Weekly: postponement of the US crypto bill, Caroline Ellison one step away from freedom, MetaMask with Bitcoin and new regulatory pressure

Summing up the week: bitcoin is once again trading in a range, Ethereum is being drained from exchanges, the US is postponing the crypto bill while simultaneously tightening regulation, Caroline Ellison is being prepared for early release, and MetaMask is finally adding full Bitcoin support. Let’s look at what really matters here and what investors can do about it.

Bitcoin: trading range and pressure on weak hands

Between 15 and 21 December, bitcoin traded in a range of 84,500–90,000 dollars: the market tested both the lower and upper bounds several times. After US inflation data came out, bitcoin briefly jumped above 89,000 dollars, but not for long. Overall sentiment remains unstable. Large trades on exchanges have dropped to cycle lows, and short-term holders are stuck in prolonged losses – it all looks like a classic cleansing of weak hands.

Forecasts, as usual, diverge: from scenarios of a deep correction to very ambitious long-term targets. But the main point is not the headline numbers – it’s that volatility hasn’t gone anywhere, and the market is currently resetting expectations and reassessing risks.

Ethereum and altcoins: price pressure but exchange shortage

This week Ethereum slid from 3,200 below 3,000 dollars and traded in a 2,700–3,000 range. But institutions are not backing down and are providing support: JPMorgan is launching a tokenized fund on Ethereum, BitMine is buying tens of thousands more ETH and now holds almost 4 million coins. ETH balances on exchanges have fallen to their lowest levels since 2016 – coins are being moved into wallets, seller pressure is easing, and the share of long-term holders is growing.

Hackers, human error and 50 million to the wrong address

It was another painful week in DeFi: Yearn Finance was hacked for roughly 300 thousand dollars, and the owner of a multisig wallet lost more than 27 million after one of the keys was compromised. Separately, there’s an address poisoning case for 50 million USDT, where an investor mixed up a very similar address and, with a single transfer, sent their entire stablecoin stack to scammers. The conclusion is simple: even a multisig won’t save you from inattention – full address checks and basic crypto hygiene are now more important than any fancy solution.

Regulation in the US: law postponed, requirements get tougher

A regulatory mix continues in the US. The Senate has approved new heads of the CFTC and FDIC, who are expected to take a closer look at crypto derivatives and offer a softer regime for banks working with digital assets. Trump is already hinting that the next Fed chair should be in favor of substantial rate cuts, while the Fed itself is easing the 2023 rules that were strangling banks’ ability to interact with crypto.

The SEC, on the contrary, is closing or pausing part of the high-profile cases (including those against Ripple and Binance), while at the same time publishing strict requirements for brokers and custodians that hold clients’ crypto assets. The big crypto bill has been postponed until 2026, but in practice regulation is becoming more targeted and stricter even without a single overarching law.

Caroline Ellison and FTX: path to freedom and ban on leadership roles

Former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison has been moved to a conditional detention regime in New York – she can stay under house arrest or in a reintegration center. Under current estimates, she could be released early as soon as late February 2026.

In parallel, the SEC has reached settlements with three former FTX top managers, including Ellison: they are banned for a certain period from holding executive positions and serving on boards of directors. The industry gets another reminder that too many questionable things were done during the years of cheap capital, and the wave of accountability has not yet fully played out.

Court cases and new rules of the game for services

Another high-profile verdict was handed down to a former developer of the pump.fun platform. In the UK, Jarrett Dunn was sentenced to six years in prison for abuse of position and the illegal transfer of about 2 million dollars in Solana tokens from the platform.

For the market this is a signal similar to the Terra or FTX stories, only on a smaller scale: even meme or hype platforms operate in a real legal space, and misappropriating users’ funds will be judged not in tweets but in court.

MetaMask + Bitcoin and mass adoption

MetaMask has finally added full Bitcoin support: you can now buy, send, receive and swap BTC in the wallet, and all transactions are visible in the common list of assets. In practice, MetaMask is becoming a truly multichain wallet rather than just an Ethereum-first brand.

At the same time, risk appetite among traders is growing in the background, funds are preparing reports on an upcoming institutional breakthrough, payment giants are testing settlements in stablecoins, and some states are considering using bitcoin for infrastructure and social projects.

AI, big deals and risks for the market

There is a real investment race in AI: tech giants are discussing multibillion-dollar investments into market leaders, while EdTech companies are merging to jointly develop AI education and shore up their business models. Against this backdrop, warnings are heard more and more often: the main risk for bitcoin in 2026 could be an AI bubble – if the sector overheats, a hit to stock markets could easily spill over to BTC, which still correlates closely with equities.

What all this means for an investor

Bitcoin and Ethereum are going through a reset of expectations: pressure on short-term holders is rising, whale activity is falling, but the long-term holder profile is strengthening. In the US there is a regulatory mix: the big crypto bill has been postponed, but new appointments and rules for banks and brokers show that regulators are preparing for the long game, not a rollback. On top of that, security incidents once again prove that it’s usually not the smart contracts that fail, but human inattention. Against this backdrop, AI is becoming financial topic number one and a potential risk for markets, including BTC.

Now is not the time to panic and yank your portfolio around. Keep a cool head, distinguish long-term ideas from impulsive chase-the-move trades, tighten up security (multisigs, hardware wallets, careful address checks and minimal showing off your balances), and keep your focus on projects at the intersection of crypto, stablecoins and traditional financial infrastructure – that’s where the next cycle’s key cases are being built.

Kursoff’s view

At Kursoff we see this week as another piece of the market’s maturation puzzle. On the one hand, there’s a prolonged correction, pressure on new participants and loud criminal cases. On the other hand, banking giants are launching tokenized funds on Ethereum, regulators are moving from broad scare stories to concrete requirements, MetaMask is adding Bitcoin, and AI together with stablecoins is gradually becoming core infrastructure.