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In a fireside chat with Metaplanet CEO Simon Gerovich at BTC MENA 2025, Michael Saylor turned a technical conversation about Bitcoin treasuries into a direct pitch to the Middle East’s sovereign wealth funds and banks, outlining how a nation or large financial institution could attract tens of trillions of dollars and become the “Switzerland” of digital capital.

Saylor and Gerovich began by framing Bitcoin as “digital capital.” As Saylor put it, “Our company pursued a strategy of accumulating digital capital. Bitcoin is digital capital. What do you do when you have capital? You issue credit against it.” Both MicroStrategy and Metaplanet are building balance sheets of Bitcoin and then issuing perpetual preferred instruments as “digital credit” backed by that capital.

Gerovich described Japan as a massive but yield-starved market. “There’s $7 trillion of cash sitting on personal bank accounts, bank balance sheets earning nothing, and corporates have another $4 or $5 trillion.” A Japanese family that puts money in the bank gets “zero.” Even as deflation fades, investors remain “accustomed to zero” and are “desperately looking for yield.”

Metaplanet’s answer is to connect that idle capital to Bitcoin. It launched “Mercury,” a perpetual preferred paying 4.9% in yen with convertibility into equity, which Gerovich called “probably one of the cheapest call options on Bitcoin out there.” Its follow-up product, “Mars” – Metaplanet Adjustable Rate Securities – is designed as a high-yield, Bitcoin-backed instrument that Japanese investors can hold in their securities accounts as a kind of supercharged bank deposit.

Inside Saylor’s Bitcoin Talks With Sovereign Funds

Saylor used this as a template for the Middle East, explaining that he has been on an intensive tour of the region’s power centers. “I’ve been meeting with all the sovereign wealth funds. I’ve been meeting with, I don’t know, 50, 100 different investors, hedge funds, family office investors… I’ve been meeting with regulators in every jurisdiction.” His message is “very, very straightforward”: “We now have digital capital. Bitcoin is digital capital, is digital gold. On top of digital capital, we have a new asset class called digital credit. Digital credit strips the volatility from the capital and provides yield, income.”

To illustrate the appeal, he contrasted capital and credit. Giving a child $1 million of Manhattan land is pure capital with no cash flow. “Or you can give them a credit instrument that pays them $10,000 a month forever, starting now. And so most people want the credit instrument. They don’t want the capital instrument… They’d rather have 10% non-volatile than 30% volatile with no cash flows.” Treasury companies like MicroStrategy and Metaplanet “exist to convert capital into credit.”

Saylor then laid out the blueprint for any ambitious bank in the region: “Have the bank custody Bitcoin. Everybody talks about self-custody. Self-custody for the bank in the country. Buy Bitcoin, have your bank custody the Bitcoin, and then start to offer credit networks on top of the Bitcoin.” If a national bank extends loans such as “SOFR plus 50 basis point loans on Bitcoin,” he argued, then as Bitcoin’s market grows from $2 trillion to $20 trillion, that bank could attract “5% or 10% of it,” pulling in “a trillion dollars or a few trillion dollars” simply because “most big conventional regulated banks don’t handle Bitcoin.”

The “biggest idea” is to turn Bitcoin-backed credit into a bank account that outcompetes the entire global deposit system. By taking digital credit instruments like Stretch or Mars, placing them in a fund that is mostly credit with a currency buffer and reserve layer, Saylor envisions a regulated account that pays around 8% with “vol of zero.” In that setup, “I wire you my billions of dollars or tens of billions of dollars, and you pay me 8% interest every day, zero vol, in a regulated bank, powered by digital credit, which is in turn powered by a treasury company with 5x as much digital capital, over-collateralized.”

In such a regime, he argued, “you could presumably attract 20 trillion dollars or 50 trillion dollars.” For depositors, “the perfect product is a bank account with zero volatility that pays you 400 basis points more than the risk-free rate in your favorite currency.” For Saylor, that account is “the lightsaber of money, the laser beam of money, the nuclear fusion reactor of money.”

