Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said on X on Friday that 2026 should mark a shift back to self-sovereignty and trustlessness, arguing the network has diluted its values for mainstream adoption. He called for private payments, easier full-node operation and dapps without centralized servers, and cited the Kohaku release and Glamsterdam fork as steps expected to address these issues.

On January 3, Mark Zuckerberg said Threads reached 320 million active users. Forbes, citing Similarweb, reported around 320 million total actives and an average of 143 million mobile actives in January 2026, after more than 30 million signups in December 2025. X still leads US mobile daily use with 21.2 million versus Threads' 19.5 million.

U.S. District Judge Ann Marie McIff Allen sentenced Utah resident Brian Garry Sewell to three years in federal prison after he pleaded guilty to wire fraud and operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business. Prosecutors said he defrauded investors of nearly $3 million and ran a cash-to-crypto service that moved more than $5 million; the court ordered more than $3.6 million in restitution.

A crypto holder on the Ethereum network lost a total of $514,000 in USDT after an address poisoning scam, with the incident detected around 14:01 UTC and publicly flagged at 14:34 UTC. The victim first sent 5,000 USDT as a test to a lookalike address before following up with 509,000 USDT to the same destination, while a separate attack in December 2025 saw another trader lose $50 million in USDT using a similar tactic. These scams exploit users' reliance on abbreviated wallet displays and transaction history when copying addresses, making fund recovery onchain highly unlikely once transfers are confirmed.

The China-led mBridge platform has processed about $55.5 billion in cross-border transactions from over 4,000 central bank payments, with volume increasing 2,500-fold since 2022. The digital yuan now accounts for 95% of activity on the project, while in the U.S. President Donald Trump has halted federal CBDC efforts and instead backed privately issued stablecoins under new national regulation.

US President Donald Trump said in the Oval Office this week that a leaker tied to Venezuela is “in jail right now.” On January 15, 2026, Lookonchain highlighted two inactive Polymarket wallets and detailed profits, including a combined $630,484 linked to trades around Nicolás Maduro’s arrest.

Belarus signed a presidential decree this week, according to the decree, creating a legal framework for cryptobanks that integrates token-linked services into the regulated financial system. Applicants must be residents of the Hi-Tech Park and register with the National Bank, and they will operate under dual supervision. Officials say the structure aims to enable innovation while maintaining strong control.

South Korean business academics pushed back against a proposal to limit major shareholders' stakes in crypto exchanges to 15–20%. At a January 16 session in Seoul, they warned of property-rights and constitutional issues, while regulators say the aim is to curb governance risks. Separately, FSC guidelines would allow listed firms and professional investors to allocate up to 5% of equity capital to digital assets.