Barclays, which manages $2.2 trillion in assets, has made its first move into stablecoins by backing Ubyx Inc., a U.S.-based clearing system for tokenized deposits and regulated stablecoins. Announced on January 7, 2026, the investment aims to improve connectivity across tokens, blockchains, and digital wallets as adoption of digital money accelerates. Ubyx CEO Tony McLaughlin …
Moody’s said stablecoins and tokenized deposits are evolving into institutional “digital cash,” with trillions in onchain settlement volume and billions in infrastructure investment.
Bitcoin fell during Asian trading hours after failing to break above $94,500, dragging the wider crypto market lower.
The Wall Street giant is widening its crypto push, following bitcoin and solana ETF filings with a potential ether trust.
Morgan Stanley's move into Ethereum ETFs signals growing institutional interest in crypto, potentially boosting market legitimacy and adoption.
The post $1.8 trillion Morgan Stanley files for Ethereum ETF with SEC appeared first on Crypto Briefing.
Japan's Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama stood at the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Jan. 5 and declared 2026 a “digital year,” framing traditional exchanges as the primary gateway for investors to access cryptoassets and ETF-like products. As Elliptic noted, she pointed to US spot Bitcoin ETFs as a model, explicitly stating what Japan's Financial Services Agency […]
The post XRP currently dominates Japan’s cash inflows, and a new 20% tax rate is about to lock that advantage in appeared first on CryptoSlate.
Unfilled price gaps in futures and ETFs are emerging as key downside reference levels for bitcoin as weakness emerges.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs in the US opened 2026 with a burst of cash that surprised some market watchers and encouraged others. Related Reading: Bitcoin Wealth Isn’t About Hype—It’s About Time And Stacking, Expert Says According to Bloomberg’s senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas, more than $1.2 billion flowed into those funds during the first two trading days of the year. He estimated that if that pace held, annualized inflows could reach about $150 billion — roughly 600% higher than the total for 2025. The spot Bitcoin ETFs are “coming into 2026 like a lion,” Balchunas said. ETF Flows Surge Early According to reports, nearly every major spot Bitcoin ETF saw money coming in during those opening sessions. Balchunas calls this inflow as broad-based. The WisdomTree Bitcoin Fund (BTCW) was one of the few exceptions that did not register the same demand. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) was reported to have taken a large share of last year’s buying. The spot bitcoin ETFs are coming into 2026 like a lion, +$1.2 in flows in first two days of year w/ everyone eating. That’s a $150b/yr pace. Told ya’ll if they can take in $22b when it’s raining, imagine when the sun is shining. pic.twitter.com/YdRaLN0Op7 — Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) January 6, 2026 Traditional Measures Fell Short Last Year Last year, spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded net inflows of over $21 billion. That was down from $35 billion in 2024. Yet Monday’s single-day net inflow of $697 million was the biggest daily intake in three months, and it came as Bitcoin traded back above the low $90,000s. Trading volume rose and some positions that had bet on a price drop were closed, which added to the move. Institutional Moves And New Filings Reports show Morgan Stanley filed with the SEC to offer both Bitcoin and Solana ETFs, a step that puts a major wealth manager alongside established issuers. Balchunas pointed out Morgan Stanley manages about $8 trillion in advisory assets and has already cleared its advisors to allocate to such products. The firm’s proposed Bitcoin trust, according to the filing, would track the spot price and avoid leverage or derivatives. How The Flows Affect The Market Analysts say ETF demand is likely to soak up circulating Bitcoin supply. If sustained, that dynamic could change how much liquidity is available to traders and might reduce the amount of BTC offered on exchanges. There was an early sign of unevenness: preliminary figures showed a large outflow from one Fidelity fund on Tuesday, which raised the chance of a net outflow for the day once all data were in. Related Reading: Ether Staking Heats Up As Entry Queue Hits 1.3 Million ETH Bitcoin Price Amid Geopolitical Noise Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s price held its ground after geopolitical headlines involving Venezuela and the capture of its leader, Nicolas Maduro, by US special forces. The top crypto asset kept its composure around the low $90,000s and climbed past $93,000 at moments. Traders and analysts pointed to short position liquidations and a rebound in other risk assets as reasons for the lift. Some on-chain observers flagged accumulation by larger holders, while others said markets were treating the news as concluded rather than as a fresh shock. Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
Hyperliquid’s native token (HYPE) is trading near a critical stage following a sharp increase in price and subsequent consolidation. With price trading close to the resistance zone of $30, traders are paying close attention to whether HYPE price will move to the next level or will pull back. Meanwhile, the trading volume and futures open …
Ethereum launched the BPO2 upgrade at epoch 419072 around 1:01 a.m. UTC on January 7, 2026, increasing the per-block blob target from 10 to 14 and maximum from 15 to 21 blobs. This 40% capacity expansion reduces data costs for rollups like Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base using Dencun’s 128KB blobs, stabilizing fees while achieving nearly …
Bitcoin’s large whales are buying aggressively while the price drops below $92,000. On-chain data shows large investors adding BTC, and exchange supply has dropped to a 7-year low. The big question now is simple, What do whales know that others don’t? Bitcoin Whale Accumulation BTC At Large According to on-chain data in early January 2026, …
Lloyds enlisted the help of Archax and Canton Network to carry out the transaction.
