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Ethereum wallet creation has reached record levels, averaging about 327,000 new wallets per day over the past week, with a single-day high of more than 393,000. The total number of non-empty wallets has climbed to roughly 172.9 million, also an all-time high, indicating growing participation from users, developers, and institutions. Ether’s price has risen around 7.5% over 24 hours to about $3,330 after trading in the low $3,000 range during the week, reflecting renewed market activity alongside the expansion in network usage.
The surge has been linked to the Fusaka upgrade in December, which reduced transaction costs and improved data handling, making applications and layer-2 networks easier and cheaper to use. Improving crypto sentiment toward the end of the year and increased interest in DeFi, NFTs, and other applications also contributed, as did a spike in stablecoin transfers that signalled heavier use of Ethereum for payments and settlements. At the same time, more than half of all Ether supply is now locked in staking contracts, with over 77 million ETH securing the network, while major exchanges such as Binance and Coinbase collectively hold several million ETH on behalf of users. Source
Bitcoin climbed about 4.5% to just above $95,500, its highest level since mid-November, as the start of the U.S. earnings season and steady inflation data supported risk sentiment. The move triggered heavy short covering across crypto markets, with roughly $587 million in short positions liquidated, including about $292 million tied to Bitcoin alone. The rally followed a period of consolidation and reflected improving sentiment toward digital assets compared with late 2025, alongside a series of global economic and political developments that renewed interest in Bitcoin as an alternative financial asset.
Traditional markets sent mixed signals, with bank stocks dragging on the Dow after weaker-than-expected results from JPMorgan, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq hovered near recent highs. December consumer price data showed inflation holding at 2.7% year over year, with modest monthly increases, keeping Treasury yields and the dollar relatively stable and reinforcing expectations that the Federal Reserve will hold rates steady in the near term while markets look toward possible cuts in 2026. Ongoing debate over the future path of monetary policy, political pressure for looser conditions, and expectations of expanding global liquidity have kept crypto traders focused on macroeconomic cues, helping to underpin Bitcoin’s recent advance. Source
BitMine Immersion Technologies has increased its Ethereum staking position by another 186,560 ETH, lifting its total to 1,530,784 ETH valued at about $5.13 billion. This represents roughly 4% of the 36 million ETH currently staked on the Beacon Chain, making it the largest known Ethereum-focused digital asset treasury. The company holds just over 4 million ETH in total, meaning around 37% of its Ether reserves are now staked, and it only crossed the 1 million ETH staked milestone a few days earlier. Its broader balance sheet also includes 192 Bitcoin, close to $1 billion in cash, and a $23 million stake in Eightco Holdings, while the Ethereum validator entry queue has climbed to 2.3 million ETH, the highest level since August 2023.
BitMine’s stock rose 3.8% in after-hours trading to $32.35 and is up about 11.5% year to date, tracking the broader recovery in crypto markets. Fundstrat’s Tom Lee, who chairs the company, remains optimistic about Ethereum and the wider crypto sector in 2026 following the market reset in late 2025. At the same time, Ether posted its strongest daily gain of the year, rising about 7% to touch $3,375, its highest price since mid-December, though technical resistance sits just above $3,400, which would need to be cleared for further upside momentum. Source
Corporate Bitcoin holdings have surged over the past six months, with public and private companies adding a net 260,000 BTC to their balance sheets, compared with about 82,000 coins mined over the same period. Total corporate treasury holdings rose from roughly 854,000 BTC to about 1.11 million BTC, an increase worth around $25 billion at current prices, or about 43,000 BTC per month. This rapid accumulation highlights growing corporate exposure to Bitcoin and suggests demand from treasuries is significantly outstripping new supply, as miners produce only around 450 BTC per day.
Most of these holdings are concentrated in Strategy, which controls about 687,410 BTC, or roughly 60% of all corporate Bitcoin reserves, valued near $65.5 billion. The firm recently resumed buying, adding more than 13,600 BTC in early January, while MARA Holdings ranks second with just over 53,000 BTC. Analysts note that spot Bitcoin ETFs could further tighten supply if inflows continue, as funds have already absorbed more than all newly mined coins since their launch in 2024. Although ETF flows have been mixed so far in 2026, the combination of corporate accumulation and institutional investment is reinforcing a long-term supply-demand imbalance in the market. Source
Privacy-focused cryptocurrencies have surged sharply, led by Monero breaking above $667 to a new all-time high after rising 54% in a week, while Dash jumped nearly 39% in a single day in its biggest move since October 2025. The rally reflects renewed interest in transaction anonymity as traders rotate into the sector, helped by Bitcoin holding above $92,000 and broader market sentiment turning risk-on. Regulatory developments have also played a role, including the EU’s new DAC8 tax reporting rules for crypto service providers and Dubai’s outright ban on privacy tokens within its financial free zone, which together revived the idea that privacy is becoming more valuable as oversight tightens.
