Ethereum Gas Fee Continues to Drop, Now at 0.352 Gwei

On December 18, the Hong Kong Economic Times reported that Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong) and Ant Group have tokenized Ant Group’s Hong Kong dollar (HKD), Renminbi (RMB, or yuan), and U.S. dollar (USD) accounts. The tokenization was carried out under the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s (HKMA) Distributed Ledger Technology Supervisory Sandbox and the Ensemble project framework, using Ant Group’s blockchain-based financial asset management platform, the “Whale Platform.” The joint solution allows Ant Group’s business entities to adopt a new financial asset management model, enabling 24/7 real-time transfers of HKD, RMB, and USD. Mahesh Kini, Global Head of Cash Management at Standard Chartered, noted that as corporate reliance on real-time liquidity rises, market demand for real-time, 24/7 financial asset management is growing rapidly.

**December 18th** UBS analysis shows this week’s jobs report hints at potential softness in the U.S. labor market—something that could lay groundwork for the Federal Reserve to cut rates further early next year. UBS Chief Economist Paul Donovan noted in a client note the data “sounded alarm bells” across multiple areas. Caution is advised when interpreting the data’s quality, as the government shutdown has worsened low response rates in the Labor Department’s survey. Morgan Wealth Management Investment Strategy Director Elyse Ausenbaugh also flagged concerns, particularly around October’s data. She said the report reinforces the market’s take on the Fed’s current policy path: the past few months’ “insurance” rate cuts were a cautious step to bring rates closer to neutral. She added a further cut in Q1 2026 may be appropriate, but for now, the economy remains stable, and the Fed is taking a patient approach to future moves. (FXStreet)

**December 18th Update** Per GMGN monitoring (https://t.me/gmgnaibot?start=i_m4TE56o8), Solana-based meme coin FARTCOIN posted an ~8.4% short-term decline, hitting a low of $0.28 before settling at $0.29 in current trading. Additional data from HyperInsight (https://t.me/HyperInsight) shows FARTCOIN’s liquidations on Hyperliquid made up roughly 38% of the network’s total. The largest short whale (address 0x7fd) has been closing positions over the past hour: its current position size is ~$7.79 million, with an unrealized profit of ~$1.75 million (226% return). The whale’s liquidation price is $0.297, putting it just ~2.3% away from being liquidated. Arkham monitoring further notes the address is suspected to belong to web3 asset manager Fasanara Capital— which oversees over $3.5 billion in assets and has a team focused on cryptocurrency arbitrage trading and lending.

On December 18th, Ethereum’s transaction throughput is set to rise again next month as developers plan to increase the network’s gas limit from 60 million to 80 million in January. However, Ethereum Foundation Developer Operations Engineer Barnabas Busa noted that two client-side optimizations must be completed before the limit is raised again: partial Blob responses at the execution layer and setting a maximum Blob flag at the consensus layer. All Ethereum core developers will reconvene on January 5th to confirm the timeline for raising the gas limit following the second BPO hard fork. The first BPO hard fork occurred on December 9th, boosting blob capacity by 66%; the second, scheduled for January 7th, will add another 66% increase. Ethereum developers and research community members have reached a consensus that the network’s gas limit should hit 180 million by the end of 2026. (Source: Cointelegraph)

On December 18th, per monitoring from Arkham analyst Emmett Gallic, the "BTC OG Insider Whale" once again unbonded 449,000 ETH last night, pushing its total holdings to 615,000 ETH (valued at roughly $1.8 billion). Previous reports noted the whale had partially unbonded ETH 8 days prior to publicly going long.

December 18: Binance Wallet has revealed the participation threshold for the AgentLISA (LISA) airdrop. Users need a minimum of 235 Alpha Points to qualify. Claiming the airdrop will consume 15 Alpha Points. Trading for LISA is scheduled to start today at 6:00 PM.