12.26 Market Brief: Volatility, Shakeouts, and the Paradigm Shift in Underlying Models

In the final week of 2025, the crypto market is undergoing a "stress test." From security vulnerabilities to options expirations, from major governance actions to macro fluctuations, the information flow is immense. Recommended to bookmark and read:

1️⃣ Security Warning: @TrustWallet supply chain vulnerability browser extension v2.68 has confirmed vulnerabilities, with losses exceeding $6 million. Although CZ has spoken out in support of compensation, this once again exposes the fragility of traditional wallet interactions. The security of on-chain assets depends not only on user habits but also heavily on the robustness of the underlying architecture.

2️⃣ Largest Options Expiration in History: The $28.5 billion "game" today at 16:00 witnesses the largest-ever options settlement for BTC+ETH. The market is currently in "extreme panic" (index 20), with BTC fluctuating violently around 89,000. Such extreme conditions act as a liquidity "pump," demanding the highest clearing efficiency from public chains.

3️⃣ Paradigm Shift in Infrastructure: Moving from "scaling" to "parallelism," Uniswap today proposed a "fee switch" and burned 100 million $UNI; simultaneously, Ethereum is also striving for a "second-level experience." Industry consensus is converging towards "high performance + value capture": in this context, Sei ( $SEI )’s advantages are increasingly evident. While Ethereum is still restructuring rules to shorten Slots, Sei’s Parallelized EVM has already achieved millisecond-level finality (TTF), ensuring DeFi protocol liquidations are smooth and delay-free even under extreme volatility. This is why capital is flowing towards infrastructure with high throughput at the core.

4️⃣ Macro Divergence: Gold and silver soar, altcoins enter winter? Spot silver hit a historic high, and the gold-silver ratio dropped to 61.6. In contrast, the altcoin season index is only 17. This divergence indicates the market is engaging in "stockpile gold rush." Besides the deflationary narrative driven by large burns like $HYPE , projects with real technological barriers and active ecosystems like Sei have a better chance to break through first when liquidity returns.

In the short term, focus on volatility (options, Federal Reserve expectations); mid-term on governance (Uni fee switch); long-term on performance (parallelization). Finding projects "building the road" amid extreme panic might be the best strategy to navigate the regulatory year of 2026.