Cointelegraph.com
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Cointelegraph.com - 10:24 Dec 27, 2025
Ethereum treasury firm Bitmine has begun staking Ether after depositing nearly $219 million worth of ETH into Ethereum’s proof-of-stake system. Ethereum treasury firm Bitmine has begun staking its Ether holdings depositing nearly $219 million worth of ETH into Ethereum’s proof-of-stake (PoS) system. On Sunday, multiple wallets linked to Bitmine sent large Ether (ETH) transfers to a contract labeled “BatchDeposit,” onchain data from Arkham shows. The transfers totaled 74,880 ETH, a pattern typically associated with institutional staking setups that aggregate funds before validator creation. “The largest Ethereum treasury company Bitmine (BMNR) has finally started attempting to stake its held ETH to earn interest income,” EmberCN said in a post on X. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 06:54 Dec 27, 2025
JPMorgan has reportedly frozen accounts linked to Y Combinator–backed stablecoin startups BlindPay and Kontigo after flagging exposure to sanctioned jurisdictions. JPMorgan Chase has reportedly frozen bank accounts linked to two venture-backed stablecoin startups after identifying exposure to sanctioned and high-risk jurisdictions. The accounts belonged to BlindPay and Kontigo, two stablecoin startups backed by Y Combinator that primarily operate across Latin America, according to a report by The Information. Both companies accessed JPMorgan’s banking services through Checkbook, a digital payments firm that partners with large financial institutions. Per the report, the freezes occurred after JPMorgan flagged business activity tied to Venezuela and other locations subject to US sanctions. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 05:03 Dec 27, 2025
The second half of 2026 will provide “more constructive conditions” for XRP to potentially surge, according to Nansen crypto analyst Jake Kennis. XRP’s price could continue consolidating into the new year, with a stronger upward trend dependent on more bullish catalysts, according to crypto analysts. “We maintain a view that the latter half of 2026 will provide more constructive conditions for risk assets in general, but in the short term, we have a slightly bearish tilt on altcoins until BTC consolidates or forms a bottom,” Nansen senior research analyst Jake Kennis told Cointelegraph. Kennis is holding off on specific price predictions for 2026, but pointed to several catalysts that could drive XRP’s (XRP) price higher, including potential spot ETF approvals, integration with global payment rails, and “increased efforts to make XRP a liquidity or bridge asset.” Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 02:54 Dec 27, 2025
Bitcoin reached new all-time highs in October, yet Jan3 founder Samson Mow has described the year as a “bear market” and anticipates a major bull run ahead. Bitcoin could be entering a bull run lasting into 2035, following what may have been a bear market over the past 12 months, according to Jan3 founder Samson Mow. However, other analysts have argued that Bitcoin’s (BTC) all-time high of $125,100 in October marked the cycle high and 2026 could be the start of a new bear market. “2025 was the bear market,” Mow said in an X post on Friday, adding that Bitcoin may be about to record a “decade long bull run.” Mow isn’t alone in his view of the year, with Bitcoin analyst PlanC echoing a similar sentiment. “If you made it through 2025, you made it through the bear market,” PlanC said in an X post on the same day. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 23:46 Dec 26, 2025
A surge in stablecoins, tokenized RWAs and growing sovereign wealth fund interest could drive a major increase in Ethereum’s TVL in 2026, Sharplink’s co-CEO said. Ethereum’s total value locked (TVL) may surge ten-fold in 2026 as adoption expands across multiple use cases and institutional investors, according to Sharplink’s co-CEO Joseph Chalom. Sharplink Gaming is the second-largest public Ethereum treasury company, holding 797,704 ETH (ETH), worth roughly $2.33 billion at the time of publication, according to Ethereum Treasuries data. “The stablecoin market will hit $500B by the end of next year,” Chalom predicted in an X post on Friday, as the total stablecoin market capitalization currently sits at around $308.46 billion. A move to $500 billion would represent an increase of about 62%. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 21:39 Dec 26, 2025
Discounts and bundle deals were offered to mining operators, as 2025 ends on a bad note for the crypto market and the mining industry. Bitmain, the largest manufacturer of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), the machines used to mine proof-of-work (PoW) cryptocurrencies, has reportedly slashed prices on several generations of mining hardware amid sector-wide turmoil for the mining industry. The company is offering bundle deals and discounts across the board, including on its S19 and S21 series machines that would have been considered “distressed sales” earlier in 2025 when Bitcoin (BTC) was rising in price, according to TheMinerMag. Even newer, flagship mining hardware like the S21 immersion-cooled ASICs were offered at discounts of $7 per terahash-second (TH/s), and some hardware bundles were auctioned off to mining operators that could “name their own price,” TheMinerMag said. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 21:15 Dec 26, 2025
