Category: Coins

• BlackRock has filed for an iShares Ethereum Staking Trust with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
• Meanwhile, WisdomTree has filed for the first fully collateralized Ethereum ETP in the European Union.

In November, BlackRock confirmed its intention to launch the iShares Ethereum Staking Trust (ETHB) after registering the name in Delaware.

Last Friday, BlackRock submitted its S-1 Registration Statement with the SEC. This begins the review process by the authority.

In June 2024, BlackRock launched an Ethereum spot ETF on Nasdaq, offering investors regulated exposure in Ethereum offers. However, the regulator at the time, led by Gary Gensler, did not allow ETFs to generate investment income through staking.

Under the new SEC chairman Paul Atkins, this is now being moved away from. BlackRock and VanEck are among the issuers resubmitting or modifying their ETF applications to allow staking.

While others are modifying their existing products, BlackRock has decided to launch an entirely new fund.

According to the application, the iShares Ethereum Staking Trust fund will not only track the price of Ethereum, but also provide staking returns at the same time. The application states:

“The Trust will not use leverage, derivatives or similar arrangements to achieve its investment objective.”

According to the filing, Coinbase Custody will serve as the primary custodian, while Anchorage Digital is listed as a secondary alternative. BlackRock announced that the filing, once approved, will trade on Nasdaq under the ticker ETHB. Only authorized participants are allowed to create or redeem shares in large blocks.

WisdomTree launches first ETH ETP with liens in the EU

• A recent Ripple share sale offers investors guaranteed returns through buyback rights and a protection clause – it could be expensive for Ripple.
• Safeguards tie profits to XRP exposure and provide large funds with a cushion against crypto fluctuations.

Ripple’s recent $500 million share sale has come under fire after details emerged showing investors were granted terms designed to protect returns regardless of market performance. Participants, including Citadel Securities and Fortress Investment Group, will be allowed to sell their shares back to Ripple after three or four years at a fixed annual return of 10%, provided the company does not go public before then.

Sea Bloomberg kept himself Ripple too reserves the right to repurchase the shares during the same period, but under more demanding conditions. If Ripple decides to buy back, it would have to pay out an annual return of 25%.

This structure appears to protect investors from the risk of loss and guarantee a profit even if Ripple’s value stagnates or the crypto market weakens. The group of investors includes big names such as Marshall Wace, Brevan Howard, Galaxy Digital and Pantera Capital.

Share buyback could cost Ripple $732 million

If Ripple were to buy back the shares after four years at a 10% annual return, the company would have to raise $732 million. This figure reflects the cost of meeting the guaranteed return included in the agreement.

The share sale also included a liquidation preference clause that gives new investors priority over previous shareholders if the company is sold or goes bankrupt.

Investor filings reportedly show that about 90% of the company’s total net assets are tied to XRP, the company’s proprietary digital token. This shows that investing in Ripple in this case is a big bet on the future development of XRP.

As of July, the company held about $124 billion in XRP, with much of it either locked or gradually being released. Since mid-July, XRP has lost over 40% of its value and has fallen 16% since October 31st. XRP is currently being used at 2,09 $ traded, resulting in an increase von 3,22 % in the last 24 hours.

Despite these market fluctuations, recent investor protection measures have helped the company maintain a valuation near $40 billion during the funding round. This suggests that traditional financial players are seeking downside protection when entering crypto companies and are treating them more like structured finance products.

• Charles Hoskinson presented the Cardano 2026 roadmap and presented the new Midnight protocol Jolteon.
• The NIGHT token has been on the market since the end of last week, and the first major crypto exchanges are already listing it.

In conversation with David Gokhshtein, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson provided details on the technology and strategy behind the phased launch of Midnight, the network’s privacy-focused sidechain. Hoskinson explained that customers should expect updates approximately every three months.

Hoskinson explainedthat Jolteon will be Midnight’s core protocol. Jolteon is designed to allow the network to process up to 5,000 transactions per second while keeping block times under one second, making Midnight one of the fastest blockchains in development:

“And then the whole thing is pushed to the mainnet, and everything is connected. So it’s going to be an endless log for about 9 months. But when you start with liquidity, then you get dapps, then you get infrastructure, and then you get the whole end-to-end package. So I like the launch plan. Every month we get some kind of new goodie and a new wave of partners.”

