Feed aggregator

Ethereum’s price is experiencing a notable uptick in certain key areas following the slight bounce above the $3,000 mark on Monday. Even though ETH has lost the pivotal price level due to a broader market pullback, a certain group of investors is now starting to show heightened demand for the leading altcoin.

Big Ethereum Wallets Re-Entering The Market

The Ethereum market appears to be shifting once again into a period of demand and accumulation. ETH’s holder behavior is undergoing a decisive shift as observed among major investors or whales, who have returned to accumulation mode.

After several weeks of relative caution, Mlik Road, a crypto and macro researcher, outlined that large ETH holders have been steadily increasing their holdings in the past few days. This steady accumulation is being carried out by wallet addresses holding more than 1,000 ETH, signaling renewed confidence in the altcoin’s long-term prospects.

Data from the Ethereum Retail and Large Investor Holdings metric shows that whale holders have acquired over 120,000 ETH valued at approximately $350 million since December 26. With the price of ETH facing volatility, this action indicates that smart money investors might be preparing themselves ahead of a major upward move, even if the price movement is still measured.

As a result of the massive accumulation, wallet addresses containing 1,000+ ETH currently control roughly 70% of the entire supply in circulation. A look at the chart shows that this share held by the cohort has been on a steady increase since late 2024, reflecting the unwavering resilience of the investors despite multiple sideways movements.

Should this behavior continue, Milk Road highlighted that the market may not fully be pricing in where the smart money anticipates ETH to head next. 

Institutions Are Doubling Down on ETH

ETH accumulation has also experienced a significant uptick at the institutional level as many large corporations double down on the leading altcoin. Lookonchain, a on-chain platform, reported that Trend Research, an investment firm specialized in secondary markets, is still stacking up USDT to purchase more ETH. 

After a period of steady acquisition, Trend Research has now amassed over 601,074 ETH worth a whopping $1.83 billion. This action demonstrates the company’s robust conviction in Ethereum and its expanding ecosystem. 

Based on the on-chain ETH withdrawal prices from Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, the average purchase price of the company’s stash is $3,265 per coin. The firm has also borrowed a total of $958 million in stablecoins from the Aave blockchain to buy ETH.

Bitmine Immersion, a leading public company led by Tom Lee, has also resumed its ETH accumulation. Lookonchain highlighted that the company purchased another 44,463 ETH valued at $130 million last week. As a result, the firm now boasts of over 4,110,525 ETH worth a staggering $12 billion.

Shiba Inu lead developer Kaal Dhairya published a year-end letter on Dec. 29 describing what he called the most difficult period in the project’s history, outlining post-hack recovery steps, law-enforcement engagement, and a proposed on-chain claims system meant to track repayment to affected users.

Shiba Inu’s Team Year-End Letter

“This year — especially the last few months — has been the hardest period in Shiba Inu’s history,” Dhairya wrote. “The hack happened. The leadership that was supposed to be here and help us through this difficult time — isn’t. They left, without accountability, and without looking back. I stayed.”

Dhairya said he is not writing as Shiba Inu’s “official ‘leader,’” but argued the community deserves a direct update on what has been done, what is still unresolved, and what changes internally. He described the team working “around the clock — all-nighters, weekends, holidays,” and positioned the letter as an accountability-driven reset focused on repayment and core infrastructure.

Addressing claims that the team failed to file official complaints, Dhairya said a formal process is underway and pushed back on demands for public proof. “I have personally been interviewed by not one, not two, but three federal agents,” he wrote. “I passed on everything I have — all the information, all the OSINT, all the details we gathered during and after the incident. The official process is happening. It has been happening.”

He declined to share a complaint ID and said he would not continue “defending” the response to opportunistic critics, arguing some are “looking to sell their snake oil and keep extracting from you.”

Dhairya said “the technical recovery is largely complete,” detailing changes made after the hack. He wrote that the Plasma Bridge is back online with new safeguards, including “blacklisting, 7-day withdrawal delays, and hardened contracts,” and said more than 100 critical contracts have been moved to hardware custody. Hexens reviewed “every major change,” he added, and the checkpoint system is functioning again.

