On 18 December, a coalition of over 125 crypto firms and advocacy groups urged the US Senate Banking Committee to oppose expanding the GENIUS Act, challenging banking lobby efforts to limit stablecoin returns. Banks, in Capitol Hill briefings, warned of up to $6.6 trillion in deposits shifting to digital platforms. Companies named include Coinbase, Gemini and Kraken.

Terraform Labs’ bankruptcy administrator has filed a $4 billion lawsuit against Jump Crypto, accusing it of secretly supporting TerraUSD’s $1 peg through confidential agreements. The case unfolds against a stablecoin market with about USD 309 billion in supply and more than USD4 trillion in transaction volume, raising new questions about the role of market makers, regulation, and user protection.

On December 18, 2025, the U.S. SEC filed proposed final judgments against former FTX and Alameda executives Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang, and Nishad Singh. The settlements include permanent anti-fraud injunctions, a 10-year officer/director ban for Ellison, 8-year bans for Wang and Singh, and a further five-year conduct injunction.

On 18 December 2025, Fasttoken (FTN) surged nearly 200% within 24 hours, climbing from about $0.37 to above $1.30 amid broad altcoin weakness. The rebound followed a year in which FTN fell over 90% from early-2025 highs, while analysts cited oversold conditions, fading MEXC delisting fears, and thin liquidity as possible catalysts.

A renewed clampdown on domestic Bitcoin mining in China drove a sharp hashrate decline and a price slide to $86,000. The restrictions focused on Xinjiang forced large operations offline, removing about 100 EH/s of computing power within 24 hours and intensifying selling as miners sought liquidity for costs and relocation.

On Wednesday, Bitcoin miner Hut 8 revealed a $7 billion AI data centre lease with Fluidstack at its River Bend campus in Louisiana, supplying 245 megawatts of capacity over a 15-year base term. The deal, which could reach about $17.7 billion with extensions and includes Google as financial guarantor, sent Hut 8 shares up roughly 20 per cent in pre-market trading.

In December 2025, the Solana network reportedly handled a Distributed Denial-of-Service attack peaking at about 6 terabits per second without downtime or a meaningful rise in fees. Co-founders and infrastructure operators attributed this resilience to upgraded defences, validator clustering, the QUIC protocol, and local fee markets, as the validator set shifts toward larger professional operators.

On 12 December 2025, Tether proposed an all-cash deal to purchase Exor's entire 65.4% shareholding in Juventus Football Club, alongside a pledge to invest up to €1 billion in the club. The offer, which would have led to a subsequent public tender for remaining shares at the same price, has been unanimously rejected by Exor, cancelling the transaction. Tether had framed the move as a strategic expansion beyond stablecoins into elite sport, media and global fan markets.

YouTube has added PayPal's PYUSD as an opt in payout rail for eligible US creators, according to Fortune. The workflow issues earnings, makes them available via PayPal Hyperwallet, and lets creators cash out to PYUSD, with the stablecoin's market cap around $3.91 billion and YouTube's creator payments exceeding $100 billion in four years.