Die Midnight-Roadmap

The Midnight roadmap has already been set in motion with Phase 1, in which the NIGHT token was launched on Cardano on December 4th. The first token transfers were made to core network participants and the project activated its redemption smart contracts.

As CNF reported, Midnight’s rollout will continue in phases over the next year to gradually expand the network. The second phase is intended to go beyond token activation to structured on-chain functions.

After that, Phase 3 will introduce the Scaled Incentivized Testnet, inviting developers, testers and eventually community validators to participate, with a focus on decentralization. As CNF reported, the final phase will see the launch of hybrid DApps.

The NIGHT distribution has been structured for sustainability by using a 360 day “thaw schedule” where each eligible address is assigned a random initial unlock date between December 10, 2025 and early March 2026, with three additional unlocks every 90 days.

Rather than encouraging short-term speculation, this staggered drop schedule will help maintain stability and growth. Now that NIGHT is on the market, it has already launched on five crypto exchanges: OKX, HTX, Bybit, MEXC, and Gate.io. This will guarantee immediate robust liquidity and global presence. Binace now also has the listing confirmed.

• Vitalik Buterin has proposed a trustless onchain gas futures market that would insure Ethereum customers against future transaction fees.
• Critics say the model lacks a natural short side and is difficult to implement.

In a recent one published article On

He wants to create a trustless on-chain gas futures market, which would mean Ethereum gas fees would be more predictable for customers. Gas fees cover the computing costs of interacting with the Ethereum-Blockchain ab.

Buterin wrote:

“Users often ask whether today’s relatively low fees will persist over the next two years, even as Ethereum scaling work continues.”

To solve this problem, Buterin proposed a futuristic system to the Ethereum community. In what Buterin calls a “base-fee forecast market,” gas could be purchased in advance for specific future periods. In this way, customers could protect themselves against rising network costs, which usually occur when network activity is high.

Buterin said such a market would “provide a clear signal of people’s expectations regarding future gas fees” and improve transparency across the system. Buterin wrote:

“Customers would receive a clear signal about expectations of the level of future gas fees and would be able to protect themselves against future increases by prepaying for a specific amount of gas at a specific time interval.”

criticism

The idea has been questioned from several quarters, including Hasu, Flashbots’ pseudonymous strategy manager. According to him, many users want to protect themselves against higher gas prices, which means that there is a lot of demand for long positions on gas.

Funny wrote on X:

“The problem is that this market has no natural short side. A lot of people are short gas and want to hedge. But no one is long gas. There may be some noise in trading, but not enough interest to create a market of any meaningful size.”

Buterin then asked whether “the protocol should be the short side” and suggested an on-chain auction for the rights to claim the base fee. A possible solution could be to let the protocol act as a short side, possibly through an on-chain auction.

Rights could be granted to demand basic fees for parts of the block gas. Hasu countered that such buyers would still return almost all of the value to the protocol itself, which would reduce incentives and not resolve the central imbalance.

• Poland’s Prime Minister Tusk blames Russian influence for blocking stricter crypto regulations to prevent fraud.
• President Nawrocki does not accept the argument of increasing fraud crimes and claims that the new law would threaten freedom.

Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk has Russia accusedto play a role in blocking a law regulating crypto markets in the country. His attempt to overturn President Karol Nawrocki’s veto of the law failed in a secret parliamentary session on December 5 after the opposition refused the support needed for a three-fifths majority.

Tusk claimed that the crypto industry was being used by Russian and Belarusian interests to interfere in Polish affairs. He called this a national security issue and said that “part of the crypto market is clearly infiltrated and controlled by Russian and Belarusian entities.”

During the vote, the parties split along political lines. The opposition, including the conservative Law and Justice party (PiS) and the right-wing Confederation, sided with the president and refused to help the government push through the law.

