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According to Odaily, data from Santiment indicates that XRP whale activity reached its highest level in three months yesterday, with 2,802 transactions exceeding $100,000. This surge in activity suggests that future volatility may increase.

According to PANews, the market capitalization of stablecoins on the Solana blockchain has reached a new record high of $15 billion, as reported by Cointelegraph. Data from Token Terminal indicates that this marks a 200% increase over the past year.

According to CoinMarketCap data, the global cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $3.07T, down by 2.47% over the last 24 hours.Bitcoin (BTC) traded between $89,642 and $92,299 over the past 24 hours. As of 09:30 AM (UTC) today, BTC is trading at $90,036, down by -2.12%.Most major cryptocurrencies by market cap are trading mixed. Market outperformers include ZKP, FXS, and GUN, up by 70%, 62%, and 26%, respectively.Top stories of the day:Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Decreases by 1.20% at Block Height 931,392U.S. Treasury Establishes Bitcoin Strategic Reserve Without PurchasingEthereum's Total Value Locked Surpasses $300 BillionBrazil Presidential Candidate Advocates for National Bitcoin ReserveSenate Agriculture Committee to Review Cryptocurrency Market StructureGold and Silver Briefly Reclaim Top Market Cap Rankings as Uncertainty Drives Safe-Haven Demand XRP Whale Activity Reaches Three-Month High, Signaling Potential Volatility SEC Cryptocurrency Task Force to Visit Miami for Direct Talks U.S. Outlines Three-Phase Plan for Venezuela Federal Reserve's January Rate Decision: High Probability of No ChangeMarket movers:ETH: $3107.01 (-3.80%)BNB: $881.47 (-3.61%)XRP: $2.1052 (-6.74%)SOL: $134.57 (-2.49%)TRX: $0.2954 (+0.03%)DOGE: $0.14294 (-4.98%)WLFI: $0.1717 (+1.78%)ADA: $0.391 (-5.56%)BCH: $630.6 (-0.22%)WBTC: $89861.36 (-2.15%)

According to ChainCatcher, U.S. stock futures for the three major indices are experiencing continued declines. The Nasdaq futures have fallen by 0.63%, while the S&P 500 futures have decreased by 0.4%. Additionally, the Dow Jones futures have dropped by 0.3%.

According to Foresight News, U.S. Treasury Secretary Besant stated in an interview with Fox Business that the department has established a strategic reserve for Bitcoin. While the Treasury does not plan to purchase Bitcoin, it will retain confiscated Bitcoin and has no intention of selling it.

Binance announced that Sky (SKY) and Plume (PLUME) have been added to Binance Simple Earn Locked Products, allowing users to earn rewards by subscribing to fixed-term staking products.Eligible subscriptions for SKY and PLUME Locked Products will open at 10:00 UTC on Jan. 8, 2026.How SKY and PLUME Locked Products workSubscription format: First-come, first-servedReward calculation period: From 00:00 UTC on the day after subscription until the end of the lock-up periodRewards distribution: DailyMinimum subscription: 1 tokenMaximum limits: Apply per product and durationActual rewards depend on subscription amount, duration, and availability.Available Locked Products and APRsSKY Locked ProductsDurationStandard APRMin per UserMax per User30 days9.75%1 SKY150,000 SKY60 days11.25%1 SKY200,000 SKY90 days12.75%1 SKY300,000 SKYPLUME Locked ProductsDurationStandard APRMin per UserMax per User30 days2.00%1 PLUME300,000 PLUME90 days3.20%1 PLUME500,000 PLUME120 days3.80%1 PLUME700,000 PLUMEHow to get startedUsers can participate by:Purchasing SKY or PLUME on the Binance Spot Market or via the Buy Crypto page (supported payment methods include Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and account balances)Depositing SKY or PLUME into a Binance accountNavigating to [Earn] and searching for SKY or PLUMESelecting the preferred duration and completing the subscriptionOnce subscribed, users begin earning rewards automatically, with daily payouts throughout the lock-up period.Additional notesSubscription caps and product availability may change based on demandEarly redemption rules and penalties (if any) are governed by Binance Simple Earn termsAPRs are not guaranteed and may be adjusted

