On January 20, 2026, the Cardano Foundation confirmed it had delegated 220 million ADA, valued at about $77 million, to 11 community-selected Delegated Representatives to strengthen governance resilience and diversity. The move follows a November 2025 proposal from key Cardano organizations to draw 70 million ADA from the community treasury to fund core infrastructure such as stablecoins, custody solutions, analytics, cross-chain bridges and pricing oracles.

On January 20, 2026, Delaware Life Insurance Company, a Group 1001 subsidiary with $60B in assets under management, introduced BlackRock's U.S. Equity Bitcoin Balanced Risk 12% Index into three fixed indexed annuity products. The strategy uses the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF to provide Bitcoin price exposure while maintaining principal protection features and targeting 12% volatility. This move makes Delaware Life the first U.S. insurer to integrate cryptocurrency-linked exposure into its annuity structure.

According to his Washington Post opinion piece, CFTC Chair Michael Selig announced a "Future-Proof" initiative to modernize oversight of digital assets and prediction markets. He was nominated in October 2025, confirmed on December 18, 2025, and sworn in on December 22, 2025, and the agency's four other commissioner seats remain vacant.

On January 15, JustLend DAO executed its second JST buyback and burn, removing the purchased tokens from circulation. Across both phases, over 1.085 billion JST—nearly 11% of the 9.9 billion supply—has been retired, with the latest stage costing $21 million and cumulative buybacks approaching $40 million. Despite the effort, JST traded around $0.04 with only modest gains.

OpenAI’s Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar reported that the company’s annual revenue climbed from $2 billion in 2023 to $6 billion in 2024 and is projected to exceed $20 billion in 2025. She linked this roughly 10-fold increase over two years to a 9.5-fold expansion in compute resources, with capacity rising from 0.2 gigawatts to about 1.9 gigawatts, and outlined plans for agents, commerce, and advertising features from 2026.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has set three priorities for his participation in the 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos, focusing on economic freedom, cryptocurrency adoption and tokenization. He plans to meet world and bank leaders to discuss market structure legislation, fair treatment of stablecoins and broader access to capital markets for billions of unbrokered adults. Armstrong contrasts this agenda with his 2025 Davos experience, where debates around Trump's crypto policies and a proposed Strategic Bitcoin Reserve dominated discussions as Bitcoin hit record prices.

Magic Eden will begin directing 15% of all platform revenue to a combined $ME token buyback and USDC staking rewards program starting February 1, 2026. Half of the allocation will fund $ME buybacks and the other half will be distributed as USDC yield to $ME stakers, with monthly claims beginning in March for February activity. This initiative builds on Magic Eden's late-2025 marketplace-focused buyback scheme and reflects its broader shift from a pure NFT marketplace to a multi-asset crypto entertainment platform.

On January 19 2026, the Reserve Bank of India proposed that BRICS members link their central bank digital currencies to streamline cross-border trade and tourism payments. The plan would allow the bloc’s economies, including newer members such as the UAE, Iran and Indonesia, to settle transactions directly instead of relying on the U.S. dollar and systems like SWIFT. The RBI is also examining bilateral FX swaps to manage trade imbalances and is promoting the e-rupee over dollar-pegged stablecoins to safeguard domestic monetary stability.

On January 19, 2026, the Seoul Customs Service reported dismantling an illegal cryptocurrency exchange ring that laundered and exchanged about 148.9 billion won (approximately $113 million) between September 2021 and last year. Three Chinese men in their 30s were arrested and sent to prosecutors for alleged violations of the Foreign Exchange Transaction Act after using mobile apps and tactics such as hwanchigi and peeling chains to move funds. The case was uncovered by the Korea Customs Service's 126-member Crime Fund Tracking Team amid a broader national crackdown on suspicious crypto-linked foreign exchange activity.