Totally Random: Vanguard, BofA, House GOP, Fed, and SEC All Pick Today 🤔
OVERVIEW
Totally Random: Vanguard, BofA, House GOP, Fed, and SEC All Pick Today 🤔
Before we dive in, here’s today’s crypto market heatmap:
Source: finviz
And here’s a look at crypto’s total market and altcoin market cap charts:
Source: TradingView
NEWS
Ok, So Not ALL Of These Happened Today, But Close Enough 🤏
The Fed’s QT stopped, the SEC chair announced the innovation exemption, the House drops the results of the Choke Point 2.0 investigation, and BofA and Vanguard both go for crypto. 🔢
We’re looking more closely at the Vanguard, BofA, and Choke Point stories today, but when you add the QT stopping (something we knew about) and the SEC chair announcement combined with the other three…
I’m not saying someone sent a group text. I’m just saying the timing’s interesting.
Why QT Ending Is Bullish:
The Fed stopped actively draining $2.2 trillion from the system. They’re maintaining the balance sheet at $6.6 trillion instead of continuing to shrink it. That removes one major liquidity headwind. Combined with rate cuts, monetary conditions are loosening. Risk assets historically perform better when the Fed stops tightening. 🗜️
Why SEC Chair Comments Are Bullish
Atkins targeting January for formal innovation exemption rules means crypto firms can build domestically without regulatory whiplash. It’s actual rulemaking versus informal guidance that vanishes with regime changes. The Biden-era “regulation by enforcement” gets replaced with clear sandbox rules. 🛝
Green On The Screen
Green across the board in crypto, with some big names up big double digits:
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Sui +17%
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Cardano +14%
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SEI +12%
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Aave +11%
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BONK +11%
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Polkadot +11%
Signs of a broader trend change? Just hopium? Who knows – but after October and November, it doesn’t take much to make crypto people feel a little better, but not any less suspicious. 🕵️
CRYPTOTWITS
The Bald Truth 👨🦲
Live tomorrow at 1 PM ET on @Cryptotwits: “The Bald Truth: All I Want For Christmas Is A Week Without a $500 Million Liquidation Event”.
Missed today’s stream? Watch it here. 👈️
NEWS
Bank of America Recommends 1-4% Crypto Allocation (Right After the Dump) 🤣
$BAC ( ▼ 0.09% ) is telling wealth clients they can allocate 1-4% to crypto via Bitcoin ETFs. Starting January 5, the firm’s CIO will cover four bitcoin ETFs: Bitwise’s $BITB ( ▲ 6.52% ), Fidelity’s $FBTC ( ▲ 6.48% ), Grayscale’s Bitcoin Mini Trust $BTC ( ▲ 6.5% ), and BlackRock’s $IBIT ( ▲ 6.54% ). 🤯
This means 15,000+ advisers can now formally recommend crypto for the first time.
Want to know what happened right before this? If you’re a reader of this newsletter, you already know (Sucktober the 10th, Sucksgiving, just horribleness all around). And that’s when BofA decides to publish allocation guidance.
I’m not one to believe in coincidences much, but the stupid amount of bullish AF news today for crypto is kind of… coincidental? I’m not complaining, it just seems very DUH BIG RED TRUCK obvious if you know what I mean.
Anyway. ⤵️
The Institutional Consensus
BofA isn’t pioneering anything. BlackRock recommended 1-2% (December 2024). Fidelity recommended 2-5% (March 2024). Morgan Stanley recommended 2-4% (October 2025).
Institutions settled on 1-5% as “reasonable” crypto exposure. Small enough to minimize crash risk, large enough to participate in upside.
According to Bernstein, retail holds 75% of spot Bitcoin ETF assets. Institutional ownership increased from 20% to 28% during the drawdown.
In other words, retail bought high. Institutions rotated in during weakness. BofA’s guidance enables that rotation to continue.
When conservative wealth managers at major banks formally recommend crypto, the legitimacy debate is over. The timing – right after a 33% drawdown – is either genius or just late.
Probably just a coincidence. 🤔
NEWS
Vanguard Finally Caves: $11 Trillion Asset Manager Opens Crypto ETF Access 🥳
Starting December 2 (today), the $11 trillion asset manager is allowing its 50+ million clients to trade third-party crypto ETFs tracking Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and Solana.
This is the same Vanguard that ruled out crypto ETFs in August. CEO Salim Ramji said “no thanks” three months ago. Now the firm cites improved frameworks and products surviving volatility.
I’m just gonna guess that their clients kept asking, and the products didn’t explode during November’s bloodbath, as a primary reason(s). 🤔
Oh. And whoever is behind VanEck’s X account: well effing done with this piece of social magic:
Twitter tweet
The Ironic Timing
Like I said in the above article about Bank of America – Vanguard capitulates right after crypto got its face ripped off. That’s when Vanguard decides crypto ETFs have been “tested through market volatility” and are ready.
In other words: the products survived retail getting liquidated. Now let’s open the doors. 🚪
Other People’s ETFs
Vanguard won’t launch its own crypto products – they’re just allowing access to existing regulated vehicles. They’ll permit Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and Solana ETFs. Memecoins are blocked because they hate fun.
This removes the last major holdout. Morgan Stanley, Schwab, Fidelity, JPMorgan already offer them. Now Vanguard does too. 👍️
NEWS
Operation Choke Point 2.0: House Documents The Systematic Debanking 😠
The House Financial Services Committee released a 51-page report yesterday documenting exactly what everyone in crypto already knew – the Biden administration used regulatory pressure to systematically cut crypto firms from banking without formal enforcement actions. 😡
The report names names, cites internal documents, and lays out how federal regulators weaponized informal guidance to kill businesses without due process.
