TU Crypto News (EN)

🤝 Coinbase expands into the Indian market India’s antitrust regulator has approved Coinbase’s acquisition of a minority stake in the crypto exchange CoinDCX. 🧮 The Indian crypto exchange was valued at $2.45 billion as part of the deal. Through this move, the U.S. company aims to scale its presence in India and the Middle East.

⁉️ Why is Humanity Protocol up today (December 17)? 📈 The price of Humanity Protocol’s native token (H) surged over 45% to $0.1 on Wednesday, despite a 2.5% drop in the broader market. ➡️ The increase came as the token recovered after the second wave of the airdrop on Binance Alpha, which had triggered speculative selling. ➡️ Since December 3, when the large distribution of 220 million tokens began, H’s price had fallen more than 60%. The current token surge reflects the market absorbing the Humanity Protocol airdrop and a potential bullish trend recovery amid the prospective use cases of Human ID technology.

‼️ Securitize promises trading in “real” tokenized shares 💵 Securitize, a company specializing in the tokenization of securities, plans to launch blockchain-based trading of publicly listed company shares in early 2026. ✅ These tokenized equities will be fully compliant with regulatory requirements, reflect real ownership, and be registered directly on the issuer’s shareholder registry. Users will be offered 24/7 trading, including during hours when traditional stock exchanges are closed. In addition, trading will be conducted through a “swap-style” interface familiar to users of decentralized finance.

‼️ Binance promises $5 million for exposing fake listing agents 🟠 Binance has published a transparency announcement on its listing process, urging projects to avoid intermediaries and apply directly, while outlining available listing options. ➡️ The crypto exchange also named several individuals and entities that allegedly posed as Binance agents and offered paid services to resolve various issues. ➡️ The published list includes Central Research, crypto incubator BitABC, Fiona Li, Suki Yang, and Kenny Z. Binance stated it is willing to pay rewards of up to $5 million for information about individuals illegally acting on behalf of the exchange.

🔐 Tether introduced the offline password manager PearPass The company launched PearPass — a password manager without cloud storage, where all data remains locally on users’ devices. Synchronization works through encrypted peer-to-peer connections, with no servers or central storage. The project is open-source and has passed an independent security audit.

📉 Bloomberg: Bitcoin could pull back to $10,000 Bloomberg senior strategist Mike McGlone allowed for a scenario in which BTC falls to the $10,000 area. According to him, the main growth drivers — ETFs, institutional adoption, and hype — have already been priced in by the market. McGlone believes that amid overheated expectations and market fatigue, Bitcoin could return to the levels seen at the start of the 2020 rally.

🔥 Hyper Foundation prepares to officially burn repurchased HYPE The foundation launched a vote to legally formalize the burning of tokens sent to an inaccessible wallet. Technically, access to it is impossible without a hard fork, and the community’s decision will permanently закрепить the status of these HYPE as burned forever.

🇧🇹 Bhutan will allocate 10,000 BTC to develop “mindfulness city” The Kingdom of Bhutan plans to use 10,000 bitcoins from its state reserves to build the Gelephu Mindfulness City — a special economic zone designed to develop high-tech industries and keep young people in the country. 🌐 GMC will serve as a hub for fintech, tourism, green technologies, and Bitcoin mining. The project is planned to be built in phases over 20 years, transforming it into a key economic corridor between South and Southeast Asia.

🇺🇸 Trump considers crypto-friendly Christopher Waller for Fed Chair Donald Trump will interview Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller on Wednesday — one of five candidates to replace Jerome Powell, according to the WSJ. Trump has already met with another contender, Kevin Warsh. 💬 Waller is known as a supporter of the crypto industry. He has spoken positively about stablecoins and DeFi, calling stablecoins «a new form of private money» that can coexist with traditional payment instruments. On Polymarket, his odds are currently estimated at 15%.

