Alright r/cc, macro just walked into the room wearing a “risk-on” t-shirt and Bitcoin looked up from the couch, nodded, and went back to doomscrolling. Let’s recap the greatest hits: US inflation came in softer than expected The Fed delivered its third straight rate cut The Bank of Japan raised rates for the first time in 30 years and somehow didn’t nuke global markets On paper? Chef’s kiss. The macro tape into year-end looks friendlier than it has in months. In reality? BTC bounced ~4%, kissed $90k, immediately remembered it left the stove on, and went straight back into the same Q4 chop. No god candle. No “up only.” Just vibes and wicks. So what gives? Why aren’t we printing face-melting green when the money printer is allegedly “warming up”? Good news (now with footnotes) Yes, CPI was cool: 2.7% headline, 2.6% core. Lowest core since 2021. Bulls everywhere reached for the champagne. Except… oops. Government shutdown. October CPI never dropped. November data is partly modeled, not observed. Rents and services basically ran on vibes and spreadsheets. Even Fed’s John Williams hit us with the classic: “Encouraging… but noisy.” Translation: Nice try, don’t frontrun QE off Excel inflation. Then he adds there’s “no immediate need” for more cuts. That’s Fed-speak for “calm down, degen.” Markets want a clean January print, not a contaminated teaser trailer. Real yields still choosing violence Reminder: 2020-21 worked because real yields were negative and dollars were being fired from a T-shirt cannon. Fast forward to now: 10Y real yields ~1.9% Fed stopped QT but also very loudly said “this is not QE” Balance sheet still ~$350B smaller YoY So yes, we’re in “less tightening,” not “free money summer.” Discount rates are still high. Long-duration risk assets (hi BTC 👋) don’t love that. BoJ: anchor gone, chain still attached BoJ finally hikes to 0.75%. Highest rate in 30 years. Zero-rate anchor = removed. Did the yen implode? Nope. Because Ueda basically whispered “don’t worry guys, we’ll go slow.” But the threat is still there. If carry trades start unwinding for real, history says risk assets don’t gently glide — they faceplant. Nobody wants to lever BTC into a potential carry squeeze that can casually delete 20–30%. So traders stay light. Smart? Probably. Boring? Extremely. BTC’s own market structure is… tired Macro aside, Bitcoin itself isn’t exactly screaming “send it.” Huge chunk of underwater supply between ~$93k–$120k Every pop triggers loss realization Market depth down ~30% from peak ETF flows choppy, November outflows hurt Liquidity mostly just rotating between the same wallets October’s rip to $126k pre-priced a lot of the “good news.” What’s left is thin books, fading demand, and sellers lurking above spot like unpaid interns. So where does that leave us? Macro isn’t hostile anymore — but it’s also not the 2020-style liquidity bazooka everyone is praying for. CPI good but noisy Fed cutting but saying “don’t get excited” Real yields positive BoJ normalization lurking in the shadows Crypto liquidity thinning, not expanding Bitcoin is acting like a half-mature macro asset: aware of conditions, but not ready to go parabolic off vibes alone. Until we get: a clean inflation downshift or actual balance-sheet expansion or real new liquidity entering crypto …this market is probably stuck doing what it’s doing best right now: Chop. Range. Emotionally exhaust everyone. See you in January. Or at $200k. Or $70k.Whichever comes first. 🚀🪓 

 So remember how NFTs were totally, definitely, for real this time dead? Yeah… about that. According to the latest numbers, NFT sales are up 12% to $67.7M, and Ethereum NFT sales casually spiked 45%. Just a small “zombie apocalypse” moment for an asset class that’s been pronounced deceased every quarter since 2022. A few observations from the trenches: ETH NFTs woke up and chose violence JPEGs apparently still pay rent “No liquidity” season lasts until it doesn’t Everyone who sold the bottom is suddenly a long-term fundamentals guy Naturally, Crypto Twitter will: Ignore this for 2 weeks Call it “wash trading” FOMO back in at +300% Are we back? Probably not.Are we so back? Also probably not.Is this market capable of reviving the most cursed narratives imaginable? Absolutely. Anyway, congrats to everyone still holding NFTs through the bear market. You survived the “who would even buy this” era and are now rewarded with… cautious optimism and mild hopium. See you all when headlines switch from “NFTs are dead” to “Why NFTs Are the Future” again. 🔁🫡

