Prosecutors charged 23-year-old Brooklyn resident Ronald Spektor with stealing roughly $16 million in cryptocurrency from about 100 Coinbase users. He allegedly impersonated a Coinbase representative and used social engineering to pressure victims to transfer funds, with a judge setting bail at $500,000. Authorities reported asset seizures and said recovery efforts continue.

Rep. Min Byoung-dug of South Korea’s Democratic Party urged the government to institutionalize and expand the legal use of stablecoins to protect payment sovereignty. Speaking at the final session of the eighth Global Business Forum in Seoul, he said stablecoins are now essential for cross-border payments and trade, warning that delays could entrench reliance on dollar-pegged assets.

On Thursday, Poland's lower house approved an unchanged crypto bill that was vetoed last year, sending it to the Senate for review. The proposal seeks to align national rules with the EU's MiCA regime by mid-2026. A government spokesperson said the president recently received a confidential security briefing, which may raise the chances of final approval.

On 20 December 2025, the European Central Bank outlined plans to enable blockchain-based settlements in central bank money from 2026, while advancing technical preparations for a digital euro. The project aims to support cross-border payments and potential links with other CBDCs, with design choices such as privacy protections and holding caps still subject to EU legislative approval. Political debates over data retention, surveillance and anti-money laundering rules could shape how closely the digital euro can mirror the privacy of cash.

Base, a Coinbase-incubated Ethereum L2, closed 2025 with $82.6M in revenue, $4.3B in DeFi TVL, and $4.8B in stablecoin value. Across April, July, and December 2025, it reached Stage 1 decentralization, cut block times to 200 milliseconds, and launched a Solana bridge via Chainlink CCIP. The year also brought onchain loans, yield options, DEX access, builder programs, and new developer toolkits.

On Friday, the U.S. SEC said it obtained final consent judgments against Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang, and Nishad Singh tied to FTX's misuse of funds from 2019 to 2022. Ellison consented to a 10-year officer-and-director bar, Wang and Singh to eight-year bars; all three also face five-year conduct-based injunctions.

In its latest annual outlook, Galaxy Research forecast that dollar-pegged stablecoins could process more transaction volume in 2026 than the US Automated Clearing House system, citing current growth trends and pending regulation. The report also noted that stablecoin supply has been expanding at a 30%–40% compound annual rate and already handles volumes exceeding major card networks while approaching half of ACH activity. Galaxy's analysts further pointed to new offerings from firms such as Western Union, Sony Bank and SoFi as evidence of expanding stablecoin adoption.

In a statement on December 19, 2025, European Central Bank executive board member Piero Cipollone said the ECB will enable distributed ledger technology transactions to settle in central bank money starting in 2026. The central bank has largely completed technical work on a potential digital euro and moved into a readiness phase, while political debate intensifies over privacy safeguards and legislative approval. Lawmakers in the EU are now negotiating the legal framework amid concerns that wider anti-money laundering and data retention rules could challenge promised privacy protections.