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Bitcoin’s first difficulty adjustment of 2026 was anything but dramatic. The network nudged the dial down to about 146.4 trillion, a pretty small retreat after the late-2025 grind higher.Graph showing Bitcoin’s mining difficulty from Oct. 14, 2025, to Jan. 14, 2026 (Source: CoinWarz)But small isn’t the same as meaningless in mining, a business where margins are measured in fractions of a fraction and the main input (electricity) can turn from bargain to backbreaker in a week. Difficulty is Bitcoin’s built-in metronome: every two weeks or so, the protocol recalibrates how hard it is to find a block so that blocks…
Trusted Editorial content, reviewed by leading industry experts and seasoned editors. Ad Disclosure Canary Capital’s CEO, Steven McClurg, has predicted that XRP will be the leading token in real-world assets (RWAs), which is projected to be a trillion-dollar sector. This came as he highlighted recent developments that put the altcoin on course to dominate the industry. Canary Capital CEO Predicts XRP Will Dominate RWAs During an interview, the investment manager opined that XRP will be the leading token for real-world assets, based on Ripple’s moves over the last two years. He noted that the crypto firm has done a great…
XRP has become the default trading chip of South Korea, bypassing Bitcoin and Ethereum to dominate the country’s high-velocity retail market.While institutional capital worldwide typically gravitates toward Bitcoin as a store of value, South Korean trading patterns tell a different story.Data from the country’s largest exchanges reveals that when the market heats up, domestic traders consistently prioritize XRP for its liquidity and speed. This preference is a structural anomaly that has defined the local retail playbook for 2025.Dunamu, the operator of the dominant Upbit exchange, listed XRP as the platform’s most-traded asset for the year, ranking it ahead of the…
The British multinational bank Standard Chartered is reportedly planning to set up a prime brokerage for crypto trading. Citing people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reports that the banking giant with $849 billion in total assets will operate the new business within its wholly owned venture capital unit SC Ventures. [adinserter block=”1″] The sources say that discussions are still at an early stage and it is not yet clear when the service will launch. Last month, SC Ventures announced in a post on the professional networking platform LinkedIn that it is developing a digital asset venture called Project37C to serve…
On Jan. 9, Tennessee’s sports betting regulator sent a set of letters that, at first glance, looked like the kind of paperwork most crypto natives scroll past.The message was blunt: stop offering sports-related event contracts to Tennessee residents, void unsettled positions, and refund customers by Jan. 31.The recipients, Kalshi, Polymarket, and Crypto.com, sit on the border between finance and gambling.A “yes/no” trade on a game outcome can be framed either as a federally regulated derivative or as an unlicensed sportsbook.Within days, the fight moved to federal court.A US district judge in Nashville, Aleta Trauger, issued a temporary restraining order blocking…
Trusted Editorial content, reviewed by leading industry experts and seasoned editors. Ad Disclosure On-chain data shows the Bitcoin mining Hashrate has declined to its lowest level since October as miners continue to decommission farms. 7-Day Average Bitcoin Mining Hashrate Has Declined Recently The Bitcoin “Hashrate” refers to an indicator that keeps track of the total amount of computing power that the miners as a whole have attached to the blockchain. This metric may be used as a proxy for the behavior of the network validators. When the value of the Hashrate goes up, it means new miners are joining the…
Trusted Editorial content, reviewed by leading industry experts and seasoned editors. Ad Disclosure XRP’s huge circulating supply is always a point of discussion among many market participants. This discussion is always around how it can realistically trade at huge price levels in the double and triple digits with such a huge total supply. However, discussion around its burn rate has resurfaced due to current figures showing a steady reduction in the cryptocurrency’s total supply. According to data shared by an expert on X, XRP’s supply has declined by more than 2 million tokens over the past two years, with comments…
Trusted Editorial content, reviewed by leading industry experts and seasoned editors. Ad Disclosure Ethereum is struggling to push above critical supply levels after a brief surge above $3,300, as the market attempts to stabilize following weeks of sustained selling pressure. While the rebound has sparked renewed optimism, price action remains fragile, with bulls still needing clear confirmation before a broader recovery can take hold. Still, the fact that ETH is holding near key levels has led some analysts to start calling for higher prices, arguing that the market may be entering a new phase after the recent downtrend. Supporting this…
In brief TD Cowen cut its Strategy price target to $440 but kept a buy rating. Strategy recently raised a further roughly $1.25 billion and used nearly all of it to buy more Bitcoin. Analysts link the strategy to broader shifts in Bitcoin’s institutional market structure. TD Cowen trimmed its price target on Michael Saylor’s Strategy (Nasdaq: MSTR) to $440 from $500, even as the firm presses ahead with its aggressive Bitcoin purchases. The research and investment banking division of TD Securities maintained a buy rating but flagged near-term pressure on its key performance metric amid price compression.“Strategy has not only…
In brief Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg urged New York lawmakers to strengthen crypto enforcement, warning that crypto now underpins money laundering and organized crime. He called for mandatory licensing, KYC rules, and criminal penalties for unlicensed crypto firms, saying current laws leave prosecutors short of authority. Experts say tougher rules could curb large-scale scams, but success will hinge on law enforcement’s technical capacity and legal clarity. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg urged state lawmakers Wednesday to criminalize unlicensed crypto operations, warning that a $51 billion criminal economy is thriving in regulatory blind spots that let criminals launder gun, drug, and…
Bitcoin miners entered early 2026 in a familiar but increasingly unforgiving setup: network hashrate is slipping from late-2025 highs, difficulty is adjusting on a delay, and power costs remain the hard constraint that decides which fleets stay online and which go dark.The result is a market that can look resilient on the surface, especially when Bitcoin bounces, but remains fragile at the margin, where a single difficulty uptick or a regional power spike can turn “operating” into “curtailing” quickly.Hashrate is cooling after a late-2025 highBitcoin’s network hashrate has cooled from its late-2025 peak pace and has not consistently returned to…
In brief DTCC affirmed its vision for tokenized securities is interoperable. DTCC’s Nadine Chakar underscored risk and costs as factors. The company plans to issue tokens first on Canton Network. The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation’s vision for tokenized securities isn’t tethered to any single network, even if it’s admittedly rooted in the past.The firm that processes roughly $10 trillion of securities transactions every day is keeping an open mind as it fleshes out its tokenized securities offering, but risk and data standards remain paramount, according to Global Head of DTCC Digital Assets Nadine Chakar.During a virtual forum on Thursday,…
Trusted Editorial content, reviewed by leading industry experts and seasoned editors. Ad Disclosure Nexo, a crypto lending platform, agreed to pay a $500,000 penalty after California regulators said it made thousands of loans without the proper state license. According to the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, the actions involved loans backed by crypto assets and raised concerns about how the company evaluated borrowers. California Action On Unlicensed Loans The DFPI found that Nexo issued at least 5,456 consumer and commercial loans from July 2018 through November 2022 to residents in California. Reports have disclosed that the company did…