He framed it as an open race: “The question is, who wants to be the Switzerland of the 21st century and attract all the money in the world?” In his view, “the answer is going to be whoever appreciates money the most, wants the money the most, that understands technology the best, that is willing to take a courageous stance of conviction with a degree of clarity,” he said.

He concluded: “That is the opportunity, and all the conversations have been extraordinarily energetic, enthusiastic, and I couldn’t be more excited. I think it will happen somewhere in this region. We’ll see where.”

At press time, Bitcoin traded at $90,164.

Парламент Таджикистана одобрил поправки в Уголовный кодекс, ужесточающие наказание за незаконный майнинг. В УК будет добавлена статья №253(2) «Незаконное использование электроэнергии для производства виртуального актива», где прописаны основания для приговора к тюремному сроку.

С середины октября по конец ноября объемы торгов фьючерсами на токенизированные американские акции на криптобирже Bitget выросли на 4468%, а спотовых сделок — на 452%.

Following the Bitcoin price crash below $100,000 back in November, different bearish predictions have begun to make the rounds in the crypto community. For some, this crash signifies the end of the bull market, ushering in the dreaded bear market. While some of the predictions have been conservative, putting the pioneer cryptocurrency somewhere around $50,000 at the bottom, one analyst in particular has predicted a deeper crash, and this was done using the gold chart.

Why A Crash Could Be Coming For The Bitcoin Price

Crypto analyst The Great Martis took to X (formerly Twitter) to share their prediction of where the Bitcoin price is headed next. The chart shows a possible decline that could send Bitcoin moving below $20,000, before eventually reaching a bottom at around $15,000. Although this is not out of the ordinary for analysts to predict such crashes, the reason why Mathis believes this is possible is what is interesting.

The crypto analyst points out that the gold performance, which has seen the asset hitting new all-time highs this year, was being driven by speculation. Martis explains that the Fed’s intervention is something that will continue to drive the price of gold higher, and this could, in turn, continue to push down the Bitcoin price.

Furthermore, the analyst expects that the gold price will rise into the $12,000 territory, putting it in the same region that the Bitcoin price was in back in 2021. The interesting thing to note about Bitcoin in 2021 is that this was the year that the digital asset went on one of its most explosive rallies so far.

If Bitcoin continues to perform inversely to gold, then a rise to 5-digits for gold would mean a bearish market for Bitcoin. A crash to $15,000 would translate to a more than 70% decrease in price from the current level, and an almost 90% decline from its $126,000 all-time high.

So far, this year, gold has been the better performer of the two when compared side-by-side. For context, the gold price is already up over 55% in the year 2025; meanwhile, the Bitcoin price suffered a major 30% drop in price after hitting $126,000 back in October.

While both of these assets continue to lead in their respective sectors, gold continues to remain the standard for what investors consider a “safe” investment compared to Bitcoin, which is known for its wild price fluctuations.

Криптобиржа Bybit получила лицензию оператора платформы виртуальных активов (VAPO) от Управления по ценным бумагам и товарным рынкам Объединенных Арабских Эмиратов.

Комиссия по торговле товарными фьючерсами США (CFTC) разрешила организациям, которые принимают заказы на покупку или продажу фьючерсных контрактов, использовать биткоин, эфир и стейблкоин USDC в качестве залога при торговле деривативами.

Caroline Pham, the acting chair of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), has announced the launch of a pilot program allowing Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and USD Coin (USDC) to be utilized as collateral in US derivatives markets. 

New CFTC Guidance For Crypto

The pilot program was unveiled on Monday, accompanied by new guidance regarding the use of tokenized collateral. The CFTC’s Market Participants Division, Division of Market Oversight, and Division of Clearing and Risk outlined their stance on tokenized assets in today’s announcement, emphasizing that the agency’s regulations are technology-neutral. 

Key topics covered in the guidance include eligible tokenized assets, legal enforceability, custody arrangements, valuation methods, and operational risks. The new directives also encompass tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), like US Treasury securities and money market funds. 

In a move designed to provide regulatory clarity, the CFTC issued a no-action position regarding certain requirements for Futures Commission Merchants (FCMs) that accept non-securities crypto assets as customer margin collateral or that hold stablecoins in segregated accounts. 

