Crypto

The wheels of motion begin to turn again as the first week of a new year commences, and the United States economic calendar starts to fill.

ESG researcher Daniel Batten says peer-reviewed studies challenge claims that Bitcoin mining destabilizes power grids or raises electricity costs. Bitcoin’s environmental impact remains contested as critics question its energy use, while ESG researcher Daniel Batten disputes several of those claims. In a Saturday X thread, ESG researcher Daniel Batten said nine common criticisms of Bitcoin mining’s energy use are contradicted by peer-reviewed studies and grid-level data. “Every nascent disruptive technology is accompanied by claims that are based on lack of understanding, lack of data, and a fear of something unknown,” said Batten. Read more

PwC’s CEO says clearer US crypto rules and stablecoin legislation pushed the firm to expand its digital asset services. PricewaterhouseCoopers decided to expand its crypto business after a shift toward clearer US regulation, citing new leadership at regulators and progress on stablecoin legislation, CEO Paul Griggs said. New leadership within US regulators such as the US Securities and Exchange Commission and new laws like the GENIUS Act were among the major developments that spurred PwC’s reversal, Griggs told the Financial Times in a report on Sunday. “The GENIUS Act and the regulatory rulemaking around stablecoin, I expect, will create more conviction around leaning into that product and that asset class,” he said, adding that “the tokenization of things will certainly continue to evolve as well. PwC has to be in that ecosystem.” Read more

Dune Analytics data reveals a surge from $14.6 million to $91.3 million in net spend across Visa's key crypto cards, led by EtherFi, in 2025.  Visa-issued crypto cards saw a massive spike in usage in 2025, with the total net spend increasing by 525% last year. According to Dune Analytics data, the total net spend for six crypto cards issued by blockchain projects in partnership with Visa went from $14.6 million in January to $91.3 million at the end of December. The six cards tracked come from crypto payments platforms GnosisPay and Cypher, along with decentralized finance projects EtherFi, Avici Money, Exa App, and Moonwell.  Read more

Analysts cite Bitcoin portfolio rebalancing as institutional investors price in three more years of Trump's "America First" policy.

The amount of crypto sent to Binance rose in the past week, but CryptoOnchain says the other side of the trade, the buyers, are yet to show up. Large crypto holders have been moving tokens onto Binance, a pattern analysts associate with potential selling, but buying demand remains muted. So-called crypto whales deposited $2.4 billion near-evenly split between Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) to Binance in the past week, the exchange’s largest net inflow in a month, but the “buying power is missing,” CryptoOnchain said in a note to CryptoQuant on Sunday. “Crucially, this surge in risk-asset deposits was not accompanied by new buying power,” it added, noting that stablecoin net flows were “essentially flat” at an inflow of $42 million for the week, which was mostly tokens moving between the Ethereum and Tron blockchains. Read more

Bitcoin rose toward $93,000 as Donald Trump made remarks suggesting tougher action on Colombia and Mexico following the US operation in Venezuela. Bitcoin climbed toward $93,000 on Monday as US President Donald Trump made comments suggesting the United States could pursue tougher action against Colombia and Mexico, extending geopolitical uncertainty in the region following the weekend operation in Venezuela. Speaking on Sunday, Trump criticized Colombia over cocaine trafficking and said a new US military operation focused on the country “sounds good to me,” according to Reuters, while also warning that “something is going to have to be done” in Mexico. “Colombia is very sick, too, run by a sick man, who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States, and he’s not going to be doing it very long," Trump warned. Read more

Pepe, Bonk, and other meme coins soar with double-digit gains as risk-on sentiment renews amid improving geopolitical and fiscal policies.

Ethereum processed $8 trillion in stablecoin transfers during Q4, nearly double Q2’s volume, while active addresses and daily transactions peaked. Stablecoin transfer volume on Ethereum surpassed $8 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2025, marking a new all-time high, Token Terminal reported on Monday. The $8 trillion milestone is almost double the transfer volume figure for the second quarter, which was just over $4 trillion, according to Token Terminal’s chart. Stablecoin issuance on Ethereum increased by around 43% in 2025 from $127 billion to $181 billion by year’s end, according to BlockWorks.   Read more

The U.S. capture of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro sent oil to four-year lows, while crypto markets have held steady.

