On December 16, Valour secured approval to list its Solana product on Brazil's B3, expanding BRL‑denominated institutional access. At press time, SOL traded near $128 within the $122–$145 band as Spot ETF net inflows were about $3.64 million and total net assets hovered around $926.33 million, while risk appetite remained cautious.

On Dec. 17, analyst Will Taylor of CryptoinsightUK argued that XRP has returned to the lower end of a long‑standing trading range between about $2.01 and $1.60, which he views as the most attractive area for risk‑to‑reward entries. He highlighted a remaining liquidity pocket around $1.83, discussed adjusting his stop loss near $1.79, and identified a reclaim of roughly $2.07 as a potential trigger for a rapid move toward $2.58–$2.60. At the time of his remarks, XRP was trading near $1.92, and he framed both the asset and the wider crypto market as deeply discounted relative to traditional assets.

On Tuesday evening, Hyper Foundation asked validators on Discord to vote on recognizing HYPE in Hyperliquid’s Assistance Fund as burned, effectively removing nearly $1 billion from circulating and total supply. The stake‑weighted vote remains open until Dec. 21 at 04:00 UTC, and the fund currently holds about 37 million HYPE, over 13% of a 270 million supply, according to The Block.

Pudgy Penguins’ PENGU token has dropped about 80% from its peak near $0.04 and slid 20% to below $0.0097 after reports that the SEC sued Shima Capital and founder Yida Gao. The price has since bounced, but with PENGU down 66% over the past 2.5 months and memecoins historically weak in December, analysts say it must hold key support near $0.0093 and reclaim $0.013 to signal a more convincing recovery.

In December 2025, the Solana network reportedly handled a Distributed Denial-of-Service attack peaking at about 6 terabits per second without downtime or a meaningful rise in fees. Co-founders and infrastructure operators attributed this resilience to upgraded defences, validator clustering, the QUIC protocol, and local fee markets, as the validator set shifts toward larger professional operators.

On Wednesday, an affiliate of Circle Internet Group, Inc. (NYSE: CRCL), the issuer of USDC, said it has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with licensed cross-border payments provider LianLian Global to explore wider adoption of the stablecoin. The collaboration will assess how USDC-based infrastructure and Circle's Arc blockchain can support faster, more transparent and cost-efficient international payments for merchants, especially in emerging markets.

On Dec. 17, SBI Ripple Asia signed a memorandum of understanding with Doppler Finance to explore XRP-based yield infrastructure and real‑world asset tokenization on the XRP Ledger. The companies described this as their first partnership with an XRPL‑native protocol and named SBI Digital Markets as the institutional custodian with segregated custody, aiming to route XRP into regulated yield sources despite the asset's lack of native staking.

ASTER is trading near $0.74 after dropping more than 22% over the last week and a further 8% in the past 24 hours, following a clean break below the $0.85–$0.90 support band. While futures open interest has fallen from over $600 million to $420 million and technical indicators remain bearish, large holders have reportedly accumulated over 1.34 million ASTER tokens valued above $1 million.