A severe winter storm in the US between 23 and 25 January drove a roughly 40% drop in Bitcoin hashrate, with about 455 EH/s going offline as many miners shut down operations. Large mining firms in Texas used demand-response and curtailment programs to free grid capacity, slowing block times to around 12 minutes but underscoring Bitcoin mining's role as a flexible energy load.

About 72% of Indonesia's licensed crypto exchanges ended 2025 with losses, despite a user base topping 20 million. Transaction value fell to IDR 482.23 trillion from 650 trillion in 2024, as liquidity moved to global platforms and competition intensified with entries from Robinhood, Bybit and Binance.

Over the last 24 hours, the crypto market's total capitalisation has dropped by 6%, with Bitcoin and Ethereum falling to two‑month lows and pressure spreading to related equities. Strategy shares closed at $143.19, down 9.63% and at their weakest level since September 2024, while BitMine ended the session at $26.70, losing 9.89% and touching its lowest point since November 2025. Both companies, which hold large Bitcoin and Ethereum reserves, now face mounting scrutiny over treasury strategies that are highly sensitive to market volatility.

OpenAI is reportedly working on a new social platform built around proof-of-personhood to tackle bot activity, exploring biometric verification tools such as Face ID and World's iris-scanning technology. As interest in biometric digital identity rises, the Worldcoin (WLD) token, linked to Sam Altman's World project, surged more than 16% to $0.53 within hours.

On January 28, the U.S. SEC released a Statement on Tokenised Securities clarifying issuer-sponsored, custodial, and synthetic models for tokenized assets. The same day, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev urged real-time, blockchain-based settlement and outlined a shift toward custodial equity tokens for investors, arguing T+1 remains too slow and noting weekends can stretch settlement to four days.

Institutions increasingly treat Bitcoin volatility as manageable, with liquidity now the core execution risk. Market depth at 1% and refill dynamics, alongside intraday cycles, drive costs, while ETFs and stablecoins shape flows. With 30% drops near round numbers, timing and structure matter more than price swings.

On January 10, 2026, Solana's maintainers urged Mainnet-Beta validators to install Agave v3.0.14, and on January 11 early snapshots showed only 18% adoption. On January 16, Anza detailed two flaws in gossip and vote processing disclosed in December 2025, and the Solana Foundation tightened delegation criteria to require specific client versions. On January 19, v3.1.7 reached testnet while v3.0.14 remained the main focus for mainnet.

On 21 January, Senate Agriculture Committee Chair John Boozman published updated language for the Digital Commodity Intermediaries Act and set a 27 January committee markup. The proposal would empower the CFTC to supervise crypto spot-market activity via intermediaries, create a retail user advocate with semi-annual reporting, and fund oversight through industry fees plus an initial $150 million.

Spacecoin's SPACE token climbed 65% after listing on Binance, alongside Season 1 airdrop plans. The team outlined a 2026/01/23 20:00 to 2026/01/30 20:00 (UTC+8) claim window and expanded multichain support across Creditcoin, Ethereum, BSC and Base. At writing it traded near $0.021, below a $0.026 launch peak.