SEC Chair Paul Atkins, speaking at an SEC Crypto Task Force roundtable, warned that expanding government oversight could turn blockchain and crypto systems into a financial surveillance tool. He argued that treating every wallet as a broker and every transaction as reportable risks creating a financial panopticon, and called for a regulatory framework that protects lawful activity and individual privacy while still allowing innovation.

XRP continues to attract institutional capital, with Spot XRP ETFs posting 19 consecutive days of inflows and $20.17 million added on Friday. Cumulative inflows stand at $990.91 million and AUM is $1.18 billion, while Spot Ethereum ETFs saw $19.41 million of outflows last week. Despite upbeat sentiment, XRP's price remains near $2, highlighting a disconnect between demand and spot performance.

On December 15, Bitcoin extended its recent pullback while shares of Strategy (MSTR) dropped 7.29% to $163.55 on heavy trading volume. During the second and third quarters of 2025, the New York State Common Retirement Fund, which oversees about $284 billion in assets, increased its MSTR position to roughly 0.10% of the company, valued at around $113.8 million, even as the stock remained highly correlated with Bitcoin's volatility.

The SEC's crypto task force convened its sixth roundtable on Monday, bringing regulators together with industry representatives to examine financial surveillance and user privacy. Commissioner Hester Peirce argued that crypto is prompting a reassessment of financial privacy, while participants from Zcash, the Blockchain Association and the Crypto Council for Innovation weighed in on policy implications.

On December 11, 2025, CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju said memecoin markets are "dead" as their altcoin share fell to 3.4% from a 10.9% peak in November 2024. Despite bearish sentiment, Pepe's chart shows a potential triple-bottom setup with a $0.0000049 neckline, a measured 75% target at $0.0000075, and, if conditions improve, scope toward $0.0000165.

MetaMask enabled native Bitcoin functionality on December 15, 2025, letting users buy, send, receive, and swap BTC within the wallet. The update supports SegWit addresses, with Taproot planned, and offers purchasing via credit cards, PayPal, and bank transfers. MetaMask also introduced a $30 million rewards program to drive user engagement.

CME Group debuted spot-quoted XRP and Solana futures, expanding a suite that already includes Bitcoin and Ether. Since launch, average daily volume in the spot-quoted BTC/ETH contracts was 11,300, rising to 18,400 in the fourth quarter and 35,300 in December, with a late November peak day of 60,700 combined contracts.

Circle has agreed to acquire the Interop Labs team and its proprietary technology in a transaction expected to close in early 2026, while the Axelar Network, its foundation and the AXL token will remain independently governed. The acquisition will fold Interop Labs' interoperability stack into Circle's Arc blockchain and Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol to bolster crosschain infrastructure for multichain applications. The move follows Circle's earlier purchase of Hashnote and comes amid a broader wave of 2025 acquisitions by stablecoin issuers, including Paxos and Tether.