The Nietzschean Penguin (PENGUIN) memecoin on Solana surged roughly 564% in value after a White House post on X featuring Donald Trump and a penguin went viral. Its market cap was about $387,000 before the post, then 24‑hour trading volume reached $244 million and market value climbed to around $136 million with the token trading near $0.13.

Support for Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 110 has reached 2.38% of the network, with 583 of 24,481 nodes signaling. The temporary soft fork would enforce consensus caps of 34 bytes for transaction outputs and 83 bytes for OP_RETURN data for one year, with potential extension. Debate intensified around Bitcoin Core version 30 after the OP_RETURN limit was removed in October 2025.

Anthony Scaramucci argued that the CLARITY Act's expanded ban on yield-bearing stablecoins makes the US dollar less competitive than China's interest-paying digital yuan. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and other industry executives also criticized the restriction, claiming it protects traditional banks and could undermine the role of US dollar stablecoins in global markets. Separately, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan cautioned that stablecoins may trigger up to $6 trillion in deposit outflows from the banking system.

Market analyst Michaël van de Poppe views the CLARITY bill’s failure to advance in Congress as positive for crypto markets. Coinbase withdrew support on Wednesday, while CEO Brian Armstrong flagged tokenized stocks and yield-bearing stablecoin concerns and later denied reported White House tensions on Saturday. Negotiations to refine the bill are continuing.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong rejected claims that the White House is considering withdrawing support for the CLARITY crypto market structure bill and denied that the administration is upset with the exchange. He said the administration asked Coinbase to find a compromise with banks and noted that industry groups are developing proposals to address community bank concerns and stablecoin yield restrictions. Armstrong expects a revised bill markup in the coming weeks after the Senate Banking Committee delayed its vote to allow further negotiations.

Market analyst Michaël van de Poppe says Ethereum's ETH-BTC ratio bottomed in April 2025 around 0.017, then advanced to 0.043 before easing near 0.034. He points to rising stablecoin supply, tokenized RWAs, developer activity, and strong transfer volumes as supportive, while ETH briefly tested $3,300 above its 365-day average before pulling back to about $3,100.

India's Financial Intelligence Unit introduced stricter onboarding checks for crypto platforms, including live selfie verification and collection of location data. Income Tax Department officials argue that decentralization and cross‑border features hinder tax enforcement, while gains from crypto sales remain taxed at 30% under current law.

According to Arkham Intelligence, BitMine Immersion Technologies staked 86,400 ETH across four transactions on Saturday, worth about $268.7 million, lifting its staked total to 1,080,512 ETH, Lookonchain said. Market analyst Nic Puckrin estimated the position at roughly $3.3 billion and a 2.81% yield, or about $94.4 million in annual ETH.

The Bitcoin network's mining difficulty slipped to 146.4 trillion on Thursday in the first adjustment of 2026. CoinWarz estimates the next change will occur on Jan 22, 2026 at 04:08:12 AM UTC, lifting difficulty from 146.47 T to 148.20 T. Average block times are 9.88 minutes, slightly under the 10‑minute target.