Lithuania-licensed payments app Brighty has arranged over 100 real estate purchases worth $500,000 to $2.5 million across the UK, France and Malta. Serving 100–150 wealthy clients who spend about $50,000 monthly, Brighty reports average euro stablecoin transactions rising from €15,785 in Q3 to €59,894 in Q4 as buyers shift to EURC over USDC.

TRM Labs said in a January 9 report that UK‑registered exchanges Zedcex and Zedxion enabled about $1 billion in flows linked to Iran's IRGC. Illicit share peaked at 87% in 2024, with transfers largely in USDT on TRON, and corporate records tied Zedcex to sanctioned financier Babak Morteza Zanjani.

In 2025, Russia's Social Fund handled about 37 million inquiries, with many asking about pension payments in crypto and whether mining income affects benefits. Officials said all state payments are in rubles and crypto taxation is under the Federal Tax Service. Senior official Maxim Oreshkin urged treating mining as export activity, while exchanges prepared for rules taking effect by July 1, 2026.

On January 9, 2026, Pump.fun co-founder Alon said the creator-fee model failed and unveiled a trader-led overhaul. The update adds fee-sharing to up to 10 wallets and ownership transfers, while a December court order let plaintiffs add nearly 5,000 chats to a lawsuit alleging over $722 million in revenue and heavy retail losses.

Tether has announced a new partnership with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to fund cybersecurity education in Senegal, victim support in six African countries, and blockchain awareness initiatives in Papua New Guinea. The collaboration follows an earlier enforcement phase in which Tether froze $3.3 billion across 7,268 wallet addresses between 2023 and 2025, and now shifts toward development-focused efforts aimed at tackling scams, human trafficking, and digital asset fraud.

On January 8, 2026, engineer David said Bitcoin's miner energy floor is $93,000, with full-cycle break-even near $96,000. He noted roughly $1.2 billion flowed into spot ETFs this week while miner hedging compressed price around $90,000–$96,000. Hedge strength sits near 100% at the year's start and is projected to drop toward ~43% by late January.

On December 11, South Korea's Supreme Court ruled that Bitcoin kept on domestic exchanges such as Upbit and Bithumb qualifies as seizable property under the Criminal Procedure Act, ending years of uncertainty over crypto assets in investigations. The court found that Bitcoin's status as an electronically recorded token with independent management and economic value meets seizure criteria, while regulators move to expand preemptive account freezes and levy tens of billions of won in AML penalties on major platforms.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on January 8, 2026, called on the Federal Reserve to move more quickly on interest rate cuts, arguing they are the key missing factor for stronger U.S. growth even as labor data show resilience. Initial jobless claims came in at 208,000 for the week ending January 3, with the four-week moving average at 211,750, the lowest since April 2024, while Fed officials currently project just one rate cut for 2026. Bitcoin slipped toward $90,000 as traders weighed the policy rift and stronger-than-expected employment figures, with the broader crypto market down nearly 2% while gold advanced.

Solana's stablecoin capitalization reached $15 billion after nearly $10 billion was issued over the past year, with more than $900 million minted in the last 24 hours. Memecoin trading revived, led by Bonk's 50% and PENGU's 40% gains, while applications generated $2.39 billion in 2025 and Western Union plans a dollar-backed token.