Trump: Evil Iran fabricates lies to drive up oil prices.

a16z General Partner Chris Dixon has officially published an announcement renaming a16z crypto to a16z Frontier, expanding its investment scope from crypto startups to a broader set of frontier technology startups—those building new technologies, opening up new markets, and taking years to mature. Dixon emphasized this is a scope expansion, not a pivot; the team will continue investing in crypto and related businesses while advocating for reasonable crypto regulation. Dixon noted that as blockchain gains wider adoption, Wall Street and fintech firms have regularly launched on-chain products, making the "crypto company" label less significant. Companies should be defined by their core business activities, not the technology they employ. His remarks also touch on the ongoing AI wave: beyond using AI to speed up and enhance existing work, focus is on native new use cases emerging from AI, full-stack startups integrating hardware, software and services, and new networks connecting humans and intelligent agents. Dixon believes blockchain will still play a critical role in this space, serving as a fast, low-cost, global, programmable financial infrastructure for the internet. Stablecoins are becoming a standard tool for fintech firms and institutions, and can also support machine-to-machine transactions and the cold start of new networks. He will lead the fund alongside firm founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, as well as general partners Eddy Lazzarin and Guy Wuollet. The operating team will continue supporting current and future portfolio companies in areas including regulation, market entry, talent, marketing and technology R&D.

New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) has issued alerts regarding two critical PHP vulnerabilities, urging regulated entities to promptly identify and remediate the vulnerabilities that are already being exploited.

GMGN co-founder Haze announced in a post that the project’s self-developed cross-chain bridge is currently undergoing small-scale volume testing, and will uphold its long-standing reputation for fast, secure, and stable transactions. Haze added that users will soon be able to buy any token across multiple blockchains using USDC through the GMGN app.

According to market data from BIT (bit.com), the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield has dropped below 5% for the first time since September 23, falling 14.97 basis points on the day. This break below the 5% threshold is mainly driven by safe-haven buying spurred by sell-offs in tech and AI-related stocks, reviving the traditional "stocks-bonds seesaw" effect. Earlier, the yield had surged to multi-year highs due to factors including inflation stickiness and fiscal supply, but has recently pulled back temporarily as risk appetite cooled. While lower long-term rates help ease financing costs and valuation pressures, their absolute level remains elevated, and the decline stems from weakness in risk assets rather than clear signals of growth or policy shifts. For crypto and other risk assets, this points to a short-term neutral-to-cautious outlook.

Amid growing AI bubble concerns on Wall Street, Blackstone President Jon Gray offered a contrasting view. He noted that current AI infrastructure development differs fundamentally from the 1990s telecom bubble, when companies typically expanded capacity en masse before waiting for demand to materialize, whereas today firms are building infrastructure to keep pace with already surging real demand. Gray described current AI demand as "parabolic growth" and revealed that Ode, an AI advisory venture co-founded by Blackstone and Anthropic, is currently even unable to meet client demand. This stands in stark contrast to the bearish view of Citadel founder Ken Griffin, who said days ago that "we are almost certainly in an AI bubble." Blackstone is positioning AI as a core investment focus, with its data center investments already totaling around $200 billion, and is deploying capital broadly into power, transmission facilities and other supporting infrastructure. However, Gray also acknowledged that even with real demand, not every investment will deliver ideal returns. Some AI-focused cloud service providers, such as CoreWeave, are currently facing financing difficulties despite solid core business performance. Gray pointed out that data center construction requires massive upfront investment, and investors must weigh whether future cash flows can cover financing costs, as well as the risk of asset depreciation from technological iteration. The current bubble debate essentially boils down to testing whether AI’s explosive demand can ultimately translate into sustainable commercial returns that cover high costs.

Decentralized exchange platform QuickSwap announced that its deployment interface on Soneium will cease operations on December 31, 2026. To facilitate the transition, QuickSwap is urging all liquidity providers and users on the chain to directly withdraw their assets and LP positions via the interface before this date. The protocol noted that even after the interface is shut down, users can still retrieve their assets independently through the official Soneium block explorer.