Day: December 26, 2025

Ethereum’s TVL To Surge ’10X’ In 2026: Sharplink CEO

admin

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…

Wintermute Founder Rejects Aave (AAVE) Token Alignment Plan as Governance Rift Deepens

admin

Wintermute said it will vote against Aave’s token alignment proposal, citing unclear governance, weak value capture, and escalating political infighting. Wintermute founder and CEO Evgeny Gaevoy said the trading firm will vote against Aave’s token alignment proposal, adding to the growing opposition within the Aave DAO as the vote nears its conclusion. In a detailed thread on X, Gaevoy said Wintermute disagrees with the proposal “as it stands,” while arguing that it asks tokenholders to commit to a major course of action without sufficient clarity on structure, governance, or…

Bitmain Advertises Steep Discounts on Hardware to Miners Amid Industry Rout

admin

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…

Ethereum’s Tokenization Role Sharpens as Tom Lee Outlines Bullish Outlook

admin

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…

Solana Stablecoin USX Plummets to $0.10 in Depeg Amid Liquidity Crunch

admin

USX suffered one of 2025’s sharpest stablecoin depegs, plunging to $0.10 before market makers restored liquidity. The USX stablecoin on Solana lost its dollar peg on December 26, collapsing to just $0.10 on secondary markets. This sudden drop, caused by a severe lack of liquidity, marks one of the most extreme depegs for a major stablecoin this year. Market Strain and Rapid Response According to blockchain security firm PeckShield, which raised an alert about the event, the depeg was a direct result of a liquidity drain on trading platforms.…

Aave Founder Says $15M Token Buy Wasn’t Used in Controversial DAO Vote

admin

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…

Bitcoin Price Capped By Shifting Maco Conditions, Not Whale Selling

admin

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. A key BTC valuation metric expanded to 2.2 from 1.8 in 2024-2025, but remained below overheating thresholds of 2.7. In 2025, elevated real yields…

Bitcoin Rebounds to $88K, Aave’s Governance Proposal Drama

admin

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. In the wider cryptocurrency space, members of the Aave community criticized their decentralized lending and borrowing protocol over what they described as…

Ethereum Network Activity Hits All-Time High as Price Lags Far Behind

admin

A large share of the recent activity increase is coming from Layer-2 networks settling transactions back on Ethereum. Ethereum (ETH) recorded its highest level of on-chain usage on December 24, 2025, even as its price hovered near $3,000 and struggled to regain recent highs. The split between record network demand and muted price action has sharpened debate around whether Ethereum’s fundamentals are strengthening quietly while short-term market conditions keep prices restrained. Record Transactions Highlight Growing Ethereum Usage Data shared by CryptoOnchain showed Ethereum’s seven-day average transaction count climbing to…

XRP’s Long-Term Breakout Narrative Builds Even As Short-Term Bears Linger

admin

XRP’s chart is telling a two-speed story right now. While short-term price action remains heavy and key resistance levels are still capping upside, the broader structure continues to quietly mature beneath the surface. This tension between near-term pressure and a slowly building macro setup is what makes the current phase especially critical for what comes next. A Multi-Year Compression Is Reaching Its Endgame In a recent update, crypto analyst EGRAG CRYPTO emphasized that the XRP macro triangle is far more than just market noise; it is a definitive roadmap. Analyzing…