He also flagged a longer-term architecture change: “We’re also decoupling the bridge from the validators,” describing it as foundational work intended to enable decentralization of Shibarium. Even with that, he cautioned that malicious validators remain a risk and decentralizing the chain “won’t be easy.” Dhairya drew a hard distinction between restoring infrastructure and repaying users. “But technical recovery is not the same as making people whole,” he wrote.

SOU: ‘Shib Owes You’ Claims Via NFT

To address repayment, Dhairya introduced SOU (“Shib Owes You”), a system he stressed is “not live yet” and likely to attract scammers pretending otherwise. Under the proposal, every affected user receives an “SOU NFT” that records what the ecosystem owes them as an on-chain claim on Ethereum.

“This isn’t a promise in a database somewhere,” Dhairya wrote. “It’s cryptographic proof that you own a claim, recorded permanently on the Ethereum blockchain where no one can manipulate it or make it disappear.”

Each SOU tracks a principal amount that declines as payouts occur or donations are applied, with progress visible “in real time” and verifiable. Dhairya said SOUs can be “merged, split, or transferred,” including the option to sell a claim for liquidity on supported marketplaces. He added that the system’s components—“minting, payouts, donations, transfers”—have been audited by Hexens.

Dhairya argued the system only works if cash flow is routed into it, and said that should be treated as an obligation for ecosystem participants, particularly those controlling official distribution channels. “For SOU to function — for affected users to actually get made whole — revenue has to flow into the system,” he wrote. “That means everyone who benefits from the Shiba Inu ecosystem needs to contribute back. Not optionally. As an obligation.”

He said he will pause or sunset projects that are not generating revenue or reaching break-even, and prioritize initiatives that can fund repayment. “Revenue flows to SOU. SOU pays back affected users. If a project doesn’t fit that chain, it waits,” Dhairya wrote. He also previewed potentially contentious changes, including revisiting tokenomics and restructuring or merging systems to redirect value “back to the network and to the users who were affected.”

In closing, Dhairya said he has personally committed significant time and funds to keep the ecosystem running, but cannot do so indefinitely. “I cannot keep doing this forever,” he wrote, calling for others to step up if they believe Shib should be “a decentralized network” rather than “a meme” or “a pump.”

“The year ahead won’t be about hype,” Dhairya added. “It will be about repair, focus, and building something that can actually last.”

At press time, Shiba Inu traded at $0.00000721.

Рост госдолга США, дефицит бюджета крупных государств и обесценивание фиатных валют помогут биткоину показать ралли в наступающем 2026 году, заявил глава отдела исследований компании Grayscale Зак Пандл (Zach Pandl).

Министр финансов Антон Силуанов высказался в поддержку предложения Банка России допустить непрофессиональных инвесторов на рынок криптовалют. Доступ должен быть возможен лишь при условии жестких лимитов на объем вложений и только если торги будут на официально зарегистрированных российских площадках, заявил чиновник в интервью телеканалу «Россия 24».

Председатель комитета российской Госдумы по финансовому рынку Анатолий Аксаков объявил, что россияне могут начать получать заработную плату цифровыми рублями с 1 сентября 2026 года.

Криптовалютная биржа Binance приостановила прямой вывод средств на банковские карты систем Visa и MasterCard для клиентов из Украины. Ограничения вступили в силу с 29 декабря, объявила биржа.

Верховный суд Республики Корея приговорил сотрудника криптобиржи к четырем годам тюрьмы за подкуп военнослужащего, согласившегося раскрыть Северной Корее тайные военные сведения за биткоины. Название криптобиржи не указано, но известно, что она южнокорейская.

Сохраняющая анонимность владельцев криптовалюта Zcash продемонстрировала стремительный рост в октябре — декабре, преодолев $540. Причиной стал растущий спрос на активы, обеспечивающие приватность транзакций, объяснили аналитики компании Grayscale.

Децентрализованная биржа Lighter выпустила собственный токен Lighter Infrastructure Token (LIT). Проект базируется в США, а токен выпускается напрямую от американской C‑Corp, которая продолжит управлять протоколом на безубыточной основе.

