A trader labeled "BTC OG 内幕巨鲸" holds leveraged long positions totaling close to $700M with about $73.18M in unrealized losses as of Dec. 18, EmberCN reports. The address holds a 191,000 ETH long position worth $540M opened at $3,167 with an unrealized loss of $64.28M and a liquidation price of $2,083, a 1,000 BTC long worth $86.15M opened at $91,506 with a $5.35M paper loss, and a 250,000 SOL long worth $30.83M opened at $137.5 with a $3.55M unrealized loss.

Coinbase announced on Dec. 18 a slate of new products to advance its Everything Exchange strategy spanning crypto, stocks, derivatives and asset tokenization, BlockBeats reports. The company plans to roll out U.S. stock trading so customers can buy equities and digital assets in one wallet, add prediction markets with thousands of Kalshi contracts, support futures and perpetuals with certain limitations, and deepen Solana ecosystem access for prompt token trading after listings. New offerings include Coinbase Advisor for AI-powered financial guidance, enterprise features under Coinbase Business showing month-over-month double-digit growth, a token sales platform, a branded stablecoin service, and Coinbase Tokenize to bring on-chain tokens backed by stocks, private equity, funds and real estate. Armstrong said firms interested in tokenization can contact Coinbase, with details on regulatory exemptions such as Reg D not yet disclosed.

The Federal Reserve has a 75.6% probability of holding rates in January and a 24.4% chance of cutting by 25 basis points, CME FedWatch data show as of December 18. By March, cumulative probabilities stand at 46% for no change, 44.4% for a 25 basis points cut, and 9.5% for a 50 basis points reduction.

A newly created wallet minted $12.1M in USDC on Arbitrum on Dec. 18 and deposited $5.1M to Hyperliquid, where it purchased 113,000 HYPE worth about $3M and 0.5 BTC valued around $43,000, MLM data show. The wallet is using a TWAP strategy to buy roughly $2M of HYPE over the next 50 minutes, while about $7M in USDC remains on Arbitrum.

Crypto market liquidations totaled $130M in the past hour, with short positions accounting for $109M and long positions for $21.2506M, Coinglass data show on December 17. Over the last 24 hours, 97,763 traders were liquidated worldwide for a combined $266M, with the largest single liquidation on Binance's ETHUSDC pair valued at $3.8396M, BlockBeats reported.

On Dec. 17, an address labeled "BTC OG" transferred 614,468 ETH, worth about $1.8 billion, into nine separate wallets, OnchainLens data show. The address holds long positions in ETH, BTC and SOL on HyperLiquid with a notional value of roughly $694 million, currently sitting on an unrealized loss of more than $37 million.

Fed Governor Christopher Waller said the current labor market is "very weak" with "not encouraging" job growth and argued the Fed still has room to cut rates, BlockBeats reports. He supported additional easing to move policy back to a neutral level but said there is no need to rush, adding he is confident inflation expectations remain anchored. Asked by CNBC whether he would emphasize the Fed's independence in any meeting with Donald Trump, Waller replied "of course," a point underscored by Trump's frequent criticism of the central bank's pace of rate cuts and of current chair Jerome Powell. Waller, appointed by Trump and confirmed to the Board in late 2020, has become one of the strongest advocates of rate cuts inside the Fed this year, as the central bank has lowered rates by 25 basis points at each of its last three meetings.

On-chain data show a wallet address associated with BlackRock transferred 74,973 ETH worth about $220.1 million and 2,257 BTC valued at roughly $197.6 million to Coinbase Prime on December 17. The deposits were sent directly from the BlackRock-linked address to Coinbase Prime in a single transaction.