Wu Blockchain News

Spanish police have dismantled a crypto-targeted kidnapping ring accused of violently abducting victims to extort digital assets, with one case resulting in a death. Authorities arrested multiple suspects and seized evidence linked to crypto wallets, communications devices, and ransom payments. — link

Bitwise Alpha head Jeff Park said BTC’s upside is capped by OG holders continuously selling options, suppressing price action and implied volatility. While ETFs are buying spot and calls, demand remains insufficient to offset native options sell pressure, keeping BTC stuck in a high-supply, low-volatility trading range. — link

With Espresso Founder Ben Fisch: Innovations in Cross-Chain & Fast Finality In this interview, Ben Fisch, the co-founder and CEO of Espresso Systems, elaborates on the project’s technological innovations aimed at solving the fragmentation problem in Web3 blockchain ecosystems. Espresso seeks to address these challenges by offering high-speed finality and supporting Layer 2 technologies, facilitating efficient communication between different blockchains. Ben details how the project leverages improvements in consensus mechanisms and innovative technologies, such as erasure coding and zero-knowledge proofs, to reduce cross-chain latency and improve interchain interaction. He also discusses Espresso’s appeal to top developers and investors, as well as its future market positioning and tokenomics model. Read More — link

According to TSN.ua, 21-year-old Ukrainian national Danylo Kuzmin was killed in Vienna, with police suspecting a crypto-related motive after a large amount was transferred from his wallet. Kuzmin, the son of Kharkiv deputy mayor Serhii Kuzmin, was allegedly beaten and forced to reveal wallet passwords before his car was set on fire. Two Ukrainian suspects have been detained: 19-year-old Bohdan Reinzhuk, Kuzmin’s university peer and the stepson of Ukraine’s ambassador to Bulgaria, and 45-year-old Oleksandr Agoiev, a former Ukrainian customs official. — link

Ethereum consensus client Prysm released a post-mortem on the Dec. 4 Fusaka mainnet incident, attributing the outage to resource exhaustion caused by costly state recomputation when processing certain attestations. The issue led to 41 missed epochs, network participation dropping to 75%, and validator reward losses of about 382 ETH. A temporary fix was applied via a runtime flag, followed by permanent changes to attestation validation logic in versions v7.0.1 and v7.1.0. — link

SEC releases crypto wallet and custody investor guide, outlining best practices and key risks across different custody models. The bulletin compares self-custody with third-party custody and warns investors to assess whether custodians rehypothecate assets or commingle client funds. The SEC also notes that hot wallets face hacking and cybersecurity risks, while cold wallets carry the risk of permanent loss due to device failure, theft, or compromised private keys. — link

On December 12, Bitcoin spot ETFs recorded total net inflows of $49.16 million, with BlackRock’s IBIT as the only product seeing net inflows, while Ethereum spot ETFs posted net outflows of $19.41 million, with only BlackRock’s ETHA remaining in net inflow; XRP spot ETFs, meanwhile, recorded total net inflows of $20.17 million. — link

ADNOC has announced that it will accept AE Coin stablecoin payments at nearly 980 service stations across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, for services such as fuel, convenience store purchases, and car washes. AE Coin is the UAE's first stablecoin licensed by the Central Bank, pegged 1:1 to the AED. — link

Weekly Project Updates: World Launches Super-app, Tempo's Public Testnet Goes Live, Farcaster Undertakes Strategic Transformation, Hyperliquid Will Introduce Portfolio Margin in Its Network Upgrade to Unify Spot and Perpetual Trading Accounts. etc — link

According to Reuters, Strategy remains in the Nasdaq 100 index and will continue its position through December. Global index provider MSCI will also decide in January whether to exclude Strategy and similar companies from its benchmarks. The Nasdaq adjustment will take effect on December 22. — link

According to sources cited by CNBC, Coinbase is set to launch a prediction market powered by Kalshi to expand its platform's asset offerings. While the partnership is non-exclusive, Kalshi will be the sole prediction market operator working with Coinbase. The announcement could come as early as next week. Sources also indicated that Coinbase plans to unveil the new product at its "Coinbase System Update" event on December 17, where it will also announce tokenized stock offerings. — link