Адрес Эфириума, связанный с эксплойтами двух протоколов децентрализованных финансов (DeFi) Kyberswap и Indexed Finance, активизировался после года затишья — его владелец продал токены на сумму более $2 млн.

Dragonfly partner Haseeb Qureshi published a category-by-category set of 2026 crypto predictions on X late Monday, arguing next year will “surprise, both to the upside and to the downside” even if “the trend lines mostly continue.”

Bitcoin And Crypto Predictions For 2026

His headline macro call pairs a bullish bitcoin target with a broader market rebound. “BTC is > $150K by year-end, but BTC dominance decreases in 2026,” Qureshi wrote. But he rejected the idea that this automatically implies a blow-off alt cycle: “I don’t think it will be wild enough to call it alt season. I think alts will rebound nevertheless, just not to crazy highs.”

Moreover, Qureshi said “the recent crop of fintech chains” will not meet expectations on usage and value flow. “Despite the excitement around the recent crop of fintech chains, their metrics will underwhelm,” he wrote, pointing to “daily active addresses, stablecoin flows, and RWAs.” He named Tempo, Arc, and Robinhood Chain as likely laggards, while adding that “Ethereum and Solana will overdeliver” and that “best developers will continue to build on neutral infra chains.”

On enterprise rails, he expects more large companies to launch networks, skewing toward regulated incumbents. “Many more Fortune 100s launch blockchains, although increasingly concentrated among banking and fintech players,” he wrote, adding: “Expect Avalanche to be a standout here, alongside OP stack, Orbit, and ZK Stack.”

Qureshi also predicted a major distribution move from consumer tech: “A big tech company (Google, Facebook, Apple, etc.) launches or acquires a crypto wallet in 2026.” And he offered a contrarian timing call on Monad: “Monad gets written off as dead by CT, but metrics take off in the latter part of the year after analysts have already forgotten about it.”

On infrastructure, he said DoubleZero adoption broadens: “At least 3 other chains connect to DoubleZero to improve their latency & throughput metrics. DoubleZero hits 80%+ stake on Solana.”

DeFi And Stablecoins

Qureshi forecass a more concentrated perpetuals market structure. “Perp DEX market share consolidates to something like 3 big venues a la HBO (market share something like 40 / 30 / 20), followed by a long tail of smaller players who compete over the leftovers (last 10%),” he wrote.

He also expects product expansion into equities. “Equity perps take off, becoming >20% of total DeFi perp volume by EOY,” he wrote, alongside “significant growth in RFQ compared to CLOBs/AMMs, both on spot and perps.” He added a reputational tail risk: “Some DeFi-related insider trading scandal hits mainstream media.”

Qureshi predicts a large expansion in stablecoin supply while remaining overwhelmingly dollar-based. “Stablecoin supply expands by ~60% in 2026, and USD remains 99%+,” he wrote. He expects Tether to cede some share: “USDT dominance declines moderately to ~55%.”

His strongest distribution claim centered on payments. “Stablecoin-backed cards grow 1,000% in 2026—insanely fast growth,” Qureshi wrote. “Becomes the dominant way that stablecoins land and expand in emerging markets. Rain is the biggest winner here.”

Regulation And Prediction Markets

Qureshi predicted a US legislative deal next year, but with caveats on what the industry gets. “Clarity Act gets signed into law in 2026 after some significant markups and horse trading,” he wrote. “A bit of buyer’s remorse from crypto insiders.”

He also forecast political scrutiny if Democrats take the House. “Dems win the house, and there is a parade of hearings about anything in crypto that touched TRUMP / WLFI,” Qureshi wrote.

“The underlying deals get subpoenaed.” In his scenario, Trump distances himself: “Trump insists he was never involved and didn’t know anything about it (and thus these deals are not protected by executive privilege). Anyone who signed a stupid deal gets publicly embarrassed.”

Qureshi expects prediction markets to expand rapidly amid unresolved US legal fights. “Prediction markets grow like crazy,” he wrote, citing “big legal fights over sportsbetting regulation and federal pre-emption,” but adding that “nothing major gets resolved next year, so status quo continues through 2026.”

