Electric Coin Company, a core development team for the Zcash network, announced its departure from Bootstrap's governance structure after a dispute over mission alignment and legal constraints. ZEC initially slumped by 22% on the news but later recovered about 10% as the team pledged to form a new company and introduced plans for a new wallet.

Bitcoin dropped from $94.7K to $90K mid‑week as sentiment turned to fear, while spot BTC ETFs saw $729 million net outflows on January 6–7 after inflows in the first two days of 2026. On January 8, Asian equities fell over 1%, BTC slipped 1.4%, and holding the $89.2K 50‑day MA is pivotal, with recovery hinging on reclaiming the $99.1K short‑term holder cost basis.

Alex Thorn of Galaxy Research said there is a “decent 60%” chance the crypto market structure bill passes, with the Senate Banking Committee markup scheduled for January 15. He cautioned the outcome could shift, while Democratic requests on DeFi compliance and oversight remain sticking points; prediction markets place passage at 79% before 2027 and 49% before May.

On 2 January, Jupiter Co-Founder and CTO Siong Ong said the Solana-based DeFi super-app may wind down its JUP token buyback program after spending over $70 million with limited price impact. Launched in mid-February 2025, the buybacks preceded a 300% rally but JUP later fell from $1.8 to $0.2, leaving the community divided between redirecting revenue to stakers and concerns over long-term product growth.

Bitcoin has trailed recent rallies in traditional havens like silver and gold, even as silver briefly hit a new all‑time high of $83 while BTC stayed below $90K. Analyst Garret Bullish, known as the White House whale, now argues that metals have topped and that capital is shifting into crypto, backing his view with $10 billion in positions across BTC, ETH, and SOL and a recent $70 million gain. Despite a $458 million weekly uptick in BTC ETF demand and easing gold ETF inflows around 28 December to 2 January, inflows into both assets have generally declined since November, leaving the upcoming MSCI and Fed decisions in January as potential catalysts for BTC’s next major move.

Mining executive Frank Giustra said Bitcoin could trade lower in 2026 if corporate treasuries unwind their holdings. Grayscale's 2026 outlook argues any unwind would have limited market impact, while Polymarket assigns a 75% chance to an MSCI delisting by Q1 2026 and one trader highlights $74k as a potential area where the correction may ease.

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.

Lighter, a privacy-focused perpetual DEX on Ethereum, saw about $250 million withdrawn from the platform a day after its LIT token generation event, with net outflows near $101 million. Perpetual trading volumes on Lighter dropped from $66 billion to $31 billion between late November and late December, while LIT's price slid 32% from $3.30 to $2.20 before rebounding to $2.60 amid mixed analyst views and slightly bearish derivatives positioning.

In 2025, Pumpfun’s PUMP token on Solana fell 78%, while a 6‑month whale holder shifted 750 million PUMP worth $1.47 million, locking in a 51% loss. Despite weekly buybacks consuming all protocol revenue and a single 1.46 billion PUMP buyback, speculative interest plunged 85% as Open Interest slid from $1 billion to $142 million, leaving the 16% price recovery and MACD golden cross dependent on reclaiming the 50-day Moving Average.