December 18, the Bank of England lowered its benchmark interest rate from 4.00% to 3.75%, in line with market expectations. Previously, the bank had paused its quarterly rate cuts that had been in place since August 2024. (FXStreet)

December 18th, according to The Block, Derive founder Nick Forster stated that traders have significantly shifted towards a defensive structural setup. The 30-day Bitcoin implied volatility has risen to nearly 45%, while the skew remains at around -5%; the longer-term skew is also anchored at this level in the first and second quarters of next year.Around the upcoming expiry date, the market positions show a clear polarization. At $100,000 and $120,000 strike prices, the open interest for call options continues to accumulate, indicating that some traders are still betting on a possible strong rebound in Bitcoin.However, the overall fund flows indicate a stronger sense of caution. Forster pointed out that shorts are accumulating a "significant scale of put option exposure" near the $85,000 strike price to hedge in case Bitcoin drops below this key level in the short term. He added that the option's implied probability still reflects a challenging market environment: the market only gives Bitcoin about a 30% probability of touching $100,000 and only about a 10% probability of reclaiming its all-time high.

December 18th, according to market sources, Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT.O) will engage in a full stock transaction merger with TAE TECHNOLOGIES, with the transaction expected to be completed by mid-2026. The merged company is expected to select a site in 2026 and begin construction of the first utility-scale nuclear fusion power plant. (Golden Ten)

December 18th, according to official sources, Binance Alpha has announced that it will become the first platform to list TradeTide (TTD) on December 20th.Eligible users can visit the Alpha event page after Alpha trading opens to claim an airdrop using Binance Alpha points. More details will be announced later.

December 18, Binance Alpha has launched VOOI (VOOI), with the current price of $0.164 and a market cap of $49.9 million. Eligible users can receive an airdrop of 335 VOOI tokens, worth approximately $55 based on the current price.

December 18th, according to official data, the cumulative trading volume of Bitget's tokenized stocks has exceeded 500 million U.S. dollars. From the trading structure perspective, the trading volume is mainly concentrated in popular assets such as Tesla, Nvidia, Apple, Meta, and others. Previously, according to data disclosed by Ondo Finance, in the first week of December, the trading volume of Ondo tokenized stocks on Bitget exceeded 88 million U.S. dollars, accounting for 73% of the market share.To reduce the participation threshold and enhance trading flexibility, Bitget has extended the zero-fee plan for tokenized stocks until January 16, 2026, exempting designated products from transaction fees and Gas fees.

December 18th, according to Hyperinsight monitoring, the "Whale" increased their ETH long position by 575 coins in nearly half an hour, bringing their total holdings to 5575 coins.At the time of writing, their latest round of long positions is valued at $15.92 million, with an unrealized loss of $38.46 thousand, and a liquidation price of $2753.

December 18th, according to on-chain analyst Ai Yi (@ai_9684xtpa) monitoring, the "Shorting Whale Insider after the 1011 Flash Crash" increased their long position by 51,612.85 SOL, with a new total holding of 301,612.8 SOL, worth 37.36 million US dollars, an average entry price of 135.2 US dollars, and an unrealized loss of 3.42 million US dollars.After adding to the position, their overall position has officially exceeded 700 million US dollars.

December 18th, according to HyperInsight monitoring, possibly influenced by Binance's dual-coin investment addition, UNI experienced a short-term surge of 10%, now trading at $5.28. The whale address on Hyperliquid starting with 0x413c has unrealized gains of over 50%, with the current position size approximately $1.18 million at an average price of $4.99. This address opened a 10x leveraged long position on UNI at midnight yesterday and has been continuously adding to the position as of 4 hours ago.Furthermore, according to monitoring, the largest UNI short position held by the "Shanzhai Short Army Vanguard" significantly reduced its UNI short position by over 30% at 13:00 yesterday, with the current position size around $3.38 million and unrealized gains of $1.39 million (410%).

December 18, glassnode analyst Chris Beamish combined the "Bitcoin HODLer Net Position Change" data to indicate that current long-term BTC holders are continuing to distribute, and with ongoing supply entering the market, they are increasing selling pressure.