Cryptopolitan

JPMorgan posted its fourth-quarter results today after the bell and said profit fell 7% in the fourth quarter of 2025, landing at $13 billion, or $4.63 per share, missing FactSet estimates of $4.85 per share.

As of press time, the JPM stock has crashed by 4.15%. Meanwhile, JPMorgan’s quarterly revenue rose 7% to $45.8 billion, though even that still fell short of Wall Street’s $46.2 billion estimate.

For the full year, revenue reached $182.4 billion, up from $177.6 billion in 2024. Full-year profit totaled $57 billion, below the $58.5 billion reported the year before, which remains the highest annual profit ever posted by any U.S. bank, let alone the largest one of them all.

Apple Card takeover weighs on JPMorgan’s Q4 earnings

According to the earnings report, JPMorgan booked an extra $2.2 billion charge related to potential future loan losses tied to roughly $20 billion in Apple credit card balances, which reduced quarterly earnings by 60 cents per share.

JPMorgan also said it missed a forecast it had issued just one month earlier for investment banking fees. Some deals expected to close before the end of the year did not move forward in time. Analysts described the quarter as solid overall despite the earnings pressure, but the stock was still down 2.4% in early Tuesday trading.

Within the commercial and investment banking unit, total quarterly revenue rose 10% to $19.38 billion. Investment banking fees declined to $2.3 billion, down from $2.5 billion a year earlier. The drop came from weaker deal activity, lower debt transactions, and softer equity underwriting.

JPMorgan’s trading revenue climbs as deal activity changes

JPMorgan’s markets division delivered stronger results, with bank trading revenue up by 17% to $8.2 billion in the quarter and stock trading revenue surging by 40%.

At the start of 2025, many Wall Street banks expected a strong rebound in mergers, acquisitions, and capital markets activity, but it didn’t happen until later in the year, though only for large transactions that generate higher fees.

By year-end, 2025 recorded the second-highest merger volume on record. Volatility throughout the year also boosted trading desks, so clients moved out of certain sectors and rotated into assets they viewed as undervalued.

For the full year, investment banking fees totaled $9.7 billion, up from $9.1 billion the prior year. Full-year trading revenue rose 19% to $35.8 billion.

JPMorgan’s net charge-offs in the fourth quarter were $2.5 billion, compared with $2.4 billion a year earlier, signaling mild credit deterioration.

Consumer activity stayed firm, as JPMorgan’s total debit and credit card spending increased 7% versus 2024. The rate of credit card balances delinquent by more than 90 days declined to 1.10%, down from 1.14% a year earlier.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said in the earnings call event:- “Consumers have money, there’s still jobs even though it’s weakened a little bit thanks to geopolitical risks. But we deal with the world we got, not the world we want.”

JPMorgan’s CFO, Jeremy Barnum, also indicated the banking industry could push back against President Trump’s proposed one-year 10% cap on credit card interest rates.

Goldman Sachs shares fell 1%, Visa and Mastercard dropped roughly 4% each, while banking ETFs XLF and KBWB crashed alongside.

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Bitpanda, the EU-based crypto brokerage, has raised the potential for an IPO. The public sale was considered for months in 2025, and may happen by the first half of the year. 

Bitpanda GmbH, a crypto trading and brokerage platform, is viewing Frankfurt as the possible venue for its initial public offering. According to sources familiar with the deal cited by Bloomberg, the sale may be completed by the end of H1. 

The decision arrives months after Bitpanda decided against a London listing, instead tapping a growing IPO season in the Euro Area. In August 2025, the exchange considered either New York or Frankfurt for a possible listing.

The Vienna-based brokerage may seek a valuation of over $4.7B (4B EUR), said the sources, which remained private. Based on the reports, Bitpanda has hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup, and Deutsche Bank to arrange the sale. 

An even shorter timeframe is possible, with a listing in the first quarter. With the new decision, Bitpanda will join a growing list of crypto companies preparing for IPOs in 2026.

Bitpanda leads the Austrian market

Bitpanda has been one of the EU-based regulated brokerages that quickly adapted to the changing crypto climate. The platform adopts Web3, as well as traditional investments, including stocks and precious metals. 

According to a report on digital asset usage in Austria, Bitpanda expanded its popularity as a local brokerage. In Austria, Bitpanda retained a 59.6% share of users, with only 21% for Binance and 11% for Kraken. Bitpanda also offers regulated derivative trading with up to 10X leverage for riskier strategies.

Platform selection in Austria is driven by Bitpanda’s one-stop approach, which includes portfolio and tax management, as well as automated capital gains tax withholding. The brokerage and trading hub relies on its fully regulated status for crypto adoption and has a high degree of user retention in Austria. The platform offers a relatively small curated collection of crypto assets and other investment opportunities, though it has not yet added Solana-based stablecoins. 

Bitpanda prepares for IPO with team changes

Bitpanda started 2026 with a new board of directors. The platform, founded by Eric Demuth and Paul Klanschek, switched to the current CEO, Lukas Enzersdorfer-Konrad. 

Demuth moved to the role of Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Swiss holding company that owns Bitpanda Group.

Bitpanda hinted at its renewed IPO plans just as Kraken announced a Nasdaq listing, pursuing a $250M raise. Bitpanda’s popularity may achieve a higher valuation, though the initial raise remains uncertain. The brokerage made the decision in a hopeful IPO season for Europe, as well as a year with high-profile crypto IPOs. 

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A Gen Z drug trafficker has been sentenced to 20 years in prison after authorities found that he used crypto as a money laundering and payment tool in a narcotics distribution network worth $4 million.

The kingpin was sentenced at the Ulsan District Court, where prosecutors accused the kingpin and his gang of smuggling drugs into the country using international courier services and making sales via the Telegram chat app. He was also fined $4.2 million.

“It is difficult for police to crack down on the import of drugs through international parcel delivery,” Presiding Judge Park Jeong-hong said in sentencing. “This scourge is spreading rapidly, so we need to punish offenders severely. These are highly antisocial crimes. They demand very heavy punishments.”

Drug dealers use Telegram as a drug department store

According to reports, Korean-language Telegram channels have become “narcotics department stores” for young South Koreans, who pay for drug deliveries in Bitcoin and other crypto assets. The court heard that the unnamed man started selling drugs online in March 2020. He recruited a gang of associates who helped him run multiple Telegram drug sales channels.

The channels sold synthetic marijuana, marijuana, LSD, and methamphetamine, mainly smuggled from Vietnam. The gang used crypto to launder its funds and paid its distributors a 10% commission on all successful deliveries.

The kingpin used a nationwide network of smaller-scale drug dealers to perform “dead drops,” or leaving bags of drugs hidden in public places and then sending pickup instructions to their buyers. Prosecutors revealed that between March 2022 and May 2023 alone, the gang dropped off almost 12,000 deliveries of over 7,000 kilograms of methamphetamine pills.

The court stated that the kingpin had developed a model that other drug dealers were now following. “The illegal distribution of drugs has become more sophisticated and active,” said the judge. “Your actions are mass-producing new drug addicts and drug criminals.”

The court also handed out jail sentences of between 30 months and three years to three of the kingpin’s acquaintances. All were found guilty of drug distribution and money laundering violations.

A year ago, South Korean authorities launched an investigation into the popular messaging app Telegram, amid allegations of the platform being used for the dissemination of illicit content. However, the authorities faced challenges in the investigation due to Telegram’s unwillingness to provide user account information to law enforcement agencies, both in South Korea and internationally.

So far, the country’s media regulator, the Korea Communications Standard Commission (KCSC) has added Telegram to its list of Foreign platform partners, allowing it to request the removal of illicit content such as narcotics information.

South Korea lifts a ban tied to laundering as criminal groups shift methods

South Korea’s Financial Services Commission (FSC) lifted the ban on corporate investments in cryptocurrencies, which had been tied to concerns about money laundering.