a16z crypto outlined why privacy could become crypto’s most important moat in 2026 and why it could shape the next adoption phase.
Ubyx is building a framework to enable tokenized money to move between issuers and institutions, supporting the exchange and redemption of funds.
Nike has quietly sold its digital products subsidiary RTFKT, which it acquired in 2021 as part of a push into NFTs and virtual sneakers, marking the end of its Web3 services announced earlier in 2025. The buyer and terms were not disclosed, but the move comes amid broader strategic shifts at Nike. Reports of the …
U.S. President Donald Trump has framed the upcoming midterm elections as a make-or-break moment for his presidency. Addressing Republican lawmakers, he warned that a Democratic victory could trigger renewed impeachment efforts, turning the midterms into a decisive political showdown rather than a routine vote. His remarks underline how tightly his political survival is now tied …
Barclays has invested in Ubyx, a US stablecoin clearing platform, marking a major move into regulated digital money and tokenized financial services.
Select bitcoin treasury equities gained after MSCI removed near-term index exclusion risk.
XRP has jumped roughly 25% off its recent lows (at one point), and Cryptoinsightuk co-founder Will Taylor says the move has reopened the debate over whether XRP is starting a larger impulse that could ultimately point toward the $8–$12 zone or whether it’s a short-term squeeze that needs to cool first. Taylor said he’s “up in the air” on the immediate next step, even as he remains long. His hesitation is rooted in a simple conflict: the lower timeframes look stretched, but XRP has a track record of accelerating after momentum spikes rather than immediately mean-reverting. What The XRP Charts Tell Us On the hourly, Taylor noted XRP’s RSI has repeatedly hit overbought territory and “we’ve crossed bearish on the hour,” a short-term warning that often precedes pullbacks or sideways digestion. On the four-hour, he described RSI as “about as high as I’ve pretty much ever seen it,” and tried to contextualize what happened the last few times XRP got similarly overheated. In one prior episode, he said XRP pulled back briefly, then continued higher by “a further like 36%.” In another, he described a rally sequence where price consolidated and then ran again, adding “another 129%” into the next leg. Related Reading: Same XRP Setup That Led To Over 1,000% Increase In 2017 Is Playing Out Again That’s the core of his dilemma: overbought conditions can be a sell signal in many markets, but Taylor argues XRP’s strongest phases often begin with RSI entering overbought, not ending there. “When XRP’s daily RSI gets overbought, XRP rips in price a lot of the time,” he said, pushing back on the reflex to fade strength. On the daily chart, he highlighted what he sees as a constructive technical shift. XRP has closed above a short-term range that previously capped price for multiple days, and printed its “highest daily close in XRP since the 13th of November.” Taylor emphasized how quickly XRP cleared that ceiling this time: after multiple failed attempts in the prior weeks, “we break straight through.” XRP Price Targets From there, Taylor laid out the upside logic using historical RSI analogs. He said three previous daily overbought signals during the current cycle coincided with major extensions, citing moves of roughly 414% in one instance and 36% and 49% in others. He framed this as pattern recognition rather than prediction: “this is complete fact,” he said, referring to the historical relationship between daily RSI overbought and subsequent upside but he still translated those rough percentages into possible zones. A smaller continuation on the order of ~39% would, in his words, take XRP to around $3.13. A larger extension could revisit all-time highs near $3.66. The most aggressive interpretation, aligned with his broader wave thesis, would move XRP “up towards our goals of like $8 to $12 for this wave.” Related Reading: Only 1 Week Left As XRP RSI Breakout Sets Up $10 Path, Analyst Predicts Structurally, Taylor said the market is at a point where multiple Elliott Wave counts can be argued. He sketched competing interpretations: XRP may be working through an ABC-type move off the lows, may be approaching a fifth wave higher, or could still be in an extended third wave within a larger five-wave advance. “My honest answer is right now I don’t know,” he said. Even without committing to a wave count, Taylor said the “impulsive” character of the rally stands out. He pointed to “the length of these candles supported by volume” across exchanges, arguing the move looks different from earlier, more corrective price action. For him, the practical test is near-term continuation: he wants to see “some more really aggressive candles” over the next day or two to support the idea that XRP is leading a broader leg rather than squeezing and stalling. Liquidity is the other piece he’s watching. Taylor said XRP has “on the hourly taken most of our upside liquidity,” while flagging downside liquidity zones around $1.70 down to $1.66. He said in established trends he would “expect a continuation to the upside,” but those downside pools, combined with stretched RSI and nearby resistance on XRP’s relative pairs, keep him from treating the current level as a clean new entry. Taylor said these mixed signals are why he has considered reducing leverage on his XRP long, noting he is “90% spot.” His bottom line was simple: XRP has delivered “a fantastic aggressive move,” but the next few sessions matter. 