Russia is preparing a landmark legal transformation that would expand who are qualified to buy and own cryptocurrencies in the country. Reports have disclosed that lawmakers in the State Duma are in the final phase of text meant to lower barriers for ordinary Russians, even as they keep safeguards and restrictions in place. Related Reading: Bitcoin’s New Power Buyers: Companies Bought 3 Times What Miners Produced The draft bill has drawn attention because it marks a shift from years of strict limits. According to TASS, the proposal would take cryptocurrencies out of a special financial regulation regime so they become a more common part of financial life for people across Russia. Lawmakers say this could make buying and holding crypto something regular citizens do, instead of a privilege for a few. “A bill has already been prepared that removes cryptocurrencies from special financial regulation, which means, they will be a common occurrence in our lives,” Anatoly Aksakov, chair of the State Duma’s Financial Market Committee, said. Expanded Access With Caps Under the current text, people who are not considered “qualified investors” would be able to buy digital coins up to a certain limit. The figure mentioned is 300,000 rubles per year, which is roughly $3,800. This cap aims to let more Russians participate in crypto while trying to prevent big losses if prices swing wildly. Ordinary buyers would still face conditions. Reports say they will have to meet some basic criteria or checks before gaining access, such as passing a short risk‑awareness step and trading only through licensed brokers or exchanges. This is meant to keep unregulated peer‑to‑peer trading from dominating. Professional or qualified market players would face fewer limits. They could trade and hold a wider range of cryptocurrencies with no annual restrictions, though they may still have to demonstrate understanding of risks. Legislative Push And Timing Lawmakers have said the draft is ready and will be discussed during Russia’s spring parliamentary session. If the State Duma passes the bill, implementation could start later in 2026. Aksakov told state media that this move could make crypto “a normal part of life” for many Russians. At the same time, Russian regulators continue to work on other crypto rules. The Bank of Russia has said it plans to set out penalties for illegal crypto intermediaries starting in 2027 and is pushing for a wider regulatory framework that covers both qualified and ordinary investors. Related Reading: Ethereum Could Surge To $7,500 And Leave Bitcoin Behind, Banking Giant Says Balancing Risk And Use Russia still bans using cryptocurrencies to pay for goods and services within the country, a rule in place since 2021. Officials say the new bill would not change that. Instead, the focus is on investment and holding, not daily spending. Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
General-purpose blockchains can’t solve industry disputes over construction changes or equipment usage. Specialized layer 1s are optimized for stateless audit trails and regulatory compliance.
Your day-ahead look for Jan. 15, 2026
Galaxy Digital closed a $75 million tokenized CLO on Avalanche to finance Arch Lending’s crypto-backed lending facility.
This investment could accelerate the integration of digital assets in content creation, potentially reshaping the media and entertainment landscape.
The post Bitmine invests $200 million in MrBeast’s Beast Industries appeared first on Crypto Briefing.
Strategy's preferred stock, STRC, sees a familiar ex dividend dip below the $100 par level.
The integration of blockchain in financial settlements could revolutionize asset liquidity, risk management, and operational efficiency globally.
The post London Stock Exchange unveils blockchain-powered platform for cash and digital assets appeared first on Crypto Briefing.
Brevis and BNB Chain are expanding their collaboration into privacy infrastructure by partnering with 0xbow to launch an Intelligent Privacy Pool on BNB Chain in Q1 2026. This privacy layer builds on 0xbow’s Privacy Pools, which use zero-knowledge proofs to mask transaction details while maintaining compliance safeguards. Users will be able to prove the legitimacy …
The bank’s digital asset division SG-FORGE used its MiCA-compliant EUR CoinVertible stablecoin.
Onchain and derivatives data point to a healthier bitcoin price advance in early 2026.
Industry leaders say transaction-level taxes and loss restrictions are draining liquidity as India tightens crypto compliance and enforcement.
LSEG launched its Digital Settlement House enabling 24/7 settlement of tokenized commercial bank deposits across currencies and networks.
