developments, regulatory headlines, institutional adoption and cycle-based expectations dominate the price action during volatile periods. These narratives influence positioning and sentiment, but over the past year, price sustainability has been dictated more by measurable capital flows, liquidity conditions and onchain behavior than by headlines themselves. Key takeaways: Read more
Prediction markets are moving into crypto’s mainstream as Crypto.com’s in-house market maker raises fairness questions and Coinbase doubles down on growth. Prediction markets have emerged as one of the cryptocurrency sector’s most consequential, if not contested, frontiers. Once the domain of niche platforms, they are now attracting serious attention from major exchanges, venture capital and even traditional financial institutions. As prediction markets move closer to the core of crypto’s business model, Crypto.com has sparked questions around fairness and market structure after seeking to hire a quantitative trader for an in-house market-making unit that would buy and sell contracts alongside other traders. Meanwhile, Coinbase has signaled a longer-term bet on regulated prediction markets with its acquisition of The Clearing Company, an onchain prediction market startup backed by a team with experience at Kalshi and Polymarket. Read more
DTCC’s move to bring US Treasurys onchain highlights growing institutional momentum behind tokenized real-world assets. Canton Coin has climbed about 27% over the past week, Cointelegraph data shows, outpacing the broader cryptocurrency market as traders reacted to fresh signals of institutional adoption. The gains follow a Dec. 17 announcement from the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) outlining plans to tokenize a portion of US Treasury securities held at its Depository Trust Company subsidiary on the Canton Network. DTCC operates post-trade infrastructure for US securities markets, with its subsidiaries processing about $3.7 quadrillion in securities transactions last year. Read more
Post-halving stress is reshaping Bitcoin mining. As margins compress, miners turn to AI, HPC and consolidation to survive heading into 2026. The Bitcoin mining industry has faced a harsher operating environment since the 2024 halving, a core feature of Bitcoin’s monetary design that cuts block rewards roughly every four years to enforce long-term scarcity. While the halving strengthens Bitcoin’s economic hardness, it also places immediate pressure on miners by slashing revenue overnight. In 2025, this resulted in the “harshest margin environment of all time,” according to TheMinerMag, which cited collapsing revenue and surging debt as major obstacles. Even publicly listed Bitcoin (BTC) miners with sizable cash reserves and access to capital have struggled to remain profitable solely through mining. To make do, many have accelerated their push into alternative, data-intensive business lines to stabilize revenue and diversify away from pure hashprice exposure. Read more
Emerging markets are finally accessing finance, with a $310-billion stablecoin market showing that adoption is not hype. Here is what this milestone actually means. The stablecoin market reached a pivotal milestone on Dec. 12, 2025, hitting $310 billion in total value. That represents a 70% increase in just one year. This growth is not just another cryptocurrency bubble metric; it signals a fundamental shift in how digital assets are beginning to be used globally. To understand why the $310-billion stablecoin market matters, it is first necessary to understand what stablecoins are. Unlike Bitcoin (BTC) or Ether (ETH), which fluctuate based on market sentiment, stablecoins are designed to aim for price stability by referencing an underlying asset, typically through reserve backing or algorithmic mechanisms. This is typically the US dollar, though some track the euro or commodities such as gold. Read more
BTC may fall to $70,000 and ETH to $2,400 if the Fed pauses rate cuts in the first quarter of 2026 and inflationary pressure persists. Key takeaways: Fed pauses could pressure crypto, but “stealth QE” may cushion downside risks. Liquidity matters more than cuts, shaping the direction of BTC and ETH in Q1 2026. Read more
Quantum computing won’t break Bitcoin in 2026, but the growing practice of “harvest now, decrypt later” is pushing the crypto industry to prepare sooner rather than later. Quantum computing has long been viewed as a threat to cryptocurrencies, a technology that could one day crack the cryptography securing Bitcoin and other blockchains. In 2026, that fear is resurfacing as major tech firms accelerate quantum research and investment. While the technology is not yet ready for widespread use, the pace of investment and experimentation has gained traction. In February, Microsoft unveiled its Majorana 1 chip, which the company dubbed “the world’s first quantum chip powered by a new Topological Core architecture,” rekindling debate about how quickly quantum hardware might move from research into real-world systems. However, despite growing attention, most experts say the risk to crypto remains theoretical, not imminent. The real concern, they argue, is not a sudden cryptographic collapse next year, but what attacke...
A prison letter from Keonne Rodriguez has reignited debate over crypto privacy tools, developer liability and executive clemency. Keonne Rodriguez, co-founder of Bitcoin privacy tool Samourai Wallet, spent Christmas Eve documenting his first day inside a US federal prison, offering a personal account as a crypto developer now serving a five-year sentence. In a letter shared by The Rage, he described the experience of surrendering himself to the prison camp. The account detailed the intake process, which included searches, medical clearances and the transition into prison housing. Rodriguez also described the emotional weight of leaving his family days before Christmas. Read more
The coming year will see perfect parallel processing, big increases in the gas limit and number of data blobs, and 10% of Ethereum’s network switching to ZK. The coming year is set to be crucial for Ethereum scaling. In 2026, the Glamsterdam fork will bring perfect parallel processing to the chain and ratchet up the gas limit to 200 million, up from 60 million today. A significant number of validators will switch over from reexecuting transactions to verifying zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs instead. This sets the Ethereum layer 1 on a path to scale up to 10,000 transactions per second (TPS) and potentially beyond, though that target won’t be hit in 2026. Meanwhile, data blobs will increase (potentially up to 72 or more per block), enabling the layer 2s (L2s) to process hundreds of thousands of transactions per second. L2s are becoming easier to use as well; ZKsync’s recent Atlas upgrade allows funds to stay on mainnet but trade in the fast execution environment of chains in ZKsync’s Elastic Network. The planned E...
