During a heated December 2025 debate with Changpeng Zhao (CZ), gold advocate Peter Schiff repeated his long-standing argument that Bitcoin creates no real wealth and merely redistributes existing wealth from late buyers to early sellers, like a giant zero-sum game or Ponzi scheme.

December 5, 2025, saw one of the quietest yet most revealing options expiry events of the year: more than $4 billion in notional value across Bitcoin and Ethereum contracts rolled off the board worthless as traders refused to chase short-term upside and instead rotated aggressively into mid-2026 calls.

In a groundbreaking development for the cryptocurrency industry, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) approved leveraged spot crypto trading on federally regulated exchanges on December 4, 2025, providing American traders with domestic access to margin-based products previously confined to offshore platforms.

November 2025 delivered one of the harshest profitability squeezes in Bitcoin mining history, with hashprice collapsing below $35 per petahash and all-in sustaining costs for many operators now exceeding $80,000 per BTC.

The cryptocurrency market is witnessing an unprecedented surge in altcoin ETF applications as of December 2025, with filings for HBAR (Hedera), AVAX (Avalanche), NEAR (Near Protocol), and TON (Toncoin) positioning these tokens for explosive growth.

Fin, a next-generation payments and stablecoin app built from the ground up for 2025 realities, has closed a $17 million seed round co-led by Pantera Capital and Sequoia Capital, with participation from Electric Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Circle Ventures, SV Angel, and angels including Plaid co-founder William Hockey and former Citadel executives.

The project is supported by CZ’s investment vehicle YZi Labs and is positioned as a next-generation DeFi venue for betting on sports, politics, crypto prices, and real-world events.

In a significant boost to blockchain infrastructure, BNY Mellon and Nasdaq have joined a \$50 million funding round for Digital Asset Holdings LLC, a pioneering finance-focused blockchain firm. This fresh capital injection underscores Wall Street's accelerating embrace of distributed ledger technology for traditional asset management, extending beyond cryptocurrencies into tokenized securities and efficient market operations.

The U.S. crypto ETF market just hit another milestone: on Thursday, December 4, 2025, the 21Shares 2x SUI ETF (ticker: TXXS) became the first-ever exchange-traded fund tracking the Sui blockchain’s native token, officially listing on Nasdaq and bringing the total number of crypto ETFs launched in 2025 to 74(128 overall, according to Bloomberg data).

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued a stark warning on December 5, 2025, declaring that inconsistent and fragmented stablecoin regulations across major economies are now forming structural “roadblocks” that threaten financial stability, hinder effective oversight, and slow the development of seamless cross-border payments.

In a landmark decision on December 4, 2025, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) approved the trading of listed spot cryptocurrency products on federally regulated futures exchanges for the first time, marking a pivotal moment in the integration of digital assets into mainstream finance.

In a candid admission at the New York Times DealBook Summit on December 3, 2025, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink declared that his views on cryptocurrencies have significantly evolved, marking a stark departure from his earlier skepticism.

In a whirlwind of speculative frenzy on the BNB Chain, the meme token Bibi (\$BIBI) rocketed 522% in the last 24 hours as of December 5, 2025, briefly pushing its market capitalization above \$13 million before settling at around \$11 million, according to real-time data from GMGN.

MrBeast, the YouTube sensation with over 450 million subscribers, is set to disrupt fintech and telecom in 2026 through Beast Industries, his burgeoning media empire.

Charles Schwab, the largest U.S. brokerage with $12.1 trillion in client assets and 38 million active accounts, confirmed on December 3, 2025, that it will roll out direct spot Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) trading directly inside its existing platform in the first half of 2026.

Charles Schwab is preparing to launch direct cryptocurrency trading on its flagship brokerage platform in the first half of 2026, giving its 35+ million accounts and $12.1 trillion in client assets seamless access to spot Bitcoin, Ethereum, and potentially a curated basket of additional digital assets.

Between November 24 and December 2, 2025, three of the largest gatekeepers of traditional wealth, controlling a combined $11 trillion in client assets, simultaneously opened the doors to Bitcoin exposure in a perfectly coordinated nine-day blitz that permanently shifted BTC from “alternative asset” to core portfolio holding.

Ethereum surged 7.38% in the past 24 hours to reclaim $3,210, decisively breaking a multi-week consolidation range just hours after the successful activation of the Fusaka hard fork on December 5, 2025. The long-awaited upgrade, powered by PeerDAS and complementary EIPs, instantly unlocked up to 8× higher data throughput for Layer 2 rollups while laying the groundwork for future L1 gas limit increases — giving traders the exact fundamental catalyst the market had been waiting for.

CZ took center stage at a Dubai blockchain event to unveil a new YZiLabs-backed prediction market protocol live on BNB Chain, while simultaneously announcing that Trust Wallet (now with 220+ million users) has rolled out native prediction market trading through direct integrations with Polymarket, Kalshi, and Myriad.

As decentralized finance (DeFi) continues to evolve in 2025, Pendle has emerged as a frontrunner in yield trading and tokenization, now integrating with the newly launched Open Gas Initiative by ETHGas to subsidize transaction costs for users. Announced on December 3, 2025, this code-free program enables protocols like Pendle to cover a portion of gas fees on the Ethereum mainnet, enhancing accessibility and reducing barriers for everyday interactions in blockchain ecosystems.