Cointelegraph.com
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Cointelegraph.com - 10:15 Jan 19, 2026
The Hong Kong Securities & Futures Professionals Association is backing the OECD’s CARF and tougher tax transparency, but wants lighter treatment and more flexible recordkeeping. The Hong Kong Securities & Futures Professionals Association (HKSFPA) has urged the city’s government to soften some elements of its planned implementation of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) crypto reporting standards. The industry body warned that the OECD’s Crypto Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) and related Common Reporting Standard (CRS) amendments could saddle local institutions with operational and liability risks. CARF is a new standard for automatic tax information exchange for crypto asset users across borders, while CRS is the OECD’s existing automatic information exchange regime for traditional financial accounts. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 10:07 Jan 19, 2026
Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed new laws creating licensed crypto exchanges and giving the central bank authority to approve tradable coins. Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has signed legislation establishing a regulatory framework for digital assets, including licensed cryptocurrency exchanges and granting the country’s central bank authority to approve which cryptocurrencies can be traded on regulated platforms. The legislation amends Kazakhstan’s banking and financial market laws, setting out new rules for the issuance and circulation of digital assets and introducing licensing requirements for crypto exchanges operating in the country, according to a government statement. The rules introduce a classification for digital assets, including stablecoins, assets backed by financial instruments and property, and financial instruments issued in electronic digital form. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 10:04 Jan 19, 2026
Bitcoin faced the prospect of turning its $98,000 highs into a liquidity hunt as tariffs put new BTC price local lows back on the table next. Bitcoin (BTC) takes a beating as the new week begins with markets held hostage by global trade tariff uncertainty. Bitcoin dips below $92,000, but traders warn that a much deeper support retest is on the horizon. Tariffs take center stage again as analysis agrees that conditions will likely get worse before the risk-asset bull run continues. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 07:15 Jan 19, 2026
Rising crypto wealth is increasing the stakes of physical coercion. “Wrench attacks” show how digital assets can become real-world targets. In January 2025, French authorities freed Ledger co-founder David Balland after kidnappers demanded a large ransom in cryptocurrency. The case illustrated what crypto crime can look like when it leaves the screen and becomes a physical hostage situation. In fact, crypto-related disputes and theft are increasingly linked to real-world violence, including abduction attempts and ransom schemes designed to force victims to hand over access. That is the logic of a wrench attack. Instead of hacking a wallet, criminals use threats or force to make the holder unlock it or send the funds themselves. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 06:37 Jan 19, 2026
Ethereum’s walkaway test asks whether the network can remain credible, secure and adaptable without constant intervention, even as quantum risks loom. Vitalik Buterin’s “walkaway test” is a way to assess Ethereum’s long-term credibility. The network is intended to remain secure and functional even if its core developers were to stop actively upgrading it. In a recent analogy, Buterin suggested that a protocol should resemble a tool you own, such as a hammer, rather than a service that gradually degrades if the “vendor” loses interest or becomes constrained by external pressures. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 06:25 Jan 19, 2026
Since mid-2023, Binance Australia users have only been able to deposit or withdraw fiat funds from their crypto exchange accounts via debit or credit card. Update Jan.19, 6:50 am: This article has been updated to include a statement from Matt Poblocki. Crypto exchange Binance has reintroduced direct bank transfers in Australia two years after the exchange was abruptly “cut off” from the Australian banking system. As of last Friday, Binance Australia has relaunched direct fiat bank and PayID deposits and withdrawals to its Australian users. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 06:19 Jan 19, 2026
The Republican and Democratic Senate Judiciary leaders have called for changes to the market structure bill, arguing it would “weaken” the ability to police money transmitters. US Senate Judiciary Committee leaders are seeking to remove crypto developer protections from the Senate’s crypto market structure bill, arguing the provisions would weaken unlicensed money transmitting laws. Senate Judiciary chair Charles Grassley and the committee’s top Democrat, Richard Durbin, told Senate Banking Committee chair Tim Scott and top Democrat Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday that the crypto bill as drafted would “create a significant enforcement gap for decentralized digital asset platforms.” “Such a gap risks attracting illicit actors — like cartels and other sophisticated criminal organizations — to decentralized platforms,” Grassley and Durbin said in a letter Politico first reported on Friday. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 06:10 Jan 19, 2026
