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The stablecoin supply hit $314 billion in 2025, but market cap doesn't tell the full story. Here's who really dominated.

In 2025, real-world assets (RWAs) tokenized on a blockchain moved from being a mere concept to something institutions and corporations actively adopted, anticipating the next big thing to emerge in the space.

In early 2025, on-chain tokenized RWAs totaled around $5.5 billion, but quickly tripled to roughly $18.6 billion over the course of the year, according to RWA.xyz data. Analysts now project the market could reach about $2 trillion by 2030.

“In a bullish scenario, this value could double to around $4 trillion, but we are less optimistic than previously published estimates as we approach the middle of the decade,” McKinsey analysts wrote in June 2024.

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Stablecoins finished 2025 far bigger and louder than most expected. On-chain data from DefiLlama shows that the total stablecoin supply is near $310 billion as of mid-December, up more than 50% from the roughly $205 billion at the start of the year.

The growth accelerated with optimism from crypto investors and builders in late 2024, when venture firms began framing stablecoins as one of the sector’s most underappreciated trends heading into 2025.

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After years of volatility and experimentation, crypto is entering an institutional phase as regulation, AI infrastructure, and tokenized assets reshape the market.

Over the past year, the crypto market has recorded many milestones. Stablecoins reached a market capitalization of roughly $126 billion, while the total crypto market capitalization crossed the $4 trillion threshold for the first time. Bitcoin (BTC), the world’s largest cryptocurrency, reached a new all-time high of over $126,000. Meanwhile, pro-crypto regulation took center stage with the emergence of bills like the GENIUS Act and the CLARITY Act.

Together, these developments underscore crypto’s shift from a speculative asset class toward financial infrastructure – a transition analysts expect to accelerate in 2026.

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2025 saw the US-China rivalry weaponize every layer of the technology stack—from minerals to models to military doctrine.

Dogecoin found itself at the center of a controversial political storm, all while being embraced by traditional institutions.

Forget the hype. These are the LLMs that caught our attention in 2025—from autonomous coding assistants to vision models processing entire codebases.

Looking for the year's best games to play with friends and family? From Donkey Kong Bananza to Borderlands 4, these are our co-op picks.

The Las Vegas Sphere is currently adorned with the cartoon creatures of crypto-native brand Pudgy Penguins. Here's how it happened.

Venture capital funding for crypto gaming all but evaporated this year, causing games to shut shop and players to lose their communities.

Solana opened 2025 with major momentum, thanks to the Trump meme coin and a new all-time high. But the year wasn't all up and to the right.

Shift4, a U.S. payments giant handling over $200 billion in annual volume for more than 200,000 businesses, has launched a stablecoin settlement platform for its merchants.

In a Dec. 22 press release, the Pennsylvania-headquartered public company said merchants can now choose to be paid in stablecoins such as USDC, USDT, EURC, or even DAI. As Shift4 explained, these currencies “are already used globally for cross-border commerce, remittances, payroll, B2B settlement, and treasury management.”

Merchants can also choose from networks such as Ethereum, Solana, Plasma, Stellar, Polygon, TON, and Base, with additional networks “added over time,” the firm said.

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Despite launching in 2020, Polymarket really put itself on the map in November 2024 following the U.S. presidential election; however, 2025 brought unprecedented growth for a crypto-native app, as the decentralized prediction market has evolved into an international information resource often cited by the world’s top media outlets.

Just 18 months ago, Polymarket was well into its fourth year of operations, processing between $10 million and $30 million in volume per week. In November 2024, however, the platform shattered expectations, processing more volume in a 5-day period than it did throughout all of 2023.

For context, the prediction market’s volumes in 2023 were miniscule, with less than $1 million being traded on some days.

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Cryptocurrency markets extended their losses on Wednesday, with Bitcoin trading below the $87,000 mark. Most major altcoins are trading lower as well, with the total cryptocurrency market capitalization at roughly $3.03 trillion, down about 0.8% over the past 24 hours.

Bitcoin (BTC) is trading around $86,995, down roughly 0.5% on the day, while Ethereum (ETH) is hovering near $2,936, lower by about 0.8%.

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Despite being the most influential new decentralized finance (DeFi) product of 2024, Solana-based memecoin launchpad pumpfun is struggling after launching its token this year, and following a new development in the platform’s ongoing legal dispute, the PUMP token is now trading more than 50% below its ICO price.

PUMP is now changing hands at a fully diluted valuation (FDV) of just $ 1.7 billion and a market capitalization of $1 billion.

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Decentralized perpetuals exchange and Layer 1 blockchain Hyperliquid has unveiled two new features in pre-alpha: portfolio margin and its BLP Earn vaults.

Founder Jeff Yan announced the change in the Hyperliquid Discord, and says the “initial rollout has intentionally low caps as safeguards, with HYPE as the only collateral asset and USDC as the only borrowable asset. USDH will be added as borrowable, and BTC will be added as collateral in a future upgrade.”

Portfolio margin unifies users’ spot and perpetuals trading accounts for greater capital efficiency. The pre-alpha phase is gated to accounts with more than $5 million in all-time volume, with a $1 million USDC global borrow cap and a $1,000 USDC per-user borrow cap in the initial stage.

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Crypto-linked stocks had a banner start to 2025, then spent the rest of the year learning that narrative alone doesn’t compound.