Ethereum's co-founder says PeerDAS and zkEVMs have solved crypto's scalability vs. security vs. decentralization trade-off. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin claims Ethereum has “solved” one of the biggest challenges in crypto: the blockchain trilemma. In a X post on Saturday, Buterin emphasized the potential of peer data availability sampling (PeerDAS) and Zero-Knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machines (zkEVMs), noting that these two upgrades are making Ethereum “a fundamentally new and more powerful kind of decentralized network.” “Now, Ethereum with PeerDAS (2025) and ZK-EVMs (expect small portions of the network using it in 2026), we get: decentralized, consensus and high bandwidth,” he said, adding:  Read more

Transaction volume jumped nearly 300% as memecoin market capitalization rose more than 23%, rebounding sharply from late-2025 lows across the sector overall. Crypto traders flooded back to memecoins as the new year turned, driving memecoin market capitalization up by over 23% in the last week after trading at a yearly low in the final days of 2025. The memecoin market cap crossed $47.7 billion on Monday, up from $38 billion on Dec. 29, according to cryptocurrency data platform CoinMarketCap. The top three memecoins by market capitalization have posted double-digit gains in the past week. Dogecoin (DOGE) has gained over 20%, Shiba Inu (SHIB) has risen 19.9%, and Pepe (PEPE) has soared by over 65%. Read more

Key metrics tracking the development of Bitcoin Core show 2025 was a good year for the blockchain, with more developers contributing more code, says Jameson Lopp. Bitcoin developers working on the software that powers most nodes backing the blockchain had a busy year in 2025, with more developers pushing out more code, according to Bitcoiner Jameson Lopp. Lopp, the co-founder of the crypto management platform Casa, said on Sunday that 135 different people had contributed code to Bitcoin Core last year, rising from just over 100 individuals in 2024 and continuing an uptrend. The number of contributors peaked in 2018 with nearly 200 contributors. Those developers also changed more code, with Lopp reporting 285,000 lines of code were changed last year, a more than 3% jump from the 276,000 lines of code changed in 2024. Read more

Media attention shifted from bitcoin’s environmental footprint to crime and kidnapping in 2025, while overall sentiment remained broadly neutral, according to crypto intelligence platform Perception.

Nobel Prize-winning Bitcoiner María Corina Machado is one of three looking to replace Nicolás Maduro as Venezuela's president after he was captured on Saturday. Following the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Saturday, attention has turned to the country’s transition to new leadership — and one Bitcoiner is in the running to lead that charge. María Corina Machado, Venezuelan opposition leader and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2025, is the second-favorite to lead Venezuela’s shift away from authoritarian rule under Maduro, who has been transferred to New York to face federal charges related to narcotics trafficking and corruption. Data from predictions market Kalshi shows Machado has a 28% chance of leading Venezuela by the end of 2026, trailing only Unitary Platform’s Edmundo González Urrutia (32%), who is widely believed to have won Venezuela’s election in May 2025 but was blocked from assuming the presidency by Maduro’s United Socialist Party. Read more

TRM’s report shows crypto is now embedded in state economic and security planning, not treated as a fringe asset.

The sentiment among crypto investors has oscillated between "fear" and "extreme fear" since the market flash crash on October 10, 2025. The CoinMarketCap “Crypto Fear and Greed Index,” a metric tracking crypto investor sentiment, flipped to “neutral” on Sunday, for the first time since October, signaling that investor sentiment is improving. The Index is at 40, signaling that investors are no longer fearful, but they are not bullish on the crypto market either. The Index recorded its lowest sentiment reading of 2025 in November, when it hit a 10, indicating “extreme fear,” according to CoinMarketCap. Crypto investor sentiment plunged in October, sparked by a historic market crash that derailed the crypto market bull run. The price of Bitcoin (BTC) hit an all-time high above $125,000 days before the crash, eventually falling to about $80,000 — a 35% drop. Read more

The altcoin market is set to rally, based on technical analysis showing altcoins trading above critical support levels formed in October. The altcoin market, which is valued at over $879 billion at the time of this writing, is poised for its next major leg up toward its previous all-time high of nearly $1.2 trillion, according to crypto trader and market analyst Michaël van de Poppe. The Total3 market cap, which tracks the total market capitalization of the entire crypto token ecosystem, excluding Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), has maintained critical support around the $784 billion level, Van De Poppe said.  The price of Total3 is also inching back toward the 365-day moving average, another critical support level, according to TradingView data. Read more

Bitcoin hits $91K as $645M ETF inflows boost sentiment. Triangle breakout targets $94K–$98K, signaling the start of a strong 2026 uptrend. The post Bitcoin Price Prediction: BTC Climbs to $91K as $645M ETF Inflows Signal Bullish Breakout appeared first on Cryptonews.

The proposal is framed as a structural move to preserve flexibility, not an immediate plan to issue new shares.