According to Foresight News, the Trump family's crypto initiative, WLFI, announced via Twitter that its subsidiary, WLTC Holdings LLC, has submitted a new application to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish a national trust bank named World Liberty Trust Company. This institution is intended to operate specifically for stablecoin-related activities. If approved, the license will enable WLTC to issue a USD-pegged stablecoin, USD1. WLTC plans to gradually expand its services to include crypto asset custody and stablecoin exchange, primarily targeting institutional clients.

Binance announced that it will update the collateral ratios and rankings of multiple assets under Cross Margin on Jan. 12, 2026, at 06:00 UTC. The adjustment process is expected to be completed within approximately 30 minutes.The update applies specifically to Cross Margin Pro Mode and may affect users’ Margin Level (ML) calculations.Assets affected by the updateThe following assets will see changes to their collateral ranking:AssetOld RankNew RankARB67ADA45CFX89TRX76ASTER87XPL98ZEC87Updated collateral ratios (tiers 8–10)Binance also outlined the collateral ratios applicable to assets ranked No. 8, 9, and 10, based on USD-denominated position size.Asset Rank No. 8Tier (USD)Collateral Ratio0 – 100,000100%100,000 – 250,00080%250,000 – 500,00060%500,000 – 700,00030%700,000 – 1,000,00010%1,000,000 – 100B0%Asset Rank No. 9Tier (USD)Collateral Ratio0 – 100,000100%100,000 – 150,00080%150,000 – 200,00060%200,000 – 400,00030%400,000 – 600,00010%600,000 – 100B0%Asset Rank No. 10Tier (USD)Collateral Ratio0 – 100,000100%100,000 – 100B0%More details on collateral ratio calculations are available on Binance’s Margin Data page.Risk notice for margin tradersBinance cautioned that changes to collateral ratios will directly impact Margin Level (ML) in Cross Margin Pro Mode.Users are advised to:Monitor ML closelyAdjust collateral positions proactivelyAccount for potential liquidation risk caused by reduced collateral effectivenessBinance stated it bears no responsibility for losses incurred if users fail to manage collateral appropriately following the update.

According to Foresight News, data from CoinAnk reveals that the cryptocurrency market experienced liquidations totaling $252 million in the past 24 hours. Long positions accounted for $215 million of the liquidations, while short positions saw $36.82 million in liquidations. Bitcoin liquidations amounted to approximately $61.38 million, and Ethereum liquidations were around $58.95 million.

According to Cointelegraph, the crypto markets are poised for potential growth in 2026, but must overcome three significant hurdles to reach new peaks, as outlined by Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan. Hougan emphasized the importance of the U.S. Senate passing a crucial crypto bill, the CLARITY Act, as one of these checkpoints. He noted that while the year has started positively for crypto, with markets gaining 5.6% since the beginning of the year, there are still obstacles to achieving new all-time highs.The crypto market experienced a significant downturn on October 10, which resulted in a $19 billion loss in futures positions in a single day. This event caused investor concerns about potential sales from major market makers or hedge funds, which Hougan described as a "heavy fog" over the market, hindering a rally in late 2025. However, the market has shown signs of recovery, shedding over $1.2 trillion following the crash but rebounding in January.The CLARITY Act, currently progressing through Congress, is a pivotal element for the future of crypto in the U.S. The Senate aims to mark up the bill by January 15, aligning drafts in the Senate Banking and Agriculture committees before pushing it to a vote. Hougan believes that the passage of this act is crucial for establishing core principles into law and providing a foundation for future growth in the crypto sector.Another critical factor is the stability of the broader equity market. Although crypto is not highly correlated with stocks, a sharp decline in the equity market could negatively impact all risk assets, including crypto, in the short term. Hougan expressed optimism that if these milestones are achieved, the momentum seen at the start of 2026 could continue strongly.While Hougan did not specifically address U.S. central bank monetary policy, other experts have highlighted its potential impact on crypto markets. Jurrien Timmer, director of global macro at Fidelity, suggested that a combination of fiscal policy and a dovish Federal Reserve could benefit long-term gains. However, the Federal Reserve has indicated no immediate rate cuts ahead of its next meeting on January 28. Nick Ruck, director of LVRG Research, noted that the current environment supports a risk-on sentiment for crypto markets but also underscores the sensitivity to inflation risks and potential policy pauses that could limit digital asset growth. CME futures markets currently show an 89% probability that rates will remain unchanged at the end of the month.