This position aims to promote a clearer understanding of the application of segregation and capital requirements for FCMs integrating digital assets into their operations.

CFTC Withdraws Outdated Advisory

Under this pilot program, FCMs will be permitted to accept BTC, ETH, and USDC as margin collateral for an initial three-month period. During this time, the firms must provide weekly reports on the amount of digital assets held in customer accounts, detailing each asset type. 

Additionally, they are required to inform CFTC staff of any significant issues that arise concerning the use of these digital assets as collateral. 

The CFTC has also withdrawn Staff Advisory No. 20-34, which previously restricted FCMs from accepting cryptocurrencies as customer collateral. 

The statement asserts that the advisory had become outdated due to the substantial advancements in the digital asset landscape and the enactment of the GENIUS Act, making it no longer relevant. Acting Chair Pham emphasized the importance of these changes, stating:

Under my leadership this year, the CFTC has led the way forward into America’s Golden Age of Innovation and Crypto. This imperative has never been more important given recent customer losses on non-U.S. crypto exchanges. Americans deserve safe U.S. markets as an alternative to offshore platforms.” 

Pham added that the initiative to allow spot crypto trading on CFTC-registered exchanges and the establishment of a digital assets pilot program set clear guardrails for protecting customer assets, while enhancing the monitoring and reporting capabilities of the CFTC.

Through these initiatives, Pham aims to provide regulatory clarity for tokenized collateral related to real-world assets and respond to the needs of the broader cryptocurrency market.

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

Американская компания Circle, выпускающая стейблкоины USDC, получила лицензию поставщика финансовых услуг Международного финансового центра Абу-Даби (ADGM).

Инвестиционный директор компании Bitwise Мэтт Хоуган (Matt Hougan) предположил, что в следующем десятилетии рынок криптовалют вырастет в 10–20 раз, причем без особого напряжения.

Руководитель Управления контролера денежного обращения Министерства финансов США (OCC) Джонатан Гулд (Jonathan Gould) заявил, что криптокомпании, претендующие на банковскую лицензию, должны регулироваться по аналогии с остальными финансовыми учреждениями.

In the wake of the GENIUS Act, which was signed into law by President Donald Trump in July, attention is now turning to the CLARITY Act, commonly known as the crypto market structure bill. This legislation has encountered substantial delays, exacerbated by the recent government shutdown and a lack of consensus in Congress.

Bank Leaders To Engage With Congress On Key Crypto Topics

This week, the CEOs of Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America are scheduled to meet with both Republican and Democratic senators to discuss the evolving legislation surrounding crypto market structure. 

The meetings are set for Thursday, and congressional staff have indicated that the CEOs would welcome the chance to share insights on US Global Systemically Important Bank (GSIB) market structure priorities.

The bank leaders are anticipated to hold separate discussions with lawmakers from both parties, emphasizing collaboration to shape effective policies that position the United States as a leader in crypto assets. Among the topics on the agenda are bank permissibility, interest payments, and concerns surrounding illicit finance. 

Senate Faces Hurdles

Recent updates on social media platform X (previously Twitter) from Eleanor Terret of Crypto In America, also indicate that obtaining a markup for the crypto market structure bill before the Christmas break poses challenges. 

Senator Mark Warner has expressed concerns about pending language from the White House regarding two critical components of the bill—ethics and quorum. 

Warner noted the importance of addressing these issues thoughtfully, stating that bipartisan discussions are ongoing, yet productive progress is essential.

The Senate’s approach to the legislation is further complicated by its division into two committees: the Banking Committee, which oversees securities laws, and the Agriculture Committee, which focuses on commodities law. 

Both committees have released drafts of their work during the fall, with markup sessions—the process for voting on amendments before a full Senate vote—upcoming. However, both committees are proceeding cautiously due to unresolved issues.

Senators Demand Conflict Of Interest Provisions

The most pressing concerns include the treatment of stablecoin yields, potential conflicts of interest, and the regulatory approach to decentralized finance (DeFi). 

