Ripple Markets UK Ltd. has been added to the UK FCA register under anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing rules and separately obtained Electronic Money Institution authorization, enabling a broader range of regulated crypto and payment services in the country. XRP traded around $2.1 after the announcement, having risen more than 10% over the previous week, while Ripple also advanced plans for a US national trust bank charter and secured approval for its RLUSD stablecoin for institutional use in Abu Dhabi.

A newly revealed bug in Babylon's Bitcoin staking protocol could let malicious validators omit block hash data from BLS vote extensions, threatening consensus during epoch transitions. Developers warned that the flaw may cause validator crashes and slow block production if abused by multiple participants, even though no exploitation has been observed so far. The disclosure comes as Babylon expands its Bitcoin-native DeFi ambitions, backed by a recent $15 million BABY token investment from a16z Crypto and a partnership with Aave Labs.

Chainalysis reported that illicit cryptocurrency addresses received at least $154 billion in 2025, a 162% increase from 2024, as sanctioned state actors expanded their on-chain activity. Stablecoins made up the bulk of these flows, while illicit transactions still accounted for under 1% of total crypto usage, even as security firm PeckShield flagged rising exploits and social engineering scams.

India's Income Tax Department recently told a parliamentary finance committee that crypto use, especially via offshore exchanges, private wallets, and DeFi, is making income detection and tax enforcement harder. Officials warned that anonymous, borderless transfers can bypass regulated intermediaries, even as India maintains a 30% tax on digital asset profits and a 1% tax deducted at source on every transfer. The Reserve Bank of India, in its latest Financial Stability Report, also argued that fast-growing private stablecoins could threaten financial stability and reiterated its preference for central bank digital currencies.

Morgan Stanley has filed with the US SEC to launch a spot Bitcoin ETF and a separate Solana fund, a move experts describe as a strategic push into crypto rather than a pure asset-gathering play. ProCap CIO Jeff Park argues the initiative could deliver reputational and long-term benefits through ETRADE and institutional channels, even if inflows lag top rivals. The filing comes as US spot Bitcoin ETFs recently swung from early-2026 net inflows to a single-day outflow of $486.08 million, underscoring volatile investor demand.

CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju expects Bitcoin to trade largely sideways through the first quarter of 2026 as capital inflows into the asset market slow and funds shift toward equities and precious metals. Around the time of his comments, Bitcoin was trading near $90,900, more than 2% below its daily level and off a weekly peak around $94,400. Despite weak sentiment and fears of a muted start to 2026, spot Bitcoin ETFs have recorded strong net inflows in the opening days of the year, and long-term bulls, including Tim Draper and Bitwise's Ryan Rasmussen, still anticipate new highs.

On Monday, the Community Bankers Council of the American Bankers Association asked the Senate to amend the GENIUS Act to prevent indirect stablecoin rewards via exchanges and partners. The group warned such incentives could pull deposits from local banks and constrain lending. Crypto industry associations and Coinbase countered that tighter rules would hinder innovation and misinterpret the law.

Ethereum activated its second Blob Parameter-Only hard fork at 1:01:11 UTC on Wednesday, lifting the blob limit from 15 to 21 and the blob target from 10 to 14. The upgrade expands data capacity for rollups while aiming to protect mainnet performance, with developers discussing a gas limit increase to 80 million and a 2026 Glamsterdam fork to drive further scalability.

A wallet labeled 8BGiMZ turned a $321 stake into about $2.18 million within 11 days on a Solana memecoin with ticker 114514. On-chain activity shows 45.58 million tokens were accumulated via small swaps before a near 700% rally lifted volume above $20 million and pushed FDV close to $50 million.