Tether plans to raise as much as $20 billion through a share offering and may tokenize its stock after the sale, Bloomberg reported on Dec. 12. People familiar with the matter said executives are weighing a share buyback and storing company equity in digital form on a blockchain once transactions are completed. At least one existing shareholder previously sought to sell shares at a valuation well below $500 billion, but Tether blocked the move over concerns that sales by current investors could affect future large fundraising efforts.

Standard Chartered and Coinbase agreed on Dec. 12 to broaden their digital asset collaboration, jointly exploring trading, prime brokerage, custody, staking and lending products for institutional clients, CoinDesk reports. The expanded partnership builds on their existing relationship in Singapore, where Standard Chartered provides bank connectivity enabling real-time Singapore dollar transfers for Coinbase customers.

Binance Futures is set to expand its derivatives offerings with the launch of two new USDT-margined perpetual contracts, as reported by BlockBeats on December 12, citing an official announcement. The USUSDT perpetual contract will be listed on December 12, 2025, at 18:45 (UTC+8), providing traders with a maximum leverage of up to 40x. Shortly after, the CYSUSDT perpetual contract is scheduled for listing on December 12, 2025, at 19:00 (UTC+8), offering a maximum leverage of up to 20x. These strategic additions aim to enhance trading opportunities and diversify the platform's product suite, catering to the evolving demands of its global user base seeking advanced leverage options.

The largest ZEC short position holder on Hyperliquid added roughly $13M in ZEC and ETH shorts on December 12, bringing total short exposure to near $118M, HyperInsight data show. The trader holds ETH shorts worth about $79.53M with $5.49M in unrealized profit at an average entry of $3,470, and ZEC shorts totaling around $24.3M with an unrealized loss of $3.47M at an average of $388. The address first opened ZEC shorts on October 10 at about $184, saw unrealized losses reach $21M by October 17, turned profitable by December 1, and has now returned to a loss-making position.

The Bank of Japan (BOJ) is anticipated to signal a commitment to further interest rate hikes at its upcoming policy meeting next week, according to three informed sources on December 12. While the central bank is poised to continue monetary tightening, the pace of subsequent increases will reportedly be contingent on the Japanese economy's response to each rate adjustment. BOJ Governor Kazuo Ueda has largely pre-announced a December hike, leading markets to almost fully price in a potential increase from 0.5% to 0.75%. The BOJ will base future decisions on assessing the impact of previous hikes on bank lending, corporate financing, and broader economic activities, rather than relying on precise forecasts for a neutral rate level.

An investor known as "BTC OG Whale" added to 5x leveraged long positions in ETH over the past 30 minutes, bringing total holdings to 151,094.5 ETH at an average entry price of $3,185.05, Hyperinsight data show on Dec. 12. The position is valued at approximately $492 million with an unrealized profit of $10.5 million, BlockBeats reports.

The address known as "BTC OG Insider Whale" added 20x leveraged long positions in SOL and 5x leveraged long positions in ETH over a 10-minute period on December 12, Hyperinsight data show. As of press time, the address's SOL long position reached 212,000 tokens and its ETH long position stood at 148,800 tokens, with combined holdings exceeding $600 million.

Binance froze only around 17% of hacked crypto assets that Korean police requested it to lock after stolen funds from Upbit were traced to the exchange on Dec. 27, KBS reports. Korean police and Upbit identified that part of the stolen Solana tokens, worth about 4.7 billion Korean won, had moved to Binance and requested a freeze on Dec. 12. Binance cited a need to verify the facts and ultimately froze roughly 800 million Korean won, completing the action after an approximately 15-hour delay, KBS reports.

U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) recorded a net outflow of $77.34 million on December 11, led by a $104 million outflow from Fidelity’s FBTC, according to daily flow data reported by Wu Blockchain. Over the same period, U.S. Ethereum ETFs saw net outflows of $42.37 million, while Solana ETFs recorded net inflows of $11.02 million, the data showed.