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This Week’s Top Stories

“David Sacks says Clarity Act markup confirmed for January.” – Thursday, 19 December 2025 

• The White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks communicated on Thursday that the Clarity Act is confirmed for January. He posted on X that they are closer than ever to passing the landmark crypto market structure legislation that President Trump has called for.
• The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act is a bipartisan legislation that establishes a regulatory framework for digital assets, clarifying jurisdiction between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The bill passed the House of Representatives in July with strong bipartisan support.

“Unemployment Rate at four-year high last month & CPI came in lower than expected.” – This week 

• In November, the U.S. unemployment rate increased to a four-year high of 4.6 percent, while the economy added more jobs than expected (64’000 vs 50’000). With one month left in 2025, the U.S. labor market is on pace for its weakest year of job creation since the job losses of 2020 and, before that, the Great Recession.
• The job slowdown in recent months has been the driving factor behind the Fed’s rate cuts during the last three meetings, but such policy changes often take time to have an effect on the economy.
• While the unemployment rate increased, the November CPI data came in lower than expected on Thursday this week. Economists expected a CPI of 3.1 percent, but the final figure came in at 2.7 percent, significantly lower.
• The odds for a rate cut in January increased slightly after the CPI data release. The chances for a cut, however, remain rather muted at 26.6 percent, up from 24 percent before the inflation data release.

“The race for the new Fed chair position is still on, but Hassett retook the lead this week.” – Tuesday, 16 December 2025 

• Kevin Hassett has reclaimed the lead on Polymarket regarding who President Donald Trump will nominate as the next chair of the Federal Reserve, after briefly losing ground to former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh.
• At the beginning of November, the odds for Hassett were trading at 85 cents, but this week, Kevin Warsh briefly took the lead, as high-level figures around Donald Trump raised concerns about Hassett, with some believing he might be too close to Trump.
• Currently, the odds for Hassett are trading at 52 cents on Polymarket, while Warsh is at 28 cents and Christopher Waller at 14 cents.

A Quick Crypto Overview: A Rollercoaster Week

Looking back at this week’s price action, we can only say that it was a wild ride. On Wednesday, Bitcoin increased by more than 4 percent in a matter of a few hours, only to get slammed back down and lose almost 6 percent during the U.S. session. On Wednesday evening, Bitcoin bottomed around $85’000 and traded to the upside during the Asian and European sessions, increasing almost 5 percent. On Thursday afternoon, however, Bitcoin lost ground again and dropped almost 6 percent in a few hours, bottoming around $84’400. And guess what? At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading just below $88’000 again, up 4.5 percent. We would not be surprised to see Bitcoin correct again during today’s U.S. session, as it would make this week a perfect rollercoaster. 

Bitcoin dominance is up this week, trading at its highest level since mid-November. Gold has traded rather flat this week, sitting just above $4’300 at the time of writing, just shy of a new all-time high, and it looks ready to trade higher. The S&P 500 lost some ground this week, bottoming on Thursday after a 3 percent drop since last Friday, but is currently up 1 percent since yesterday, likely due to the lower-than-expected inflation data in the U.S. 

In the world of altcoins, times are hard, as most major altcoins are down between 10 and 20 percent over the past seven days. PUMP is leading the race to the downside with a decline of 32 percent, ASTER is down 28 percent, DASH is down 22 percent, and ENA is down 21 percent over the past seven days. 

Chart of the Week: Bitcoin vs S&P 500

Bitcoin is trading at the same price versus the S&P 500 as it was before the U.S. elections last year, currently down 35 percent from this year’s high and 18 percent below the 2021 highs. We are now trading at a similar discount from the highs as we were in the summer of 2024, when we corrected 33 percent from the March 2024 highs against the S&P 500.

