BlockBeats news, on December 21, IOSG founding partner Jocy posted on social media, "2025 will be the darkest year for the crypto market, as well as the dawn of the institutional era. This is a fundamental shift in market structure, while most people still view the new era through the lens of old cycles. A review of the 2025 crypto market shows a paradigm shift from retail investor speculation to institutional allocation, with core data indicating institutional holdings at 24%, and retail investors exiting at 66%, completing the turnover in the crypto market. Although BTC fell by 5.4% in 2025, it reached a historical high of $126,080 during that period. The market dominance has shifted from retail investors to institutions. Institutions continue to build positions at 'high levels' because they focus on cycles rather than prices. Retail investors are selling, while institutions are buying. The current phase is not the 'top of the bull market', but rather the 'institutional accumulation period'. November 2026.

BlockBeats news, on December 21, according to the on-chain AI analysis tool CoinBob (@CoinbobAIbot), the smart money address starting with 0xfee has accumulated a profit of 5.04 million USD since its first trade in October, completing 30 positions of Close Position in the meantime, with a monthly win rate and overall win rate both exceeding 90%. This whale prefers to short using a main position in BTC, supplemented by small long orders to capture Rebound profits. It started to Build a Position short when Bitcoin was around 115,000 USD on October 13, and has since gradually increased the position, which is still held currently. Meanwhile, this address often quickly opens long orders at short-term lows in mainstream tokens and closes them within the day, with only 1 loss out of 20 long order trades so far. Currently, the short position scale of this address in Bitcoin is about 22.57 million USD, floating.

BlockBeats news, on December 21, Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council of the White House, stated that "the three-month average of the current core inflation rate is 1.6%, and Trump is seeking data-dependent candidates among the nominees for Fed chair." (Jin10)

Sidney Powell, the CEO of Maple Finance, stated that traditional DeFi is "dead" and that the future will be dominated by on-chain capital markets. He believes that institutional trading will migrate on-chain, replacing traditional intermediaries and driving capital market activities to occur directly on the Blockchain.

Odaily News ARK Invest founder Cathie Wood expects the inflation rate to be 0% by 2026, and she believes that 2026 could be a "golden year." After experiencing tariffs, government shutdown risks, and Fed hawkish comments, if oil prices and rents continue to fall, the market may underestimate the extent to which inflation is close to zero.

Alex Thorn, the research director at Galaxy Digital, predicts that Bitcoin may be widely accepted as a hedging asset over the next two years, expecting it to reach $250,000 by the end of 2027. Although the market dynamics in 2026 are complex with high uncertainty, the long-term outlook for Bitcoin remains optimistic, with increasing maturity of the asset class and a higher level of institutional adoption.

Jameson Lopp, co-founder of the Bitcoin custody company Casa, pointed out that the risks of Quantum Computing to Bitcoin should be approached with caution. Although it won’t break the Bitcoin network in the short term, the transformation will be extremely complex and may take 5 to 10 years. He suggests staying optimistic while preparing for the worst-case scenario.

ChainCatcher message, according to the RootData calendar page, next week will include several key news items such as project updates, macroeconomic news, Token unlocks, incentive activities, and pre-sale events, details are as follows:
December 22:
MBG unlocked 21,666,700 Tokens, worth 11,047,200 USD, accounting for 16.615% of the circulating supply.
December 23:
ZORA unlocked 16,666.67 million Tokens, worth 683.79 million USD, accounting for 3.715% of the circulation;
AVAIL unlocked 20,913.19 million Tokens, worth 1.3988 million USD, accounting for 5.787% of the circulating supply;
US third quarter real GDP annualized quarterly rate preliminary.
December 24:
NIL unlock 613.

BlockBeats news, on December 21, according to on-chain analyst Ai Yi (@ai9684xtpa), "the Whale that has shorted BTC four times continuously since March 2025" reduced its position by 20 BTC 20 minutes ago, realizing a profit of $465,000. Currently, there are still 550.7 BTC in the short order, valued at $48.6 million, with unrealized gains of $12.8 million and funding fees profit of $9.6 million, bringing the total account profit to over $55.51 million.