A crowded release slate buried plenty of standout games this year, so we’ve pulled together a list of hidden gems that still deserve your attention.

A burst of social-media sleuthing has focused on alleged redaction failures in newly released DOJ documents—raising real questions about digital security and viral misinformation.

Ani’s rise showed how chatbots became partners instead of tools, driving a year of AI intimacy and its human consequences.

This year, global power centers like Wall Street learned to love Ethereum—and Ethereum learned to love them back.

Cryptocurrency markets fell sharply on Tuesday, with Bitcoin sliding back below $88,000 after briefly trading above $90,000 on Monday. Most major digital assets are trading lower, with the total cryptocurrency market capitalization standing at about $3.04 trillion, down 2.4% over the past 24 hours.

Bitcoin (BTC) is trading around $87,383, down about 2.4% on the day, while Ethereum (ETH) is holding near $2,957, down roughly 2.7%.

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The Aave alignment saga rages on after founder Stani Kulechov declared Aave Labs’ intent to vote against BGD Labs’ tokenholder alignment proposal from earlier this week, with voting commencing on Dec. 21.

Following last week’s governance dispute over CoWSwap interface fees, Ernesto Boado, the co-founder of BGD Labs and former CTO at Aave Labs, released a token alignment proposal to bring clarity to the ecosystem’s dynamics and to shift more control from Aave Labs to the DAO.

On Dec. 18, Kulechov responded in the forums with the intent to vote “no” on the proposal. The Aave Labs founder was quick to emphasize the importance of open dialogue within the DAO and to state that Aave Labs is “100% committed” to improving communication.

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Most token launches in 2025 failed to reward early buyers, with projects that debuted at lower fully diluted valuations (FDV) greatly outperforming their bigger, more hyped rivals, data from Memento Research shows.

The firm tracked 118 token launches in 2025 and found that more than 84% are now trading below their token generation event (TGE) valuations, with a median loss of more than 70%. Only 18 tokens are still in the green, while the rest have suffered substantial losses since launch.

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Polymarket airdrop speculation is ramping up after a screenshot emerged of a Polymarket team member saying that a Polymarket Layer 2 network is the prediction market’s “#1 priority.”

Polymarket just recorded its three highest-volume days since the U.S. presidential election in November 2024, with $91.7 million in trading volume on Dec. 19 and $92.7 million on Dec. 20. On Dec. 21, Polymarket processed $85.6 million, just above its most recent daily high of $85.07 million on Nov. 9, according to DeFiLlama.

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Here are the biggest corporate crypto treasury bets of 2025 and what they reveal about how far Strategy’s Bitcoin playbook has spread.

New research suggests complex cognitive challenges, from StarCraft II to musical training, can slow neural aging by years.

Crypto users were the recipients of billions in "free money" token airdrops during 2025. Here's a look at the biggest.

Details have been leaked of 13 suspicious Binance accounts which moved $144 million since the 2023 settlement, and $1.7 billion since 2021.

Major digital assets recorded modest gains on Monday, Dec. 22, as the market regained its footing ahead of the Christmas holidays following recent volatility.

Bitcoin (BTC) rose 2.5% over the past 24 hours to $90,125, while Ethereum (ETH) surged 3.2% to $3,060. Other large-cap coins also posted gains: BNB increased 2.3% to $867, XRP rose 2.2% to $1.94, and Solana (SOL) gained 3.3% to $128.

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“Anna’s Archive” claimed it scraped 86 million songs from Spotify—revealing some wild things about people’s favorite music.

The Pudgy Penguins mobile battle royale, Pudgy Party, impressed us this year—and its creators say this is only the beginning.

Magma Devs, an engineering team building on the decentralized RPC routing protocol Lava Network, unveiled its RPC Smart Router on the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Marketplace on Monday, Dec. 22.

The launch, in partnership with Google, aims to give companies a more reliable way to connect to public blockchains such as Ethereum, Solana, and Polygon. The Smart Router distributes blockchain requests across multiple providers, automatically selecting the fastest and most stable option in real time.

By avoiding reliance on a single access point, it seeks to prevent outages and reduce failed transactions or delays in decentralized applications, according to a press release viewed by The Defiant.

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Bitcoin hit $90,353 in a futures-led rally, but a negative Coinbase premium and ETF outflows reveal a lack of U.S. demand.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is exploring different paths for the newly rebranded Base App, questioning whether its focus should be on finance, social features, or both.

In a Dec. 18 post, Armstrong noted that the platform currently functions as both a wallet and a social hub. However, he also admitted he’s hearing different takes on whether that’s the right direction for the app.

“Should Base app focus on being a self-custodial version of Coinbase (trading and financial services oriented) or lean into content/creator coins and social? (Or is this a false dichotomy.) This is a key question I heard from people coming out of the product event yesterday,” said Armstrong, referring to the Coinbase System Update 2025, where the exchange unveiled a set of new products.

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From Wall Street to Washington, Bitcoin reached new heights in 2025, despite tensions flaring over changes to the network's codebase.

Digital asset funds saw $952 million in outflows last week as US regulatory delays spooked investors, with Ethereum leading the retreat.

The Curve DAO has rejected a governance proposal to allocate 17.4 million CRV tokens, worth about $6.2 million, to the decentralized exchange’s (DEX) development team.

