On Dec. 11, 2025, South Korea's Supreme Court issued its first explicit ruling that Bitcoin held in centralized exchange accounts can be seized under the Criminal Procedure Act. The decision, which upheld the confiscation of 55.6 BTC from a suspect under a money laundering investigation, classifies Bitcoin as electronic information with independent economic value and aligns the country's enforcement approach with US and EU practices.

On Jan. 1, 2026, China permitted commercial banks to pay interest on e‑CNY wallet balances, aiming to integrate the CBDC into bank balance sheets. On Jan. 7, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said the shift gives China an edge, colliding with the GENIUS Act’s July 2025 prohibition on stablecoin yields and raising competitiveness concerns for US dollar stablecoins.

Bitcoin Core developers released version 30.1 on Jan. 1 and, on Monday, disclosed a migration bug affecting 30.0 and 30.1 that can delete wallet directories during legacy upgrades. Developers pulled both binaries and advised against using migration tools until 30.2 is available; Coin Dance reports Bitcoin Core powers about 78% of reachable nodes.

Starknet, an Ethereum layer-2 ZK-rollup used by DeFi and gaming applications, is undergoing a new bout of mainnet downtime in 2026 after a series of outages in 2025. The team said on X that engineers are investigating the disruption and working to restore services, with the latest incident lasting just over two hours at the time of writing, while the STRK token price remained largely unchanged.

Solana, BNB Chain, Base, Tron and NEAR processed the most transactions in 2025, led by Solana's 23.01 billion. BNB Chain handled 3.89 billion, Base 3.29 billion, Tron 3.22 billion and NEAR 1.89 billion, as activity concentrated on high‑throughput, low‑fee networks. Retail‑oriented use cases were the main drivers across these ecosystems.

Coinbase plans to emphasize stablecoins, Base and an 'everything exchange' through 2026, per CEO Brian Armstrong. In a New Year's post he reaffirmed the vision, and in December the firm launched stock trading and prediction markets while rebranding its wallet as an 'everything app'.

Tether acquired 8,888 BTC on New Year's Eve, lifting its disclosed Bitcoin holdings above 96,000, according to CEO Paolo Ardoino. BitInfoCharts data shows the company's Bitcoin address is now the fifth-largest, behind Binance, Robinhood and Bitfinex. The purchase fits Tether's pattern of allocating up to 15% of quarterly earnings to Bitcoin.

In December, onchain analysts observed wallets linked to the Official Trump (TRUMP) memecoin on Solana withdrawing roughly $94 million in USDC from TRUMP liquidity pools and sending the funds toward Coinbase. The latest transfer involved 33 million USDC routed via an entity labeled Fireblocks, while the token itself has fallen from a January peak of $75.35 to trading below $5 by year's end.

Bitwise has submitted filings to the US SEC for 11 new single-token "strategy" crypto ETFs targeting major altcoins. The proposed funds would blend direct token holdings with ETPs and derivatives, aiming to give investors regulated access to assets such as AAVE, UNI, ZEC, TAO, SUI, and NEAR.