Infinex Founder Loses $50K Bet Over ETH 2025 Year-End Price

Crypto executive Kain Warwick is set to pay up $50,000 after betting that Ether would hit $25,000 in 2025, joining one of many market participants who overestimated the speed of Ether’s recovery after its dip in October. Ether (ETH) ended Dec. 31 trading at roughly $2,980, around 13.7% lower than where it started at the…

Solana Has Institutional Momentum With RWAs Heading Into 2026

Solana appears poised to expand from its memecoin-focused, retail-dominant network this year, after posting record real-world asset tokenization activity in December.  Data from RWA.xyz shows the value of tokenized RWAs on Solana increased nearly 10% over the last month to a record-high $873.3 million, while the number of Solana RWA token holders rose over 18.4%…

Ethereum’s Validator Entry Queue Has Flipped Exit Queue

Ethereum’s staking queue has flipped the exit line for the first time in six months, with almost twice as much ETH now lined up to be staked as ETH trying to leave the network. The entry queue for validators has roughly 745,619 Ether (ETH) with a nearly 13-day wait, while the exit line has around…

Crypto Sentiment Moves Out Of ‘Extreme Fear’ But Uncertainty Stays

A widely used crypto market sentiment indicator has shaken off its “extreme fear” rating as of Friday, returning to its highest levels in 21 days despite still trading under $90,000. The index, which measures overall crypto market sentiment, recorded a “fear” score of 29 in its Friday update, climbing out of the “extreme fear” zone…

CARF Transaction Reporting Begins in Participating Jurisdictions

Crypto investors across 48 countries will start to have their crypto wallet transaction data recorded for tax purposes this year, as the long-awaited Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework rolls out globally.  CARF, an international tax transparency framework developed by the OECD, officially goes into effect in 2027.  However, as of Jan. 1, crypto service providers in participating…

Base’s Creator Coin Experiment Meets Resistance After Shirley Launch

Coinbase and its Ethereum layer-2 Base are drawing pushback from traders and builders who argue that its creator token experiment failed to turn a viral social media moment into sustained onchain activity. The backlash came after YouTuber Nick Shirley launched a token on creator platform Zora. Shirley’s token briefly rode his online fame to about…

Can Solana Shed Its Memecoin Image in 2026?

Solana heads into 2026 facing the question of whether infrastructure upgrades and tokenized financial activity can push the network beyond its memecoin reputation. Solana kicked off 2025 at the height of the memecoin frenzy, with Solana (SOL) reaching a new all-time high of $293 on Jan. 19. As memecoin volumes cooled over the year, SOL…

Ethereum Co-founder Pitches dApps as Solution to 2025 Cloudflare Outage

Vitalik Buterin, one of the co-founders of the Ethereum blockchain, said decentralization applications (DApps) could mitigate failures in internet infrastructure, such as when internet services provider Cloudflare experienced a massive outage in November. In a Thursday X post, Buterin said Ethereum needed to do more to achieve its mission of “[building] the world computer that…

Bitcoin Options Are Not Capping BTC Price

Key takeaways: Covered calls gained traction as cash-and-carry returns collapsed, but data shows they are not structurally suppressing Bitcoin’s price. Stable put-to-call ratios and rising put demand suggest hedging and yield strategies coexist with bullish positioning. As Bitcoin (BTC) price entered a downtrend in November, traders began forming theories about why institutional inflows and corporate…

Compliance-Friendly Tools On The Rise

Crypto privacy entered the spotlight in 2025 as new technology clashed with regulators, a trend that is set to intensify in 2026 with developers pushing the envelope and legal battles approaching a conclusion. In its early days, Bitcoin (BTC) was often viewed as an anonymous payment tool despite its transparency. Since then, the introduction of…