Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has shifted away from his earlier view that layer-2 networks should be the main path to scaling Ethereum, arguing many are still controlled by multisig bridges rather than fully inheriting mainnet security. He now favors scaling the Ethereum base layer via higher gas limits and precompiled native rollups, while encouraging L2s such as Arbitrum, Optimism, Base and Starknet to focus on specialized use cases. The comments follow internal discussions among Ethereum developers about mainnet scaling and past proposals targeting up to 10,000 transactions per second.

The ISM Manufacturing PMI rose to 52.6 in January, beating the roughly 48.5 consensus and ending 26 months of contraction. Analysts say the shift could support Bitcoin, which hovered near $78,000 and briefly touched a 10‑month low of $75,442 on Monday.

On Sunday, Strategy executive chairman Michael Saylor hinted the firm added Bitcoin after a more than 13% weekend slide pushed BTC to $75,892, briefly under its $76,040 cost basis before rebounding to $76,765. The drop followed President Donald Trump's Friday nomination of Kevin Warsh; Saylor posted “More Orange” alongside a $55 billion purchases chart.

Donald Trump said he will name his choice for the next Federal Reserve chair, and several outlets reported Kevin Warsh is expected to be the nominee. Prediction markets reflected the shift, with Polymarket moving from 30% to 95% odds for Warsh and Kalshi at 93%, while Rick Rieder fell to 3.4%. Warsh has voiced a more favorable view of Bitcoin, calling it potential market discipline.

During Q4 2025, Avalanche's tokenized real‑world assets climbed 68.6% to over $1.3 billion, aided by the November launch of BlackRock's $500 million BUIDL and a loan tokenization push by FIS and Intain. Despite this, AVAX fell 59% to $12.3 in Q4 and is down another 10.5% in 2026, with VanEck's Avalanche ETF debuting on Monday.

Gold jumped 4.4% on Wednesday, adding about $1.65 trillion to its market value and setting a record above $5,500 with a total cap of $38.77 trillion. The single-day gain nearly equaled Bitcoin's $1.75 trillion market cap, while over five years gold has risen 173% versus Bitcoin's 164%. Bitcoin traded down during the move.

On Jan. 13, Strive completed its acquisition of Semler Scientific and has now used proceeds from a preferred stock sale to retire $110 million, or 92%, of the debt it assumed. The firm also purchased about 334 Bitcoin, taking its holdings to 13,132 BTC valued at $1.17 billion, but its ASST share price still closed 2.23% lower at $0.80 on Wednesday. Public companies now collectively hold about 1.134 million BTC, roughly 5.4% of the total Bitcoin supply.

Nearly four in ten US merchants now accept cryptocurrency at checkout. A survey conducted in October among 619 payment decision-makers reported strong customer interest, with almost nine in ten receiving crypto payment inquiries and 84% expecting crypto payments to become mainstream within five years.

Morgan Stanley has appointed long-time executive Amy Oldenburg as head of digital asset strategy, following its early-2025 filings for spot Bitcoin and Solana ETFs and a staked Ether ETF. The $2 trillion bank is also hiring multiple digital asset roles and preparing a crypto wallet for cryptocurrencies and tokenized real-world assets, targeting its 19 million wealth management clients.