Crypto

Can Ripple and Cardano hold it together as the market matures to fundamental-focused projects, Galaxy's Novogratz asked Friday.

[PRESS RELEASE – Seoul, South Korea, December 28th, 2025] On December 26, 2025, MEET48 — the world’s first idol fan economy ecosystem built on a Web3-native architecture and deeply integrating AI and UGC — jointly held the “MEET48 2026 Annual Roadshow For Al Entertainment UGC Platform & Web3.0 Strategy” Launch Event in Seoul, South Korea, together with […]

Digital asset treasury companies such as Tom Lee’s BitMine have contributed to the increase in the entry queue, but the network’s Petcra upgrade may have also helped. Ethereum’s staking queue has flipped the exit line for the first time in six months, with almost twice as much ETH now lined up to be staked as ETH trying to leave the network. The entry queue for validators has roughly 745,619 Ether (ETH) with a nearly 13-day wait, while the exit line has around 360,518 ETH and an eight-day wait, according to the blockchain explorer Ethereum Validator Queue. The flippening happened on Saturday, when both queues were around 460,000, but the entry queue has gone vertical since, while some argue the exit queue is trending towards zero. Read more

Silver’s recent price surge mirrors Bitcoin’s trademark volatility. The precious metal is swinging wildly on rate cut bets and shifting industrial demand. The price of silver continues to notch new highs amid a precious metals market boom, with the asset trading in a very crypto-like fashion over the weekend with sharp volatility.  Silver hit a new all-time high of almost $84 on Sunday, with demand for gold also driving the price up to new heights of around $4,530. Meanwhile, the crypto market continues to stutter.   As highlighted in a post on Sunday by markets publication The Kobeissi Letter, silver saw extreme volatility over the weekend, spiking 6% and then dumping 10% in the span of an hour. Read more

Russia and Ukraine conducted attacks on key energy infrastructure, affecting peace deal prospects despite ongoing diplomatic efforts.

Bitcoin is helping reinforce the US dollar’s reserve currency status by acting as a market check on excessive inflation and deficit spending, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has claimed Bitcoin provides healthy competition for the US dollar, which in turn pressures policymakers to maintain fiscal discipline and helps preserve the greenback’s dominance. “[Bitcoin] provides a check and balance on the dollar in the sense of if there's too much deficit spending or inflation in the US, people will flee to Bitcoin in times of uncertainty,” Armstrong argued in an interview on Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin on Thursday. “It might be okay to have 2-3% inflation if the economy is growing at 2-3% but if inflation outstrips the growth of the economy, you'll eventually lose the reserve currency status, and that would be a massive blow to the United States.” Read more

Crypto executives, including Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley and Castle Island Ventures founding partner Nic Carter, have pushed back against a proposed billionaire tax in California. A proposed 5% tax on billionaires' wealth in California has drawn a strong response from crypto executives, who argue it would trigger an exodus of entrepreneurs and capital flight, and would be wasted anyway. The ballot initiative, known as the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act, proposes a 5% tax on net wealth above $1 billion to help fund the health care system and state assistance programs, according to the SEIU United Healthcare Workers West union. As the proposed wealth tax is partly assessed against unrealized gains, some billionaires may need to sell stock or parts of their businesses to raise funds to pay the tax, which would either be payable in one installment, or over five years with interest payments. Read more

A server-wide hack flooded Rainbow Six Siege with billions in credits, forcing an emergency shutdown and a major rollback operation. French video gaming giant Ubisoft has been forced to halt the live services of Rainbow Six Siege after hackers breached the game and dished out 2 billion in-game credits to every player. The exploit was initially confirmed by the team via X on Dec. 27, with a series of updates following, ultimately leading to a suspension of the game’s servers and marketplace the following day. Reports from players on social media indicate that hackers were able to take control of the major parts of the game’s online systems, with players reporting that everyone was receiving 2 billion in-game R6 credits upon logging in, alongside rare items such as skins and guns.  Read more

Mirae Asset is in talks to acquire Korean crypto exchange Korbit via its consulting arm, as traditional finance targets licensed crypto infrastructure. The post South Korea’s Mirae Asset Group Explores $100M Takeover Of Crypto Exchange Korbit appeared first on Cryptonews.