29 minutes of $XRP TA. pic.twitter.com/aJ4yiC7Sdr — Cryptoinsightuk (@Cryptoinsightuk) January 6, 2026 If XRP keeps printing strong daily candles and the relative pairs start closing above resistance, his $8–$12 zone framing remains a live bull-case roadmap. If not, the same overbought signals and nearby liquidity pockets increase the odds that XRP first resets through consolidation or a retracement before any larger leg can develop. At press time, XRP traded at $2.25. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
Vitalik and Solana's Yakovenko outline competing ideas about resilience, exposing deeper trade-offs between sovereignty, speed and economic design.
Zac Prince, former BlockFi CEO and current Head of Galaxy One, believes Bitcoin will hit a new all-time high in 2026. Speaking in a recent chat with John Gillen from Milk Road, Prince pointed to late 2025’s heavy bearish sentiment as a sign that things are about to turn around. “I would make a prediction …
RAKBank's in-principle nod from the Central Bank of the UAE to launch a dirham-backed stablecoin adds a homegrown bank to the UAE’s stablecoin race.
Changpeng Zhao-backed YZi Labs criticized CEA's new poison pill and bylaw changes in a Wednesday post on X.
Analytics firm Glassnode has highlighted how the Bitcoin Funding Rates have increased across the various exchanges, but still not to a high degree. Bitcoin Perps Funding Rates Have Surged In a new post on X, Glassnode has talked about the latest trend in the Bitcoin Funding Rates for the major perpetual futures markets. The “Funding Rate” is an indicator that measures the amount of periodic fees that traders on the futures market are exchanging between each other on a given derivatives platform. Related Reading: Bitcoin Accumulation: Data Shows Institutions Are Net Buyers Again When the value of this metric is positive, it means the long holders are paying a premium to the shorts in order to hold onto their position. Such a trend implies a bullish mentality is dominant in the market. On the other hand, the indicator being below the zero mark suggests the shorts outweigh the longs and a bearish sentiment is shared by the majority of traders on the exchange. Now, here is the chart shared by Glassnode that shows the trend in the 7-day moving average (MA) of the Bitcoin Funding Rate for major exchanges over the last couple of years: As displayed in the above graph, the Bitcoin Funding Rate has witnessed an increase across these platforms recently, indicating that investors have been setting up fresh bullish positions. The mean Funding Rate for these exchanges dropped to the 0% mark back in November as the cryptocurrency’s price went through a crash. As the asset settled into its consolidation phase, investors gradually set up longs, culminating in the indicator recovering to 0.005%. Related Reading: Bitcoin Miner Capitulation Ends: Hash Ribbons Flash Buy Signal In the last 24 hours, however, the mean Funding Rate has retraced back to 0.003%, implying some investors have closed up their long positions after the latest recovery rally and/or others have set up shorts to bet against the bullish price action. In the past, major rallies have tended to occur alongside notable positive Funding Rates on the different exchanges. According to Glassnode, the threshold has generally lied at 0.001%. Since the mean Funding Rate is still below this level, the analytics firm has noted, “current conditions remain supportive but not yet decisive.” BTC Broke Above $94,000 Before Retracing Down Bitcoin has seen the renewal of bullish momentum recently, with its price recovering as high as $94,700, but the past day has seen a setback for the digital asset as it’s now back at $92,100. Other cryptocurrencies have also been volatile to varying degrees in the past day, which has resulted in liquidations of over $500 million on the derivatives exchanges, as data from CoinGlass shows. Out of these $503 million in liquidations, about $146 million of the positions involved were Bitcoin-related ones. Featured image from Dall-E, CoinGlass.com, Glassnode.com, chart from TradingView.com
O'Callaghan joins from market maker IMC where he was employed as global head of institutional partnerships and digital asset sales.
