Meta's stock climbed 5.7% in early trading Thursday after reports emerged that CEO Mark Zuckerberg intends to reduce metaverse funding by up to 30%. The cuts will target Horizon Worlds and the Quest VR division. Savings will be redirected toward AI hardware projects, including smart glasses and wearables.

Lighter, an Ethereum-based decentralized perpetual exchange valued at $1.5 billion, introduced spot market trading starting with ETH on Thursday. The platform processed $292.5 billion in trading volume during November, becoming the highest-volume perpetuals protocol that month. Lighter plans to add additional spot markets in the coming days.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said multiple sovereign wealth funds have been acquiring Bitcoin at price levels including $120,000, $100,000, and the $80,000 range. The purchases represent long-term strategic positions rather than short-term trades, according to Fink. Technical analysis shows Bitcoin remains within an ascending channel with potential upside toward $100,000 if key support levels hold.

MicroStrategy will not be compelled to liquidate its Bitcoin holdings even if removed from MSCI indexes, according to Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer at Bitwise. The company holds $60 billion in Bitcoin and $1.4 billion in cash, with no debt conversion scheduled until February 2027. Hougan emphasized that no mechanism exists to force cryptocurrency sales simply because the stock price falls below net asset value.

Monad's blockchain processes 2.2 million daily transactions and holds $277.5 million in DeFi total value locked since its mainnet launch. Data show 75% of assets bridged to the network have moved to other chains, according to WormholeScan. The MON token has declined 28% over the past week despite generating $100,000 in fees during its first seven days.

Strategy has sharply reduced its Bitcoin acquisition pace, purchasing only 135 BTC in December 2025 compared to 134,000 BTC at its 2024 peak. The company raised over $1.44 billion in equity to establish a dollar reserve covering preferred stock dividends and bond interest for 12 to 24 months. CryptoQuant data show monthly acquisitions declined from 134,000 BTC during the 2024 peak to 9,100 BTC in November 2025.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has authorized spot cryptocurrency trading on federally regulated U.S. futures exchanges. Bitnomial, a U.S.-based derivatives platform, will launch next week, offering retail and institutional investors access to spot, futures, and options trading under CFTC supervision. The move aligns with efforts to establish regulated alternatives to offshore platforms.

Bitcoin's failure to break through $94,000 on December 3 has left more than a quarter of circulating supply in unrealized loss. On-chain data show the cryptocurrency fell below the 0.75 cost-basis quantile in mid-November, a threshold where three-quarters of supply remains profitable. The current structure presents elevated risk as price remains below critical cost-basis levels identified by quantile analysis.