He argued Polymarket extends its cultural edge and distribution. “Meanwhile Polymarket continues to steamroll the culture,” Qureshi wrote. “Prediction markets are perceived as cool and smart, and so are allowed to throw up odds everywhere.” He added that as domestic expansion ramps, “it starts winning more and more domestic market share from Robinhood and sportsbooks.”

Most competitors, in his view, will not matter. “The explosion of other platforms tacking on prediction markets mostly flop,” he wrote. “90% of prediction market offerings are totally ignored and then wind down by EOY.”

Qureshi said “B2B partnership-driven distribution underperforms, direct-to-consumer outperforms,” with demand concentrated in “Polymarket, Robinhood, and Kalshi frontends (plus traditional sportsbooks).”

AI And Privacy

Qureshi argued crypto’s practical AI use remains narrow. “Primary AI use cases in crypto remain within software engineering and security. Everything else remains a prototype,” he wrote. “Wallet automation remains minimal.” He added: “AI agents will still not be ‘paying each other’ or spending any meaningful money in 2026.”

On spam and identity, he dismissed the near-term feasibility of a Worldcoin-style gate despite theoretical promise. “Worldcoin has verified 17 million identities—that’s 1 in 500 people,” Qureshi wrote. “Being at 1/500 distribution is way too small of an identity base for any service to transition to using Worldcoin as an identity gate.” He suggested an alternative path: “ZK Passports are probably more likely in the short-medium term, because much more of the world’s population as an NFC-enabled passport and can scan it with their phones.”

Asked about privacy as a major theme, Qureshi demurred. “I think privacy is going to be a laggard,” he wrote. “Zcash will likely do well because people want to believe, and there will be some adoption of private transactions on Arc, Tempo, etc.” Still, he returned to his overarching frame: “I predict mostly people will keep doing things in 2026 the way they’ve already been doing them.”

At press time, the total crypto market cap stood at $2.93 trillion.

Дальнейшее развитие крипторынка теперь определяют не розничные трейдеры и инвесторы, а институциональные игроки, заявил аналитик инвестиционного банка Cantor Fitzgerald Бретт Кноблаух (Brett Knoblaux).

Власти Южной Кореи отложили принятие закона о регулировании стейблкоинов — обсуждение ключевых положений перенесено на следующий год, поскольку правительство не может определиться, каким именно компаниям будет разрешено выпускать стейблкоины.

К концу 2026 года курс биткоина может превысить $150 000, однако темпы роста первой криптовалюты будут ниже, чем у альткоинов, заявил топ-менеджер венчурной компании Dragonfly Capital Хасиб Куреши (Hasib Qureshi).

On Monday, December 29, 2025, Michael Saylor’s Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) announced its latest Bitcoin purchase. The company had acquired over $100 million worth of the digital asset again, keeping in line with its consistent buying over the years. While Strategy’s large Bitcoin buys have often been a cause for celebration in the crypto community, not everyone believes that this is a good strategy. Mainly, world-renowned economist Peter Schiff has blasted the move, highlighting its profits so far as subpar.

Strategy’s Bitcoin Move Would Have Been Better With Any Other Asset

Schiff’s comments come hot on the heels of the Strategy announcement, showing a total of 1,229 BTC was bought at approximately $109 million. The average purchase price for the coins came out to around $88,568 once the purchase was done, adding to the already considerable Bitcoin holdings of the publicly-held company.

Less than 30 minutes after Strategy’s announcement, Peter Schiff took to the X (formerly Twitter) platform to share his thoughts on the move. Mainly, the economist is not impressed with how the company’s Bitcoin bet has played out so far, despite sinking over $50 billion into the digital asset.

Schiff points out that despite aggressively buying BTC over the last five years, Strategy’s profits sit at only 16%. Breaking this down over the number of years that the company has been buying Bitcoin, it averages out to around a 3% annual profit on the investment.

Given this, the economist believes that the company would’ve been better off if it had accumulated any other asset besides Bitcoin. Interestingly, the prices of other assets such as gold and silver have hit new all-time highs this year, while BTC has continued to struggle.

