On January 17 2026, Axie Infinity's AXS token surged about 64% in a single day to roughly $2.02 and has gained over 100% in the past week, while its market cap sits above $346M and 24-hour trading volume exceeds $997M. The broader GameFi segment now holds around $7 billion in market capitalization, up 6.3% in 24 hours, with tokens such as RON, SAND, SLP, MANA and ILV also recording double-digit daily and weekly gains.

Metaplanet CEO Simon Gerovich and Bitmine Immersion Technologies Chairman Thomas Lee are publicly backing their firms' Bitcoin and Ethereum holdings as core drivers of future income. In January 2026, Metaplanet bought $632.5 million in BTC under its "555 Million Plan," while Bitmine holds over 4.2 million ETH and targets owning 5% of the total supply. Both companies are building revenue strategies around BTC income tools and ETH staking amid strong ETF inflows and optimistic price projections for 2026.

Defiance ETFs, a Miami-based investment firm, will liquidate its Defiance Leveraged Long + Income Ethereum ETF (ETHI) and seven other products on January 30, 2026, after only four months of trading. The leveraged Ethereum ETF gathered about $6.4 million in inflows and delivered -66% returns, a scale the firm views as insufficient in a market where crypto ETFs saw roughly $50 billion in inflows in 2025. The last trading day for the affected funds is set for January 26, 2026, with remaining shares redeemed in cash at net asset value on the liquidation date.

Sei Network has set a mid-2026 deadline to complete its SIP-3 transition from a dual Cosmos–EVM design to an EVM-only blockchain, following community approval in May. The three-phase "Sei Giga" upgrade, running from January to March, will impact holders of Cosmos-native assets on Sei, including about $1.4 million in USDC.n that must be migrated before late March 2026 to avoid potential loss of access. The overhaul also introduces EVM-based staking, disables inbound IBC transfers, and replaces Sei's native oracle with external providers.

On January 3, Mark Zuckerberg said Threads reached 320 million active users. Forbes, citing Similarweb, reported around 320 million total actives and an average of 143 million mobile actives in January 2026, after more than 30 million signups in December 2025. X still leads US mobile daily use with 21.2 million versus Threads' 19.5 million.

On January 16, 2026, the Trump White House confirmed that 57.55 BTC forfeited by Samourai Wallet developers remains on the U.S. government balance sheet and has not been sold. Officials stated the Bitcoin is being held in the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve in line with Executive Order 14233, after on-chain movements to Coinbase had raised concerns about a possible violation. The report also notes ongoing tensions over crypto policy, including SDNY prosecutions and debates around the CLARITY Act's treatment of stablecoins and DeFi.

A crypto holder on the Ethereum network lost a total of $514,000 in USDT after an address poisoning scam, with the incident detected around 14:01 UTC and publicly flagged at 14:34 UTC. The victim first sent 5,000 USDT as a test to a lookalike address before following up with 509,000 USDT to the same destination, while a separate attack in December 2025 saw another trader lose $50 million in USDT using a similar tactic. These scams exploit users' reliance on abbreviated wallet displays and transaction history when copying addresses, making fund recovery onchain highly unlikely once transfers are confirmed.

South Korean business academics pushed back against a proposal to limit major shareholders' stakes in crypto exchanges to 15–20%. At a January 16 session in Seoul, they warned of property-rights and constitutional issues, while regulators say the aim is to curb governance risks. Separately, FSC guidelines would allow listed firms and professional investors to allocate up to 5% of equity capital to digital assets.

On January 15, 2026, State Street Corporation announced a Digital Asset Platform built to support tokenized products such as ETFs, money market funds and regulated stablecoins. The infrastructure aims to offer institutional clients wallet management, custody and cross‑jurisdiction access on both public permissioned and private blockchains. The bank is also backing a tokenized private liquidity fund with Galaxy Asset Management that will use PYUSD and initially launch on Solana before expanding to other networks.