Some Democratic senators have indicated that they will not support the legislation unless it includes provisions addressing any possible conflicts relating to the President’s family and their business involvements in the crypto realm. 

Moreover, while market structure legislation primarily targets centralized platforms managing user funds, there is a push from the traditional finance sector to classify virtually all crypto-related entities, including developers and validators, as intermediaries.

Market analyst MartyParty provided an encouraging update on December 4, noting that the bipartisan crypto market structure bill is gaining momentum in Congress. 

A markup session with the Senate Banking Committee has been tentatively scheduled for December 17-18, just prior to the holiday recess.

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

22-летний житель американского штата Калифорния Эван Танжман (Evan Tangeman) признал вину в отмывании денег для группы преступников, похитивших 4100 биткоинов.

Ripple has become the most aggressively structured bet in blue-chip crypto after a group of major Wall Street firms wired about $500 million into the company in November, lifting its valuation to roughly $40 billion and making it one of the highest-valued private players in the sector. Bloomberg reported that Ripple’s share sale brought in some of the biggest names of Wall Street but only after investors secured a suite of downside protections.

Wall Street Goes All-In On Ripple

The investor line-up reads like a who’s who of modern market structure: Citadel Securities, Fortress Investment Group, Marshall Wace, Brevan Howard–linked vehicles, Galaxy Digital and Pantera Capital all participated, treating the round at least as much as a structured credit trade as a venture bet.

According to multiple accounts of the deal, several funds underwrote Ripple essentially as a concentrated exposure to XRP itself. Bloomberg’s reporting states that multiple investors concluded at least 90% of Ripple’s net asset value was tied to XRP, with the company controlling about $124 billion of the token at market prices in July.

That XRP cushion has already been tested. XRP is down roughly 40% from its mid-July peak and about 15–16% since late October, yet even after that drawdown, estimates in deal coverage still put the company’s XRP treasury in the tens of billions of dollars, with a large portion locked in escrow and released gradually over time.

The protection that Wall Street insisted on has become the defining feature of the deal. Investors secured the right to sell their shares back to Ripple after three or four years at a guaranteed 10% annualized return, unless the company has gone public by then.

Ripple, conversely, can force a buyback in those same windows only by delivering about 25% annually. On top of that, the funds negotiated a liquidation preference, giving them priority over legacy shareholders in a sale or insolvency.

The numbers involved are non-trivial. FinTech Weekly estimates that if the put option were exercised in full at the four-year mark, Ripple’s cash outlay would approach $700 million–$730 million, irrespective of operating performance or token prices at the time. Those obligations sit alongside an already heavy capital agenda: Ripple has agreed to buy prime-brokerage platform Hidden Road for roughly $1.3 billion and corporate-treasury specialist GTreasury for about $1 billion, while also confirming it has repurchased more than 25% of its outstanding shares.

Banks and trading desks are now treating the November round as a new reference point for crypto credit risk. FinTech Weekly reports that “those terms are now shaping how banks, funds, and trading desks assess Ripple’s balance sheet, exit risk, and future liquidity,” with the three- and four-year exit windows being modeled explicitly alongside XRP price scenarios and rate curves.

Ripple’s management maintains there is “no plan, no timeline” for an IPO, but the structure of the deal effectively date-stamps its private capital: either the company lists or finds new liquidity on favorable terms before the put windows open, or it must fund a secured, fixed-return exit for some of the most sophisticated players on Wall Street.

At press time, XRP traded at $2.0498.

За год общие балансы первой криптовалюты на централизованных биржах снизились на 403 200 BTC. Это является положительным сигналом, считают аналитики платформы Santiment.

Just a week after announcing its $1.44 billion USD Reserve, Strategy has made a Bitcoin purchase of nearly $1 billion, one of the largest for 2025.

Strategy Has Made Its Ninth Largest Bitcoin Buy Of The Year

In a new post on X, Strategy co-founder and chairman Michael Saylor has shared info related to the latest routine Monday Bitcoin purchase made by the treasury company.

While the timing of the buy is routine, its scale is not. In total, Strategy has added 10,624 BTC to its holdings with the acquisition. This is the biggest purchase since July’s 21,021 BTC mega-buy.

