CME Goes All In: Precious Metals See Sharp Decline

On December 31, Erik Zhang—Neo co-founder and core developer—accused NEO founder Da Hongfei of failing to fulfill financial disclosure commitments. Zhang stated a recent phone call yielded a clear agreement: starting January 1, 2026, Da will focus solely on operating and developing NeoX and SpoonOS, and will no longer be involved in any Neo mainnet matters. He also called on Da to immediately publish a complete, verifiable financial report to the community, including a detailed list of all assets managed by the Neo Foundation (NF) and a breakdown of all expenses—addressing longstanding community concerns over transparency and governance. In response, Da Hongfei claimed Zhang controls the vast majority of Neo funds, influences consensus node voting, and is willing to hijack agreements at the expense of the community and token holders. Da added he has repeatedly urged Zhang to transfer NEO/GAS tokens from personal custody to the foundation’s multisig address (while Da retains key h

On December 31, the dYdX Foundation announced that since the proposal to allocate 75% of protocol revenue to DYDX token buybacks was passed on November 13, it has repurchased approximately 7.5 million DYDX tokens, totaling around $1.35 million in value. The next buyback will involve 1.78 million DYDX tokens.

On December 31, Upbit announced it will add support for CRO as a staking digital asset, with the feature scheduled to launch on January 6.

As of December 31, cryptocurrency industry leaders held high hopes for 2025—but Michael Saylor, Tom Lee, and Arthur Hayes all missed their Bitcoin price targets for the year’s end. BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes earlier this year predicted Bitcoin would hit $200,000 or more by 2025’s close. In a November blog post, he doubled down: “I’ll stick to my forecast—if I’m wrong, that’s fine.” By December, Hayes conceded his prior calls were “pretty terrible.” Tom Lee—chair of BitMine, Ethereum’s first treasury firm—was bullish at year’s start. In a January CNBC appearance, he forecast Bitcoin would surge to $250,000 by 2025’s end. By late November, Lee had walked back his prediction to “over $100,000.” MicroStrategy co-founder Michael Saylor also leaned into overly bullish forecasts early this year, arguing institutional inflows would drive steady Bitcoin gains. By October 29, he revised his take: “Our current expectation is Bitcoin will be around $150,000 by year’s end.” *Note: C

On December 31, Binance Alpha will launch the second round of Quack AI (Q) airdrop claims. Users with at least 240 Alpha points can claim 2,500 Q tokens on a first-come, first-served basis. If the reward pool isn’t fully distributed, the points threshold will automatically drop by 5 points every 5 minutes. Note: Claiming the airdrop will deduct 15 Alpha points.