Title: "Trillion-Dollar Stablecoin Battle, Binance Decides to Join Again"
Author: Lin Wanwan, Dongcha Beating
In 2024, the total on-chain transfer volume of stablecoins reached $27.6 trillion, surpassing the combined total of Visa and Mastercard for the first time.
This figure was $300 billion five years ago and was nearly zero ten years ago.
On December 18, a project called United Stables launched a new stablecoin, $U, in Dubai. Its reserves are not in cash or government bonds but a combination of USDC, USDT, and USD1 stablecoins. Collateralizing stablecoins with stablecoins is industry slang called "matryoshka."
Binance Wallet immediately integrated, BNB Chain

The whole country bets on Bitcoin: clever move or foolish gamble? Is the behind-the-scenes of this shocking high-stakes gamble really as simple as it seems?

The "kill zone" has sparked heated discussions on Chinese online platforms, stemming from revelations about the financial struggles of ordinary Americans, highlighting the harsh realities of life pressure and loss of security. The "kill zone" in the crypto market is even more brutal, as high-risk behaviors and lack of regulation lead to instant liquidations, causing retail investors to suffer heavy losses. The article emphasizes the importance of strengthening social security and personal financial management to cope with potential risks and regain hope for life.

Tomasz Tunguz, Founder of Theory Ventures
Compiled by: Yuliya, PANews
At the end of each year, Tomasz Tunguz, founder of Theory Ventures, systematically reviews his predictions for the past year and offers new insights for the year ahead.
In his review of 2025, Tunguz scored his ten predictions (each worth one point) with an average of 7.85. This year, profound structural changes occurred in fields such as artificial intelligence, capital markets, data infrastructure, and crypto finance. These changes not only validated most of his predictions but also laid clear foreshadowing for the development trends of 2026. This article will review the market upheavals of 2025 and look ahead to the twelve major trends coming in 2026. PANews will provide an analysis of these two articles.

Today's News Highlights:
1. The US government is on a three-day holiday, and EIA data has been postponed to next week.
2. The Russian Central Bank plans to open up crypto investments and draft new regulations to distinguish investor levels.
3. Polymarket confirms it was attacked through a third-party authentication vulnerability, resulting in some user funds being stolen.
4. HashKey Capital's fourth fund has completed a $250 million initial round of fundraising.
5. K33 Research: Maintains a bullish outlook for 2026, predicting Bitcoin will outperform stock indices and gold.
6. Trend Research has purchased an additional 46,000 ETH, bringing total holdings to over 580,000 ETH, with unrealized losses exceeding $140 million.
7. In 2025, a total of 267 crypto M&A transactions were completed, amounting to $8.6 billion.
Macro
The US government is on a three-day holiday, and EIA data has been postponed to next week.
Trump signs an executive order; US federal agencies are...

Text: RWA Knowledge Circle
Editor: RWA Knowledge Circle
Introduction
Recently, a phenomenon has emerged in the RWA community that is worth pondering repeatedly. Securitize, the number one in RWA market share, third-place Ondo, and leading digital asset exchanges

Author: AJC, Messari Enterprise Research Manager
Translation: Tim, PANews
By 2025, Base has further solidified its leading position as Ethereum's L2 champion across many data metrics. Among them, revenue is the most indicative of its dominance within the entire L2 ecosystem.
Although the total revenue of L2 has significantly declined from its peak in 2024, Base continues to maintain a dominant position in the L2 market. In December 2023, Base's on-chain revenue was $2.5 million, accounting for only 5% of the total L2 revenue of $53.7 million. One year later, Base's on-chain revenue grew to $14.7 million, representing 63% of the total L2 revenue of $23.5 million in December 2024. This trend continued into 2025, with Base achieving $75.4 million in revenue from the beginning of the year, accounting for 62% of the total L2 revenue of $120.7 million.
Base's leading advantage

Since the article "Where Should the Chinese Prediction Market Explore Next," prediction markets have entered the mainstream worldwide. Referencing Bitcoin and stablecoins, crypto products that achieve PMF will be recognized by the market as a new track, receiving continuous funding.
Thanks to the inherent platform monopoly effect of prediction markets, surrounding services have become a consensus within the community, aiming to cultivate it into a natural incubator for capturing external ecosystems, thereby constructing a hierarchical ecosystem of core—peripheral—outer layers.
After outlining the basic pattern and direction of prediction markets above, let's attempt to analyze their existing peripheral services. Besides imitation platforms, tools, and rebate programs, what other directions can support high-market-value peripheral business models?
Premature Prediction Markets
>
> The world may end, but progress marches on.
>
>
>
Prediction markets are deterministic