The new acquisition has cost the firm $90,615 per token or $962.7 million in total. In USD terms, this is the ninth largest addition to the company’s Bitcoin reserves.

This big purchase has come a week after Strategy announced a new shift for the company with its $1.44 billion USD reserve. Saylor said that the reserve will better position the firm to navigate short-term volatility.

The announcement was also accompanied by the usual Monday Bitcoin buy, but at just 130 tokens, it was a relatively small one. If the latest acquisition is to go by, however, the USD reserve doesn’t seem to be stopping Strategy in hoarding more of the cryptocurrency.

According to the filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the new buy, which occurred in the period between December 1st and 7th, was funded using sales of the firm’s STRD and MSTR at-the-market (ATM) stock offerings.

Strategy now holds a total of 660,624 BTC, with an average cost basis of $74,696 per coin or total investment of $49.35 billion. At the current price of the asset, the Bitcoin treasury company’s holdings are worth about $59.68 billion, which means that it’s sitting on a profit of nearly 21% right now.

In some other news, while Strategy has continued its Bitcoin accumulation, the same hasn’t been true for another side of the sector: the spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

The spot ETFs refer to investment vehicles that allow investors to gain indirect exposure to BTC. That is, the funds hold the cryptocurrency on behalf of the investors, enabling them to invest into the asset without having to bother with the on-chain side of things.

Since mid-October, the US Bitcoin spot ETFs have mostly faced waves of net outflows as the cryptocurrency’s price has followed a bearish trajectory. The last week of November registered a small positive netflow, however, breaking a streak of four consecutive weeks of outflows.

This turnaround didn’t last, though, with the latest week once again ending with net outflows, as the below chart from SoSoValue shows.

The outflows were only modest, coming out at about $87.8 million, but still indicate lingering pessimism in the market.

BTC Price

Bitcoin broke above $92,000 earlier in the day, but the coin has since faced a pullback as it’s now back at $89,900.

Глобальная бычья структура рынка биткоина сохранилась, но сейчас он перешел в тактически хрупкую стадию, заявил аналитик платформы CryptoQuant Аксель Адлер младший (Axel Adler Jr).

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) concluded its Biden-era probe into DeFi platform Ondo Finance, and whether its tokenized products complied with federal securities laws, without any charges, following the Trump administration’s pro-industry approach and focus on tokenization.

Case Closes: SEC Ends Ondo Finance Probe

On Monday, Ondo Finance announced it had received formal notice that the US SEC’s two-year investigation into the platform, which started during the Biden administration, had concluded in late November with no charges.

The platform now joins the list of crypto companies that have seen their cases and probes dismissed or closed without any enforcement actions this year, including Gemini, Kraken, Ripple, Coinbase, and Uniswap Labs.

The SEC initiated the probe in 2024 to examine whether firms’ tokenization of Real-World Assets (RWA) complied with federal securities laws, the platform explained. Additionally, it sought to determine whether the ONDO token was a security.

“Ondo’s growth and leadership in the emerging tokenization category made us a focus, but not a justified target,” the announcement added. At the time, the US regulatory environment was characterized by a “regulation by enforcement” approach, which led to caution and confusion.

Nonetheless, they “remained steadfast in its conviction that regulated, transparent tokenization models like Ondo’s are not only compatible with investor-protection principles, but can strengthen them.”

To Ondo Finance, this marks a “meaningful milestone” for the broader tokenization industry, which will push innovation, compliance, security, and investor protection forward, as the sector gains momentum and becomes a priority on the federal agency’s agenda.

It’s worth noting that Ondo has solidified its position as a leader in the RWA sector with strategic partnerships, expansions, and the launch of its own Layer-1 blockchain, which aims to bridge the gap between traditional finance and decentralized finance.

As reported by Bitcoinist, the firm aims to advance its mission to “democratize” access to high-quality US financial assets and ensure tokenized assets move seamlessly across major blockchains.