The proposal submitted by Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov sought approval for a grant of CRV tokens to fund Swiss Stake AG, the core development firm behind Curve, managed by Egorov.

The funding is intended to cover software development, infrastructure, security work and ecosystem support for Swiss Stake’s roughly 25-person team working on the protocol, which is the third-largest DEX in decentralized finance (DeFi) with over $2.1 billion in total value locked, according to DeFiLlama.

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Under loosened regulations from the Trump administration in the United States, both decentralized finance (DeFi) and centralized platforms are rushing to bring real-world assets (RWAs) onchain, with tokenized stocks being one of this year's breakout products.

According to TokenTerminal, the market capitalization of tokenized stocks stands at $831 million as of this week, compared to just $32 million at the beginning of 2025, a 2496% increase.

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Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson said post-quantum cryptography exists, but would slow blockchains without hardware support.

From Deadrop to Nyan Heroes and plenty in between, many promising crypto games closed up shop this year. These are the biggest.

BitMex co-founder Arthur Hayes thinks Bitcoin will range until year's end, but it could jump to $200,000 before March. Here's why.

Institutions are gobbling up Solana for their balance sheets. These are the top publicly traded treasuries.

Charles Hoskinson explains the "poisoned transaction" Cardano hack that took place back in November, and how it split the chain in two: “I don’t wanna have figure out, like, ‘How do we reimburse all these guys?’ They were honestly following the protocol, their nodes didn’t understand that there was a split.”

Cardano co-founder Charles Hoskinson talks hash vs lattice-based cryptography, and how November's “poisoned transaction” hack could have destroyed Cardano if they were BFT-based “Ethereum is embracing STARKs and hash-based crypto. [Cardano is] embracing lattice-based crypto on our side. You know, it’s Blu-ray vs HD DVD, we’ll see which one the market picks.”

Under President Trump, the SEC has backed down from nearly all its fights with crypto firms. These are the biggest lawsuits and investigations ended so far.

Bitcoin may be the first digital asset, but it shouldn’t be the only one affected by legislation, Indiana State Rep. Kyle Pierce told Decrypt.

The Marshall Islands recently used Stellar to pay universal basic income, testing whether crypto can stand in for basic banking

The lawsuit alleges that OpenAI's ChatGPT reinforced delusions that preceded a fatal attack on a user’s mother.

President Trump is leading the crypto charge in Washington, but the industry could face backlash once he leaves office, Etherealize co-founder Danny Ryan told Decrypt.

Publicly traded firms are now stacking Ethereum, pulling in billions of dollars of ETH. These are the largest holders.

LEO, the native token of the iFinex — the parent company of Bitfinex and Tether — outperformed the broader cryptocurrency market on Friday, Dec. 19 following Bitfinex’s decision earlier this week to scrap all trading fees.

The token is currently changing hands at $7.40, up 11% on the day, according to data from CoinGecko, pushing it into the top gainers today. The surge follows a few days of losses for the token, which was trading as high as $9.51 just a week ago.

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Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase filed lawsuits in Connecticut, Illinois, and Michigan this week to stop the states from applying local gambling laws to prediction markets.

In an X thread yesterday evening, Dec. 18, Coinbase’s chief legal officer Paul Grewal said the company believes these markets should fall under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) federal oversight, not state gaming regulators. “State efforts to control or outright block these markets stifle innovation and violate the law,” Grewal wrote.

Coinbase's CLO emphasized that prediction markets differ from casinos, noting that while casinos win only if players lose and set odds to maximize profits, prediction markets “are neutral exchanges, indifferent to price, that match buyers and sellers.”

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Hackers linked to the government of North Korea largely avoided using DeFi lending protocols to swap and obscure stolen cryptocurrency in 2025, even as they laundered record volumes.

According to a new report by blockchain forensics firm Chainalysis, hackers reportedly linked to the government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) stole at least $2.02 billion worth of crypto in 2025, bringing the cumulative total DPRK-linked losses to $6.75 billion.

Despite fewer confirmed incidents, DPRK-linked groups accounted for 76% of all service compromises, relying on large attacks followed by laundering cycles lasting roughly 45 days. When it comes to DeFi, the report shows a sharp divergence in how North Korean hackers operate compared with other threat actors.

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Commission-free stock and etf trading (u.S.), allowing users to trade equities alongside crypto using usd or usdc. Prediction markets, enabling trading on real-world outcomes like elections, sports, and economic data via a partnership with kalshi. Equity futures and perpetuals trading, expanding derivatives access directly inside the main coinbase app. Solana dex trading via jupiter, allowing users to swap solana tokens directly on coinbase. New borrowing functionality against btc and eth holdings. Coinbase token sales, allowing for ico launches and early-stage token support. Coinbase tokenize, an institutional platform designed to support tokenized assets, including tokenized stocks over time. Base app global launch, making coinbase’s onchain “everything app” available in more than 140 countries. Coinbase business, now generally available, offering payments, invoicing, and usdc-based tools for companies. Expanded stablecoin and payments apis, including embedded wallets and custom-branded stablecoins for builders. Coinbase advisor, an ai-powered assistant designed to help users navigate portfolios and coinbase products.

Crypto markets were stagnating on Friday, Dec. 19, with Bitcoin and other major tokens seeing little change on the day as traders digest November's inflation data, which was cooler than expected.

