Wallet

On Friday, Betterment customers reported an unauthorized notification urging them to send up to $10,000 in Bitcoin and Ethereum for a promise of triple returns within a three-hour window. Betterment later said the message mimicked an official promotion but was sent via a third-party communications platform and was not a real offer. The incident coincides with ongoing social engineering and wallet-drain campaigns targeting EVM-compatible networks through phishing and malicious extensions.

Zcash developers who left Electric Coin Company plan to build a new Zcash-focused startup and a wallet code‑named cashZ using the Zashi codebase. Former ECC CEO Josh Swihart said they will not launch a new token and remain focused on ZEC. Meanwhile, dev activity has slumped, and recent market swings have tested the project.

Dogecoin futures on BitMEX saw a sharp 4,858% jump in volume to $77.61 million, while the spot price pulled back after a strong start to 2026. DOGE traded around $0.14, posting a modest 0.31% daily gain and 8.36% rise over the week, as traders watched key resistance levels and moving averages. At the same time, House of Doge outlined 2026 expansion plans, including RWA initiatives in Japan and new payment products such as a rewards debit card and embeddable wallets.

Former Zcash developers announced the cashZ wallet on January 8, 2026, a day after the entire Electric Coin Company team resigned. Built on the Zashi codebase, the wallet is slated to launch in a few weeks with easy migration for Zashi users. The group said it remains focused on Zcash development and is not introducing a new coin.

Chainalysis reported that illicit cryptocurrency addresses received at least $154 billion in 2025, a 162% increase from 2024, as sanctioned state actors expanded their on-chain activity. Stablecoins made up the bulk of these flows, while illicit transactions still accounted for under 1% of total crypto usage, even as security firm PeckShield flagged rising exploits and social engineering scams.

Developers who left the Electric Coin Company on Wednesday are preparing to release a new Zcash wallet called cashZ, built on the existing Zashi codebase. The team plans to launch the wallet within a few weeks and enable seamless migration for Zashi users, while emphasizing a return to cypherpunk ideals and faster scaling for Zcash.

In 2026, Morgan Stanley plans to introduce bitcoin, ether, and solana trading on its E-Trade platform and launch a proprietary digital wallet, according to its head of wealth management. The firm has also filed for BTC, ETH, and SOL-based ETFs and progressively opened spot bitcoin ETF access from select high-net-worth clients to all client accounts, including retirement plans. These moves build on prior infrastructure investments and reflect a broader shift among major Wall Street banks toward digital assets.

On January 8, 2026, Polygon Labs introduced the Open Money Stack to support regulated stablecoin payments and connect wallets, fiat access, compliance and onchain settlement. The stack targets fragmentation with a single integration for cross-chain transfers and on/off-ramps. Polygon cited a three-year high $3.3 billion stablecoin supply and more than $2 trillion in transfers over six years.

Zscaler ThreatLabz reported three malicious Bitcoin-themed npm packages that installed a remote access trojan dubbed NodeCordRAT. The packages bitcoin-main-lib, bitcoin-lib-js, and bip40 were removed from the npm registry in November 2025 after accumulating over 3,400 downloads, and the malware targets Chrome credentials, .env tokens, and MetaMask wallet secrets.

Digital asset infrastructure provider Fireblocks has acquired crypto accounting and tax compliance platform TRES for $130 million to enhance its institutional product suite. The deal is aimed at helping clients manage audit-ready, tax-compliant records as stablecoin settlements reach hundreds of billions of dollars each month and more enterprises move treasury flows on-chain. TRES will continue operating as a standalone product while its infrastructure is integrated into Fireblocks' stack.