Grayscale: Value Storage Demand and Regulatory Clarity Will Drive Crypto Bull Market, Bitcoin Could Hit New High in First Half of Next Year

Dec. 30 — Macau Radio reports a local Macau woman was lured by an online acquaintance to invest in cryptocurrency. Starting in mid-September, she made eight transfers to a designated account. The platform briefly displayed a “paper profit of 7.9 million yuan,” but when she attempted to withdraw her funds, she was told to pay 250,000 yuan upfront as an “exchange rate difference.” After that, she lost contact with the platform, and it was later confirmed she had been scammed out of 1.18 million yuan.

On December 30, MLM Monitor reported that following Justin Sun’s deposit of roughly $200 million into Lighter LLP, he withdrew approximately 5.2 million USDC from a single wallet. A portion of those funds was used to purchase about 1.66 million LIT tokens, which are currently valued at around $4.65 million. Additionally, roughly 1.2 million USDC remains in his spot account.

December 30 — Per Coinbob Popular Address Monitoring (link: https://t.me/Coinbob_track_CN), the so-called "Shanzhai Air Force Leader" has significantly cut its ZEC short by 43.3% over the past 3 hours, equal to ~$713,000 in value. Subsequently, the address redeployed capital to open a LIT short near $2.82, currently holding ~44,100 tokens (valued at ~$125,000) — and is still actively adding to the position as of press time. Monitoring data shows the address is the largest short holder for UNI and ASTER on the Hyperliquid exchange. It once held 22 shorts at once; after closing nearly half its positions in December, it has resumed opening new shorts recently, with total position value standing at ~$25.72 million. Lately, the address has been primarily shorting: it has fully closed 10 shorts so far this month and specializes in capitalizing on altcoin price swings. Data indicates an 80% win rate over the past 30 days, with $82.27 million in net profits this year.

Dec. 30 — Unleash Protocol, an IPFi platform built on the Story ecosystem, announced a security incident involving its smart contracts: unauthorized activity led to the draining and transfer of user funds. Initial probes show an external address exploited Unleash’s multisig governance mechanism to gain administrative access, then executed an unauthorized contract upgrade that enabled unauthorized asset withdrawals. Affected assets currently identified include WIP, USDC, WETH, stIP and vIP. The assets were later transferred to an external address via third-party cross-chain infrastructure. Unleash noted the incident originated from its own governance and permission framework, with no evidence to date of impact on Story Protocol’s contracts, validators or underlying infrastructure. The impact appears contained to Unleash’s relevant contracts and administrative permissions. All protocol operations are currently paused.

December 30th — Per data from SlowMist Blockchain, there were 200 security incidents across the year, leading to roughly $2.935 billion in losses. Compared to 2024 (410 incidents, ~$2.013 billion in losses), while incident numbers dropped sharply, losses rose by about 46% year-over-year. ### Ecosystem Distribution Ethereum remains the most frequently targeted and hardest-hit ecosystem, with annual losses of ~$254 million—far ahead of other chains. BSC follows closely, with related losses of ~$21.93 million; Solana ranks third, at ~$17.45 million. ### Project Tracks DeFi projects are the top target: In 2025, 126 incidents (63% of the year’s total) led to ~$649 million in losses—down 37% from 2024 (339 incidents, $1.029 billion). Exchange platforms saw only 12 incidents but incurred a massive $18.09 billion in losses; Bybit alone lost ~$14.6 billion in one breach, the year’s most severe. ### Attack Causes Contract vulnerabilities were the main driver (61 incidents); X acco