Breaking Down Strategy’s BTC Holdings

Presently, Strategy retains its title as the publicly-traded company with the highest amount of Bitcoin holdings. According to data from the data aggregation website, CoinGecko, Strategy currently holds 672,497 BTC, which accounts for 3.202% of the total Bitcoin supply.

The entire stack has cost the company a whopping $50.44 billion to accumulate, with an average price of $74,997 at the time of the last purchase. At a 16% profit margin so far, Strategy is currently sitting on over $8 billion in unrealized profits, down from its all-time high of $22 billion in profits when the Bitcoin price crossed $126,000 back in October.

Член комитета по финансовым услугам Палаты представителей США Максин Уотерс (Maxine Waters), принадлежащая к Демократической партии, призвала изучить действия Комиссии по ценным бумагам и биржам США (SEC) в отношении регулирования криптовалют.

Минюст России предложил наказывать за нелегальный майнинг штрафом до 1,5 млн рублей или двумя годами принудительных работ. При получении крупного дохода от добычи криптовалют или в составе группы — тюремное заключение до пяти лет.

С 2026 года вступят в силу новые правила приобретения цифровых финансовых активов (ЦФА). Квалифицированные и непрофессиональные инвесторы получат разные возможности для сделок, заявили в Банке России.

В первые девять месяцев 2025 года на американском рынке не появлялось новых спотовых криптовалютных ETF, однако с октября все поменялось. Количество биржевых фондов на альткоины стало расти из месяц в месяц. В чем же причина и что это за новые ETF?

Joseph Chalom, the CEO of Sharplink, has outlined an optimistic forecast for Ethereum’s (ETH) future, emphasizing a significant increase in the total value locked (TVL) within the network in the coming year. 

Stablecoin Expansion And Institutional Interest

According to a report from CoinMarketCap, Chalom anticipates that the stablecoin market will soar to $500 billion by December 2026. Currently, the total market capitalization for stablecoins stands at approximately $308.46 billion, suggesting a 62% growth from current figures. 

Given that Ethereum is responsible for processing over half of all stablecoin transactions across various blockchain networks, the projected expansion in stablecoin  issuance and transaction volume is set to significantly elevate the network’s TVL.

Chalom further predicts that the market for tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) will also witness substantial growth, potentially reaching a total value of $300 billion next year. 

This is expected to move beyond tokenizing individual securities and funds to encompass complete fund complexes, thereby increasing Ethereum’s relevance in the financial ecosystem.

Key to this expected growth is the increasing involvement of major financial institutions from traditional finance such as BlackRock, which has shown heightened interest in blockchain technologies over the past year. Chalom predicts that it could serve as a catalyst for moving significant assets onto Ethereum’s infrastructure.

Can Ethereum Overcome Price Challenges?

The rise in total value locked usually indicates increased network utilization, which can bolster market sentiment and may influence Ethereum price dynamics. Currently, data shows ETH’s TVL at approximately $68.20 billion.

Crypto analyst Benjamin Cowen recently expressed skepticism about Ethereum reaching new price highs in 2026, particularly in light of Bitcoin’s (BTC) market conditions. 

However, Chalom anticipates that sovereign wealth fund holdings and tokenization efforts on Ethereum could grow five- to tenfold in the coming year. 

This potential increase is attributed to competitive pressures that may encourage institutional investors, who have previously been hesitant about cryptocurrency exposure, to reconsider their strategies as peer adoption accelerates.

Moreover, Chalom believes that the integration of on-chain artificial intelligence (AI) agents and prediction markets will gain mainstream traction in 2026, further driving activity and adding value to the Ethereum ecosystem. 

Ultimately, Sharplink’s CEO stressed that the convergence of institutional interest from traditional finance firms, expanded applications, and the involvement of sovereign funds could significantly position Ethereum for impressive TVL growth in the near future.

Currently, Ethereum is trading at around $2,930, marking a 13% year-to-date decline for the leading altcoin. Compared to its all-time high of $4,964 reached earlier this year, the cryptocurrency is currently trading 40% below this level. 

Featured image from DALL-E, chart from TradingView.com