Stablecoin payments firm RedotPay has raised $107 million in a Series B round led by Goodwater Capital, taking its total funding for 2025 to $194 million. The company plans to use the capital for acquisitions, additional licensing, compliance expansion and hiring as it pushes into new markets and broadens its payments products.

Sberbank is piloting DeFi tools and expanding regulated crypto-linked investments, with total issuance around 1.5 billion rubles. Executives outlined the approach at the "FI Day. AI & Blockchain" conference in Moscow, while the bank engages the Bank of Russia and Rosfinmonitoring on qualified investor access to digital assets.

On Monday, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Attorney General Pam Bondi to confirm any ongoing probes into decentralized exchanges such as PancakeSwap and Uniswap, and requested a response by Jan. 12. Her letter coincided with Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott delaying a markup of the Responsible Financial Innovation Act to 2026.

Aave’s founder Stani Kulechov confirmed this week that the U.S. SEC has closed its four-year investigation into the protocol without recommending enforcement. Shortly after, a new governance proposal from BGD Labs co-founder Ernesto Boado asked for AAVE token holders to move the Aave brand, domains, social channels, and developer gateways into a DAO-controlled legal entity. If approved, this shift could mark one of DeFi’s most far-reaching decentralization restructurings by redefining who owns and steers the protocol’s public-facing infrastructure.

During the holiday period, scammers intensify phishing, fake wallet apps, bogus presales and romance schemes to exploit distracted crypto users and the irreversibility of blockchain transfers. They also run impersonation, recovery and holiday-themed token scams, sometimes aided by AI voice cloning and malicious SDKs that steal wallet phrases. Users can reduce risk by relying on official apps and links, protecting keys, using strong security tools and carefully verifying offers, charities and giveaways.

On Tuesday, the Canton Network announced that World Liberty Financial will deploy the USD1 stablecoin on Canton to support compliant, privacy‑enabled onchain finance for institutions. According to CoinGecko, USD1 has surpassed $2 billion in market cap and is fully reserved and redeemable 1:1, with custody and issuance handled by BitGo entities.

Singapore-based StraitsX plans to extend its XSGD and XUSD stablecoins to Solana by early 2026. The move targets automated payments and onchain SGD–USD exchange, with the pair having processed over $18 billion in onchain transactions. StraitsX operates under MAS oversight and is exploring a consumer pilot with Grab.

Crypto.com has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre to research how distributed ledger technology can be applied to global commodities trading and settlement. The collaboration will assess tokenized commodities listings, custody models, and liquidity tools across sectors such as precious metals, diamonds, energy, and agriculture, while also adding education programs and running in parallel with Crypto.com's separate expansion into prediction-based market intelligence.