In a notable shift within the cryptocurrency landscape, Metaplanet has set ambitious plans to ramp up its Bitcoin holdings to 210,000 by the end of 2027, signaling a strong bullish sentiment in the market. This move adds to the growing interest among institutional investors.
In recent developments, Lookonchain reported that BlackRock made significant deposits into Coinbase Prime, including 2,292 Bitcoins valued at approximately $199.8 million and 9,976 Ethereum valued at around $29.23 million, highlighting the asset management giant’s continued engagement in cryptocurrency investments.
Analyst Emmett Gallic from Arkham has uncovered that entities linked to the notorious Mt. Gox hacker, Aleksey Bilyuchenko, have transferred 1,300 BTC, worth about $114 million, to unidentified trading platforms in the past week alone. Currently, these addresses hold a total of 4,100 BTC, equivalent to about $360 million, while a combined total of 2,300 BTC has already been sold.
On the macroeconomic front, initial jobless claims in the U.S. totaled 214,000 last week, falling short of market expectations which estimated 223,500. The report on continuing jobless claims registered 1.923 million, slightly above the 1.9 million forecast. This mix of data continues to shape expectations regarding the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy.
BlackRock’s strategists, Amanda Lynam and Dominique Bly, have stressed that the Fed is anticipated to implement only limited rate cuts in 2026. The expectation is that further cuts will depend heavily on labor market stability, keeping the Fed’s actions cautiously optimistic.
In the metals market, Swissquote Bank’s senior analyst, Ipek Ozkardeskaya, noted that gold prices have surpassed record highs over 50 times this year, driven by persistent factors that contribute to its upward trajectory. The outlook for gold remains bullish in both medium and long-term perspectives.
Turning to market trends, the cryptocurrency market witnessed a wave of liquidations totaling $167 million within the last 24 hours, with long positions contributing to a significant portion of this figure. Bitcoin liquidations accounted for approximately $53 million, while Ethereum saw about $38 million liquidated.
Due to the Christmas holiday, U.S. stock markets experienced an early closure on Wednesday. The Dow Jones edged up by 0.6%, while the S&P 500 rose by 0.32%, and the Nasdaq increased by 0.22%. In commodities, spot gold dipped below $4,450, reflecting a decline of 0.78%.
A recent liquidation map from Bitget indicated that leverage is highly concentrated around the current Bitcoin price of $87,700, suggesting that short-term price fluctuations could trigger further liquidations. Notably, there is dense short liquidation between $88,500 and $90,000, while there is growing long risk beneath $86,000.
In terms of liquidity, Bitcoin experienced a net outflow of $7 million over the past day, with inflows amounting to around $45 million and outflows totaling roughly $52 million.
Other notable news in the tech and finance sectors includes Nvidia’s recent acquisition of Groq assets for $2 billion, although they clarified that the entire company was not included in the agreement. Meanwhile, former acting chair of the U.S. CFTC, Caroline Pham, has joined MoonPay as Chief Legal Officer. OpenAI is reportedly considering the introduction of advertisements within ChatGPT to diversify its revenue streams.
In developments within the cryptocurrency sphere, USDC Treasury burned 50 million USDC on the Ethereum network, while Circle has introduced tokenized gold and silver swap services based on USDC. Multicoin is suspected of purchasing 60 million WLD OTC from the Worldcoin team, and Brevis unveiled its tokenomics, allocating 32.20% of its 1 billion total supply for community incentives.
Additionally, the US XRP spot ETF saw a net inflow of $11.93 million yesterday, and the daily transaction count on Ethereum L1 reached a peak of 1.91 million transactions, marking a new high for 2025.
In further clarification, the Scroll project addressed misunderstandings regarding a DAO closure, stating that the governance restructuring is intended to improve operations rather than terminate them.
The market capitalization of stablecoins on the Aptos chain has surged over 60% this year, hitting a peak of $1.8 billion. In a notable development, the founder of Aave has been accused of attempting to enhance governance voting rights by increasing his holdings of $10 million in AAVE tokens. Lastly, West Main Self Storage has increased its Bitcoin holdings by 0.114, totaling 2.074 Bitcoins, while data shows that Aave’s lending volume has plummeted by approximately 70% since August, signaling a general retreat in DeFi leverage. A whale was also observed going long on 127.4 million TST with 1-2x leverage on Hyperliquid, raising concerns of possible price manipulation.
