In the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), regional authorities are considering building cryptocurrency mining farms at the Ulugurskoye and Ergedzheyskoye gas fields operated by Ulugurneftegaz, a joint venture of Alrosa and Sakhatransneftegaz. The plan seeks to use large local gas reserves to power coin minting facilities, as Russia promotes relocating miners to remote northern regions with surplus energy and colder climates to ease pressure on grids in other areas.

In 2025, Dfinity Foundation vice president Lomesh Dutta told Cointelegraph that AI-powered no-code apps on decentralized blockchains could weaken AWS cloud dominance and cut dependence on centralized servers. AWS outages in April and on Oct. 20 disrupted Binance, KuCoin, MEXC and Coinbase for about 15 hours, highlighting the gap between crypto’s decentralization narrative and its underlying infrastructure.

On December 18, 2025, the U.S. SEC filed proposed final judgments against former FTX and Alameda executives Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang, and Nishad Singh. The settlements include permanent anti-fraud injunctions, a 10-year officer/director ban for Ellison, 8-year bans for Wang and Singh, and a further five-year conduct injunction.

AVAX climbed more than 2% after VanEck revised its Avalanche ETF filing with the U.S. SEC to incorporate on-chain staking and appointed Coinbase Crypto Services as staking provider. The planned ETF aims to mirror AVAX price performance and staking returns with a 0.30% management fee, while AVAX traded around $12.22 amid rising open interest but softer trading volumes.

ETH-focused ETFs saw withdrawals in the second half of December, with weekly outflows exceeding $600 million, according to recent flow data. Selling was led by BlackRock's product, and ETH traded just below $2,900 during the period. Early-week capital exits reduced buy-side support, keeping the near-term outlook defensive.

Updated December 20, 2025, Coinbase's 2026 Crypto Market Outlook adopts a restrained stance, comparing conditions to the mid‑1990s internet build‑out. It anticipates deeper institutional participation under frameworks such as the GENIUS and CLARITY Acts and projects stablecoin market cap could reach $1.2 trillion by 2028, while noting Bitcoin's open interest has declined.

Jim Cramer said OpenAI should raise at least $200B, citing a $300B obligation to Oracle, to shore up the data center trade. He warned the sector could slump without swift funding and floated a $1T valuation. U.S. stocks rose on December 19, with AI-linked names such as Oracle and Nvidia gaining.

CryptoQuant data shows addresses labeled as new Bitcoin whales now represent almost 50% of Bitcoin’s realized cap, a level that seldom topped 22% before 2025. Analysts add that short‑term holder supply grew by roughly 100,000 BTC in 30 days, while exchange flows indicate around 37% of BTC sent to Binance came from 1,000–10,000 BTC wallets.