Weekly: Ethereum Fusaka upgrade, prediction markets and a Darwinian phase for crypto companies

Bitcoin, Ethereum and market sentiment

Bitcoin ended November with a noticeable drawdown and is acting nervously: sharp swings up and down, some investors are taking profit and exiting ETFs, while big players are accumulating BTC at a discount.

Ethereum is also down for the month but is holding closer to local highs and has already received an important upgrade that is more about the long story than short-term speculation.

Ethereum Fusaka: faster, cheaper, more data

Fusaka is already live on the Ethereum mainnet. PeerDAS significantly increases throughput for rollups and prepares the network for cheaper and more massive transactions. At the same time, cryptography and UX are being upgraded, and long-dated calls are popular on the derivatives market – clearly, people are playing ETH for the long term.

Prediction markets boom: BNB, MetaMask, Trust Wallet

Prediction markets are moving out of their niche: on BNB Chain a service is launching where you can both bet on events and earn yield on locked assets. MetaMask and Trust Wallet are adding separate prediction tabs directly in the wallets, plus options like transaction insurance. The trend is simple: this is now a mass product, not just entertainment for enthusiasts.

Exchanges and projects: Binance, TON, Solana Mobile

Binance has personnel changes: co-founder Yi He has become co-CEO alongside the current CEO. The exchange is also launching Junior accounts for teenagers under parental control to combine crypto and financial literacy.

In the TON ecosystem, a decentralized AI network is emerging where GPU owners rent out computing power for Toncoin. Solana Mobile is preparing the SKR token with an airdrop – the native asset for its mobile ecosystem.

Regulation, stablecoins and big players

In Poland, the president vetoed a law on the crypto market, while in the UK digital assets were officially recognized as a separate type of property. The IMF warns that in high-inflation countries stablecoins can erode national currencies. Social network X is hit with a serious fine from EU regulators, and major banks are already openly advising clients to allocate part of their portfolios to crypto while preparing for broader crypto ETF launches and asset tokenization.

AI and crypto

Ukraine is preparing its own Ukrainian-language LLM based on a Google model so that AI services work properly in Ukrainian. Companies like Anthropic are already using AI to search for vulnerabilities in smart contracts, and OpenAI is focusing more on the quality of its core product. At the same time, there is a debate on how AI breaks traditional opinion polls and whether we will end up with data centers powered by mini-nuclear reactors.

Security and the dark side

The week did not pass without tough stories: a high-profile case of kidnapping and murder for crypto once again reminds us that large amounts in digital assets also mean physical risks. Hacks and exploits surged sharply in November, with losses in the hundreds of millions and well-known DeFi projects among the victims. At the same time, illegal mining is causing energy companies billions in losses, and authorities are shutting down thousands of grey farms.

What else is worth noting:

• The co-founder of one of the largest prediction market platforms has become the youngest female billionaire.
• A major bank is advising clients to allocate up to a few percent of their portfolio to crypto assets.
• Amazon has unveiled a new AI chip and is strengthening cooperation with a GPU manufacturer for data centers.
• Georgia has signed a memorandum of cooperation with one of the enterprise blockchains.
• Europol and its partners have shut down a major crypto mixer and a money laundering scheme worth hundreds of millions of euros.

Kursoff’s take

The market is entering a survival-of-the-fittest phase: cheap money is gone, asset premiums are deflating, and only projects with real utility and working economics will make it.

Against this backdrop, price swings matter less than things like Fusaka, prediction markets, tokenization and clear regulation. Infrastructure is growing – and that is where investors should be looking, rather than obsessing over daily chart moves.