As the cryptocurrency market was generally sluggish in early December, the Solana-based meme coin PIPPIN staged an astonishing counter-trend big pump. Data shows that an early trader turned approximately $180,000 in principal into over $1.5 million in just one month, realizing more than $1.3 million in unrealized profit. However, behind the frenzied price performance, on-chain data has begun to show dangerous signals, including mass liquidation of short positions, a sharp decline in on-chain transaction activity, and cautious warnings from analysts, reminding market participants of the huge risks hidden amidst the revelry.

The Federal Reserve took more than two years to reduce its balance sheet by $2.4 trillion, resulting in gold's market capitalization expanding by $15 trillion in just one year. The modern monetary supply system has undergone earth-shattering changes. Traditional banking theories have fallen behind the times because they overlook two counterexamples: cross-border capital flows and the substitution of assets like gold for fiat. At the beginning of 2024, the spot price of gold in London was less than $2,000, and it has now soared to $4,200.

Blockchain payment giant Ripple has recently received approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to expand the scope of its Major Payment Institution (MPI) license, allowing it to provide a wider range of compliance payment services for bank and corporate clients in the country. This regulatory milestone not only solidifies Ripple's strategic foundation in the Asia-Pacific region since 2017 but also supports its efforts to use digital assets such as RLUSD and XRP to build faster and cheaper cross-border payment infrastructure for financial institutions.
Through its Asia-Pacific subsidiary, Ripple Markets APAC, Ripple has successfully expanded beyond its original focus on digital token services, providing a one-stop service for various clients in Singapore, a tightly regulated international financial center, including payment collection, custody, currency conversion, and payment disbursement. Ripple President Monica Long stated that this license upgrade lays the groundwork for future investments, aiming to build critical infrastructure for financial institutions seeking more efficient and secure cross-border payments.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently painted a disruptive vision of the future in an interview: when artificial intelligence and robotics are highly developed enough to meet all human needs, the concept of "currency" as a tool for labor allocation may disappear. He believes that "energy" based on physics will become the ultimate currency, and Bitcoin, due to its Proof of Work mechanism, will convert energy into digital scarcity, playing a central role as a value carrier in this future. This forward-looking discourse places Crypto Assets at the center of the grand narrative of AI, provoking deep market reflections on ultimate value storage.

Bitcoin has fallen below the $87,000 mark, and with the People's Bank of China speaking out on strict control of Crypto Assets, Hong Kong's Crypto Assets concept stocks have all suffered heavy losses. Boyaa Interactive (0434) dropped 6.7%, Okex Cloud Chain (1499) fell 9.7%, and Yunfeng Financial (0376) decreased by 11.3%. The Central Bank of China has rarely mentioned stablecoins in its meetings, stating that there are risks of them being used for Money Laundering, fundraising fraud, and illegal cross-border fund transfers.

Ethereum price has plummeted over 6% in the last 24 hours, with a monthly decline of 27%. The technical chart has also broken below the key bearish flag continuation pattern. On-chain data shows that the NUPL indicator, which measures the unrealized profits of long-term holders, is sliding towards the June cycle low area, which highly coincides with the target level near $2140 indicated by technical analysis. Currently, Ethereum has dropped below its strongest cost basis support wall, and if it cannot quickly recover $2840, the next target range for the bottoming out may be locked in between $2260 and $2140.

In the first week of December 2025, the Bitcoin market will face a decisive test as four major U.S. macroeconomic events occur in quick succession, which may reshape expectations for monetary policy and market liquidity. Fed Chairman Powell will give a speech on December 1, and on the same day, the Fed will officially end quantitative tightening, setting the tone for a shift in liquidity for the market. Subsequently, ADP employment, initial jobless claims, and core PCE inflation data will be released sequentially, with the market's expectation for a rate cut at the Fed meeting on December 10 reaching as high as 87.6%. This series of events will collectively determine whether Bitcoin can make a comeback or continue its downward trend.

Elon Musk recently stated on a podcast that he believes "money as a concept will eventually disappear." He emphasized that even in a post-scarcity era, "energy is the real currency," and clearly pointed out that "this is why I say Bitcoin is based on energy." He stressed that energy cannot be controlled through legislation, and producing energy is very difficult, therefore "we are likely to end up using energy and electricity generation as de facto currency."

Qian Zhimin, this name has become a focus again after being silent for several years. On November 11 local time, Qian Zhimin, the main culprit of the Tianjin Lantian Ge Rui large-scale illegal fundraising case in China and the largest Bitcoin Money Laundering case in British history, was sentenced to 11 years and 8 months in prison in the UK. The British police have locked 61,000 Bitcoins, which, at the current market price, is close to 50 billion yuan. The question of who should benefit from the appreciation has become the focus of legal games between China and the UK.