Market analyst Egrag Crypto said the XRP price structure remains largely bullish despite the cryptocurrency’s recent struggles to break above $2. The analyst has presented a chart analysis showing XRP slowly approaching a key decision zone that could determine its next upward move and push it firmly out of its current consolidation. XRP Price Structure Still Bullish On Wednesday, January 14, Egrag Crypto said the XRP 3-day chart shows obvious, strong signals. He stated that XRP remains structurally bullish despite experiencing long periods of consolidation following its last rebound above $2 this year. According to the analyst, XRP’s price is currently compressing within a descending channel as it moves closer to a key decision zone between $2.30 and $2.40. He explained that this type of compression often appears after a strong move and can lead to a larger price expansion. Related Reading: Bitcoin Price Crash To $57,000: The Bullish Path That Could End In Tears In his post on X, Egrag Crypto shared key trends he observed on XRP’s 3-day chart. He revealed that the 50 Exponential Moving Average (EMA) has begun to flatten, indicating that selling pressure for XRP may be easing. At the same time, the 200 EMA continues to move higher, supporting the analyst’s opinion that the macro trend for XRP is still bullish. Egrag Crypto also emphasized that XRP is holding above the EMA cluster, a sign of structural strength rather than weakness. He highlighted that the upper boundary of the descending channel aligns precisely with the critical resistance areas at $2.3, marked by a red line on the chart. As these four developments occur simultaneously on the XRP chart, Egrag Crypto shared insights into their potential price impacts. He stated that a clean 3-day close above $2.40 would likely confirm XRP’s breakout from the descending channel. Based on the chart structure, he added that such a move could open the door for a continuation toward the $2.70 and $3.13 levels. If XRP is rejected at the channel’s resistance, Egrag Crypto has said that the price would likely remain range-bound. He concluded his analysis by emphasizing that as long as XRP continues trading above $2.0, its bullish structure will remain intact, and this ongoing consolidation phase should be seen as a period of compression ahead of a potential major price expansion. Related Reading: This Ethereum Triangle Breakout Puts Price Above $24,000, Here’s The Path Chart Signals Potentially Deeper Downtrend In Egrag Crypto’s chart, the lower boundary of the descending channel touches a key support area, marked by a white line. This could mean that if XRP fails to hold $2 and even drops below it, it could invalidate the analyst’s bullish thesis and trigger a decline toward the next support level at $1.65, representing a roughly 17.5% drop from current prices. If price falls further below $1.65, XRP could crash toward the last highlighted support level just around $1.0, reflecting an approximately 50% decrease from around $2.1. Featured image created with Dall.E, chart from Tradingview.com
Crypto markets paused on Thursday after bitcoin’s decisive breakout earlier this week, with BTC holding key support levels while altcoins saw profit-taking.
A pickup in Bitcoin spot demand and persistent spot ETF inflows could push BTC above the next significant hurdle at $98,000 and secure a sustained recovery.
Crypto banking firm Sygnum forecasts that upcoming US regulations, including the CLARITY Act and Bitcoin Act, could drive sovereign Bitcoin reserves and boost tokenized bond issuance by major institutions in 2026. Countries like Brazil, Japan, and Germany may adopt BTC strategically, while traditional finance increasingly explores blockchain-based token rails. Wider adoption could raise Bitcoin’s global …
Decred has caught the market off guard with a sharp upside move, snapping out of its range-bound consolidation. Unlike many breakouts that rely on hype and heavy turnover, this rally looks more like a supply squeeze—price has been pushed higher as selling pressure thins out rather than because buyers suddenly flooded in. With the DCR …
Sygnum predicts US crypto regulation will spur sovereign Bitcoin reserves and accelerate tokenized bond issuance by major financial institutions in 2026.
Bitcoin's brief climb above $97,000 over the past day extended a run that suggests the underlying mechanics signal a structural shift in how capital is interacting with the asset class. According to CryptoSlate data, BTC reached a peak of $97,860, its highest price level since last November. This price performance continues the flagship digital asset's strong […]
The post Bitcoin price is exploding, and a rare “gamma squeeze” suggests the price action is about to get violent appeared first on CryptoSlate.
The Series A round was led by Castle Island Ventures with participation from Coinbase Ventures.
Federal trademarks give McConaughey new weapons against AI voice theft, but he's also embracing the technology on his terms.
Argentine crypto exchange Lemon introduced a Bitcoin-backed Visa card, letting users access peso credit without selling BTC. By locking 0.01 BTC (~$960), customers receive 1 million pesos credit. The card will allow adjustments and stablecoin payments. This reflects growing crypto adoption in Argentina amid high inflation and ongoing distrust of traditional banks.
Bitcoin nears two-month highs as RSI divergence and a bullish MACD cross build, with BTC eyeing $101,000 as the next major reclaim level for trend confirmation.
The London Stock Exchange's new Digital Settlement House uses tokenized bank deposits for instant, round-the-clock settlement across blockchain and traditional payment networks.
