Anthony Scaramucci argued that the CLARITY Act's expanded ban on yield-bearing stablecoins makes the US dollar less competitive than China's interest-paying digital yuan. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and other industry executives also criticized the restriction, claiming it protects traditional banks and could undermine the role of US dollar stablecoins in global markets. Separately, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan cautioned that stablecoins may trigger up to $6 trillion in deposit outflows from the banking system.

Market analyst Michaël van de Poppe views the CLARITY bill’s failure to advance in Congress as positive for crypto markets. Coinbase withdrew support on Wednesday, while CEO Brian Armstrong flagged tokenized stocks and yield-bearing stablecoin concerns and later denied reported White House tensions on Saturday. Negotiations to refine the bill are continuing.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong rejected claims that the White House is considering withdrawing support for the CLARITY crypto market structure bill and denied that the administration is upset with the exchange. He said the administration asked Coinbase to find a compromise with banks and noted that industry groups are developing proposals to address community bank concerns and stablecoin yield restrictions. Armstrong expects a revised bill markup in the coming weeks after the Senate Banking Committee delayed its vote to allow further negotiations.

Market analyst Michaël van de Poppe says Ethereum's ETH-BTC ratio bottomed in April 2025 around 0.017, then advanced to 0.043 before easing near 0.034. He points to rising stablecoin supply, tokenized RWAs, developer activity, and strong transfer volumes as supportive, while ETH briefly tested $3,300 above its 365-day average before pulling back to about $3,100.

India's Financial Intelligence Unit introduced stricter onboarding checks for crypto platforms, including live selfie verification and collection of location data. Income Tax Department officials argue that decentralization and cross‑border features hinder tax enforcement, while gains from crypto sales remain taxed at 30% under current law.

According to Arkham Intelligence, BitMine Immersion Technologies staked 86,400 ETH across four transactions on Saturday, worth about $268.7 million, lifting its staked total to 1,080,512 ETH, Lookonchain said. Market analyst Nic Puckrin estimated the position at roughly $3.3 billion and a 2.81% yield, or about $94.4 million in annual ETH.

The Bitcoin network's mining difficulty slipped to 146.4 trillion on Thursday in the first adjustment of 2026. CoinWarz estimates the next change will occur on Jan 22, 2026 at 04:08:12 AM UTC, lifting difficulty from 146.47 T to 148.20 T. Average block times are 9.88 minutes, slightly under the 10‑minute target.

On Monday, the Starknet team published a post‑mortem on a temporary mainnet outage, attributing it to a state mismatch between its execution blockifier and proving layer. The incident triggered a block reorganization that reverted 18 minutes of activity. In September 2025, a sequencer bug caused a separate five‑hour halt, two reorganizations, and about 1 hour rolled back.

The Nasdaq Stock Exchange and CME Group have combined their crypto benchmarks by renaming the Nasdaq Crypto Index to the Nasdaq-CME Crypto Index, which currently tracks major assets such as Bitcoin, Ether, XRP, Solana, Chainlink, Cardano and Avalanche. Executives and analysts expect crypto index benchmarks and exchange-traded products to gain traction as the digital asset market becomes more complex and investors increasingly seek passive, diversified exposure.