Gold cleared the $5,500-per-ounce mark this week, and crowds in Shanghai moved to sell bars, jewelry, and heirlooms as prices briefly set an all-time high of $5,594.82 before falling more than 5% to $5,109.62. Local sellers cited a 100-gram bar fetching about 122,000 yuan ($17,560), with some jewelry reselling for 10,000 yuan ($1,439).

Binance used Data Privacy Week in Kenya to run a safety campaign for boda boda riders, combining road safety gear distribution with training on digital asset protection. The exchange’s Africa team linked helmets and reflective equipment to concepts like encryption and multi-factor authentication, while executives reiterated plans to expand tokenized stock offerings alongside other real-world asset initiatives.

On January 26, 2026, Avalanche reported that VanEck’s AVAX spot ETF (ticker VAVX) would begin trading on Nasdaq, coinciding with an AVAX price rebound of more than 1%. The fund plans to stake a portion of its AVAX, returning rewards to shareholders after fees, while VanEck is waiving sponsor fees up to $500 million in assets or until 2/28/26. AVAX is currently trading near $11.7, with analysts watching key price levels between $11 and $14.80 as on-chain activity and address growth accelerate.

BlackRock filed an S-1 on January 23, 2026 for its iShares Bitcoin Premium Income ETF, advancing plans for a Bitcoin income-focused product under the iShares brand. The fund aims to generate an annual premium yield of about 8–12% by using a covered call strategy on Bitcoin and IBIT shares, while BlackRock’s existing IBIT spot ETF remains the largest U.S. Bitcoin ETF by assets despite recent outflows. Bitcoin is trading below $90,000, with technical analysis indicating potential downside toward last April’s lows around $74,000 or even $68,000 on the weekly chart.

On January 26 2026, Virtune announced the launch of its physically backed Virtune BNB ETP on Nasdaq Stockholm, offering 1:1 exposure to BNB and charging a 1.95% management fee. The SEK‑denominated product adds to Virtune's lineup of over 20 crypto ETPs, while a 10:1 share split for Virtune Bitcoin Prime ETP is scheduled for February 2 2026. Despite growing institutional interest in BNB, the token has dropped over 6% in the past week and about 10% in the last six months.

On Friday January 23, XRPL Commons completed its regular amendment vote and supported the XLS-80 Permissioned Domains and XLS-81 Permissioned DEX proposals following successful Devnet testing. XLS-80 has already surpassed the validator backing needed for XRP Ledger integration, while XLS-81 remains in the voting phase and below its threshold. The group also withdrew support for the XLS-56 Batch Transactions amendment due to a discovered signature bug, and kept its position unchanged on the XLS-85 token escrow upgrade, which still requires further testing.

On January 26, 2026, Ripple said it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Jeel, Riyad Bank’s innovation arm, to pilot blockchain applications in Saudi Arabia. The agreement will examine cross-border payments, digital asset custody, and potential tokenization use cases aligned with the Kingdom’s fintech goals.

In the week ending January 23, XRP spot ETFs recorded about $40 million in net outflows. On January 26, 2026, Santiment reported the token's 30-day MVRV at -5.7%, indicating undervaluation as price traded between $1.88 and $1.95. Binance's reserves rose to roughly 2.74 billion XRP, adding near-term supply pressure.

On January 25, 2026, Matcha Meta warned that users who disabled One-Time Approvals may have been exposed through its SwapNet integration. By January 26, 2026, the platform said it was investigating while about $16.8 million had been drained via direct token approvals, with SwapNet contracts temporarily disabled and funds moved from Base to Ethereum.