On New Year's Day, trader Vida reportedly earned over $1.5 million by trading around an abnormal $26 million bid wall on Binance for the small-cap token BROCCOLI714. Vida shifted from an arbitrage hedge to directional longs and later shorts as Binance's circuit breakers distorted spot-futures prices and the bid wall disappeared. The episode raised questions about the source of the orders and how the exchange's risk controls functioned under extreme conditions.

In 2025, Ethereum posted record network activity, yet ETH fell 10% year-to-date under $3000 and the ETH/BTC ratio dropped 6%. Layer-2 revenues totaled $129.17 million, with only around $10 million paid to the mainnet, leaving $119 million to operators; Base generated more than $75 million, nearly 60% of the sector. The Dencun upgrade cut fees and weakened burn-driven support for ETH.

In 2025, Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) bought about 225,027 BTC, lifting its treasury to roughly 672,497 BTC. The firm ended the year with a $48.3 billion market cap against a $59.2 billion valuation for its Bitcoin holdings, while short interest reached 29.14 million shares on Dec. 15. Post-halving issuance was estimated at 164,000 coins.

CoinShares said XRP investment products drew about $70.2 million in the final week of December 2025, lifting monthly inflows above $424 million, while Bitcoin and Ethereum funds saw $25 million and $241 million in outflows. CryptoSlate data showed XRP near $1.87 and down 15% for the month as US-listed spot products, launched mid-October, amassed over $1 billion in net inflows, tightening tradable supply via custodial cold storage.

For the first time in six months, Ethereum's validator entry line exceeds exits. According to the Ethereum Validator Queue tracker, about 734,299 ETH await activation with a nearly two‑week delay, versus roughly 343,179 ETH in the exit queue with a six‑day wait, after BitMine submitted 342,560 ETH over the past 48 hours.

On Dec. 24, XRPL Labs lead software engineer Denis Angell announced that the XRP Ledger’s AlphaNet has integrated post-quantum cryptography and native smart contracts. The upgrade replaces elliptic curve signatures with the NIST-standardized ML-DSA (CRYSTALS-Dilithium) scheme, introducing Quantum Accounts, Transactions, and Consensus while significantly increasing signature size to about 2,420 bytes. Alongside enhanced quantum resistance, the update brings base-layer smart contract capabilities designed to expand XRPL’s DeFi ecosystem beyond payments.

In 2025, data from Memento Research shows that 118 major token generation events took place and 100 of those tokens, or 84.7%, now trade beneath their opening fully diluted valuations, with the median drawdown at 71%. Analysts link this to a "low float, high FDV" launch model, a liquidity vacuum created by ETF-driven flows into Bitcoin and Ethereum, and a shift in institutional behavior as liquid funds reportedly stopped buying new tokens at TGE over two years ago.

In Q4 2025, on-chain metrics and market flows point to a Bitcoin demand gap, with US spot ETFs moving to net redemptions and aggregate holdings down by roughly 24,000 BTC. Analysts citing CryptoQuant and Alphractal describe a "bear season", while price analogs from Fidelity's Jurrien Timmer highlight support near $65,000–$75,000.

In early October 2025, Bitcoin reached a record $126,223 before a sharp Oct. 10 deleveraging wiped out about $20 billion in leveraged positions and drove a 30% price drop. Since then, exchange volumes and market depth have fallen, with data showing a roughly 30% slide in aggregated 2% depth from 2025 highs and more than $5 billion redeemed from U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs. With Binance's 1% order book depth shrinking from over $600 million in October to under $400 million, Bitcoin is now trading below $90,000 in a structurally thinner market. At 12:14 pm UTC on Dec. 20, 2025, Bitcoin was priced at $88,279.08, with a market cap of $1.76 trillion.