On January 17, 2026, an analysis explained why public blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum deliver much lower throughput in practice than their theoretical benchmarks suggest. Because networks must balance security, decentralization, and scalability, real-world performance is constrained by consensus design, propagation delays, mempool congestion, and conservative block size choices, though users can partially mitigate these limits with Layer-2 solutions and fee strategies.

Over the past week, Zcash has fallen from about $528 to $400 amid leadership-related uncertainty and persistent selling pressure, with the token recently trading around $402. During this downturn, a newly created whale wallet accumulated 76,661 ZEC valued at $31.65 million, while on-chain data show negative spot netflows and technical indicators warning that ZEC could break below the $400 support if bearish momentum continues.

XRP is currently trading just above $2, while an Elliott Wave-based technical outlook suggests a final Wave C advance toward the $2.26–$2.28 resistance area before a deeper correction. Analyst CasiTrades, using the 1-hour chart, expects the recent pullback to around $2.03 as a completed B wave that could lead into a five-wave C structure. If price is rejected near this upper band, the scenario anticipates a larger downside phase that may drag XRP back toward the macro support region around $1.65.

On January 14, Base led Ethereum layer-2 fee revenue with about $147,000 for the day, according to CryptoRank.io. Arbitrum and Starknet followed at roughly $39,000 and $9,000, while many other scaling networks generated under $5,000; a DefiLlama table cited by community analysts showed Polygon near $155,000 across its broader network, prompting debate over L2 classification.

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.

XRP is holding the $2.00 support while large holders have accumulated over 50 million tokens during a period of sideways price action. At the same time, exchange outflows are reducing sell-side liquidity and derivatives data shows a pronounced long bias, suggesting the market is approaching a decisive volatility phase.

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.

FTX will run its next creditor distributions on March 31, 2026, and creditors must complete KYC, submit a W-8 BEN and choose a distribution agent by February 14, 2026, according to an update from Sunil Kavuri on X. The plan is overseen by John J. Ray III, and some jurisdictions identified by Kavuri remain ineligible.