 So apparently the wisdom of the crowds has decided Bitcoin is not touching $100K before year-end. Prediction markets are betting against it. Cool story. Meanwhile, crypto ETFs casually pulled in $700M in inflows, the 2nd biggest week in the last six. TradFi money is tiptoeing in like “I don’t believe in this… but also don’t leave me behind.” 🤡📈 Altcoins? They’re doing that classic move where they stop bleeding just long enough for everyone to whisper “is this it?” Weekly losses trimmed, some green candles sneaking in. And then there’s GameFi, which clearly did not receive the recovery email—except for one absolute main character. 🎮 GameFi: Mostly pain, one giga-chad While the sector naps, Power Protocol (POWER) decided it’s allergic to gravity and sent +110% in a week. Why? Ronin Network collab ✅ Binance Alpha listing ✅ That’s it. That’s the tweet. Sometimes all it takes is the right buzzwords and a Binance logo. The rest of GameFi? Market cap dipped 1% to $9B, and volume got absolutely rugged, down 77% to $1.3B. The trenches are quiet. Too quiet. Fear & Greed crawled from 25 → 29, which in crypto terms is like going from “existential dread” to “mildly less dead inside.” 🕹️ Meanwhile in Web3 gaming land… TRUMP meme coin is launching a GameFi play called Trump Billionaires Club with a $1M prize pool in TRUMP tokens. Walletless onboarding, NFTs, Open Loot-powered. Yes, this is real life. The Blockchain Gaming Alliance says confidence is up to 66%, as studios ditch pure speculation and try this wild new thing called sustainability. Elixir Games is backing Alea, a sweaty, skill-based arena shooter. Less ponzinomics, more “git gud.” Funding undisclosed, vibes competitive. 📊 Weekly scorecard (aka who pumped, who got dunked on) Top Gainers POWER: +109.87% (main character energy) NeuralAI (NUERAL): +21.98% Undeads Games (UDS): +20.63% XYO: +17.92% Fusionist (ACE): +17.19% Top Decliners World of Dypians (WOD): -25.04% (no catalyst, no mercy) Mythos (MYTH): -22.26% Baby Shark Universe (BSU): -20.31% Echelon Prime (PRIME): -18.25% Wilder World (WILD): -17.33% TL;DR Prediction markets say BTC under $100K. ETFs are quietly loading bags. Alts are stabilizing. GameFi is still in timeout. POWER went full send because Ronin + Binance Alpha. Everyone claims we’re “building sustainably” now. Fear is still high, but at least it’s slightly less spicy. Do with this what you will, degens. Or just fire up CMC’s AI tool and pretend you’re doing research. 😏🚀

 So Blankos Block Party holders just got an email basically saying: “Hey fam, what if numbers… didn’t go down?” Enter Pulse Market — Mythical’s brand new NFT marketplace where everything is priced in USDC instead of MYTH, aka the token that has been doing a -91% interpretive dance over the last year. Yes, that MYTH.Yes, we all held it “for utility.”Yes, we are tired. What’s actually happening Mythical currently runs everything on Mythical Market, priced in MYTH, on Mythos Chain (Polkadot). Pulse Market is being pitched as a “new trading experience” (drink) where: Prices are in USDC Blankos holders log in with the same email BUT get a completely separate wallet AND can’t even see their MYTH balance Totally normal behavior. Very Web3. No notes. Chain confusion speedrun USDC is natively supported on Polkadot, so Pulse could still live on Mythos……but the whole “separate wallet, no MYTH access” thing screams new infra. Reminder: Blankos NFTs used to be bridgeable to Ethereum.Which means this could be Mythical quietly whispering: “Hey… you miss the EVM too?” No promises, no roadmap, just vibes and an email. Why Blankos? Because Blankos is: Mythical’s most recognizable IP Not tied to a live game right now Mobile version isn’t coming until 2026 (lmao) Translation:Blankos is the perfect canary in the coal mine for: Stablecoin pricing New UX New backend And seeing if OGs ragequit or say “actually… this is fine” TL;DR MYTH nuked itself Mythical said “what if USDC tho” Pulse Market appears Separate wallet, separate vibes Possible Polkadot → EVM arc? No timeline, no clarity, maximum speculation Honestly?If this means I can buy an NFT without doing mental math like it’s a 2021 DeFi farm, I’m in. Wake me up when: Pulse launches Blankos hit USDC floors And MYTH becomes a governance token for nostalgia

