This year, in the 7 FOMC meetings held so far, Bitcoin has performed poorly, rising only once.

On December 9, crypto news outlet CriptoNoticias reported that since March 2023, Solana’s active validators have dropped from over 2,500 to roughly 800—a decline of more than 68%. Community opinions are split: some argue “Sybil node purging” boosts network health, while others (including several infrastructure teams) note most recent departures are genuine operators exiting due to economic and operational costs. The actual impact on decentralization hinges on the number of surviving independent validators and the distribution of staking/voting power.

On December 9, White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said it would be “irresponsible” for the Federal Reserve to set an interest rate target in advance for the next six months, stressing the importance of tracking economic data. Speaking in a Monday interview with CNBC, Hassett noted: “The Fed chair’s job is to monitor data, adjust policy, and explain the rationale behind its actions. So if someone says, ‘I’ll do this in the next six months,’ that’s indeed irresponsible.”

On December 9, official sources confirm Arkham has rolled out new on-chain monitoring for Zcash. To date, Arkham has tagged over half of the shielded and transparent transactions on Zcash’s privacy blockchain—these transactions total $42 billion and are all linked to identified individuals and entities.

Dec. 9 – Per Coinbob Popular Address Monitoring, the "BTC OG Insider Whale" (address 0xb31) added to its ETH long position at $3,120 in the past half-hour. The position size grew from $155 million this morning to $209 million, a $54 million+ increase. **Current Position Stats**: - Average entry price: $3,069 - Liquidation price: $2,069 - Unrealized profit: $3.8 million (9%) - 2,900 ETH remaining untraded Earlier today (midnight), the address partially closed an ETH long position worth ~$14.06 million. **Prior Key Moves**: - Dec. 7 night–8 morning: Transferred $70 million from a Binance wallet to Hyperliquid, then opened a 5x-leveraged ETH long (its largest opening in 30 days). - Dec. 1: Associated addresses (0xf6f, 0xF74, 0x411) collectively borrowed $220 million USDT from Aave and sent it to a Binance wallet. The 0xf6f address staked >126,000 ETH that day, when ETH hit a ~10-day low of $2,718 before rallying. **Background**: The "BTC OG Insider Whale" is an 8

On December 9, a meme token named $SAMANTHA (Franklin’s Girlfriend) launched on the Solana blockchain, with its narrative centered on a "childhood cartoon couple." Introduced by @d3v_unknown, the token draws inspiration from the *Franklin* animated series, positioning itself as $FRANKLIN’s official "companion" to capture market attention. On-chain data shows active liquidity post-launch: the single-token pair’s one-hour trading volume hit $800,000, while its peak market cap briefly reached $300,000.

On December 9, Hyperinsight data shows the "1011 Insider Whale" is continuing to increase leverage on its ETH long positions. As of press time, the whale has added leverage to more than 6,600 ETH long positions, boosting its holdings to 57,173.79 ETH—with a total position value of $178 million. Last night, the "1011 Insider Whale" had reduced its ETH long positions.