Portofino Mint - 8 December 2025

🚀 𝗪𝗲𝗹𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗼𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗼 𝗠𝗶𝗻𝘁!

🌍 Cryptos at a glance:

Crypto markets staged a sharp flush-and-rebound: leverage was wiped out as BTC briefly dipped below $88K before stabilising around $91–92K, while ETH recovered back above $3,100 and SOL traded near $140.
The global market cap hovered around $3.1T, roughly flat week-on-week after a volatile mid-week drawdown and subsequent relief rally.

Flow positioning is mixed: Digital-asset ETPs logged $716m of net inflows, led by BTC, XRP and LINK products, signalling that institutional demand hasn’t disappeared. But at the same time, BlackRock’s IBIT posted a record $2.7bn outflow streak over five weeks, highlighting profit-taking and waning enthusiasm for the “BTC-as-ETF” trade.

Overall, this was a week where derisking and rotation coexisted: leverage was forced out, but real-money flows quietly turned positive again.

Key Market Levels:

• Bitcoin (BTC): ~$91.8K, trading in a broad $85K–$93K range after a volatility spike driven by ETF outflows and Fed-watching.
• Ethereum (ETH): ~$3,140, with on-exchange balances at multi-year lows and treasury flows down ~80% from August peaks as the “ETH DAT trade” unwinds.
• Solana (SOL): ~$138, supported by ecosystem news (Solana–Base bridge, infra upgrades) but facing ETF outflows and supply overhang.
• Total Market Cap: ~$3.1T, BTC dominance ~57%.

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📊 Macro Overview

The macro backdrop remains dominated by the upcoming Federal Reserve meeting.

• Market pricing and several banks (BofA, others) now see a December rate cut as plausible, with softer inflation and cooling labour data reinforcing the “policy pivot soon” narrative.
• The dollar has softened and U.S. yields drifted lower, giving risk assets, including crypto, a short-term tailwind.

Equities are choppy but broadly resilient; crypto trades as “high-beta macro” again: every new data point on growth, jobs or inflation immediately feeds into rate-cut odds and, by extension, risk appetite for BTC, ETH and altcoins.

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🪙 Project & Token Highlights

Ethereum: upgrades, UX and fees

• The Fusaka upgrade went live, aiming to improve rollup throughput and move Ethereum closer to an “instant feel” UX.
• Vitalik Buterin floated a design for a trustless gas-futures market so users and apps can hedge gas spikes; it’s sparked debate over feasibility, MEV incentives and complexity.
• ZKsync confirmed it will deprecate ZKsync Lite (the first Ethereum ZK-rollup) in 2026, consolidating focus on ZKsync Era and signalling a maturing L2 landscape.
• EigenPhi data shows sandwich attacks on Ethereum have waned

Privacy & L2s

• Aztec Network raised over $60m in ETH via a community-first token sale, testing a new auction mechanism and confirming ongoing demand for privacy-preserving L2s.
• Bitcoin Cash (BCH) quietly became one of the best-performing L1s YTD after a ~40% surge, underscoring that “old” L1s can still attract speculative flows when fees and speed narratives resurface.

Prediction markets & wallets

• MetaMask integrated Polymarket, and Trust Wallet launched in-wallet prediction markets via Myriad.
• Kalshi raised $1bn at an $11bn valuation and signed a multi-year deal with CNBC to bring prediction odds into mainstream finance coverage, completing a big step toward “prediction markets as a new data feed” alongside prices and yields.

DATs & corporate flows

• The ETH DAT trade is decisively unwinding: ETH treasury purchases fell from 1.97m ETH in August to ~370k in November. BitMine remains the dominant holder, with more ETH than all other treasuries combined.
• Bitcoin treasuries are entering what some analysts call a “Darwinian phase”, with premiums collapsing and only the most resilient balance sheets likely to sustain large BTC positions through the current drawdown.

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🏛️ Regulatory Updates

• The UK’s Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025 received Royal Assent, making the UK one of the first jurisdictions to explicitly recognise crypto tokens and stablecoins as a form of personal property, strengthening protection against theft and insolvency disputes.
• The European Commission proposed expanding ESMA’s powers to give it more direct oversight of crypto-asset service providers as part of a broader capital-markets integration package, effectively a step toward a “European SEC” for digital assets.
• Italy set a hard MiCA deadline: crypto firms must apply for authorisation by 30 Dec 2025 or exit the market, pushing platforms to choose between full EU-compliant licensing or withdrawal.
• Poland went the other way: parliament failed to overturn the president’s veto of its crypto bill, leaving the country as the EU’s lone MiCA holdout and creating a regulatory gap within the bloc.
• The IMF published a detailed paper on stablecoins, warning that large-scale adoption could erode central-bank control over monetary conditions if not tightly integrated into existing frameworks.
• CFTC approval for U.S. spot BTC and ETH trading on regulated exchanges is widely seen as a “massively huge deal” for institutional participation, giving large players a familiar venue and risk framework.
• Across Asia and LatAm, Taiwan, Japan, Argentina and Russia all signalled different flavours of crypto integration, from potential 2026 stablecoin launches to using crypto to mitigate sanctions or inflation risk.

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🏢 Institutional Developments

• Bank of America now officially recommends a 1–4% crypto allocation for wealth-management clients and explicitly highlights Bitcoin ETFs as a channel.
• Vanguard reversed course and will allow trading of Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs on its brokerage platform, after years of scepticism toward crypto.
• In Europe, French banking giant BPCE is preparing to roll out in-app BTC, ETH, SOL and USDC trading to millions of retail customers, while the Euro stablecoin market cap has doubled year-on-year since MiCA, underlining Europe’s growing on-chain euro liquidity.
• On the tokenization and infra side, Kraken’s acquisition of Backed Finance, Hua Xia Bank’s tokenised yuan bonds, and fresh funding for Canton Network all point to renewed institutional interest in tokenised securities and real-world assets.

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📆 What to Watch Next Week

Macro

• Fed meeting (Dec 9–10): rate decision, updated projections, and Powell’s remarks.
• U.S. data: inflation and labour indicators for confirmation of cooling trends.
• Global releases: EU inflation, Australian GDP, and balance of trade figures.

Crypto

• BTC/ETH price action around the Fed outcome and key resistance levels.
• Bittensor halving, with potential shifts in AI-linked token activity.
• Post-Fusaka metrics on Ethereum: rollup throughput, fees, and UX performance.
• Regulatory developments as ESMA mandate expansion and Italy’s MiCA deadline approach.

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📅 Missed last week’s update? Catch up on all headlines in the previous Portofino Mint.

𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘮𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘱𝘶𝘳𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘶𝘵𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘢𝘥𝘷𝘪𝘤𝘦. 𝘐𝘭𝘭𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘊𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘎𝘗𝘛.

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