Base-Solana Bridge Goes Live on Mainnet

Plus: 🔒 CFTC approves spot crypto trading, 🐸 PEPE website exploited, 📺 Kalshi partners with CNBC.

Author

Juan Aranovich
December 05, 2025

Hi! In today’s edition:

  • 🔗 Base launches a mainnet bridge connecting directly to Solana

  • 🔒 CFTC approves spot crypto trading on U.S. exchanges

  • 🐸 PEPE memecoin website compromised with wallet draining malware

  • 📺 Kalshi partners with CNBC for real time prediction market data

  • 🎙️ Uneasy Money dives into Fusaka, Kamino controversy, Infinex, Hyperliquid and more

  • 🎙️ Debate: Strategy’s valuation crash and future outlook

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By Tikta

Base-Solana Bridge Goes Live on Mainnet

Coinbase's Ethereum layer 2 network Base launched an open-source bridge to Solana, enabling direct asset transfers between the two chains.

“To build a global economy, we need to make it interoperable and connected; and being a bridge, not an island, has been a core value of Base since day one,” said the Base team in a blog post. 

Users will be able to move assets across Base and Solana, deposit SOL in Base apps and import and export assets across both chains. 

Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) verifies transactions securely, lowering risks like lost funds from mismatched networks.

Base is the second largest Ethereum-based layer 2 network with $12.98 billion in total value secured, according to L2 Beat.

CFTC Approves Spot Crypto Trading on U.S. Exchanges

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has approved spot crypto trading on federally regulated exchanges for the first time.

Acting CFTC Chair Caroline Pham announced the decision on Thursday, noting that “spot crypto can trade on CFTC-registered exchanges that have been the gold standard for nearly a hundred years.”

Chicago-based exchange Bitnomial plans to launch its offering as early as Monday, following self-certification, marking a shift from offshore platforms to U.S.-regulated markets.

The CFTC’s move aligns with President Donald Trump's directives via the Working Group on Digital Asset Markets and the CFTC's "Crypto Sprint" initiative, involving consultations with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

PEPE Memecoin Website Exploited: Blockaid

The official Pepe (PEPE) memecoin website was compromised in a front-end attack, redirecting visitors to malicious links containing Inferno Drainer malware.

Blockchain security firm Blockaid identified the Inferno Drainer code — a phishing toolkit with wallet-draining scripts and social engineering tools — embedded in the site's front end.

Users connecting wallets risked asset theft through unauthorized approvals or seed phrase prompts.

PEPE's price remained relatively flat following the alert, trading 83% under its all-time high a year ago. 

Kalshi Brings Prediction Market Data to CNBC 

CNBC and Kalshi have entered a multi-year, exclusive partnership that will put Kalshi’s real-time prediction market data across CNBC’s TV, digital, and subscription platforms starting in 2026.

CNBC will integrate Kalshi’s prediction data into shows like “Squawk Box” and “Fast Money,” including an on-screen Kalshi-branded ticker showing market-implied probabilities for events such as Fed moves, elections, and key economic releases.

Kalshi will also host a CNBC-branded page on its platform featuring markets curated by CNBC, giving users a way to trade directly on questions highlighted in CNBC coverage.

The newsroom deal follows a similar partnership with CNN announced earlier this week, where Kalshi became CNN’s official partner in providing real-time probability data to CNN's newsroom.

Uneasy Money: Did Solana Dapp Kamino Break the Golden Rule of DeFi?

The crew digs into Ethereum’s Fusaka upgrade, the controversy surrounding Kamino’s decision to blacklist Jupiter, Hyperliquid’s buzzing equities perp futures market and more.

Ethereum Fusaka is live, Infinex has embarked on its token sale, Hyperliquid is bolstering its HIP-3 markets and there is drama in Solana’s DeFi land.

In this episode of Uneasy Money, hosts Kain Warwick, Luca Netz and Taylor Monahan delve into the significance and implications of the Fusaka upgrade and the controversy surrounding Infinex’s token sale.

They also take a look at the promise and risks of Hyperliquid’s buzzing perp futures markets on tokenized equities and Kamino’s controversial response to competition from Jupiter.

In addition, they touch on Anthropic’s smart contract study and the recent Yearn Finance exploit.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Is Strategy’s Model Unraveling? What is Driving the Recent Rout and Where It Can Go From Here

Two market experts debate the company’s outlook as its valuation tanks.

Michael Saylor’s Strategy has not had the year it hoped for. Amid an explosion of copycats and Bitcoin price weakness, the company has seen its valuation and so-called mNAV crash.

In this special episode of Unchained, Praxos co-founder Vinny Lingham and The Benchmark Company Analyst Mark Palmer join Unchained Executive Editor Steve Ehrlich to debate Strategy’s outlook.

They discuss the impact of new preferred stocks on common shareholders, the company’s new cash reserve and the potential impacts of MSCI exclusion.

They also delve into what the Bitcoin digital asset treasury ecosystem could look like in the future and whether Strategy could have employed a better acquisition model.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

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  • ⚠️ A major Cloudflare outage briefly disrupted many crypto platforms — from big exchanges like Coinbase and Kraken to the front ends of DeFi apps — before the web-infrastructure provider said it had applied a fix and was monitoring stability.

  • 💰 BlackRock CEO Larry Fink told Forbes that several unnamed sovereign wealth funds have been steadily adding to their bitcoin positions, even increasing their purchases as the price slid from $126,000 into the $80,000 range to strengthen long-term holdings.

  • 🔐 Upbit, South Korea’s biggest crypto exchange, erased all legacy deposit addresses after a wallet overhaul forced by a recent $44.5 billion KRW security incident, requiring users to create new ones before deposits and allowing 33 assets across 21 networks to reopen in phases.

  • 🤖 Axelar introduced AgentFlux as a privacy-preserving framework that lets financial institutions run AI agents locally so their trading strategies and private keys never leave their own systems, while also improving the accuracy of onchain automation by splitting tool-selection and execution into separate models.

  • 🌍 MoneyGram announced that Fireblocks will start powering its stablecoin-based settlement system, a move aimed at speeding up cross-border transfers for the remittance giant’s 50 million customers while modernizing the legacy payment rails it has relied on for decades.

  • 🛢️ Argentina’s state oil company YPF is studying whether to let customers pay for fuel in crypto, a move that would likely depend on local exchanges such as Lemon, Ripio or Binance because pump prices would need to reference “crypto dollars” rather than the official peso rate.

  • 📈 Twenty One Capital said it will begin trading on the NYSE as “XXI” after its SPAC merger closes on Dec. 8, giving public investors equity exposure to its $4 billion bitcoin stash while it pursues a model focused on efficient BTC accumulation and onchain transparency.

  • 🏛️ HashKey Holdings is reportedly preparing to start taking investor orders next week for a Hong Kong IPO that could raise at least $200 million, with the listing still targeting a potential debut before year-end depending on final sizing and timing.