IBM CEO's Warning: Trillions of Dollars in Spending Difficult to Profit From
In early December 2025, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna publicly questioned the sustainability of AI data center expenditures. He pointed out that building a 1-gigawatt AI data center costs about $80 billion. If the global plan reaches 100 gigawatts, the total capital expenditure would amount to $8 trillion, with just interest expenses requiring an annual profit of $800 billion to support. This is several times the combined profits of current tech giants. Krishna emphasized that the five-year depreciation cycle for AI chips further amplifies the pressure: "You must use it up within five years, or you have to discard and reset." This statement quickly triggered market shock, highlighting a core turning point in AI development from a "technology race" to an examination of "economic feasibility."
Krishna's calculation is not isolated. Multiple institutions estimate,

A few weeks ago (at that time I hadn't yet read the article "Underground Argentina: Jewish Moneylenders, Chinese Supermarkets, Young People Giving Up, and Middle-Class Reverting to Poverty"), an old classmate I hadn't seen in a long time called me one day. During the conversation, he suddenly asked:
Are you still paying attention to digital currencies?
This old classmate and I have a very deep connection to the crypto ecosystem. When I was still clueless and attended my first offline Bitcoin lecture, I talked to him about my mindset at the time: I didn't understand what Bitcoin was, but I was very curious and wanted to listen.
Since then, until now, he has been one of the very few people in my real life who knows about this experience of mine.
The difference is that since then, I have fully immersed myself in the crypto ecosystem, while he still fights and struggles in the business world.
Despite that, over the years, every time we chat, we talk about the crypto ecosystem and crypto assets.
This time when he called, as usual, we started talking about...

The payments industry may seem "old," but it has always been the earliest and most easily restructured part of the financial system through technology.
While the market is still debating whether "cryptocurrency is an asset," two major payment giants—Visa and Mastercard—have reached a consensus on a more fundamental engineering issue: Is there a more efficient settlement layer that can be embedded into the existing payment system instead of starting from scratch?
The answer is stablecoins.
Recently, Visa announced the opening of USDC settlement to banks in the United States via Solana; previously, Mastercard partnered with Ripple to test RLUSD-based transaction settlement on XRPL.
This is not just a short-term pilot but a clear signal that the global payment infrastructure is beginning to migrate toward a new generation of settlement layers.
Visa: Making stablecoins into a "settlement"

Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) announces an investment of up to $2 billion in Polymarket, valuing the company at $8 billion. This is the largest private equity investment from traditional Wall Street and will position Polymarket as a global distributor of event-driven data, potentially launching the POLY token. The investment marks a turning point for Polymarket and its founders, as ICE plans to boost revenue through data services while exploring the path to productize information.

Author: Chloe, ChainCatcher
Recently, the controversy between Aave DAO and Aave Labs has been exposed. The former is responsible for governance protocols, while the latter develops Aave products.
The focus of this dispute is the fee issue arising from the recent announcement of deep integration with CoW Swap. An Aave DAO member using the pseudonym EzR3aL pointed out that Aave Labs recently integrated CoW Swap services, originally intended to optimize user trading paths, but on-chain data shows that the fees generated from this integration no longer flow into the DAO, but directly into Labs' private address. At the current rate, approximately $10 million will flow out of the DAO treasury in one year.
EzR3aL raised concerns to the community: why was there no prior consultation with the DAO regarding the fees?

JPMorgan Chase has withdrawn nearly $350 billion in cash from its Federal Reserve account since 2023 and has allocated most of it into U.S. government bonds. This move is a defensive strategy the bank has adopted to counter the threat of rate cuts that could erode its profits.
According to data compiled by industry tracking agency BankRegData, as of the third quarter of this year, this bank, with assets exceeding $4 trillion, has seen its balance at the Federal Reserve plummet from $409 billion at the end of 2023 to just $63 billion.
During the same period, the bank increased its holdings of U.S. Treasury bonds from $231 billion to $450 billion. This operation allowed it to lock in higher yields in advance to prepare for Federal Reserve rate cuts.
These fund transfers reflect how this largest U.S. bank is preparing for the end of a period of easy profits. During that period, the bank will

1. Looking Back at 2025: What Drove BTC Prices Through the "Four Seasons" of the Year?
As 2025 draws to a close, Golden Finance, in this moment of bidding farewell to the old and welcoming the new, launches the series of articles "Looking Back at 2025." Reflecting on the year's developments in the crypto industry, we also hope that in the new year, winter will dissipate and the stars will shine brightly. In 2025, the crypto market was once glorious, reaching new all-time highs, then returning to calm, and entering a phase of oscillation and bottoming out. This article reviews the performance of the crypto market this year. Click to read
2. Bitwise: Top 10 Crypto Predictions for 2026
Driven by strong institutional demand and a series of favorable regulatory developments, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and Ripple (XRP) all hit record highs (respectively $126,080, $4,946, $293, and $3.65). Stablecoins and tokenization have become household terms, Morgan Stanley,

Author: Sleepy.txt
PayPal is about to open a bank.
On December 15, this global payments giant with 430 million active users officially submitted applications to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Utah Department of Financial Institutions to establish an industrial bank (ILC) called "PayPal Bank."
However, just three months earlier, on September 24, PayPal announced a major deal, selling up to $7 billion of its "buy now, pay later" loan assets to asset management firm Blue Owl.
During the conference call at that time, CFO Jamie Miller confidently emphasized to Wall Street that PayPal's strategy was to "maintain a lightweight balance sheet," to free up capital and improve efficiency.
These two events are contradictory—on one hand pursuing "lightness," but

Bull Market Traps and Bear Market Traps are two of the most deceptive patterns in financial markets. They can mislead traders into establishing positions based on false signals—only for the price to quickly reverse afterward.
Recognizing these traps is crucial for traders in stocks, forex, cryptocurrencies, commodities, and indices.
If understood and identified correctly, these traps can not only help traders protect their capital but also present strategic short-term trading opportunities.
This article will delve into the nature, causes, identification methods, and practical strategies to avoid falling into these traps.
What is a Bull Market Trap?
A bull market trap is a false signal that suggests the downtrend has reversed into an uptrend, but the price quickly resumes its decline.
In other words, the price temporarily breaks through a key resistance level, enticing traders to believe that an upward trend has begun, but then fails to sustain the momentum and turns downward.
In this situation

In 2025, the crypto market experienced a journey from the glory of reaching $100,000 BTC to a period of consolidation. The loose policies at the beginning of the year and Trump's rise to power drove the market upward, but later tariffs and economic concerns affected the trend, ultimately leading BTC to fluctuate above $90,000 by the end of the year. There is uncertainty about the market's future direction.

Author: Jack Inabinet, Source: Bankless, Translation: Shaw Golden Finance
In the cryptocurrency space, liquidity is crucial.
No matter which angle you analyze this industry from, this principle applies. Liquidity affects everything, from token prices to Ethereum staking patterns.
Last week, the US clearing core institution—the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC)—was authorized to provide compliant tokenization services under federal regulations. Since then, the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) at an institutional scale has garnered increasing attention. Today, the cryptocurrency industry faces an unknown: how will these RWAs be distributed on-chain?
Today, we will examine DTCC’s own tokenization requirements and discuss the role of liquidity in determining the dominance of cryptocurrencies, in hopes of better understanding which blockchains are most likely to succeed in the RWA tokenization field.
DTC