According to Odaily, Josh Swihart, CEO of the Electric Coin Company (ECC), the development team behind Zcash (ZEC), announced on X that the majority of the Bootstrap board members, including Zaki Manian, Christina Garman, Alan Fairless, and Michelle Lai, have deviated from Zcash's mission. As a result of alleged dismissals by these board members, the entire ECC team has resigned. Swihart stated that their employment terms were unilaterally altered, preventing them from fulfilling their duties effectively and with integrityThe team is now forming a new company, maintaining their original mission to build an unstoppable privacy currency. Importantly, the Zcash protocol remains unaffected by these changes. The decision to resign was made to safeguard the team's work from what they describe as malicious governance actions that have hindered ECC's ability to fulfill its original mission.In 2020, following the decision of most shareholders to donate their shares, ECC began transitioning to a nonprofit structure under Bootstrap.

According to Cointelegraph, digital asset infrastructure company Fireblocks has invested $130 million to acquire the crypto accounting platform TRES. This acquisition aims to bolster Fireblocks' tax compliance infrastructure to better support institutional clients. The company highlighted the increasing need for robust blockchain accounting protocols, especially as stablecoin settlements surpass hundreds of billions monthly and enterprises manage entire treasury flows on-chain.Fireblocks CEO Michael Shaulov emphasized the importance of providing both crypto-native firms and traditional institutions with clear and accurate accounting and auditability. By integrating TRES with Fireblocks, customers can manage their digital asset operations while gaining essential financial intelligence on a secure, compliant, and scalable platform. As part of the acquisition, TRES will offer Fireblocks clients audit-ready, tax-compliant financial records for their operations.Fireblocks communicated to Fortune that the $130 million acquisition underscores its commitment to helping clients maintain compliance while leveraging blockchain technology. Shaulov expressed confidence in creating a comprehensive treasury management solution through this acquisition. TRES CEO and co-founder Tal Zackon assured in a blog post that TRES will continue as a standalone product, with no changes for its customers and partners. Zackon added that Fireblocks' resources would accelerate TRES' growth, enhance customer service, improve security, and deepen technological advantages.Fireblocks, known for providing crypto custody, transfer, and settlement services, claims partnerships with 2,400 enterprises and supports $10 trillion in transactions. The firm also offers stablecoin services to assist enterprises in launching and managing their own stablecoins. This acquisition follows Fireblocks' recent integration of the tech stack from enterprise-focused wallet provider Dynamic in late October, further expanding its service offerings.

According to ChainCatcher, Sotheby's recently released the '2026 Luxury Outlook Report,' highlighting the increasing impact of cryptocurrency on high-end real estate purchases. The report notes significant trends in markets such as Dubai, New York, and California. It emphasizes that changes in regulatory environments could become pivotal, potentially integrating crypto assets into mortgage qualification standards. This development could open new avenues for buyers with substantial cryptocurrency holdings to enter the real estate market.

According to Odaily, attorney Jake Chervinsky expressed on platform X that Congress has passed the GENIUS Act, which prohibits yield-generating stablecoins, thereby granting significant benefits to banks. He criticized the policy for lacking a reasonable basis from the outset and for stifling an entire category of innovative crypto products. Chervinsky also noted that banks are currently attempting to further disrupt market structures, a move he opposes.