The total cryptocurrency market capitalization stood at roughly $3.06 trillion, little changed over the past 24 hours. Bitcoin (BTC) slipped about 0.4% on the day to trade near $88,000 at press time, extending its pullback after repeated failures to reclaim the $90,000 level.

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Decentralized derivatives protocol Synthetix is launching a perpetual derivatives DEX on Ethereum, which will use a hybrid onchain-offchain order matching system to bypass Ethereum mainnet's latency and high gas fees.

The launch will debut with Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana derivatives with up to 50x leverage, surpassing most competitors, which typically offer between 20x and 40x leverage on their largest assets.

In the future, the Synthetix perp DEX plans to offer features including multicollateral margin, RWA support, incentives programs, and future integrations and compatibility across Ethereum DeFi, according to a press release shared with The Defiant.

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Cardano’s Charles Hoskinson says the U.S. government needs much more rigorous testing when it comes to deciding which cryptocurrencies are considered valuable and which are not. “Why is XRP in the system but not Sui? Why is Solana in the system but not BNB? Can we objectively answer that against some metric?”

Charles Hoskinson comments on Trump's meme coin, the president's impact on crypto, and how the government ruined the super cycle: “The minute that Trump Coin got launched. It went from ‘crypto is bipartisan’ to ‘crypto = Trump = bad = corruption.'"

Lido DAO, the decentralized organization behind the largest liquid staking protocol in DeFi, is signaling plans to push beyond its core ETH staking business next year.

The plan, titled “2026 Ecosystem Grant gRequest (EGG): Executing GOOSE-3,” lays out a $60 million budget for new products as Lido seeks to move beyond just a single-product, staking-focused model. According to the proposal, Lido wants to develop new earn products and vault structures designed for different users, including on-chain treasuries and even regulated entities.

“The proposed focus for the Foundations in 2026 shifts towards evolving Lido’s position from a single-product protocol focused on liquid staking to an innovative organization with a product portfolio by expanding the product offering, creating new revenue streams and ensuring long-term protocol resilience,” the proposal reads. Liquid staking protocols let traders keep their staked assets usable while still earning staking rewards.

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Intuit, the fintech company behind TurboTax, QuickBooks, and Credit Karma, said Thursday, Dec. 18, that it has partnered with USDC issuer Circle to add stablecoin capabilities across its platform.

The multi-year agreement will let Intuit use Circle’s infrastructure, as well as USDC itself, to enable faster, lower-cost, and programmable financial transactions for consumers and businesses, according to an official press release from Circle. USDC is currently the second-largest stablecoin, with a market capitalization of nearly $78 billion.

The integration aims to make refunds, remittances, payments, and savings faster and more efficient across Intuit's platforms. The financial management firm said it will leverage its customer base and data to provide quicker access to funds and streamline financial workflows.

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United States-based digital bank SoFi Technologies unveiled SoFiUSD, a 1:1 cash-backed U.S. dollar stablecoin issued by SoFi Bank. The move makes SoFi the first U.S. national bank to release an “open access” stablecoin as the line between traditional and digital finance continues to blur.

The neobank announced the move today, Dec. 18, just over one month after the bank relaunched crypto trading. SoFi products tout “bank-grade safety” that are able to be integrated with other leading traditional finance services. The firm said in the announcement that the stablecoin will use a "public, permissionless blockchain," without specifying which network, but noting that "partners can move funds around the clock with near-instant settlement at fractional-cent pricing."

SoFi says its stablecoin is backed 1:1 by cash reserves held in its Federal bank account, ensuring immediate redemption. The bank also noted that SoFiUSD can be used for settlement not only for its crypto trading offerings, but also across partner card networks and businesses, as well as international remittances and point-of-sale transactions made with SoFiPay.

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Markets are mixed on Thursday morning as cryptocurrencies failed to extend Wednesday’s short-lived rebound. Bitcoin and Ethereum traded slightly higher on the day, though prices remain range-bound after recent volatility.

The total cryptocurrency market capitalization stands at about $3.05 trillion, up 2% over the past 24 hours. Bitcoin (BTC) climbed about 1% in the last 24 hours, trading around $88,200 at press time after failing to hold above the $90,000 level.

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Crypto majors were mixed; btc+0.3% at $87,400; eth -2% at $2,870; bnb -2% at $838, sol -3% at $124. Beat (+26%), pippin (+9%) and cc (+4%) led top movers. Coinbase announced several new products last night, including prediction markets, stock trading, equity perps, ai advisors, borrowing, full dex integration and more. Senators proposed the safe crypto act, creating a federal task force to coordinate agencies on crypto scam enforcement and investor protection. The dtcc said it will issue tokenized securities on canton network, starting with tokenized u.S. Treasuries. Ex-alameda ceo caroline ellison left federal prison after 11 months, moving to another government facility or home confinement to serve the rest of her 2-year sentence. The acting cftc chair caroline pham left to join moonpay as its chief legal and administrative office. Citadel and other big banks are planning to spend $100m in the 2026 midterms, potentially opposing pro-crypto spending. Circle announced its arc builders fund, meant to support early-stage teams building apps and services on arc.

Tokenization firm Superstate said on Thursday, Dec. 18, that tokenized public equities issued through its Opening Bell platform are now available as collateral on Kamino, the largest lending protocol on Solana, with $2.24 billion in total value locked (TVL).

