On Thursday, crypto exchange Gemini said it will exit the United Kingdom, European Union and Australian markets while cutting its workforce by 25%. The firm plans to concentrate on expanding in the United States and scaling its Gemini Predictions platform, which has attracted over 10,000 users and $24 million in trading volume since launching in December 2025.

The Aster decentralized exchange and perpetual futures platform announced on Thursday that its new layer-1 blockchain testnet is open to all users, with a mainnet release targeted for Q1 2026. The project, which rebranded in March 2025 into a perpetual futures DEX and competes with Hyperliquid, plans to roll out fiat on-ramps, open-source its code and expand token utility as perp DEX volumes surged into the trillions of dollars in 2025.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Congress on Wednesday that the government will keep Bitcoin seized in asset cases but will not instruct private banks to buy BTC during a downturn. He said $500 million in retained BTC has grown to over $15 billion, and acquisitions must remain budget‑neutral under a March 2025 executive order.

Fireblocks said Wednesday it will integrate Stacks, a Bitcoin-aligned DeFi layer, to offer institutional lending and yield opportunities. Leveraging Stacks' roughly 29-second blocks helps bypass Bitcoin's ~10-minute interval while still settling to the BTC ledger for finality. Fireblocks expects the rollout in early 2026, without a specific launch date.

Foundry USA, operator of the world's largest Bitcoin mining pool, has reduced its hashrate by about 60% since Friday in response to winter storm Fern sweeping across the United States. The pool's computing power reportedly dropped by nearly 200 EH/s, slowing temporary block production to around 12 minutes while it still maintains about 23% of global Bitcoin mining pool hashrate. The storm has caused widespread power outages for over 1 million residents and prompted other US-based mining pools to curb energy use to ease pressure on the grid.

Michael Saylor, co-founder of Strategy, argued that "ambitious opportunists" pushing Bitcoin protocol changes represent the network's greatest risk. His remarks reignited disputes over non-monetary uses like NFTs, references to BIP-110, and readiness for quantum threats, as figures including Adam Back and Nic Carter voiced opposing views on post-quantum migration.

Tezos, a layer-1 proof-of-stake blockchain launched in 2018, has activated its 20th major protocol upgrade, named Tallinn. The upgrade reduces base layer block times to 6 seconds, lowers storage costs, and enables all validators to attest to every block using BLS signatures, improving finality and efficiency.

Pierre Rochard of Strive argues that US tax rules, rather than scaling technology, are the main barrier to using BTC for everyday payments. In December 2025, the Bitcoin Policy Institute warned about the absence of a de minimis exemption, and a July 2025 bill proposed a $300 threshold with a $5,000 annual cap.

The Nietzschean Penguin (PENGUIN) memecoin on Solana surged roughly 564% in value after a White House post on X featuring Donald Trump and a penguin went viral. Its market cap was about $387,000 before the post, then 24‑hour trading volume reached $244 million and market value climbed to around $136 million with the token trading near $0.13.