Presidential veto sparks dispute over crypto rules

President Nawrocki vetoed the bill on December 1, saying the proposed rules were too strict and “a real threat to the freedoms of the Polish people.” He argued the bill gave financial regulators powers that could harm economic freedom because they could too easily block websites and freeze accounts.

Tusk’s government then accused the president of exposing Polish citizens to increased risks of fraud. She pointed out that 5,800 cases of fraud related to cryptocurrencies have been reported in recent years. Tusk warned that those who upheld the veto would “regret their decision in a few days.”

The president denied the allegations. On the YouTube channel Kanał Zero, Nawrocki explained:

“I have not received any information from the security services about the use of cryptocurrencies either before my veto of the law or after.”

He insisted that if there were security concerns, he as head of state should have been informed early on.

PiS MP Janusz Kowalski accused Tusk of using secrecy to spread fear and called for the secret material to be made public. Nawrocki’s chief of staff Zbigniew Bogucki questioned the delay in presenting the bill and asked why the Tusk government did not act sooner if the threat was so serious.

Now Nawrocki wants to present his own version of a crypto law to parliament. His office has not released any details. The dispute increases tensions between the president and the prime minister. In November, Tusk restricted top security chiefs’ access to Nawrocki, who then refused to approve security-related promotions.

• Inflows into digital asset ETPs reached $716 million, with BTC and XRP alone accounting for nearly $600 million.
• ProShares led the movement, while BlackRock’s iShares drained around $105 million.

A current one Message by James Butterfill, head of research at European digital asset manager CoinShares, crypto exchange-traded products (ETPs) recorded $716 million in new inflows last week, following $1 billion inflows the previous week. Butterfill noted that while there were small outflows on Thursday and Friday, they appeared to be in response to U.S. economic data that signaled continued inflation pressures.

Overall, digital investment products saw strong momentum, with recent inflows pushing total assets under management to $180.5 billion, up 8% from November lows, after four weeks of $5.5 billion in outflows.

Bitcoin and ProShares dominate the inflows

Bitcoin-led ETPs were the biggest beneficiaries last week, recording $352 million in inflows, while year-to-date inflows total over $27 billion and assets under management exceed $140 billion.

Ethereum (ETH) funds have invested over $12.9 billion so far this year, including modest inflows of $39 million. While XRP, the fourth-largest token by market cap, saw a significant increase in interest with weekly inflows of $244.7 million, Chainlink (LINK) recorded weekly inflows of $52.8 million, representing 54% of its total AUM.

US-based ProShares led all issuers with weekly inflows of $210 million. Meanwhile, BlackRock’s iShares ETFs, which have quickly become one of the most influential forces in the ETP space, saw modest outflows of $105 million.

Despite the decline, iShares is still the largest asset under management in the sector, with more than $80 billion. Grayscale Investments saw another $7 million in outflows this week, bringing year-to-date outflows to more than $3 billion.

Issuers based in the USA had a more positive development. Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund had $62 million in inflows, and Bitwise Funds Trust recorded another $14 million.

Most regions showed strong interest in digital investment products, with the US recording $483 million in inflows, followed by Germany with $97 million and Canada with $80.7 million. Sweden was the biggest outlier, recording outflows of $5.6 million, bringing the year-to-date total to $836 million – the highest net outflow of any region this year.

Bitcoin itself is over 91.770 $ traded, supported by one 67% increase in sales $56 billion, while options activity with a almost 300% increase to $3.52 billionexploded.

Ethereum followed the price movement of BTC and is over 3.100 $ traded, where the total turnover of derivatives is around 115.97% to 84.99 Billion $ and the open interest by 4.57% to 38.37 billion has risen.

• Zach Humphries, Shiba-Inu supporter from the very beginning, outlines measures to restore Shiba-Inu’s old dynamics.
• He is pushing for the memecoin to focus more on SHIB to readjust to retail cycles.

Shiba Inu is still on its long-term downward trend, but Zach Humphries, an early supporter, is of the opinionthat the token can still have a realistic path to success. He has drawn up a list of structural changes that he believes must take place before SHIB can regain the strength it enjoyed during its explosive 2021 cycle.

