Polymarket's Open Interest Hits Yearly High of Approximately $326 Million, With Sports, Politics, and Crypto Leading the Way

Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) released its Q3 2025 report on December 17, showing continued expansion in the city’s virtual asset investment product market. As of end-November, the total market value of SFC-approved virtual asset spot ETFs rose 33% year-over-year to HK$5.47 billion, with the number of products growing to 11—reflecting increasing demand for compliant virtual asset investments. Meanwhile, tokenized financial products are advancing rapidly. Since their launch earlier this year, SFC-approved tokenized retail money market funds saw a 557% year-over-year jump in assets under management (AUM) to HK$5.48 billion (as of end-November), with 8 funds now available. This trend signals rising retail acceptance of tokenized products. Regulators have also issued risk warnings. In August, the SFC and Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) jointly reminded investors of market volatility tied to the stablecoin sector, noting that regulators are balancing virtu

On December 17, Ethereum Treasury firm ETHZilla Corporation issued a letter from its Board Chair to shareholders, reviewing the company’s strategic execution progress over the past five months and outlining development plans for 2026 and beyond. ETHZilla notes it was initially positioned as an infrastructure provider bridging traditional finance (TradFi) and decentralized finance (DeFi). Its core strategy includes ongoing ETH accumulation, yield generation via strategic deployment, and on-chain real-world asset (RWA) tokenization operations. For recent progress, ETHZilla disclosed it has built the foundational infrastructure for RWA tokenization. In October, the company announced a partnership with Liquidity.io—a regulated broker-dealer and one of the few U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)-registered digital alternative trading systems (ATS)—in which ETHZilla holds a stake in Liquidity.io’s parent company. Through this partnership, ETHZilla will gain exclusive access t

On December 17th, a whale address deposited 10,169 ETH (worth ~$29.77 million) into Binance, netting a $11.36 million profit, per OnchainLens monitoring data. Previously, the whale withdrew 19,505.5 ETH (~$48.69 million) from a trading platform and staked the funds, then deposited an additional 20,269 ETH (~$60.05 million). The staking activity earned the whale 763.58 ETH. Address: 0xc8D45CC670c6485F70528976D65f7603160Be2CD

On December 17th, per data from Coinglass, if Ethereum (ETH) falls below $2,800, the total long liquidation intensity across major centralized exchanges (CEXs) will reach $1.022 billion. Conversely, if ETH climbs above $3,000, the total short liquidation intensity on major CEXs will hit $843 million. BlockBeats Note: Liquidation charts do not display the exact number of contracts pending liquidation or their precise value. Instead, the bars on these charts reflect the relative importance of each liquidation cluster compared to neighboring clusters—i.e., "intensity." Accordingly, the chart illustrates how strongly an asset’s price will be impacted when it hits a given level. A taller "liquidation bar" signals a more intense price reaction driven by a liquidity cascade once that price point is reached.

December 17: Orion Compute—founded by early Bitcoin investor Nick Rose—today announced its entry into large-scale Bitcoin mining and AI data center infrastructure development, with an initial focus on emerging markets boasting abundant low-cost energy. Orion Compute noted that as global AI data center investments accelerate, North America and Western Europe face rising electricity costs, grid congestion, and power supply risks. The firm plans to deploy computing infrastructure in regions with energy surpluses and low utilization rates to slash electricity costs and ensure uninterrupted power supply. In the short term, Orion Compute will prioritize projects in West Texas, U.S., before expanding to emerging economies once regulatory and infrastructure conditions mature. For its strategy, the company is using a phased deployment model: initially leveraging cost-effective AI hardware (like Nvidia A100 GPUs) to cut capital expenditures and optimize energy and operational systems; subs

December 17 — In the crypto space, the longstanding pain point—“acquiring new users is easy, retaining them is hard”—remains prominent. But prediction market platform Polymarket’s user retention far outperforms the industry average. Per a study by analytics firm Dune and market maker Keyrock, researchers tracked monthly cohorts of new active users to see if they stayed active traders in subsequent months. Among a sample of 275 crypto projects (networks, DeFi, wallets, trading apps), Polymarket boasts an average retention rate of over 85% across its protocol. The report notes that in markets relying heavily on frequent participation and liquidity, poor user retention typically signals “skin-deep” growth—and long-term active users remain rare in crypto. Analysis points to the key distinction between prediction markets and traditional crypto apps: their strong event-driven nature. Trading centers on real-world events (elections, sports, macroeconomic data), which keeps users co