Crypto Weekly Rollup: Bitcoin vs. Gold, Ethereum’s Big Upgrade, Prediction Market Explosion, and Why Tokenization Is About to Go Mainstream

The first week of December delivered one of the most eventful stretches in crypto in months — from Bitcoin flashing a historical buy signal, to Ethereum shipping another successful upgrade, to prediction markets going fully mainstream. Even Larry Fink is writing love letters to tokenization in The Economist.

Here’s everything you need to know.

Could This Bearish Market Be the Setup Everyone Misses?

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Bitcoin Is Cheaper Than Ever in Gold Terms — Is This the Buy Signal?

Bitcoin is up 2% on the week, trading around $92,300, but the real story is this:

Bitcoin has never been cheaper relative to gold in the past 15 years.

• The Bitcoin/Gold ratio is now below the historical power-law trendline

• This has only happened once before — late 2017, right before BTC rallied explosively

• Analysts suggest the reason is simple: institutions still understand gold, and they still don’t understand Bitcoin

In other words:
Gold is getting the institutional bid first — Bitcoin is next.

If history rhymes, this looks like a long-term accumulation zone.

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Ethereum Pops 6% and Gets a Fair Value Upgrade: ETH Should Be $5,000–$6,200

ETH is trading near $3,200, up 6% this week.

A new dashboard at ethval.com aggregates every major valuation metric for Ethereum — DCFs, fee revenue, staking yield, TVL multiples, and crypto-native ratios.

Across all models, ETH’s blended fair value is ~$5,000.

Remove the traditional price-to-sales metrics (which don’t apply well to blockchains), and ETH screens at over $6,200 fair value.

In short:
ETH looks significantly undervalued.

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Ethereum’s Fusaka Upgrade: Real Sharding, Cheaper Fees, and Faster Block Times Coming

Ethereum shipped its second major upgrade of the year — Fusaka — with only a small temporary hiccup from the Prysm client (quickly resolved thanks to Ethereum’s multi-client design).

What Fusaka Delivered

✔️ True data-availability sharding (8x more blob space for L2s)
✔️ 25% increase in L1 block capacity
✔️ Layer-1 transaction fees falling under $0.01

Vitalik is now openly encouraging some apps to consider building directly on L1 again, especially ahead of future upgrades.

And Next? Faster Blocks.

EF researchers confirmed:

• 6-second blocks are ready to ship in 2025

• 3-second blocks are the long-term target

This changes the entire UX of Ethereum.

If block times fall to 3 seconds?

Ethereum begins to feel instant.

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Prediction Markets Explode: PolyMarket Goes Mainstream, Kalshi Lands CNN, and Two New Billionaires Are Born

Prediction markets are having their biggest moment ever.

PolyMarket

• Now fully live in the US with a mobile app

• Already #4 on the App Store in sports betting

• Recorded $4.3B in November volume

• Founder Shane Copeland, age 27 → youngest self-made billionaire

Kalshi

• Recorded $5.8B in monthly volume

• Announced exclusive partnership with CNN

• Co-founder Luana Lopes Lara (29) → youngest self-made female billionaire

Why It Matters

Prediction markets are becoming:

• mainstream entertainment

• mainstream financial tools

• mainstream political forecasting machines

But…

The Regulatory War Has Just Begun

Several US states (NV, MA, NY, MD, OH) are pushing back, claiming prediction markets violate sports betting laws.

This is round two of the prediction-market fight — and the courts will decide whether these new billion-dollar platforms become permanent institutions.

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SEC’s “Innovation Exemption” Coming in January — ICOs Make a Comeback

The SEC (post-Gensler) plans to release new guidelines next month providing:

• regulatory clarity

• safe harbors

• a sandbox for crypto innovation

This is why we’re already seeing:

• MegaE

• Monad

• Aztec

…running openly transparent token sales again.

Speaking of which…

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Aztec’s On-Chain Token Sale Breaks $16K ETH Using a New “Continuous Clearing Auction”

Privacy-focused Aztec launched a fully on-chain auction mechanism co-developed with Uniswap.

• No CoinList

• No CEX

• No intermediaries

• ETH-only

• Open for weeks

• 16,000+ ETH already committed

It feels like a return to 2017 Ethereum ICO culture, but with far more sophistication and legal clarity.

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Institutional Adoption: Larry Fink Says Tokenization Is the Next Internet Boom

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink wrote a striking article in The Economist:

Tokenization today = the Internet in 1996

He predicts:

• A future where all assets live in a single digital wallet

• Tokenized stocks, bonds, real estate — everything

• Blockchain rails powering TradFi behind the scenes

This is not hype.
This is not marketing.

Fink controls $10 trillion in assets.

The institutional era of tokenization has begun.

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Boomer Banks Join the Party

Bank of America now lets wealth advisers recommend 4% Bitcoin allocations.
Charles Schwab will offer Bitcoin & Ethereum trading in 2026, likely powered by Coinbase’s white-label infrastructure.

This is why the old four-year crypto cycle may be flattening.

The pipes are widening.

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Tether FUD Returns — But This Time, It’s Mostly Noise

Arthur Hayes raised a concern that a 30% drop in Tether’s Bitcoin + gold holdings could make USDT “insolvent.”

But deeper analysis shows:

• 80% of Tether’s assets are cash & T-bills

• Only ~20% are BTC + gold

• Even a severe drawdown doesn’t threaten redemptions

• Tether can redeem ~80% of its supply without touching BTC or gold

This isn’t a Luna-style scenario — not even close.

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The UK Officially Recognizes Crypto as “Property” — King Charles Signs It Into Law

A quietly massive milestone:

The UK now recognizes digital assets as a third legal category of property.

This unlocks:

• better custody laws

• clearer ownership rights

• easier court enforcement

• better insolvency protections

• bridges for banks & insurers

This is how real regulatory progress begins — quietly.

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Sentiment Check: Early Santa Energy

As one meme summarized:

“Being bullish on crypto right now feels like being Santa waiting alone in an empty mall.”

But the fundamentals — Ethereum scaling, institutional adoption, prediction-market growth, and US regulatory reforms — are lining up beneath the surface.

Smart money is positioning quietly.

Retail hasn’t returned yet.

And that’s usually when the best opportunities appear.

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Final Note

Crypto is volatile, unpredictable, and emotionally brutal.
But this is still the frontier — and those who build and accumulate during uncertain times have historically reaped the rewards when the cycle turns.

Stay early. Stay informed. Stay Bankless.