Circle has minted an additional 750 million USDC on the Solana network in the past 1 hour.

On Dec. 21, Bitcoin News reported that BlackRock Chief Investment Officer Rick Rieder will interview for the Federal Reserve Chair position at the Jackson Hole retreat. As of now, prediction markets show Kevin Hassett (former Council of Economic Advisers chair) is once again leading the pack in odds to become the next Fed Chair, at roughly 54%. Former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh has about 21% nomination odds, while Fed Governor Christopher Waller is at 14%.

OnchainLens monitoring reported on December 21 that Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has sold multiple cryptocurrencies over the past two days—including UNI, ZORA, BNB, KNC, OMG and other meme tokens—totaling tens of thousands of dollars. Following those sales, he transferred approximately $564,672 in USDC and 27 ETH (valued at roughly $80,364) using the privacy protocol Railgun.

As of December 20, Coinglass data shows total crypto liquidations over the past 24 hours hit $125 million—with long positions totaling $60.7 million in liquidations and short positions $64.26 million.

December 20: Per Farside monitoring data, cumulative net outflows from U.S. Bitcoin spot ETFs totaled $4.971 billion this week, while those from U.S. Ethereum spot ETFs reached $6.439 billion.

December 20 — On-chain researcher Specter reports that the address which lost 50 million USDT in a phishing attack yesterday left an on-chain message for the attacker, noting a formal case has been filed. With help from law enforcement, cybersecurity agencies and multiple blockchain protocols, authorities have gathered significant actionable intelligence on the attacker’s activities. The attacker’s controlled wallet address is now under 24/7 monitoring. The attacker has been asked to return 98% of the stolen funds to a designated address within 48 hours. If compliant, they may keep $1 million as a white hat bounty (to reward vulnerability discovery and disclosure). This offer depends on full, timely cooperation. Upon return of the funds, victims will consider the matter resolved and take no further action. If the attacker refuses, the case will be escalated via legal and international law enforcement channels to identify the attacker and pursue criminal and civil charges.

On December 20, on-chain analyst Ai Auntie (@ai_9684xtpa) reported that two addresses tied to the same entity/institution purchased 5,678 ETH on-chain over the past hour. The average entry price was $2,985.7, with total spending hitting $16.95 million — kicking off a new swing trading round. Their last swing trade, executed between December 3 and 12, saw an investment of $14.97 million and netted a $137,000 profit.