Odaily News BNB Chain has released a developer notice stating that the BSCScan API is now deprecated and should be replaced with Etherscan API V2. To ensure uninterrupted service and achieve better API performance, migration to BSCTrace through MegaNode is required.

Jinse Finance reports that in response to the "50 million USDT phishing attack" incident, the Ethereum Community Foundation issued a statement on the X platform indicating that the practice of truncating addresses with ellipses (e.g., 0xbaf4b1aF...B6495F8b5) should be stopped immediately. Address information needs to be displayed in full, as hiding parts of the address can create unnecessary risks. Furthermore, some UI options provided by certain wallets and blockchain explorers also have security issues, which can actually be resolved. It is reported that the phisher previously generated an address with the same first and last three characters, and the victim transferred 50 million USDT to the similar address generated by the phisher without carefully checking the copied address.

Odaily News The Central Bank of Korea has recently sent a formal document regarding the second round of CBDC testing to major banks, considering the distribution of some government subsidies in the form of Digital Money during the second round of testing. The aim is to use CBDC to restrict the use of subsidies and drop the management and administrative costs associated with subsidy distribution. However, a Central Bank official stated that details, including specific methods and timelines, are currently under discussion. (decenter)

The Bank of Korea has issued documents for the second round of CBDC testing to major banks, planning to distribute part of government subsidies in the form of Digital Money to drop management costs. Currently, details are still under discussion. The previous pilot program was suspended due to issues of cost and practical application value.

Next week, several tokens will undergo significant unlocking, including Humanity (H), Plasma (XPL), SOON, etc. The unlocking amount and market value will reach millions of dollars, which could have a potential impact on the market.

Odaily News Hyperbot data shows that Brother Ma Ji has opened a 10x leverage ZEC long order again, currently holding 888 ZEC with an average entry price of 439.2441 USD. He also holds 5200 ETH long orders, with a total position value of approximately 15.97 million USD.

Golden Finance reported that the Polish Bitcoin treasury company BTCS S.A. announced a collaboration with Singaporean digital asset solution provider QCP Group, aiming to leverage cash-collateralized options structures, cumulative weighted frameworks, and other financial tools to transform its Bitcoin treasury strategy from passive holdings. It is reported that BTCS S.A. has increased its holdings by 21.684 BTC, and the current open interest of Bitcoin has risen to 137 coins.

PANews, December 21 news, according to Sina Finance, at the 8th CCF China Blockchain Technology Conference and the 2nd Global Blockchain Industry Summit, the "Blockchain Innovation Achievement Industrialization (Shanghai) Service Center" was inaugurated, and Shanghai Xujiahui Mall (Group) Co., Ltd. signed residency agreements with 8 blockchain companies.

Odaily News Fed's Harker stated that due to data distortion, the consumer price index of 2.7% on November 11 may underestimate the price rise over the past 12 months. Staying vigilant about inflation, he tends to maintain the interest rate stable before spring.

On December 21, news came that Sean Farrell, the head of cryptocurrency strategy at Tom Lee's Fundstrat, responded on the X platform regarding the "discrepancy between his market views and those of Tom Lee". He stated that the cautious views from the earlier part of the year reflected risk management rather than a completely bearish stance. The current market pricing is almost perfect, but risks still exist, including government shutdowns, trade fluctuations, uncertainties in artificial intelligence capital expenditures, and changes in the Fed chair. At the same time, high-yield bond spreads are tightening, and cross-asset volatility is low. Recently, fund flows have also shown divergence. The current benchmark assessment suggests that a rebound may occur at the beginning of the year, followed by another pullback in the first half of the year, providing more attractive opportunities for year-end positioning. If the judgment is wrong, I would prefer to wait for confirmation signals. For investors following this outlook, I still expect Bitcoin and Ethereum to

Sean Farrell of Fundstrat responded to the market's divergent views, emphasizing that different analysts have independent research frameworks and strategies. He focuses on a high encryption asset portfolio with a more aggressive approach, while Tom Lee emphasizes the long-term strategies of large institutions. He believes that current market risks still exist, but expects Bitcoin and Ethereum to challenge new highs by the end of the year.