Crypto

Crypto legislation is now in place across major economies, and coming soon in the US, but tax and privacy questions remain unresolved. Digital asset regulation finally shifted into gear in 2025 as the US moved toward a more crypto-friendly legal framework and the EU began fully enforcing the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) framework across Europe. But crypto lawyers enter 2026 facing unresolved questions around prediction markets and super apps, tax, privacy and digital market structure. To understand how crypto law evolved in 2025 and preview what lies ahead, Magazine spoke with legal experts Catherine Smirnova and Yuriy Brisov of Digital & Analogue Partners in Europe, Joshua Chu of the Hong Kong Web3 Association and Charlyn Ho of Rikka in the US. Read more

XRP scored every major win in 2025 with the SEC case resolved and spot ETFs launched, yet the price crashed 50%, with the $5 target remaining elusive. In 2025, the XRP community celebrated the long-awaited resolution of the SEC lawsuit, the launch of multiple US-based spot ETFs, and a surge in Ripple partnerships. Yet, the coveted $5 price target remained elusive, with XRP (XRP) price peaking at $3.66 before falling as much as 50% to a low of $1.58 in October.  Key takeaways: Some of the most bullish events for XRP occurred in 2025, yet it fell by over 50%, underperforming the market. Read more

Base’s push into creator coins is facing mounting criticism from traders and builders after Nick Shirley’s token on Zora spiked to about a $9 million valuation and then promptly slumped. Coinbase and its Ethereum layer-2 Base are drawing pushback from traders and builders who argue that its creator token experiment failed to turn a viral social media moment into sustained onchain activity. The backlash came after YouTuber Nick Shirley launched a token on creator platform Zora. Shirley’s token briefly rode his online fame to about a $9 million fully diluted value before sliding to $3 million. Most of the volume came from existing traders rather than new users. In a widely shared critique, trader and content creator notthreadguy argued that if Shirley couldn’t make the model work, nobody could.  Read more

The pardons cemented crypto as both an economic force and a partisan issue in Washington.

Crypto privacy is approaching an inflection point as relevant lawsuits near their conclusions and developers pivot toward designs that ensure privacy while appeasing regulators. Crypto privacy entered the spotlight in 2025 as new technology clashed with regulators, a trend that is set to intensify in 2026 with developers pushing the envelope and legal battles approaching a conclusion. In its early days, Bitcoin (BTC) was often viewed as an anonymous payment tool despite its transparency. Since then, the introduction of onchain analytics and surveillance has made it increasingly apparent that transparent blockchains are far from private. This led to an arms race between pro-privacy developers, onchain surveillance organizations and regulators, culminating in high-profile legal cases. The developers of the decentralized Ether (ETH) mixer Tornado Cash are fighting over whether software development constitutes a financial service, and those behind the Bitcoin non-custodial mixer Samourai Wallet were recently sent...

Spot Bitcoin ETFs just broke a 7-day losing streak with $355M in inflows. Discover why BlackRock is buying and what improving liquidity means for BTC's price. The post Bitcoin Price Prediction: Spot ETFs Just Snapped a 7-Day Losing Streak – Hidden Bull Market Starting by Institutions? appeared first on Cryptonews.

Whale accumulation across Solana tokens is headlining crypto-related social buzz as 2026 begins, according to data from Santiment. Cryptocurrency markets kicked off 2026 with a focus on Solana, as Santiment data showed discussion regarding whale accumulation of SOL-related tokens as the top trend on Thursday. Santiment said multiple SOL-linked assets have seen repeated purchases of 10 or more Solana (SOL) by large wallets. “Market caps vary widely, but liquidity remains strong, indicating sustained interest  from large holders,” Santiment said in a Thursday post sharing five trending topics. Read more

Millions of long-inactive users still hold crypto at Bithumb, highlighting how early retail capital can remain untouched for years. South Korean crypto exchange Bithumb flagged over $200 million in customer assets dormant across 2.6 million accounts, offering a glimpse into how much retail capital remains untouched on centralized platforms.  The disclosure came as part of the exchange's dormant asset recovery campaign, which targets users who have not logged in or traded for over a year. According to Bithumb, dormant assets total about 291.6 billion Korean won (about $201.8 million), with some balances left inactive for over a decade. Bithumb said the largest dormant holding it had identified was worth about $2.84 million. Meanwhile, the longest period of inactivity stretched to 4,380 days, or almost a dozen years.  Read more

Glassnode data shows that XRP's exchange balances hit their lowest level since 2018 in late December, sparking the usual wave of accumulation phase speculation and “tight supply = moon” commentary. While the eight-year low encompasses the entire exchange ecosystem, CryptoQuant data for Binance offers a recent window into whether these troughs actually precede rallies. Binance's […] The post XRP on exchanges hits 8 year low, but historical data exposes a brutal flaw in the popular “moon” narrative appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin historically turns positive in early January, which gives the crypto asset a 2/3 chance of gaining 10% next week.

