MSCI’s Crypto Treasury Rules Could Spur $15B of Forced Selling
MSCI is considering excluding crypto‑treasury companies from its indexes, a move that could force $10‑15 billion in asset sales. Analysts estimate total outflows of $11.6 billion, with Michael Saylor’s Strategy alone facing $2.8 billion in exits. The affected firms hold $113 billion in float‑adjusted market cap, and the forced selling would add pressure to a market already in decline. Industry groups have petitioned against the rule, gathering over 1,200 signatures.
US Fed Pulls Guidance Blocking Its Banks From Engaging with Crypto
The Federal Reserve has withdrawn its 2023 guidance that barred uninsured banks from offering crypto services, labeling it outdated. In its place, the Fed issued new guidance that creates a formal pathway for both insured and uninsured banks to engage...
World Liberty Proposes Using 5% of Treasury to Boost Its Stablecoin
World Liberty Financial, a Trump‑linked firm, has proposed using 5 % of its WLFI token treasury—about $120 million—to increase the supply of its USD1 stablecoin. The move aims to boost adoption across high‑profile CeFi and DeFi partnerships and generate more value capture...
Ethereum Could Get Faster in January with Gas Limit Rise to 80M
Ethereum developers plan to raise the network’s gas limit from 60 million to 80 million after the Jan. 7 BPO hard fork, aiming to boost transaction throughput. The increase follows a series of prior hikes that have taken the limit from 30 million in...
Jito Foundation to Return to US Amid 'Clearer Rules' For Digital Assets
The Jito Foundation announced it will move its operations back to the United States, citing a clearer regulatory landscape for digital assets. The nonprofit, which builds maximal extractable value (MEV) infrastructure on Solana, had been forced offshore during the SEC’s...
Acting CFTC Chair to Join MoonPay After Leaving Agency
Caroline Pham, the acting chair of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, announced she will leave the regulator to become MoonPay’s chief legal and administrative officer. Pham, who took the acting role in January, oversaw a modest enforcement record of...
Ex-Alameda CEO Won’t Be Spending the Holidays in Federal Prison
Former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison was moved from Danbury federal prison to a Residential Reentry Management office in New York City, marking her first housing change since November 2024. She is serving a two‑year sentence for her role in...
Binance Mulls New US Strategy, CZ Potentially Reducing Stake: Report
Binance is weighing a strategic overhaul to re‑enter the United States, which may involve reducing co‑founder Changpeng Zhao’s controlling stake. The exchange is exploring partnerships with firms such as BlackRock and the decentralized platform WLFI to navigate regulatory hurdles. A...
Silvergate Bank Lawsuit Calls for FTX, Alameda Clients to Weigh in on $10M Settlement
A California class‑action lawsuit seeks to distribute a $10 million settlement to Silvergate Bank claimants linked to FTX or Alameda Research. More than 46,000 investors who deposited fiat into FTX‑related accounts between 2019 and 2022 can file claims before the Jan 30...
Kyrgyzstan’s USDKG Shows How Real-Asset Stablecoins Are Evolving in Emerging Markets
Kyrgyzstan has introduced USDKG, a USD‑pegged stablecoin backed by physical gold rather than cash or Treasury securities. The token debuted on the Tron blockchain with an initial issuance of 50 million units and plans to expand to Ethereum. Its hybrid model...
Former SEC Counsel Explains What It Takes to Make RWAs Compliant
Former SEC counsel Ashley Ebersole says the SEC’s evolving stance is unlocking compliant real‑world asset (RWA) tokenization, after years of enforcement‑first policy. He highlights a model where tokenized equities are backed by shares held by regulated clearing brokers, granting full...
Binance Alleges Fake Listing Agents, Offers up to $5M Whistleblower Reward
Binance warned users that third‑party "listing agents" are fraudulent and outlined a direct token‑listing process. The exchange publicly identified seven fake agents and urged projects to apply through official forms. To combat the scheme, Binance announced a whistleblower bounty of...
Bitcoin Miner Hut 8 Lands $7B Google-Backed AI Data Center Lease
Hut 8, a Bitcoin mining firm, signed a 15‑year lease valued at $7 billion to deliver 245 MW of AI data‑center capacity at its River Bend campus in Louisiana. The agreement pairs infrastructure provider Fluidstack with Google, which will act as a financial backstop...
