🇰🇷 South Korea lifts 9-year ban on cryptocurrency investments
South Korean authorities officially remove restrictions that have been in place since 2017, prohibiting companies from investing in crypto assets and holding them on their balance sheets.
The decision opens the door for institutional capital, which has been excluded from the market for years.
Now corporations will be allowed to allocate up to 5% of their capital into the top 20 cryptocurrencies. Around 3,500 companies will fall under the new rules. $ZEC $SOL $LTC
🗣 X "upgraded" Cashtags — a step toward embedded trading
X (Twitter) has significantly updated the Cashtags feature, allowing users to track stock and cryptocurrency prices directly from the feed.
What it was like before: — The price was displayed next to the ticker; — Hovering over it showed a simple mini-chart; — The feature has existed since 2012 but was often disabled, especially after the rebranding.
What's changed now: — Typing a cashtag triggers a search for stocks and crypto with price and percentage change; — Clicking opens a full chart and detailed asset information; — New Buy / Sell buttons have appeared, indicating a potential foundation for future embedded trading.
X is gradually transforming from a social network into a financial platform. $SOL
✔️The prosecutor's office has launched an investigation regarding Federal Reserve Chair Powell.
✔️Jerome Powell's response: The Department of Justice is threatening the Fed with criminal charges for refusing to comply with Donald Trump's demands regarding interest rates. $BTC
☠️ Iran and Russia have become key players in using cryptocurrencies to circumvent sanctions
In general, the volume of illegal crypto operations in 2025 reached a record $154 billion, increasing by 162% year-on-year.
Analysts specifically highlight the growing influence of Chinese networks involved in money laundering, which have turned crypto-crime into a professional industry. $XRP $DOT $ATOM
💵 Stablecoin cards will become one of the main trends of 2026
Dragonfly believes that payments through USDT and USDC will become the primary way of using cryptocurrency. The user pays with a regular card, while the transaction internally goes through the blockchain in digital dollars.
Dragonfly is a venture fund investing in crypto and blockchain projects.
The startup Rain, which issues such cards, raised $250 million. Its turnover grew almost 40 times in 2025. The cards are already working in Ethereum, Solana, Tron, and Stellar networks.
Western Union will launch stablecoin transfers and cards in 2026. The US, UK, and Canada will introduce regulations that make this market legal for banks and fintech.
Ultimately, cryptocurrency will gain mass recognition not through trading, but through regular cards with digital dollars inside. $ETH
‼️ Record-breaking XRP ETF trading and outflows from Bitcoin and Ethereum
✖️ The results of the first full week of 2026 were mixed for crypto ETFs. While XRP ETFs reached a record weekly trading volume of $219 million, Bitcoin and Ethereum funds faced outflows of $750 million.
Since their launch in mid-November 2025, XRP funds have attracted a total of $1.22 billion, with net assets reaching $1.47 billion, representing 1.16% of XRP's market capitalization.
🧬 Spot ETFs for SOL also recorded a positive net inflow for the week, receiving $41.1 million. $ETH
📈 Co-founder of Pump.fun, Alon Cohen, announced the platform's transition to a new Creator Fee Sharing system, enabling the distribution of a portion of meme sale fees among 10 wallets.
Although details are still unknown, these wallets could include the creators of meme coin ideas, promoters of campaigns, social media videos, and other similar content that contributes to the sustained popularity of tokens. $JTO
🪙 CZ: American banks bought BTC while the market panicked
Changpeng Zhao, founder of Binance, stated that amid panic selling by retail investors, American banks and major players were actively accumulating bitcoin.
According to him, it is precisely during moments of fear that assets are redistributed from weak hands to institutions—and the current correction is no exception. $BTC
🔹 According to VanEck's base scenario, ETH price will exceed $22,000 by 2030. The bullish scenario implies even more impressive growth, over $154,000 per ETH. $ETH
Donald Trump warned of a possible government shutdown by the end of this month. The White House and Congress have not yet reached an agreement, and the deadline for temporary funding is January 30, 2026. $TRUMP
🔼 Stock exchange Nasdaq and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) are standardizing crypto indices and have already renamed Nasdaq (NCI) to the Nasdaq-CME crypto index.
The merger is a response to the growing complexity of the crypto market and institutional excitement around digital assets and blockchain technology.
✅ The benchmark index NCI includes BTC, ETH, XRP, SOL, LINK, ADA, AVAX. Whether there will be further changes to its composition is currently unknown. $AVAX
🇺🇸 a16z will lead the fight for U.S. technological leadership
📈 Leading venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) announced the raising of $15 billion by the end of 2025, which it estimates accounts for 18% of all U.S. venture investments from last year.
✅ Investor funds have filled new funds, including American Dynamism ($1.18 billion), Apps ($1.7 billion), Bio + Health ($700 million), Infrastructure ($1.7 billion), Growth ($6.75 billion), as well as other venture strategies ($3 billion).
a16z founder Ben Horowitz sees protecting U.S. technological leadership—supported by AI and cryptocurrency—as his primary goal. He referred to them as "key architectures of the future". $XRP
🚀 Rain has raised $250M for launching stablecoin cards
📈 Rain, the company behind stablecoin-linked cards backed by Visa and available in over 150 countries, has achieved a valuation of $1.95B in Series C funding round of $250M led by ICONIQ.
➡️ The new capital will be used to obtain operational licenses and establish presence in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa.
According to Bloomberg, Rain is currently developing integration with major payment networks ACH in the US and SEPA in Europe through bank partners. $USDC
Grayscale has filed for ETFs on BNB and Hyperliquid
Grayscale Investments registered trusts in Delaware for the BNB-ETF and Hyperliquid-ETF.
Although filing an application does not guarantee a public listing, it is traditionally seen as the first step in launching an ETF.
🎯 The process coincided with the BNB Chain's 2026 roadmap update, which claims a capacity increase to tens of thousands of transactions per second. $HYPE
Google has risen to second place in the world by market capitalization
Alphabet (Google) surpassed Apple and became the second largest publicly traded company in the world by market capitalization. The stock growth has been supported by expectations in the AI direction, cloud business, and stable advertising revenue.
Notably, only four non-American companies are in the top 20 global companies: TSMC (6th place), Saudi Aramco (9th), Tencent (15th), and Samsung (17th), highlighting the dominance of the United States in the global stock market. $ETH
According to Andrew Tate, Washington is increasing pressure on the Danish island, hoping to use the cold climate and cheap electricity to mine BTC at a cost significantly lower than the market
Yesterday, Trump said he offered island residents $100k if they wanted to change their citizenship to American. $BTC
👛 The Zashi cryptocurrency wallet team launches a new startup, CashZ
The developers of the Zashi mobile wallet for Zcash announced the launch of CashZ after the team left Electric Coin Company due to disagreements over management and the project's future development.
🗓 CashZ is built on the foundations of Zashi — with the same codebase and logic. The release is expected within a few weeks.
The new product is intended to be an advanced solution for the Zcash community — effectively a new phase in the evolution of privacy payment tools in this segment. $ZEC