Circle Internet Group plans to spend 2026 strengthening its payments network and Arc, its institution-oriented layer-1 blockchain, to support broader corporate and institutional stablecoin adoption. The company aims to move Arc from testnet to production and extend the reach of USDC, EURC, USYC and partner-issued stablecoins across more chains while simplifying their everyday use.

In 2025, Bybit's trading volume climbed to a total of $1.5 trillion and its market share rose to 8.1%, even after a $1.5 billion hack in February. CoinGecko's report added that average trading volumes across the top 10 exchanges increased by 7.6% over the year, while Binance remained the largest exchange with $7.3 trillion in volume.

Ether balances on centralized exchanges have fallen from 12.31 million tokens in July to 8.15 million, while the price has traded in a tight range around the $2,800–$3,000 level. At the same time, about 3.6 million ETH are queued for staking with an estimated 63-day wait, and total staked Ether has climbed to over 36 million tokens. Large holders such as BitMine have now locked more than 2.5 million ETH, and some staking wallets have recently withdrawn over 26,000 tokens from Binance.

In its 2026 crypto crime report released on Wednesday, TRM Labs said the use of large language models in scams increased fivefold in 2025. It reported $35 billion in crypto was sent to scammer addresses last year, down from $38 billion in 2024, while illicit wallets received about $158 billion and the illicit share fell to 1.2%.

Santiment said in an X post on Tuesday that social chatter around silver and gold has outpaced crypto on most days this month. According to TradingView, silver set a new all-time high just over $117 on Tuesday before pulling back, while Google Trends shows search peaks of 100 for crypto on Jan. 21 and silver on Jan. 22.

Bitcoin services firm River reports that 60% of the top 25 banks operating in the United States have either begun offering or announced plans to launch Bitcoin-related products such as trading or custody. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, reflecting on meetings at the World Economic Forum in Davos held from Jan. 19 to Jan. 23, said most banking CEOs he spoke with were supportive of crypto, while several major institutions including JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Citigroup are exploring or providing institutional crypto services.

Bitcoin’s network hashrate fell more than 40% to 663 EH/s over a two-day period as a major winter storm hit the United States, before rebounding to around 854 EH/s on Monday. Mining firms including Abundant Mines and large listed operators cut output, with some daily production dropping from 45 BTC to 7 BTC, while the US remains the top contributor to global hashrate at close to 38%.

AccuWeather said on Thursday a winter system could stretch 1,800 miles from far west Texas to the mid-Atlantic and impact up to 60 million people, raising the likelihood that US Bitcoin miners will cut load. Bitdeer said it does not expect major interruptions and can reduce consumption if asked, while estimates put US miners at nearly 38% of global hashrate.

Layer-1 protocol Saga paused its Ethereum-compatible SagaEVM chainlet on Wednesday following a $7 million exploit. Its dollar-pegged stablecoin fell to $0.75 around 10:16 pm UTC, and TVL slid roughly 55% from over $37 million to $16 million. The team says the network remains sound and has begun blacklisting the attacker's address.