Phong Le, CEO of MicroStrategy, the world's largest corporate Bitcoin holder, clearly outlined the stringent trigger conditions for selling Bitcoin for the first time: sales will only be considered if the stock price falls below the net asset value (mNAV falls below 1) and the company is unable to finance through equity or debt. Facing pressure from preferred stock dividends of $750 million to $800 million annually, the company insists on paying through premium stock issuance and views Bitcoin sales as a "last resort" to protect shareholder value. At the same time, the company has launched the "BTC Credit Dashboard" to demonstrate to investors that even if Bitcoin falls to $25,000, its financial structure remains robust, and the long-term holding strategy remains unwavering.

According to Nate Geraci, co-founder of the ETF Institute, the cryptocurrency asset management company Grayscale will launch the first Spot Chainlink exchange-traded fund in the United States this week. Grayscale will upgrade the Chainlink private sale trust into an ETF, which will track the Spot price of LINK and generate returns based on the earnings from staking LINK.

The total amount of outstanding loans in the cryptocurrency lending market in the third quarter has approached $25 billion, according to data from Galaxy Research. Since the beginning of 2024, the CeFi lending market has grown by over 200%, reaching its highest level since the peak in the first quarter of 2022. As of September 30, the outstanding loans of stablecoin issuer Tether amount to $14.6 billion, with a market share of 60%.

Ripple Labs subsidiary Ripple Markets APAC has received approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to expand its regulated payment activities under the Major Payment Institution (MPI) license. Fiona Murray, Vice President and General Manager of Ripple Asia-Pacific, stated that the region has experienced significant rise, with on-chain activity increasing by approximately 70% year-on-year, and Singapore "is at the center of this rise."

The privacy coin Zcash has seen an astonishing rise of over 1230% in early 2025, but has since fallen nearly 50% from its yearly high of 743 USD (Binance data), currently trading around 377 USD. Renowned analyst Altcoin Sherpa has issued a warning that based on the double top breakout and the breach of key technical levels, the likelihood of ZEC dropping to 200 USD in the coming weeks or months is sharply increasing. This significant pullback resonates with the overall market risk aversion triggered by the unclear interest rate cut path of the Fed in December, adding more uncertainty to this "roller coaster" market for privacy coins.

According to Nate Geraci, co-founder of the ETF Institute, cryptocurrency asset management giant Grayscale plans to launch the first spot Chainlink exchange-traded fund in the United States this week. Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas expects the product to be officially listed on December 2, marking Grayscale's conversion of its LINK private sale trust established in 2020 into a publicly listed ETF. This move signifies that the Oracle Machine leader Chainlink becomes another crypto asset to gain mainstream compliance investment exposure, following Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and others, and it also opens the door for direct competition with rival Bitwise in this space.

In November, the Spot volume of Centralized Exchanges (CEX) dropped to $1.59 trillion, down from $2.17 trillion in October, a decrease of 26.7%, marking the lowest volume month since June's $1.14 trillion. Binance maintained the top spot in November with a volume of $599.34 billion, but this was a significant decline from October's $810.44 billion. Gate recorded $96.75 billion.

On December 1, XRP fell sharply to a low of $2.05 along with the broader market, and analysts warned that it might further dip to the $1.82 support level in the next 1 to 4 weeks. The core downside risk stems from Fed rate cut and Bank of Japan rate hike expectations triggering yen arbitrage Close Position, while XRP Spot ETF has seen a weak inflow of only $666.6 million since its launch, far below market expectations. Despite a bearish short-term outlook, the legislative progress of the U.S. market structure bill and potential regulatory Favourable Information provide hopes for a Rebound in its mid-term trend over the next 4 to 8 weeks.

What is Nad.fun? It is a native meme coin issuance platform on the Monad Blockchain, utilizing a bond curve-based smart contracts system to create and trade meme coins. All tokens are launched in a fair launch model, with no pre-sale or team allocation. Nad.fun went live on Devnet on January 13, 2025, creating 445 new tokens and conducting 3,772 exchanges in just a few days.

According to Bloomberg, on the first trading day of December, the cryptocurrency market experienced a "Black Monday," with Bitcoin falling more than 6% in a single day, dropping below the key psychological level of 86000 USD, while Ethereum also plunged over 7% to around 2800 USD. This round of selling was triggered by multiple pieces of unfavourable information: the world's largest stablecoin USDT was downgraded by S&P, the Central Bank reiterated its crackdown on virtual money, and MicroStrategy admitted for the first time that it might sell Bitcoin to pay dividends. Market sentiment has turned sharply, and investors are now focusing on the more important technical support level of 80000 USD, worrying that a deeper pullback may be on the horizon.

The Japanese government bond market experienced a Black Swan Event today, with the country's 3-month government bond yield pumping over 34%, corresponding to a big dump in its bond prices. The yield on Japan's 10-year government bonds rose by 5 basis points to 1.85%, while the yield on Japan's 2-year government bonds reached its highest level since 2008, with government bonds across all maturities experiencing a big pump. Meanwhile, U.S. stock index futures fell across the board in early trading, and the Nikkei index plummeted nearly 2% at one point.