Meme coins are again in the spotlight in early 2026 as the broader crypto market is beginning to recover. As soon as Bitcoin and Ethereum are stable, traders tend to switch to high-risk and high-reward assets such as meme coins. Due to this, such popular tokens as SHIB, FLOKI, and BONK have begun to demonstrate …
Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, recently dropped from its yearly high of $94,762 to $92,700, marking roughly a 2.18% decline. This move has raised short-term concerns, especially after Bitcoin ETFs saw a notable inflow of $697.2 million on January 5.Despite it, Veteran financial trader Matthew Dixon believes this pause may be setting the stage for …
Barclays has made its first stablecoin startup investment, backing Ubyx as banks push into regulated digital payments.
Binance Futures will launch silver perpetual contracts on Wednesday, offering up to 50x leverage on silver priced in U.S. dollars per troy ounce.
As Ethereum (ETH) recently reclaimed key levels above $3,200, the dynamics within its staking system have shifted significantly. For the first time in nearly six months, the entry queue for staking Ethereum now exceeds the exit queue, a development viewed by many as a bullish indicator for ETH prices. Currently, a substantial 1.32 million ETH is waiting to be staked, with an average wait time of 23 days, while only about 3,000 ETH are queued for withdrawal, which takes merely an hour, indicating a net increase in locked ETH rather than unlocked coins. Bullish Signals For Ethereum Analysts at Bull Theory suggest that historically, significant spikes in entry queues occur when investor confidence in Ethereum’s long-term potential rises. In contrast, increases in exit queues are often associated with market fear or forced sell-offs. Presently, the landscape shows rising entry demand, decreasing exit pressure, and an overall increase in net lock-up, a combination that has frequently been observed before stronger bullish cycles for ETH. Related Reading: XRP Surges Towards $2.20: Leading Monday Gains And Driving Crypto ETF Inflows Compounding this positive sentiment is the current high level of network activity. Daily transactions on the Ethereum network are trending upwards, indicating that market participants are actively engaging with the platform rather than leaving it. Enhanced network usage leads to increased ETH burning, contributing to a supply crunch that further supports the asset’s value. According to the analysts, institutional investment is one of the notable drivers behind the current surge in staking. In just the past two weeks, BitMine – the public company with the largest Ethereum holdings – has staked around $2.58 billion worth of ETH, signaling a long-term commitment to the asset and suggesting growing institutional interest in the digital asset. Key Factors Suggest A Significant Upswing Ahead This development comes ahead of potential catalysts that could further boost staking demand. While the BlackRock Ethereum staking ETF is still awaiting approval, its eventual green light could grant access to a broader pool of traditional capital, thereby enhancing the overall staking demand for ETH. Additionally, ETH has successfully broken out of a three-month downward trend. If it can reclaim levels between $3,500 and $3,600, the analysts predict that a substantial rally could follow. Related Reading: Bitcoin Reaches $93,000 Amid Renewed Optimism: What To Keep An Eye On This Week As of now, ETH has recovered by 11% in the past two weeks according to CoinGecko data, positioning the token just below these key levels at $3,270. This performance has even surpassed that of Bitcoin (BTC), which has recorded gains of just 6% in the same time frame. Taking into account additional factors such as the anticipated approval of the BlackRock ETF and the potential for regulatory clarity through the passing of the Market Structure Bill, also known as the Clarity Act, Ethereum appears to be in a strong position to experience a significant rally in 2026. Featured image from DALL-E, chart from TradingView.com