The final regulations will be published in January or February. Under the draft, legal entities will be allowed to allocate up to 5% of their shareholder equity to coins within the top 20 by market capitalization.

Stablecoins are not yet included in this list; a decision on them will be made later. According to Chainalysis, Stablecoins accounted for 84% of illicit transaction volume in 2025. This made stablecoins the most commonly used asset in illicit on-chain activity.

As reported by Cryptopolitan, investments will be permitted only through the country’s five largest regulated exchanges: Upbit, Bithumb, Korbit, INEX, and Coinone. 

Experts in anti-money laundering and investigators say that criminal groups see casino junkets and chip-cash cycles as safer than crypto. The warning comes after reports that Chinese nationals used casinos in Jeju and other regions of the country to clean up money they got from voice-phishing scams.

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Intersect’s Hard Fork Working Group has proposed to name the next Cardano hard fork to Protocol Version 11, the “van Rossem” hard fork, after DRep Max van Rossem. The community has a tradition of naming hard forks in memory of impactful DReps in the blockchain ecosystem, starting with Byron.

Cardano said naming the 2026 hard fork after van Rossem will continue to uphold a long-standing tradition that has been passed down from Shelley, Allegra, Mary, Alonzo, Vasil, Valentine, Chang, and Plomin. The Vasil, Chang, and Plomin hard forks were named after the recently deceased Dreps, in recognition of their families and the Cardano community as a whole. 

Meanwhile, the Hard Fork Working Group said the Cardano community remembers Max as a sharp-minded and deeply committed DRep, as those who worked with him attest. He was heavily involved in the development of Cardano’s constitution and contributed to many governance discussions that have helped shape and optimize the network. 

Max plays a key role in the first Constitutional Committee election 

DRep van Rossen served as both a member and a co-lead of the Constitutional Committee Election Working Group, which oversaw the first fully elected Constitutional Committee (CC). He was also integral in the network’s founding governance documents as a delegate representing the Dutch Cardano community at the Constitutional Convention in Buenos Aires, Brazil. Max is one of the major driving forces behind the inclusion of Article VIII in the Cardano constitution. 

Additionally, Max founded AdaMoments, a project that allowed Ada holders to preserve their personal histories by storing images, videos, and text as permanent moments on the Cardano ecosystem. He also facilitated meetups and connected people across the Cardano blockchain as a member of the Dutch community. 

Meanwhile, Intersect announced the proposed hard fork to Protocol Version 11 late last year. The upgrade is expected to introduce improvements to node security, ledger consistency, and Plutus’s performance without requiring a transition to a new ledger era. These updates will include enhancements to reference input rules, the uniqueness of the VRF key, and Plutus primitives. The changes represent the next tranche of treasury-funded development for the Cardano ecosystem.

Cardano opens polls to confirm hard fork name 

The Hard Fork Working Group has launched a poll where Cardano community members will vote on the proposed name for the hard fork. The poll will run from January 13 to February 14, 2026. Participating DReps are required to deposit a minimum of 100,000 ADA to vote, and so far, eight DReps have voted YES, representing 1.57% (91.24M ADA) of the total stake (14.16B ADA). The last vote was cast over 20 minutes ago as of publication.

Meanwhile, the final vote will be forwarded to the Technical Steering Committee (TSC) for review and ratification. The hard fork working group will also form a think tank and meet fortnightly to discuss and coordinate matters related to the hard fork. The upcoming hard fork requires network-wide coordination, but with a much lower integration burden than during era transitions.

All other hard fork-related information will be communicated later through the Intersect Knowledge Base. An open Intersect working group will also be formed to include community members who want to participate in the current and future mainnet hard forks. 

The latest proposed upgrade will introduce improvements without transitioning into a new ledger era, keeping Cardano within the same ledger era, currently Conway. The intra-era hard fork introduces fixes, refinements, optimizations, and other new features that do not require an era transition.  

These new changes will collectively enhance script performance, reduce execution costs, and expand the capabilities of builders within the Cardano network. They will also improve governance correctness and transparency.

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Yield, a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, has lost $3.73 million in trade. This was a result of extreme slippage, resulting in 3.84 million GHO being exchanged for just 112,000 USDC.

According to Perkshield, the transaction involved six different tokens and leveraged two DeFi platforms, including Uniswap V4 and Bancor. Several internal ETH transfers were executed to facilitate the swap, including transfers from Uniswap pools to wrapped Ether contracts, as well as Bancor swap and converter addresses.  

Slippage and liquidity difficulties cause losses in millions

The main transaction sent 3,840,651 stkGHO from the Uniswap pool. After that, smaller amounts of both stkGHO and GHO tokens were transferred through various liquidity pools and converters.

#PeckShieldAlert Yield (@yield) has suffered a major financial hit totaling ~$3.73M.

The loss occurred during a Vault operation involving a swap from $stkGHO to $USDC; due to extreme slippage, 3.84M $GHO was exchanged for a mere 112K $USDC. pic.twitter.com/jB5c1Zjm6m

— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) January 13, 2026

The largest ETH transfer was 24.99 ETH, worth approximately $78,368 from a Uniswap V4 pool. Smaller transfers, from fractions of an ETH to several ETH, were also seen. These were used for private settlement between liquidity pools and swap aggregators. Several transactions of ERC-20 tokens also happened.

Small transfers of tokens, including 11,127 stkGHO, worth approximately $11,118, and 2,707 stkGHO, worth $2,705, contributed to the overall transaction, but they didn’t have much of an effect on the total loss.

The transaction was quickly approved on-chain, with over 7,200 block confirmations recorded. The gas fee translated to only $1.03, underscoring that the loss was not due to transaction costs but entirely the result of slippage and liquidity issues. 

Yield acts as a vault layer that sends money to dozens of DeFi venues with “risk-adjusted optimization.” But slippage is the oldest trick in DeFi. If controls don’t work, limitations, routing, liquidity checks, and “optimization” can all become donations.

Users whose assets are deposited in the affected vault may experience reduced balances, though the extent of individual impact has not been disclosed. The protocol’s response and any corrective measures, such as adjustments to slippage limits or trade sizing parameters, remain pending.

 DeFi slippage and manipulation incidents increase

Previous DeFi incidents include smaller slippage-related losses in protocols like Yearn Finance, which resulted in the loss of approximately 63% of the LP value. Losses totaled $1.4 million prior to any returned funds, or around 2% of the entire treasury. 

Besides slippage, these platforms are very vulnerable to attacks. Last month, YearnFinanceV1 faced a hack that resulted in losses of about $300,000. The stolen funds were swapped into 103 Ether and now sit at address 0x0F21…4066, according to Etherscan images shared by the firm. Researcher Li found that the exploit was similar to an attack carried out in 2023, leading to losses exceeding $10 million. 

At the same time, Cryptopolitan featured a $2.7 million drainage from an old contract belonging to Ribbon Finance, the rebranded version of Aevo. That attack involved repeated interactions with a proxy admin contract at address 0x9D7b…8ae6B76. The attacker invoked functions such as transferOwnership and setImplementation to manipulate price-feed proxies through delegate calls.

Hyperliquid vault also recently suffered a nearly $5 million loss in a POPCAT manipulation attack. A trader split positions across multiple wallets, pushed the market around, then let it snap back, leaving the platform’s liquidity vault to eat $4.9 million in losses when the trade unraveled.

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Each cycle, there is a small number of cheap tokens that begin to give indications of being the next breakout. They tend to be discovered prior to the larger market taking up the cue. Analysts have already started indicating a new cheap altcoin selling below $0.10, which is on the verge of a big protocol milestone this year. The debate on whether it would become the next crypto to hit the $1 mark is increasing with the speed at which development is taking place.