What’s Happening Onchain? Uniswap Fee Switch Proposal, Institutions Onchain & Hyperliquid News 

Hayden Adams has officially submitted the UNIfication proposal for a final onchain governance vote, running from today to December 25. As we have mentioned before, the proposal, if approved, would take effect following a two-day timelock and execute a series of onchain actions designed to restructure how value flows through the Uniswap ecosystem. The proposal would trigger an immediate retroactive burn of 100 million UNI tokens from the treasury; the fee switch would be activated on Uniswap v2 and v3 on the Ethereum mainnet, and the routing of Unichain sequencer fees would also be integrated into the same UNI burn mechanism. 

In the world of institutional adoption, there was some significant news this week, as the Singapore Gulf Bank (SGB) announced at Solana Breakpoint 2025 that its clients are now able to mint and redeem stablecoins directly on the Solana blockchain. Also this week, JPMorgan announced the launch of a tokenized money-market fund on the Ethereum blockchain for qualified investors. The new fund will be seeded with $100 million of JPMorgan’s own capital. Finally, Visa said that U.S. financial institutions are now able to settle stablecoin transactions using USDC on the Solana blockchain, with Cross River Bank and Lead Bank being among the first adopters of the new service. 

The Hyperliquid Foundation submitted a proposal to view the tokens sitting in the Assistance Fund as officially “burned” and permanently removed from the circulating and total supply. The Assistance Fund is the protocol-level mechanism that automatically converts a large portion of the blockchain’s trading fees into HYPE tokens through an embedded process at the execution level of the L1 blockchain. Up until now, the tokens have remained part of the total supply of HYPE. By voting “Yes,” validators agree to treat the Assistance Fund HYPE tokens as burned. 

Digital Asset Fund Flows: $864 Million Inflows, Strategy Bought 10K BTC & HYPE ETF is Coming 

Last week, digital asset investment products saw net inflows of $864 million, marking their second consecutive week of net inflows. Bitcoin led the race with $522 million, followed by Ethereum with $340 million, while Aave and Chainlink each saw roughly $5 million in net inflows. In the meantime, Strategy bought 10’645 Bitcoin last week for roughly $980 million at an average price of $92’000. 

When looking at this week, the Bitcoin spot ETFs started with the largest outflows of the month, with roughly $600 million leaving the products on Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday saw net inflows of $460 million, while yesterday saw $160 million in net outflows. The Ethereum spot ETFs are currently sitting on weekly net outflows of roughly $600 million, with one day to go, while the Solana spot ETFs have attracted roughly $60 million so far this week. 

The team of spot ETFs will likely be joined by a new teammate over the coming months, as Bitwise amended its Hyperliquid ETF filing under the ticker BHYP. Bitwise first filed a Form S-1 for the Hyperliquid ETF in September, becoming the first asset manager to seek U.S. approval for a fund offering spot exposure to the network’s native HYPE token. 

Market Sentiment: Back in Extreme Fear for the Crypto Markets 

Market sentiment in the crypto market has declined again, as the Crypto Fear and Greed Index is sitting at 16, an extremely fearful level, while the CNN Fear and Greed Index is at 43, in fear territory. AAII members remained predominantly bullish for the coming six months (44 percent), but the number of bearish members increased from 30 to 33 percent compared to last week.

Other Relevant News 

• Phantom has partnered with Kalshi to bring tokenized prediction markets directly into the Phantom crypto wallet. – Link
• Interactive Brokers has begun allowing a subset of eligible U.S. retail clients to fund individual brokerage accounts with stablecoins. – Link 

Looking Ahead: Christmas Week Ahead & Crypto Outlook 2026 

The Christmas rally remained a dream and did not materialize this week, as Bitcoin chopped up and down while altcoins traded significantly lower. Next week will likely be one of low volume, as many market participants are celebrating the holidays—at least in the Western Hemisphere. This week, we published a new episode of our Verified Podcast, where we discussed the new Crypto Outlook 2026. You can watch the full episode here.

Below, you can find some of the key data releases and events to watch out for next week. 

Tuesday, 23 December 2025 

• USA – GDP Q3
• USA – Consumer Confidence 

Wednesday, 24 December 2025 

• Christmas Holiday 

Thursday, 25 December 2025 

• Christmas Holiday 

Friday, 26 December 2025 

• St. Stephan’s Day