cryptexa

Changpeng Zhao said that the lack of privacy may be slowing the adoption of cryptocurrency as a means of everyday payments.

Imagine a company paying employees’ salaries in crypto directly on the blockchain. With the current level of transparency, anyone can see how much each employee earns just by looking at the sender’s address.

📊 crypto prices: BTC ≈$68,388 ETH ≈$1,956 SOL ≈$84,92 BNB ≈$612 XRP ≈$1,45 Market cap ≈$2,34T Fear & Greed Index: 12 ("Extreme fear") Altseason Index: 30

Nick Carter, a partner at Castle Island Ventures, warned that if Bitcoin developers do not urgently adopt quantum-resistant cryptography, it could lead to a “corporate takeover” of the blockchain. In his view, large institutional investors may lose patience with developers due to delays in addressing the issue. Carter drew an analogy with BlackRock, saying the firm would “have no choice” given the sheer scale of capital it has invested in the asset. “I think the developers will continue to do nothing. […] Institutional players will likely get tired of this, fire the team, and hire a new one,” Carter added.

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, said he is beginning to feel “concerned” about the direction in which prediction markets are developing. In his view, they should evolve into platforms for hedging risks related to price volatility faced by consumers. At the moment, however, such platforms are becoming “too closely aligned” with “unhealthy” products focused on short-term betting and speculative behavior rather than long-term value creation, the developer believes. Instead, blockchain-based prediction markets combined with AI language models should become general-purpose hedging mechanisms that help provide price stability for consumers. “There are price indices for all major categories of goods and services that people buy, with physical goods and services in different regions treated as separate categories, and there are prediction markets for each category,” Buterin explained.

📊 crypto prices: BTC ≈$70,263 ETH ≈$2,088 SOL ≈$89,71 BNB ≈$635 XRP ≈$1,57 Market cap ≈$2,41T Fear & Greed Index: 13 ("Extreme fear") Altseason Index: 36

Outflows from U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs extended for the fourth consecutive week. Over the past five trading days, investors withdrew nearly $360 million from the products. Total assets under management (AUM) declined to $87 billion — the lowest level since Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election in early November 2024. Ethereum ETFs are showing a similar negative trend. Over the week, the products lost $161 million in capital, with AUM falling to $11.7 billion — a level last seen in July of the previous year. Against this backdrop, exchange-traded products based on Solana, XRP, and Dogecoin attracted $13.2 million, $7.7 million, and $0.25 million respectively.

📊 crypto prices: BTC ≈$68,922 ETH ≈$2,053 SOL ≈$84,97 BNB ≈$618 XRP ≈$1,41 Market cap ≈$2,36T Fear & Greed Index: 11 ("Extreme fear") Altseason Index: 29

In France, an armed manhunt targeted the head of Binance France. Three masked men broke into a house in Val-de-Marne searching for the executive. He was not at home, and the attackers fled with two phones. A few hours later, they assaulted a woman at another address, reportedly trying to reach another crypto entrepreneur. However, they targeted the wrong house. The suspects were later tracked through surveillance cameras and arrested at a train station in Lyon.

Leadership changes have taken place at the Ethereum Foundation. Tomasz Stańczak has stepped down from his role as Co-Executive Director. Bastian Aue has been appointed as Interim Co-Executive Director of the EF.

A Senate committee in the state of Indiana has approved bill HB1042, allowing public pension funds to invest in cryptocurrencies.

The market capitalization of tokenized gold has increased by more than $2 billion since the beginning of 2026, surpassing $6 billion. The leaders are Tether Gold (XAUT) and Paxos Gold (PAXG), which together account for about 96.7% of the market. Tokenized gold is backed by more than 1.2 million ounces of physical gold stored in vaults.

Coinbase reported losses for the fourth quarter, and the company’s shares hit a two-year low in after-hours trading. Total revenue fell by 5% to $1.8 billion. Trading revenue declined by 6% to $983 million, while subscription and services revenue decreased by 3% to $727 million. Net loss reached $667 million.

📊 crypto prices: BTC ≈$66,509 ETH ≈$1,945 SOL ≈$78,93 BNB ≈$607 XRP ≈$1,36 Market cap ≈$2,28T Fear & Greed Index: 8 ("Extreme fear") Altseason Index: 30

Tether Gold introduced Scudo — a new unit for measuring the value of on-chain gold. Scudo becomes the “gold penny,” equal to one troy ounce of gold, simplifying the use, tracking, and transactions of Tether Gold (XAU₮). This means XAU₮ users can now send and receive gold in convenient, independent smaller units.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong sold more than 1.5 million shares of the exchange, worth approximately $550 million, between April 2025 and January 2026. The sales were made on a fairly regular basis — typically in batches of 25,000–40,000 shares, occasionally larger.

BitMine CEO Tom Lee expects Ethereum to recover in the near term. According to his observations, since 2018 the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization has already shown eight strong V-shaped reversals following major corrections. Despite weak price performance, interest in ETH staking remains high — the queue has reached a record 71 days, with a historic 4 million ETH waiting to be deposited into the smart contract address.

Binance acquired 4,545 BTC for $304.58 million, completing its $1 billion Bitcoin purchase.

Coinbase has launched infrastructure for creating wallets for AI agents called Agentic Wallets. The tool enables AI agents to independently store funds, make payments, and generate income.

📊 crypto prices: BTC ≈$67,442 ETH ≈$1,965 SOL ≈$80,46 BNB ≈$614 XRP ≈$1,37 Market cap ≈$2,3T Fear & Greed Index: 8 ("Extreme fear") Altseason Index: 31

TON Wallet has launched cross-chain deposits in Telegram in partnership with MoonPay. The update allows users to top up balances with assets from the most popular blockchains — without additional bridges, swaps, or manual conversions. Currently, users can deposit USDC or USDT from the Ethereum, Solana, TRON, BSC, Polygon, Arbitrum, and Base networks. Assets are automatically converted into USDT on TON at a 1:1 rate. Deposits in BTC, ETH, and SOL are credited to the wallet in the equivalent amount of Toncoin. In the near future, developers plan to add withdrawals of TON-based USDT into stablecoins on other major blockchains.