|
|  |  | Monday, December 29, 2026 | |  | | Anna Barclay/Getty Images | Good morning, Quartz readers! It’s Shannon Carroll with the Daily Brief. Today, the holidays hit your bank statement, crypto heads to rulebook season, AI’s boom prints fresh billionaires, and M&A goes big-game hunting. | | HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW | New Year, same goal: drop the debt. A Motley Fool survey found debt payoff as the top resolution for about a quarter of respondents, with credit cards the main target, even as people worry they won’t stick to budgets. | AI moved markets — and personal fortunes. After investors poured over $200 billion into AI startups in 2025, Forbes counted a crop of more
than 50 new AI billionaire builders, especially from infrastructure and tooling. | M&A came off the sidelines in
2025. Global deal value hit about $4.5 trillion, while smaller transactions kept fading — fueled by cheaper credit, steadier rate expectations, and boards ready to swing. | | | SPONSORED |  | Erase Interest Until Nearly 20270% Intro APR on
Balance Transfers | If you have outstanding credit card debt, getting a new 0% intro APR credit card could help ease the pressure while you
pay down your balances. On top of all that, these top credit cards offer up to an insane 6% cash back and a generous welcome bonus. Click through to see what all the hype is about. | | |
| | JINGLE BILLS | The holidays have a funny way of turning into a line item — usually around late January, when the credit card statement lands and the festive glow curdles into math. The credit card statement shows up with a cheery little list of spontaneous gift runs, upgraded dinner reservations, and “just one more” online orders that felt harmless in isolation and loud in aggregate. A Harris Poll on behalf of the American Institute of CPAs found that 47% of holiday spenders planned to take on debt this season, and 79% anticipated
using credit cards to make purchases. More than half said they’re unlikely to pay their balances in full, and 17% expect repayment to take more than six months — long enough for the holiday glow to fade and the interest to keep its own tradition alive.
The expensive part, two financial therapists argue, isn’t the shopping. It’s what makes people dodge the numbers. “If shame is too intense, we’ll avoid [facing it],” says Sarah Carr, a certified financial planner and financial
therapist. “We’re just going to keep pushing that giant ball down the hill, and we will not actually take action steps to change and to pay that off.” Erika Wasserman, the author of “Conversations With Your Financial Therapist,” says that “everything you just bought on Black Friday for 25% off, you’re now paying 25% in interest on it.”
Their playbook is less punishment, more traction: swap self-blame for curiosity about the “why,” pull up statements and make a payoff plan fast, and
use visual accountability like progress thermometers so repayment feels tangible. Carr also recommends reframing payments as paying for experiences you valued, while Wasserman argues for a 2026 “yes plan,” because the word “budget” carries the same restrictive connotation as “diet” — and about the same success rate, and because, “That way, it's easier to start saying no to other things when you start saying yes to [your goals].” Start saving for next year’s holidays in January, rethink traditions with intention, and keep the story from
repeating on a higher APR. The holiday glow fades; interest doesn’t. Quartz’s Deborah Kearns has more on the seven ways to reset your money
mindset. | | | RECOMMENDED READING | The
future of tech, decoded.
Semafor Technology unpacks the ideas, innovations, and power shifts redefining the global tech landscape. From AI and machine learning to the startups and policies shaping
the industry, each briefing delivers clarity and depth on the tech transforming our world
|
| | | SEC YOU LATER | Crypto spent 2025 sprinting, then face-planting, and then insisting that’s all very healthy cardio. Bitcoin ripped higher after the 2024 election, up more than 65% over the following 12 months on President Donald
Trump’s promise that he would try to turn the U.S. into the “crypto capital of the world” — then promptly gave back more than a quarter of its value in two months and slid 13% lower year to date. The twist is that the usual doom soundtrack is quieter. This drawdown looks less like “industry survival” and more like “industry adolescence,” a comedown in a market that’s spent a decade auditioning for legitimacy.
Washington wants to make that legitimacy official, preferably by January.
Trump’s “crypto czar,” David Sacks, said the Senate could vote on the CLARITY Act by January 2026 after it passed the House in July, a bill that would split oversight between the SEC and the CFTC and give finance firms a clearer map for how to engage. Crypto’s boosters are selling it as sunlight and stability, while Consumer Reports is waving a big red flag, warning the bill “prioritizes regulatory certainty for the crypto industry at the expense of consumer protection” and weakens the SEC’s ability to “protect investors and maintain market
integrity.” Stablecoins are lining up behind the same story arc, too, with 21Shares forecasting circulation surpassing $1 trillion by 2026 as the GENIUS Act moves toward implementing rules expected by July 2026.
Meanwhile, the market is getting institutionalized in the most American way possible, through ETFs and an avalanche of new products. LSEG data showed Bitcoin’s average correlation with the Nasdaq 100 climbed to 0.52 in 2025 from 0.23 in 2024, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs were
buying enough to double new issuance, and BlackRock’s IBIT pulled in about $25 billion in net inflows this year. The SEC approved the first spot Bitcoin ETF less than two years ago, and already 39 digital-asset funds have launched, with at least 125 crypto ETF filings waiting, including the sort of ticker names that read like Mad Libs until you remember they come with prospectuses. If 2026 is the “dawn of the institutional era,” it’s also the year crypto’s emotional core gets professionally packaged, which is how you end up with a market that
still runs on psychology while insisting it’s finally grown up. Quartz’s Niamh Rowe has more on what Bitcoin’s trading signals for 2026. | | | SPONSORED | | Erase
Interest Until Nearly 20270% Intro APR on Balance Transfers | If you have outstanding credit card debt, getting a new 0% intro APR credit card could help ease the pressure while you pay down your balances. On top of all that, these top credit cards offer up to an insane 6% cash back and a generous welcome bonus. Click through to see what all the hype is about. | | |
| | MORE FROM QUARTZ | |
|
|
|