The Flow Foundation has been slammed for rolling the layer 1 Flow chain back to patch up a $3.9 million exploit, with one partner advising validators to stop processing transactions until further notice. deBridge founder Alex Smirnov has urged validators on the Flow blockchain to stop processing transactions until the Flow Foundation devises a remediation plan for users impacted by its controversial rollback of the chain. The rollback was in response to the theft of $3.9 million on Dec. 27 when an attacker exploited a flaw in Flow’s execution layer and siphoned funds off the chain via multiple cross-chain bridges. deBridge is one of Flow’s main bridge providers and Smirnov called on Flow to clarify plans to address doubled balances for users who bridged out during the rollback window. Read more

Many crypto and Bitcoin treasury companies may go under in 2026 as the model comes under pressure, industry executives tell Cointelegraph. Digital asset treasury (DAT) companies face a grim future heading into 2026, with shares in many of the largest players sharply down, industry executives say. “Going into the next year, I think that the outlook for DATs is looking a bit bleak,” Altan Tutar, co-founder and CEO of crypto yield platform MoreMarkets, told Cointelegraph. Large numbers of crypto treasury companies emerged in 2025 to give Wall Street investors another avenue to access cryptocurrencies. The share prices of many initially shot up as heavyweight investors poured in billions as Bitcoin (BTC) rose to a peak in October, but a broad crypto market decline has since hurt their valuations. Read more

Many analysts previously forecast that Bitcoin would hit a price target between $180,000-$250,000 in 2025, but the price has fallen flat. The yearly Bitcoin (BTC) price candle is set to close in the red, ending 2025 lower than at the start of the year, unless BTC can rise by 6.24% above the yearly open of about $93,374.  “3 days for Bitcoin to recover and close up on the year. If not, this will be the first post-halving year we close in the red. 6.24% required to make this a green candle,” Puckrin said.  Bitcoin hit an all-time high above $125,000 in October, days before a historic market crash put a dent in Bitcoin’s rally and dropped crypto prices across the board. Read more

A widening gap between VC pricing and public market caps signals a reset after narrative-driven optimism cooled.

Bitcoin miners produced block 929,699 on Dec. 27. What if that was the signal for a New Year’s moment, rather than our traditional calendar? The pitch is that block height, the ordered count of blocks every full node can verify, can act as a calendar layer for a market that trades and settles across jurisdictions. […] The post What if Bitcoin blocks signaled the New Year? Creating Universal Bitcoin Time but trapping holders in a tax nightmare appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Indie developers dropped some of the year's best games, including some offbeat insta-classics. Here's what you might have missed.

The rising Bitcoin network mining difficulty ensures the network remains sufficiently decentralized but also makes life harder for miners. The Bitcoin (BTC) network mining difficulty, the relative computing challenge of adding a new block to the ledger, increased slightly to 148.2 trillion in the last adjustment of 2025 and is projected to rise again in January 2026. The next Bitcoin difficulty adjustment is projected to occur on January 8, 2026, at block height 931,392 and is expected to raise the network mining difficulty to 149 trillion, according to CoinWarz. Average block times are about 9.95 minutes at the time of this writing, slightly below the 10-minute target, meaning that difficulty will likely increase to get block times closer to the target. Read more

Coinbase said a former customer support agent was arrested in India as investigators probe a breach tied to insider bribery and customer data theft. Chief Executive Officer Brian Armstrong said on Dec. 27 that the arrest involved a former support agent and thanked Hyderabad Police for assistance in the ongoing investigation. The update puts attention […] The post Coinbase claims arrest in the $355 million insider extortion scheme that targeted nearly 70,000 customers appeared first on CryptoSlate.

AMLBot data shows USDT issuer Tether's freezes were roughly 30 times larger than USDC by value and address count.

Bitcoin has outperformed precious metals over the last decade, but critics say the comparison doesn't hold up under shorter time horizons. Bitcoin (BTC) has outperformed gold and silver by several orders of magnitude since 2015, racking up a 27,701% gain, compared to silver’s 405% gain and gold’s 283% appreciation during the same period, according to author and analyst Adam Livingston.  “Even ignoring the first six years of Bitcoin's existence, for the crybabies who whine about the timeframe comparison, gold and silver drastically underperform the apex asset,” Livingston said in an X post. Gold advocate Peter Schiff, one of Bitcoin’s harshest critics, chimed in, telling Livingston that he should compare these assets over the last four years instead of 10. “Times have changed. Bitcoin's time has passed,” Schiff said. Read more

From Anthropic to Z.AI, the 2026 AI toolkit space demands knowing which platforms deliver. These are the best.