speculation

Iran's New Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei Has Not Made a Public AppearanceIran's new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has not made a public appearance for a long time, sparking strong speculation about his serious injuries. In the face of rampant rumors, the son of the Iranian president and senior relatives urgently came forward to clarify, insisting that the new leader is "safe and sound."A relative of Mojtaba told the Financial Times: "He is currently in good condition and is still busy with various tasks. For security and political reasons, he has decided not to make any public appearances for the time being. To some extent, this also creates uncertainty for his opponents, preventing them from getting accurate information about him. Let them guess slowly." The expert meeting did not clarify whether Khamenei was present during the meeting and did not provide details about the voting process.Earlier reports indicated that Iran's ambassador to Cyprus, Alireza Salarian, stated in an interview that Iran's new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei was injured in the airstrikes by the United States and Israel on February 28.

The Governor of the People's Bank of China, Pan Gongsheng, stated at the press conference on the economic theme of the Fourth Session of the 14th National People's Congress that, overall, in the past year, financial risks in key areas of our country have been resolved in an orderly manner, the financial system and financial market have operated smoothly, and risks in key areas have continued to converge. The People's Bank of China, together with relevant departments, has maintained a high-pressure crackdown on illegal financial activities such as illegal fundraising, speculative trading of virtual currencies, and underground banks.In the next step, the People's Bank of China will orderly resolve risks in key areas to prevent financial risks and maintain financial stability, continue to carry out a high-pressure crackdown on illegal financial activities in collaboration with industry regulators and law enforcement departments such as the police, closely monitor and assess the impact of external shocks, and utilize macro-prudential and financial stability policy tools to timely weaken or block risk contagion.

The head of the Solana protocol Meteora, Zen @realdezen, stated that since taking over in March last year, the team has taken insider trading risks seriously and has established practical protective measures.Zen referred to Meteora as a permissionless platform, with the main focus over the past 12 months on enhancing the robustness and reliability of the infrastructure, allowing projects to go live without manual intervention from the team. As a result, the team only became aware of relevant situations after certain projects went live or were integrated. In the related prediction markets, Meteora once became the most probable and ranked first among guesses.

Vitalik Buterin posted on the X social platform, stating that the current prediction markets are overly focused on short-term cryptocurrency prices and high-dopamine products like sports betting, lacking long-term social information value, which may lead to unhealthy product-market fit.He suggested that prediction markets should be encouraged to develop towards "risk hedging," making them tools for reducing asset or real expenditure risks. Buterin also envisioned constructing a stable mechanism to replace fiat currencies through personalized prediction market shares based on price indices, thereby providing users with more sustainable value hedging solutions. He called for the establishment of a new generation of financial systems, rather than merely relying on speculative flows.

RTFKT's NFT series Clone X has recently shown strong price performance. NFT Price Floor data indicates that the Clone X floor price is currently at 0.38 ETH, reaching a new high since April 2024, with a 7-day increase of 339.8%. The series briefly touched 0.44 ETH last weekend, with a significant increase in trading activity. The price fluctuations of Clone X are mainly influenced by the news of "Nike selling RTFKT."Nike quietly completed the sale of RTFKT in December 2025, and the identity of the buyer and specific terms remain confidential. The market generally expects that after separating from Nike, RTFKT may follow the path of NFTs like Pudgy Penguins and Moonbirds, which saw a resurgence after being acquired, achieving a brand revitalization. Currently, Improbable co-founder Herman Narula, BAYC parent company Yuga Labs, and billionaire collector Adam Weitsman have all explicitly denied involvement in the acquisition. The most speculated potential buyers include LVMH and Pudgy Penguins.Among them, the LVMH group and its family members are seasoned players in the NFT space, and the brand has a deep historical collaboration with Clone X creator Takashi Murakami; Pudgy Penguins has close ties with RTFKT. According to crypto KOL @baofuliu's analysis, RTFKT founder Zaptio attended a co-founder gathering with Pudgy Penguins last year and subsequently posted "Clones are so back," hinting at a project revival. Additionally, Pudgy Penguins CEO Luca Netz has held Clone X NFTs for four years and has successful experience in NFT revitalization. It is important to note that the above acquisition information is purely market speculation and has not been officially confirmed, and does not constitute investment advice.

