On Monday, Chairman Tim Scott said the Senate Banking Committee will not hold a markup on the crypto market structure bill this week, with a spokesperson targeting early 2026. The House passed the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act in July by a 294-134 vote, while senators continue bipartisan talks on ethics rules, stablecoin yields, and oversight.

Decentralized perpetual exchange Aster has introduced Shield Mode, enabling traders to open high-leverage BTC and ETH perpetual positions without revealing orders on public books. The feature supports up to 1,001x leverage with instant, zero-slippage execution and runs alongside a promotional campaign waiving gas and trading fees until December 31, 2025. Orders placed via Shield Mode are excluded from Aster's airdrop rewards program.

Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon has been sentenced to 15 years in a U.S. prison for wire fraud linked to the Terra-Luna collapse and could later face up to 30 additional years if convicted in South Korea. He may apply for transfer to South Korea after serving half of his U.S. term, where prosecutors have prepared a separate case tied to Capital Markets Act violations and large investor losses.

On December 15, 2025, ZachXBT stated that Ronald Spektor was arrested in New York for allegedly running a Coinbase support impersonation scam. His November 2024 investigation linked Spektor to a $6.5 million theft targeting a single victim in October 2024. It remains unclear whether any funds have been recovered.

ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood is reshaping the firm's portfolio toward disruptive innovation and cryptocurrencies, expecting these companies to compound at 40–50% annually versus 15–20% for the "Mag 6" tech giants. In a recent interview, she cited ARK's historical outperformance during 2017–2018 rate hikes, reiterated that innovation could dominate global equity value by 2030, and highlighted fresh allocations into Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and Chinese stocks like Baidu and WeRide. Wood also noted the impact of October's crypto flash crash and MSCI's review of digital asset treasury firms on market sentiment while emphasizing the operational flexibility of ARK's ETF structure.

0G Foundation says a breach led to the theft of 520,010 $0G, 9.93 ETH, and about $4,200 in USDT, totaling roughly $520,000. The group attributed the incident to a leaked private key on compromised Alibaba Cloud servers, with attackers abusing an emergency withdrawal and later routing funds via Tornado Cash. The exploit was linked to a Next.js vulnerability reported on December 5.

On December 12, SpaceX outlined steps toward a 2026 IPO, with a secondary sale at $421 per share implying about an $800 billion valuation, according to a shareholder letter reviewed by Reuters. If market conditions permit, the offering could raise more than $25 billion. Starlink now tops 8 million users, and analysts project $11.8–$15 billion in 2025 revenue.

On December 13, 2025, OKX and MANTRA escalated a dispute tied to migrating OM to MANTRA’s new blockchain. MANTRA’s CEO set January 15, 2026 for deprecating the ERC-20 token and pressed OKX to disclose user-held versus balance-sheet OM, while OKX alleged coordinated accounts inflated OM’s price and cited an April plunge of over 90% absorbed by its Security Fund.

Updated on December 13, 2025, Communications Minister Solly Malatsi issued a final directive recognizing equity equivalent investment programs as alternatives to South Africa's 30% Black ownership requirement. According to the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition, more than 19,000 submissions were received, with about 90% supporting the EEIP approach; Starlink still needs ICASA regulatory amendments and licensing.