Author: Zen, PANews
The "Metaverse," which was repeatedly hyped two or three years ago, has become clearer in its true industry landscape as the narrative wanes. Approaching the end of 2025, the global metaverse industry presents a complex picture of "hot and cold" unevenness.
After the boom in 2021 and cooling down in 2022, the metaverse ecosystem in 2025 has not entirely declined; instead, there have been signs of recovery and breakthroughs in certain sectors.
At the same time, some areas still experience sluggish growth, forming a stark contrast. Some have achieved new highs in user scale and engagement, while others face declining activity or even user churn. This hot-and-cold polarization has become a key focus in observing the metaverse industry in 2025.
Immersive Gaming Platforms: Over 100 Million Users but Want to "Tear Off the Metaverse" Label
The virtual worlds provided by immersive games are currently the most mature and active sector of the metaverse. In 2025, immersive UGC

Author: Dingdang; Editor: Hao Fangzhou
Produced by: Odaily Planet Daily
In the eighteen years since the birth of Bitcoin, the "four-year cycle" theory has almost become the foundational belief of the cryptocurrency market. Bitcoin halving, supply contraction, price increases, and altcoin seasons have not only explained multiple bull and bear market transitions in history but also profoundly influenced investors' position management, project fundraising rhythms, and even the industry's understanding of "time."
However, after the April 2024 halving, Bitcoin only rose from $60,000 to a historical high of $126,000, with gains far below previous cycles. Altcoins are even more weak, and macro liquidity and policy variables have become more sensitive market anchors. Especially after the large-scale entry of spot ETFs, institutional funds, and traditional financial instruments, a question has been repeatedly discussed:
Does the four-year cycle in the crypto market still exist?

I'll be more direct.
Binance is the best entry point for project teams to exit liquidity after issuing tokens, no doubt about it. $MON 's initial launch caused Coinbase to plummet, which should have completely dispelled other project teams' ideas of bypassing Binance.
When the market consensus is that BNB Chain projects will receive priority in launching Alpha, BNB Chain projects will naturally form scale.
There's no way around it; liquidity is the absolute lifeline of assets, and Binance is the liquidity center, which also determines and controls the "fate" of the majority of projects.
Next, there might only be one area to watch—edge innovation. Edge innovation is not about replacing Kodak with a better Kodak, but about replacing it with a mobile phone. From "Qiqin Jinchu" to the US and Japan, they all originated from fringe cultural groups and continuously absorbed external cultural innovations.
Large companies encountering this kind of potential "edge innovation"

This article summarizes from Messari's 100,000-word annual report, combining AI and human insights, and outlines the following 60 encryption trends for 2026.
1. If L1 does not have real growth, encryption money will increasingly flow towards Bitcoin.
2. ETH is currently still the "younger brother" of Bitcoin, not an independent leader. ETH has support from institutions and enterprises, and can earn alongside Bitcoin, but it is not yet fully able to stand on its own.
3. The correlation between ZEC and Bitcoin has dropped to 0.24, serving as a privacy hedge against Bitcoin.
4. Application-specific currencies (such as Virtuals Protocol, Zora) will become an emerging trend in 2026.
Take Virtuals Protocol as an example to introduce application-specific currency:
When a user creates an AI agent, a token exclusive to the agent will be issued.

The article investigates the cryptocurrency issues that users are most concerned about in 2025 through AI large models, focusing on market cycles, profit paths, and Risk Management. Different models propose different questions based on their characteristics, reflecting the high Fluctuation of the crypto market and users' concerns about returns and safety.

