1. Popular cryptocurrency on CEX
CEX transaction volume Top 10 and 24-hour price fluctuations:
BTC: +1.12%
ETH: +0.84%
BNB: +0.72%
SOL: +0.94%
BIFI: +119.08%
DOGE: +1.11%
ZEC: +9.81%
FARM: +8.83%
BAR: -0.18%
ZBT: +25.51%
24-hour gain leaderboard (data source: OKX):
BANANA: +25.76%
METIS: +19.44%
ULTI: +14.40%
AVNT: +9.56%
LAYER: +9.33%
MEW: +9.09%
PARTI: +7.34%
DASH: +6.53%
CFX: +6.44%
GHST: +6.27%
24-hour cryptocurrency gain leaderboard (data source: msx.com):
QNTM.M: +18.11%
HUT.M: +15.28%
RGTI.M: +14.65%
FLY.M: +14.08%
QUBT.M: +13.04%
FFAI.M: +12.5%
ABTC.M: +11.24%
HYPD.M: +11.17%
ABTS.M: +11.11%
IONQ.M: +10.95%
2. On-chain popular Meme Top 5 (Data source: GMGN):
Beat
VELO
RLS
GUA
LAB
Headline
BlackRock: The Federal Reserve's rate cut in 2026 may be limited.
BlackRock strategists Amanda Lynam and Dominique Bly noted in a report that the Federal Reserve is expected to implement only a limited degree of interest rate cuts in 2026. With this round of cuts accumulating to 175 basis points, the Fed is approaching the neutral interest rate level. Unless there is a sharp deterioration in the labor market, the room for further rate cuts in 2026 is quite limited. According to LSEG data, the market currently expects the Fed to make two rate cuts in 2026.
Aave founder faces scrutiny for purchasing $10 million in AAVE tokens
Aave founder Stani Kulechov recently sparked community controversy by purchasing $10 million worth of AAVE tokens. DeFi strategist and liquidity expert Robert Mullins stated that the purpose of this purchase was to enhance Kulechov's voting power to support a proposal that directly harms the best interests of token holders in the upcoming vote. Prominent crypto KOL Sisyphus also expressed similar concerns, stating that Kulechov may have sold millions of dollars worth of AAVE tokens between 2021 and 2025, questioning the economic motives behind his buyback. As this controversy unfolds, Aave token holders are discussing how governance rights for this DeFi protocol should be exercised. Critics point out that large token purchases could significantly influence the voting results on high-risk governance proposals. Data shows that the top three voters in Aave DAO control over 58% of the voting power, raising concerns about the fairness of the governance mechanism.
The Philippines has begun banning Coinbase and Gemini
The Philippines has begun banning cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase and Gemini due to their operation as unlicensed virtual asset service providers (VASPs).
Analysts: The medium and long-term outlook for gold remains optimistic.
Gold prices have climbed again, continuing to strengthen after hitting a record high in the previous trading day. Ipek Ozkardeskaya, a senior analyst at Swissquote Bank, pointed out that gold prices have refreshed historical highs over 50 times this year, and the core factors driving gold prices upwards have not yet dissipated. She stated, "The medium and long-term outlook for gold remains optimistic in theory."
Matrixport: In the current crypto market, the impact of capital flows on prices is stronger than fundamentals.
Matrixport released today's chart stating that the main driving force of crypto asset prices, based on pricing logic, remains the inflow of incremental funds, rather than changes in user numbers or application scenarios. This is particularly evident in the Ethereum ETF: during nearly $10 billion of continuous inflow, the price of ETH rose from approximately $2,600 to $4,500; when the inflow slowed, the price quickly retraced its previous gains.
In an environment with relatively limited new genuine demand, both Ethereum and the broader crypto market remain highly sensitive to marginal changes in capital flows. In comparison to the last bull market, where the narrative was more focused on 'adoption, revenue, and network growth', the current cycle's price performance is largely dependent on where the capital flows, how quickly it enters, and when it suddenly stops.