The launch allows eligible investors outside of the United States to borrow stablecoins on Kamino using tokenized shares of publicly traded companies, according to a press release viewed by The Defiant. Superstate said that this is the first time SEC-registered, exchange-listed equities have been used directly as collateral in a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, while borrowers retain exposure to the underlying shares.

The integration reflects broader efforts to make tokenized assets more composable and liquid, connecting regulated securities with DeFi — especially through compliant issuance and transfer agent infrastructure.

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Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase said it plans to launch Coinbase Tokenize, an institutional platform designed to bring real-world assets (RWAs) on-chain.

Speaking during the “Coinbase System Update 2025” presentation on Dec. 17, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong described Coinbase Tokenize as “our end-to-end solution for bringing off-chain assets on-chain,” combining “issuance, custody, compliance, and trading all in one place.”

Armstrong said the platform is intended to support a wide range of assets, “from equities to private companies, funds, real estate, and more, adding that Coinbase’s existing partners and user base mean the pieces are already in place for its Tokenize platform:

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Fragmentation across blockchain networks is costing the tokenized real-world asset (RWA) market hundreds of millions of dollars a year, according to new research from data analytics platform RWAio.

The report, created with input from 17 companies including Coinbase, Franklin Templeton, and Polygon, estimates that fragmentation across blockchains is causing between $600 million and $1.3 billion in lost value each year. Currently, the total value of tokenized real-world assets in circulation, including private credit, U.S. Treasury debt, and commodities, has reached over $36 billion.

RWAio found that the same assets often trade at different prices on different blockchains, with price gaps of 1-3%. Meanwhile, moving assets between chains can cost investors 2-5% per transaction due to fees and slippage. Ethereum currently holds 52% of all tokenized RWA value, while Polygon accounts for 62% of tokenized bonds.

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A major driver behind Hyperliquid’s success in 2025 is its buyback system, with the Hyperliquid Assistance Fund (AF) buying back more than 37 million HYPE tokens since its inception. While most supporters considered the tokens in the AF already burned, as they were removed from circulation, the Hyper Foundation is looking to make it official.

An announcement on Dec. 16 from the Foundation reads: “The Hyper Foundation is proposing a validator vote to formally recognize the Assistance Fund HYPE as burned, removing the tokens permanently from the circulating and total supply.”

If passed, the roughly $920 million worth of HYPE currently in the Hyperliquid Assistance Fund, plus future revenues, would be permanently burned.

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The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) announced that it has selected the Canton Network to tokenize a subset of the U.S. Treasury securities it holds, highlighting the platform’s privacy features amid a rising debate over financial confidentiality in digital assets.

The pilot, scheduled for the first half of 2026, will allow DTCC for the first time to mint Treasuries on the Canton Network, a Layer 1 blockchain designed for banks, exchanges, and other financial infrastructure. The process will employ DTCC’s ComposerX platforms, according to a press release from DTCC.

The partnership serves as an example of one way institutional plays are looking to adopt blockchain technology for efficiency, but without compromising confidentiality. Yuval Rooz, co-founder and CEO of Digital Asset, the firm behind Canton, said that the L1 was chosen because most public blockchains cannot meet the confidentiality needs of larger market participants.

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Yield aggregator Yearn Finance finds itself licking its wounds after yet another exploit, this time to the tune of $300,000.

Security firm PeckShield confirmed the incident on Tuesday evening, Dec. 16, reporting that the exploiter was able to swap the stolen funds for 103 ETH, worth approximately $290,000 at current prices.

The recent hack is Yearn’s second in the last month, though today’s is much smaller than the $9 million loss at the beginning of the month.

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Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank — currently under U.S. and EU sanctions — is piloting “various instruments from the world of decentralized finance” as it anticipates a future convergence between decentralized and traditional finance.

In a recent interview with Russian business media outlet RBC, Sberbank management board deputy chairman Anatoly Popov declined to specify which DeFi tools the bank is testing. However, he noted that any meaningful integration would depend first on a clear regulatory regime in the country.

“We are confident that in the future traditional banking and DeFi will work in convergence. Legal crypto markets in Russia are only emerging. Ahead lies a long road: developing regulation, building infrastructure, filling it with new products and creating a liquid secondary market,” Popov told RBC.

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Crypto majors were mostly flat; btc -0.3% at $87,000; eth -1% at $2,930, bnb -1% at $858, sol even at $128. Night (+11%), morpho (+10%) and myx (+5%) led top movers. Bitwise forecasted new bitcoin all-time highs in 2026, pointing to structural factors like institutional capital inflows, regulatory clarity, and continued adoption to outweigh historical bearish factors. The sec ended its four-year investigation into aave, closing the file without recommending enforcement action. Visa expanded its stablecoin pilot to more us banks and to include settlement on solana. The fdic approved a proposal to implement the genius act, outlining how fdic-supervised banks could issue payment stablecoins through subsidiaries. Trump said he would be open to nominating democrats to the sec and cftc, a shift that could help unblock the stalled senate crypto market-structure bill. Elizabeth warren raised concerns about dex risks, flagging pancakeswap and alleging links to trump-connected flows and north korea–tied laundering. The ftc said nomad must repay recovered funds after the $186m 2022 bridge hack. Hong kong influencers face charges related to their promotion of the collapsed jpex exchange, which left investors with roughly $206 m in losses. The south korean government approved about $15m in debt relief for crypto traders.