Fundstrat’s head of research said institutional tokenization supports a $7,000–$9,000 Ether price in early 2026 and a longer-term case for $20,000. Ethereum’s growing role in institutional finance took center stage on CNBC’s Power Lunch this week, when Tom Lee, co-founder and head of research at Fundstrat Global Advisors, said Ether could climb to $7,000–$9,000 by early 2026 as Wall Street accelerates efforts to tokenize assets and move financial activity onchain. Lee said Ether’s (ETH) investment case is increasingly tied to its use as financial infrastructure, as Wall Street experiments with onchain settlement and tokenized securities. “Wall Street wants to tokenize everything,” Lee said, pointing to initiatives at Robinhood and BlackRock. The shift, he said, could bring efficiencies to traditional finance while anchoring real-world use cases on Ether. He added that Ether could eventually reach $20,000 as adoption deepens. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 20:00 Dec 26, 2025
Stani Kulechov's comments followed an uproar in the Aave community about the relationship between the Aave decentralized autonomous organization and Aave Labs. Stani Kulechov, the founder and CEO of Aave Labs, the main development company behind the Aave decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol, denied claims that he recently purchased $15 million of Aave (AAVE) tokens to influence a controversial community vote that failed to pass. “These tokens were not used to vote on the recent proposal, and that was never my intention. This is my life's work, and I am putting my own capital behind my conviction,” Kulechov said. He also said that Aave Labs has not clearly communicated the economic alignment between it and Aave token holders. “In the future, we'll be more explicit about how products built by Aave Labs create value for the DAO and AAVE token holders,” he added. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 20:00 Dec 26, 2025
Bitcoin’s technical and onchain market structure was robust throughout 2025, but ever-shifting macroeconomic conditions eventually put a cap on BTC price. Will the trend shift in 2026? Bitcoin’s 2024–2025 price action highlighted a disconnect between improving high-timeframe onchain structure and restrictive macroeconomic conditions. While crypto-native liquidity and supply dynamics strengthened during Bitcoin’s (BTC) 2024 rally, external variables, like elevated real yields and Federal Reserve balance sheet contraction, imposed valuation limits as the cycle progressed. Key takeaways Bitcoin rallied to above $100,000 from $42,000 in 2024 alongside rising stablecoin inflows and sustained BTC exchange outflows. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 19:00 Dec 26, 2025
Cryptocurrency markets experienced a modest recovery this week, but spot Bitcoin ETFs extended a five-day losing streak amid thin year-end liquidity. Cryptocurrency markets had a small rebound following last week’s dip, as investor activity wound down during the holidays. Bitcoin (BTC) fell to a weekly low of $86,561 on Tuesday, before bouncing back above $88,600 on Friday, according to TradingView data. Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) demand remained weak, recording $175 million in outflows on Wednesday, which marked a fifth consecutive day of net outflows, according to Farside Investors. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 18:25 Dec 26, 2025
The USX stablecoin briefly slipped below its dollar peg on Solana DEXs before recovering after its issuer injected liquidity into secondary markets. USX, a Solana-native US dollar-pegged stablecoin, briefly traded below its peg on decentralized exchanges early Friday after heavy sell pressure overwhelmed available liquidity on Orca and Raydium, prompting issuer Solstice Finance to step in with liquidity support. In an X post on Friday, PeckShieldAlert showed USX briefly trading as low as $0.10 in secondary markets before rebounding, a move attributed to isolated trades executed during a period of extremely thin liquidity. Aggregated DEX data shows a less extreme move. A 15-minute USX/USD chart from GeckoTerminal’s Orca pool shows USX dipping to about $0.80, reflecting where most trading volume occurred, before recovering and stabilizing near $0.99 as liquidity returned. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 18:00 Dec 26, 2025
Regulatory clarity in the United States and the likelihood of falling interest rates will push the crypto ETF market higher in 2026. Crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are set to explode in 2026, with over 100 new ETF filings expected and billions of dollars in net inflows pouring into the investment vehicles, according to analysts. Senior Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas forecast a base case of $15 billion in capital flows in 2026 and as much as $40 billion if market conditions improve. The US Federal Reserve is “probably” going to lower the interest rate in 2026, pushing net inflows toward the mid or upper limits of the estimate, Balchunas told Cointelegraph. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 17:28 Dec 26, 2025
The mainnet rollout follows the Fermi testnet activation in November, further reducing block times on the layer-1 blockchain network. The BNB Smart Chain’s Fermi hard fork has been scheduled for mainnet activation on Jan. 14, following about two months in the testnet phase. Fermi will lower the block interval to 250 milliseconds from 750 milliseconds to support “time-sensitive” applications that require sub-second block times, according to the BNB community’s GitHub page. The upgrade also introduces extended voting parameters to make up for the communication lag between nodes due to the shortened block times. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 17:01 Dec 26, 2025