Understanding and proactively grasping these capital flows will be one of the core focuses of our subsequent research and a key tracking direction heading into 2026.
Industry News
Barclays raised the U.S. GDP growth forecast for the fourth quarter to 2%.
Barclays economists pointed out in a research report that the Federal Reserve is likely to view the unexpected acceleration of U.S. GDP in the third quarter as a signal that potential demand remains strong. Although volatile components such as net exports may exaggerate the overall growth strength, the continued expansion of consumer spending still shows fundamental resilience. Economists noted that despite fluctuations in economic performance in the first half of 2025, total demand has accumulated significant momentum by the end of the year. Based on this, Barclays slightly raised its forecast for the year-on-year GDP growth rate in the fourth quarter by about 0.3 percentage points to 2.0%.
Initial jobless claims unexpectedly decreased, and the unemployment rate in December may continue to remain high.
The number of initial jobless claims in the United States unexpectedly decreased last week, but due to sluggish employment, the unemployment rate in December may remain high. The U.S. Department of Labor announced on Wednesday that for the week ending December 20, the seasonally adjusted number of initial jobless claims decreased by 10,000 to 214,000. Economists surveyed by Reuters had previously expected the initial jobless claims number to be 224,000. Recent data has shown volatility due to seasonal adjustments ahead of the holiday season. The labor market remains in what economists and policymakers call a 'no hiring, no firing' mode. Despite the resilience of the U.S. economy, the labor market is nearly at a standstill. For the week ending December 13, the number of continuing jobless claims increased by 38,000, reaching 1.923 million, consistent with the survey results released by the World Large Enterprises Federation on Tuesday, which showed that consumers' views on the labor market worsened to levels not seen since early 2021. The unemployment rate rose to a four-year high of 4.6% in November, although part of the reason is due to technical factors related to government shutdowns.
China Property Investment Holdings intends to acquire BNB and other digital assets to include in the company's strategic reserves.
China Property Investment Holdings Limited (736 HK) announced that the board has resolved to advance the asset allocation plan: under the premise of complying with relevant laws and regulations and risk control, it intends to use its own funds to purchase and hold BNB and other suitable digital assets in the open market as the company's strategic reserve assets.
Bitcoin will experience the largest options expiration in history this Friday, which may drive Bitcoin up.
This Friday, approximately $23.6 billion worth of Bitcoin options will expire, marking the largest options expiration day in Bitcoin's history.
Analysis indicates that the scale of this expiration date is enormous, and overall tends to be bullish. The maximum pain point (the price level where option buyers incur the most significant losses and sellers gain the most) is set at $96,000, which will reinforce the upward price trend.
Data: Yesterday, Ethereum L1's transaction volume exceeded 1.913 million, setting a record for the highest single-day transaction volume this year.
Etherscan disclosed data on the X platform, revealing that Ethereum L1 processed 1,913,481 transactions on December 23, setting a record for the highest daily transaction volume in 2025, with an average transaction fee of $0.16.
Project News
Drift Foundation: Proposes to allocate $9 million in operating funds to Drift Labs through the DIP-9 proposal
Drift Foundation has published the DIP-9 proposal on the governance forum. This proposal aims to establish a sustainable fee distribution framework to fund the ongoing development and growth of the protocol.
According to the proposal, DIP-9 intends to allocate $1.5 million monthly from the protocol fees already collected to Drift Labs to support its operating expenses, including engineering infrastructure, subscriptions, and gas fees. If the proposal passes, an initial payment of $9 million will be made in advance to cover operating costs for the first half of 2026. Subsequent allocations will be made monthly for a period of 18 months.
Currently, the Drift protocol ecosystem is performing steadily, with total fee income reaching $42 million. The vote on this proposal will begin on December 24, 2025, with an initial execution period of two years.
The total remuneration of the three executives of the Uniswap Foundation reached $3.87 million, with the work outcome being only 'grants of $10 million'.
