GM, Readers! 🎄

Christmas is almost here, and it has been a wild year for crypto. Thank you all for being a part of this amazing journey. 🎉

Top stories this week:

A Merry Update: ✨

Breaking: Coinbase just underwent a major makeover. It has rolled out its biggest update of the year, the “Everything Exchange.”

Not just crypto, the one-stop platform has expanded its products and offerings to stock trading, tokenization, prediction markets, AI-powered advisors, and more…

“A new era of Coinbase starts now and lots of other cool stuff,” Coinbase announced on X on December 18.

With the Everything Exchange, Coinbase has taken a major leap, expanding its products beyond crypto.

The all-in-one app will build a futuristic financial system that is easily accessible, intelligent, and bridges TradFi and DeFi.

Stock Trading

Not just crypto assets, the update enables traders to diversify their investment portfolios in traditional stocks and ETFs using USD or USDC, all from a single account. How cool is that?

From early 2026, Coinbase envisions expanding 24/7 perpetual stock trading for traders outside the U.S., practically from anywhere in the globe.

Coinbase Tokenize

The tokenized assets market is growing. It is only a matter of time before every asset on Earth is tokenized. Coinbase believes in this mantra. To be a part of this growing ecosystem, Coinbase plans to roll out “Coinbase Tokenize,” an end-to-end platform for tokenizing stocks early next year.

Prediction Markets

Powered by Kalshi, it is an in-app on Coinbase where participants from the U.S. can predict outcomes from elections, collectibles, and global events. Manage prediction market positions with crypto, equities, and stocks from a single interface.

Solana DEX Trading

Coinbase is integrating with Solana’s DEX aggregator, Jupiter, enabling seamless and direct trading and swapping of Solana tokens.

Coinbase Business

It is a one-stop business platform available in the U.S. and Singapore. Designed for emerging businesses, it helps to send, manage payments, and earn USDC rewards through the “Coinbase Advanced” interface.

Coinbase Advisor

Build a portfolio or receive personalized trading advice through the AI-powered Coinbase Advisor.

New Base App

Launched in 140+ countries, it is an on-chain “Everything App” that enables users to control and manage social feeds, payments, trading, earning, etc., from a single place.

And there is more…

The platform will soon launch a feature for businesses to create custom-branded, fully-pegged (including USDC) stablecoins. Following the December upgrade, Coinbase shares rose by almost 4.6%.

Sure, if you held your stocks since the dotcom bubble, you would’ve been up—eventually. But three years after the dot-com bust the S&P 500 was still far down from its peak. So, how else can you invest when almost every market is tied to stocks?

Lo and behold, billionaires have an alternative way to diversify: allocate to a physical asset class that outpaced the S&P by 15% from 1995 to 2025, with almost no correlation to equities. It’s part of a massive global market, long leveraged by the ultra-wealthy (Bezos, Gates, Rockefellers etc).

Contemporary and post-war art.

Masterworks lets you invest in multimillion-dollar artworks featuring legends like Banksy, Basquiat, and Picasso—without needing millions. Over 70,000 members have together invested more than $1.2 billion across over 500 artworks. So far, 25 sales have delivered net annualized returns like 14.6%, 17.6%, and 17.8%.*

Want access?

[Click here to skip the waitlist →]

_{Investing involves risk. Past performance not indicative of future returns. Reg A disclosures at masterworks.com/cd}

Crypto regulatory progress faces a setback as the U.S. Senate Banking Committee delays the long-anticipated Crypto Market Structure Bill until early 2026.

The House passed the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025, CLARITY Act of 2025 (Crypto Market Structure Bill) in July 2025 to establish a clear regulatory structure for digital commodities.

However, in December, the U.S. Senate and lawmakers pushed the markup hearings to 2026 election year. The critical delay prolonged regulatory uncertainty and dampened hopes of investors and crypto exchanges in the U.S.

Committee Chair Tim Scott said that there was not enough time to reach clear bipartisan negotiations before the holiday break. This may stretch to 2026, which is an election year. This may shift the focus to complex political agendas and further delay the progress.

Post-holidays, Congress will most likely prioritize the funding bill, which expires on January 30 2026, rather than the Market Structure Bill.

Your time is better spent creating content, not managing ad campaigns. Google AdSense's automatic ad placement and optimization handles the heavy lifting for you, ensuring the highest-paying, most relevant ads appear on your site.

Earn with Google AdSense

Is Bitcoin and the broader crypto market gearing up for the Santa Claus rally?

Historically, a Santa Claus rally spans across the last five trading days of December and the first two trading days of January. During this time, stock prices and even crypto experience a significant surge.

The reason?

The holiday season and the year-end bonuses fuel the market. Traders are generally happy and optimistic. Institutional investments are thin. As a result, the market experiences significant retail inflows.

Since 1950, the S&P 500 has made solid average gains during the Santa rally. Though the crypto market is unpredictable, there is a seasonal trend for price appreciation.

On Monday morning, the traditional U.S. stock futures market, the S&P 500, gold, and silver all made strong gains, setting the stage for the Santa rally.

As for Bitcoin, it climbed to $90,000 after a dip to $88,000. Ethereum continues to show a strong rebound, trading above $3000. Other major altcoins, Solana and XRP, showed resilience.

The recent Fed Reserve year-end liquidity boost of $6.8 billion could renew optimism for risk assets like Bitcoin.

Crypto never sleeps…so while Wall Street takes a Christmas break, DeFi markets are open 24/7. This could drive some extra inflows from active traders.

Despite the seasonal hopes, the overall crypto market sentiment is cautious, tiptoeing around volatility and macroeconomic uncertainty.

So, will Santa deliver this Christmas? The holiday momentum is building up. Let’s keep our festive spirits up and fingers crossed. 🤞

Looking ahead: Nasdaq seeks to extend trading hours, as Wall Street gears up for 24/7 move.

MetaMask, the Ethereum-only wallet, has integrated Bitcoin support, accelerating its multi-chain growth and user experience.

Until now, MetaMask offered wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), which comes with custodial risks, higher costs, and security breaches. The new Bitcoin integration replaces the wrapped BTC version and overcomes this limitation.

Buy, receive, swap, or send Bitcoin to other wallets directly from the MetaMask wallet.

Buy Bitcoin using local currencies and payment options.

A minor bump: MetaMask reminded its users that Bitcoin transactions are slower compared to EVM or Solana-supported networks.

Read the full update at MetaMask News.

Last week’s quiz result

Option C: Solana integrated the Proof of History (PoH) consensus mechanism to timestamp every block in the blockchain. It enhances immutability, trust, speed, and efficiency of the network.

“The XRPL Lending Protocol is coming” – Ripple Staff Software Engineer at Ripple, Edward Hennis, shared a post on X, highlighting key features of the upcoming XRP Ledger (XRPL) Lending Protocol. The upcoming lending protocol will provide institutional-grade yield, fixed-rate, and fixed-term lending to XRP holders. He further explained that rather than pooled collateral, it will use its own segregated Single Asset Vault (SAV) to hedge against risks.

Ethereum developers are targeting early 2026 to launch their next major upgrade, Glamsterdam. The ambitious upgrade will be a major systemic overhaul that will boost network transparency, data processing speed, and overall efficiency. One of the key pillars will be to enhance decentralization by separating block builders from proposers and reducing validator centralization risks. Ethereum’s next is Hegota upgrade, signaling continuous growth and a more robust platform for users.

Based on CoinMarketCap Data, December 24, 12:47 AM ET.