In November, the total trading volume of Kalshi and Polymarket approached nearly $10 billion.

On December 1, White House Crypto and AI Czar David Sacks publicly pushed back against *The New York Times*’ investigation into his conduct as the administration’s lead on AI and cryptocurrency, dismissing the months-long effort as chasing baseless allegations. Sacks issued a social media statement claiming *The Times* assigned five reporters this summer to probe conflicts of interest between his government role and tech industry background. “Through so-called ‘fact checks,’ they landed on accusations we thoroughly refuted,” he wrote. “Anyone reading this piece closely will see they’ve cobbled together anecdotes that don’t back the headline—exactly their intent.” The contentious November 30 *Times* article—headlined “The Silicon Valley Man in the White House: Profiting for Himself and Pals”—alleged Sacks leveraged his dual roles as White House AI/crypto lead and prominent tech investor to push policies benefiting AI and crypto assets, to the advantage of himself and his extensive

As of December 1, Crypto In America reports that Bitnomial is poised to become the first U.S. derivatives exchange to offer spot cryptocurrency trading. The exchange submitted self-certification documents last month under U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Regulation 40.6(a) — a rule that allows Designated Contract Markets (DCMs) to roll out new rules once they demonstrate compliance with the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) requirements. Bitnomial’s self-certified rules cover the listing of spot products, including retail leveraged spot trading under CEA Section 2(c)(2)(D), enabling customers to trade and finance digital assets directly on the platform. Per documents filed on November 13, the relevant rules officially took effect last Friday, meaning spot trading could launch in the coming days.

On Monday, December 1, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will participate in an event at Stanford University honoring the late George Shultz and deliver a speech. However, he will not address economic issues due to the Fed’s communication blackout ahead of its upcoming policy decision. No official Fed comments are expected until the central bank announces its interest rate decision next Wednesday. Traders currently put the probability of another 25-basis-point rate cut from the Fed at nearly 90%. If the cut materializes, markets will turn to the Fed’s updated "dot plot" for clues about interest rate trajectory in 2026.

On December 1, BitMine released data showing it held 2,650,900 ETH as of September 29. Today’s figures put the holding at 3,726,499 ETH—meaning the firm increased its ETH positions by 1,075,599 over the past two months. Over that same period, ETH’s price has fallen from its October opening price of $4,142 to $2,811 (at time of writing), a 32% drop.

On December 1, on-chain yield platform Altura closed a $4 million funding round, per Decrypt. The round was led by Ascension, with participation from European private equity leader Moonfare, InnoFinCon, and other investors. Altura runs a single on-chain vault that uses a market-neutral strategy to generate stable yields. Users deposit stablecoins, and the vault drives protocol revenue via strategies including capturing exchange spreads, earning funding fees through position hedging, and rotating collateral into low-risk yield-bearing assets.

On December 1, BitMine announced its total holdings of cryptocurrency, cash and "potential assets" have reached $12.1 billion as of 6:30 PM Eastern Time on November 30. The asset breakdown includes: - 3,726,499 Ethereum (ETH) - 192 Bitcoin (BTC) - $36 million in equity of Eightco Holdings (NASDAQ: ORBS) (a "potential asset") - $8.82 billion in unencumbered cash Thomas "Tom" Lee, Chairman of Fundstrat and BitMine, stated: "Over the past week, BitMine acquired an additional 96,798 ETH. Looking ahead to December, the Fusaka Upgrade (also called Fulu-Osaka) is set to go live on December 3, bringing upgrades to scalability, security and usability. The Federal Reserve is poised to take key December actions: ending quantitative tightening (QT) and expected to cut interest rates again on December 10. More than seven weeks have passed since the October 10 liquidation event, signaling the crypto market has regained its footing. Taking all this into account, we believe these facto