 So yesterday Bitcoin decided to remind everyone that price discovery is optional. 📈 Pumps $3k in an hour, reclaims $90k💥 $120M in shorts get Thanos-snapped📉 Immediately nukes to $86k🔥 $200M in longs follow them into Valhalla🌀 ~$140B market cap swing before your coffee got cold Crypto Twitter:“OMG leverage is out of control again 😡😡😡” Glassnode, quietly pulling receipts:“Actually… no.” The leverage boogeyman (again) Perps open interest? Down from cycle highs.Funding? Chilling around neutral.Front-end implied vol? Compressed after FOMC instead of exploding. Translation: this wasn’t some giga-degen 125x festival. This was thin liquidity + options positioning + everyone standing on the same rake. The liquidation looked insane because the market was basically hollowed out. When a few positions unwound, price moved like it was allergic to stability. The real problem: bags. So many bags. Between $93k and $120k is a graveyard of “local top” buyers staring at red numbers and whispering “I’ll sell on the next pump, I swear.” Short-term holder cost basis: ~$101.5kCoins underwater: 6.7M BTC (cycle high, btw) Every rally =🧑‍🚀 “Finally, exit liquidity”🔻 price smacks into overhead supply🔁 repeat, early-2022 style And the fun part?Recent buyers are slowly becoming long-term holders… while still underwater, which historically is how you get good old-fashioned capitulation vibes. Spot buyers: window shopping, not committing CVD says it all. Coinbase (US): kinda trying Binance + aggregate flows: absolute chop salad Dip buying: tactical, not “I believe in the future” energy Corporate treasuries?One or two chads show up, drop a headline, disappear for weeks. Not structural demand, just vibes. Options: the invisible handcuffs This market is basically options-expiry jail right now. Big expiries: Dec 19 & Dec 26 Dealers: long gamma on both sides Incentive: sell rips, buy dips Congrats, price is now mechanically pinned. Range looks something like:📉 ~$81k (True Market Mean)📈 ~$93k (overhead supply + dealer hedging) Until Dec 26 passes, BTC is less “digital gold” and more range-bound premium farm. TL;DR for the timeline addicted: This wasn’t leverage going feral Futures are de-risked, funding is chill Vol actually compressed Real issue = too much supply overhead + options pinning price into a box Dec 17 was a liquidity tantrum, not a systemic meltdown BTC isn’t broken.It’s just stuck under a mountain of bags while options dealers play ping-pong with your emotions. See you at expiry. 🫡📉📈

 So remember when banks spent a decade telling us Bitcoin was for criminals, libertarians, and people who forgot their password? Yeah… about that. According to River, almost 60% of the top 25 US banks are now somewhere between “thinking about Bitcoin” and “quietly bolting it into their wealth platforms.” Not shouting it from the rooftops, mind you. More like whispering “it’s just an alternative asset” while nervously checking the OCC guidance. 2024 was the year of “ETF fixes everything.”2025 is the year of “okay fine, clients want the actual Bitcoin.”2026 is shaping up to be “sir, Bitcoin is now a standard line item next to bonds and REITs.” Phase 1: ETF cope Banks let asset managers do the dirty work. ETFs meant: No keys No wallets No explaining seed phrases to compliance Flows went up, flows went down, nothing exploded. Risk committees nodded solemnly and said: “Volatile, but… manageable.” Highest praise possible. Phase 2: White-label everything Now comes the real pivot. Banks don’t want to be crypto companies — they want crypto to behave like FX. So instead of building exchanges, they’re doing: “Powered by Coinbase” (but don’t say Coinbase too loud) NYDIG custody Fireblocks keys PNC is already letting private clients trade BTC using Coinbase’s backend. Schwab and Morgan Stanley are aiming for 2026 spot BTC/ETH trading, with: Hard caps Conservative margin Eligibility rules tighter than