GeckoPulse: 2025 Crypto Review

The team will be a taking a break this Christmas and the New Year, we'll see you back on January 5, 2026!

Winding Down 2025

We’re almost at the end of the year, and the crypto markets have been quite the rollercoaster in the past 12 months.

While Bitcoin reached a new-all time high of $126K in October, the world’s largest cryptocurrency is now down by 31.0% to $87K as of the time of writing, ending 2025 lower compared to the start of 2025.

Similarly, despite the proliferation of ETH treasury companies in 2025 Q3, the asset is still down by 12.3% from $3,336 in January to $2,926 today.

Within 2025, we’ve also seen the resurgence of old and new narratives such as tokenized collectibles and privacy coins.

In particular, Zcash had an impressive run in Q3 as well, surging by over 13x from $50 to a peak of $670.

However, other sectors such as memecoins, NFTs and AI tokens have largely stagnated, and have underperformed drastically since 2024.

Not long after the launch of TRUMP, the memecoin market cap has shrunk significantly by 71.9% from the 2025 peak of $150.6B in January, to just $42.3B today.

Gnosis Goes Down a Different Path

The Gnosis Chain has executed a hard fork to recover funds from a $116M exploit that occurred earlier in November.

In an announcement post yesterday, the network’s operators executed the hard fork on Monday and urged all other operators to take action to continue receiving rewards.

However, it remains to be seen on how and when the funds will be distributed back to users.

Since the hard fork, the price of the native GNO token has fallen slightly by 3.2% from $124.30 to $120.30 today.

Civil War

Unrest within the Aave community continues to grow after Aave Labs has apparently pushed a brand-asset ownership proposal to a Snapshot vote.

Stani Kuchelov, founder of Aave, shared on X that the proposal has moved to the next stage after ‘extensive discussion, and that the ‘community is ready to make a decision’.

The proposal itself aims to provide AAVE holders with full control of the platform’s brand assets, which include the domains, naming rights, and social channels.

However, the proposal’s original author, former Aave Labs CTO Ernesto Boado, claims that the published proposal does not reflect his original ideas.

He accused Aave Labs of pushing the proposal forward without his approval, and called upon the community to avoid participating in the vote or to signal their abstinence.

The turmoil within the community had begun since last week, after a debate arose over the control of protocol interface fees between Aave Labs and the Aave DAO.

Since then, the price of AAVE has plunged by 22.1% from $195 to $152 today.

Last-minute Deals

Coinbase is ending 2025 by acquiring The Clearing Company, a prediction markets platform.

According to their recent blog post, the transaction is currently in its final stages and is expected to be completed in January next year.

The purpose of the acquisition is for the team to assist Coinbase in expanding its own prediction market offerings.

Most of the core team, consisting of around 10 employees, will be joining Coinbase.

While the firm was acquired in exchange for cash and Coinbase stock, further details regarding the deal have remained private.

In Other News

Polymarket Vulnerabilities Detected. Decentralized prediction market platform Polymarket confirmed that multiple users were affected by a security breach involving a third party platform. Several users reported unauthorized logins and loss of funds.

Suspicious Movement on Binance. Leaked internal data suggests that Binance failed to stop the movement of 13 suspicious accounts, violating Binance’s 2023 legal settlement agreement, which saw CZ resign from his post as CEO at the time. The accounts have moved funds worth $144M since November 2023.

Market Making Yes/No Questions. Crypto exchange Crypto.com (CDC) is reportedly hiring a quant trader to market make for  sports contracts. This move highlights the ever growing interest in the prediction market space as more exchanges jump in on the band wagon.

Clamping Down on Crypto Scams. The US SEC is clamping down on several crypto trading platforms and investment clubs, targeting social media users. The entities named in the complaint are: Morocoin Tech Corp., Berge Blockchain Technology Co., Ltd. and five others.

HYPE Burn Completed. The Hyperliquid proposal to burn over $890M worth of HYPE has passed. All funds in Hyperliquid’s Assistance Fund system address are now recognized as burnt, effectively reducing Hyperliquid’s circulating supply by over 10%.

Tom Lee Remains Bullish. Tom Lee’s Ethereum treasury firm BitMine, acquired an additional $88M worth of ETH on Monday. BitMine now holds over $12B worth of ETH.

Ghana Legalizes Crypto. The African nation of Ghana passed the Virtual Asset Service Providers Bill, now requiring entities and individuals to register with the central bank before interacting with digital assets.

A Cup of Joe. Interoperability crypto project Espresso, released the airdrop checker for their upcoming ESP token airdrop. Eligible users can now register their crypto wallets, token claims are expected in 2026.

Bybit Discontinues Support for Japan. Major crypto exchange Bybit, will begin phasing out services for residents of Japan from 2026 due to regulatory hurdles. Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) is also clamping down on other crypto exchanges including: MEXC Global, LBank Exchange, KuCoin and Bitget.