Crypto

The scheme distributed drugs as counterfeit pharmaceutical pills throughout New Jersey, with eight co-defendants already pleading guilty.

Changpeng Zhao spoke at the World Economic Forum's 2026 Annual Meeting in Davos this week, his first appearance on the official programme since Binance's 2023 US settlement and his subsequent guilty plea, prison sentence, and presidential pardon. The listing placed him squarely in WEF's “New Era for Finance” track, including a session titled “Where Are […] The post From prison to Davos, pardoned Binance founder CZ exposes a $33 trillion secret the global elite can’t hide anymore appeared first on CryptoSlate.

This week's redemptions reached the highest level since November, a signal that often marks a local bottom in the price of bitcoin.

The proposal would fund the reserve with unclaimed crypto and staking rewards rather than direct state Bitcoin purchases. Lawmakers in the US state of Kansas are considering a bill that would create a state-managed Bitcoin and digital assets reserve fund funded through unclaimed property rather than direct purchases of cryptocurrency. ​Kansas Senate Bill 352, introduced by Senator Craig Bowser on Wednesday, would establish a “Bitcoin and digital assets reserve fund” in the state treasury, administered by the state treasurer.  The fund would consist of airdrops, staking rewards and interest earned on abandoned digital assets held under Kansas’ unclaimed property law.  Read more

Bitcoin trades near $89.5K as a 2-day death cross and bear flag raise downside risk, with analysts eyeing $60K–$40K targets.

Binance applied for a MiCA license in Greece shortly after France flagged the exchange as still unlicensed under MiCA ahead of June compliance deadlines. Binance submitted an application for authorization under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) in Greece as regulators warn of looming compliance deadlines. A Binance spokesperson confirmed to Cointelegraph on Friday that the exchange had filed for a MiCA license in Greece and was working with the country’s financial regulator, the Hellenic Capital Market Commission (HCMC). “We welcome the opportunity to work closely with the HCMC as this new regulation takes shape in the EU and look forward to contributing to the long-term growth of the EU’s digital financial ecosystem,” the exchange’s representative said. Read more

XRP's internal structure looks intact on Binance; however, directional clarity remains absent as CVD fails to turn positive.

Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin details his 2026 “self-sovereign” tech stack, swapping Big Tech apps for encrypted, open-source and local privacy tools. Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin declared 2026 to be the “year we take back lost ground in computing self-sovereignty,” starting with his own devices.  In a Friday post on X, he laid out the software changes he has made to reduce reliance on data-hungry, centralized platforms. The “two major changes” to the software he used in 2025 were switching “almost fully” to Fileverse, an open-source, decentralized document platform — a kind of privacy-preserving Google Docs — and switching “decisively” to Signal as his primary messaging app. Read more

The Financial Times reports that Ledger is planning a US IPO at a $4 billion valuation as hardware wallet demand increases amid crypto fraud and hacks. French crypto hardware wallet provider Ledger is planning an initial public offering (IPO) in the United States, which may value the company at more than $4 billion. Ledger is in talks with bankers at Goldman Sachs, Jefferies and Barclays about a potential US listing, the Financial Times reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. In November 2025, Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier said the company was planning fundraising or a listing in New York, noting that money for crypto was “certainly not in Europe.” Read more

The end of another week is here again, which means a new round of Bitcoin and Ether options contracts are expiring while spot markets have tanked this week.

[PRESS RELEASE – Miami, Florida, USA, January 23rd, 2026] TokenFi, a next-generation platform focused on tokenization for real-world assets and digital economies, has launched a major branding and awareness campaign across Italy ahead of the 2026 Winter Olympics. The four-week campaign will begin Jan. 26 and is strategically designed to capture the attention of a […]

[PRESS RELEASE – VILNIUS, Lithuania, January 22nd, 2026] BTCC, the world’s longest-serving cryptocurrency exchange, reported record 2025 performance with $3.7 trillion in total trading volume and a global user base that reached 11 million, a 60% increase year-over-year. As the exchange approaches its 15th anniversary in 2026, it is shifting focus toward AI-enabled trading tools […]

Similar XRP funding conditions preceded rebounds of about 50% in August and September 2024 and about 100% in April 2025. XRP (XRP) funding rates on Binance have been mirroring the behavior seen ahead of sharp price rebounds since 2024. Key takeaways: Crowded XRP shorts (negative funding) have preceded rebounds. Read more

The Justice Department ramps up crypto fraud enforcement as scams surge, losses hit record highs, and AI aids financial crime.

PricewaterhouseCoopers says that crypto is working in a “fragmented global ecosystem,” tackling different challenges in different markets. Crypto adoption is growing at different rates around the world, with some regions advancing much faster than others, says accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). “While crypto networks are borderless, adoption is not,” PwC said in its Global Crypto Regulation Report 2026. “Payments, remittances, savings, capital markets, and tokenization use cases are emerging unevenly across regions.” PwC said that crypto adoption still depends on economic conditions, financial inclusion, and existing financial infrastructure, leading to a “fragmented global ecosystem” where the technology solves “very different problems” across different markets. Read more

Bitcoin miners have powered down to ease the load on the grid in the past, such as in 2022, when Texas miners curtailed their activities amid a major winter storm. A winter storm threatening to pelt most of the southern US with ice and heavy snow this weekend could see Bitcoin miners curtail their operations until the front has passed. American weather forecasting company AccuWeather reported on Thursday that a “massive winter storm” could extend for 1,800 miles from far west Texas to the mid-Atlantic coast, cutting power, preventing travel in over a dozen states and affecting upwards of 60 million people. When large storms have caused havoc to power grids in the past, Bitcoin miners have powered down to ease the load on the grid. In 2022, when a major winter storm hit Texas, crypto miners across the state voluntarily curtailed their activities. Read more

The American Bankers Association’s fight over stablecoin yields has become its top priority as Congress looks to pass crypto market structure legislation before the midterms. The American Bankers Association (ABA) has made cracking down on stablecoin yield a top priority for 2026, amid its ongoing debate with US lawmakers that it will hurt the banking industry’s competitiveness. The ABA said on Tuesday that one of several priorities it has this year is to “stop payment stablecoins from becoming deposit substitutes that slash community bank lending by prohibiting paying interest, yield or rewards regardless of the platform.” Stablecoin oversight topped a list of five priorities, which also included fighting financial fraud, stopping arbitrary interest rate caps, and focusing on indexing and mission-driven banks. ABA CEO and president Rob Nichols said the priorities are guided by input from various banks and businesses of all sizes and models. Read more

Bitcoin’s slide below $90,000 has pushed on-chain realized profit metrics into negative territory, a level last seen before the previous bear market.

The Justice Department will drop its case against Nathaniel Chastain, a former OpenSea manager who successfully appealed a wire fraud and money laundering conviction. US prosecutors will not retry their wire fraud and money laundering case against a former manager at the nonfungible token platform OpenSea, following a federal appeals court's July reversal of the convictions. On Wednesday, prosecutors told a Manhattan federal court that they entered into a one-month deferred prosecution agreement following the appeals court ruling, after which the case will be formally dismissed. In a letter, Manhattan US Attorney Jay Clayton, a former SEC chair, said the decision was made based on Chastain already serving parts of his initial sentence, including three months behind bars, and that he agreed not to contest the forfeiture of 15.98 Ether (ETH) worth $47,330 that that prosecutors alleged was obtained through the scheme. Read more

The White House came under scrutiny for sharing a modified arrest image on X, as the administration pushes tougher limits on manipulated media.