Mutuum Finance (MUTM)

The project analysts are monitoring is Mutuum Finance (MUTM). However, with the decentralized system of lending on Ethereum, unlike meme tokens or even a narrative-driven play, Mutuum Finance is developing it. The protocol facilitates loaning, sourcing, and management of collateral in actual credit conditions.

Users will have the option to provide assets to get yield and borrowers borrow at an advantage by providing collateral. As an illustration, when a trader is not willing to sell his/her ETH, he/she may put it as collateral and borrow stablecoins instead. The protocol is used to enforce borrowing rules and not the intermediaries.

The introduction of the V1 protocol has been already proven. As per the official X statement, Mutuum Finance would first be launched on Ethereum Sepolia testnet and then on mainnet. This is the stage when interest rates, collateral regulations and liquidation logic are deployed on-chain.

Security preparation has also been experienced in development. In the completion of the audit, Halborn Security, which is a reputable organization auditing smart contracts in the DeFi crypto industry, performed a review of Mutuum Finance. This measure is aimed at creating support to trust before the launch window.

Signals of Early Pricing

Although Mutuum Finance is at the early lifecycle stage, the number of participants has still been on the increase. The project has sold stocks of MUTM worth into the hands of more than 18,800 investors worth over $19.7M. These statistics suggest that the amassing started when they were not in the limelight.

Price progression has also provided another indicator. At the beginning of 2025, its initial token price was $0.01. The token is now selling at $0.04 in presale phase 7, which is an improvement by 3x since the beginning. Analysts observe that price improvement during the build stage usually indicates long-term positioning as opposed to the short-term rotation. It is also indicative of an increase in interest before the start of the V1 activation period.

Stablecoin and Security Integration 

Security validation is another key infrastructure item. CertiK rated Mutuum Finance with a 90 out of 100 Token Scan, and there is a bug bounty of 50,000 of their token at stake to find vulnerabilities prior to the V1 release. In the case of a lending system, these layers are significant since the collateral, liquidation and interest execution should be efficient.

The upcoming V1 protocol also includes stablecoins. The core liquidity assets in borrowing markets and repayment structures will be stable assets. Stablecoins decrease volatility when settling loans and also assist in luring users who require fixed borrowing terms.

The innovation distinguishes Mutuum Finance among narrative-based tokens that can only be rewarded by attention, and it is more consistent with previous infrastructure games within the DeFi ecosystem.

Growing Urgency

Mutuum Finance is at Phase 7 and the price is $0.04. This step is below the established launch price of $0.06 that will provide current buyers a lower cost base in advance of the V1 roll-out period. 

Recent allocation information also indicates that a purchase of whales during this stage was of $100,000. Big wallets would also be more likely to go with conviction based on time frames and product availability and not hype.

The launch date is deemed as Q1-Q2 2026, analysts reckon that this could be the last cycle MUTM will trade below $0.05 before the models of functional utility and on-chain borrowing would start to take a hold in valuation modeling.

Among the investors who are scanning to find the best cryptocurrency priced below $1 and with actual infrastructure backing it, Mutuum Finance is one of the names that is being monitored leading to the spring and summer rotations in 2026.

For more information about Mutuum Finance (MUTM) visit the links below:

Website: https://www.mutuum.com

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/mutuumfinance

A French regulator has revealed that 30% of crypto companies without a MiCA licence in France are unresponsive. There’s no communication on ​whether they intend to get the licence required under new EU ‌ rules or will cease operating by July.

Stéphane Pontoizeau, executive director of the market intermediaries and market infrastructures supervision directorate at the AMF, told journalists in Paris that the regulator had written to companies in November to remind them that the country’s transition period ends on June 30 this year.

However, of about 90 registered crypto companies in France that are not MiCA-licensed, 30% have already applied for a licence, and 40% were not ​seeking one. A remaining 30% had not told the regulator their plans nor ‌responded to the November letter.

France supports giving ESMA more power

Under the European Union’s ‌ crypto rules, MiCA, crypto companies must receive licences from national regulators in order to be able to operate across the bloc. Those rules came into force last year to bring crypto assets under formal regulation.

MiCA licences have been granted to crypto companies, including US exchange Coinbase, OKX, Crypto.com, Binance, stablecoin issuer Circle, and British ​fintech Revolut. Last year, France threatened to challenge the “passporting” of licences granted by different member states, saying it was concerned companies were seeking ‍out jurisdictions with more ⁠lenient licensing standards.

Last month, the European Commission suggested that ESMA should oversee crypto companies at the EU level, although some countries opposed the idea. However, the head of the AMF, Marie-Anne Barbat-Layani, laid out the regulator’s plans for 2026 and said again that France supports making the European capital markets stronger and giving ESMA more power.

At the same time, the European Securities and Markets Authority said that it expects crypto companies without MiCA authorisation to have either implemented or have such plans in place by the end of the transition period.

Deblock, GOin, Bitstack, and Credit Agricole-owned CACEIS  have been recorded to have received approval. However, Firms that do not apply for or obtain MiCA licensing risk being forced to suspend services, block EU users, or face financial penalties.

National regulators, including France’s AMF, are closely monitoring whether registered firms are preparing for the transition. Stephane Pontoizeau said that he was concerned about this group.

Analysts state that MiCA’s higher compliance costs may push smaller or lightly capitalized crypto companies to shut down EU operations rather than pursue licensing. This could lead to fewer but more heavily regulated platforms operating in France and across the EU, reshaping competition in the sector.

Investigations that brought fear to crypto companies

Recent moves by the France regulators have shown that licensing alone is not sufficient without ongoing compliance and cooperation with regulators. Q4 was dominated by France conducting anti-money laundering (AML) inspections on dozens of crypto exchanges, including Binance and Coinhouse.

According to Bloomberg, the French prudential supervision authority, ACPR, has been conducting on-site controls since late 2024, after which Binance was instructed to strengthen its risk controls during the examination. “Periodic onsite inspections are a standard part of the supervision of regulated entities,” Binance stated.

The checks verify compliance with conditions for PSAN (digital asset service provider) registration, particularly testing anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing controls. Failure to address ACPR findings could lead to sanctions or compromise a company’s ability to obtain MiCA agreements from France.

Two years ago, Coinbase agreed to pay $100 million to settle complaints regarding “historical shortcomings” in its regulatory compliance work with New York’s Department of Financial Services. The exchange has since developed crypto-focused anti-money laundering tools and an automated Transaction Monitoring System, following investigations that began in 2021.

For exchanges operating in Europe, such as OKX, regulators are considering penalties against the exchange after hackers allegedly laundered $100 million in stolen Bybit funds through its Web3 platform. However, the problem lies in the authorities still debating whether OKX’s integrated services

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The wild ride that lesser cryptocurrencies previously provided to investors has dramatically shortened. These digital tokens are now experiencing price spikes that fade at record speed, indicating a significant shift in where individuals are investing their speculative funds.

In 2025, rallies for these lesser-known crypto assets would generally endure only 20 days, according to market maker Wintermute’s study of over-the-counter cryptocurrency trading. That’s a sharp drop from the 40 to 60 days these price runs would typically continue in earlier years.

Billions in market exposure disappear

The change goes beyond simple loss of excitement. Retail investors appear to be redirecting their gambling money away from the wide array of smaller digital coins that once thrived on viral buzz and trading momentum. Instead, they’re looking at other high-risk opportunities like meme stocks and prediction markets.

The numbers tell a stark story. Since October, the amount of open interest in futures contracts for these alternative coins has plunged 55 percent. That translates to more than $40 billion in market exposure vanishing. Meanwhile, investors are turning to bigger, more established digital currencies like Bitcoin and Ether when they want to make bets tied to broader economic trends, explained Jake Ostrovskis, who leads OTC trading at Wintermute.

“The market was no longer driven by those idiosyncratic narrative themes and it was more macro-based for a while,” Ostrovskis said. “We were having a lot of conversations with a lot of traditional financial counterparties who had noticed that as well.”

