On December 24, 2025, HashKey Capital announced the first close of its HashKey Fintech Multi-Strategy Fund IV, securing $250 million in commitments. The firm is targeting a $500 million final fund size and drew interest from institutional allocators, family offices, and high‑net‑worth investors.

CryptoQuant data shows that decentralized borrowing on Aave has dropped sharply since August 2025, with weekly USDT and USDC loans falling from $6.2 billion to $1.9 billion by late November. At the same time, Nexo's weekly retail credit withdrawals fell from $34 million in mid-July to $8.8 million in mid-November before rebounding to $23 million, suggesting users increasingly prefer borrowing against collateral over selling in a weak market. Overall, CeFi lenders appear to be acting as a liquidity backstop while DeFi leverage contracts.

Alex Davis, CEO of Mavryk, argues that tokenizing real-world assets marks an inevitable next phase for global capital markets and is no longer a speculative idea. Drawing on his prior work at Tezos and in DeFi, he explains how Mavryk is building a dedicated tokenization network and the Maven platform to connect assets, lending and data in one ecosystem. Davis expects institutional and retail access to expand rapidly by 2026 as regulation, infrastructure and macroeconomic pressures converge.

Xen Baynham-Herd, Head of Global Growth at Base (Coinbase), outlined how the L2 aims to compete through user experience, distribution, and product integration rather than fee cuts. He said success in three to five years means onchain apps feel like everyday mobile software, and noted that over the past 12 months more teams have committed to durable products.

On December 23, 2025, the official Ethereum X account published a guest thread by author and investor William Mougayar asserting that Ethereum operates as a non‑rivalrous, non‑excludable public good. He proposed a three‑part valuation approach—captured value, flow value, and a compounding "trust surplus"—to assess Ethereum’s role beyond fees, throughput, and short‑term metrics.

Amplify ETFs announced on Tuesday that it has rolled out two new crypto-focused exchange-traded funds, the Amplify Stablecoin Technology ETF (STBQ) and the Amplify Tokenization Technology ETF (TKNQ). STBQ tracks the MarketVector Stablecoin Technology Index, while TKNQ follows the MarketVector Tokenization Technology Index, with each fund allocating 25% to 50% of its portfolio to qualifying crypto-related assets at rebalancing.

On December 23, 2025, Bitget Wallet announced a full integration with Hyperliquid to broaden its onchain perpetuals offering. The company said users can access fees between 0.06% and 0.09%, more than 300 trading pairs plus equity-linked contracts, and up to 150x leverage within a self-custodial interface.

U.S. crypto oversight entered a new phase this week as President Donald Trump signaled openness to reviewing the Samourai Wallet conviction and the Senate confirmed Mike Selig to lead the CFTC. At the same time, regulators including the SEC and Federal Reserve pulled back from earlier restrictive policies, while Congress advanced targeted anti-scam legislation. Together these moves point to a shift away from enforcement-heavy strategies toward clearer rules and a more focused consumer protection approach.

BlackRock's spot Bitcoin ETF, IBIT, ranked sixth by 2025 year-to-date inflows even as it posted a roughly 9.6% loss for the year. The fund has taken in about $25.4 billion in net inflows, outpacing several equity and commodity ETFs, including GLD. The snapshot was highlighted on December 19, 2025.