PaperImperium posted on the X platform, stating that the executive compensation levels at Uniswap Foundation (UF) are abnormal. Financial statements show that the Uniswap Foundation issued $9.9929 million in grants, while employee compensation expenses reached $4.7943 million, of which $3.8711 million was used for executive compensation. In 2024, 22% of the Uniswap Foundation's total expenditures were used for executive salaries.
In contrast, the Optimism Grants Council had a total funding budget of $63.5 million during the same period, while the remuneration paid to auditing and subsequent staff was only $2.1393 million. Even with an additional $500,000 KYC service fee, the total remuneration for the three executives of the Uniswap Foundation has already equaled the entire operational cost of the Optimism Grants Council, while the amount of funds delivered is only 20% of the latter.
Hyper Foundation: The HYPE in the aid fund address has been officially destroyed.
The Hyper Foundation announced on the X platform that the HYPE in the aid fund system address (0xfefefefefefefefefefefefefefefefefefefefe) has been officially confirmed as destroyed. This governance vote was based on a proof-of-stake weighted consensus, with 85% of the stakes voting in favor of the destruction, 7% against, and 8% abstaining.
Kraken Global Consumer Head: The company plans to launch a prediction market product in 2026
Mark Greenberg, Global Consumer Head of Kraken, stated that the company plans to launch a prediction market product in 2026. In addition, Kraken recently announced the acquisition of Backed Finance, which drives the issuance of xStocks. Greenberg shared his outlook on future tokenized stocks.
Investment and Financing
Web3.0 Social Platform Crypto Life Completes $20 Million Financing, Aiming to Reshape Data Sovereignty and Social Value Distribution
The next-generation decentralized social ecosystem Crypto Life announced the completion of a $20 million institutional round of financing. This round of financing was participated in by multiple investment institutions including Bluemount Foundation, VEGA-Ventures, Infinite Alliance, ChainPulse Capital, and UZ Capital.
Crypto Life aims to build a global, decentralized, user privacy-centric social network through blockchain technology, breaking the monopoly and control of traditional social giants over user data, and reshaping the social trust system and value distribution model.
Regulatory Trends
The EU's digital asset tax transparency legislation will come into effect on January 1, 2026.
The European Union's latest digital asset tax transparency legislation will take effect on January 1, aiming to extend the EU's long-standing administrative cooperation framework in tax matters to crypto assets and related service providers. This includes requirements for crypto asset service providers, including exchanges and brokers, to collect and report detailed user and transaction information to national tax authorities.
The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission has included 'Kewin Kew' and 'Globiance X/Globiance HK' in the warning list of suspicious virtual asset trading platforms.
According to official news, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission announced the inclusion of 'Kewin Kew' and 'Globiance X Limited / Globiance HK Limited' in the warning list of suspicious virtual asset trading platforms. The Hong Kong SFC stated that 'Kewin Kew' and 'Globiance X/Globiance HK' both promote the operation of virtual asset trading platforms, suspected of conducting unlicensed activities. Additionally, investors have reported difficulties in withdrawing assets from 'Globiance X/Globiance HK'.
Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission: Beware of suspicious investment products 'VSFOLT' / 'Victory Sauce Original Wine' RWA tokens
The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission today announced the inclusion of 'Victory Sauce Original Wine (VSFOLT)' and 'Victory Sauce Original Wine' RWA tokens in the list of suspicious investment products. It is reported that these products claim to represent certain entities of baijiu original liquor assets as well as shares of a publicly listed company in Hong Kong. Investors can also share profits upon the product's maturity. The Hong Kong SFC reminds investors to act with extreme caution, as they may suffer significant or even total losses in the related investments.
Hong Kong Financial Secretary and Securities and Futures Commission: Jointly issued a consultation summary on legislative proposals for regulating virtual asset trading and custody services.