Bitcoin futures open interest has begun to recover in January after a sharp Q4 deleveraging, though analysts say the rebound remains modest. Bitcoin futures open interest (OI) — a measure of derivative market participation — has gained almost 13% from the start of the year, which analysts say could reflect more risk appetite for crypto. The increase follows a sharp deleveraging phase from October through December, when Bitcoin derivatives exposure fell alongside a broad market correction. Bitcoin futures OI has fallen 17.5% from 381,000 BTC to 314,000 BTC over the past three months, following a roughly 36% price correction from early October, “reflecting a phase of risk reduction and the unwinding of leveraged positions,” said CryptoQuant analyst “Darkfost” on Monday. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 22:02 Jan 18, 2026
Overregulation of the crypto industry would negatively impact markets and gut decentralized finance (DeFi), according to Michaël van de Poppe. The failure of the CLARITY crypto market structure bill to advance in the United States Congress is positive for crypto markets and the industry, according to market analyst Michaël van de Poppe. Van De Poppe cited crypto exchange Coinbase withdrawing support for the bill on Wednesday and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong’s X post listing several concerns with the most recent version of the bill. The issues included a “de facto ban” on tokenized stocks, government access to user records on decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms and prohibiting yield-bearing stablecoins, Armstrong said. Van De Poppe said: Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 20:53 Jan 18, 2026
The expanded prohibition on stablecoin yield in the CLARITY Act makes the US dollar less competitive than the Digital Yuan, Scaramucci said. The prohibition on yield-bearing stablecoins in the CLARITY Act puts the US dollar at a competitive disadvantage to China’s Digital Yuan, a yield-bearing central bank digital currency, according to Anthony Scaramucci, founder of asset manager SkyBridge Capital. “The whole system is broken,” Scaramucci said in response to the prohibition on crypto exchanges and service providers offering customers yield on stablecoins in the CLARITY Act, a crypto market structure framework for the US. He asked: The People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, began allowing commercial banks to pay interest on digital yuan deposits in January. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 11:41 Jan 18, 2026
Vitalik Buterin warns that Ethereum’s push to add new features while preserving backward compatibility is inflating protocol complexity, calling for a “garbage collection” process. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is urging developers to confront the protocol bloat driven by an endless push to add new features while rarely removing old ones. In a Sunday post on X, Buterin argued that true trustlessness and self-sovereignty depend less on raw decentralization metrics and more on simplicity. “Even if a protocol is super decentralized with hundreds of thousands of nodes, and it has 49% byzantine fault tolerance, and nodes fully verify everything with quantum-safe peerdas and starks, if the protocol is an unwieldy mess of hundreds of thousands of lines of code and five forms of PhD-level cryptography, ultimately that protocol fails,” he claimed Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 11:00 Jan 18, 2026
Crypto’s interoperability layer reveals a gap between the industry’s decentralization narrative and how value actually moves across blockchains. Moving value across blockchains is now largely mediated by a small group of centralized intermediaries despite crypto’s long-standing claims of decentralization. Michael Steuer, president and chief technology officer of Casper Network, framed this dynamic as a structural outcome of the industry’s approach to interoperability and user experience. With a background spanning mobile gaming, enterprise software and early blockchain development, Steuer approaches the industry’s interoperability problem as a question of how real users interact with technology. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 09:25 Jan 18, 2026
