Steak 'n Shake has disclosed a $10 million Bitcoin purchase for its corporate treasury, its first public Bitcoin allocation since enabling crypto payments in May 2025. The 91-year-old burger chain has formalized a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve that channels all customer Bitcoin payments into long-term holdings, linking reserve growth to same-store sales performance.

The U.S. Department of Justice has confirmed that 57.55 BTC forfeited by Samourai Wallet developers will stay on the U.S. government balance sheet under Executive Order 14233, instead of being auctioned. Valued at about $6.3 million, this Bitcoin is designated for the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, highlighting a shift in federal digital asset management.

Several EU states sending troops to Greenland prompted the US president to unveil new tariffs on those countries starting February 1, with a possible hike on June 1. While EU officials called an emergency meeting and US Democrats prepared legislation to counter the measures, Bitcoin's price held steady at just above $95,000 during the weekend. Analysts who reviewed Trump's tariff strategy over 12 months view this as step four in the broader trade confrontation and expect traditional markets to open lower as events unfold. Bitcoin, which previously dropped sharply during the April 2025 trade war, has so far shown greater resilience in the current Greenland-related dispute.

On January 17, 2026, Patrick Witt, Director of the White House Crypto Council, confirmed that the U.S. government is still working to build a strategic Bitcoin reserve funded only by judicially seized assets. The initiative, constrained by President Trump's executive order and complex inter-agency legal requirements, excludes open-market purchases while retained Bitcoins from Samourai Wallet developers and ongoing market shifts in Bitcoin are monitored for potential policy impact.

Analyst Tyrex warns that Bitcoin's structure resembles April 2022 and, if the uptrend fails, projects an 11.04% slide toward $86,000–$84,000 while price hovers near $95,000. Separately, CryptoXLarge maps January–May 2026: quiet accumulation, a February surge, a March ATH around $240,000, an April bull trap, and a May flash crash.

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 17 January 2026, Metaplanet CEO Simon Gerovich argued that Bitcoin is largely absent from corporate balance sheets because it rarely reaches board-level discussion. He said it conflicts with standard treasury assumptions on volatility, return predictability, and accounting, and that only a few firms accept perception risk and long-term skepticism to adopt it.

On 17 January 2026, spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded more than $1.4 billion in net inflows over the preceding week, pointing to renewed interest from large investors. Ethereum ETFs also saw positive, though smaller, allocations as institutions cautiously rebuilt exposure. Analysts highlight that reduced selling by major Bitcoin holders, combined with ETF demand, is tightening available supply even as volatility persists.