Crypto Talkies December 5th 2025

Tonight’s crypto tape had a little bit of everything: hardware scares, political money moves, ETF milestones, and a fresh round of “institutions are absolutely watching this space,” even as retail in the U.S. eases off the gas. Let’s start with the story that should make anyone using their phone as a wallet sit up. Ledger’s Donjon security team says it has found a critical, unpatchable flaw in MediaTek’s Dimensity 7300 Android chip (COMMON). With physical access and some serious electromagnetic pulse hardware, an attacker could get full control over a device. This is not a casual, everyday threat — you need specialized equipment and hands-on access — but for people storing significant crypto on affected smartphones, it’s a reminder that “hot” mobile storage is only as strong as the silicon inside. For larger balances, hardware wallets and multisig still look a lot more comfortable than a single Android chip. Money and politics crossed paths in the UK, where crypto and aviation investor Christopher Harborne, a shareholder in Tether/Bitfinex parent DigFinex, wrote a record check to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party. The roughly $12 million donation is the largest-ever from a living individual to a British political party and pushes Reform ahead of the Conservatives in recent fundraising. For crypto, the takeaway is less about party lines and more about just how embedded digital asset wealth has become in mainstream political financing. On the institutional side, Wall Street’s blockchain bet quietly got bigger. Digital Asset (CC) raised about $50 million from the likes of BNY, Nasdaq, S&P Global and iCapital to accelerate roll-out of the Canton Network. It is a bet on regulated, permissioned infrastructure and tokenized real-world assets, not meme coins and degens. The message from TradFi: blockchains are moving deeper into the plumbing of capital markets, and they want to own the rails. Regulators in Europe were busy as well. In Brussels, the European Commission floated a plan to dramatically expand ESMA’s powers, effectively turning it into an EU-wide supervisor for crypto under MiCA rather than relying on national “passporting” regimes. Think a more SEC-style, centralized model for oversight and market integrity. Major member states are on board, aiming to tighten security, unify rules, and close the perceived gap with the U.S. It’s a signal that the EU doesn’t see MiCA as the finish line but as a foundation. Italy pushed in the same direction, warning crypto firms that the current light-touch regime expires at the end of 2025. Under the new stance, every virtual asset service provider will need full MiCAR/CASP authorization by December 30, 2025 or exit the market. For platforms serving Italian users, the clock is now very clearly ticking. Poland, meanwhile, went the other way. Parliament failed to override the president’s veto of a MiCA-aligned crypto bill, leaving the country outside the EU’s harmonized framework for now. The result is regulatory limbo: stricter rules are delayed, fragmentation continues, and political divisions around crypto remain unresolved. Enforcement did show its teeth. Europol led an international operation that dismantled a €700 million-plus European crypto fraud and laundering network. The scheme leaned on fake trading platforms, deepfake-style ads, and call centers to lure and fleece victims. Authorities made arrests, seized millions, and took down infrastructure. It’s a classic pattern: as digital finance scales, so do the scams — and so do the cross-border crackdowns. Back in the U.S., the mood among individual investors looks noticeably cooler. Fresh FINRA data shows overall risk appetite has dropped hard since 2021. Crypto ownership is basically flat, but interest in putting new money into digital assets — and other high-risk trades — is falling across all age groups. The steepest pullback is among young and minority investors, who were some of the most enthusiastic buyers in the last cycle. Retail is not rushing in at these levels. That may help explain why policy moves like Indiana’s stand out. Lawmakers there advanced House Bill 1042, which would allow public pension and retirement plans to include Bitcoin and crypto ETFs (BTC) as standard options. It is not direct on-chain exposure, but it would normalize digital assets inside some of the most conservative pools of capital in the country. Meanwhile, institutional positioning in Bitcoin itself remains a focal point. JPMorgan thinks bitcoin’s fair value over the next 6–12 months sits near $170,000 (BTC), and expects Strategy’s balance sheet strength and BTC holdings to be a bigger near-term price driver than miner flows. The bank is also watching an upcoming MSCI index decision as a potential catalyst. On the flip side, the spot market is not exactly serene. Bitcoin slid sharply toward the $90,000–$91,000 area (BTC), with ETF outflows, leverage flushes, and a nervous tape feeding December volatility. Price sits near a technical wedge apex, with traders split between “final capitulation before continuation” and “the start of a deeper bearish stretch.” The next decisive move out of this range will do a lot to settle that debate. Zooming out, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said sovereign wealth funds have been quietly buying those dips. According to him, they are building long-term Bitcoin positions via spot ETFs and direct holdings, treating BTC as a sort of strategic reserve asset. These allocations are larger and much less speculative than retail trades, and they point to a slow but meaningful shift in how governments and quasi-governmental pools of capital relate to digital assets. Ethereum (ETH) had a more constructive day. The price