Decentralized perpetual futures exchange Hyperliquid stated that a wallet flagged by the community for shorting and selling $HYPE is controlled by a former staff member dismissed in Q1 2024. On-chain observers had tracked the address’s large $HYPE balance, alleged TWAP-style selling and links to HyperEVM after the token’s launch. In response, Hyperliquid reiterated its code of conduct, including a ban on team trading $HYPE derivatives and a zero-tolerance policy toward insider trading.

Gemini Asia Pacific head Saad Ahmed said institutional investors now dictate how crypto markets digest shocks, focusing more on long-term positioning than daily price swings. He highlighted the November to December 2025 sell-off, when Bitcoin fell from near $100,000 to about $87,000 and Ethereum dropped from around $3,900 to roughly $2,745 before partially recovering, as an example of more disciplined risk management. Ahmed added that ETF flows, stablecoin activity and real-world asset usage are increasingly important signals of market health alongside on-chain fundamentals.

On Thursday, Terraform Labs’ court-appointed plan administrator Todd Snyder filed a federal lawsuit in Illinois seeking $4B in damages from Jump Trading, co-founder William DiSomma, and former Jump Crypto president Kanav Kariya. The complaint alleges Jump struck a secret deal to support TerraUSD’s peg, profited heavily from trading LUNA, and helped set the stage for the May 2022 collapse that erased about $40B in value before Terraform filed for bankruptcy in January 2024.

On December 18, 2025, PeckShield reported that a whale's multisig wallet was emptied of about $27.3M following a private key compromise. The drainer pushed roughly $12.6M (4,100 ETH) through Tornado Cash, retained about $2M in liquid assets, and controls a wallet that holds a leveraged Aave position with around $25M in ETH against roughly $12.3M in DAI debt.

Bitcoin drifted toward $86,000 on Thursday as Asian markets opened weaker following Wednesday's tech-led slide on Wall Street. A snapshot showed BTC at $86,575 (-1.1%), Ether at $2,832 (-4.2%), and XRP at $1.86 (-3.7%), with total crypto market value at $3 trillion (-1.5%).

On December 17, 2025, HashKey Holdings launched trading on HKEX, initially rising about 6% before slipping under the HK$6.68 IPO price. The offering raised roughly $206M and drew heavy demand, with institutional subscriptions about 5.5x and retail nearly 394x, while cornerstone investors included Fidelity and UBS.

The Bank of Canada has outlined that any future Canadian stablecoins must maintain a one-to-one peg with central bank money and be fully backed by high-quality liquid assets to ensure convertibility at par. Governor Tiff Macklem also called for clear, fee-free redemption terms and tied stablecoin oversight to broader payments and open banking modernization expected to advance by 2026.

Bitcoin climbed about 2% in Asian trading on Wednesday to around $87,000, while regional equities posted modest gains following a mixed US jobs report. Analysts highlighted record-low Bitcoin exchange reserves and upcoming US CPI data as key drivers for expectations on 2026 Federal Reserve rate cuts and a potential move toward $90,000.

According to on-chain data from Ember, a large AI Agent-focused wallet has exited a basket of agent tokens bought for $31.12M, receiving just $2.57M and realizing a loss of about $28.54M. Individual positions in AIXBT, FAI, NFTXBT, POLY, BOTTO and MAICRO dropped between 84% and 99% as the whale's sell orders hit thin order books.