Another major driver has been turmoil at Zcash, whose core development team resigned in early January following internal disputes, sending the token down about 50% from its recent high and prompting investors to seek alternatives. Monero has benefited as the most established decentralized option, while Dash has attracted speculative flows as a lower-priced, higher-volatility proxy, amplified by short squeezes and thin liquidity. Although technical indicators show strong momentum for Monero and a more fragile, squeeze-driven structure for Dash, both assets are now trading in areas where profit-taking and sharp pullbacks are possible if fresh demand fades, leaving the durability of the rally dependent on continued capital rotation and supportive broader market conditions. Source
Galaxy Research warns that a draft crypto market structure bill in the Senate Banking Committee would greatly expand U.S. financial surveillance powers by giving the Treasury Department new tools over digital assets and decentralized finance frontends. The proposal would broaden the department’s special measure authority and create a legal framework for temporarily freezing transactions without a court order, paired with liability protection for firms that comply with law enforcement requests. Galaxy argues this would exceed the surveillance scope of the House’s CLARITY Act and could amount to the biggest expansion of financial monitoring authority since the post-9/11 Patriot Act reshaped how the government tracks and intervenes in illicit finance across the banking system.
The draft also introduces formal recognition of a distributed ledger application layer and directs Treasury to clarify sanctions and anti-money-laundering obligations for U.S.-based crypto frontends, which critics say risks shifting enforcement burdens onto software infrastructure. Industry figures say the debate highlights unresolved tensions between regulatory compliance and privacy, especially as activity grows on networks like Ethereum and more enterprises consider on-chain payments and payroll. Others point to practical barriers such as conflicting state rules on stablecoin wage payments, arguing that even clearer federal guidance will not be enough to support widespread business adoption unless these legal inconsistencies and surveillance concerns are addressed. Source
Justin Slaughter, Paradigm’s vice president of regulatory affairs, said that even if the crypto market structure bill passes Congress and is signed into law, the rules needed to implement it could take many years to complete. The bill has reached the Senate committee stage with bipartisan backing and is scheduled for a markup in the Senate Banking Committee, while a related hearing in the Senate Agriculture Committee has been delayed until late January. Slaughter estimates that because the legislation requires around 45 separate rulemakings, the full process could extend across nearly two presidential terms before all regulations are finalized and enforced.
He noted that rulemaking is often slow because agencies must draft proposals, collect public feedback, and issue final regulations, citing the Dodd-Frank Act as an example of how major financial reforms can take three to eight years after passage to be largely implemented, with some parts still unfinished. Slaughter also cautioned that the bill itself may face setbacks before becoming law, saying major legislation often fails multiple times before eventually passing, and that its progress will depend on whether bipartisan cooperation holds during upcoming negotiations. Source
Pakistan has signed an agreement with SC Financial Technologies, a company linked to World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture associated with the family of US President Donald Trump, to explore using its dollar-pegged USD1 stablecoin for cross-border payments. According to a source cited by Reuters, the partnership would involve collaboration with Pakistan’s central bank to integrate the stablecoin into a regulated digital payments framework alongside the country’s developing digital currency infrastructure, with potential uses including remittances. The specific terms of the deal have not been made public, and little information is available about SC Financial Technologies, but the arrangement would be one of the first known cases of a Trump-linked crypto project partnering directly with a sovereign government.
Pakistan is expected to formally announce the agreement during a visit to Islamabad by World Liberty Financial chief executive Zach Witkoff. World Liberty’s stablecoin has previously been used in large transactions, including a $2 billion equity investment in Binance by an Abu Dhabi state-backed firm, and the company recently launched an onchain lending and borrowing platform centered on USD1 and its governance token. The move aligns with Pakistan’s broader effort to position itself as a global crypto hub, which has included setting up a national virtual assets regulator, allowing major exchanges to operate locally, developing a Bitcoin reserve, and exploring tokenization of real-world assets to attract foreign investment and increase market liquidity. Source
Markethive presents itself as a platform built to defend free expression, privacy, and entrepreneurial independence in what it describes as an increasingly censored and centralized digital environment. The article positions the company alongside figures such as Telegram founder Pavel Durov and X owner Elon Musk, portraying them as entrepreneurs resisting government overreach and surveillance pressures. It outlines Markethive’s broader vision of creating a decentralized global ecosystem based on blockchain, cryptocurrency infrastructure, and large-scale data storage, designed to support hundreds of millions of users while remaining resilient against cyberattacks, regulatory intrusion, and content suppression. The company frames its mission as enabling open information exchange, financial autonomy, and business development without fear of censorship.