Singapore Gulf Bank (SGB) announced at Solana Breakpoint 2025 in Abu Dhabi the launch of a new service that allows clients to mint and redeem stablecoins directly on the Solana blockchain. SGB is a regulated digital bank, and the service connects traditional banking with blockchain technology. — link

The Ethereum community has recently proposed ERC-8092, which aims to establish a cross-chain "associated accounts" identity standard. The proposal allows two blockchain accounts to publicly declare, prove, and revoke their relationship through cryptographic signature payloads. Currently in the draft stage, ERC-8092 supports use cases such as sub-account inheritance, delegated authorization, and reputation aggregation, and achieves cross-chain interoperability through compatibility with EIP-7930. — link

Research firm Kaiko said in its latest report that crypto market liquidity is increasingly concentrated in a small number of centralized exchanges, with reliance on Binance particularly pronounced. The report noted that during periods of high volatility, such concentration could amplify market-wide cascading risks. Kaiko also said that Binance continues to face structural, operational, and legal uncertainties, including not being formally regulated, having been convicted in the U.S. over anti–money laundering failures, and not yet holding an EU MiCA license. — link

Research firm Kaiko said in its latest report that crypto market liquidity is increasingly concentrated in a small number of centralized exchanges, with reliance on Binance particularly pronounced. The report noted that during periods of high volatility, such concentration could amplify market-wide cascading risks. Kaiko also said that Binance continues to face structural, operational, and legal uncertainties, including not being formally regulated, having been convicted in the U.S. over anti–money laundering failures, and not yet holding an EU MiCA license. — link

Research firm Kaiko said in its latest report that crypto market liquidity is increasingly concentrated in a small number of centralized exchanges, with reliance on Binance particularly pronounced. The report noted that during periods of high volatility, such concentration could amplify market-wide cascading risks. Kaiko also said that Binance continues to face structural, operational, and legal uncertainties, including not being formally regulated, having been convicted in the U.S. over anti–money laundering failures, and not yet holding an EU MiCA license. — link

Research firm Kaiko said in its latest report that crypto market liquidity is increasingly concentrated in a small number of centralized exchanges, with reliance on Binance particularly pronounced. The report noted that during periods of high volatility, such concentration could amplify market-wide cascading risks. Kaiko also said that Binance continues to face structural, operational, and legal uncertainties, including not being formally regulated, having been convicted in the U.S. over anti–money laundering failures, and not yet holding an EU MiCA license. — link

OKX stated in a public announcement regarding the MANTRA (OM) incident that it identified multiple related accounts colluding to use large amounts of OM as collateral to borrow USDT, artificially driving up the price. OKX's risk control systems detected the activity in advance and requested corrective actions, but the accounts refused to cooperate, after which the platform took control of the accounts to manage risk. Shortly thereafter, the price of OM collapsed. OKX said it liquidated only a very small amount of OM, and that the resulting major losses were fully covered by the OKX insurance fund. Multiple third-party analyses indicate that the price crash was mainly driven by perpetual futures trading on platforms outside OKX. OKX also noted that the source of the unusually large amount of OM and its highly concentrated ownership remain unexplained, and that relevant evidence has been submitted to regulators and law enforcement, with multiple lawsuits currently ongoing. — link

OKX stated in a public announcement regarding the MANTRA (OM) incident that it identified multiple related accounts colluding to use large amounts of OM as collateral to borrow USDT, artificially driving up the price. OKX's risk control systems detected the activity in advance and requested corrective actions, but the accounts refused to cooperate, after which the platform took control of the accounts to manage risk. Shortly thereafter, the price of OM collapsed. OKX said it liquidated only a very small amount of OM, and that the resulting major losses were fully covered by the OKX insurance fund. Multiple third-party analyses indicate that the price crash was mainly driven by perpetual futures trading on platforms outside OKX. OKX also noted that the source of the unusually large amount of OM and its highly concentrated ownership remain unexplained, and that relevant evidence has been submitted to regulators and law enforcement, with multiple lawsuits currently ongoing. — link

Itaú, Brazil's largest private bank, released a research report recommending that investors allocate 1%–3% of their portfolio to Bitcoin in 2026 as a means of diversifying risk and hedging against currency fluctuations. — link