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.

Support for Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 110 has reached 2.38% of the network, with 583 of 24,481 nodes signaling. The temporary soft fork would enforce consensus caps of 34 bytes for transaction outputs and 83 bytes for OP_RETURN data for one year, with potential extension. Debate intensified around Bitcoin Core version 30 after the OP_RETURN limit was removed in October 2025.

Anthony Scaramucci argued that the CLARITY Act's expanded ban on yield-bearing stablecoins makes the US dollar less competitive than China's interest-paying digital yuan. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and other industry executives also criticized the restriction, claiming it protects traditional banks and could undermine the role of US dollar stablecoins in global markets. Separately, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan cautioned that stablecoins may trigger up to $6 trillion in deposit outflows from the banking system.