Economic forces have recently taken the driver’s seat for Bitcoin pricing. President Donald Trump’s tariff policies and changing predictions about interest-rate cuts have triggered some of the most dramatic swings in crypto markets. Last year saw two of the biggest sell-offs following tariff announcements in April and October. Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s climb to a record high in October was partly fueled by concerns about currency losing value.

At the same time, tokens associated with high-profile people such as Trump and Argentinian President Javier Milei made news but failed to keep investor interest for more than a few days. Brief instances of activity include last year’s rivalry between memecoin sites Pump.fun and LetsBonk.Fun caused momentary turbulence but did not result in a sustainable recovery.

“By most measures, things remain in a bearish, choppy market,” said Cosmo Jiang, general partner at Pantera Capital Management. “Bitcoin needs to lead for it to be a really healthy rebound.”

CoinMarketCap’s Altcoin Season Index measures the performance of cryptocurrencies that are not among the top ten in terms of market value. According to the statistics, most smaller tokens performed worse than larger tokens during the last 90 days.

October hit holders of these alternative coins particularly hard. A single day of market selling erased $19 billion in value from digital assets, and the market hasn’t shown any significant recovery since then.

Speculation money flows to new ventures

Jasper De Maere, desk strategist at Wintermute, explained that these smaller coins are stuck with stagnant liquidity as money flows toward different speculative opportunities. Without major cash coming in to support the growing number of smaller tokens being created, the market for these alternative coins has essentially stalled.

“In 2021, crypto was pretty much the avenue for speculation,” De Maere said. “Today we see the equity market taking a lot of that in the shape of space, quantum, robotics and AI; all these narratives soaking up retail investments.”

Competition for retail investor dollars has gotten fiercer with the growth of prediction markets. Platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi have secured billions in funding from major backers, including Intercontinental Exchange Inc., which owns the New York Stock Exchange, and a16z. These platforms have become so popular that they’ve drawn new competitors into the space. Both Robinhood Markets Inc. and CME Group Inc. have rolled out their own products that let everyday investors place bets on various event outcomes.

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The Flow protocol can’t seem to catch a break, as Huobi HTX, an exchange linked to Justin Sun, publicly condemned the project’s recovery plans after it suffered close to a $4 million exploit. 

An update shared via the Huobi official site detailed the major security incident that occurred on the Flow network in December last year, and claimed that after the incident, Huobi HTX immediately attempted to verify the situation by reaching out to the team and providing abnormal price monitoring and on-chain data.

Huobi criticizes Flow’s recovery plans

The report claims that after the project team confirmed the security incident, Huobi HTX continued to provide assistance to the project team in risk management and on-chain tracking, including providing relevant address information and related recharge information.

Through this process, Huobi HTX’s risk control and monitoring system continuously tracked abnormal capital flows and took restrictive measures on identifiable hacker-related assets to prevent further inflows into the market as much as possible while protecting the overall interests of currency holders.

However, the report claims that without fully communicating with the exchange and the community, the Flow project party decided to unilaterally promote its so-called “Isolated Recovery” plan through protocol layer authority.

Without mastering the private key, the team directly forcibly transferred its identified FLOW assets from centralized exchange addresses, including Huobi HTX. These assets included a large number of normal user positions obtained via real market transactions, and they were going to be unilaterally destroyed on January 30, 2026, according to plans announced by the team.

Huobi claims the approach not only seriously deviates from the decentralization principle that the blockchain should have, but it also fails to fully consider the legitimate rights and interests of the platform and its regular users.

Huobi HTX claims it was acting in the best interest of users and its community and continued to invest resources in monitoring, tracking, and coordination, striving to minimize the potential impact on users in a highly uncertain environment.

It has said it will continue to urge the Flow project team to handle this incident more transparently and responsibly, while fully respecting the legitimate rights and interests of users, exchange custody assets, and publish a complete and auditable post-analysis report.

The exchange has also said it will continue to synchronize the progress of the incident with users, and will provide explanations and follow-up as soon as possible in any situation that may affect users’ asset rights.

The collateral damage from the Flow exploit 

The hack that disrupted the Flow ecosystem went down on December 27, 2025.

The hacker minted counterfeit or duplicate tokens, which led to about $3.9 million in assets being drained and bridged out to other chains. To be clear, the exploit did not affect legitimate user deposits and balances; it only created fake assets.

In the days that followed, the Flow team claimed there was no other logical way forward than to initiate a rollback that would restore the network to a pre-hack state while removing unauthorized transactions from the ledger.

The rollback raised eyebrows and critics like Alex Smirnov, whose company, deBridge, is integrated with Flow, alleged the team had reached the decision to effect a rollback without communicating or coordinating with his platform, even though it had claimed they were synchronizing with critical partners.

After consulting, the foundation altered course, switching to a targeted recovery approach that saw it maintain most valid transactions on-chain and only process transactions that failed to act correctly. The plan saw affected accounts temporarily frozen as forensic analysis was carried out to identify and fully remediate the illicitly minted tokens.

The foundation called it the “scalpel” approach and claimed it would enable them to resolve the issue while staying true to their principles of decentralization.

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Polygon Labs has acquired two U.S.-based crypto startups for over $250 million in a bid to position itself as a competitor to Stripe. 

Multiple leading companies, including Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, and traditional banks, are investing billions to capture market share in the stablecoin industry. And now, Polygon, a crypto powerhouse company, has splurged on its ambitions to enter the booming stablecoins and payments sector.

Polygon Labs announced a $250 million acquisition 

Polygon Labs acquired two crypto startups, Coinme, which operates crypto ATMs and cash-to-crypto services, and Sequence, a blockchain infrastructure provider, for over $250 million. 

The company announced the acquisitions five days after it introduced its Open Money Stack system. The system is designed to unify liquidity, payment processing, and regulatory controls for global stablecoin transactions. 

Coinme was founded in 2014 as one of the first licensed digital currency exchanges in the United States. The company offers Polygon money-transmitter licenses and compliance infrastructure, allowing operations in 48 states, while Sequence contributes smart wallet technology and tools that simplify crypto payment flows across networks without requiring technical steps. 

Together with Polygon, the businesses have processed more than $1 billion in off-chain sales and over $2 trillion of on-chain value transfers. 

Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron and Polygon Foundation founder Sandeep Nailwal said the acquisitions are a way of positioning the company as a direct competitor to Stripe. Nailwal described the approach as a “reverse Stripe” strategy. 

How does Polygon stack up against Stripe?

Stripe has built its stablecoin infrastructure through a series of major acquisitions over the past years. In October 2024, Stripe announced a $1.1 billion acquisition of Bridge, a startup focused on stablecoins, which closed in February 2025. In September 2025, Stripe launched Open Issuance, a platform powered by Bridge that enables any business to launch and manage their own stablecoin with just a few lines of code. 

Stripe also acquired the team behind the crypto payment app Valora in December 2025 and developed with Paradigm the Tempo blockchain for stablecoin payments. 

Meanwhile, Polygon already operates an established network of blockchains built on top of Ethereum and is now adding companies to develop services on this existing foundation. The company finished 2025 with $3.3 billion in stablecoins on-chain. 

Boiron said Polygon’s near-term strategy would be built on partnerships with payment networks like Visa and Mastercard. Visa launched USDC settlement in the United States in December 2025. Expansion in the U.S. is planned through 2026. 

As of November 30, Visa’s monthly stablecoin settlement volume passed a $3.5 billion annualized run rate. It also launched a pilot program allowing instant payouts in USD-backed stablecoins through its Visa Direct platform. The company has planned a rollout expected in the second half of 2026.

Mastercard unveiled end-to-end capabilities for stablecoin transactions in April 2025, competing directly with Visa. Visa predicts the stablecoin market could reach as much as $4 trillion by 2030.