Solana’s bid to move beyond memecoins will depend on whether its upgrades can deliver predictable execution for serious onchain finance. Solana heads into 2026 facing the question of whether infrastructure upgrades and tokenized financial activity can push the network beyond its memecoin reputation. Solana kicked off 2025 at the height of the memecoin frenzy, with Solana (SOL) reaching a new all-time high of $293 on Jan. 19. As memecoin volumes cooled over the year, SOL had fallen to around $130 by mid-December. “Solana needs to shake off the stamp of ‘memecoin [or] NFT’ chain and position itself as a serious place for Web2 and Web3 financial businesses to come and build the future of finance,” Tomas Fanta, principal at the crypto investment firm Heartcore, told Cointelegraph. Read more

Crypto analyst Chris Millas has highlighted an unusually persistent slump in Strategy shares, breaking with past drawdown patterns even as the firm continued accumulating bitcoin.

Digital asset treasuries, altcoin ETFs and bitcoin’s famed year‑end seasonality were meant to supercharge prices. What came instead was the worst drawdown since 2022's crypto winter.

CC has skyrocketed by over 130% monthly.

If you followed Bitcoin ETFs day to day in 2025, you probably developed the same habit everyone did: you checked the print at night, read one sentence about “risk-on” or “risk-off,” then tried to map a clean story onto a messy market. The problem is that daily flows are noisy by design. They're the residue […] The post Bitcoin ETF fatigue is real, ignoring noise, these are the 10 days that mattered in 2025 appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Tether closed out 2025 with an 8,888 BTC purchase, increasing its disclosed Bitcoin holdings to more than 96,000 BTC. Tether picked up 8,888 Bitcoin (BTC) on New Year’s Eve, increasing its disclosed Bitcoin stash to more than 96,000 to close out 2025, its CEO Paolo Ardoino said. The USDt (USDT) stablecoin issuer has become one of the biggest active Bitcoin holders, placing the company’s Bitcoin address as the fifth-largest behind Binance, Robinhood, and Bitfinex and ranking second among privately held corporate BTC treasuries. The move is part of a pattern of Tether’s quarterly Bitcoin accumulations. The company has been funneling up to 15% of its earnings into Bitcoin every three months. The latest batch was worth about $780 million at the time of acquisition. Read more

A trader claimed to have made $1 million by timing a long-short trade after spotting abnormal activity by a market maker account on Binance, while the exchange denied any security breach. A trader claimed to have profited about $1 million on New Year’s Day by capitalizing on “abnormal” trading behavior of a suspected market maker account on Binance. Investor Vida said on X that the abnormal trading activity was tied to BROCCOLI714, a low-liquidity token on the BNB Chain. The memecoin had an abrupt price surge followed by a sharp reversal early Thursday morning in Asia, which Vida said was driven by unusually large spot buy orders on Binance’s order book. Read more

Following the 2012 halving, Bitcoin surged to end the following year at a new high; and a similar pattern played out in 2016 and again in 2020. Bitcon ended 2025 lower than it began, marking the first time it’s fallen in a post-halving year. Bitcoin (BTC) halvings occur every four years, when mining rewards are cut in half and fewer new coins enter the market. Historically, this has resulted in a cycle of accumulation: a post-halving bull run that peaks, followed by a sharp correction and a multi-year bear market. After the 2012 halving, Bitcoin spiked to end the following year at a new high; a similar pattern played out in 2016 and again in 2020.  Read more

BlackRock further separated itself from competitors in the crypto ETF market in 2025, with its Bitcoin and Ether funds, IBIT and ETHA, accounting for the majority of net inflows. US investors poured over $31.77 billion into US crypto exchange-traded funds in 2025 despite the crypto markets stumbling towards the final months of the year.  US spot Bitcoin (BTC) ETFs took the lion’s share of investor interest, accumulating $21.4 billion in net inflows in 2025, according to Farside Investors data. However, it marks a fall from the $35.2 billion net inflows seen in 2024. Read more

From Ross Ulbricht’s pardon to Ripple’s SEC victory, here’s a list of crypto’s most celebrated turnarounds this year and what they mean for the year ahead.  Another eventful year for crypto is now behind us. Bitcoin notched a new all-time high but ended the year in the red, the regulatory climate in the US warmed, privacy coins stormed the market, institutional adoption surged and the US president even launched a memecoin. With 2026 now underway, Cointelegraph takes a look at some of the biggest comebacks in crypto last year and what it could mean for the next 12 months.  Read more