Brazilian exchange Mercado Bitcoin has released a report projecting that Bitcoin’s market capitalization will more than double by the end of 2026 to reach 14% of gold’s market value. The exchange also expects stablecoin capitalization to climb to $500 billion and altcoin ETFs, led by XRP and Solana products, to see strong institutional inflows.

On January 10, 2026, Wells Fargo Head of Macro Strategy Michael Schumacher said volatility across equities, FX, and rates has subsided, bolstering confidence in risk assets including cryptocurrencies. He added the Fed is likely to cut rates a few more times, but not immediately, preferring one or two months of additional data.

Meta secured 20-year nuclear power agreements with Vistra, Oklo and TerraPower to supply its Prometheus AI data center. On January 9, 2026, Vistra rose 10.5% to $166.38 and Oklo closed 7.9% higher, while Meta said the combined arrangements could support up to 6.6 GW of clean energy by 2035.

On January 10, altcoins captured over 50% of crypto trading volume, compared with Bitcoin at 27% and Ethereum at 23%. High-beta plays including Solana memecoins, Polygon, and Beefy posted strong gains, while January 9 data showed $93.82 million net withdrawals from U.S. spot ETH ETFs, amid mixed momentum for BTC and ETH.

On January 8, Stripe announced a partnership with Microsoft to embed a Stripe-powered shopping and checkout experience directly inside Copilot for U.S. users. The integration uses the Agentic Commerce Protocol and Shared Payment Tokens so shoppers can discover products and pay within chat while merchants retain control of transaction data. Microsoft is also working with PayPal to enhance inventory surfacing and branded checkouts, and extending agent-based Brand Agents to Shopify merchants.

On-chain data shows A7A5, a ruble-pegged stablecoin, was the fastest-growing stablecoin over the past 12 months and added about $90 billion to circulating supply in 2025. Issued via a Kyrgyz entity on Tron and Ethereum, it surpassed USDT and USDC despite an EU ban on ruble-backed transactions.

On January 8, 2026, on-chain activity showed an anonymous wallet (0x6C8EC8f1) receive about 8,535 ETH, and Truebit Protocol's TRU plunged amid an alleged exploit worth roughly $26.44 million. According to Cyvers, real-time monitoring flagged the transfer as anomalous, with around half of the funds routed via Tornado Cash. Truebit said it is working with law enforcement, and TRU was near $0.072 at publication.

On January 8, 2026, India's stock market saw its steepest single-day decline in four months as benchmark indices fell sharply alongside heavyweight Reliance Industries. The Sensex dropped about 0.93% and the Nifty 50 lost around 1.04%, extending weekly losses while exporters and sector indices also recorded notable declines amid rising concerns over potential U.S. tariff hikes.

On January 8, 2026, Vitalik Buterin argued that prioritizing higher bandwidth is safer for Ethereum's scalability than pushing for lower latency. He highlighted PeerDAS and Zero-Knowledge Proofs as paths to potentially scale the network thousands of times, and outlined P2P improvements and smaller per-slot node counts (e.g., 512 vs 30,000) to cut propagation delays without sacrificing decentralization.