CZ posted on the X platform that many people often ask him where he thinks the next big opportunity lies, and his answer is always "watch where I spend my time."CZ pointed out that this logic is not complicated, but market participants often choose to ignore it, instead chasing so-called "10x overnight" opportunities, which have a very high probability of failure. His statement aims to emphasize that long-term investment and sustained focus on a direction often reflect truly potential opportunities better than short-term speculation.

DWF Labs stated that in 2025, over $19 billion in liquidations cleared excessive leverage from the crypto market, shifting the market from a speculation-driven cycle to a balance sheet-driven market structure.The supply of stablecoins grew by over 50% year-on-year, with more than $20 billion allocated to yield-bearing stablecoins, indicating that the crypto industry is moving from being merely a payment tool to focusing on asset management.The on-chain real-world assets (RWA) scale expanded from approximately $4 billion to $18 billion, while the proportion of derivatives trading on DEX and CEX increased to four times the original, marking the crypto market's accelerated transformation into a credible financial infrastructure.

According to Jinshi, U.S. Treasury Secretary Basant stated that speculation about the Federal Reserve Chair nominee will be announced in early January, and the Supreme Court will make a ruling on tariff issues in early January.

Coinbase Institutional stated that the turmoil in November reshaped the market landscape: the open interest of BTC/ETH/SOL perpetual contracts decreased by 16% month-over-month; there was a $3.5 billion outflow of BTC and a $1.4 billion outflow of ETH from U.S. spot ETFs; the funding rate for BTC perpetual contracts briefly fell below 2σ of the 90-day average, before recovering.These changes lay the groundwork for a stable situation in December, and the institution believes it can remain cautiously optimistic, as excessive speculation has been curbed. The systemic leverage tracking purely speculative positions has stabilized around 4%-5% of the total market capitalization, down from about 10% this summer. Lower leverage indicates a healthier market structure and reduces the risk of a significant decline before the end of the year.

According to Trends News monitoring, Trump posted on Truth Social the day before, fiercely criticizing the judicial predicament faced by NCAA: a ruling by a judge with no knowledge or experience led to NCAA and sports leagues conceding, and Trump stated this would bring "$BIG trouble." As the "$" symbol typically represents tradable asset codes on social platforms, the community speculated that Trump might launch a meme coin.Based on dynamics across various platforms, the token that garnered the most consensus following Trump's post was BIG, created on the Solana network through the Bonk platform, approximately 10 seconds after his post. As of the time of writing, this token has a total of 5,148 holders, with a peak market cap reaching $5.3 million, which has now retraced to $360,000.ChainCatcher reminds users that meme coins often lack practical use cases and exhibit significant price volatility, so investment should be approached with caution.

Coinbase Institutional posted that the overall cryptocurrency market (represented by the COIN50 index) fell by 18.47% in November. The 90-day trend shows a downward trajectory, global liquidity is decreasing, and the Federal Reserve's hawkish comments have intensified risk-averse sentiment.Funds continue to rotate out of more speculative market segments, exacerbating the decline of altcoins, with only a few altcoins rising against the trend. Among all categories, DeFi performed the best, with a decline of only 6.7% compared to other categories that clearly showed risk-averse sentiment.

Beijing Business Daily Financial Investigation Team published an article titled "The Surge of Cryptocurrency Speculators into Social Platforms," which points out that the chaos of cryptocurrency speculation has infiltrated platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Taobao, and Xianyu. What appears to be lifestyle sharing, newcomer benefits, or product links is, in fact, a diversion for cryptocurrency speculation, brewing a carefully woven hunting trap for ordinary people. From the perspective of diversion methods, it can be roughly divided into several situations, such as creating topics to build IP and setting up advertising links on platforms. Industry insiders believe that a "counter-hunting" battle against the chaos of cryptocurrency speculation has also begun, but to completely end this game, a joint effort from regulators, platforms, and users is needed.Not long ago, Pan Gongsheng, the governor of the People's Bank of China, publicly stated that efforts to crack down on the operation and speculation of virtual currencies within the country would continue. Since 2017, the People's Bank of China, together with relevant departments, has issued multiple policy documents to prevent and address the risks of domestic virtual currency trading and speculation, and these policy documents remain effective. In the next step, the People's Bank of China will continue to work with law enforcement agencies to combat the operation and speculation of virtual currencies within the country, maintain economic and financial order, and closely monitor and dynamically assess the development of overseas stablecoin values.