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As the crypto market moves into a new phase in 2026, XRP and Dogecoin (DOGE) are back in the spotlight. XRP is benefiting from clearer regulatory and legal expectations, along with continued institutional interest through channels such as ETFs—helping restore confidence in its longer-term outlook. Dogecoin, meanwhile, remains largely driven by its community, with price action that tends to react quickly to sentiment and trending narratives, making short-term volatility a defining feature.

With market swings becoming more intense, more holders are rethinking strategies that rely solely on price moves. To maintain long-term exposure to XRP and DOGE while improving income consistency, some investors are adding cloud mining to their portfolios and using daily settlement payouts to create steadier cash flow. Through platforms such as NAP Hash, participants can generate relatively stable passive income without stepping away from the market—helping offset uncertainty across market cycles.

Why NAP Hash Stands Out in Cloud Mining

As competition in the cloud mining market continues to heat up, NAP Hash has drawn attention for one main reason: its long-term focus on compliance, transparency, and disciplined operations—areas that help it stand apart from many competitors. Registered in the United Kingdom, NAP Hash operates within a relatively clear regulatory environment and uses standardized, process-driven management to strengthen user confidence over time.

In terms of operations, NAP Hash runs on a fully cloud-based model. Users can participate in mining rewards without buying, setting up, or maintaining any equipment, which significantly lowers the barrier to entry. The platform integrates data center resources across multiple continents and supports mining with clean energy sources such as geothermal, hydropower, wind, and solar—providing more stable performance with lower energy use. Combined with intelligent computing power allocation and a MiCA-aligned compliance framework, the platform is designed for stronger stability and long-term efficiency.

On the product side, NAP Hash offers short-term mining plans ranging from one to three days, giving users faster capital turnover and more flexibility in managing allocations. New users can also access trial mining power worth $15 to $100, allowing them to experience real settlement results without an upfront commitment—reducing both decision pressure and early-stage risk.

By continuing to improve energy efficiency while keeping power costs under control, NAP Hash delivers a more competitive net return profile and further strengthens its position in the cloud mining sector.

How to Get Started with NAP Hash in Three Simple Steps

Step 1: Create Your Account
Setting up a NAP Hash account takes less than 30 seconds, and new users instantly receive a starter reward.

Step 2: Choose a Cloud Mining Contract

The platform offers a range of budget-friendly plans suitable for beginners and experienced investors alike. Each contract provides fixed returns with daily payouts, giving users a clear and predictable earning experience.

Popular Contract Earnings Examples

Mining Machine ModelContract PriceDuration (Days)Daily EarningsPrincipal + Total ReturnsBTC Miner A1366L$1002 Days$3$100 + $6BTC Miner A1346$5006 Days$6$500 + 36$GODE Miner DogeII$250020 Days$36$2500 + 725$BTC Miner M60S++$800030 Days$130$8000 + 3888$LTC Miner ANTRACK V1$1000035 Days$172$10000 + 6020$

Please visit the official NAP Hash website to view more contract options.

Step 3: Collect Your Daily Earnings

Mining rewards are credited to your account automatically every day. You can withdraw your earnings at any time or reinvest them to build stronger long-term returns.

Real User Cases

MJ, a freelance graphic designer in Los Angeles, USA, wanted to create a more stable income stream alongside project-based client work. She chose a $2,000 cloud mining contract, which generates around $22–$26 per day through automatic daily payouts. She said the daily settlement helps reduce financial stress during slower months, and compared with trading, the income is easier to track and plan around—especially when freelance cash flow is unpredictable.

SR, a homemaker in Manchester, UK, was looking for a simple way to add extra income without taking on complex financial tasks. She started with a $1,200 cloud mining contract, earning about $15–$18 per day in daily payouts. She explained that the steady cash flow helps cover daily household expenses such as groceries and utilities, and she prefers cloud mining because it doesn’t require constant market watching or frequent decision-making.

AD, a mechanical engineer in Munich, Germany, shifted part of his long-term crypto allocation into a $6,000 cloud mining contract to improve portfolio stability. His contract delivers approximately $45–$55 per day with daily settlement. He described it as a practical way to smooth out market volatility, noting that the fixed contract structure and consistent payout schedule align well with an engineer’s preference for measurable performance and predictable returns.

Taken together, these cases highlight how cloud mining is increasingly used by a wide range of users—from freelancers and homemakers to engineers—as a low-maintenance way to build daily cash flow. In a volatile market environment, it provides an alternative path for investors who want to stay exposed to crypto while improving income stability and financial planning clarity.

Conclusion
As volatility continues to define the 2026 crypto landscape, investors are increasingly shifting from short-term price speculation toward strategies that can deliver more consistent returns without abandoning long-term exposure. In this environment, NAP Hash is being viewed as a practical alternative—offering a low barrier to entry, green-powered infrastructure, and automated daily settlement designed to support steady cash flow.

With more capital gradually moving into cloud mining, platforms that emphasize regulatory alignment, transparent operations, and energy-efficient computing are gaining stronger traction. For investors navigating unpredictable market cycles, these models provide a clearer path to income stability and portfolio continuity—helping reduce reliance on timing the market while maintaining participation in the broader crypto upside.For more information about NAP Hash, please visit https://naphash.com/ or contact us by email at [email protected]

The popularity of structured products associated with the S&P 500 Futures Excess Return Index, often denoted by the ticker SPXFP, has skyrocketed.

Last year, issuance increased by 48% to $3.5 billion, indicating a strong demand from investors for securities intended to benefit from stable market circumstances and falling interest-rate expectations. According to Structured Products Intelligence, a division of WSD, early 2026 activity is already picking up steam, with approximately $300 million in fresh sales recorded by last Friday.

Betting on a Goldilocks economy

What is proving attractive right now? Investors believe that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates while the economy continues to grow at a decent clip. People in finance call this a “Goldilocks” situation – not too hot, not too cold.

These financial products work by allowing investors to make money from stock market gains, but with special payment terms tied to market conditions. That is proving attractive right now.

Portfolio managers and traders are piling into these SPXFP-linked notes because they see a particular scenario playing out. Company profits should stay solid as the economy keeps chugging along. Meanwhile, they’re expecting inflation to cool down enough that the Fed starts lowering rates.

The increased trading around SPXFP reveals how Wall Street’s approach has shifted. Rather than just betting that stocks go up or rates go down, investors want strategies that work across multiple economic outcomes. These structured notes deliver that flexibility. Some protect your original investment. Others multiply gains when markets move the right way. It depends on how each one’s designed.

Recent inflation data present an intriguing picture: while headline figures have decreased, service costs and earnings have remained relatively stable. Interpreting these indications, investors anticipate that the Fed would progressively move toward lower rates without causing significant market disturbances that would harm company profits. They can take advantage of this delicate balance via SPXFP-linked notes.

Last year’s 48% sales increase reflects more than rate predictions alone. It shows growing comfort with structured products themselves. These instruments have gotten more sophisticated and accessible for institutions and wealthy individuals. Banks and investment firms keep rolling out new variations. Different risk levels, different timeframes, different payout structures are now available. This innovation continues to fuel rapid growth in both issuance and adoption.

Those early 2026 figures underscore how investor interest is accelerating. Roughly $300 million in SPXFP-linked notes sold in just the year’s first weeks suggests traders are positioning aggressively based on Fed expectations. Early-year activity like this often serves as a bellwether for broader market sentiment, reflecting what players with serious economic and equity market insights are thinking.

Risks remain but appeal holds strong

Analysts caution that these investments are not risk-free, even though they may be. Structured notes frequently incorporate leverage and contingent payoffs. When volatility strikes or markets take unexpected turns, that might increase losses.

The appeal is still strong, though. These items can support some economic scenarios, especially the Goldilocks conclusion, in which GDP stays steady, inflation stays low, and rates decline.