Markets showed tentative signs of relief on Wednesday morning, Dec. 17, after several sessions of losses, with Bitcoin and all of the top-20 crypto assets trading slightly higher. The total cryptocurrency market capitalization stands at about $3.12 trillion, up 1.4% over the past 24 hours.

Bitcoin (BTC) rallied sharply this morning, gaining over 3% on the day to briefly break back above $90,000, though the largest cryptocurrency is still down 2.5% on the weekly timeframe. BTC is currently trading just below the $90,000 mark at press time.

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Uniform Labs, a blockchain infrastructure company founded by former team members of Standard Chartered and UniCredit, on Dec. 17 announced the launch of Multiliquid, a protocol designed to provide instant liquidity for tokenized assets.

The tokenized real-world asset (RWA) market currently boasts a total distributed asset value of over $18.7 billion, including private credit, real estate, private equity, and Treasury funds, per RWAxyz. However, most of these assets are hard to sell quickly because redemptions depend on the issuer.

Multiliquid attempts to address this challenge by allowing instant swaps between blue-chip tokenized money market funds (MMFs) and stablecoins. The protocol will start with USDC and USDT, with additional stablecoins to be added later, according to a press release viewed by The Defiant.

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Aave is at the center of a governance dispute after the DAO and Aave Labs clashed across forums and social media, initially over fee distribution. But the debate has turned into a full-blown indictment of how many major crypto organizations are structured.

At the core of the disagreement is the question of what role should DAOs and companies play, and the difference between token holders and equity holders.

In response, Ernesto Boado, co-founder of BGD Labs and former CTO at Aave Labs, proposed a multi-phase token alignment proposal aimed at clarifying the role and rights of AAVE tokenholders.

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Crypto majors were very red to start the week; btc -3% at $87,200; eth -6% at $2,950, bnb -2% at $868, sol -3% at $128. Xdc (+4%), cc (+3%) and sky (+2%) led top movers. Jpmorgan launched a tokenized money-market fund on ethereum, using onchain rails to settle fund shares. The senate punted the crypto market-structure markup to next year, delaying near-term progress on a major u.S. Framework bill. Coinbase and robinhood joined the new u.S. ‘tech force’ aimed at recruiting top engineers to build ai infra for the government. Metamask expanded beyond ethereum by adding native bitcoin support, letting users buy, send, and receive btc inside the wallet. Paypal applied for a bank charter in utah as its next potential step into the traditional banking system. Trump said he would “look at” pardoning samourai wallet developer keonne rodriguez, directing the attorney general to investigate the request ahead of his prison reporting date. Grayscale argued quantum computing was unlikely to move crypto valuations in 2026, while warning chains still needed long-term post-quantum upgrade planning. Bittensor (tao) completed its first halving event with issuance dropping from 7,200 tokens/day to 3,600.

Crypto majors were very red to start the week; btc -3% at $87,200; eth -6% at $2,950, bnb -2% at $868, sol -3% at $128. Xdc (+4%), cc (+3%) and sky (+2%) led top movers. Jpmorgan launched a tokenized money-market fund on ethereum, using onchain rails to settle fund shares. The senate punted the crypto market-structure markup to next year, delaying near-term progress on a major u.S. Framework bill. Coinbase and robinhood joined the new u.S. ‘tech force’ aimed at recruiting top engineers to build ai infra for the government. Metamask expanded beyond ethereum by adding native bitcoin support, letting users buy, send, and receive btc inside the wallet. Paypal applied for a bank charter in utah as its next potential step into the traditional banking system. Trump said he would “look at” pardoning samourai wallet developer keonne rodriguez, directing the attorney general to investigate the request ahead of his prison reporting date. Grayscale argued quantum computing was unlikely to move crypto valuations in 2026, while warning chains still needed long-term post-quantum upgrade planning. Bittensor (tao) completed its first halving event with issuance dropping from 7,200 tokens/day to 3,600.

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Commissioner Hester Peirce said financial surveillance rules need to be rethought as crypto technology changes how much visibility the government has into users’ financials.

Commissioner Peirce made the comments on Monday, Dec. 15 at the sixth roundtable organized by the SEC’s Crypto Task Force, which was created this year and is led by the commissioner. Regulators met up in Washington, D.C. to discuss privacy, financial monitoring and the growing use of digital assets.

The discussion underscores growing agreement among experts and regulators that crypto will not see wider use unless people and businesses can feel like they can transact privately, without exposing sensitive financial information.

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A decision to rewrite a blockchain’s recent history to make users whole is exposing fault lines over governance, and precedent on Gnosis Chain.

In a governance forum post on Dec. 12, Philippe Schommers, Gnosis’ head of infrastructure, said the network would need to undergo a hard fork to return funds frozen during the recent exploit of DeFi protocol Balancer.

If everything goes according to plan and validators update their software on time, the hard fork is expected to activate at 16:11 UTC on Dec. 22. Nodes that fail to follow the chain with a majority of stake “will get penalized,” Schommers wrote, adding that the team is currently focused on returning user funds by Christmas.

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Payments giant Visa Inc. launched USDC settlement today in the United States, allowing U.S. issuer and acquirer partners to settle transactions via Circle’s stablecoin using Visa’s payments rails.

