A Polymarket account identified as "0x31a56e" that made roughly $400,000 from a wager on former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro's capture and removal is now inaccessible on the platform. The account had placed about $32,000 on Maduro's ouster and related U.S.-Venezuela conflict markets, and later moved more than $436,000 in USDC from its Polygon address on Jan. 3. Its disappearance, while other user pages remain visible, is intensifying scrutiny over potential insider trading and transparency issues on prediction markets.

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.

Binance has introduced perpetual futures contracts for gold and silver under the tickers XAUUSDT and XAGUSDT, expanding its derivatives offering beyond purely crypto assets. The products, settled in USDT and operating under FSRA oversight in Abu Dhabi’s ADGM, give traders onchain access to precious metals price movements without physical delivery. Other major exchanges already list similar contracts, underlining growing demand for safe-haven exposure via crypto-native infrastructure.

Binance has introduced perpetual futures for gold and silver priced in USDT, giving traders round-the-clock onchain access to the metals’ price movements without owning the underlying assets. The new XAUUSDT and XAGUSDT contracts are regulated under the Abu Dhabi Global Market framework as Binance plans more traditional asset-linked derivatives.

Bernstein's Tuesday research note anticipates a multi-year tokenization "supercycle" beginning in 2026 after a soft end to 2025. The firm reaffirmed Bitcoin targets of $150,000 for 2026 and $200,000 for 2027, and projects stablecoin supply near $420 billion by end-2026, tokenized assets around $80 billion, and prediction market volumes roughly $70 billion.

On Thursday, January 8, nearly $150 million in leveraged crypto long positions were liquidated within a single hour as Bitcoin slid below $90,000. Data shows $88.23 million in longs were cleared around 7:00 a.m. (UTC) and another $57.02 million at 8:00 a.m. (UTC), contributing to $464.44 million in total liquidations over 24 hours that affected more than 137,000 traders. Bitcoin accounted for $66.53 million in wiped positions versus $33.78 million for Ethereum, while the overall crypto market value fell from $3.21 trillion to $3.09 trillion.

Bitcoin's new-year advance stalled after the price fell back under $90,000 following a rejection near $95,000, while its market capitalization slipped to $1.8 trillion and dominance hovered around 57%. Major altcoins also declined, with XRP dropping by more than 6% and Zcash losing over 20% after a developer announced their departure, as the total crypto market cap contracted by roughly $100 billion to $3.170 trillion.

BlackRock accumulated Bitcoin and Ether over a three-day span via ETF-linked wallets, during which both assets advanced before retracing part of their gains. Onchain data indicates inflows of 9,619 BTC and 46,851 ETH from Coinbase Prime-linked addresses into BlackRock's ETF custody wallets. Bitcoin briefly moved above $90,000 and tested the $93,000 to $94,000 range, while Ether climbed past $3,100 toward $3,300 before both cooled off and settled above their initial levels.