A central product highlighted is the Swarm, or Hive Swarm, a built-in virtual conference room system available to all members, with expanded seating through paid tiers. These rooms support real-time audio and video, chat, screen sharing, recording, polls, calendars, whiteboards, and website sharing, using WebRTC for cross-browser compatibility. The system also includes multi-camera management for large organizations such as churches, invitation widgets that can be embedded on external platforms, and profile controls tied to verified identities for certain events to reduce abuse. Markethive emphasizes that these tools are designed to foster collaboration, community building, and secure communication while prioritizing user privacy and data protection, and it frames the service as part of a broader effort to preserve free speech and digital autonomy in the face of expanding regulation and surveillance. Source
Bitcoin advocacy groups urged congressional tax leaders to extend de minimis tax exemptions beyond stablecoins to include Bitcoin and major network tokens, arguing that limiting relief to dollar-pegged tokens would fail to simplify everyday crypto payments. The coalition, which included the Bitcoin Policy Institute, Bitcoin Voter, Blocks, Crypto Council, Digital Chamber, MoonPay, and River, sent a letter to Senate and House committee chairs warning that the IRS classification of crypto as property means even small purchases trigger taxable events that require tracking cost basis and gains or losses. They said this treatment discourages real-world use at a time when Bitcoin is accepted by more than 3,500 merchants across all 50 states and is used by millions of Americans for payments.
The groups proposed treating stablecoins compliant with the GENIUS Act like cash, with no transaction or annual limits, while also granting exemptions to major network tokens that support those payment systems. Their plan includes a 25 billion market capitalization threshold for qualifying tokens, along with a 600 per-transaction cap and a 20,000 annual cap. The effort revives a stalled push from 2025 and has gained urgency due to new broker reporting rules requiring digital asset transactions to be reported on Form 1099-DA starting in 2025, which the coalition says could create widespread reporting errors and audit risk for routine, low-value payments. Source
Impersonation scams in the crypto space surged by roughly 1,400 percent in 2025 compared with the previous year, with fraudsters posing as trusted individuals or organizations to steal crypto, passwords, and account access. According to Chainalysis, the average amount stolen through these scams also rose by over 600 percent, highlighting a troubling escalation in both frequency and scale. High-profile incidents included scammers impersonating Coinbase to defraud victims of nearly 16 million, prompting law enforcement action and ongoing legal proceedings. Fraudsters increasingly combined tactics such as social engineering, pig butchering schemes, and technical wallet exploits, making scams more sophisticated and harder to detect.
Artificial intelligence has amplified the effectiveness of scams, contributing to what Chainalysis calls the industrialization of fraud, with AI-driven operations proving 4.5 times more profitable and allowing scammers to manage higher transaction volumes and reach more victims. Authorities are urged to prioritize preventative measures, including real-time fraud detection, cross-border law enforcement cooperation, and support for low-capacity jurisdictions. Experts recommend reducing human trust points, verifying every interaction, and never sharing sensitive data like passwords or key phrases to counteract impersonation scams. Source
Ethereum may be positioned to outperform Bitcoin in 2026 as investor interest rotates toward altcoins and on-chain activity strengthens. Bitcoin’s market dominance has declined from midyear highs, signaling growing attention on Ethereum and other large-cap tokens. The ETH/BTC ratio has risen year-to-date, suggesting relative strength for Ethereum, while transaction activity on the network has grown 6.8 percent in 2026, with a 31 percent spike since mid-December. Analysts point to increased ETF demand, Layer 2 adoption, protocol upgrades, and expanding DeFi activity as key catalysts that could support Ethereum’s outperformance, particularly as investors seek higher beta exposure in the market.
Despite these encouraging signs, experts caution that the rotation of capital may be cyclical rather than indicative of a long-term shift. Prediction markets remain skeptical of a broad altcoin rally in the near term, and sustained Ethereum outperformance will likely depend on follow-through from ETFs, successful implementation of upgrades like Fusaka and ERC-8004, and supportive macroeconomic and liquidity conditions. Current market data shows Ethereum’s year-to-date return slightly ahead of Bitcoin, but analysts emphasize that continued growth will require a combination of regulatory clarity, on-chain adoption, and broader market support. Source
The Senate Agriculture Committee has scheduled a markup hearing for Jan. 27 to review its crypto market structure bill, with the legislative text set to be published on Jan. 21. The bill is designed to bring clarity and certainty to the crypto market by establishing clear oversight roles for the SEC and CFTC and providing a regulatory framework for digital assets. Committee leaders emphasized transparency and thorough review as they finalize the legislation, which aims to protect consumers while supporting innovation in the US crypto industry.