Solana Tests Quantum-Resistant Transactions in New Project Eleven Pilot
Solana announced a partnership with post‑quantum security firm Project Eleven to pilot quantum‑resistant transactions on a dedicated testnet. The collaboration delivered a functional testnet employing post‑quantum digital signatures, demonstrating that end‑to‑end quantum‑resistant transactions can be both practical and scalable. The...
CAR’s Crypto Push Fueled ‘State Capture’ by Elites, Criminal Networks: Report
An investigative report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime says the Central African Republic’s cryptocurrency push deepened elite control and opened channels for foreign criminal networks. The country’s brief experiment with Bitcoin as legal tender was reversed after...
Polymarket Shows Stronger Retention than Most DeFi, Wallets and Exchanges
Polymarket’s user‑retention metrics, analyzed by Dune and Keyrock, beat more than 85% of the 275 crypto projects surveyed, highlighting its outperformance in a sector where sustained engagement is rare. The study tracked monthly cohorts and found that Polymarket’s cohort retention...
Bitcoin Institutional Buys Flip New Supply for the First Time in 6 Weeks
Institutions are now buying more Bitcoin than miners are creating, flipping the daily supply balance for the first time since early November. Capriole Investments reports institutional demand is 13% higher than the newly mined BTC on a rolling daily basis....
KuCoin Taps Tomorrowland Festivals as MiCA-Era On-Ramp for European Fans
KuCoin has signed an exclusive multi‑year deal with Tomorrowland Winter and Tomorrowland Belgium to become the festivals’ sole crypto and payments partner from 2026 through 2028. The agreement follows KuCoin’s recent acquisition of a Markets in Crypto‑Assets (MiCA) service‑provider license...
Hyperliquid Governance Vote Aims to Permanently Sideline $1B Assistance Fund
The Hyper Foundation has put forward a validator vote to officially deem the HYPE tokens held in the Assistance Fund as permanently inaccessible, effectively treating them as burned. The fund, which automatically converts trading fees into HYPE, contains roughly $1 billion,...
SEC Lawsuit Puts Shima Capital’s Future in Question as Wind-Down Message Surfaces
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Shima Capital and its founder Yida Gao, accusing them of misleading investors while raising nearly $170 million. The complaint alleges Gao exaggerated fund performance, inflating a 2.8× return to a claimed 90×, and concealed...
Bhutan Pledges 10K Bitcoin to Develop Its ‘Mindfulness City’
Bhutan announced it will allocate 10,000 Bitcoin, worth roughly $875 million, to finance the Gelephu Mindfulness City (GMC), a new special administrative region. The city, covering about 10% of the country, is designed to curb youth out‑migration by creating high‑value jobs...
Saylor’s Bitcoin Stash Will Be Very Hard for Anyone to Match: Pomp
Anthony Pompliano warned that no public company is likely to match Michael Saylor’s Strategy’s Bitcoin accumulation. Strategy now holds 671,268 BTC—about 3.2% of the total supply—valued at roughly $58.6 billion. The firm recently bought 10,645 BTC for $980.3 million, paying $92,098 per...
Lightning Network Hits Record Capacity on Crypto Exchange Adoption
The Lightning Network (LN) hit a new capacity record of roughly 5,600 BTC (about $490 million) as major exchanges like Binance and OKX deposited more Bitcoin onto the layer‑2. While total capacity surged in November‑December, the number of active nodes and channels...
SAFE Crypto Act Will Have Scammers Shaking in Their Boots: Crypto Lawyer
U.S. Senators Elissa Slotkin and Jerry Moran introduced the Strengthening Agency Frameworks for Enforcement of Cryptocurrency (SAFE) Act, a bipartisan bill designed to unite the Treasury, FinCEN, the Secret Service and other law‑enforcement bodies with private‑sector forensic firms to combat...
Aave Founder Outlines 2026 ‘Master Plan’ After End to SEC Probe
Aave founder Stani Kulechov unveiled a 2026 master plan centered on the V4 upgrade, the Horizon real‑world asset market, and a new mobile app after the SEC ended its four‑year probe. V4 will employ a hub‑and‑spoke architecture to unify cross‑chain...