Security failures don’t just drain funds, they often destroy trust, leaving most hacked crypto projects unable to recover despite fixing the technical flaws. Nearly four out of five crypto projects that suffer a major hack never fully regain their footing, according to Mitchell Amador, CEO of Web3 security platform Immunefi. Amador told Cointelegraph that most protocols enter a state of paralysis the moment an exploit is discovered. “Most protocols are fundamentally unaware of the extent to which they are exposed to hacks, and are not operationally prepared for a major security incident,” he said. According to Amador, the first hours after a breach are often the most damaging. Without a predefined incident plan, teams hesitate, debate next steps and underestimate how deep the compromise may go. “Decision-making slows as teams scramble to understand what happened, leading to improvisation and delayed action,” he said, adding that this is frequently when additional losses occur. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 07:10 Jan 18, 2026
In 2024, the Bank for International Settlements stepped back from mBridge, seeking to distance itself from sanctions-related speculation surrounding the platform. China-led cross-border digital currency platform mBridge has processed more than $55 billion in transactions as efforts to build payment rails that operate outside traditional dollar-based systems find momentum. Project mBridge, a multi-central bank digital currency (CBDC) platform, has now settled over 4,000 cross-border transactions with a cumulative value of roughly $55.5 billion, according to data compiled by the Washington-based Atlantic Council. That figure marks a nearly 2,500-fold increase since the project’s early pilot phase in 2022. The platform is currently being tested by central banks in mainland China, Hong Kong, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. China’s digital yuan, or e-CNY, accounts for an estimated 95% of total settlement volume on mBridge. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 06:27 Jan 18, 2026
Michael Saylor shares his thoughts on criticism around Bitcoin treasuries, an exec says CLARITY Act ‘has a long way to go‘: Hodler’s Digest -
Cointelegraph.com - 06:27 Jan 18, 2026
Michael Saylor shares his thoughts on criticism around Bitcoin treasuries, an exec says CLARITY Act ‘has a long way to go‘: Hodler’s Digest -
Cointelegraph.com - 04:49 Jan 18, 2026
The massive staking inflows are strengthening ETH’s supply-demand dynamic, potentially setting the stage for upward price momentum this year. The Ethereum staking validator exit queue has dropped to zero — signaling a dramatic fall in selling pressure and strengthening confidence in Ether (ETH) as a yield-bearing asset. Data from Ethereum Validator Queue shows the exit queue has fallen from its September 2025 peak of 2.67 million Ether (ETH) to 0 ETH, while the entry queue has risen more than fivefold over the last month to 2.6 million ETH, the highest since July 2023. Wait times for the entry queue have now stretched out to 45 days, while exiting ETH is being processed in a matter of minutes. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 01:15 Jan 18, 2026
Solana Labs CEO Anatoly Yakovenko said Solana fees could fund AI-assisted development to write and improve Solana’s codebase in the future. Solana Labs CEO Anatoly Yakovenko said he wants Solana to be a constantly evolving network, continuously updating to meet the changing needs of users, contrasting with Vitalik Buterin’s vision of Ethereum as a self-sustaining blockchain. “Solana needs to never stop iterating. It shouldn’t depend on any single group or individual to do so, but if it ever stops changing to fit the needs of its devs and users, it will die,” Yakovenko stated in a post to X on Saturday. His remarks were in response to a post from Buterin, who said Ethereum needs to reach a point where it passes the “walkaway test,” meaning it becomes self-sustainable without developer influence for decades to come. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 22:06 Jan 17, 2026
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said the industry is working on several ideas to help community banks in the CLARITY market structure bill. Brian Armstrong, the CEO of crypto exchange Coinbase, denied reports that the White House is considering pulling support for the CLARITY Act, a crypto market structure bill, and also denied rumors that the administration is “furious” with Coinbase. “The White House has been super constructive here. They did ask us to see if we can go figure out a deal with the banks, which we're currently working on,” Armstrong said. On Friday, independent journalist Eleanor Terrett reported a clash between Coinbase and the administration of US President Donald Trump, with the White House threatening to withdraw support for the market structure bill if Coinbase did not resume negotiations. Read more -
Cointelegraph.com - 20:58 Jan 17, 2026
The company began accepting Bitcoin as a method of payment in May 2025, following hundreds of store closures between 2018 and 2025. Steak ‘n Shake, a fast-food restaurant chain that accepts Bitcoin (BTC) payments at its stores, announced on Friday that its BTC corporate treasury grew by $10 million in notional value. “All Bitcoin sales go into our strategic Bitcoin reserve,” the company said, adding that adopting BTC as a treasury asset has led to a flywheel effect that increases same-store sales, which, in turn, grows the company’s BTC stash. In May 2025, the company announced it would start accepting BTC as a method of payment at all its locations worldwide, in a phased rollout. Read more
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