Here is how $SHIB could actually make a major comeback. We need 3 big things to happen in order for this project to get back to where it was in 2021.

1⃣ Refocus the entire ecosystem on SHIB
2⃣ Ride the next wave of retail momentum
3⃣ Build a roadmap that is simple,… pic.twitter.com/ipeL7DBVdR

— Zach Humphries (@Z_Humphries) December 7, 2025

System expansion had Shiba-Inus Core identity diluted

Humphries says that with SHIB there has been a distortion of the original system. Since the SHIB initiative launched in August 2020, several projects have joined it: Shibarium, ShibaSwap, Metaverse, BONE, LEASH, TREAT and several NFTs.

Today, Humphries believes that branching the system into too many individual products led to a decline in trust. The basic requirements for SHIB adoption in retail no longer seem clear. Humphries believes that SHIB remains among the top 25 cryptocurrencies as it trades just 90% below its ATH.

A price level of $0.000044 could attract more investors because it would be a big relief for the current traders.

SHIB Renaissance depends on convincing planning

Humphries sees retail participation as key to a successful recovery. He points out that memecoins typically perform well when a new investor base emerges with access to cheap assets.

He also advocates for a simple, straightforward plan. The current path is too complicated, such as simultaneous work in the metaverse, games, a DEX, L2 scaling and new token models. that seems to go against the wishes of the SHIB owners.

• Harvard University now holds the equivalent of $443 million in cryptocurrencies – twice as much as in gold.
• It is an indication of the growing institutional recognition of digital assets, even from organizations that are considered more conservative.

Harvard University has significantly increased its Bitcoin holdings and tripled its ETF investments in the third quarter of 2025. The $53 billion foundation now has twice as much money invested in Bitcoin as in gold, showing it is moving heavily away from traditional investments toward digital assets.

Harvard Management Company has increased its Bitcoin investments by $443 million, bringing its total to $117 million. This is the largest allocation of digital assets the university has ever made. Harvard’s decision to add BTC to its core assets shows that major institutions are beginning to recognize cryptocurrencies as legitimate financial assets.

Gold investments also saw an increase, doubling from $102 million to $235 million over the same period. However, the share of Bitcoin investments is twice that of gold, showing that cryptocurrencies are preferred over traditional safe-haven assets such as gold.

University foundation invests in Bitcoin instead of gold

Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan described Harvard’s action as a “blatant debasement trade,” suggesting the university sees Bitcoin as a hedge against the erosion of fiat currency. He also noted that the move reflects a broader trend of digital currencies becoming a recognized part of diversified investment portfolios.

Harvard ramped its bitcoin investment in Q3 from $117m ot $443m. It also boosted its gold ETF allocation from $102m to $235m.

Think about that for a second: Harvard decided to put on a debasement trade and it allocated to bitcoin 2-to-1 over gold.

—Matt, December 8, 2025

The surge in BTC investments comes at a time of market volatility, leading to retail outflows. Despite this volatility, Harvard’s institutional investment exposure appears robust, with Bitcoin being one of the largest single investments by a university endowment.

Harvard’s 2:1 Bitcoin-Gold allocation highlights the strong institutional preference for cryptocurrencies. A prospect that was once considered a fringe investment is now widely accepted among sophisticated investors. The ratio shows the belief that Bitcoin is a more effective hedge against inflation than gold.

Bitcoin traded above $126,000 for much of 2025 amid tightening liquidity in global markets. The Harvard allocation that has now become known supports the view that Bitcoin is suitable as a tool for managing the foundation’s assets.

Germany, through Deutsche Digital Assets, has launched the DDA Physical Bitcoin ETP, the first regulated exchange-traded Bitcoin product on the Nortia marketplace. It gives public companies and asset managers access to Bitcoin in a regulated environment and increases confidence in wider acceptance of cryptocurrencies.

• Binance Alpha will list the NIGHT token starting December 9th, shortly after it launches on Cardano.
• The NIGHT token is joined by DUST, a token that enables private, shielded transactions.