The embrace of SPXFP-linked products also reflects a broader search for alternatives to traditional bonds. U.S. Treasury yields plateaued after sharp swings in 2023 and early 2024. With equity markets hovering near record highs, structured notes offer a creative path to differentiated returns. They allow sophisticated investors to bundle income, growth exposure, and customized risk management into a single instrument.

Current market conditions look tailor-made for this trade. Inflation is easing, corporate earnings remain resilient, and global uncertainties persist. By wagering on a Goldilocks scenario, investors profit if the economy avoids both overheating and sharp contraction. Structured notes linked to the SPXFP index work as an efficient vehicle to translate that outlook into tangible positions.

Looking ahead, the trajectory of SPXFP-linked structured notes will likely remain on Wall Street’s radar as a sentiment gauge. Continued demand could signal mounting confidence that central banks will pivot toward easing. Any slowdown in issuance might indicate growing caution about the current expansion’s durability. Either way, the activity surge highlights evolving investor positioning in an increasingly complex and fast-changing market environment.

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A bill facilitating the everyday use of cryptocurrency in the Russian Federation has been drafted already, revealed a high-ranking member of the parliament in Moscow. 

According to the official, a key figure in efforts to regulate decentralized digital assets in Russia, the legislation is expected to boost the country’s crypto sector.

Crypto to become part of Russian life, lawmaker vows

A draft law designed to liberalize and simplify crypto operations has already been prepared, according to Anatoly Aksakov, chairman of the important Committee on Financial Markets at the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s bicameral legislature.

The document will help make the use of the digital currency commonplace in the lives of Russian citizens, emphasized the lawmaker, who is overseeing efforts to legalize transactions with digital assets.

The main goal of the legislative initiative is to turn cryptocurrency into an accessible tool for most Russians while simultaneously integrating it into the nation’s economy, Aksakov clarified.

Quoted by the official TASS news agency and leading daily newspapers such as Rossiyskaya Gazeta and Vedomosti, he further unveiled:

“Considerable attention will be paid to the development of digital financial assets, and we will devote a great deal of time to cryptocurrencies during the upcoming spring session.”

“A bill has already been drafted that would exempt cryptocurrencies from special financial regulation, meaning they will become commonplace in our lives,” Aksakov said in comments for the Rossiya-24 TV channel.

He added that the reforms advancing in his chamber will provide what he described as a powerful impetus for the development of Russia’s crypto industry under domestic regulations.

Professional participants in the financial market will be able to work with cryptocurrencies without restrictions, while non-qualified investors will have access, too, albeit restricted, the deputy highlighted.

He went on to point out that under the upcoming rules, Russian residents will be able to actively use digital coins for international settlements and to raise foreign capital by placing such assets on the financial markets of other nations.

Russia moving closer to cryptocurrency legalization

The current push to legalize crypto flows in Russia began when its monetary authority released key points from its new regulatory concept in late December.

The proposal aims to recognize cryptocurrencies as “monetary assets,” expand investor access to them and their derivatives, and help Russian companies attract foreign investment, as reported by Cryptopolitan.

The announcement came after 2025 became the year that significantly changed Russia’s traditionally conservative attitude towards crypto in general.

Pressed by Western sanctions that restricted its access to traditional financial channels, last spring the country introduced a special legal regime permitting the use of digital currencies in cross-border payments.

The “experimental” solution also gave a narrow category of “highly qualified” investors the opportunity to put money into crypto assets. In May, the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) authorized financial firms to offer them crypto derivatives as well.

In November, financial regulators in Moscow started discussing the possibility of scrapping the current overly strict requirements for investors that include a minimum annual income threshold and prior experience in traditional investments.

Under the new legislation, expected to be adopted by July 1, 2026, regular qualified investors and even ordinary citizens will be able to legally buy Bitcoin and the like, although crypto purchases for the latter will be limited to 300,000 rubles ($3,800) a year.

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Altcoins with small-cap sizes tend to have their best price performance preceding big lists and issuances. Analysts following the early-stage DeFi tokens are currently looking at one project that has a lower valuation than most of the bigger and more densely-traded ones in the market and which may have less baggage on its way to the top. It is now concerned with the rate of development of infrastructure and when the usage based on revenue will commence.

Early Positioning and Presale Structure

It is the Mutuum Finance (MUTM) altcoin. Mutuum Finance is constructing decentralized lending and borrowing on structured credit markets on Ethereum. The project began its presale in the beginning of 2025 and has passed a series of pricing points. MUTM is currently trading at $0.04 and has collected over 18,800 investors who contributed to the amount of $19.7 million. The total number of tokens is 4 billion and 45.5% of the number of tokens are currently being allocated in the presale.

Over 825 million of these tokens are already sold and Phase 7 is over 5% allocated. The established launch price is at $0.06 and the first entrants will be valued at up to 500% MUTM appreciation. The gradual funding and wallet involvement has been viewed by the market analysts as hoarding as opposed to hype trading which tends to underpin cleaner valuation models entering launch.

V1 Activation and First Price Prediction

The V1 protocol launch is the most significant stage of the roadmap of Mutuum Finance. According to the official X version, V1 is going to be introduced to Sepolia testnet and then to mainnet. Upon the release of V1, the protocol enables borrowing, lending, collateral, interest logic and liquidation channels. This is where utilization substitutes speculation.

Mutuum Finance will provide depositors in the lending pools with mtTokens. These mtTokens are depository positions and increase in value as the borrowers pay up the interest. The protocol is also based on a buy-and-distribute model, which guides revenue to purchase MUTM in the market and redistribute such tokens to the stakers of mtTokens. Analysts observe that revenue pressure to buy is not similar to attention pressure to price action witnessed in meme cycles.

Analyst models that follow similar trends in DeFi suggest that a pre-launch token that has confirmed utility and a supply pattern could trade between $0.20 and $0.25 within the initial post-launch phase. This is a range of about 400% to 500% increase in value on current pricing assuming adoption will occur.

Roadmap Milestones

Mutuum Finance also intends to launch a borrower-backed interest stablecoin. Stable assets are essential in lending markets since they are the major borrowing currency and medium of settlement. As analysts point out, loan volume has the propensity of growing due to the lack of volatility in repayment plans with stablecoins.

The expansion of Layer-2 is also covered in the roadmap in order to lower the cost and enhance transaction throughput with the growth in the usage. The low fees and reduced block time are significant to borrowers who make adjustments in leverage positions or make regular payments.

Security is the final significant box that is filled by investors before extensive capital is submerged into a protocol. Mutuum Finance has gone through a separate security audit by Halborn Security, has introduced a $50,000 bug bounty and received a 90/100 Token Scan rating at CertiK. These measures minimize smart contract issues related to liquidation logic, collateral, and interest routes.

There are incentives as well on participation. The presale also has a 24-hour leaderboard which will give the leader each day $500 in MUTM. The project is also compatible with the payment of a card, which reduces friction among new purchasers.

As infrastructure, security and supply structure speed up simultaneously, a large number of analysts now put Mutuum Finance on the lists of potential best crypto to buy under $1 in the early-stage valuation and next crypto with upside potential in the 2026 cycle.

For more information about Mutuum Finance (MUTM) visit the links below:

Website: https://www.mutuum.com

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/mutuumfinance

Former NYC Mayor Eric Adams launched his own cryptocurrency, “NYC Token,” on the Ethereum Blockchain. Adams stated that funds raised by the sale of NYC Token will go towards fighting antisemitism and “anti-Americanism.” The project has since been called a “rugpull” by investors.

Eric Adams announced the launch of his own cryptocurrency, NYC Token, on January 12th at a press conference in Times Square. The former mayor told Fox News that his goal with the sale of NYC Token ($NYC) was to donate the proceeds to fund three different initiatives: Antisemitism education and awareness, blockchain education for New York City youth, and scholarships for talented students in underserved New York City communities.