The move begins with two initial banking participants, Cross River Bank and Lead Bank, using USDC on the Solana blockchain, with partner expansion expected in 2026. Visa initially launched the pilot program for Solana-based USDC settlement in September 2023.

Visa stablecoin settlement is expected to also launch on the upcoming Arc Layer 1 blockchain, which is the stablecoin-focused chain developed by Circle, in collaboration with Visa as a design partner.

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Markets continued their decline Tuesday, Dec. 16, with Bitcoin and most of the top-20 assets by market cap in the red. Total crypto market cap is just above $3 trillion, down from over $4 trillion in October.

As of press time today, Bitcoin (BTC) is trading just above $87,000, dipping as low as $85,400 in the past 24 hours and down about 1% on the day.

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On-chain prediction markets have grown quickly over the past two years, with total monthly volume jumping from under $100 million in early 2024 to more than $13 billion today.

That’s a 130-times increase, making them one of the fastest-growing financial sectors, according to a new report from Keyrock and Dune Analytics, shared with The Defiant. Most of the growth in 2025 is coming from non-sports-related markets, despite sports betting leading U.S. prediction market activity in recent months.

“Economics” and “Tech & Science” show the biggest volume gains this year, up 10 times and 17 times, respectively. Open interest is also expanding fastest in Economics (7x) and Social & Culture (6x).

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TradeXYZ, the leading HIP-3 market provider on Hyperliquid, is being called out by its competitors after a single user triggered a 3.5% selloff in the XYZ100 market on Sunday afternoon.

The move appeared to be a planned attack, as a newly funded wallet shorted $10 million of the XYZ100, which tracks Nasdaq (NQ) futures, and successfully liquidated $13 million of long positions despite the NQ not trading on Sundays.

Prices rebounded closer to the oracle price within 30 minutes, but critics and competitors were quick to call out the platform, lamenting TradeXYZ's 24/7 markets.

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Indiana State Representative Kyle Pierce unpacks hist latest crypto-focused bill, while showcasing his familiarity with Bitcoin.

J.P. Morgan Asset Management on Monday, Dec. 15, launched its first tokenized money market fund (MMF) on Ethereum, marking another step by a major bank to move traditional financial products onto public blockchains.

The fund, called My OnChain Net Yield Fund (MONY), is open to qualified investors. It is issued on Ethereum, the world’s largest smart contract blockchain, which currently has more than $74 billion in total value locked across decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, according to DefiLlama.

MONY is built using J.P. Morgan’s tokenization platform, Kinexys Digital Assets, and is structured as a private placement fund, according to a press release viewed by The Defiant. The fund holds only U.S. Treasury securities and repurchase agreements backed by Treasurys.

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Crypto markets took another hit on Monday, with Bitcoin dropping below the $87,000 mark and most altcoins plunging amid fears that a bear market may be underway.

As of press time, Bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $86,300, down roughly 3% over the last 24 hours. The total cryptocurrency market capitalization is also down 2.8% at $3.04 trillion.

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A SushiSwap governance proposal to sharply increase the SUSHI token’s annual emission rate (AER) passed on Sunday, Dec. 14, with the vote demonstrating just how concentrated decision-making on the decentralized exchange protocol can be.

The vote to lift annual emissions more than threefold, from 1.5% to as much as 5% of total supply, was decided almost entirely by a single wallet, 0xFf…492. That address controlled about 99.9% of the roughly 5.2 million voting power cast, with no votes against or abstentions, per Snapshot voting details.

Under the proposal, SushiSwap can issue up to about 14.25 million SUSHI a year, compared with roughly 4.3 million previously. The additional tokens are intended to support liquidity mining, new token listings, private liquidity arrangements and growth incentives linked to SushiSwap’s aggregator.

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Crypto majors were mostly flat over the weekend; btc even at $89,700; eth +1% at $3,150, bnb +1% at $888, sol +1% at $133. Mnt (+10%), merl (+3%) and trx (+3%) led top movers. The sec issued a no-action letter allowing certain tokenized stock offerings, giving firms some regulatory clarity to launch tokenized equities without immediate enforcement risk. The sec also issued an investor bulletin explaining the basics of crypto custody. The occ granted national bank charters to circle, ripple, and other crypto firms. Tether considered tokenizing its stock after pursuing a share sale that could value it around $500b. Vanguard’s quant equity head compared bitcoin to a “digital labubu” even as vanguard opened client access to trading crypto etf products. The uk proposed legislation to bring crypto under its full fca regulatory oversight. Xstocks enabled tokenized equities to move between solana and ethereum using chainlink’s ccip bridge. Netflix greenlit a crypto-themed comedy titled one attempt remaining, starring jennifer garner.

Interactive Brokers (IBKR), one of the world’s largest brokerage services, now allows users to deposit stablecoins in their brokerage accounts.

According to a Bloomberg report, the feature will have a staggered rollout beginning in the United States, allowing eligible accounts to fund their brokerage accounts with stablecoins.

The move presents a much-needed alternative for those who made their wealth in crypto, as before, users were required to offramp via a centralized exchange, transfer funds to their bank account, and then transfer money from a bank account to a licensed brokerage, while paying fees to every intermediary along the way.

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Major digital assets traded mostly flat or posted modest losses on Friday as stock markets dipped following disappointing earnings from several large U.S. technology companies.

