Lightning's got this weird paradox going.
Network capacity dropped 22% to 4,077 BTC since last year, fewer nodes running...
Yet transaction volume exploded 266% YoY. Square's onboarding 4M merchants, Tether's pushing USDT through it.
Feels like we're watching infrastructure shrink while actual usage takes off.
Quality over quantity?

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In the crypto world, what truly determines victory is never code, but the interplay between liquidity, power, and regulation. The rise and fall of BUSD is not merely a tragic tale of a stablecoin, but a financial war waged by exchanges attempting to "unify the world."

When BUSD was thrust onto the historical stage, it carried not only a compliance narrative, but also Binance's ambition to reshape the stablecoin order through coercive measures—by manipulating exchange rates and merging trading pairs, directly swallowing competitors' liquidity into its own ledger.

The "automatic conversion" of 2022 was a textbook example of a blitzkrieg; and 2023...

The Rise and Fall of Binance's Dominance: From BUSD's "Unification" to $U's "Conquering the World"—The Stablecoin Wars

Source: Galaxy Research; Translation: Jinse Finance xz
Bitcoin's closing price in 2025 is expected to be roughly the same as the level at the beginning of the year.
The cryptocurrency market experienced a genuine bullish wave in the first ten months of this year. Regulatory reforms continued to advance, ETFs continued to attract funds, and on-chain activity became increasingly active. Bitcoin hit an all-time high of $126,080 on October 6th.
However, the market failed to deliver the expected breakthrough after the initial frenzy; instead, it experienced rotation, repricing, and rebalancing. This was driven by factors such as unmet macroeconomic expectations, a shift in investment narratives, leveraged margin calls, and massive...

Galaxy: 26 Predictions for the Crypto Market in 2026

According to ME News, on December 20th (UTC+8), Sean Farrell, Head of Crypto Strategy at Tom Lee's Fundstrat, stated in his "2026 Crypto Outlook" report, "While I believe Bitcoin and the overall crypto market still have strong long-term upside potential, and liquidity-driven support is expected to emerge in 2026, we may still need to digest some risks in the first/second quarter of 2026, which could present more attractive entry points."