Arthur Hayes is positioning for a 2026 liquidity rebound, arguing that Bitcoin’s weak 2025 wasn’t a referendum on “crypto narratives” so much as a straightforward dollar-credit story. In his latest essay, “Frowny Cloud,” the Maelstrom CIO says he is adding risk via Strategy (MSTR), Japan’s Metaplanet, and Zcash (ZEC) as he expects US dollar liquidity to inflect higher after a year in which Bitcoin lagged both gold and US tech stocks. Hayes frames 2025 as an awkward year for the standard cross-asset shorthand that treats Bitcoin as either digital gold or a high-beta proxy for US tech. In his telling, Bitcoin behaved “as expected” under tightening conditions, while gold and the Nasdaq 100 rose for different reasons despite falling dollar liquidity. Related Reading: Here’s Why Bitcoin Volatility Sparks Fresh Attention On MicroStrategy He argues gold’s bid is being driven by sovereign balance sheets rather than retail mania, rooted in distrust of US Treasury exposure after prior asset-freeze precedents. “If the US president steals your money, it’s an instant zero. Does it then matter what price you buy gold at?” he writes, casting central banks as price-insensitive buyers. On equities, Hayes leans into an industrial-policy interpretation of the AI trade. His claim is that the US and China have effectively treated “winning AI” as strategic, dulling the usual market discipline and helping explain why the Nasdaq decoupled from his dollar-liquidity index in 2025. That divergence matters because it sets up his core takeaway for 2026: Bitcoin needs expanding dollar liquidity to regain momentum. “Bitcoin and the Nasdaq rise when dollar liquidity expands. The only problem is the recent divergence,” Hayes writes, before returning to the “vicissitudes of dollar liquidity” as the primary driver he wants to track. The Three-Pillar Liquidity Pitch Hayes’ 2026 outlook hinges on a sharp rebound in dollar credit creation. He cites three channels: a growing Fed balance sheet via Reserve Management Purchases (RMP), commercial-bank lending into “strategic industries,” and lower mortgage rates catalyzed by policy-driven demand for mortgage-backed securities. In his account, quantitative tightening faded as a dominant headwind in late 2025, with QT ending in December and RMP beginning as a new, steady buyer. He claims RMP “at a minimum” expands the balance sheet by $40 billion per month, and expects that pace to rise as government funding needs increase. The second leg is bank credit creation, which he says accelerated in 4Q25, with large lenders willing to extend loans where government equity stakes or offtake agreements reduce default risk. The third is housing: Hayes points to Trump-backed directives for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to deploy $200 billion toward MBS purchases, arguing that lower mortgage rates could unlock a familiar wealth effect and, by extension, more credit. Related Reading: Bitcoin Accumulation Continues: Strategy Purchases 1,287 BTC Amid Rising Prices He ties the pieces together with a simple conclusion: if liquidity turns, Bitcoin should follow. “Bitcoin … and dollar liquidity bottomed around the same time,” he writes, arguing that the next major leg depends less on sentiment than on renewed credit expansion. MSTR, Metaplanet, And ZCash Hayes describes himself as a “degen speculator” and says Maelstrom is already “nearly fully invested,” but he still wants “MOAR risk” to capture upside convexity if Bitcoin reclaims higher levels. Rather than using perpetuals or options, he says he’s long Strategy and Metaplanet for levered exposure via corporate balance sheets. His timing argument is valuation-relative: he compares each company’s “DAT” to Bitcoin priced in the relevant currency (yen for Metaplanet, dollars for Strategy) and says those ratios sit near the low end of the past two years, after being “down substantially” from mid-2025 peaks. He adds a key condition: “If Bitcoin can retake $110,000, investors will get the itch to go long Bitcoin through these vehicles. Given the leverage embedded in the capital structure of these businesses, they will outperform Bitcoin on the upside.” He also flags continued accumulation of Zcash. Hayes argues the departure of developers at Electric Coin Company (ECC) is not bearish: “We continue to add to our Zcash position. The departure of the devs at ECC is not bearish. I firmly believe they will ship better, more impactful products within their own for-profit entity. I’m thankful for the opportunity to buy discounted ZEC from weak hands.” At press time, MSTR traded at $179.33. Featured image from YouTube, chart from TradingView.com
Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan warned that stablecoin yield rules could shift up to $6 trillion in deposits from banks.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs attracted over $1.7 billion in a three-day streak as BTC hit two-month highs and sentiment turned bullish.
The Senate Banking Committee postponed a markup hearing for the legislation late Wednesday after Coinbase pulled its support for the bill.
Crypto exchange Lemon has launched a Bitcoin-backed Visa credit card in Argentina, letting users lock up BTC as collateral to access peso credit lines without selling their coins.
Argentina’s crypto platform Lemon has launched the country’s first Visa credit card backed by Bitcoin collateral, allowing users to access peso credit without selling their BTC or requiring a bank account or credit history. Customers deposit a small amount of BTC as collateral and receive a credit limit in pesos, which they can use at …