Bitcoin Dips Below $86,000 This Morning

On December 18, Reuters reported that Coinbase has named former UK Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne as chair of its internal advisory board, a move aimed at expanding its influence outside the U.S. Osborne served as UK Chancellor from 2010 to 2016, stepping down after the Brexit referendum. He currently holds several positions, including chair of the British Museum and partner at investment bank Robey Warshaw LLP.

On December 18, SlowMist Cosmos posted on X that its team has discovered critical vulnerabilities in two cryptocurrency exchanges—vulnerabilities directly impacting fund security. Despite publicizing its findings, the team said it has not received any response or been contacted by the exchanges. One platform has a 24-hour trading volume of $3.7 billion, while the other’s is $240 million, per SlowMist. Separately, a tweet from the SlowMist team’s official account noted it proactively reached out to exchange ICRYPEX Global yesterday.

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)