Author: thiccy
Compiled by: Tim, PANews
In 2025, the cryptocurrency market witnessed an astonishing volatility script again, but many suffered heavy losses in trading.
This article is not written for those traders who have been losing money, but for those who are highly profitable yet have experienced a significant drawdown in profits this quarter.
One of the greatest pains in life is witnessing months or even years of effort go to waste overnight.
In Greek mythology, Sisyphus is condemned to endlessly push a boulder up a mountain, only to watch it roll back down each time he reaches the top. The cruelty of this punishment lies in its precise targeting of the core of the human experience—that absurdity of futility and repetition. However, Camus saw another possibility in Sisyphus: when he acknowledges the absurd and no longer hopes for ultimate redemption, but instead fully engages in the act of pushing the stone up the mountain itself, he transforms himself in the process.

In 2025, the competition in the encryption Wallet market is fierce, and Phantom has attracted attention with a valuation of 3 billion and rapid user growth. Although its volume has been eroded by exchange wallets, Phantom is trying to expand its market and user base by launching new products such as the stablecoin CASH and debit cards. In the face of challenges, it seeks survival and development through a "trading + consumption" model.

Author: Pan Zhixiong
The annual summary of Bitcoin Optech has always been regarded as a technical barometer for the Bitcoin ecosystem. It does not focus on price fluctuations, but rather records the most genuine pulse of the Bitcoin protocol and key infrastructure.
The report for 2025 reveals a significant trend: Bitcoin is undergoing a paradigm shift from "passive defense" to "active evolution."
In the past year, the community has moved beyond merely patching vulnerabilities and has started to systematically address existential threats (such as quantum computing), while aggressively exploring the boundaries of scalability and programmability without sacrificing decentralization. This report is not only a memorandum for developers but also a key index for understanding the attributes of Bitcoin assets, network security, and governance logic over the next five to ten years.
Core conclusion
Looking ahead to 2025, the technological evolution of Bitcoin presents three core characteristics, which are also key to understanding the following 10 major events.

As we enter Christmas week, the global market's initial response does not belong to the crypto market. Against the backdrop of a weakening dollar and a retreat in US Treasury yields, risk aversion sentiment has rapidly intensified, with gold and silver taking the lead in the market, continuously refreshing their historical highs and becoming the hottest destination for capital.
In contrast, the crypto market appears unusually quiet, with Bitcoin not taking off alongside the macro tailwinds, but instead continuing to linger in the 88,000-89,000 fluctuation range, lacking the offensive posture that should be expected before the holiday.
It is under such a contrast that the question of whether "Bitcoin will experience a Santa Rally" has once again become a topic of repeated discussion in the market. The so-called Santa Rally is originally a seasonal phenomenon in traditional financial markets, referring to the phase of rising risk assets before and after Christmas, driven by improved sentiment and changes in liquidity. However, when it comes to the crypto market, this rule has never been considered stable. This year's Bitcoin is indeed in avoidance.

Today's news highlights:
Spot silver breaks through the $70 mark for the first time.
CFTC Acting Chair Caroline Pham steps down, Michael Selig is sworn in as the 16th Chair.
Bitcoin spot ETFs saw a net outflow of $142 million yesterday, marking the third consecutive day of outflows.
A certain address staked 1.17 million SOL, worth approximately 174.36 million USD.
BitMine increased its holdings by 98,800 ETH last week, bringing the total to 4.066 million.
Last week, global listed companies net bought $26.35 million in BTC, and Strategy did not increase its holdings.
macroeconomic
Hong Kong Police: 15 people have been arrested in the robbery case of a 1 billion yen virtual currency exchange.
According to Hong Kong media Hong Kong 01, last week two Japanese company employees engaged in virtual currency and luxury goods business took a car to a virtual currency exchange shop in Sheung Wan, planning to exchange 1 billion yen (approximately contained in 4 travel suitcases.

Author: Frank, PANews
The year 2025 will be dramatic and pivotal for public chains in the crypto world. If 2024 is the "carnival night" where various new public chains compete for attention with high expectations of airdrops and grand narratives, then 2025 will be the "waking moment" after the celebration.
When the tide goes out and liquidity tightens, the real data that was once obscured by the appearance of prosperity begins to surface. We see a "tale of two cities": on one side is the widespread halving of secondary market prices and a significant slowdown in TVL growth, while on the other side is a counter-trend surge in on-chain fee income and DEX trading volume.
The stark contrast reveals a brutal truth: the market is no longer paying for mere "narratives"; capital is concentrating on leading protocols that have the ability to generate value and meet essential needs.
The PANews data team has comprehensively compiled the core data for 26 mainstream public chains for the year 2025, starting from