On January 16, 2026, on-chain researcher ZachXBT said Monero's latest upswing was tied to laundering proceeds from a $282M hardware-wallet breach, with BTC and LTC rapidly converted into XMR and some funds routed via Thorchain. After spiking above $788 and rallying from $454 on January 10, XMR pulled back to $667.43, roughly 20% below its record high.

In early 2026, vault curators significantly increased the value they manage, reinforcing their role as a key growth engine for DeFi lending. Steakhouse Finance's vaults surpassed $1.8B, while Morpho's total value locked rose from $5.79B at the end of 2025 to $6.91B in mid-January 2026. Vault curators now actively manage risk, concentrate on USDC-based strategies, and support the expansion of Morpho V2 and other onchain lending products.

Kaito said it will retire its Yaps product after losing access to the X API, shifting focus to curated creator content on X, TikTok and YouTube. On January 16, 2026, KAITO traded at $0.54, near its $0.49 all-time low, according to CoinGecko. The platform plans stricter curation and tiered incentives for influencers and KOLs.

Mantra confirmed January 15, 2026 as the final day to migrate OM from Ethereum to its mainnet, with about 7% of supply still unmigrated as ERC-20 tokens. On January 14, 2026, CEO JP Mullin said the company will restructure and reduce roles after OM's April 2025 crash and weaker market conditions.

On January 15, 2026, several large Polymarket wallets that had posted major gains on prediction markets tied to the US operation in Venezuela were reported as inactive or deleted, while one key trader, Sbet365, redirected activity to an Iran-focused market. The main tracked wallet exited with gains of 194,741.73 before deletion, two of three wallets stopped placing new bets for 11 days, and Sbet365 accumulated "yes" tokens in a market on Iran's Supreme Leader ahead of a January 31 deadline, even as another trader lost over $40K on a failed Iran strike prediction.

Whale transfers of BTC to Binance decelerated in January 2026 after heavier December activity, according to Binance data. Year to date, about 15,800 BTC moved to the exchange, 42.5% slower than December's 37,133 BTC, while BTC briefly topped $97,500 before pulling back to $95,449.56. Mean deposits stayed above 20 BTC, and whales accounted for 20.85% of inflows.

On January 14, 2026, Ethereum staking surpassed 30% of the total supply, with approximately 36 million ETH locked. The validator entry queue reached its highest level since 2023, with more than 2.34 million ETH awaiting activation and waits reported up to 48 days. Bitmine added 186,650 ETH in the past day and anticipates up to $500 million in annualized rewards.

On January 14 2026, Vitalik Buterin argued that Ethereum has now realized the Web3 architecture first outlined in 2014, combining its proof-of-stake L1 with scaling and storage side projects. He highlighted L2 networks, ZK-EVMs, Waku and IPFS as key pieces of the stack, while Ethereum continues to anchor DeFi with deep liquidity and hundreds of thousands of active wallets as ETH trades above $3,328.08.

An early Ethereum whale completed the distribution of more than 154,000 ETH, moving the final 26,000 coins to Bitstamp. The holder bought at a $517 average and could realize about $274M in net gains, while ETH held above $3,100 and daily volumes approached $20B.