Adams also made clear his concern about a rise in what he called “anti-Americanism” spreading throughout “Ivy League college campuses and inner cities.” His hope is to use blockchain technology to combat this and other social issues in New York City by funding different nonprofits like Combat Antisemitism without raising taxes.

NYC Token launch deemed “Rugpull” by investors

Social media went into a frenzy after investors of $NYC took to X, claiming that the token was rug-pulled shortly after launch. One user, AshCrypto, stated that the token hit $500 million in market cap before experiencing an 80% crash to below $100 million after liquidity was withdrawn from the project. This liquidity removal apparently happened just around 30 minutes after the token’s initial launch, according to @RuneCrypto_ on X. Bubblemaps, an analytics platform that maps on-chain data and activity, posted that a wallet connected to the $NYC deployer cashed out on $2.5 million when the token peaked in price.

Under a post on Eric Adams’ official X account announcing the launch of $NYC, there is now a community note claiming that the former mayor himself withdrew liquidity from the token shortly after launch. The official NYC Token account on X posted a statement to address concerns, stating:

“Given the overwhelming support and demand for the token at launch, our partners had to rebalance the liquidity. We are aware of reports flagging the transactions removing liquidity from the pool.”

They then went on to say that the team has since “added additional funds to the liquidity pool.”

The founder of Uniswap, Hayden Adams, also criticized Eric Adams’ actions and ultimately the trend of celebrities using their fame to launch tokens and scam unsuspecting investors. He made a point that it is entirely possible for those with status and a following to be able to monetize it through the blockchain without ripping people off. He additionally argued that celebrities can likely make even more money by launching a legitimate project instead.

Eric Adams’ past corruption scandal

Adams’ tenure as mayor of the largest city in the U.S. was largely overshadowed by a tumultuous corruption scandal. In 2024, he was accused of accepting illegal campaign donations and charged with wire fraud, conspiracy, and multiple counts of bribery, according to a CBS News timeline on the matter. Federal agents raided the homes of Adams and multiple members of his administration between 2023 and 2024, leading to a series of resignations. Adams pleaded not guilty to his charges, and the case was ultimately dropped at the request of the Trump Administration’s Department of Justice in April of 2025. The former mayor maintains his innocence to this day.

It has only been roughly two weeks since Eric Adams left the New York City mayor’s office after Zohran Mamdani was elected to replace him in 2025. Critics of Adams have taken to social media to attack his integrity both before and after the launch of the token, questioning why anyone would trust him with their money, considering his history.

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The South Korean crypto exchange Korbit has accepted a fine of nearly $2 million. The exchange also has an official warning for widespread failures in its AML and customer verification systems.

In a statement, Korbit stated, “We respectfully and humbly accept the Financial Intelligence Unit’s decision to impose a fine. […] Despite the difficult circumstances, we have made this decision to ensure transparency and the healthy development of the crypto market.”

The fine shakes up Korbit’s market presence in South Korea

The Financial Intelligence Unit levied the penalties after finding that the company had broken many regulations for monitoring transactions. The FIU gave Korbit a warning along with the fine.

Responsibility was also placed on senior leadership, with the exchange’s CEO receiving a caution and the reporting officer receiving a reprimand.

According to the FIU, around 12,800 cases involved improper identity verification. These included accepting unclear or unverifiable ID documents, incomplete address information, and failures to carry out required re-verification. 

Another 9,100 cases involved users being permitted to trade before verification was fully completed, violating rules that restrict transactions by unverified customers.

Regulators also flagged 19 virtual asset transfers involving three overseas virtual asset service providers (VASPs) that were not properly reported. This was a breach of Korea’s rules regarding the handling of unregistered foreign entities.

Additionally, the FIU identified 655 cases where Korbit failed to conduct mandatory money laundering risk assessments before introducing new transaction types, including NFT-related services.

The fine is a major blow for Korbit, as the firm’s average daily trading volume has shrunk to just above the $12 million mark this year, representing a mere 0.5% of the South Korean market. This is below the country’s major exchange, Upbit, which consistently commands a market share of approximately 70% to over 80% of the total trading volume. 

At the same time, Korbit is preparing for a potential change in ownership. The exchange is currently majority owned by gaming giant Nexon through its holding firm NXC, with a subsidiary of SK holding about one-third of the shares.

Securities firm Mirae Asset is reportedly in talks to acquire Korbit. A local newspaper, Chosun Ilbo, reported a preliminary memorandum of understanding valued between $68 million and $95 million. However, final terms have not yet been confirmed.

South Korea’s anti-fraud efforts outweigh regulatory clarity, weakening the crypto sector

In their efforts to curb crypto fraud, the South Korean government has nearly $61.4 million worth of digital assets across several crypto trading platforms over the past 6 years, Cryptopolitan reported. This includes $37.4 million worth of crypto assets affected by Bithumb’s 2020 suspension of withdrawals. 

They also froze crypto assets worth $18.9 million across 30,106 cases between 2020 and September 2025. The regulator froze another $4.4 million worth of crypto, which was blocked on the Coinone exchange in connection with 755 cases. Nearly $296,000, involving 529 cases, was also frozen on Korbit, while a further $222,000, involving around 280 cases of non-compliance with the region.

Meanwhile, concerns are growing within the domestic virtual asset market as the release of guidelines allowing corporations to open bank accounts for crypto transactions has been delayed beyond its planned timeline.

“The delay in releasing the guidelines for corporate virtual asset accounts stems from the substantial workload involved in drafting the new legislation,” an FSC official said. “While we are reviewing the guidelines in parallel, our limited workforce means resources are concentrated on priority tasks, making it difficult to specify a clear timeline.”

On-chain data showed that the combined 24-hour trading volume of Korea’s five major won-based crypto exchanges, including Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit, and Gopax, totaled $2.39 billion as of 1 p.m. Friday. This represented an about 82% drop from the $13 billion recorded on the same day a year earlier.

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Regulated stablecoins, including USDC, may create a new layer of financial settlement, announced Circle in its latest report. Stablecoins may bring Internet innovation to money, similar to the upgrades in data, media, and other industries. 

USDC serves as the sound money layer of the internet, according to Circle’s latest report on stablecoins. The company, which is one of the fast-growing fintech and crypto apps for 2025, believes stablecoins will reshape businesses and institutions. 

Circle believes stablecoins will form a hybrid layer between traditional finance and on-chain infrastructure. Some regulated stablecoins may help with siloed or fragmented liquidity. 

Stablecoins may be adopted even more widely by banks, payment companies, corporations, and institutions. The state of Wyoming recently distributed its FRNT stablecoin for trading, while other entities are preparing to either adopt existing tokens or launch their own brand. 

USDC grew its market share in 2025

USDC was aggressively minting new tokens in 2025, boosting its presence on multiple networks. The stablecoin expanded its market share each quarter, reaching 29% at the end of the year. 

In terms of transfer volumes, USDC carries around 40% of value, remaining the second-biggest player on the stablecoin market after USDT. 

USDC expanded both its transaction activity and value transfers in the past year. | Source: Circle Reports

Circle also launched several stablecoins denominated in other currencies. EURC is the leading asset, growing its supply more than eight times following the launch of MiCA regulation in 2024. Circle was one of the stablecoin issuers to benefit from the new regulations, as its tokens were adopted on multiple frameworks for EU users.

Circle to launch the Arc payment infrastructure

Circle is going beyond being a plain issuer of stablecoins, instead building a new financial infrastructure. 

Circle is preparing to launch Arc, a scalable blockchain and a native infrastructure for payments. Circle will compete with other chains like Polygon, which are also creating dedicated payment rails. The chain will also compete with Tether’s Plasma, a dedicated stablecoin network.

Arc may move beyond payments and into capital formation, contracts, and payroll coordination. Arc will transfer stablecoins, but also turn into an entire economic operating system. Arc will use USDC to pay transaction fees, requiring even simple asset ownership. 

