Cointelegraph.com
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Cointelegraph.com - 19:57 Dec 18, 2025
Bitcoin briefly clinched $90,000 after the November Consumer Price Index report showed a drop in US inflation, but the essential components for an extended rally remain elusive. Bitcoin (BTC) moved closer to reclaiming $90,000 after US inflation cooled more than expected, with the November CPI coming in at 2.7% year-over-year versus forecasts of 3.1%. The softer print narrows the gap to the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, easing near-term inflation pressure and reviving risk appetite across markets. Key takeaways: The lower-than-expected CPI print generated a positive response from Bitcoin as new positions opened versus the usual short covering. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 19:25 Dec 18, 2025
Data suggests that fears about Xinjiang-related Bitcoin mining have overstated the impact, with hashrate losses proving brief and driven partly by US power curtailments. Recent claims of a major Bitcoin mining crackdown in China’s Xinjiang region rippled through the digital asset industry this week, but data by TheMinerMag suggests the actual impact was far smaller than early narratives implied. According to the latest Miner Weekly report, the Bitcoin network initially experienced a short-term hashrate decline, which was linked to developments in Xinjiang. However, the drop also coincided with power curtailments in the United States. Most major mining pools recovered to near pre-dip levels within days, resulting in a net decline of roughly 20 exahashes per second, which is significantly lower than the approximately 100 EH/s loss cited in early reports. “That points to a largely temporary disruption rather than a sustained, region-specific shutdown,” the report said. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 19:05 Dec 18, 2025
US lawmakers are only considering de minimis tax exemptions for dollar-pegged stablecoins, according to Bitcoin Policy advocate Conner Brown. Representatives of the Bitcoin Policy Institute (BPI), a nonprofit Bitcoin advocacy organization, warned that US lawmakers have not included a de minimis tax exemption for Bitcoin transactions below a certain threshold. “De Minimis tax legislation may be limited to only stablecoins, leaving everyday Bitcoin transactions without an exemption,” Conner Brown, BPI’s head of strategy, said on X, adding that the decision to exclude Bitcoin (BTC) is a “severe mistake.” In July, Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis introduced a bill proposing a de minimis tax exemption for crypto transactions of $300 or less, with a $5,000 annual limit on tax-free transactions and sales. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 18:25 Dec 18, 2025
In a recent Cointelegraph interview, James Check uses onchain data to challenge popular Bitcoin narratives and outline his thinking for 2026. Bitcoin’s price may look deceptively familiar, but according to onchain analyst James Check, the market beneath the surface has changed far more than most investors realize. In a new interview with Cointelegraph, Check revisits a question he was asked earlier this year: Are we in a bull market or a bear market? While Bitcoin (BTC) is trading near similar price levels, Check says that leverage, investor cost base, and sell-side behavior are now very different, and all those shifts matter. In fact, a majority of the capital currently invested in Bitcoin was acquired at higher prices, leaving many holders underwater and shaping a cautious sentiment. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 18:22 Dec 18, 2025
The company’s stablecoin infrastructure and USDC coin will be part of the deal, potentially to be embedded in Intuit’s financial platforms. Intuit, the company behind TurboTax, Credit Karma, QuickBooks and Mailchimp, announced a “multi-year, strategic partnership” with stablecoin issuer Circle involving its stablecoin infrastructure and USDC (USDC). In a Thursday notice, Intuit said the agreement with Circle would allow “faster, lower-cost” payments through their platforms, which focus on business transactions, tax refunds and marketing. According to Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire, the deal will “extend the speed, power and efficiency of USDC for everyday financial transactions.” USDC is the second-largest stablecoin by market capitalization, trailing Tether’s USDt (USDT) by more than $186 billion. According to data from Nansen, USDC’s market cap was more than $77 billion at the time of publication. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 18:07 Dec 18, 2025
Issued by SoFi Bank, the dollar-backed token is designed for payments and settlement across banks, fintechs and enterprise platforms. SoFi Technologies has launched SoFiUSD, a fully reserved US dollar stablecoin issued by its banking subsidiary, SoFi Bank. According to Thursday’s announcement, SoFiUSD is backed one-to-one by cash held by SoFi Bank, a nationally chartered and insured depository institution, and is redeemable on demand. It is designed to support low-cost settlement for banks, fintechs and enterprise platforms. A SoFi spokesperson told Cointelegraph that SoFiUSD will initially be issued on the Ethereum network, with plans to add support to other blockchains over time. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 17:28 Dec 18, 2025
