Dear Readers! 🌞

This is the final edition of 2025, and what a wild year it has been! Thank you all for being part of this journey and making it worthwhile. 🥳

2025 was eventful, packed with big wins and sharp lows, and we have endured it all.

Looking back, here is the Good, the Bad & the Ugly (unfiltered):

The Good

The Bad

The Ugly

2025 has been the year of regulatory breakthroughs and clarity. Here’s a yearly recap of the major developments:

President Trump, as part of his broader ambition to build a pro-crypto nation, signed the Genius Act into law on July 18. It established the first-ever comprehensive Federal regulatory framework for stablecoins in the U.S.

The historic law required clear boundaries and prioritized consumer protection. It implemented a 1:1 reserve backing with U.S. dollars and short-term treasuries. Stablecoin issuers are asked to adhere to strict AML (anti-money laundering) rules and disclose their monthly reserves publicly.

The Genius Act was long overdue and strengthened America’s leadership in the global crypto space.

🔔 Plus: Let’s not forget Trump’s Executive Order signed on August 7, a major institutional win that expanded access to cryptocurrencies for 401(K) retirement plans for employees.

👉 Revisit the news: Trump Greenlights Crypto in 401(K).

On March 6, President Trump signed the executive order to create the first-ever Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. The Reserve will be funded with Bitcoins seized from criminal or civil forfeitures. The order prohibits the sale of any Bitcoin from the Reserve.

On October 6, the flagship currency reached the record-breaking All-Time High of $126,000, the highest this year.

Massive Spot Bitcoin ETF inflows worth $300 million, fed rate cuts, and positive market sentiment buoyed the surge. The U.S. 43-day government shutdown also shifted investments into alternative currencies like Bitcoin.

The SEC approved Generic Listing Standards on September 17 for exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which opened doors for the rapid expansion of crypto ETFs.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs generated over $57 billion, and ETH Spot ETFs pulled in $12.6 billion in cumulative inflows to date.

Canary Capital’s first-ever U.S. Spot XRP ETF ($XRPC) emerged as the biggest ETF launch in 2025 with a record $58 million single-day trading volume.

In 2025, 15 other Spot ETFs, including Solana and Dogecoin, entered the market. Following the new standards, analysts forecast that 2026 will be an even bigger year for crypto ETFs.

👉 Revisit: ETF Season Boom.

Ethereum launched two major upgrades this year, the Pectra upgrade on May 7 and the much-anticipated Fusaka upgrade, which went live on December 3.

The Fusaka upgrade activated PeerDAS, which dramatically improved data capacity by 8x, layer-2 efficiency, and reduced transaction costs.

Coinbase also rolled out its major year-end update, the “Everything Exchange,” a one-stop platform for stock trading, tokenization, prediction markets, and AI-powered advisors.

👉 Learn more here.

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}

Despite the headlines, severe volatility and Bitcoin’s relentless price fall crippled the crypto market and eroded investor confidence.

October 10 was the bloodiest day for crypto as it witnessed one of the largest liquidations in history. On Friday, over $19 billion in leveraged positions were wiped out within hours. The escalating U.S.-China trade war and Trump’s 100% tariff imposition on Chinese imports (effective Nov 1) sparked the collapse.

The 43-day U.S. government shutdown was the longest in American history. The unprecedented shutdown caused chaos, slowed economic productivity, and delayed launches for several crypto ETFs.

Did you catch these stocks?

Robinhood is up over 220% year to date.
Seagate is up 198.25% year to date.
Palantir is up 139.17% this year.

AltIndex’s AI model rated every one of these stocks as a “buy” before it took off.

The kicker? They use alternative data like reddit comments, congress trades, and hiring data.

We’ve teamed up with AltIndex to give our readers free access to their app for a limited time.

The next top performer is already taking shape. Will you be looking at the right data?

Get Alt Data Stock Picks

_{Past performance does not guarantee future results. Investing involves risk including possible loss of principal.}

2025 may have been one of the brightest years for crypto regulation, but it was also a year for sophisticated scams and breaches.

The infamous North Korea-based Lazarus group continued to dominate major heists in 2025. The hacker group drained almost $1.5 billion from the Bybit crypto exchange. The incident is estimated to be one of the largest exchange thefts in history. One of their other victims was the South Korean crypto exchange Upbit, which lost $30.4 million after unauthorised system access.

In July 2025, Indian crypto exchange CoinDCX reported a loss of nearly $44 million, described as a “sophisticated server breach.”

The year-end shock? The Trust Wallet hack. 🫣

Between December 24 and 26, 2025, the Trust Wallet browser extension was compromised due to malicious code, resulting in a collective loss of nearly $7 million. The incident highlighted the urgent need for high-end security features and strong verification.

According to multiple Blockchain security reports, these high-profile breaches climbed to $2.7 billion in 2025.

The AI bubble is no longer a simple trend, but a looming threat to crypto markets. The rapid rise in AI tech, stocks, and investments can pose significant risks to Bitcoin and other crypto assets in 2026.

AI-focused companies and stocks soared, which influenced the prices of correlated assets like Bitcoin in recent years. Once the hype cools and the bubble bursts, the AI stock prices may drop sharply and impact Bitcoin prices.

AI phishing or artificial intelligence-powered crypto scams have exploded in recent times. Unlike conventional scams, AI scams are personalized, more human-like, and harder to detect.

Attackers use AI-driven bots to infiltrate social media channels such as Telegram or Discord groups and impersonate trusted entities. They trick group members into sharing their personal details, like wallet passwords or credit card numbers, through malicious links.

These sophisticated AI tools study and understand user behaviour and design highly personalized attacks through phishing emails, websites, or fake phone calls.

Last week’s quiz result

Option 2: BitMine Immersion Technologies is currently leading with ETH holdings of 4.11 million tokens (as of December 29, 2025).

2026 could see breakthroughs in real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, far-reaching institutional adoption, blockchain upgrades, ETF growth, stablecoins payments go mainstream, and clearer and more advanced regulations.

Prediction and perpetual futures markets are evolving, driving sophisticated traders. In 2025, popular prediction markets, Polymarket and Kalshi, gained traction. Polymarket received CFTC approval (Amended Order of Designation), signalling regulatory compliance and broader acceptance.

Admittedly, Bitcoin underperformed this year and is currently trading at $87K (at the time of writing). Many analysts expect 2026 to be a consolidation year for Bitcoin and other major altcoins amid macroeconomic shifts, market uncertainty, and AI bubble anxiety.

Based on CoinMarketCap Data, December 31, 1:13 AM, ET.