📉 Bitcoin slips below $88,000.

🔥🇺🇸 CME today launched XRP and SOL futures linked to spot prices. This transition to spot-quoted futures makes XRP and SOL more convenient for institutional investors, narrowing the price gap with spot and simplifying hedging and accounting for traditional investment strategies.

😍 #ETH BitMine has already bought 3,967,210 ETH (about $12.4B), roughly 3.2% of the total supply released.

Key figures:

- Average purchase price: $3,074 per ETH

- Available cash for replenishing reserves: $1B

- Bought last week: 102,259 ETH

- Earlier forecast: Tom Lee's projection

🥳🔄 #TAO Bittensor completes its first halving. The daily TAO supply has fallen from 7,200 TAO to 3,600 TAO, and the block reward is now 0.5 TAO.

🏦🙋‍♂️ #SOL Charles Schwab now offers Solana futures (SOL) and Micro Solana futures (MSL).

🤝 Exciting news: Ondo Finance will integrate the Solana blockchain in early 2026. Official announcement. #ondo #sol

🙋‍♂👀 #W #XRP Ripple expands RLUSD support to Layer-2 Ethereum blockchains. The rollout has entered testing and is awaiting NYDFS approval for a public launch next year. Source: CoinDesk

Russians will never be able to pay with cryptocurrency for goods and services, said Anatoly Aksakov, chairman of the State Duma Committee on the Financial Market. Just a reminder: you can currently pay for New Year’s purchases with 🦋 Crypto Bot, directly from your 🪙 USDT balance in any Russian store that supports QR payments. To pay, simply scan the code at checkout and tap the pay button.

🤝👀 #ONDO #SOL: Ondo will integrate with Solana early next year.

Alarm signal: the crypto market could crash like October 11. 👀 The Inter-Exchange Flow Index (IFP) has turned red, signaling a slowdown in capital flows between exchanges. While it’s a relief that no BTC is sitting on exchanges, liquidity in the market remains thin. 😳 This could open the door to a repeat of October 11’s disaster—mass liquidations worth tens of billions of dollars. 😱 The situation looks especially tense four days before the Bank of Japan raises rates to a record high since 1995. 😨

❌🇨🇳 BTC hashrate fell about 8% yesterday to around 100 EH/s, according to the Nano Labs founder.

Reason: closure of Xinjiang mining farms after authorities confiscated/disabled 200,000–400,000 Bitcoin mining devices.

Context: Xinjiang was the informal Bitcoin mining capital before China’s 2021 ban on digital assets.

Chinese mining pools now account for roughly 52% of the total BTC hashrate.

Impact: short-term pressure on BTC; volatility could rise in the coming days.

Crypto Headlines

🎩 #ETH BitMine (BMNR) reports holding 3.97 million ETH.

🇧🇹🤝 Bhutan inks a multi-year MoU with Cumberland DRW, a cryptocurrency market maker, to jointly develop digital asset infrastructure at Gelephu Mindfulness City (GMC). Cointelegraph

The strategy purchased 10,645 BTC.

🎩 The #BTC Strategy bought another 10,645 BTC last week.

😡 The BOJ decision could shake the crypto market.

The market has almost fully priced in a 25 bp rate hike to 0.75% at the Dec 18–19 meeting.

A 25 bp rise would be one of the sharpest reversals in Japanese monetary policy in decades (after the era of zero and negative rates).

The yen is strengthening against the dollar (USD/JPY).

Why this matters: higher rates plus a stronger yen hit the yen carry trade (borrowing in yen to buy risk assets like stocks and crypto). When that trade winds down, leverage is unwound and the yen is bought back.

This sets up a classic risk-off mood: deleveraging, tighter liquidity, and altcoins taking the hardest hit.

Recall that in 2024 the Japanese market was already a catalyst for the Bitcoin correction.

Crypto Headlines

💳 SOL Phantom to launch a Visa debit card — announcement. In the USA, the card is already available; other countries will follow soon. Previously: Crypto Headlines forecast market.

🪙 Since the start of 2025, Solana’s active trader base has dropped—from 4.8 million to 680 thousand—roughly a sevenfold decline.

🇷🇺🙅‍♂ Aksakov: Cryptocurrencies will never become a form of payment in Russia and will only be viewed as an investment tool.

🇷🇺 Anatoly Aksakov: In Russia, cryptocurrency will never become a means of payment. It can only be an investment instrument. If you pay for anything, use rubles. Previously: fines for paying with crypto. Crypto Headlines