The chain will also use deterministic finality instead of node coordination for increased security and compliance with financial standards. Arc has been running as a testnet since October 2025 and is already spread across the major regions for on-chain activity.

Circle enters a market with accelerating competition, where fintech apps and on-chain payment channels are consolidating. The trend includes leading apps like Revolut, as well as smaller on-chain native stablecoin hubs and wallets. 

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ZKsync has listed real-world infrastructure as the primary focus in its 2026 strategy, building upon existing capabilities and unlocking new classes of applications. Alex Gluchowski, the inventor of ZKsync, said 2025 laid the foundation that now enables real-world use cases requiring privacy, performance, coordination, and operational maturity.

Gluchowski noted that privacy will be the most important competitive advantage in the crypto space, and Prividium represents the most advanced blockchain platform for privacy. According to the co-founder and CEO of Matter Labs, Prividium is fully EVM-compatible, production-ready, and expressive. Developers can build private applications without the need to rewrite code in obscure languages, break familiar UX flows, abandon Ethereum tooling, or sacrifice compatibility and liquidity.

Meanwhile, 2026 will build on this foundation, making privacy the default starting point for enterprise applications. Building and operating private applications on ZKsync will feel natural for developer teams accustomed to enterprise infrastructure, which is unlike adopting a separate crypto stack. 

Atlas upgrade turns ZK stack into high-performance production L2 stack 

Gluchowski claimed that the Atlas upgrade turned the ZK stack into the highest-performance production L2 stack, designed to support enterprise-level and institutional chains under real load. In 2026, this foundation will evolve into a platform where appchains are first-class citizens, allowing multiple chains to be operated as a single system.  

Meanwhile, applications will be able to access liquidity, execution, and shared services across private and public ZK chains, including Ethereum, without external bridges or integrations. On the other hand, cross-chain behavior will be native, composable, and largely invisible to both developers and users. The result is that performance isolation, shared services, bootstrapping infrastructure, native connectivity, and security primitives will all be available out of the box. ZK stack will, therefore, become the default choice for building appchains.

“If you need your own chain, ZK Stack will offer the most direct path to production, with far less operational complexity and far greater composability than fragmented alternatives.”

–Alex Gluchowski, the inventor of ZKsync

According to Gluchowski, ZKsync made a deliberate decision to build for real-world constraints rather than industry shortcuts. That meant avoiding many practices that are popular in this industry but incompatible with a long-term approach. 

Meanwhile, those choices are now embedded into the ZKsync architecture and are irreversible. They form the foundation of Incorruptible Financial Infrastructure, where trust is fostered in cryptography rather than human intermediaries or operators. 

ZKsync uses TEEs to verify ZK computation

According to the ZKsync team, the protocol utilizes ZK to verify the chain’s validity and TEEs to further validate the ZK computation. Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) are secure areas within a hardware device that protect sensitive operations and data from external attacks or unauthorized access. 

A TEE provides an isolated environment where encryption, decryption, and authentication can be executed while ensuring integrity and confidentiality. The TEE is isolated from the main operating system and applications running on it, making it more difficult for attackers to access or interfere with the data being processed within the TEE.

Meanwhile, many TEE implementations utilize hardware security features, such as Trusted Platform Modules (TPMs), secure enclaves, or hardware-based encryption accelerators, to enhance security. TEEs can also provide attestation services,  enabling confidential computing by ensuring that data processed within the environment remains encrypted and protected from both hardware and software vulnerabilities outside the secure area.

TEEs are widely used in various applications, including mobile payments, financial transactions, IoT security, and identity verification, among others. They also help protect against data breaches and malware attacks, among other cybersecurity threats, by providing a trusted environment for private operations. 

Another reason why ZK sync uses TEEs is that they are faster than ZK Proofs, therefore, making interoperability between ZK chains faster. Additionally, the TEE prover runs transactions in its VM and checks at the end whether the same Merkle tree was produced.

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When a large altcoin starts calming down following a good streak, a number of traders will start searching the market in case they can find opportunities at an earlier level. The historical track record of Solana has offered excessive returns, yet the recent price action has made some investors seek the tokens that are still in their infancy. 

That search has caused some Solana holders to keep track of a new protocol that has a small entry point and expansion potential. Its price has already increased by about three times of their original levels, but analysts feel it is only at its adoption window.

Solana (SOL)

Solana is among the hottest smart contract projects in recent market cycles. Now SOL goes at approximately $138 with a market cap threatening tens of billions. Its ecosystem has attracted a lot of developer attention and a massive amount of liquidity over the years. Being early adopters, many made spectacular returns as Solana had developed into one of the most actively used blockchains.

Nevertheless, SOL has had resistance in some price levels in spite of this history. Technical charts indicate that price is not being able to break out above $150 to $160 which has resulted in creating a range in which buyers and sellers have not been continuous. The upward movement has been slowed in these areas of resistance in the past few months. 

Once a large market cap symbol breaks through resistance, it usually requires high inflows or new catalysts to clear them. Prices may remain choppy or in a range without a new wave of adoption or major network events.

Mutuum Finance (MUTM)

Mutuum Finance (MUTM) is one of the new crypto projects that Solana investors have been paying attention to. Mutuum Finance is creating an Ethereum-based decentralized lending and borrowing protocol. It develops dual markets whereby the users provide liquidity so that they could earn some yield and the borrowers obtain loans using collateral. The two lending structure is to serve lenders aiming to receive passively and borrowers who require capital without the need of selling assets.

Mutuum Finance started to distribute its tokens in early 2025 at the price of $0.01. Since this time, users have passed through several presale pricing phases. Its current price is around $0.04 which is approximately 3x up the opening price. The presale has already passed more than $19.7 million and the number of holders has exceeded 18.800 wallets.

The presale has also included security and participation features. Mutuum Finance has a 24-hour leaderboard that grants a $500 reward of MUTM to the best daily contributor. This promotes uniform action as opposed to intermittent peaks. The presale also facilitates card payments in order to reduce the entry barriers of new crypto users.

Price Prediction Comparison

In the comparison of price potential between Solana and Mutuum Finance, there are limitations and opportunities in various categories. In the case of Solana (SOL) the present price action and resistance levels indicate that the market is undergoing a phase of consolidation. There are technical models which project that SOL can be traded sideways or just slowly climb until a significant catalyst is seen. 

In comparison, Mutuum Finance (MUTM) is in the lower phase of adoption and has product milestones to achieve. As per analysts who monitor DeFi infrastructure tokens, a predetermined initial valuation analysis connected with the signals of the first protocol places MUTM into the range of $0.20 to $0.28 in the course of the early usage growth. 

In addition to the short-term applications, more long-term predictions related to the revenue and yield requirements are also appearing. Analysts simulate a mid-cycle between $0.40 and $0.60 as depositors receive interest on mtTokens and the protocol system, which generates revenue and pushes it into the market in its buy-and-distribute model. 

Security and Whale Allocations

Mutuum Finance has been prepared based on security. A smart contract audit was also completed under Halborn Security, one of the reputed firms that carry out reviews of DeFi systems. Mutuum Finance also scored 90/100 in CertiK in the Token Scan and introduced a bug bounty of 50,000 USD to find responsible disclosure of vulnerabilities before usage mode can commence.

Mechanics of participation such as 24-hour leaderboard are used to keep the interest alive. This advantage every day motivates continuous interactions as opposed to bursts of social threads. The support of card payments also increases the potential audience of buyers outside crypto native wallets.

In recent times the presale has also attracted bigger players with allocations by bigger wallets of over six figures. This is usually translated to premature conviction by those who provide allocations who watch on timelines as well as infrastructure preparedness rather than social sentiment itself.

For more information about Mutuum Finance (MUTM) visit the links below:

Website: https://www.mutuum.com

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/mutuumfinance