On Jan. 14, OCC head Jonathan Gould rejected Senator Elizabeth Warren's request to halt the review of World Liberty Financial's national trust bank charter application. WLF filed the application on Jan. 7 to broaden its crypto services and handle its USD1 stablecoin in-house, while the OCC said the process will follow existing rules and remain free from political or personal financial influence.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s civil action against Gemini Trust Company and Genesis Global Capital over the Gemini Earn program has been dismissed with prejudice in the Southern District of New York, pending a federal judge’s approval of the joint stipulation. The regulator accepted the outcome after Gemini agreed to contribute up to $40 million to support a full in-kind recovery of Gemini Earn investors’ crypto assets through the Genesis bankruptcy, while Genesis separately agreed to a $21 million settlement with the SEC.

ARK Invest's "Big Ideas 2026" report projects the crypto market could reach $28 trillion by 2030, with Bitcoin potentially representing around 70% of that value. The firm estimates Bitcoin's price could approach $950,000 to $1 million by 2030 as adoption increases, alongside substantial growth from DeFi, stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Circle announced a grant to the United Nations’ Digital Hub of Treasury Solutions to enhance digital financial infrastructure for humanitarian payments. The initiative builds on a 2022 pilot with USDC for displaced Ukrainians and aims to make every donor dollar more efficient amid $38 billion in yearly aid still routed through legacy systems.

On Tuesday, Jameson Lopp shared data indicating X posts mentioning "Bitcoin" dropped 32% to 96 million in 2025 versus 2024. Google Trends also showed waning search interest after November 2024, while sentiment gauges in early 2026, including Santiment and CryptoQuant metrics, pointed to persistent caution despite price gains.

Fundstrat head of research Tom Lee, who also chairs Ethereum treasury firm BitMine, forecasts a "painful" pullback in crypto and equities in 2026 before a strong recovery toward year-end. He still expects Bitcoin to reach a fresh all-time high this year, viewing it as confirmation that the October 10 deleveraging shock is behind the market. Lee and other analysts also see energy, basic materials and metals as potential outperformers in 2026, though some warn of a later sharp correction that could hit crypto even harder.

On Monday, Magic Eden CEO and co-founder Jack Lu said the firm is preparing for a coming "speculation supercycle", as prediction markets posted a record $814.2 million in daily trading volume. Magic Eden will roll out its Dicey crypto casino and sportsbook this quarter and route 15% of platform revenue to ME tokenholders via USDC buybacks and staking rewards. This strategy comes after the NFT market cap dropped from $7.95 billion to $2.5 billion in 2025 but has climbed back above $3 billion in early 2026.

On Friday, Trove said it would shift its planned perps DEX from Hyperliquid to Solana just days before its token generation event. On Monday, the team disclosed it will keep $9,397,403 to continue building, while issuing refunds, and the TROVE token plunged over 95% to $0.0008 within ten minutes of launch.

The Bitcoin network's seven-day average hashrate fell below 1,000 EH/s on Saturday and now sits at 993 EH/s. It is nearly 15% lower than the 1,157 EH/s peak on Oct. 19, as an analyst says some miners are shifting power to AI, even with four difficulty cuts since Nov. 12, 2025 and higher hashprice.