In an exclusive Cointelegraph interview, the crypto analyst pointed to macro headwinds, muted sentiment and cycle dynamics shaping Bitcoin’s path into 2026. As Bitcoin (BTC) continues to underperform gold and major equity indices, investors are increasingly questioning whether this cycle is unfolding differently than expected. In a new interview with analyst Benjamin Cowen, we dig into why Bitcoin is lagging traditional markets, and why the current setup may feel strikingly similar to 2019. Cowen points out that while stocks and gold are responding positively to expectations around future monetary easing, Bitcoin appears far more sensitive to actual liquidity conditions rather than optimism alone. That distinction, he explains, helps clarify why BTC has struggled to gain momentum even as broader markets push higher. According to Cowen, Bitcoin often requires a clearer macroeconomic catalyst before it can outperform, and that catalyst may not yet be in place. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 16:04 Dec 26, 2025
Bitcoin and several major altcoins attempted to start a relief rally, but higher levels continue to attract strong selling by the bears. Key points: Bitcoin attempted to rise above $90,000, but sustained recovery may require institutional demand to pick up. While most major altcoins are struggling near their recent lows, Bitcoin Cash looks strong on the charts. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 14:00 Dec 26, 2025
As AI blurs the line between real and synthetic media, strategies for restoring user trust online are still taking shape as we enter 2026. How often have you come across an image online and wondered, “Real or AI”? Have you ever felt trapped in a reality where AI-created and human-made content blur together? Do we still need to distinguish between them? Artificial intelligence has unlocked a world of creative possibilities, but it has also brought new challenges, reshaping how we perceive content online. From AI-generated images, music and videos flooding social media to deepfakes and bots scamming users, AI now touches a vast part of the internet. According to a study by Graphite, the amount of AI-made content surpassed human-created content in late 2024, primarily due to the launch of ChatGPT in 2022. Another study suggests that more than 74.2% of pages in its sample contained AI-generated content as of April 2025. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 13:26 Dec 26, 2025
Tokenized commodities are increasing amid growing investor demand for more accessible onchain financial products, following new all-time highs for gold and silver. Blockchain-based tokenized commodities are nearing the $4 billion milestone, following new all-time highs reached by the world's leading precious metals. Gold, silver and platinum hit record highs on Friday, with spot gold rising as high as $4,530 per ounce, TradingView data shows. Silver, currently not a major contributor to the tokenized commodities market, briefly touched an all-time high of $74.56 per ounce. Tokenized commodities rose 11% in the month leading to Friday, reaching $3.93 billion, according to data aggregator RWA.xyz. Tether Gold (XAUt) was listed as the largest tokenized commodity, worth $1.74 billion, followed by Paxos Gold (PAXG) at $1.61 billion. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 13:00 Dec 26, 2025
The lowdown on how the switchover to ZK-proofs is expected to work this year as part of Ethereum’s plan to scale to 10,000 TPS. 2026 is a pivotal year for Ethereum. The first Ethereum validators will process tiny zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs instead of reexecuting transactions. This unlocks immediate scaling benefits for the layer 1 and sets it on the path toward 10,000 transactions per second (TPS). Researcher Justin Drake demonstrated that validating proofs on an old laptop is already possible at EthProofs Day at Devconnect in November. One in 10 validators are expected to make the switch to ZK before the end of the year. It’s a complete overhaul of the fundamental way the blockchain works: comparable in scale to the Merge in 2022, when Ethereum successfully switched from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 11:55 Dec 26, 2025
Once a barometer of retail hype, memecoins are closing the year with shrinking liquidity, weaker participation and fading speculative momentum. Memecoins are trading near year-end lows, marking a sharp reversal from the speculative peak reached in Christmas 2024. Memecoins fell 65% over the year to a market capitalization of $35 billion on Dec. 19, their lowest level of 2025, according to CoinMarketCap data. They retraced some losses on Friday, rising to about $36 billion. Last year, memecoins thrived on Christmas Day, recording about $100 billion in valuation, according to CoinMarketCap data. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 11:15 Dec 26, 2025
From hacks and macro shocks to stablecoin regulation and market-structure upgrades, 2025 reshaped how crypto operates and what mainstream adoption really means. On Feb. 24, the crypto industry faced a renewed security reckoning after about $1.4 billion was stolen from Bybit, making it one of the largest exchange-related thefts on record. US authorities publicly attributed the attack to actors linked to North Korea and warned that the stolen assets would likely be laundered through a network of addresses and intermediaries. Read more
8149 items