Ethereum fell to $3,000 on Dec. 6, declining 5.08% over 24 hours, HTX market data show. The drop marks a significant move for the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

Circle minted an additional 500 million USDC on Dec. 5, bringing its cumulative issuance to 10 billion tokens over the past month, lookonchain data show. The minting occurred one hour prior to the reporting time. The activity reflects continued expansion of USDC stablecoin supply during the period.

The U.S. Commerce Department reported on December 5 that the PCE price index rose 0.3% month-over-month in September, pushing the annual rate to 2.8% from 2.7% in August, Jin10 reports. Core PCE inflation, excluding food and energy prices, declined to 2.8% from 2.9% in August. The Fed's preferred inflation gauge remained below 3% with moderate monthly increases, potentially supporting a rate cut at next week's meeting. A government shutdown delayed October inflation and November employment data, leaving officials to assess policy based on outdated indicators as they balance elevated inflation against cooling labor market conditions.

Ethereum's blob base fee surged 15 million times following the Fusaka upgrade, Yi Lihua, founder of Liquid Capital (formerly LD Capital), said in a Dec. 5 social media post. EIP-7918 introduced a minimum fee mechanism requiring blob fees to equal at least 1/15.258 of the L1 execution base fee, up from a previous 1 wei floor that left nodes inadequately compensated for KZG verification costs. The design ties pricing to network resource consumption and enables congestion control through price-driven blob traffic regulation, with PeerDAS technology expanding blob storage capacity. Yi noted blob fees now contribute to ETH's burn mechanism, with projections showing an eightfold increase in burns that could represent 30-50% of total burns by 2026, contingent on L2 transaction volume growth.

Coinglass data show cumulative short liquidation intensity across major centralized exchanges would reach $764 million if Ethereum breaks above $3,200 on December 5. Long liquidation intensity would total $973 million should the price fall below $3,000. The liquidation chart displays relative strength of each cluster rather than exact contract quantities, with higher bars indicating stronger potential price reactions driven by liquidity waves.

The U.S. Commerce Department released September's core Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index data on Dec. 5, showing a 0.2% monthly increase and 2.8% annual rise, with the annual rate 0.1 percentage point below expectations, Bureau of Economic Analysis data show. Overall PCE climbed 0.3% month-over-month with annual inflation at 2.8%, both meeting forecasts. The Federal Reserve uses the PCE price index as its primary inflation gauge, with core data considered a more reliable indicator of long-term trends.

Bitcoin rose 1.06% to above $91,000 on Dec. 5 following the release of U.S. core PCE price index data, BlockBeats reports. The core PCE annual rate unexpectedly fell to 2.8%, a three-month low. The cryptocurrency's gain came shortly after the data release.

The U.S. core Personal Consumption Expenditures price index fell to 2.8% year-over-year in September, below market expectations of 2.9%, Jin10 reports. The reading marked a three-month low and deviated from forecasts that anticipated the rate would hold at 2.9% for a third consecutive month.