A New Chapter For Tokenized Securities

In the Monday statement, the platform also highlighted that the SEC’s decision reflects a broader shift in US policy, with regulators reassessing the methods used during the Biden era for the crypto industry. Earlier this year, a White House report recognized the sector as foundational to the future of the global financial system and named Ondo Finance among the key players.

Notably, the regulatory agency has added tokenization to its formal agenda. In the SEC’s Investor Advisory Committee meeting last week, the regulatory agency affirmed it is evaluating tokenization to modernize the issuance, trading, and settlement of public equities.

In his remarks, SEC chairman Paul Atkins stated, “Distributed ledger technology and the tokenization of financial assets, including securities, have the potential to transform our capital markets. Our financial markets have long been the envy of the world, and to ensure that they remain so, U.S. firms and investors must have the opportunity to leverage this technology as they lead the future of global capital markets.”

Atkins added that the agency’s role is to enable market participants to operate and innovate under clear guardrails, ensuring that the US markets remain the most dynamic, transparent, and trusted in the world.

“The resolution of the SEC inquiry marks the end of one chapter for Ondo and the beginning of another. Put simply, the time is now for tokenized securities to become a core part of U.S. capital markets. The future of global finance, including U.S. capital markets, will be onchain and Ondo will help lead that transition,” the announcement concluded.

Комиссия по ценным бумагам и биржам США (SEC) завершила двухлетнее расследование в отношении криптопроекта Ondo Finance, ориентированного на токенизацию реальных активов, без предъявления ему обвинений.

В 2026 году в России будет введена уголовная ответственность за незаконный майнинг, заявил на Совете по стратегическому развитию и национальным проектам вице-премьер Александр Новак.

Digital asset exchange Coinbase has restarted crypto trading in India after a two-year absence, with fiat deposits planned to arrive in 2026.

Coinbase Has Returned To India For The First Time Since 2023

As reported by TechCrunch, Coinbase has resumed user onboarding in India for the first time since pulling out of the country back in 2023, more than two years ago. The American crypto exchange ranks as the largest public digital asset company in the world, hosting around $516 billion in assets on its platform.

Initially, the exchange first entered India in 2022, but only a few days after beginning services, it had to suspend UPI payments. UPI, short for Unified Payments Interface, is the most widely adopted real-time digital payments instrument in India. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) had said shortly after Coinbase’s launch that it wasn’t aware of any crypto exchange using UPI.

With UPI access gone, Coinbase users no longer had a way to purchase digital assets on the platform using fiat. The exchange stopped new user signups in June 2023, with a complete discontinuation of services happening in September 2023.

“We had millions of customers in India, historically, and we took a very clear stance to off-board those customers entirely from overseas entities, where they were domiciled and regulated,” said Coinbase’s APAC director, John O’Loghlen, at India Blockchain Week (IBW). O’Loghlen added that the decision to pull out didn’t come without hesitation.

Fast-forward to 2025, and Coinbase announced in March that it had registered with India’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), allowing it to provide crypto services in the country. The platform opened in early access in October, and now, it has seen a full public launch. So far, users can only access crypto-to-crypto trading, but according to O’Loghlen, a fiat on-ramp is planned to become available next year. This would allow users to buy digital assets using the Indian Rupee (INR).

While India isn’t closed off to cryptocurrencies like its northern neighbor, China, it still has a relatively strict digital-asset regulation regime. The nation collects a 30% tax on investor crypto profits and allows for no offsets against losses. Additionally, it charges a 1% Tax Deducted at Source (TDS) on all transactions, as a method of tracking digital asset activity.

Naturally, this taxation regime isn’t ideal for crypto companies, as it directly affects adoption. O’Loghlen said that Coinbase is hoping the Indian government will relax the tax to make it more convenient for investors to hold digital assets.

Reopening its exchange isn’t the only move that Coinbase has made in the subcontinent recently. As announced on its blog, the platform has made an investment in Indian crypto exchange CoinDCX. “Taken together, these steps reflect a clear commitment: we believe India and its neighbors will help shape the future of the global onchain economy,” noted the post.

Bitcoin Price

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading around $91,800, up more than 7% over the last week.