Crypto ETPs to Enter ‘Cheesecake Factory’ Era in 2026: Bitwise
Bitwise researcher Ryan Rasmussen predicts more than 100 crypto exchange‑traded products will debut in 2026, following the SEC’s October release of generic listing standards that eliminate the lengthy 19(b) approval process. The new framework allows issuers to list spot, index,...
Bank of Canada Lays Out Criteria for ‘Good Money’ Stablecoins
The Bank of Canada announced that only fiat‑backed, high‑quality stablecoins will receive regulatory approval, targeting a 2026 rollout. Governor Tiff Macklem emphasized a 1:1 peg to central‑bank currencies and backing by liquid assets such as Treasury bills. The framework builds...
US Senator Sounds Alarm on DeFi, Cites PancakeSwap Amid Market Structure Delay
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to the Treasury and Justice Departments demanding disclosure of any investigations into decentralized finance platforms, specifically naming PancakeSwap and Uniswap as potential national‑security threats. She highlighted alleged money‑laundering links to North Korea and...
3 Reasons Why Trader Demand for XRP Evaporated: Is $1 Next?
Trader demand for XRP has evaporated, with Binance futures taker‑buy volume collapsing by roughly 96% since its July peak. The estimated leverage ratio on the pair has slumped to 0.18, indicating widespread deleveraging across retail, mid‑size and institutional participants. Wallet...
How Scammers Target Crypto Users During the Holidays and How to Stay Protected
The holiday season is seeing a surge in crypto‑related scams, as cybercriminals exploit increased online activity, heightened emotions, and festive promotions. Scammers employ phishing emails, fake wallet apps, bogus token presales, romance “pig‑butchering,” and impersonation attacks that have risen sixfold...
Solana Enters Brazil’s Main Exchange as Valour Expands Regulated Crypto Access
Valour, a subsidiary of DeFi Technologies, received approval to list a Solana exchange‑traded product (VSOL) on Brazil’s primary stock exchange, B3. The ETP, denominated in Brazilian reais, will track Solana’s price and joins existing Valour offerings for Bitcoin, Ether, XRP...
Crypto’s ‘Super App’ Race Is on as Industry Enters Aggregation Era: Report
Crypto platforms are entering an aggregation era where the primary value lies in owning the user relationship rather than the underlying protocol. Exchanges such as Binance, Kraken, Coinbase and OKX are racing to become the default gateway for trading, payments,...
Solana Under ‘Industrial Scale’ DDoS Attack: Co-Founder Says It’s ‘Bullish’
Solana co‑founder Anatoly Yakovenko announced the network is under a six‑terabit‑per‑second DDoS attack, one of the largest ever recorded for a blockchain. Despite the massive traffic, the network showed little visible latency or slot‑misses, leading Yakovenko to label the assault...
Spain’s Regulator Sets Out MiCA Transition Rules for Crypto Platforms
Spain’s securities regulator CNMV has published a detailed Q&A that explains how the EU’s Markets in Crypto‑Assets Regulation (MiCA) will be applied locally. The guidance clarifies authorization procedures, notification duties and day‑to‑day conduct for crypto‑asset service providers. Crucially, Spain shortens...
Alexander Ray, Our Partner Within the CTDG Initiative and a Web3 Entrepreneur, Co-Founder of Albus Protocol and JPool, Has Passed...
Alexander Ray, a veteran enterprise engineer turned Web3 entrepreneur, co‑founded Albus Protocol, JPool, and the PointGroup venture studio. He helped build Solana’s liquid‑staking infrastructure, managing over 1.3 million SOL across 170 validators, and created a privacy‑preserving compliance layer for regulated DeFi....
Bitcoin Sharks Stack at the Fastest Pace in 13 Years, with BTC Down 30%
Mid‑size Bitcoin holders, known as sharks, added roughly 54,000 BTC over the past week, pushing their total to about 3.575 million coins. This represents the fastest accumulation rate for this group since 2012, even as Bitcoin trades around $85,000, down 30%...
Most Crypto Sectors Lagged Bitcoin over Past 3 Months: Glassnode
Glassnode’s on‑chain data shows Bitcoin fell 26 % over the past three months but still outperformed most crypto sectors, which saw steeper declines. Ether dropped 36 %, AI tokens 48 % and memecoins 56 % in the same period. The analysis highlights a capital...