reclaimed and held above $3,000, with key support around $3,150–$3,200 acting as a floor and technicals improving: rising volume, a breakout in RSI, and renewed accumulation by “shark”-sized wallets. Traders are eyeing a move toward the $3,700 region if the structure holds. Tom Lee added fuel to that narrative, calling ETH “grossly undervalued” vs. BTC, floating targets as high as $20,000 (ETH), and pointing to the Fuska upgrade, lower fees, and tokenization growth as reasons the market may be underpricing Ethereum’s role in digital finance. Altcoins were their usual mix of drama and optimism. XRP spent the day soaking up both. On one side, XRP is hovering near $2 after roughly a 30 percent slide over the last two months (XRP). Sentiment is deeply sour, with social chatter hitting its most bearish tone since October and leaving the token vulnerable to further downside. At the same time, U.S. spot XRP ETFs are one of the few bright spots: they have logged a record 13–14 straight days of inflows and are closing in on $1 billion in assets under management less than a month after launch (XRP). Ripple also officially closed its $1 billion acquisition of GTreasury, a move that pushes it deeper into corporate treasury and institutional liquidity. Yet the token still trades 42 percent below its year-to-date peak of $3.67. Strong pipes, weaker price. Meme and retail favorites showed signs of life. Shiba Inu (SHIB) saw a new whale pull 169 billion SHIB off Coinbase as the price tried to base around $0.000009. Bullish divergences on the charts and shrinking exchange balances have some traders calling for a new uptrend, even as many holders sit on heavy prior losses. Dogecoin (DOGE) is in its own consolidation band around $0.14–$0.15, flashing a TD Sequential buy signal and building what analysts describe as a “healthier” market structure. A clean break above $0.17 and a descending trendline could open the door to a move toward $0.20 in the nearer term, and much higher levels in future cycles if history rhymes. Elsewhere in the long tail, Terra’s legacy came back into focus. U.S. prosecutors are seeking a 12-year prison sentence for founder Do Kwon, arguing the $40 billion Terra collapse inflicted more damage than FTX, Celsius and OneCoin combined. In a twist only crypto could deliver, LUNC (LUNA, LUNC) jumped roughly 40 percent heading into his expected U.S. sentencing next week, as speculators leaned into the heightened attention. On the DeFi and infrastructure front, there were both stumbles and new ambitions. Stablecoin protocol USPD disclosed a sophisticated exploit in which an attacker quietly took over a proxy, minted 98 million USPD, and drained over $1 million in liquidity. The vector relied on a shadow contract and a hidden CPIMP-based pathway, illustrating yet again how complex smart contract architectures can harbor long-lived attack surfaces. HumidiFi’s WET token sale on Solana (SOL) ran into a very different kind of problem: bots. A large sniping farm hoovered up essentially the entire supply in a prior presale round, sending the price from $0.069 to $0.25 in a flash and blocking regular users from participating. The team is now relaunching with a new token, tightened contracts, and a focus on fairer distribution. One protocol looking ahead is Aster (ASTER). The decentralized exchange rolled out an ambitious roadmap into the first half of 2026, including its own Aster Chain Layer-1, a staking program, and community-driven upgrades aimed at expanding token utility, weaving in real-world assets, and growing its DeFi ecosystem. The plan builds on what it calls major progress through 2025 and is another example of DEXs moving to control more of their underlying stack. The banking and exchange world also shifted a bit. Former Signature Bank executives are back with N3XT, a fully reserved, Wyoming-chartered blockchain bank. The pitch: programmable, instant, 24/7 U.S. dollar payments for institutional clients, with no lending of customer deposits. It is a direct nod to lessons from the last wave of crypto-friendly banks that ran into traditional liquidity problems. In Hong Kong, HashKey is preparing to open its order books for a public listing expected to raise at least $200 million. The IPO would be one of the city’s largest digital-asset offerings in 2025 and will be closely watched as a barometer of Asia’s appetite for regulated crypto exchange equity. Over in Turkey and the Gulf, Paribu agreed to buy CoinMENA for up to $240 million, securing regulated licenses in Dubai and Bahrain and giving the Turkish platform a much larger MENA footprint. U.S. exchanges are sharpening their pitch to the top of the market. Kraken rolled out an invitation-only VIP program for high-net-worth and institutional clients, with dedicated relationship managers, always-on premium support, early access to new products, and even curated global experiences. With an eye toward a planned 2026 public listing, Kraken clearly wants to position itself as a go-to platform for large, strategic capital. And in the enterprise blockchain corner, IOTA (IOTA) marked its 10th anniversary with a step toward mainstream institutional adoption. BitGo will add insured custody and wallet support for IOTA tokens on mainnet starting in early December, opening regulated U.S. access for funds and corporates that cannot touch self-custody. All told, tonight’s picture is classic late-cycle crypto: regulators tightening rules while some countries stall, fraud rings getting busted as new exploits appear, retail stepping back just as sovereign funds step in, and major banks, exchanges, and protocols quietly laying tracks for the next phase. The noise is thick, but the infrastructure keeps getting built.

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