Bitcoin is trading around $85,600 after November CPI came in softer, while on December 18, 2025 the Bank of England cut rates and the ECB left key rates unchanged. A daily close below $85,000 risks a slide toward $83,000–$80,600, whereas reclaiming $90,200 would be an early sign of stabilization.

SoFi Bank introduced SoFiUSD on December 18, 2025, positioning a USD-pegged, fully reserved stablecoin for banks and fintechs, according to a company statement. The firm says it runs on a public, permissionless blockchain with near-instant, 24/7 settlement, and reserves are held in cash at the Federal Reserve with 1:1 redemption.

On December 18, 2025, Wall Street economists questioned the reliability of November's CPI after a six‑week government shutdown curtailed data collection. According to Cryptopolitan, headline inflation was 2.7% versus a 3.1% forecast, with core at 2.6% against 3.0%, figures the BLS compiled with extensive imputation. Markets initially reacted but the moves faded.

Claims of a renewed Xinjiang mining crackdown spread this week, but the Miner Weekly by TheMinerMag shows the Bitcoin hashrate drop was brief and overlapped with U.S. power curtailments. Most pools rebounded within days, leaving a net decline of roughly 20 exahashes per second versus early talk of approximately 100 EH/s.

On December 18, 2025, Chainlink announced a partnership with 24 major financial institutions to deploy an infrastructure aimed at improving corporate actions processing. The system uses the Chainlink oracle network, blockchains, and AI to extract, validate, and distribute corporate actions data across multiple chains. The initiative builds on a prior Phase 1 project and is moving into Phase 2, which targets faster, more accurate, and standardized delivery of corporate actions information for asset managers.

On Dec. 17, Intersect's Product Committee published the "Vision 2030" roadmap, setting strict Key Performance Indicators for Cardano, including 324 million annual transactions, 1 million monthly active wallets, and around $3 billion in TVL. The plan aims for at least 16 million ADA in yearly protocol revenue by 2030 and uses an illustrative $5 ADA price — about 500% above current levels — to show potential earnings, while shifting the network toward an enterprise-focused "operating system" model that relies heavily on Layer 2 infrastructure.

On 18 December 2025, Bitwise filed a proposal with U.S. regulators for a spot exchange-traded fund that would track the price of SUI, the native token of the Sui blockchain. The planned ETF would use Coinbase for custody and may include staking to earn network rewards, as competition among issuers in the altcoin ETF segment intensifies. Details such as fees, ticker, and listing venue have not yet been disclosed, and investor demand will likely determine the product's long-term viability.

Forward Industries has tokenized its SEC-registered FWDI shares on Solana via Superstate’s Opening Bell platform, making them usable as collateral in decentralized finance. Ex-US shareholders can move their NASDAQ-listed equity into allowlisted Solana wallets and post it on Kamino to borrow stablecoins while retaining exposure to the underlying stock.