⚖️ Aave is free: SEC closes case after four years The decentralized protocol Aave announced that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has ended the investigation launched four years ago. In a letter dated August 12, the SEC stated that it does «not intend to recommend an enforcement action» against the project. 🗽 The investigation began during a period of heightened pressure on the DeFi industry, but its closure has become an important signal of a regulatory shift under the Trump administration. According to media reports, this year the SEC has dropped or paused roughly 60% of its crypto-related cases.

⚡️ Lightning Network hits new all-time high in capacity The Bitcoin Layer-2 Lightning Network (LN) has reached record capacity: 5,606 BTC according to Bitcoin Visuals and 5,637 BTC according to Amboss — nearly $490 million. 📈Growth surged in November–December after nearly a year of decline. Major exchanges, including Binance and OKX, have been depositing more BTC into the LN, driving the jump in capacity. Although the number of nodes and channels remains below 2022 peaks, the data shows that Lightning is gaining liquidity even if the number of participants is growing more slowly.

🇬🇧 UK crypto ownership share falls to 8% 📉 According to a survey commissioned by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the share of adult Britons owning cryptocurrency declined from 12% to 8% over the past year, although this remains higher than the 4% recorded in 2021. At the same time, the total value of digital assets held continues to grow: 21% of respondents own cryptocurrency worth between $1,343 and $6,708, while 11% hold between $6,709 and $13,416. ✅ Among survey respondents, 57% said they own Bitcoin, 43% reported holding Ethereum, and 21% said they own Solana.

‼️ Solana withstood a powerful “industrial-scale” DDoS attack 🧬 Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko and several sources linked to the Solana ecosystem stated that the network faced an industrial-scale DDoS attack, one of the largest in history.

“A volumetric attack of 6 Tbps means billions of packets per second. Under such load, one would normally expect increased latency, skipped slots, or delayed confirmations,” wrote Pipe Network CEO David Rhodus.

📈 Instead, the data showed that the attack had virtually no impact on the network. As a result, Anatoly Yakovenko called it a “bullish signal” for Solana.

💰 Visa launches USDC settlements on Solana for U.S. banks The payment network has begun offering U.S. banks the ability to conduct transactions in USDC via the Solana network. Going forward, Visa plans to add support for the ARC blockchain, also developed by Circle.

💥 Gemini launched a prediction market in all 50 U.S. states After receiving federal approval, the exchange rolled out its forecasting platform nationwide. Gemini is intensifying competition in the race to build universal crypto applications.

🐋 A whale lost more than $20 million on AI agent tokens Over the year, the investor invested around $23 million in AI tokens on the Base network, but today sold the entire portfolio for just $2.58 million. The total loss amounted to $20.43 million, or −88.77%.

🔗 Ripple Labs bets on a multichain approach Ripple Labs is expanding the use of its RLUSD stablecoin to Ethereum layer-2 blockchains. 🧑‍💻 RLUSD will be tested on Optimism, Base, Ink, and Unichain. Ripple said the move is “critical for a scalable, efficient, and interoperable future.”

🪙 SBI Holdings launches a yen-pegged stablecoin Japanese conglomerate SBI Holdings, together with blockchain company Startale Group, is set to launch a stablecoin pegged to the Japanese yen. 🗓 The release of the coin is preliminarily scheduled for the second quarter of 2026. Startale recently introduced Startale USD (USDSC), an institutional-grade stablecoin.

👛 MetaMask now supports Bitcoin The MetaMask cryptocurrency wallet has added native support for Bitcoin as part of its multi-chain expansion. 🤑 Wallet users can now buy and swap Bitcoin. Previously, MetaMask added support for Solana.

✍️ Trump may pardon head of Samourai Wallet U.S. President Donald Trump will consider the possibility of pardoning Keonne Rodriguez, co-founder of Samourai Wallet. 📕 He instructed U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to review the case. Rodriguez was sentenced to five years in prison for “money laundering” through crypto mixing.