It’s not new information. But it’s now officially on record.
The Deets
At least 30 digital asset entities lost banking access between 2022-2024. The documentation includes FDIC “pause letters” to 24 banks, Federal Reserve guidance requiring pre-approval for crypto activities, and SEC’s Staff Accounting Bulletin 121 making custody a nightmare.
High-profile casualties: $COIN ( ▲ 1.32% ), $MARA ( ▲ 3.39% ), founders from $UNI.X ( ▲ 6.15% ), $XRP.X ( ▲ 7.04% ), Gemini. Anchorage Digital laid off 20% of staff after losing banking access.
Banks got 24-72 hours notice their accounts were closing. No formal charges. No enforcement actions. Just vague warnings about “regulatory uncertainty.”
Kind Of A Big Deal
The report creates a permanent Congressional record with internal FDIC letters and victim testimony. It’s insurance against Choke Point 3.0 and feeds directly into pending legislation like the CLARITY Act.
The uncomfortable truth: this worked because crypto had no political constituency that mattered. The reversal happened because political winds changed – not because justice prevailed.
The lesson isn’t “the system worked.” The lesson is regulatory agencies have enormous discretionary power to destroy industries through informal guidance, and they’ll use it when politically convenient. 💢
STOCKTWITS
Stonkmarket News 📰
NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
AI, Stablecoins, & Privacy News 🕵️
🧠 Hyperon Goes From “AGI Theory” To “AGI Infrastructure” And It’s A Little Terrifying
So this is scary as hell. Cool as hell too, but scary: Hyperon just unveiled a MeTTa compiler that finally runs fast enough to power real AGI workloads instead of PhD demo apps. It now compiles cognitive code into smart-contract-grade Rholang (no idea what that means) on ASI Chain, meaning neural-symbolic reasoning literally runs across a decentralized network. Artificial Superintelligence Alliance.
🕶️ ECC Reorganizes To Ship Zashi Faster And Make Zcash Actually Usable
ZEC finally found product-market fit, don’t screw this up. Zashi’s growth has forced ECC to merge engineering, marketing, and product into one focused machine instead of three polite email threads. The team leads got reassigned like a playoff roster shuffle – all to sustain the momentum behind shielded ZEC and keep onboarding real users instead of academic thought experiments. Zcash.
NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
DeFi, DEX, & Lending News 🏦
🧩 Ontology Drops v3.0.0 And Basically Rebuilds Its Whole Economy
Ontology’s new MainNet upgrade cuts ONG supply, boosts staker rewards, and finally drags its token model into the modern era instead of letting inflation chew it alive. Identity, EVM support, and governance all got leveled up so Ontology can pretend it’s not eight years old in crypto time. They even rolled out better tooling, a new encrypted messaging system, and a wallet upgrade. Ontology.
🎯 Membit Staking Arrives And The Bonus Points Are… Absolutely Unhinged
Membit launched staking with bonus multipliers that go from “nice boost” to “I hope your calculator is ready” topping out at 1800%. The whole system is designed to nuke bots, reward real humans, and turn consistent contributors into literal point factories. Band.
💸 Flow Goes Full “Consumer DeFi” And Prepares To Onboard The Next 100 Million Users
Flow is rolling out enshrined protocols, starting with a credit market built directly into the chain, plus a consumer app called Peak Money that abstracts away crypto’s usual pain. Protocol automation, safe yield, and a network-level fee revamp all push Flow toward sustainable, mainstream DeFi instead of degens-only roulette. It’s aiming to make everyday finance actually tolerable – which is more than most chains can say. Flow.
NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
Protocol News 🏦
📈 TPS Myths, Block Time Lies, And Reactive’s “We Don’t Play That Game” Approach
TPS comparisons are mostly useless because every chain defines “a transaction” like it’s a different animal, and half the numbers you see are theoretical benchmarks dressed up as gospel. Reactive dodges the entire TPS arms race by scaling through parallel RVMs that process events at ridiculous potential throughput while keeping congestion predictable. TPS is a vibes metric unless a chain can sustain load at scale without face-planting. Reactive Network.
📊 Truflation + Chainlink CRE + QuantAMM = A Bitcoin BTF That Actually Listens To Macro
Truflation’s real-time inflation model feeds QuantAMM’s Bitcoin BTF so the fund can rotate between BTC and USDC based on macro regime shifts – way faster than ETFs that rebalance like they’re waiting for permission slips and the boss to say ‘ok’. Chainlink CRE handles the heavy automation so the whole system runs trustlessly without TradFi middlemen watering it down. Truflation.
LINKS
Links That Don’t Suck 🔗
⛓️ Chainlink Gears Up For Fresh Boost As US’s First-Ever Spot LINK ETF Debuts On NYSE
🪨 BlackRock Sees Tokenization as the New Financial Infrastructure
🤦 Michael Burry renews crypto attacks calling Bitcoin “worth nothing”
👛 Trust Wallet Becomes First Major Web3 Wallet With Native Predictions Markets
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Author Disclosure: The author of this newsletter holds positions in AVAX, ADA, PUDGY, WLC, IMX, XTZ, NEAR, HBAR, ALGO, INJ, LTC, LINK, ZEC, XLM, and FET. 📋