After the markup, the committee will vote on the bill before it can advance to the full Senate, and eventual passage in the House is required before it reaches President Donald Trump for signing. While the bill has gained momentum, certain issues remain unresolved, including rules on stablecoin yield and decentralized finance. An amended draft from the Senate Banking Committee proposes barring crypto asset providers from offering passive yield on stablecoin holdings, a measure that has drawn concern from US banking groups but highlights the ongoing effort to clarify and standardize crypto regulation. Source
KrakAcquisition, a new SPAC backed by cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, Tribe Capital, and Natural Capital, has filed with the SEC to raise up to 250 million in an initial public offering. The company, incorporated in July 2025 in the Cayman Islands, plans to offer 25 million units at 10 each and aims to list on the Nasdaq under the ticker KRAQU. While it has not yet selected a business combination target or engaged in substantive deal discussions, the SPAC intends to focus on companies building infrastructure and services for the digital asset ecosystem. Kraken’s involvement is expected to provide access to its ecosystem, operational experience, and regulatory expertise, though the exchange is not contractually obligated to execute any business combination.
Key Kraken personnel are involved in the SPAC’s management, including Sahil Gupta as chief financial officer and Robert Moore as a director upon the offering’s completion. The SPAC’s mission is to accelerate growth for businesses bridging decentralized finance and traditional finance, though it may pursue initial business combinations in any sector. Kraken has also filed confidentially for a potential IPO of its own common stock. KrakAcquisition has not publicly commented on the filing beyond its SEC disclosure. Source
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has highlighted significant vulnerabilities in today’s stablecoins, arguing that their heavy dependence on the U.S. dollar and institutional control leaves the crypto ecosystem exposed to inflation, governance capture, and centralization. He identified three key flaws in current designs: reliance on a single fiat reference, vulnerability of oracle systems to manipulation, and distortions caused by staking yields. The stablecoin market has grown rapidly, reaching 306 billion by the end of 2025, fueled by regulatory clarity and increased adoption by banks, fintechs, and major crypto projects, but Buterin warns that this institutionalization undermines the original vision of decentralized, censorship-resistant money.
Experts echo Buterin’s concerns, noting that dominant stablecoins like USDT and USDC are already heavily controlled and exposed to fiat inflation, limiting their long-term resilience. Analysts suggest that a truly global stablecoin should be independent from any single state, potentially backed by a diversified basket of assets or commodities and secured against financial capture. Buterin also emphasized the need for more robust staking mechanisms and better oracle designs to reduce reliance on high levels of value extraction from users. Without such innovations, he believes stablecoins will remain structurally weak and unable to fulfill their role as a reliable backbone for decentralized finance. Source
The Solana Policy Institute has called on the SEC to clearly differentiate between centralized crypto exchanges and non-custodial DeFi software, arguing that developers of open-source smart contracts should not be regulated as market intermediaries. The institute highlighted that non-custodial developers do not control user assets, execute trades, or exercise discretion over funds, making current exchange-focused rules, such as Rule 3b-16 under the Securities Exchange Act, inapplicable. It recommended that the SEC adopt a custody-and-control-based framework and provide guidance to distinguish between intermediated and disintermediated blockchain activity, warning that misclassification could discourage innovation and push activity offshore.
The call for clarity comes amid growing concerns over developer liability, exemplified by legal actions against Tornado Cash developers in the US and the Netherlands. US Senators Cynthia Lummis and Ron Wyden have introduced legislation, the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, to protect developers who do not handle user funds from federal or state money-transfer requirements. Similar protections are included in the proposed CLARITY Act, though the Senate Agriculture Committee has delayed its markup to ensure broader bipartisan support. The moves reflect a push to safeguard innovation and provide legal certainty for blockchain developers operating within the United States. Source
Ethereum treasury firm SharpLink Gaming plans to lead the way in productively using ETH holdings in 2026 after accumulating over 865,000 ETH, worth about 2.75 billion. Last week, the firm deployed 170 million in ETH for staking and elevated incentives on the layer-2 network Linea, marking the start of its mission to generate yield and optimize on-chain returns. SharpLink emphasizes a multi-year, long-term capital strategy that allows it to access opportunities unavailable to shorter-term investors, aiming to pioneer productive uses of Ethereum through staking, restaking, liquid restaking tokens, and opportunistic portfolio allocations.
The firm also plans to maintain financial flexibility, potentially providing liquidity or lending to other protocols as opportunities arise. CEO Joseph Chalom highlighted that the treasury strategy is designed to benefit shareholders across market cycles, allowing the firm to hold through ETH price fluctuations while continuing to generate yield. SharpLink’s approach has contributed to a modest stock increase recently, despite broader volatility, reflecting the firm’s long-term focus on maximizing the productivity and strategic use of its Ethereum holdings. Source
Disclaimer: These articles are provided for informational purposes only. They are not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or any other advice.
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