RWA

In a December 23, 2025 press release from Johannesburg, VALR said it secured an FSCA Over‑the‑Counter Derivatives Provider licence and grew to over 1.7 million registered users. The company added 100+ tradable coins, enabled payments at 31,000 stores and 700,000 locations, listed USDPC and xStocks, and reported over $1 million in user rewards during 2025.

ETHZilla, backed by Peter Thiel, said it sold $74.5 million (24,291 ETH) to reduce debt and will discontinue its mNAV metric while pivoting to tokenization. The reversal follows mNAV slipping below 1 in early December and an October effort to prop it up with $40 million in ETH sales, as broader ETH treasuries and ETFs posted sizable outflows.

COTI has published its 2026 roadmap, prioritizing multichain Privacy-on-Demand, private RWAs, and expanded DeFi/DEX presence. The project's loyalty program offered 12.5 million COTI tokens in Season 001, ended on November 11, 2025, and launched a second season with 15 million $COTI plus bonuses and high APY equivalents.

According to ChatGPT, Ethereum is favored over Solana for 2026, with the AI model focusing on value capture, institutional alignment, and evolving layer-2 economics rather than raw activity. It highlights maturing rollups, rising blob-space demand, and constrained issuance for ETH, while noting year-to-date prices of $3,040 for ETH (down almost 9%) and $126 for SOL (down 33%) as of press time.

Bitget reported that cumulative spot trading in its tokenized stock products has exceeded $500 million, with activity concentrated in major U.S. technology names such as Tesla, Nvidia, Apple, and Meta. In the first week of December, the exchange handled over $88 million in Ondo-issued tokenized stocks, accounting for around 73% of that segment's market flow, and has committed to zero-fee trading on these products through January 16, 2026.

Tokenized stocks have surged 2,695% year to date in 2025, outpacing tokenized commodities (225%) and funds (148%), while stablecoins rose 49% in the same period. Ethereum remains the primary issuance venue, but Solana, BNB Chain, Arbitrum, Base, and Polygon have carved out notable market share. Issuers including Backed, Ondo Finance, Dinari, and Robinhood are driving adoption.

MoonPay president Keith Grossman says tokenization will remake finance faster than digitization reshaped media. He cites institution-led pilots and regulatory milestones, including an SEC/CFTC joint statement in September and SEC approval for DTCC in December. The RWA market cap is nearly $19 billion excluding stablecoins, and DTCC handled about $3.7 quadrillion in 2024.

Tokenized gold supply, including Paxos's PAXG, has climbed to about $1.5 billion, according to Token Terminal. Analysts debate whether Bitcoin's lag versus gold reflects a temporary safety rotation or a valuation gap, with the Bitcoin-to-gold ratio near levels seen at past market lows.

The Ethereum Foundation has introduced a security-first roadmap for zkEVMs, defining three milestones through the end of 2026 that culminate in 128-bit provable security and strict proof size limits. Alongside these technical targets, Ethereum is promoting institutional adoption with an "Ethereum for Institutions" portal and highlighting its leadership in tokenized real-world assets and privacy technologies. Co-founder Vitalik Buterin has also warned that growing protocol complexity threatens trustlessness, prompting plans to simplify user interactions through smart contract wallets.

A draft crypto tax framework in the US House of Representatives, led by Rep. Max Miller and supported by Rep. Steven Horsford, proposes a bipartisan overhaul of how digital assets are taxed. The plan includes a de minimis exemption for regulated stablecoin payments under $200, clearer rules for tax treatment of crypto lending, and up to five years of deferral on income from mining and staking rewards. If formally introduced and passed, it could mark a major shift in how Americans use and report digital assets for tax purposes.