According to BlockBeats, on January 8, U.S. law firm Burwick Law announced progress in a lawsuit, stating that the plaintiff has filed a revised complaint in federal court. The complaint accuses Baton Corp, the operator of PumpFun, along with Solana Foundation, Solana Labs, and several executives, of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).

According to Odaily, the Senate Agriculture Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on the structure of the cryptocurrency market on January 15. This hearing coincides with a similar session planned by the Banking Committee on the same day.

Gold and silver briefly reclaimed their positions as the two largest assets globally by market capitalization, as the new year opened amid heightened macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty.According to data from CompaniesMarketCap, Gold currently holds the top spot with a market capitalization of approximately $31.1 trillion.Silver also moved back into second place, briefly overtaking NVIDIA, before slipping back behind the chipmaker at the time of publication. Silver and Nvidia have been trading places near the top of the rankings since December.Nvidia’s elevated valuation continues to be driven by strong global demand for artificial intelligence computing infrastructure, while precious metals have benefited from a renewed flight to safety.Safe-haven assets gain amid geopolitical and policy uncertaintyInvestor demand for gold and silver has strengthened over the past year as markets grapple with global conflicts, trade disputes, and policy uncertainty, reinforcing the appeal of traditional “store of value” assets.Expectations around U.S. monetary policy have also played a role. Markets are increasingly pricing in the possibility of significant interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve under its new leadership, a shift that typically supports commodities by lowering real yields and weakening the dollar.That demand has pushed both metals to fresh highs, with gold recently trading near $4,500 per ounce and silver approaching $80 per ounce, marking new all-time levels.Crypto yet to follow, but catalysts may be formingWhile the rally in precious metals has not yet fully extended to Bitcoin and the broader crypto market, some analysts believe the lag may be temporary.In a recent interview, Owen Lau, managing director at Clear Street, said U.S. monetary policy in 2026 could emerge as a major catalyst for digital assets.Lau argued that lower interest rates would likely reignite appetite among both retail and institutional investors for risk assets, including what he described as “digital gold,” potentially narrowing the performance gap between precious metals and crypto.Market snapshotGold market cap: ~$31.1 trillionSilver market cap: competing with Nvidia for No. 2 spotBitcoin ranking: eighth-largest asset by market capitalizationKey drivers: geopolitical risk, Fed rate expectations, safe-haven demand

According to ChainCatcher, Strategy's perpetual preferred stock, Stretch (STRC), returned to $100 during pre-market trading on Wednesday. The company may consider selling more shares at market price to raise funds for further Bitcoin purchases.The last time STRC traded at this level was between November 4 and November 13, before it dropped to a low near $90. Following the price rebound, Strategy can issue shares linked to this product through an ATM offering.

