CMC Market Pulse delivers actionable market insights, giving you all the key narratives and developments you need in under 5 minutes.
Market Overview 📉
*Data as of 6:45 AM UTC on December 19, 2025.
Bitcoin (BTC) ended the week down 5.90%, while Ethereum (ETH) underperformed, falling 10.1% in the same period. Total crypto market cap fell 6.69% to close the week at $2.93T, down from $3.14T in the week prior.
Similar to the weeks since the 10/10 crash, liquidations continued to stay muted, with most days seeing less than $300M in liquidations. Likewise, funding rates maintained under sub-10% levels, reflecting a generally bearish stance on the market.
📌 Michael Saylor’s Strategy acquires 10,645 BTC for a total of $980.3M, bringing their total holdings to 671,268 BTC. - Link
📌 Visa launches their Stablecoin Advisory Practice, seeking to assist businesses and financial institutions with stablecoin integrations and implementations. - Link
📌 Coinbase announces plans to rollout stock trading on their platform, starting with US customers, alongside prediction markets, powered by Kalshi- Link
Why does it matter?
Crypto markets broke lower over the week, amidst a weakening equities market. While a positive CPI result helped to reverse some of the damage in equities later into the week, crypto failed to catch a strong bid, with many weak altcoins continuing to fall lower. The S&P 500 closed 1.63% lower over the week, while the Nasdaq trailed behind at 2.01% down.
Notable altcoin outperformers this week included Pippin (PIPPIN), Audiera (BEAT), Humanity (H), Alchemist AI (ALCH), Monero (XMR), and Sky (SKY).
Narrative of the Week 📰
The DTCC receives approval from the SEC regarding tokenized assets, opening the path for an increasingly tokenized world, bridging the gap between TradFi and DeFi.
📌 The DTCC receives the no-action letter from the SEC, greenlighting the clearing and settlement of tokenized assets, including stocks, bonds, treasuries, and more.
📌 JP Morgan launches their first tokenized money market fund, My OnChain Net Yield Fund (MONY) on Ethereum. - Link
📌 Securitize introduces Stocks, natively-tokenized stocks on-chain, as opposed to the majority of implementations which trade the actual stocks off-chain, enabling proper ownership of the actual underlying. - Link
Why does it matter?
Tokenization continues to be a key area of interest for traditional financial institutions in the crypto space, with developments continuing to flourish despite widespread pessimism in the market.
Major Project Updates 🗓️
📌 The Hyperliquid Foundation proposes a validator vote to officially recognize the HYPE tokens held in the Assistance Fund address as burned, taking them out of the circulating supply. - Link
📌 MetaMask extends support to include Bitcoin, enabling transfers, swaps and on-ramping directly to the Bitcoin Network. - Link
📌 Phantom begins the rollout of their Phantom Cash debit cards, kicking off with US customers. - Link
📌 Interop Labs, the initial developers of Axelar Network, have been acquired by stablecoin issuer, Circle. The AXL token and foundation remain independent. - Link
📌 Stripe L1, Tempo, introduces Tempo Transactions, enabling a range of features including paying network fees in any stablecoin, batching and concurrent transactions, among others. - Link
Why does it matter?
Although the recent Hyperliquid proposal is seen as largely bullish from HYPE bulls, skeptics question the rationale behind the decision considering better uses for the funds, such as a secondary insurance fund.
DeFi Brief 🏦
*Data as of 6:45 AM UTC on December 19, 2025.
📌 Uniswap launches the final governance vote for the fee switch, which will officially close on 25th December and take effect after a 2 day timelock if successful. - Link
📌 Mantle’s mETH protcol introduces the Buffer Pool upgrade, increasing the efficiency of redemptions from mETH to ETH by supplying a portion of staked ETH to Aave to generate a blended yield. - Link
📌 Aave unveils their 2026 roadmap, including focus on Aave Horizon, Aave V4, the Aave App, and alignment with AAVE token holders. - Link
📌 Perptual DEX, Variational, officially launches their points program, retroactively awarding points to early users on the platform. - Link
Why does it matter?
Uniswap’s fee switch has been highly anticipated since years ago, with Uniswap being a leading DEX across chains. The successful passing of the fee switch will mark a historical moment for DeFi and signal alignment between protocol and token holders.
Fundraises 💰
📌 Lightning Network powered wallet, Speed Wallet, raises $8M in a strategic funding round led by Tether alongside Ego Death Capital. - Link
📌 Crypto payment network, RedotPay, raises $107M in a Series B funding round led by Goodwater Capital, with participation from Pantera Capital, Circle Ventures and Blockchain Capital, among others. - Link
📌 Ethereum blockspace markets, ETHGas, raises $12M in a Seed round led by Polychain Capital, with other investors including Amber Group, BlueYard Capital, Tokka Labs, Stake Capital, and more. - Link
📌 Solana-native prediction markett, Worm.wtf, raises $4.5M in a pre-seed round, with investors including 6th Man Ventures, Solana Ventures, Alliance, Borderless, and more. - Link
Airdrops Abound 🎁
📌 Fogo cancels their token presale amidst backlash regarding their token valuation, announcing their airdrop, which will occur with the token launch on January 13th. - Link
📌 Berachain liquidity protocol, Infrared Finance, airdrops 2% of the total token supply to eligible users, with claims closing on 1st January 2026. - Link
📌 HyperLend releases their Terms and Conditions for their upcoming airdrop. Users must sign the terms by January 18th to receive their airdrop. - Link
Tweet of the Week 📝
Source: @0xlaiyuen
Any bulls left?
