On December 18, 2025, BNB Chain said AWS customers can settle cloud invoices in BNB through the Better Payment Network, offering near‑instant and low‑cost settlement. The rollout includes integration into AWS billing workflows and, according to the announcement, could reduce fees by up to 70%. Separately, AWS GuardDuty reported a crypto‑mining campaign abusing EC2/ECS credentials.

EDENA Capital Partners has secured a $100 million structured investment from New York-based GEM to scale its government-approved digital securities infrastructure and launch Security Token Offering exchanges in Indonesia and Egypt. The Singapore-based blockchain firm plans to roll out a fully regulated STO marketplace in Indonesia in the first quarter of 2026, followed by Egypt later that year, listing tokenized assets such as real estate, carbon credits, corporate equity, bonds, and commodities. EDENA aims to support 20 to 30 STOs across both markets next year and targets operating in over 30 countries with more than $10 billion in tokenized assets by 2030.

On Wednesday, US spot Bitcoin ETFs took in roughly $457 million in net inflows, the strongest single-day tally since early November. On December 18, 2025, the report noted Fidelity attracted the largest share while BlackRock also saw gains, with cumulative ETF inflows above $57 billion and total assets exceeding $112 billion.

On December 18, 2025, the xStocks platform launched tokenized U.S. equity trading on the TON Blockchain directly inside the Telegram Wallet, enabling around 100 million users to buy and sell shares around the clock. Users can access tokenized stocks such as Tesla, the S&P 500 ETF, and Nvidia through a self-custodial wallet, while xStocks has already reached over $180 million in on-chain assets and nearly 50,000 wallet holders since its June listing. The project is also preparing deployments on additional blockchains as part of a broader infrastructure push for global capital markets.

On Dec. 17, Bitcoin jumped $3,000 in an hour to reclaim $90,000, wiping out $120 million in shorts, before falling to $86,000 as $200 million in longs were liquidated, swinging market cap by $140 billion in two hours. Glassnode's Dec. 17 analysis attributes the turmoil to thin liquidity, overhead supply between $93,000 and $120,000, and clustered December options expiries that are keeping price confined in an $81,000–$93,000 band rather than to excessive futures leverage.

On Wednesday, the SEC's Trading and Markets Division detailed how broker-dealers can custody tokenized stocks and bonds under Rule 15c3-3, requiring exclusive control of private keys and defined operational, security and governance measures. Commissioner Hester Peirce separately raised trading-venue questions as Nasdaq (Nov. 30), Securitize (Tuesday) and Coinbase (Thursday) advance tokenized equity initiatives.

XRP has fallen almost 50% from its multi-year peak at $3.66 to trade below $2, with several analysts flagging a bearish chart structure that could send the price toward $1. Veteran trader Peter Brandt pointed to a potential double top on the weekly chart, while other technical and onchain metrics highlighted key support zones around $1.78, $1.65 and near $1.07. Some Elliott Wave and fractal-based analyses also outlined scenarios in which XRP might revisit the $1.20–$1.35 and $0.60 areas before attempting a longer-term recovery toward $1.

The Walt Disney Company agreed to invest $1 billion in OpenAI and signed a three-year licensing arrangement that makes it Sora's first major content partner. The deal enables AI‑generated short videos and images featuring more than 200 characters from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars, while Disney adopts OpenAI's APIs and rolls out ChatGPT for internal use.