📊 Stablecoin flows: where liquidity is moving

💵 Over the past week, capital in stablecoins (USDT + USDC) across the top 15 blockchains shows a clear shift. Liquidity is actively migrating from Solana, Stable, and Tron toward TON and Ethereum.

Top inflows:

🟢 TON: +$509M
🟢 Ethereum: +$171M

Top outflows:

🔴 Solana: –$507M
🔴 Tron: –$334M
🔴 Base: –$191M
🔴 Hyperliquid: –$80M

🛠 Bitcoin mining vs local residents in Texas

🐄 In Hood County, Texas, a long-running conflict between locals and mining company MARA has escalated into a lawsuit.

Residents complain about constant industrial noise, health issues, and falling property values, while the company insists its operations are legal and bring economic benefits to the region. 💵

An attempt by residents to gain city status and introduce strict noise limits failed in a local vote. 🤷

The case highlights the often overlooked social costs of rapid crypto mining expansion in the US — where economic growth and community impact are increasingly colliding.

🐋 CryptoQuant: whales stop selling BTC

🔎 According to CryptoQuant, Bitcoin whales have largely stopped offloading coins, with selling pressure dropping to near-zero.

Large holders were actively taking profits during BTC’s decline from $124,000 to $84,000, but that phase now appears to be over. 💪

The market has shifted into a stabilization phase, suggesting reduced downside pressure and a more balanced supply–demand dynamic in the short term. 📊

🐃 Déjà vu on the BTC chart?

🕵️‍♂️ Analyst Timothy Peterson compares the current Bitcoin price action to $16,000 at the end of 2022. According to his charts, the market is showing an almost identical pattern of December weakness.

If history repeats itself, a post–January 7 rally could follow — similar to what we saw in early 2023. The thesis is based on long-term seasonality and recurring market cycles. 🎄

Not a guarantee, but a familiar setup worth watching. 🧐

🎼 Bitcoin turns into music in Brazil 🇧🇷

An experimental orchestral project in Brazil has been approved to turn Bitcoin price data into live music. 🙀

🎶📈 During the concert in Brasília, an algorithm will track BTC price movements and technical data in real time, converting volatility into melody, rhythm, and harmony as the orchestra performs live.

The goal is to give the audience an audible experience of Bitcoin’s market behavior, blending art, math, economics, and physics.

Altseason canceled? Not so fast 👀

📝 According to a market overview from market maker Wintermute, retail investors are rotating out of altcoins and back into BTC and ETH, while institutions have been steadily accumulating Bitcoin and Ethereum since summer.

Key points:

▪️ BTC dominance has been rising throughout the second half of the year
▪️ Altcoins are under pressure from large token unlocks
▪️ Capital is concentrating mainly in BTC and ETH
▪️ Holiday season + low liquidity = sideways market

Conclusion: An altseason is still possible, but not right now. First, BTC needs to reclaim higher levels and show strength. Short term: chop and liquidation-driven volatility. Mid term: institutions remain the main growth driver.🚀

🐳 Reality check for VC valuations

🐃 During bull markets, venture investors often push crypto project valuations higher on hype and momentum. But when the market cools, these projects face a harsh reality check: public market caps fall far below their earlier private valuations. 👀

📉 The recent downturn clearly exposed the growing gap between VC estimates and real market prices. As liquidity dries up and speculation fades, only projects with real traction and sustainable economics manage to hold value — the rest are repriced by the market. 🤷

🚨 Trust Wallet browser extension hack — what we know so far

📝 Reports started spreading on X about users losing funds right after authorizing the Trust Wallet browser extension. Wallets were drained and funds sent to unknown addresses. Initial losses were estimated at ~$2M, but the damage has now exceeded $6M with hundreds of victims. 🙀

🔍 What happened

▪️The issue is linked to Trust Wallet browser extension v2.68.
▪️Malicious code was found sending wallet data to a fake domain (metrics-trustwallet․com), registered just days before the attack.
▪️The malware appears to trigger when importing a seed phrase, though other scenarios may also be affected.

📢 Official Trust Wallet statement

▪️Only browser extension v2.68 is affected.
▪️Users must disable v2.68 immediately and update to v2.69.
▪️Mobile app users and other versions are NOT affected.
▪️Update only via the official Chrome Web Store link.

🔥 CZ (he is owner TW) stated that Trust Wallet will compensate affected users.

🔨 Bitcoin network hash rate since Christmas 2009 has grown 122 trillion times — from 9 MH/s to 1.1 ZH/s!

⚡️ That’s an absolutely insane computing power, crunching mind-boggling calculations every second.

💡 Next time your neighbor asks “what backs BTC?” — just show them this number.

