On January 15, BNY Mellon announced tokenized money market funds, ETFs, deposits, and stablecoin products to expand its digital asset services. The bank said the program aims to boost liquidity, streamline settlements, and enable programmable payments on a private network for institutional clients. It will leverage its infrastructure and partnerships, including firms like Galaxy Digital.

On January 15, 2026, Twitter (X) updated its developer API to ban apps that reward users for posting, with product lead Nikita Bier citing a surge of AI-driven spam. After the announcement, InfoFi tokens fell, as Kaito dropped over 15% and Cookie declined 20%, and Bier offered migration help to Threads and Bluesky.

Crypto holders suffered an estimated $17,000,000,000 in losses to scams and fraud in 2025, driven by a surge in impersonation and AI-enabled attacks. On-chain inflows to scam addresses reached at least $14,000,000,000, and average haul per scam rose from $782 to $2,764, while AI-linked schemes extracted about 4.5 times more value.

Over the past 90 days, XDC Network has processed $1.3 billion in USDC transactions, highlighting growing demand for stablecoin-based payments and settlement. This activity, which features low-cost, fast cross-border transfers, aligns with expectations that 2026 will see bank pilots with digital dollars evolve into full-scale production systems. As institutional adoption accelerates, XDC is being used more as an underlying payment rail than a destination for capital.

On January 15, 2026, London Stock Exchange Group launched Digital Settlement House (LSEG DiSH), a blockchain platform enabling 24/7 settlement of tokenized commercial bank deposits across on-chain and off-chain networks. The service offers real-time PvP/DvP and multi-currency, multi-jurisdiction access under Post Trade Solutions, following a PoC on the Canton Network; the London Stock Exchange has also listed new crypto ETPs, including 21Shares' Bitcoin Gold ETP.

On 15 Jan 2026, Pakistan signed an MoU with SC Financial Technologies, an affiliate of Trump-linked World Liberty Financial, to pilot the USD1 dollar-pegged stablecoin in cross-border transfers. The State Bank of Pakistan will explore integrating USD1 into the country's regulated digital payment systems, alongside a new virtual assets law and an upcoming CBDC pilot. The initiative aims to experiment with supervised use of private stablecoins within Pakistan's evolving digital finance framework.

SG-Forge said on Thursday it completed exchange and settlement of tokenized bonds using its euro-pegged EUR CoinVertible as part of SWIFT interoperability testing. The firm called EURCV the first MiCA-compliant on-chain settlement asset natively compatible with SWIFT. SWIFT announced in September 2025 a blockchain-based shared ledger and named at least 30 partner banks.

On January 14, 2026, NCAA President Charlie Baker asked the CFTC's Michael Selig to pause college sports prediction markets over student-athlete safety and integrity concerns. The request targets roughly $320 million in active markets and seeks stronger safeguards around age limits, oversight, and harassment prevention. Recent growth includes a January 12 record of $701.7 million in daily volume.