Crypto News Catch Up | Dec. 7 – 13, 2025

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From Robinhood to Paxful, from YouTube to Xiaomi, here are the crypto news you might have missed this week. Click a link in the table of contents below to read a specific topic:

Robinhood agrees to purchase Indonesian brokerage and crypto platform

The transaction includes PT Buana Capital Sekuritas and PT Pedagang Aset Kripto and is expected to close in the first half of 2026 pending regulatory approval. Current majority owner Pieter Tanuri will serve as a strategic advisor following the transfer of the licensed entities.

Management aims to utilize the acquired infrastructure to offer U.S. equities and digital assets to a market of 19 million capital market investors. The strategy avoids the lengthy process of obtaining new operating permits from the Financial Services Authority.

IMF warns of stablecoin risks to emerging economies

The International Monetary Fund released a report identifying dollar-pegged digital assets as a potential threat to monetary sovereignty in developing nations.

• The financial body stated that “currency substitution” in high-inflation economies could weaken central bank control over interest rates and capital flows.
• The organization urged regulators to implement stricter oversight to prevent these $300 billion instruments from destabilizing local financial systems.

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Market observers disputed the urgency of the alarm and argued that the sector remains too small to impact global foreign exchange markets. Analysts from firms including Coinbase noted that the vast majority of stablecoin volume facilitates cryptocurrency trading rather than real-world commercial payments.

Paxful admits to facilitating money laundering and sanctions evasion

The peer-to-peer cryptocurrency platform entered a plea agreement with the Department of Justice to resolve charges of conspiring to violate the Bank Secrecy Act and the Travel Act.

As part of the resolution, the company will pay a $4 million criminal forfeiture and a separate $3.5 million civil penalty to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a total significantly reduced from federal guidelines due to the firm’s documented inability to pay.’

‘Ethereum has already bottomed’: Tom Lee’s BitMine reportedly adds $112 million in ETH to treasury

The company chairman argued that traditional financial institutions have decisively selected the network as the primary infrastructure for digitizing real-world assets. He asserted that while Bitcoin serves as a store of value, Wall Street requires a programmable smart contract layer to tokenize stocks, bonds, and real estate, a utility that justifies a significantly higher valuation for the protocol.

To back this high-conviction thesis, the firm executed the purchase of 33,504 tokens through institutional broker FalconX, pushing its total reserves to approximately 3.86 million units.

YouTube adds PayPal stablecoin payout option for US creators

The Google-owned video platform integrated PayPal’s USD-pegged token (PYUSD) as a formal payout method for creators in the United States, following PayPal’s rollout of the feature to recipients in the third quarter.

This integration allows eligible accounts to bypass traditional banking settlement times by receiving revenue directly on-chain.

Xiaomi taps Sei Network for native wallet integration on global devices

The consumer electronics giant agreed to install a dedicated digital asset application on all units shipped to markets outside China and the United States. This integration utilizes multi-party computation security and allows account access through existing Google or Xiaomi credentials rather than complex seed phrases.

Sei Labs allocated $5 million to a developer fund to build applications for the manufacturer’s annual output of 168 million devices. Future phases of the deal involve the acceptance of stablecoin payments at 20,000 retail locations. Executives scheduled initial trials for Hong Kong and the European Union in the second quarter of 2026.

Bhutan launches sovereign gold-backed digital asset on Solana blockchain

Gelephu Mindfulness City, a special administrative region within the Himalayan kingdom, issued the “TER” token this week to serve as a sovereign-backed digital currency. Each unit corresponds to physical bullion reserves held in secure custody by DK Bank, with the Solana network providing the settlement infrastructure for the instrument.

This initiative broadens the nation’s digital asset portfolio beyond its extensive state-owned Bitcoin mining operations, which utilize the country’s hydroelectric resources.

This article is published on BitPinas: Crypto News Catch Up | Dec. 7 – 13, 2025

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