On January 20, Aave shifted stewardship of Lens Protocol's social applications to Mask Network, assigning the Web3 firm to lead consumer-facing product development while Lens remains open-source. Aave will now focus on its core DeFi business and act only as a technical advisor, with no change to Lens's ownership, smart contracts, or governance. Vitalik Buterin later praised Lens's evolution and voiced optimism about the future of decentralized social platforms built on shared data layers.

In 2025, Bitcoin's global search interest fell about 50% even as the asset reached an all‑time high of $126,080. Posts on X mentioning "Bitcoin" declined 32% year over year to 96 million, and sentiment weakened following an October 10 liquidation of over $19 billion. By mid‑January 2026, social metrics turned more bearish despite prices rising from $90,320 to $97,540.

On January 21, 2026, Galaxy Digital outlined a $100 million hedge fund targeting returns in both rising and falling markets. According to sources familiar with the plan, it aims to be operational in the first quarter and will allocate roughly 30% to crypto tokens and 70% to equities of financial services firms exposed to digital-asset trends.

On January 21, 2026, White House digital currency advisor Patrick Witt called on Congress to quickly pass a comprehensive crypto market structure bill while support from the current administration remains strong. He warned that delaying action until after a future market shock could result in reactionary, punitive rules that hinder innovation, even as industry concerns from firms like Coinbase have slowed the bill’s progress.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick stated at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 21, 2026, that the U.S. economy is robust and could expand by more than 5% at the start of 2026, with potential to top 6% if interest rates fall. He argued that currently high borrowing costs are constraining business and household spending and urged the European Union to avoid retaliatory measures if the United States proceeds with tariffs linked to Greenland, warning this could reignite a damaging tariff spiral.

By mid-January 2026, daily cryptocurrency payment-card transactions neared 60,000, marking a 22x rise from December 2024. The cards processed close to $4 million in spending each day, while cumulative activity surpassed 7.3 million transactions and $804 million in volume, supported by about 150,000 active users.

Stablecoin appchain Noble plans a standalone EVM Layer 1, departing its Cosmos SDK stack. People familiar with the upgrade say mainnet is slated for March 18, while the team maintains short‑term Cosmos support. The new network targets sub‑second finality for stablecoin and FX use cases, after processing over $22 billion across 50 chains since 2023.

On January 21, 2026, Hong Kong's Financial Secretary Paul Chan reaffirmed that the city regulates digital asset activities by risk level rather than by the underlying technology. Hong Kong is piloting tokenized deposits, expanding tokenized green bond issuance worth about $2.1 billion, and preparing a stablecoin licensing regime while also testing cross-border blockchain payments with partners such as Brazil.

Recent on-chain data indicates that institutional custody wallets and spot Bitcoin ETFs have accumulated about 577,000 BTC, valued at roughly $53 billion, over the past year. Large holders now control significantly more Bitcoin than two years ago, while US spot ETFs have seen net inflows and corporate treasuries have expanded their BTC positions, reducing the supply available on exchanges.