Bitcoin (BTC) is trading flat over the past 24 hours at $90,200, while Ethereum (ETH) fell 3.5% to $3,070. Among other large-cap coins, BNB, XRP, and Solana all traded flat on the day at $876, $2, and $132, respectively.

The total cryptocurrency market capitalization is holding steady at around $3.58 trillion, unchanged over the past 24 hours, with a 24-hour trading volume of $153 billion. Bitcoin continues to dominate the market with a 57.1% share, while Ethereum represents 11.8% of total crypto capitalization.

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The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) has received a no-action letter from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that allows it to test a new service for creating tokenized versions of assets it already holds.

On Dec. 11, the SEC approved a three-year pilot for certain Layer 1 (L1) and Layer 2 (L2) blockchains, starting in the second half of 2026. The program covers highly liquid assets, including stocks in the Russell 1000 index (the 1,000 largest publicly traded U.S. companies), major index-tracking exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and U.S. Treasury bills, notes and bonds.

According to a press release viewed by The Defiant, the tokenized versions must keep the same rights and protections as the original securities. The no-action letter also allows the Depository Trust Company (DTC), a subsidiary of the DTCC, to start the service more quickly than usual, provided it follows certain rules.

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Do Kwon, the founder of the defunct algorithmic stablecoin protocol Terra, is set to serve 15 years behind bars.

Terra’s $40 billion implosion is considered one of the first dominoes to fall, leading to the bear market and FTX collapse in 2022, and to intense regulatory scrutiny of the crypto industry from the United States in 2023.

LUNA, now LUNC, soared from a $325 million market capitalization in January 2021 to $41 billion by April 2022, before collapsing to near-zero in May of that year.

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Solana’s lending markets are gaining traction, with their total value locked (TVL) hitting $3.6 billion in December 2025 – up 33% from $2.7 billion a year earlier, according to a new report from Redstone.

Redstone, a blockchain oracle and data provider, points to the network’s efficiency as a key driver, citing 400-millisecond transaction finality and a median fee of $0.001. Solana also maintained 100% uptime over the past year and processed a peak daily DEX volume of $35.9 billion.

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Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Based released a Hyperliquid and HIP-3 frontend, HyENA, on Dec 9.

More than $50 million of total volume was traded on HyENA in its opening two days, making it the second-largest permissionless perpetual market on Hyperliquid, only trailing Hyperunit’s TradeXYZ.

The launch comes less than a month after Hyperliquid rolled out “growth mode,” which lowered HIP-3 fees by 90% to incentivize activity and development.

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The highly volatile “internet capital markets” coin, JELLYJELLY, launched by Venmo co-founder Iqram Magdon-Ismail in January, is soaring today after it was released in the Apple App Store on mobile devices.

JELLYJELLY surged as much as 120% over the last 24 hours to a $102 million market capitalization and is currently changing hands at 0.085 per token, or an $85 million valuation.

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Major digital assets recorded losses on Thursday amid disappointing U.S. unemployment data, erasing much of their gains from the previous day, when the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by 25 basis points.

Bitcoin (BTC) fell 2.4% over the past 24 hours to $90,800, while Ethereum (ETH) dropped 5.7% to $3,200. Among other large-cap coins, XRP declined 3.2% to $2.01, BNB lost 3% to $875, and Solana (SOL) slipped 3.3% to $133.

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Galaxy Digital Holdings LP has issued its first U.S. Commercial Paper on the Solana blockchain, which boasts a total value locked of over $10 billion.

J.P. Morgan, the largest bank in the world by market capitalization, acted as an arranger for the deal and created the on-chain USCP token used. The securities were purchased by Coinbase, the largest U.S.-based centralized crypto exchange (CEX), and Franklin Templeton.

Payments for both the initial issuance and the redemption will be made in USDC stablecoins from Circle – USDC is currently the second-largest circulating stablecoin with a market capitalization of $78 billion. Meanwhile, Galaxy Digital Partners LLC, Galaxy’s investment banking affiliate, structured the deal.

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The Arbitrum DAO is set to decide on a new incentive program that would reward governance delegates for consistent participation and transparent reasoning.

The proposal, outlined by the Arbitrum team in a Nov. 19 forum post, would compensate “active delegates focused solely on their voting record and making public their voting rationale.”

According to the proposal, the goal is to “reduce voter apathy” and increase active voting power. To qualify for rewards, delegates would have to vote on proposals and “publicly post rationale for how they voted and why” within five days.

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The largest centralized cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S., Coinbase, is set to launch on-chain trading of Solana-based tokens directly through a built-in decentralized exchange in its app, bypassing the need for traditional listings.

The update, unveiled today, Dec. 11, at the Solana Breakpoint conference in Abu Dhabi, per an X post from Solana, routes trades to on-chain liquidity pools, giving retail users access to Solana-based tokens while keeping the experience inside Coinbase’s product.

Speaking at the conference, Andrew Allen, senior protocol specialist at Coinbase, said that users “will get early access to millions of tokens and they can trade these assets the moment they become available on-chain.”

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Today KYD Labs, a Solana-based ticket sourcing platform, announced the launch of TIX — a DeFi lending layer built for live event financing.

TIX will be integrated with KYD Labs, bringing a verifiable financing and settlement layer to its existing infrastructure.

KYD is DeFi’s largest ticket transfer platform, with more than $8 million in ticket sales, and $2 million in pre-existing financing across more than 300,000 tickets, according to the press release.

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