🎄 Bitcoin Christmas Prices: A Trip Through Time 💸

Every Christmas, BTC tells a different story. From cents to five figures — here’s how Bitcoin has grown over the years 👇

📆 BTC price on Christmas:

• 2010 — $0.25 🤯
• 2011 — $4
• 2012 — $13
• 2013 — $682
• 2014 — $319
• 2015 — $456
• 2016 — $896
• 2017 — $14,027 🚀
• 2018 — $3,815 😬
• 2019 — $7,275
• 2020 — $24,665
• 2021 — $50,430 🔥
• 2022 — $16,831 ❄️
• 2023 — $43,665
• 2024 — $98,200 🧨
• 2025 — $87,350

🎅 Moral of the story: volatility is temporary, Bitcoin’s long-term trend is not.

HODLers know — Christmas hits different when you zoom out 🎄📈

🛍 Don’t rush to bury Bitcoin

🔎 Zooming out beats watching short-term noise. If we look at 10-year average annual returns (CAGR) as of Dec 2025, the picture is pretty clear:

🟠 Bitcoin: ~70% per year
🟡 Gold: ~15% per year
🔵 S&P 500: ~13% per year

Yes, BTC is volatile in the short term — corrections, fear, and shakeouts are part of the game. But over a 5+ year horizon, Bitcoin has consistently outperformed traditional assets by a wide margin.

📌 Bottom line: volatility doesn’t cancel long-term dominance. Time in the market still matters more than timing the market.

Perspective matters in crypto 👀

We feel bearish because we compare current prices to the latest ATH. But a healthier way to look at the market is through yearly lows, not recent highs.

📌 Example:

▪️2024 yearly low: $38,505
▪️2025 low: ~$74,434

That’s +128% from 2024 yearly bottom 🚀

💡 Takeaway:

Short-term pullbacks look scary only when viewed from the top. Zoom out, and Bitcoin is still massively up relative to its annual lows.

Sometimes the problem isn’t the price — it’s the perspective 🧐📊

🔎 In its annual report, Messari analysts highlights a clear shift from past-cycle hype to hard economic reality

Key takeaways:

1️⃣ BTC remains the only true “monetary” asset in crypto — the market runs back to it during fear.
2️⃣ Most L1 altcoins will keep underperforming BTC: fast and cheap ≠ trusted as money.
3️⃣ ETH is institutionally understandable, but often trades like a leveraged version of BTC.
4️⃣ Stablecoins are the real mass use case: payments and settlements, not flashy narratives.
5️⃣ Tokens without clear economics are punished — promises no longer sell.
6️⃣ DeFi is maturing: less fairy tales about APY, more real revenue from fees, spreads, and funding.

📌 Messari’s conclusion: crypto is turning into financial infrastructure, not a story of endless growth. By 2026, only assets with trust, sustainable demand, and real value capture will survive — the market is no longer giving “belief credit.” 🏗

👨‍🎨 Tom Lee is bullish on ETH… again

Bitmine CEO Tom Lee said on CNBC that ETH could rally to $7,000–$9,000 by early 2026. 👀

And if tokenization really takes off, he believes $20,000 ETH is on the table. 🚀

Sounds inspiring — until you remember that Bitmine is currently sitting on an unrealized ~$3.5B loss from its ETH investments 😁

When you’re that deep underwater, optimism comes naturally.

The irony? The analytics firm where Tom is Chief Investment Officer also allows for a scenario where ETH drops below $2,000. 😏

Bullish on TV, cautious in the models.
Crypto never changes.

💡 Bitcoin dip = tax hack?

While the S&P 500 keeps printing new ATHs, Bitcoin is down ~30% from its peak — and that drop turned into a tax opportunity for US investors.

📊 The trick is called tax-loss harvesting:

▪️If your stocks made +$10,000, you owe roughly $2–3k in taxes.
▪️But if you sell BTC at a -$10,000 loss, that loss can offset the stock gains.
▪️Result: tax bill goes to zero.

🔥 The best part? You can buy BTC back immediately — even a minute later. No waiting period.

📉 With stocks, this doesn’t work:

▪️The IRS enforces a 31-day “wash sale” rule for securities.
▪️Bitcoin isn’t classified as a security, but as property, so the rule doesn’t apply.

🧠 Net effect: BTC stays in your portfolio, but the tax burden disappears.

Sometimes a dip isn’t pain — it’s a strategy.

🔼 RWA beats AI in returns this year

According to CoinGecko data, the most profitable crypto narrative of 2024 was AI, delivering an insane +2,939%, even outperforming memecoins. 🚀

🥇 This year the picture has changed.
AI hype is harder to sustain, while RWA (Real World Assets) keeps growing steadily and has taken the lead with +185% YTD.

📉 Fewer flashy launches, more real adoption — tokenization is quietly gaining momentum while speculative narratives cool off.

🤔 The big question: which sector will dominate next year?