On January 17, 2026, on-chain observers reported Bitcoin bots aggressively sweeping a wallet whose private key was derived from the coinbase txid of block 924,982. The address received two small BTC deposits totaling 0.00020305 BTC, which were rapidly spent through competing replace-by-fee transactions, leaving no remaining balance and directing nearly all funds to fees. The case highlights how bots precompute addresses from predictable keys and instantly drain any BTC sent to them, exposing the risks of weak or publicly known private key schemes.

On January 17, 2026, Japan's government said it is investigating X over sexually suggestive images generated by Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok and has demanded immediate improvements. Officials in Tokyo are weighing legal options, while other countries and regions including the Philippines, Indonesia, Canada, California, the EU and several European states are already examining or restricting Grok over explicit or degrading image outputs.

Betterment said an unauthorized party accessed a third‑party marketing system, leading to bogus push alerts and emails that promoted a "crypto giveaway." The messages promised to triple deposits and instructed users to send between $1 and $750,000 in Bitcoin or Ether within three hours. At the time of writing, the listed wallets held 0.14626084 BTC and $1,779.30 in ETH.

On December 28, 2025, Kaspersky's SecureList reported that stolen crypto accounts listed on dark-web markets fetch an average of $105, with individual prices ranging from $60 to $400. The data is harvested by phishing kits, exfiltrated via email, Telegram bots, or admin panels, and then monetized immediately or routed into broader resale pipelines.

Venezuelan economist Asdrubal Oliveros said in a recent podcast that the country now collects roughly 80% of its crude oil export revenue in Tether's USDT and other stablecoins. PDVSA has required USDT payments for spot oil sales since March 2024, while Caracas struggles to convert growing stablecoin balances due to currency controls and sanctions. Despite these constraints and U.S. measures including a 25% tariff and tanker seizures, Venezuela's GDP reportedly increased from $102.38 billion in 2023 to $119.81 billion in 2024.

Two Canadians from Ontario and Prince Edward Island lost a combined $2.3 million to an AI-enabled deepfake cryptocurrency investment scheme. The Ontario victim lost $1.7 million after being deceived by a fake Elon Musk video, while the other victim lost $600,000 after watching a clip falsely linked to Dragon's Den. The report was updated on December 21, 2025.

On December 21, 2025, SantaStealer was detailed as a malware-as-a-service that prioritizes crypto wallets. It is promoted on Telegram and hacker forums with monthly plans at $175 (Basic) and $300 (Premium). Rapid7 links it to BluelineStealer and notes weak evasion, while data is exfiltrated in 10MB chunks over port 6767.

On Saturday, December 13, the stablecoin market set a new capitalization high at $310.117 billion. At the time of writing it is near $309.911 billion, with USDT at $186.242 billion and USDC at $78.315 billion, together holding around 85 percent of the sector.

Bitcoin mining equities declined 1.8% in the week ending December 5, 2025, with market capitalization falling to $67.89 billion from $69.12 billion. Trading volume dropped 25.66% to $307.35k. Average cash costs for public miners to produce one Bitcoin reached $74,600, while all-in costs including depreciation and stock-based compensation climbed to $137,800, according to CryptoRank data.