Rising geopolitical friction between the United States and Iran is prompting investors to favor gold and other safe-haven assets while trimming exposure to equities and crypto. Analysts see potential for a sharp gold move and note that Bitcoin remains confined between $60,000 and $70,000 amid weak whale accumulation and ETF outflows. Capital flows in India and the United States highlight how macro uncertainty is reshaping portfolio allocations across gold products and spot Bitcoin ETFs.

A large leveraged ARC perpetuals long on Lighter unraveled after ARC fell around 6:00 pm ET on Wednesday, according to the platform. Auto-deleveraging engaged as the LLP briefly absorbed 200 million ARC worth $14.7 million; the trader lost about 8.2M USDC while LP losses were held near $75,000 under risk caps. Lighter later set a $40 million ARC open-interest limit and shifted the pair to a capped liquidity strategy with about $100,000 USDC.

South Korean lawmaker Kim Seung-won is drafting amendments to the Capital Market and Financial Investment Business Act and the Act on the Protection of Virtual Asset Users that would mandate disclosure by online "finfluencers." The proposal would require people who regularly promote or advise on financial products or virtual assets to reveal both their compensation and the type and amount of assets they hold, with potential penalties on par with market manipulation or insider trading.

According to Arkham, wallets attributed to Ethereum co‑founder Vitalik Buterin declined from about 241,000 ETH in early February to 224,000 ETH by Tuesday, a net outflow of roughly 17,000 ETH. In January, he said he had earmarked 16,384 ETH (about $45 million) to support privacy‑focused projects and related open hardware and verifiable software efforts.

Investor capital is rotating toward publicly listed crypto firms, per DWF Labs, which cites Memento Research showing over 80% of 2025 token launches trade below their TGE price with 50–70% drawdowns within about 90 days. Meanwhile, crypto IPO fundraising reached about $14.6 billion in 2025 and M&A topped $42.5 billion.

On a proposal debated in the Dutch parliament, lawmakers appear poised to overhaul the Box 3 asset tax by imposing annual levies on both realized and unrealized gains for assets such as stocks, bonds and cryptocurrencies. Officials argue the change is needed to address court rulings and prevent an estimated 2.3 billion euros in lost yearly revenue, while critics from the investment and crypto communities warn it could drive capital and talent out of the Netherlands.

In a Sunday post on X, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin urged adding a "garbage collection" function to cut protocol bloat stemming from perpetual backward compatibility. He warned that excessive code and complex cryptography weaken trustlessness and self-sovereignty. His proposal targets fewer lines of code, reduced reliance on advanced primitives, and more invariants.

According to Immunefi CEO Mitchell Amador, nearly 80% of crypto projects that suffer a major hack never fully recover, largely due to operational paralysis and lost trust during incident response. Chainalysis data shows 2025 crypto hack losses hit $3.4 billion, with the $1.4 billion Bybit breach helping drive 69% of losses by early December.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs booked $1.42 billion in net inflows over the past week, the strongest since early October, with roughly $754 million Tuesday and about $844 million Wednesday, then a $395 million outflow Friday. Ether ETFs were similarly front-loaded, adding approximately $479 million for the week after about $290 million Tuesday, $215 million Wednesday, and roughly $180 million in net outflows Friday.