NFT

On January 20, 2026, Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu said at the CfC St. Moritz conference that affluent crypto collectors who buy NFTs to hold, rather than trade, are helping sustain a market that still records about $300 million in monthly sales. He compared these collectors to traditional art buyers, revealed his own NFT portfolio is down roughly 80%, and linked the last-minute cancellation of NFT Paris 2026 to France's changing stance on crypto and growing security concerns.

On Monday, Magic Eden CEO and co-founder Jack Lu said the firm is preparing for a coming "speculation supercycle", as prediction markets posted a record $814.2 million in daily trading volume. Magic Eden will roll out its Dicey crypto casino and sportsbook this quarter and route 15% of platform revenue to ME tokenholders via USDC buybacks and staking rewards. This strategy comes after the NFT market cap dropped from $7.95 billion to $2.5 billion in 2025 but has climbed back above $3 billion in early 2026.

Magic Eden will begin directing 15% of all platform revenue to a combined $ME token buyback and USDC staking rewards program starting February 1, 2026. Half of the allocation will fund $ME buybacks and the other half will be distributed as USDC yield to $ME stakers, with monthly claims beginning in March for February activity. This initiative builds on Magic Eden's late-2025 marketplace-focused buyback scheme and reflects its broader shift from a pure NFT marketplace to a multi-asset crypto entertainment platform.

On Jan. 18, 2026, SHIB marketing lead Lucie told holders there is "no panic" and that SHIB and SOU are "moving up together" as SOU NFTs track obligations tied to the late‑2025 Shibarium exploit. The daily burn rate jumped 3,904.47%, with 29,998,516 SHIB sent to dead wallets via two transfers of 28,000,000 and 1,576,200.

On 16 January 2026, the Bank of Russia proposed expanded reporting rules requiring banks to disclose detailed information on cross‑border transactions, including crypto activity. The draft would separate buys, sells, and transfers of digital currencies and seeks to reflect such flows in the balance of payments ahead of broader market regulation expected this year.

Bitcoin’s New Year advance is stalling near the key $90,000 support area after multiple failed attempts to hold above that level since November 2025. Morgan Stanley has filed for both Solana and Bitcoin ETFs with staking features, while Shiba Inu briefly touched $0.00001 and XRP jumped about 32% in January, drawing a cautionary technical warning from John Bollinger. Bitcoin has also posted its first post‑halving red year as traders monitor tight ranges and potential Sunday volatility around $85,000 to $90,000.

On Jan. 7, the full developer team at Electric Coin Company, which leads work on the Zcash protocol, resigned following a conflict with its parent nonprofit board and said it will launch a new firm and wallet. U.S. spot XRP ETFs recorded their first daily net outflows on Wednesday, with $47.3 million leaving 21Shares' TOXR and contributing to a 5% XRP price drop to about $2.13, while Bitcoin, Ethereum, prediction markets, stablecoins, and onchain crime trends also moved markets.

The Flow Foundation published a technical post-mortem on Tuesday detailing a Dec. 27 protocol exploit that enabled counterfeit tokens, with confirmed losses of about $3.9 million. Validators halted the network within six hours and resumed operations two days later under a governance-approved recovery that preserved legitimate history and destroyed fake assets.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin changed his X profile picture to a Milady NFT, coinciding with the collection's floor price jumping almost 30% within a day. Milady Maker's minimum price climbed to about 1.07 ETH as trading volume and sales spiked, while Buterin also shared a New Year message outlining Ethereum's key technical progress in 2025 and longer-term mission.

South Korea’s Financial Intelligence Unit fined crypto exchange Korbit ₩2.73 billion (about $1.90 million) after an on-site AML/KYC inspection conducted October 16–29, 2024 identified nearly 22,000 rule breaches. The FIU also flagged 19 overseas transfers tied to three unregistered foreign VASPs and confirmed the sanction on December 31, 2025.