At 13:04 London time on Friday, the FTSE 100 crossed 10,000, touching 10,046.25 after a 1.2% intraday rise. The UK benchmark climbed 22% in 2025, its strongest annual performance since 2009, led by banks and miners, and it outpaced the Stoxx 600 and the S&P 500. European indices started 2026 higher, while sterling traded near $1.3447.

Tesla’s European performance deteriorated in December 2025, with France deliveries at 1,942 (-66%) and Sweden down 71%. Norway bucked the trend with 5,679 registrations, up nearly 90%, while analysts see Q4 global deliveries declining 11–15%. Across the first eleven months, battery‑electric registrations rose 27% as Tesla’s fell 28%.

Ethereum Foundation co-director Tomasz Stańczak said in a recent interview that 2026 priorities include faster finality and institutional privacy, backed by a 50‑person privacy cluster and a six‑month roadmap launched in 2025. The push builds on tools like Kohaku and protocols such as Railgun, with Vitalik Buterin urging further progress toward private, censorship‑resistant DeFi.

On January 1, 2026, Bloomberg Senior Commodity Strategist Mike McGlone outlined a base-case scenario of heightened market stress, comparing Donald Trump’s presidential timing to Herbert Hoover’s and calling for a third down year for U.S. stocks since 2008. He argued that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies likely topped out, seeing a move to $50,000 as more probable than a surge above $100,000, while also expecting gold’s 2025 outperformance to fade and U.S. T-bonds to take over as the main source of alpha.

As 2026 trading begins, Delphi Digital reports that crypto investors are grappling with a "token identity crisis" as assets increasingly resemble equity, governance tools, or customer acquisition incentives. Securitize's IPO plans, MetaDAO's ownership tokens, Uniswap's fee switch, and CAC-style distribution models such as Worldcoin illustrate this shift, while regulatory moves in the US and Europe aim to clarify rules for institutions. Around $2.2 billion in Bitcoin and Ethereum options are set to expire, with Bitcoin trading near $88,970 and option positioning suggesting expectations for a possible move back above $90,000.

Turkmenistan has legalized cryptocurrency mining and trading under a licensing regime, with exchanges and miners supervised by the central bank. The legislation was signed in late November and came into force this week, while cryptocurrencies remain excluded as legal tender. The policy aims to diversify the gas‑dependent economy without loosening state control.

On December 30, Grayscale Investments filed a Form S-1 to convert its over-the-counter Bittensor Trust into a spot ETF on NYSE Arca under ticker GTAO. As of December 31, the trust held $7.97 million in digital assets, traded on OTCQX with 1.88 million shares, a 2.5% fee, and 0.0192 TAO per share.

According to CoinGlass figures cited by Ted Pillows, Ethereum logged losses in nine of twelve months in 2025, its most persistent slump since 2018. As of early January 2026, ETH trades near $3,020, up 1.6% on the day and down 11.2% year over year, with technicians eyeing $3,000 and the 200-day average.