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This Wednesday, BTC outperformed stocks as launchpads rose. More importantly, this week’s update shows a systematic change in the way crypto markets are distributed.
We also take a look at M&A and fundraising over the past year, and see the huge growth in mergers and acquisitions in crypto. Together, this points to a market where infrastructure, not inventory, is becoming a major driver of opportunity.
Signs
Markets leaned slightly risk-on last session, with cryptocurrencies and growth leading the way while securities lagged behind. BTC was the best performer on the day (+1.6%), while the Nasdaq 100 (+0.1%) and Gold (+0.1%) were flat, and the S&P 500 fell modestly (-0.4%), reinforcing the view that the increased risk was concentrated in crypto rather than across the economy as a whole. Intraday volatility was seen across all lines, but dips were regularly bought, especially in the US trading window.
Within crypto, today’s tape was defined by aggressive rotation in trading headlines. Launchpads (+3.9%) led the challenge by a wide margin, followed by the Solana ecosystem (+2.3%) and DEXs (+2.1%). Crypto Miners (+1.9%), tokens and Buybacks (+1.9%), Exchange tokens (+1.9%) and games like RWA (+1.9%) also finished green. On the other hand, a number of groups saw interesting offers. Gaming (-6.4%) was more friendly, with Loans (-3.7%), Money Leaders (-3.5%), Ethereum ecosystem (-3.5%), and Memes (-3.4%) all falling significantly.
Among the Earnings Leaders, HYPE (-3.0%) continues to perform well as concerns about stability, fees and competition. Meanwhile, AAVE (-3.8%) was the worst performing stock on the list as concerns about Aave Labs and the DAO connection continue. This is even the case with the founder of Aave Stani Kulechov exchange about $10 million wrapped in ETH in AAVE to show “connection” with the token.
Overall, the market trend is showing a prudent volatility rather than a risk-on bias. Volatility remains elevated and an exit appears optional. A sustained follow-up will depend on BTC’s ability to hold on to recent gains and re-establish leadership.
Market Changes
Jupiter has combined with Coinbase’s onchain trading stacks to transform the power of Solana-based financial services, bringing one of Solana’s most important liquid assets directly to the crypto ecosystem. The integration allows users to sell Solana tokens through Coinbase’s on-chain experience, while Jupiter manages the process and executes Solana DeFi in the background.
On average, Jupiter makes $4 million a month from the (ultra) affiliates it offers and this affiliate provides a way to generate this revenue.
So what’s going on? Instead of writing new Solana products directly into a central ledger, Coinbase is leaning on onchain rails. Jupiter acts as the execution engine, aggregating liquidity across Solana DEXs, optimizing routes, and settling trades onchain, while Coinbase provides the distribution, UX, and on- and off-ramps. For users, this means access to a larger ecosystem of Solana tokens than is available on centralized exchanges, without having to leave the Coinbase ecosystem.
Coinbase is one of the leading exchanges in the world, with a large number of users with an average of $80-$100 billion in monthly transactions.
Together, they significantly expand the reach of Solana’s products to retail users. Notably, Coinbase isn’t competing with Solana DeFi veterans here, it’s placing them. This marks a major shift in which centralized platforms are increasingly becoming the starting point for onchain liquidity. The idea behind this is that onchain trading removes the long connection time with centralized exchanges, allowing markets to create where the money is already available. In the midst of a market downturn, this combination could serve as a catalyst for replicating COIN and JUP by increasing trading volume and revenue opportunities.
However, unlicensed markets cut both ways. Acquiring more tokens also means exposure to bad or bad things, so verification, financial analysis and trading volume are still important. The Jupiter-Coinbase merger is not just about a single agreement but more of a system change, where major exchanges rely heavily on DeFi tools to provide more market opportunities and Solana’s business is hard to ignore.
Capital changes and M&A
Crypto M&A activity has grown exponentially in the past few quarters. The volume of M&A in November 2025 alone reached about $ 10.7 billion, led mainly by Naver’s purchase of Dunamu (operator of the Upbit exchange) for $ 10.3 billion.
This follows the strong Q3 2025 when crypto M&A above $10 billion for the first time, doubling the history of $5 billion and representing a 30x jump compared to the same period in 2024. By November 2025, the total M&A contract value reached $8.6 billion across 133 transactions (excluding four years Dunamu). M&A has grown from $457,000 in Q1 2021 to $4.2 billion in Q2 2025, representing a 9000x increase.
The increase has been led by large exchanges that use a wide range of strategies. Coinbase completed six acquisitions in 2025, including the $2.9 billion purchase of Deribit, currently the leading crypto options platform. Ripple acquired four companies, including the $1.25 billion purchase of prime brokerage Hidden Road, while Kraken completed five purchases, including NinjaTrader for $1.5 billion and Small Exchange for $100 million. Recent deals show that in December, Paribu acquired CoinMENA for $240 million, Stripe acquired wallet provider Valora, tokenization company Kraken Backed, and Galaxy acquired liquid protocol Alluvial.
Crypto fundraising has grown by almost 41%: from the previous value of $ 4.63 billion in January 2021 to a high value of $ 6.52 billion in July 2025.
Earnings activity has been strong in 2025, although it fluctuates from month to month. Funding peaked in July 2025 at $6.5 billion before dropping to $4-5 billion per month through Q3 and Q4. Recent highlights include Kraken getting $800 million through two rounds in November (including $200 million from Citadel Securities at a cost of $20 billion), Kalshi raising $1 billion at a cost of $11 billion for its market prediction platform, Monad completing a $188 million public sale at $2.5 million closing $2.5 billion of $10 billion of $1000000000 B. construction fees. Annual fundraising through November 2025 amounted to about $ 36 billion, a significant recovery from the five years of crypto 2023-2024 when monthly fundraising was often difficult to exceed $ 1 billion.
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