Cryptocurrency markets suffered another week of declines as investor activity gradually waned ahead of the holiday season.
Bitcoin (BTC) fell more than 5% over the past week, hitting a weekly low of $84,398 on Thursday before rebounding to above $87,769 on Friday. TradingView data shows.
Volatility in the cryptocurrency market continues to threaten the stability of digital asset treasury (DAT) companies as their longevity now depends on avoiding a “multi-net asset value (mNAV) rollercoaster that leaves these companies subject to fluctuations in the value of tokens held on their balance sheet, according to Solmate CEO Marco Santori.
In the broader cryptocurrency space, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ended its four-year investigation into Aave, marking a significant regulatory victory for the industry.
Following development, Stani Kulechov, founder of Aave, unveiled a 2026 “master plan” for the decentralized lending platform that aims to capture $1 billion in value through real-world asset deposits through the launch of Aave v4, Horizon, and the Aave app.
DAT’s longevity depends on avoiding the ‘mNAV rollercoaster’: Solmate CEO
The rise of digital asset treasury companies will be written as the meta-narrative of 2025, but the longevity of this movement will be determined by capital management and sound business strategies.
According to Solmate CEO Marco Santori, all DATs have to grapple with the value of the underlying token they hold on their balance sheets. This shouldn’t be a problem for revenue generating companies, but regular DATs will have a bumpy ride.
“The asset-to-net multiple is what allows many of these treasuries to survive. If their shares are trading at a high mNAV, meaning their market cap is greater than the value of the coins they have on their balance sheet, they can sell the shares in an accretive manner,” Santori said on the Chain Reaction X show on Cointelegraph.
“Every dollar of stock that they sell, they take it and buy the underlying coin, which increases their net asset value. As long as they can maintain the premium, they can just keep doing it. And that’s the pure fun vault model. I really think this has a future.”
The problem, however, is that mNAV will decline as interest in the underlying DAT token declines. Santori explained that falling token prices result in lower mNAVs.
“It means that a lot of treasuries are kind of idle because they can’t grow efficiently and effectively. I didn’t want to be subject to that. I didn’t want that for our investors. I want to give them exposure to SOL and the growth of the Solana network, but I didn’t want them to ride the mNAV roller coaster,” Santori said.
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Aave founder unveils ‘master plan’ for 2026 after SEC probe ends
Aave founder Stani Kulechov revealed his decentralized protocol’s 2026 “master plan,” shortly after revealing that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had ended a four-year investigation into the platform.
In a Tuesday post to
Pointing to 2026, the CEO outlined a master plan that places a strong focus on scaling the DeFi platform and achieving specific utilization metrics such as $1 billion in real-world asset (RWA) deposits.
“In the current situation, our strategy for next year is based on three main pillars: Aave v4, Horizon and Aave App,” he said.
Aave v4 is a major update, touted to bring significant improvements to loan and lending pools, user interface, and liquidation parameters, among others.
In his post, Kulechov said that v4 will be the “backbone of all finance,” pointing to the customized credit markets that the Hub and Spoke v4 model will provide.
In this model, a hub refers to a single, unified cross-chain liquidity pool that functions as a central location for all assets on the protocol, while spokes refer to highly customizable markets that benefit from the hub’s liquidity.
“This will enable Aave to service trillions of dollars in assets, making it the best choice for any institution, fintech or company looking to access Aave’s deep and reliable liquidity,” he said, adding:
“In 2026, Aave will be home to fresh markets, fresh assets, and fresh integrations that have never existed before in DeFi. We will continue to engage with fintechs and work closely with DAO and our implementation partners to progressively scale TVL throughout the year.”
Looking to Horizon’s next pillar, Aave’s decentralized real asset marketplace, the CEO outlined his intention to hire “a number of leading financial institutions” to become a central player in the RWA space.
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Hyperliquid management vote aims to permanently sideline $1 billion relief fund
The Hyper Foundation has proposed a verification vote to formally declare HYPE tokens stored in the Hyperliquid Protocol Emergency Fund system address permanently unavailable, excluding them from circulation and the total supply of the resource.
According to essentially, the Relief Fund is a protocol-level mechanism built into the Layer 1 network execution. It automatically converts transaction fees into HYPE tokens and routes them to a designated system address. At the time of writing this, the wallet contains approximately $1 billion in tokens.
The system address was designed without control mechanisms, so funds cannot be recovered without the need for a hard fork. “By voting Yes, validators agree to treat the HYPE Relief Fund as burned,” the Hyper Foundation wrote.
Native Markets, issuer of the native stablecoin Hyperliquid USDH, he reminded users that 50% of the profits from the stablecoin reserve are directed to the Emergency Fund and converted into HYPE tokens. “If the validator vote is accepted, these contributions will be formally considered burned,” the company wrote.
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ETHGas raises $12 million as Buterin revives gas futures debate
Ethereum blockchain trading platform ETHGas announced that it has raised $12 million in a seed round led by Polychain Capital.
Financing announcement comes after Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently discussed the idea of an onchain “gas futures” market, arguing that such a product could give users a clearer signal about expected fees and allow them to hedge future costs.
ETHGas argues that Ethereum needs to “rethink how it allocates block space on the network” and says its newly launched block space trading platform is a step in that direction. The company said the market launched with $800 million in commitments from validators, builders and other participants.
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Tokenized shares may be available online, but the SEC still wants the keys
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Trading and Markets outlined on Wednesday how broker-dealers can hold tokenized stocks and bonds under existing customer protection rules, signaling that blockchain-based crypto asset securities will be included in traditional securities safeguards rather than treated as a new category.
Division he said would not object to broker-dealers considering themselves holders of cryptocurrency securities under existing customer protection rules, as long as they meet a number of operational, security and governance conditions. This only applies to cryptocurrency securities, including tokenized stocks or bonds.
While this statement is not a rule, it provides clarity on how U.S. regulators expect tokenized securities to fit into traditional market-based securities.
The guidance suggests that tokenized securities are not treated as a new asset class subject to unique rules. Instead, they are placed within existing broker-dealer frameworks, even as they settle on blockchain networks.
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DeFi market overview
According to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, most of the 100 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization ended the week in the red.
Launchpad Memecoin Token Pump.fun (PUMP) is down 32%, marking the biggest drop this week in the top 100, followed by decentralized exchange token Aster (ASTER), which is down more than 27% over the past week.
Thank you for reading our roundup of the most important events in DeFi this week. Join us this Friday for more stories, insights and education about this dynamic space.