MetaMask Adds Bitcoin Support After Teasing It 10 Months Ago
MetaMask announced native Bitcoin support, allowing users to buy, swap, send, and receive BTC directly within the wallet. The feature arrives ten months after a February tease and joins existing integrations with Ethereum, Solana, Monad and Sei. Bitcoin transactions will...
Trump to ‘Look Into’ Recently Convicted Samurai Wallet Co-Founder
U.S. President Donald Trump announced he will review the case of Samourai Wallet co‑founder Keonne Rodriguez, signaling a possible pardon. Rodriguez and fellow founder William Lonergan Hill were sentenced in November to five and four years for operating an illegal...
Japan’s SBI and Startale Plan Regulated Yen Stablecoin in 2026 Under New Framework
Japanese financial conglomerate SBI Holdings and Web3 infrastructure firm Startale have signed an MoU to create a fully regulated yen‑denominated stablecoin, to be issued by Shinsei Trust & Banking and circulated via SBI VC Trade. The token, designed for tokenized...
Circle to Acquire Interop Labs Team and IP as Axelar Remains Independent
Circle announced it will acquire Interop Labs’ team and proprietary technology, with the deal slated to close in early 2026. The acquired assets will be integrated into Circle’s Arc blockchain and Cross‑Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) to accelerate asset interoperability. Axelar...
Bitget Tests TradFi Trading with Forex, Gold and Stock Derivatives Using USDt
Bitget has opened a private beta for a TradFi trading feature that lets crypto users trade major fiat pairs, gold and stock derivatives using Tether’s USDt as collateral. The service merges traditional markets with Bitget’s existing crypto spot and derivatives...
Bitcoin Parabola Breakdown Raises Chance for 80% Correction: Veteran Trader
Veteran trader Peter Brandt warned that Bitcoin has broken its long‑standing parabolic advance, a pattern that historically precedes steep corrections. The cryptocurrency is already about 20% below its all‑time high, and Brandt suggests an 80% drawdown could be possible if...
Digital Asset ETPs Post Third Straight Week of Net Inflows, Led by US Demand
Crypto exchange‑traded products (ETPs) recorded $864 million in net inflows last week, with the United States contributing roughly $796 million. Bitcoin and Ether products dominated the inflows, pulling in $522 million and $338 million respectively, while Solana and XRP added modest amounts. Multi‑asset crypto...
How Bitcoin Whales Move Markets, and the Signals to Ignore
Cointelegraph’s new video examines how Bitcoin whales shaped the market in 2025, highlighting a pivotal Oct. 10 crash that erased billions in retail positions while a single whale pocketed roughly $200 million. The episode also notes a wave of dormant wallets reactivating,...
Crypto ATM Operator to Expand to Texas, Citing Friendly Regulation
Bitcoin Bancorp, formerly Bullet Blockchain, announced plans to install up to 200 crypto ATMs across Texas, targeting a Q1 2026 rollout. The company highlighted Texas’ crypto‑forward stance, citing modernized money‑transmitter laws and a pro‑innovation policy environment. Texas has already become...
Firestorm Erupts in Aave Governance Forum over CoW Swap Fees
A dispute erupted in the Aave DAO after a member revealed that fees generated by the new CoW Swap integration—estimated at $200,000 per week, or roughly $10 million annually—were being sent to a private address controlled by Aave Labs instead of the...
Why Oil-Rich Investors Are Fueling Bitcoin’s Next Liquidity Wave
Oil‑linked investors from the Gulf are increasingly allocating capital to Bitcoin through regulated spot ETFs, notably via sovereign wealth funds and family offices. In Q3 2025 Abu Dhabi’s investment council raised its IBIT holdings to roughly $518 million, illustrating the scale...
Bitcoin’s Four-Year Cycle Is Intact, but Driven by Politics and Liquidity: Analyst
Bitcoin’s traditional four‑year cycle remains intact, but its drivers have shifted from the protocol‑based halving to political events and liquidity conditions, according to 10x Research analyst Markus Thielen. He points to the 2013, 2017 and 2021 peaks, all occurring in...
Standard Chartered, Coinbase Deepen Alliance to Build Institutional Crypto Infrastructure
Standard Chartered and Coinbase have broadened their alliance to create a full‑stack crypto infrastructure for institutional clients. The expanded scope covers trading, prime brokerage, custody, staking and lending services, leveraging the bank’s cross‑border banking expertise and Coinbase’s institutional platform. The...