Ethereum rose more than 3% within 10 minutes on December 17, trading near $2,977, HTX market data show. The rally pushed Ethereum's market capitalization to approximately $348.769 billion.

Ethereum dropped below $2,900 on Dec. 17, declining 1.29% over 24 hours, HTX market data show. The cryptocurrency breached the $2,900 level on the HTX exchange.

Blockchain infrastructure firm Uniform Labs launched Multiliquid on Dec. 17, a round-the-clock swap protocol for tokenized money market funds, RWA and stablecoins. The protocol allows institutional users to exchange between blue-chip tokenized money market funds and stablecoins at any time, addressing multi-day redemption delays and liquidity constraints. Multiliquid supports liquidity trading in USDT and USDC.

Huang Licheng's address opened 25x leveraged ETH and 10x leveraged HYPE long positions on Dec. 17, Hyperinsight data show. The ETH position consists of 4,550 ETH at a $2,940.6 entry price with liquidation at $2,735.3, currently showing an unrealized loss of $86,000. The HYPE position consists of 15,888.88 HYPE at a $27.60 entry price, with a current unrealized loss of $4,000.

SBI Ripple Asia signed a memorandum of understanding with XRPL-native protocol Doppler Finance on December 17 to jointly explore XRP-based yield products and real-world asset (RWA) tokenization on the XRP Ledger, BlockBeats reports. The deal marks SBI Ripple Asia's first collaboration with a native XRPL yield protocol, with both parties focusing on building compliant and transparent yield infrastructure for institutional clients to support XRP's evolution from a payment-focused token to an income-generating financial asset. Doppler Finance will supply the on-chain yield framework, while SBI Digital Markets, regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, will act as the institutional custodian providing segregated custody for client assets. The partnership is described as a key step to deepen institutional use of XRP Ledger, leveraging the regulatory and ecosystem position of SBI Group and Ripple in Asia to accelerate XRP yield use cases and RWA tokenization in markets such as Japan and Singapore where rules for tokenized assets and blockchain-based yield products are relatively clear.

A whale address deposited 10,169 ETH (worth approximately $29.77 million) to Binance on Dec. 17, realizing a profit of $11.36 million, OnchainLens data show. The address had previously withdrawn 19,505.5 ETH (approximately $48.69 million) to stake, then deposited 20,269 ETH (approximately $60.05 million), earning 763.58 ETH. Address: 0xc8D45CC670c6485F70528976D65f7603160Be2CD.

Ethereum would trigger cumulative long liquidations of $1.022 billion across major centralized exchanges if its price falls below $2,800 on Dec. 17, Coinglass data show. Conversely, a break above $3,000 would result in cumulative short liquidations of $843 million on major CEXs.

Polymarket's user retention significantly outperforms most crypto platforms, according to a December 17 study by Dune and market maker Keyrock. The research tracked monthly cohorts of newly active users across 275 crypto projects—including networks, DeFi protocols, wallets and trading applications—and found Polymarket's average retention rate exceeded 85% of analyzed protocols. The report noted that event-driven prediction markets built around real-world events such as elections, sports and macroeconomic data may sustain repeat engagement without heavy subsidies. In December, Coinbase signaled plans for tokenized stocks and a prediction market, Gemini launched its prediction market across all 50 U.S. states, Phantom integrated event-based trading via Kalshi, and Bitnomial secured U.S. CFTC approval to offer prediction market and clearing services.

Address 0xDE2…E4613 built positions in ETH, LINK, AAVE, UNI, POL and COMP totaling $17.8 million on Dec. 17, Ai 姨 (@ai_9684xtpa) reports. The funds were withdrawn from Binance two hours earlier, with ETH accounting for 95% ($16.93 million) at an average price of $2,935.55.