Ethereum and Solana are no longer divided only by questions of scalability. They are increasingly split by fundamentally different visions of what blockchain networks must be built to withstand — and what resilience actually means in a world of geopolitical risk, real-time markets, and institutional adoption.Recent exchanges between Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, and Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana, surfaced two sharply contrasting definitions of resilience — one rooted in sovereignty and redundancy, the other in performance and economic viability.At stake is not just technical design, but the future shape of blockchain adoption.Vitalik Buterin: Resilience as Sovereignty and SurvivalIn a post on X revisiting Ethereum’s Trustless Manifesto, Buterin framed resilience as the ability of a blockchain to survive catastrophic failure scenarios — including political exclusion, infrastructure collapse, developer disappearance, and financial confiscation.Ethereum, he argued, was never designed to optimize for speed or convenience. Instead, its goal is to ensure that any user, anywhere in the world, can remain sovereign under hostile conditions.“Resilience is the game where anyone, anywhere in the world, will be able to access the network and be a first-class participant,” Buterin wrote.“Resilience is sovereignty.”In this framing, decentralization and redundancy are not inefficiencies but essential safeguards. Ethereum’s architecture — including multiple independent execution and consensus clients — is intended to reduce the risk of single-point failures that could halt the network entirely.Solana’s Yakovenko: Resilience Through PerformanceYakovenko responded to Buterin’s post by calling it a “cool vision,” while offering a starkly different interpretation of resilience.For Solana, resilience is inseparable from performance — specifically, the ability to synchronize massive volumes of information globally at high throughput and low latency, without relying on trusted intermediaries.“If the world can benefit from 1gbps and 10 concurrent 10ms batch auctions, then that’s the floor we must deliver reliably across the planet,” Yakovenko wrote.“If it’s 10gbps and 100 1ms auctions, then that’s what we will deliver.”In this view, a blockchain that cannot reliably handle real-time markets, payments, and auctions at scale is not resilient, regardless of its philosophical commitments.The Trilemma Debate ReignitedThe exchange followed Buterin’s comments earlier this week claiming that Ethereum has effectively solved the blockchain trilemma — decentralization, security, and scalability — through technologies such as PeerDAS and zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machines (zkEVMs).That assertion sharpened scrutiny of Ethereum’s roadmap and reopened debate over whether resilience should be measured by redundancy and censorship resistance, or by speed and economic competitiveness.Cyber Capital founder Justin Bons pushed back forcefully, arguing that Ethereum’s approach risks falling behind.“The path ETH has chosen is a losing one,” Bons wrote.“Objectively unable to compete on capacity within competitive timelines and also unable to compete on speed at all.”In his view, performance constraints and economic realities cannot be treated as secondary concerns indefinitely.Redundancy vs. Performance: Two Resilience ModelsEthereum’s resilience thesis is grounded in architectural caution. The network favors gradual scaling, redundancy, and conservative upgrades designed to minimize systemic risk.Earlier this week, Ethereum developers raised the network’s blob limit for the second time, incrementally increasing data throughput while prioritizing node safety and fee stability. Rather than pushing execution speed aggressively, Ethereum continues to favor measured capacity increases.Validator behavior has reinforced that narrative. In early January, Ethereum’s validator exit queue fell close to zero, signaling renewed willingness among validators to lock up capital long-term — often interpreted as confidence in Ethereum’s security model and roadmap.Solana’s model, by contrast, prioritizes resilience through sustained high performance. Yakovenko’s comments reflect a belief that future financial systems will demand real-time execution, and that reliability must be proven under maximum load, not theoretical stress scenarios.While Solana suffered high-profile outages in earlier cycles, the network has since hardened its infrastructure through protocol upgrades, fee markets, and operational improvements.Institutional Signals and Trade-OffsEach approach carries risks.Ethereum’s long-term resilience claims depend on the successful implementation of complex systems such as zkEVMs and proposer-builder separation — designs that remain largely untested at full mainnet scale. Critics argue these could introduce new centralization pressures by shifting influence toward specialized, capital-intensive builders, potentially creating liveness risks if those layers fail.Institutional behavior offers another lens. Ethereum remains the dominant settlement layer for stablecoins and tokenized U.S. Treasurys, reflecting institutional preference for predictability, regulatory comfort, and conservative risk profiles.Solana, meanwhile, has gained traction in performance-sensitive use cases. Tokenized real-world assets on Solana reached record levels in late 2025, while spot Solana ETFs and enterprise payment pilots have accelerated adoption.Two Futures, Two Definitions of ResilienceTaken together, the debate highlights a widening philosophical divide.Ethereum is optimizing for survivability under extreme conditions, even if that comes at the cost of speed. Solana is optimizing for economic viability and real-time performance, even if it requires tighter coordination and more aggressive engineering.Both networks are betting that their definition of resilience will matter more as blockchain adoption moves from experimentation to global financial infrastructure.Which vision prevails may ultimately depend not on ideology, but on what kind of stress the next phase of adoption places on blockchains — and which systems prove resilient when it counts.

According to PANews, WisdomTree has officially withdrawn its registration application for a proposed spot XRP ETF. In a filing submitted on Tuesday, the company stated that it has decided not to proceed with the product's issuance at this time and requested the SEC to withdraw the registration statement along with all accompanying exhibits and amendments. Previously, WisdomTree had submitted the S-1 registration documents related to the spot XRP ETF to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in December 2024.