Digital asset treasury companies face heightened scrutiny following a $45 billion contraction in crypto holdings during the fourth quarter. Industry participants defend the sector against claims of creating market selling pressure, with major treasury operators showing no evidence of liquidating positions despite holdings falling from $140 billion to $97 billion.

Decentralized finance lending totaled $40.99 billion at the end of the third quarter, a 54.84% quarterly increase, according to Galaxy Digital's research team. Combined with centralized platforms, total crypto-collateralized loans climbed to $65.37 billion, surpassing the previous record of $53.44 billion from Q4 2021. DeFi's market dominance over centralized venues rose to 62.71% by quarter-end.

Four researchers from Arbitrum developer Offchain Labs have challenged Vitalik Buterin's proposal to adopt RISC-V for Ethereum's execution layer. In a November 20 post on Ethereum Research, they argue WebAssembly (WASM) offers superior long-term benefits as Ethereum's smart contract format. The team supports reducing ZK proving costs but questions whether a single instruction set architecture can optimally serve both ZK-proving and smart contract delivery functions.

Bitcoin stabilized above $86,000 after a week of intense selling activity. Data show approximately 20,000 BTC—worth nearly $2 billion—moved to centralized exchanges over the past seven days, reflecting profit-taking behavior among holders. Exchange inflows peaked at roughly 81,000 BTC on November 21, the highest level since mid-July.

XRP reserves on Binance declined to approximately 2.785 billion tokens by November 12, 2025, marking near multi-month lows. Exchange-wide XRP balances have fallen roughly 3.4% since early October. JPMorgan analysts project $4.3 billion to $8.4 billion in potential inflows to spot XRP ETFs during their first year of trading.

Cardano suffered its first major chain split in eight years on November 21 after a malformed delegation transaction exploited a 2022 deserialization vulnerability. The network fragmented into two competing chains for several hours before converging through natural consensus by November 22. A developer publicly acknowledged causing the incident, while founder Charles Hoskinson's decision to involve the FBI prompted an IOG employee to resign over concerns about legal liability for coding errors.

Strategy has reaffirmed its long-term Bitcoin strategy despite a sharp market correction. The firm holds 649,870 BTC purchased at an average of $74,430, maintaining roughly 16% profitability even as Bitcoin fell nearly 9% over the past week. The company's chairman restated the firm's commitment to its holdings, while MSTR stock declined toward the $170 level.

Bitcoin climbed past $87,000 on November 23 after trading near $80,000 earlier in the day. The cryptocurrency remains down over 33% from its October peak of $126,000. Long-term holders are driving selling pressure as the market continues to face volatility, according to market analysts.