The lawsuit against the memecoin launch platform Pump.fun, Solana Labs, the Solana Foundation and Jito was amended to include new evidence over MEV trading practices. A US court is once again being asked to weigh in on maximal extractable value practices after a judge allowed new evidence to be added to a class-action lawsuit tied to a memecoin platform. The judge granted a motion to amend and refile to include new evidence a class-action lawsuit against memecoin launch platform Pump.fun, the maximal extractable value (MEV) infrastructure company Jito Labs, the Solana Foundation, which is the nonprofit organization behind the Solana ecosystem, and others. The motion said over 5,000 pieces of evidence in the form of internal chat logs were submitted by a “confidential informant” in September that were previously unavailable. The filing said: Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 17:07 Dec 18, 2025
ETH rebounded toward $3,000 as stocks reacted positively to a cooler-than-anticipated CPI print, but this week’s $553 million spot ETHER ETF outflow could keep a cap on prices. Key takeaways: US-listed Ether ETFs saw heavy outflows, signaling fading institutional interest as network fees, staking and leverage demand declined. ETH futures premiums and open interest declined, indicating cautious positioning and limited confidence, without a clear shift to outright bearishness. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 16:40 Dec 18, 2025
Aptos has proposed an optional post-quantum signature scheme, citing long-term risks that advances in quantum computing could pose to existing cryptography. Blockchain network Aptos is moving toward a post-quantum signature option, reflecting growing concern that advances in quantum computing are no longer purely theoretical and could eventually affect how blockchain networks secure accounts and transactions. On Thursday, Aptos outlined a proposal to introduce post-quantum signatures, addressing the network’s reliance on digital signatures for ownership, transaction authorization and overall security. While existing cryptographic schemes remain secure against classical computers, researchers warn that sufficiently powerful quantum machines could one day forge them, potentially compromising account security retroactively. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 15:01 Dec 18, 2025
Bitcoin tagged $89,500 as US CPI data revealed sudden multiyear lows in inflation, but liquidations stayed high as the BTC price spiked. Bitcoin (BTC) ramped up volatility into Thursday’s Wall Street open as markets reacted to surprise US inflation data. Key points: Bitcoin traders weather more snap BTC price volatility as CPI surprises to the downside. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 15:00 Dec 18, 2025
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino says an AI-driven bubble could shake Bitcoin, and shares his outlook on Europe, DATs and tokenization in 2026. Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, the issuer of the world’s largest stablecoin, has raised concerns about how a potential AI bubble could affect Bitcoin by 2026. Ardoino shared his outlook on Bitcoin (BTC) and the broader crypto industry on Thursday during the Bitcoin Capital podcast, co-hosted by Bitfinex Securities and Blockstream. The executive said he sees Bitcoin “still too much correlated” to capital markets, thus potentially being impacted by the AI bubble, or a theorized stock market bubble growing amid the current AI boom. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 14:46 Dec 18, 2025
Ether has dropped below $3,000 and is down 42% from its record high, prompting traders to question where the next bounce zone for the ETH price might be. Ether (ETH) has retraced 42% from its all-time high of $4,950 with traders wondering where the altcoin was likely to bottom out next. Key takeaways: Ether traders see ETH price dropping to $2,100 if support at $2,800 fails. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 13:34 Dec 18, 2025
“Pure play” digital asset treasury companies will have to contend with volatility tied to the net asset value of their token holdings if they don’t build successful business ventures. The rise of digital asset treasury (DAT) companies will go down as a meta-narrative of 2025, but the longevity of the movement will be decided by capital management and sound business strategies. According to Solmate CEO Marco Santori, all DATs have to contend with the value of the underlying token they hold on their balance sheets. This shouldn’t be a problem for revenue-generating businesses, but pure-play DATs will be in for a bumpy ride. In the Solana ecosystem, Santori sees a unique opportunity to offer bare-metal validator services, given that the protocol was uniquely designed for high-throughput services like exchanges and trading platforms. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 13:12 Dec 18, 2025
Forensic analysis suggests an attacker took control of a whale’s multisig wallet minutes after creation and has been slowly draining funds since. A crypto attacker apparently took over a whale’s multisig wallet minutes after it was created 44 days ago, and has been draining and laundering funds in stages since. In a Thursday post on X, blockchain security firm PeckShield reported that a whale’s multisig wallet had been drained of roughly $27.3 million due to a private key compromise. PeckShield noted that the attacker has laundered about $12.6 million, or 4,100 Ether (ETH), through Tornado Cash and retained around $2 million in liquid assets, while also controlling a leveraged long position on Aave (AAVE). However, new findings from Yehor Rudytsia, head of forensic at Hacken Extractor, indicate the total losses may exceed $40 million and that the incident likely began much earlier, with first signs of theft dating back as far as Nov. 4. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 13:00 Dec 18, 2025
