On January 12, 2026, Bakkt Holdings, Inc. said it entered an agreement to acquire Distributed Technologies Research Ltd. in an all‑equity deal. Bakkt will issue Class A stock equal to 31.5% of the "Bakkt Share Number," about 9.1 million shares based on the current figure, and plans a corporate name change to "Bakkt, Inc." on January 22.

Between January 5 and January 11, Strategy reported purchasing an additional 13,627 bitcoin for roughly $1.25 billion at an average cost of $91,519 per BTC, including fees. As of January 11, the company holds 687,410 BTC acquired for about $51.80 billion, funded largely through sales of MSTR common stock and STRC preferred shares under its at-the-market programs.

Standard Chartered is planning to establish a crypto prime brokerage within its wholly owned venture arm SC Ventures, according to people familiar with the matter. The initiative is still at an early discussion stage with no confirmed launch date, and would build on the bank's existing digital asset projects and institutional spot crypto trading services. The bank is also working with Bank Malaysia and AirAsia parent Capital A to explore a ringgit-pegged stablecoin under Malaysia's Digital Asset Innovation Hub framework.

SharpLink (Nasdaq: SBET) said it has moved $170 million in ETH onto Linea, aligning with a $200 million crypto treasury program announced last fall. The structure involves Anchorage Digital, ether.fi and EigenCloud to combine qualified custody with onchain yield tools, signaling a push toward institutional-grade DeFi on Ethereum.

On January 8, the Financial Action Task Force recognized the T3 Financial Crime Unit as a model of public-private collaboration for policing illicit blockchain activity. Launched in September by TRON DAO, Tether and TRM Labs, the unit has supported freezes over $250 million, and the partners report more than $300 million across five continents.

On January 8, 2026, Polygon Labs introduced the Open Money Stack to support regulated stablecoin payments and connect wallets, fiat access, compliance and onchain settlement. The stack targets fragmentation with a single integration for cross-chain transfers and on/off-ramps. Polygon cited a three-year high $3.3 billion stablecoin supply and more than $2 trillion in transfers over six years.

On January 7, 2026, Tether and Rumble (NASDAQ: RUM) announced the launch of Rumble Wallet, a self-custodial crypto wallet integrated directly into the Rumble video platform. The wallet initially supports Tether USD (USDT), Tether Gold (XAUT) and Bitcoin, enabling tipping, peer-to-peer payments and instant creator payouts without traditional intermediaries.

On January 7, 2026, Archax said it partnered with Lloyds Banking Group and the Canton Network to execute the UK’s first Gilt purchase settled with tokenised sterling deposits. The flow used tokenised deposits issued on Canton and a tokenised UK Gilt from Archax, demonstrating interoperability with Lloyds’ traditional accounts.

On January 6, 2026, Tether announced Scudo, a unit of account for Tether Gold (XAUT) intended to streamline pricing, transfers, and everyday use. One Scudo equals one‑thousandth of a troy ounce to reduce awkward decimals and make gold‑denominated payments more intuitive. The company also introduced tooling for self‑custodial wallets supporting XAUT, other stablecoins, and Bitcoin.