airport security Translation: “Yes, but only for adults.” Regulation arc (unexpected buff for banks) The irony is delicious. The same regulatory moat crypto tried to escape is now working in banks’ favor. Stablecoin rules? ✔️ OCC trust charters? ✔️ Riskless principal trades so capital charges don’t nuke returns? ✔️ Now Bitcoin can sit politely next to Treasuries instead of screaming from an offshore exchange dashboard. The new risk nobody wants to talk about Banks solved price risk… and imported infrastructure risk. Turns out if: Coinbase NYDIG Fireblocks have a bad day, half of Wall Street’s shiny new Bitcoin offerings sneeze at the same time. So yes, Bitcoin is being “normalized,” but also concentrated behind a few vendors that didn’t exist 10 years ago. What could possibly go wrong. The endgame By 2026: Bank of America advisors can recommend crypto ETFs BTC shows up in the same dashboard as your dividend stocks Grandma owns Bitcoin and doesn’t even know where the keys are And the real question won’t be “Does your bank offer Bitcoin?”It’ll be “Which wrapper are you using — ETF, direct custody, or advisory model?” Banks didn’t choose Bitcoin.Their clients did. Now TradFi is just doing what it always does best: Pretend it invented the thing Wrap it in compliance Take a basis point Bitcoin didn’t get adopted by banks.Banks got adopted by Bitcoin.

 So remember when DeFi was gonna be a purely crypto-native parallel financial system?ETH as pristine collateral, wrapped BTC everywhere, algo stables printing synthetic dollars out of vibes and emissions? Yeah. About that. Turns out the entire experiment quietly rage-quit sometime in the last 18 months and crawled back to the most boomer asset imaginable: US Treasuries. Not even in a dramatic way. No blowups. No governance votes titled “ARE WE SELLING OUT???”Just… $9B of tokenized T-bills casually sitting on-chain like they own the place. The numbers (aka the receipts): ~$9B in tokenized US Treasuries & money market funds ~60 products ~57k holders ~3.8–5% yield (aka: not zero, not ponzi) ~$19B total tokenized RWAs Growth: 5x while Crypto Twitter was arguing about blobs This isn’t some boutique “web3 meets finance” demo either. BlackRock’s BUIDL is almost $3B, accepted as collateral on Binance, and multichain Franklin Templeton said “why not put the shareholder registry on-chain” and shipped BENJI Circle’s USYC went from “who?” to $1.3B after Binance plugged it into derivatives margin JPMorgan launched a tokenized money market fund on Ethereum like it’s just another Tuesday The plumbing is live. Not a testnet. Not a hackathon deck. Production. What actually changed? DeFi spent two years assuming it could bootstrap a full collateral hierarchy out of: volatile assets reflexive leverage and vibes That worked great until it didn’t. Meanwhile, TradFi has spent decades solving one boring problem really well: What is the thing everyone trusts when everything else breaks? Answer: short-dated US government debt. So now DeFi has reinvented the repo market, except: settlement is 24/7 margin moves on-chain and your “risk-free rate” token has an ERC-20 address Congrats, we rebuilt Wall Street… but faster and with better UX (sometimes). Is this still DeFi if everything is KYC’d? Yes and no. Most of these tokens: are allowlisted have minimum redemptions in the six figures live in “KYC-DeFi” not public pools But inside those constraints? They’re used as margin collateral They’re rehypothecated They’re plugged into rate markets like Pendle They price the short end of the on-chain yield curve That’s not cosplay. That’s financial infrastructure. The real plot twist Stablecoins already monetized Treasuries.They just hid them in the balance sheet. Now the collateral itself is tokenized, portable, pledgeable, and composable. So the new DeFi monetary base looks like: stablecoins Treasury-backed tokens repo-like primitives yield stripped and traded separately ETH didn’t die. BTC didn’t die.They just stopped pretending to be money-market funds. TL;DR DeFi didn’t overthrow TradFi.It integrated the US Treasury market as its base layer. Tokenized T-bills are becoming crypto’s repo market: the thing perps, stables, DAOs, and derivatives clear against the boring asset everything depends on the spine, not the edge Whether this goes from $9B to $80B depends on regulation and rates. But the direction is locked in. We came for censorship resistance.We stayed for the risk-free rate. 🦅📈