Three major incidents accounted for the majority of crypto losses in 2025, while upgraded security across DeFi protocols managed to keep hackers at bay, according to Chainalysis. Crypto hackers focused on large crypto entities and personal crypto wallets this year, resulting in $3.4 billion in crypto losses in 2025 — the highest figure since 2022. Just three hacks in 2025, led by the $1.4 billion hack of crypto exchange Bybit, accounted for 69% of all losses from January through to early December, a Chainalysis report released on Thursday found, with the largest attacks a thousand times larger than the typical incident. Andrew Fierman, the head of national security intelligence at Chainalysis, told Cointelegraph that while massive attacks drove this year’s uptick in losses, it’s unclear if 2026 will unfold in the same way. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 12:35 Dec 18, 2025
The rollout provides Telegram users with access to tokenized US stocks via a self-custodial wallet, but it will not be available in the US at launch. Kraken-backed tokenized securities platform xStocks is launching on TON Wallet, a self-custodial wallet on the Telegram messenger. Following an initial rollout on Wallet in Telegram, xStocks is now live on TON Wallet, marking the offering’s official launch on Telegram-linked blockchain, The Open Network (TON), Kraken announced Thursday. “Launching xStocks on TON brings tokenized equities onto truly open infrastructure,” Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi said in the announcement, adding that the launch marks the first time for Telegram users to access tokenized US equities onchain. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 12:19 Dec 18, 2025
Bitcoin’s Taproot usage is declining, signaling wider concerns around its quantum future, as the leading cryptographers race to solve the quantum threat in 2026. A small but growing group of Bitcoin advocates and crypto fund managers is urging the network to accelerate work on quantum-resistant signatures, arguing that the perception of a future “quantum threat” could become a market risk long before it becomes a practical one. Some supporters are pointing to a draft Bitcoin Improvement Proposal known as BIP-360, which would introduce a post-quantum signature option for Bitcoin addresses that could be vulnerable to future advances in quantum computing. The implementation must be finalized and deployed in 2026, said Charles Edwards, the founder of quantitative Bitcoin (BTC) and digital asset fund Capriole. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 11:58 Dec 18, 2025
ETHGas announced a $12 million seed raise as Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin reignited discussion around onchain gas futures and fee-hedging mechanisms Ethereum blockspace trading platform ETHGas announced it has raised $12 million in a seed round led by Polychain Capital. The funding announcement comes after Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently discussed the idea of an onchain “gas futures” market, arguing that such a product could give users a clearer signal of expected fees and let them hedge future costs. ETHGas argues that Ethereum needs “a reimagination of the way blockspace is allocated on the network” and claims that its newly-launched blockspace trading platform is a step in that direction. The company said the market launched with $800 million in commitments from validators, builders and other participants. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 10:55 Dec 18, 2025
Coinbase expands in Poland with PPro to support Blik, making crypto transactions faster and easier amid stalled local regulations. Major US cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is expanding payment options in Poland by integrating with one of the country’s most widely used mobile payment systems. Coinbase has partnered with European payment processor PPro to enable payments via Blik, a popular Polish mobile payment network with nearly 20 million users. The announcement was made by Coinbase executive and NFT Paris co-founder Côme Prost, who joined the exchange in February 2024 to lead its French operations. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 01:54 Dec 18, 2025
Ethereum could see another rise in transaction speed in January, with developers considering raising the gas limit to 80 million after the next blob parameter-only hard fork. Transaction throughput on the Ethereum network is set to be boosted again next month, with developers aiming to increase Ethereum’s gas limit from 60 million to 80 million in January. Christine Kim, vice president of the research team at Galaxy Digital, shared a summary of the All Core Developers meeting on Monday, in which Nethermind representatives said developers should be ready to move forward with a gas limit increase after the next BPO hard fork on Jan. 7. Ethereum Foundation developer operations engineer Barnabas Busa, however, noted that two client-level optimizations are needed before another increase in the block gas limit — namely, partial blob responses on the execution layer and the max blobs flag on the consensus layer. Read more
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