Binance Alpha is a platform in Binance Wallet that introduces early-stage crypto projects with growth potential to Web3. More support for NIGHT is expected to come from leading exchanges, custodians and wallets in the near future.

Midnight Network, a privacy-focused blockchain developed as a sidechain to Cardano, posted on X:

“Binance now supports NIGHT. As the world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance is helping bring NIGHT to a wider audience and giving more users the opportunity to directly use the Midnight network. This strengthens NIGHT’s reach and is a win for data protection on Web3.”

NIGHT Token: Launch on Cardano

On December 4th, Midnight officially launched NIGHT as a native Cardano asset. At the same time, redemption requests were submitted for over 4.5 billion NIGHT tokens that had already been claimed during the Glacier airdrop phase. The Glacier airdrop involved more than 170,000 eligible wallet addresses, with over 3.5 billion NIGHT tokens claimed by customers.

In the second phase, the so-called Scavenger Mine, another billion NIGHT tokens were claimed from more than eight million wallet addresses, further expanding the community and reach of the network.

As CNF reported, NIGHT serves as the primary utility and governance token for the system. Owning NIGHT generates a second resource called DUST, which is used to pay for shielded and private transactions and smart contracts. Together, NIGHT and DUST enable comprehensive private interactions on the Midnight network.

Although the launch and distribution of the tokens took place on December 4th, the release schedule for the community-allocated NIGHT token begins on December 10th. The tokens will be unlocked in installments over approximately a year. The first release date will be randomly assigned to each participant within a 90 day window.

As CNF reported, the Midnight Network’s roadmap is divided into four phases. The first phase, “Hilo,” lays the groundwork and creates liquidity and stability for the network. The subsequent phases “Kukolu”, “Mohalu” and “Hua” build on this foundation and lead to the full development of the Midnight system.

Cardano’s native token ADA had a modest increase over the past week von 12 % and will for 0,43 $ traded. However, he stays 85 % below its all-time high of 3,10 $. Sales rose 90% to $685 million.

• The claim for damages came after a warning from Chinavirtual assets and stablecoins are not legal means of payment – Pi Coin was used as an example.
• An investor from Arizona previously had the SocialChain Inc., the operating company of Pi-Network, and two of its founders were reported for fraud.

Pi Network is charged with securities fraud under US federal law. This resulted in a ten million dollar lawsuit for damages. On October 24, Harro Moen of Arizona filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against SocialChain Inc. and its two founders, Nicolas Kokkalis and Chengdiao Fan, as well as other parties.

The lawsuit states presentedthat Moen had been cheated out of the value of the Pi tokens that he had “mined” over the network since April 2020.

Moen claims that over $2 million worth of unauthorized transfers from Pi took place and that delays or errors in migrating tokens to the Pi Network mainnet made them illiquid. The lawsuit further states that the defendants misled investors about the decentralization and distribution of the Pi tokens.

The lawsuit further alleges that they conducted undisclosed token sales and transferred approximately two billion Pi coins.

The central allegation is that Pi Network and its leadership violated US securities laws and investor protections by marketing and operating the token system in a manner that benefited insiders at the expense of ordinary investors.

China’s role

Following Beijing’s crackdown on cryptocurrencies, seven Chinese industry associations, including the National Internet Finance Association of China and the China Banking Association, have issued a warning against RWA tokenization. Specifically, the Pi network was denounced as an example of a token that could be used in pyramid schemes and to launder the proceeds of crime.

Market performance and upgrades

Fact: Pi Network uses AI in its fast-track KYC system to speed up verification, reduce manual checks by half, and help users stuck in backlogs complete the process on the blockchain faster.

As CNF reported, 17.5 million customers have completed KYC, 15.7 million have already migrated to the mainnet, and three million are in the queue waiting for full verification.

Pi Network is also preparing for the planned unlock of 190 million Pi tokens this month. The native Pi token has been around for the past week 4% and more in the last 24 hours 0,96 % decreased so that its current price is at 0,2210 $ and the market capitalization is approximately $1.84 billion.