Crypto experts say political pressure on the US Federal Reserve could drive volatility, but also shift flows toward Bitcoin and gold in the long run. Global central bank leaders have rallied behind US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, warning that political pressure on the Fed risks undermining financial and economic stability worldwide. In a joint statement released Tuesday, governors from 11 major central banks said they “stand in full solidarity with the Federal Reserve System and its Chair Jerome H. Powell,” stressing the importance of central bank independence. The statement comes after US authorities opened a criminal investigation into Powell over a $2.5 billion renovation of the Fed’s headquarters, a move that has intensified tensions between the central bank and the Trump administration. Read more
ZKsync’s 2026 plan shifts focus from experimentation to production-ready infrastructure designed for banks, enterprises and regulated financial systems. Layer-2 network ZKsync released a 2026 roadmap that puts privacy, deterministic control and native interoperability at the center of its strategy for institutional digital asset adoption. Its plan, published by Matter Labs co-founder and CEO Alex Gluchowski, frames zero-knowledge technology as a foundational infrastructure for regulated finance. The roadmap follows a year of infrastructure delivery. In 2025, the network rolled out core components including Atlas, Prividium and Airbender. According to Gluchowski, these systems were designed to meet operational realities faced by banks, enterprises and governments, where confidentiality and performance are critical requirements. Read more
BNB Chain’s Fermi hard fork goes live on Wednesday, cutting BSC block times from 0.75 seconds to 0.45 seconds and tightening fast-finality rules. BNB Chain’s Fermi upgrade, which goes live Wednesday, will cut BNB Smart Chain (BSC) block times from 0.75 seconds to 0.45 seconds and push transaction finality to “around one second,” positioning the network as one of the fastest major Ethereum Virtual Machine chains. The hard fork completes the final phase of BNB Chain’s “short block interval” roadmap and is framed as a performance and reliability upgrade rather than a cosmetic tweak. With Fermi, BSC validators will produce blocks every 0.45 seconds, almost halving the time it takes for transactions to be confirmed onchain. Read more
The 21Shares Bitcoin Gold ETP allocates two-thirds to gold and one-third to Bitcoin and trades in pounds sterling and dollars on the London Stock Exchange. 21Shares, a major global exchange-traded product (ETP) provider, has expanded access to its investment product that combines exposure to Bitcoin and gold. The 21Shares Bitcoin Gold ETP (BOLD), which tracks both Bitcoin (BTC) and gold, debuted trading on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) on Tuesday, according to an announcement. “Now that retail investors in the UK have access to crypto ETPs, 21Shares is dedicated to delivering a wider selection of innovative regulated products,” 21Shares CEO Russell Barlow said. Read more
Truebit lost $26 million after a smart-contract overflow bug let an attacker mint tokens at near-zero cost, sending the TRU price down 99%. A $26 million exploit of the offline computation protocol Truebit stemmed from a smart-contract flaw that allowed an attacker to mint tokens at near-zero cost, highlighting persistent security risks even in long-running blockchain projects. Truebit suffered the $26 million exploit that resulted in a 99% crash for the Truebit (TRU) token, Cointelegraph reported on Friday. The attacker abused a loophole in the protocol’s smart-contract logic, which enabled them to mint “massive amounts of tokens without paying any ETH,” according to blockchain security company SlowMist, which published a post-mortem analysis on Tuesday. Read more
The move adds Ukraine to a growing list of countries, including France, Germany, the UK, Italy, Poland, Thailand and Australia, where Polymarket is already restricted. Ukraine has blocked access to the prediction market platform Polymarket, classifying its activities as unlicensed gambling under national law. The decision was issued by the National Commission for the Regulation of Electronic Communications (NCEC) on Dec. 10, 2025, under Resolution No. 695. The ruling requires internet service providers to restrict access to online resources that organize, conduct or facilitate gambling without a valid license. As part of the enforcement, the domain polymarket.com has been added to Ukraine’s public register of blocked websites, effectively cutting off local access to the platform, local news outlets reported on Monday. Read more