Stablecoin

During a Binance Q&A, Changpeng Zhao rejected claims the exchange sparked the Oct. 10 liquidation wave that erased about $19 billion in leveraged positions. He said he spoke as a shareholder, not as an executive. USDe's brief drop to $0.65 on Binance was later tied to an internal oracle issue, and users were compensated around $283 million.

On 31 January 2026, Tether reported it ended 2025 with around $10 billion in profit, about 23% below 2024’s $13 billion. The company also began a fundraising process. Despite lower earnings, USDT remained the largest stablecoin with over $185 billion in circulation as demand for digital dollars outside traditional banking persisted.

During the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2026, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon confronted Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong over Armstrong's comments that banks are quietly working to derail a US crypto market structure bill. The clash, centered on whether stablecoin issuers should be allowed to offer yield or rewards, comes as the legislation has passed the House but stalled in the Senate amid political and industry pushback. Coinbase later sought to play down tensions with banks, even as the Senate Banking Committee postponed a markup following Armstrong's stance that the bill is unacceptable in its current form.

On January 30, 2026, Tether published its Q4 2025 attestation, reporting more than $10 billion in net profit for 2025. The BDO Italy–signed report showed $6.3 billion in excess reserves against $186.5 billion in liabilities, as USDT supply climbed by roughly $50 billion to over $186 billion.

Tether reported more than $10 billion in net profit for 2025, about $3 billion below the $13 billion it booked in 2024, with figures verified in a BDO-prepared report. The company said direct exposure to U.S. Treasuries surpassed $122 billion, total assets rose by $49.17 billion year over year, and roughly $50 billion in new USDt was issued over the past twelve months.

On 31 January 2026, ARK Invest's tokenization research indicated that RWAs scale fastest where structures are simple and liquid. By end-2025, public-chain RWA value reached roughly $19 billion, with commodities growing over 60% QoQ to about $3.5 billion. The report points to tokenized money as the next unlock for fully on-chain markets.

Key players in the Ripple-backed XRPL ecosystem are preparing an XLS-66 lending upgrade on testnet, aiming to unlock institutional DeFi strategies via single-asset vaults and fixed-rate loans. Evernorth plans to center its XRP treasury strategy on the upcoming lending protocol, while RLUSD’s supply has climbed above $1 billion even as XRPL’s DeFi TVL has fallen to about $60 million. Large XRP holders show mixed signals, with +1 million XRP wallets returning to accumulation as the token trades around $1.7 amid easing but still net selling whale flows.

Tether said in a Friday BDO-prepared report that 2025 net profit exceeded $10 billion, about 23% below the $13 billion recorded in 2024. The filing showed direct U.S. Treasury holdings above $122 billion and $50 billion of new USDt issued over 12 months, as demand moved outside traditional banking.

Avalanche's RWA total value locked stood at $1.3 billion, with subnet architecture and compliance features attracting institutional participation. In Q4 2025, BlackRock expanded its $500 million BUIDL fund on Avalanche, while daily C‑Chain transactions reached 2.1 million amid growing RWAs, gaming, and enterprise activity.

The U.S. OCC granted Nubank conditional authority to organize a national bank 121 days after its September 30, 2025 application. Regulators set 12 months to complete capitalization and 18 months to launch, alongside separate authorizations from the FDIC and Federal Reserve. The charter would enable deposits, cards, lending, and federally supervised digital asset custody.