Alright anon, gather round. It’s time for the annual episode of Ethereum: Still the Most Important Chain (Trust Me Bro). Let’s get this out of the way:Ethereum is the most consequential blockchain ever built. Programmable money. DeFi. Secure smart contracts. The Louvre of crypto. No argument there. But here’s the vibe shift no one wants to talk about: Technological irrelevance doesn’t rug you. It just slowly stops texting back. 🧠 The New Eth Maxi Mantra “We still have TVL.” That’s it. That’s the tweet.TVL has gone from “measure of success” to “emotional support metric.” Yes, Ethereum has lots of capital locked.No, that capital is not doing cardio. It’s parked. Sleeping. Yield-farming itself into a coma. Meanwhile, money velocity is out here living its best life… somewhere else. 📉 Revenue Check (Oof Edition) According to Nansen: Ethereum revenue: down ~76% YoY → ~$604M Solana: ~$657M TRON (yes, that TRON): ~$601M, powered by stablecoin giga-chads in emerging markets ETH did a big brain move with Dencun/Fusaka — cheaper L2 fees — and accidentally nerfed its own income.Congrats, you optimized yourself out of rent. 🚀 Activity Wars: Solana Presses “Spam” Artemis data says in 2025: Solana: ~98M monthly active users ~34 billion transactions Ethereum bros reply instantly:“Yeah but that’s just bots.” Which is true.But also sounds exactly like: “Those aren’t real users anyway.” (— MySpace, 2008) Solana is basically the NASDAQ: fast, chaotic, arbitrage bots everywhere.Ethereum is FedWire: slow, serious, settles things that actually matter. Different games. Different vibes. But the volume gap is getting loud. 🧨 The Real Problem: No Urgency Kyle Samani said the quiet part out loud: ETH hit $100B faster than any asset ever.Fees were exploding.Scaling was obviously urgent.And yet… there was never urgency. Ethereum never went to war.It held community calls. This is how platforms don’t die — they just become foundational while someone else becomes fun. 🧩 L2s: Scaling or Balkanization? Yes, L2s work. Fees are low. Users are happy. But now we have: Fragmented liquidity Fragmented UX Fragmented value accrual Ethereum secured the kingdom, but the L2s took the toll booths, the brand loyalty, and the profit margins. ETH risks becoming the world’s most secure collateral warehouse. ⚙️ The Plot Twist: Ethereum Wakes Up 2025 EF arc unlocked: Ossification → Accelerationism New leadership with actual engineering PTSD Pectra + Fusaka shipped Beam Chain roadmap drops like: 4-second slots Single-slot finality “What if L1 was… fast?” Upgrading a $400B network mid-flight is insane.But so is doing nothing while Solana speedruns mass adoption. Pick your poison. 🧾 Final Take “We still have TVL” is not a strategy.Liquidity is mercenary. It farms wherever it’s treated best. Ethereum can still win — but only if: Beam Chain actually ships L2s stop feeling like 12 different apps duct-taped together ETH re-links usage → value accrual Otherwise, by 2030, ETH will be: Systemically important Deeply respected Commercially… mid And in crypto, history doesn’t pay gas fees. TL;DR:Ethereum is still the backbone.But the market is asking whether it wants the backbone…or the nervous system. 🧠⚡ 

So yeah, this week’s episode of Crypto Adoption, But Make It Boring™ just dropped. YouTube quietly added PayPal’s PYUSD as a payout option for U.S. creators. Not “YouTube launches a wallet.” Not “Google becomes a validator.” Just a new toggle sitting next to the usual payout rails, routed through PayPal/Hyperwallet like a well-behaved enterprise citizen. Crypto Twitter wanted a moon mission. What we got is… plumbing. And honestly? That’s bullish. What actually happened (before the hopium overdoses) YouTube pays creators → Funds show up in PayPal Hyperwallet → Creator can now select PYUSD instead of fiat If they want, they can later send that PYUSD on-chain from PayPal No Metamask popup. No seed phrase onboarding trauma. No “sir, please bridge to Arbitrum” tutorial video. Just vibes and compliance. Why this matters (even