Crypto derivatives trading surged to $86 trillion in 2025, averaging $265 billion per day, as Binance captured almost 30% of global volume, CoinGlass reported. Cryptocurrency derivatives trading volume surged to almost $85.7 trillion in 2025, averaging about $264.5 billion a day, according to a report by liquidation data tracker CoinGlass. Binance led the market with roughly $25.09 trillion in cumulative derivatives volume, or about 29.3% of global trading, meaning nearly $30 of every $100 traded ran through the exchange, CoinGlass said. OKX, Bybit and Bitget followed, each posting $8.2 trillion to $10.8 trillion in yearly volume. These four exchanges accounted for about 62.3% of total market share. Read more
Zhao urged the blockchain industry to adopt new security measures, including scam address blacklist, after an investor lost $50 million to an address poisoning scheme. Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao proposed additional security measures to “eradicate” address poisoning, including wallet warnings and blacklists of suspicious accounts. "All wallets should simply check if a receiving address is a 'poison address,' and block the user. This is a blockchain query," Zhao wrote in a Wednesday blog post. Address poisoning is a form of phishing in which scammers trick victims into sending crypto to illicit wallets by first sending them small transactions. Unsuspecting users often copy and paste the attacker’s address from their wallet history. Read more
Market data showed shrinking participation across NFTs, with fewer buyers, sellers and transactions signaling fading speculative interest. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) extended their year-end slide in December, with total market valuations falling to their lowest level in 2025. According to data from CoinGecko, the overall valuation of the NFT sector fell to $2.5 billion in December. This represented a 72% decline from a peak of $9.2 billion in January. The decline came as NFT sales activity remained subdued following a weak November performance. In December, weekly NFT sales failed to surpass $70 million during the first three weeks of the month, falling below November’s pace. Read more
Bitcoin ETF performance remained negative on Christmas Eve as a short final US trading session produced another $175 million in net outflows. Bitcoin (BTC) institutional outflows continued into Christmas as the US gained the title of biggest BTC seller. Key points: Bitcoin ETF netflows stay negative for Christmas Eve as the institutional investment vehicles lose another $175 million. Read more
Crypto hackers took social engineering to a whole other level this year, and advances in artificial intelligence mean scams are about to get even harder to detect. The majority of crypto exploits in the coming year won’t be caused by a zero-day bug in your favorite protocol, say crypto security experts. It’s going to be caused by you. That’s because 2025 has shown that the majority of hacks don’t start with malicious code; they begin with a conversation, Nick Percoco, chief security officer of crypto exchange Kraken, told Cointelegraph. From January to early December 2025, data from Chainalysis shows that the crypto industry witnessed over $3.4 billion in theft, with the February compromise of Bybit accounting for nearly half of that total. Read more
Elon Musk added that “triple-digit” economic growth could even be possible by 2030; however, some Bitcoiners worry about a 2026 bear market. The Bitcoin community is hopeful for the cryptocurrency to again rally after billionaire Elon Musk predicted that the US economy could experience significant growth by December 2026 at the earliest. “Double-digit growth is coming within 12 to 18 months,” Musk said in an X post on Tuesday, “If applied intelligence is proxy for economic growth, which it should be, triple-digit is possible in ~5 years.” Bitcoiners often look to macroeconomic signals, from growth forecasts to central bank policy, as clues for how broader economic trends could impact Bitcoin’s (BTC) price. Read more
The number of crypto deals reportedly skyrocketed this year and hit a record total value of $8.6 billion, led by Coinbase’s record-breaking acquisition of Deribit. The crypto sector reportedly saw a record $8.6 billion worth of deals in 2025, as the crypto-friendly Trump administration brought confidence to crypto-focused mergers and acquisitions. The Financial Times reported on Wednesday that 267 deals were inked in the crypto industry up to Tuesday, an 18% increase from 2024. The $8.6 billion in deal value is a nearly 300% jump from last year, which saw $2.17 billion in deals, and the growth is expected to continue into 2026. Coinbase made the biggest acquisition of the year with its $2.9 billion purchase of the crypto options trading platform Deribit, the biggest-ever acquisition in crypto. Read more
Dragonfly’s Rob Hadick says “there’s a lot of room” in crypto for more than one blockchain as networks race to win market share of tokenized assets. Solana and Ethereum will both thrive in the tokenization race and neither blockchain will push the other out of the space, says Dragonfly general partner Rob Hadick. “They are both Facebook,” Hadick told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday, when asked which blockchain will gain market dominance like social media platform Facebook or fall behind like the once-popular MySpace. Hadick said that with growing interest in tokenization and increasing economic activity onchain, there’s room for multiple blockchains to coexist. Read more8821 items