On December 24, the Hong Kong Financial Secretary and the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) jointly published a consultation summary on legislative proposals for establishing a licensing system for virtual asset trading and custody service providers. The Hong Kong Financial Secretary and SFC also initiated further public consultations today on the licensing system for service providers providing opinions on virtual assets and virtual asset management services, which will last for one month.
Voice of Individuals
CZ: The Binance wallet now supports identifying malicious addresses, and users will receive a warning if they attempt to transfer funds to them.
CZ posted on Binance Square, stating, "The cryptocurrency industry should be able to completely eradicate address poisoning attacks to protect users. All wallets should simply check whether the receiving address is a poisoned address and prevent users from sending to it. This is a blockchain query. Wallets should not display these junk transactions anywhere. If the value of the transaction is small, filter it out. Security alliances in the industry should maintain real-time blacklists of these addresses so that wallets can check before sending transactions. The Binance wallet has done this. If users try to send to a malicious address, they will receive a warning."
Tom Lee: After gold rises first, Bitcoin's surge will be even stronger.
Tom Lee retweeted his view on the X platform, expressing his belief that gold will rise first, followed by a stronger rally in Bitcoin.
Vitalik predicts: There may be bug-free code in the next 15 years.
Vitalik Buterin stated on the X platform that the assertion that 'bugs are inevitable, you cannot write bug-free code' will no longer hold in the 2030s. Vitalik believes that while many software will still have bugs (because functional improvements are more important in specific use cases), if developers truly wish to have bug-free code, this goal will be achievable in the 2030s.
Yi Lihua: Preparing $1 billion to continue increasing holdings of ETH
2025-12-24 12:31
Odaily Planet Daily News reported that Yi Lihua posted on the X platform, stating that Trend Research is preparing to raise $1 billion in funds and will continue to increase its holdings of ETH based on this. Yi Lihua suggested not to short and stated that this will be a historic opportunity.
Wintermute OTC head: The mainstream coins falling below key moving averages has led to a short-term outflow of funds.
Wintermute OTC head Jake posted on the X platform, stating, "Most traders will naturally become trend followers, especially those who are profit-driven. Currently, BTC, ETH, and SOL are all operating below their respective moving averages, which has been enough to make short-term speculators lose interest in them. Conversely, the same logic also applies: once they regain key moving averages, funds will systematically flow back, and market momentum will recover accordingly."
Spark Strategic Director: The vote on controlling the Aave brand is essentially a battle for the traffic entry and future path.
Spark Strategic Director monetsupply.eth posted on the X platform, stating that many people lack the necessary background understanding of this event involving Aave.
Over the past few years, Avara and Aave Labs have been advancing the development of Aave v4 (with the work funded by $15 million provided by the DAO); meanwhile, ACI, BGD, TokenLogic, LlamaRisk, and other service providers (SPs) and DAOs have focused their main efforts on the expansion and growth of Aave v3.
During this period, Aave v3 has grown to become the largest lending protocol on-chain, and has also become an important cash cow project (with annual net income reaching tens of millions of dollars). From any perspective, the efforts made by the DAO and service providers around v3 can be considered a huge success. In contrast, during Avara's development of v4, a significant portion of its energy was invested in projects or acquisitions not directly related to the Aave ecosystem, and these attempts ultimately did not bring incremental value to the Aave ecosystem.
For this reason, there is currently a certain divergence surrounding the future development direction of the Aave protocol, centered on two path choices: one is to fully focus on the migration to v4 and gradually abandon v3; the other is to allow v3 and v4 to run in parallel for the long term while continuing to support v3 over a longer period. In this issue, Aave Labs tends to favor the first option, while ACI, BGD, and other service providers generally lean toward the second option.
In the context of controlling the Aave brand and IP, especially the control over the aave.com front end, it becomes particularly crucial. This front end is currently the most important and widely used entry point for users into the Aave protocol. This is not just about the fees generated by the front-end exchange function, but also about who controls the 'traffic entry' of the Aave ecosystem and what development path v3 / v4 will ultimately adopt.