though it’s not a pump) YouTube has paid out $100B+ in four years. That’s ~$25B/year flowing through creator payouts. Even a tiny opt-in rate turns into real recurring stablecoin volume. Best case scenarios floating around: Conservative: ~$6M/year in PYUSD Base case: ~$120M/year Aggressive: ~$1B/year And before someone screams “THAT’S NOTHING,” remember:This isn’t about supply shock. PYUSD already has ~$4B market cap. This is about habit formation. Stablecoins don’t win by YOLO inflows.They win by becoming the default “eh, I’ll just leave it there for now” balance. The sneaky part YouTube doesn’t touch crypto.Google doesn’t custody tokens.PayPal does all the scary stuff. Which means: Platforms stay clean Compliance teams stay sane Creators get optional on-chain exits This is how crypto actually sneaks into Web2: as a dropdown menu, not a manifesto. Also: timing is not accidental This lands right as: Stablecoin regulation is actually becoming a thing Policymakers are shifting from “ban it” to “fine, just attest monthly” Citi is out here forecasting $1–4 trillion in stablecoin issuance by 2030 Translation: the adults are back in the room, and they brought spreadsheets. TL;DR YouTube added PYUSD payouts via PayPal Nobody had to become a crypto company Stablecoins are entering payroll-like flows This won’t pump your bags tomorrow But it does quietly normalize holding crypto as income Not financial advice, but if your favorite YouTuber starts saying “smash the like button so I can settle on Arbitrum,” just know we warned you. 

 So the Blockchain Game Alliance just released its 2025 State of the Industry Report, and honestly? It reads like the patch notes for a game that finally stopped being in pre-alpha denial and decided to ship something real. TL;DR:– Web3 gaming is apparently growing up (yes, I was shocked too).– MENA is speedrunning its way into becoming a global blockchain gaming powerhouse.– Africa is grinding XP steadily.– Female participation is up to 23% (finally, some new players in the lobby).– The industry might—might—be becoming less of a speculative loot box casino. Okay, let’s break this down like a YouTube influencer explaining yield farming to their dog: 🎮 “Web3 Gaming Is Maturing” — BGA, 2025 Translation: We’ve officially moved from “click buttons, get tokens” to “games that look like someone didn’t code them during a coffee-fueled panic attack.” Sustainable models, higher-quality gameplay, actual art direction… things are happening. Speculation isn’t gone, of course—this is crypto, not Narnia—but at least the games can now be played without needing a PhD in gas fees. 🌍 MENA: The New Final Boss of Web3 Gaming Two facts that made my eyebrows respawn: In 2021, less than 1% of industry pros in BGA’s survey were from MENA. In 2025, that number is 20%. Combined with Africa’s growth (0.5% → 5.5%), over 25% of responses now come from emerging markets. In gaming terms, MENA basically went from “NPC in the background” to “main character energy” in four years. A young, digitally-native population + governments throwing giga-bucks at gaming, esports, and digital infrastructure = a region that just 100x’d its XP bar. Sebastien Borget (co-president of BGA + The Sandbox co-founder) even dropped the report live in Abu Dhabi like it was a legendary loot reveal. Respect. 👩‍💻 More Women in Web3? Actual Progress?? 23% of survey participants were women — the highest ever.Not 50/50 yet, but at least it feels less like a Discord server moderated exclusively by dudes named “CryptoWolf420.” A big chunk of credit goes to Yasmina Kazitani, BGA’s first female co-president, aka the person doing the actual side quests that matter:– Building grassroots communities– Pushing for representation– Co-founding the Women in Web3 AllianceBasically, she’s speedrunning “fixing the industry.” 📈 What This Actually Means New regions. New talent. New leadership.And if you’re a studio in the West still wondering why your daily active users are just you and your dev intern… yeah, maybe look at where the players actually are. 📅 Wanna See This Energy IRL? Dubai GameExpo Summit (powered by PG Connects), May 20–21, 2026.Because nothing says “the future of gaming” like an event with enough AC to cool a small moon.