Title: DeFi Has Lost Its Charm
Author: @0xPrince
Translation: Peggy, BlockBeats
Author: Rhythm BlockBeats
Source:
Repost: Mars Finance
Editor's note: DeFi has neither stagnated nor collapsed, but it is losing something that was once the most important—"the sense of exploration."
This article reviews the evolution of DeFi from early exploration to gradual maturity, pointing out that after infrastructure improvements and transaction modes become standardized, on-chain financial participation methods are converging: returns have become the basic expectation, lending is more like short-term financing, and incentives dominate user behavior. The author does not deny the value of DeFi but instead asks a more difficult question: when efficiency and scale are fully optimized, can DeFi still shape new behaviors, rather than just serve existing ones?

According to Mars Finance, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission has announced the inclusion of "可盈可乐" and "Globiance X Limited / Globiance HK Limited" on the warning list of suspicious virtual asset trading platforms. The Hong Kong SFC stated that both "可盈可乐" and "Globiance X/Globiance HK" promote and operate virtual asset trading platforms, suspected of conducting unlicensed activities. In addition, investors have reported difficulties in withdrawing assets from "Globiance X/Globiance HK."

According to Mars Finance, cryptocurrency analyst Trader T has monitored that the net outflow of the US Ethereum Spot ETF is 95.53 million USD. ETHA (BlackRock): net outflow of 25.05 million USD; ETHW (Bitwise): net outflow of 13.98 million USD; EZET (Franklin): net outflow of 561.

ICBC Singapore Branch, under the guidance of the Central Bank and the Monetary Authority of Singapore, has successfully launched a pilot program for overseas deposits into the digital renminbi personal Wallet, facilitating convenient payments for Singaporean tourists in China.

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This article is from: Kalshi Research
Compiled by | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina); Translator | Azuma (@azuma\_eth)
Editor's Note: Leading prediction market platform Kalshi announced yesterday the launch of a brand new research column, Kalshi Research, aimed at providing Kalshi's internal data to scholars and researchers interested in topics related to prediction markets. The first research report of the column has been published, titled "Kalshi Outperforms Wall Street in Predicting Inflation" (Beyond Consensus: Prediction Markets and the Forecasting of Inflation.

According to a report from Mars Finance, the latest financial stability report released by the Central Bank of Korea shows that the activity level of the Korean crypto market is still higher than the global average, at 157% and 112% respectively. However, as Bitcoin is expected to surpass $100,000 by 2025, the behavior of Korean retail investors has shifted from actively building positions to concentrating on taking profits and cashing out significantly. The report points out that 91.2% of the trading volume in the Korean crypto market is contributed by the top 10% of accounts, leading to an increased risk of market manipulation. The Central Bank of Korea warns that if institutional and ETF access is relaxed, the vulnerability of the Korean market in global fluctuations will intensify. Currently, the related hot money has shifted to the local Korean stock market and leveraged ETFs in the US.

NVIDIA plans to deliver H200 chips to Chinese customers in mid-February 2026, with an expected shipment volume of 5,000-10,000 traps and a unit price of approximately 1.4 million yuan. NVIDIA stated that this move will not affect the supply capacity for global customers, and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang will visit China in January 2026.

According to Mars Finance, Wintermute posted on the X platform stating that as the holidays approach, the market structure continues to narrow, with Bitcoin's dominance rising. Due to oversupply and intensive token unlocking plans, alts continue to perform poorly. Internal liquidity data shows that there is buying pressure on mainstream tokens, with institutional funds being a continuous source of buying since the summer, while retail investors are rotating back from altcoins to mainstream tokens. Although spot buyers provide a stable foundation for the market, price discovery still occurs through derivation, leading to a coexistence of net buying of mainstream tokens and intra-day sharp declines triggered by leveraged close positions. Moreover, Financial Institutions are steadily entering the encryption field, which is expected to provide support for mid-term prices. In the short term, the market will continue to fluctuate in a thin liquidity environment, with BTC and ETH continuing to act as the main risk absorbers.

According to Mars Finance, on-chain analyst The Data Nerd (@OnchainDataNerd) monitored a suspected Arrington Capital wallet address that unstaked 5.68 million ETHFI tokens (approximately 4.04 million USD) from the EthFi protocol 5 hours ago. The wallet also received an additional 3.24 million ETHFI tokens from the token unlock program over the past 3 months.

According to Mars Finance, Glassnode's chief research analyst CryptoVizArt stated that the market weakness warned in November has largely materialized, and it is now necessary to reassess these signals and reevaluate the overall market structure. The excessive selling by long-term holders (LTH) continues to put pressure on the market's absorption capacity. Since Bitcoin's price broke through the historical highs of 2021-2022, long-term holders have realized profits from approximately 3.8 million Bitcoins. However, the selling pace of long-term holders has recently slowed down, and the continued cooling of this profit-taking activity is a key prerequisite for forming a lasting bottom pattern. Currently, the scale of unrealized losses has stabilized at over 5% of the total market capitalization, marking the highest pressure level in this cycle to date. Despite the significant pressure, it remains far below the extreme loss conditions during deep bear markets, such as during the FTX collapse.

According to Mars Finance, monitoring by HyperInsight shows that in the past 10 hours, Huang Licheng has been continuously increasing the position of 475 ETH long orders in the price range of approximately $2932 to $2942, with the holdings scale increasing by about $1.4 million. Subsequently, open orders were placed in the range of $2960 to $3125 for partial take profit, and this order has been partially filled. Monitoring indicates that this address has continuously held ETH long orders since December 17, making multiple buy low, sell high transactions and rolling increases in positions. Currently, its ETH long order holdings have increased from $13.2 million to $21.62 million, with an average price of $2978, and unrealized losses of about $110,000 (approximately 13%), with a liquidation price of $2870. In addition, its previously held HYPE and ZEC long orders have now all been closed.

The prediction market aggregator Rocket has completed a $1.5 million pre-seed funding round, led by Electric Capital, with participation from several other VCs including Jsquare. Rocket utilizes a non-binary betting structure that allows users to reuse capital across multiple predictions and achieve continuous returns.

According to Mars Finance, Whale Alert monitored that USDC Treasury destroyed 50 million USDC stablecoins on the Ethereum blockchain about 3 minutes ago.

According to Mars Finance, based on SoSoValue data, the overall trend of the crypto market zone is a continuous pullback, with a general decline of about 2% to 9% over the past 24 hours. Among them, the NFT zone fell by 9.46%, within the zone, Pudgy Penguins (PENGU) decreased by 4.66%, and Audiera (BEAT), which previously had a significant rise, faced a pullback, dropping by 41.28%, but APE NFT (NFT) still rose by 3.66%. In addition, Bitcoin (BTC) fell by 1.12%, dropping below $88,000; Ethereum (ETH) decreased by 2.01%, maintaining around $3,000. In other zones, the PayFi zone fell by 1.64% over the past 24 hours, within the zone, Telcoin (TEL) rose.

The policy team at TRM Labs reviewed the global cryptocurrency policies for the fourth quarter of 2025 and found that stablecoin regulation has become a major agenda, with 80% of Financial Institutions launching digital asset initiatives, and the illegal activity rate of VASPs being lower than that of the entire ecosystem. This year is seen as a turning point for U.S. cryptocurrency policy, with regulatory approaches gradually strengthening.

According to Mars Finance, on December 24, Lookonchain monitored that in the past 24 hours, BitMine, under Tom Lee, has purchased another 67,886 ETH, worth approximately $201 million.