Ⓜ️ Visa has launched a pilot service that allows companies to send payments in stablecoins to crypto wallets from fiat accounts.

🌐 SWIFT completes the transition to the ISO 20022 standard, designed to increase the speed and quality of international payments — the new format simplifies the interaction of banking systems with digital technologies, including blockchain-based solutions.

💰 Peter Thiel, the legendary investor who was behind the creation of PayPal and Facebook, stated that Bitcoin has effectively been "appropriated" by major financial institutions and the government.

According to him, the ideological essence of cryptocurrencies — cypherpunk anarchism and decentralization — has been lost: today BTC is even convenient for the FBI, which indicates complete institutionalization.

Thiel admitted that he still holds a small position but has lost confidence in BTC as a tool of freedom: "It seems we got not a revolution, but an ETF from BlackRock."

🐳 Japanese giant SoftBank sold all its NVIDIA shares worth $5.83 billion to finance investments in OpenAI — the sale was part of an "asset monetization" strategy to prepare the company for a $40 billion investment in the ChatGPT developer by the end of the year.

🎖️ CoinDesk published the annual Exchange Benchmark 2025, in which Binance took first place among centralized exchanges and received the highest rating of AA — the only platform to score over 90 points in both spot (93.4) and derivatives trading (93.65).

Analysts note that the crypto exchange sector is showing steady growth in maturity and transparency: nearly 60% of platforms operate under regulatory supervision, and more companies are publishing Proof-of-Reserves and reports.

According to CoinDesk, major exchanges today are becoming more reliable and institutionally resilient than five years ago.

🗽 The US government has started working again — Donald Trump signed the H.R. 5371 law and officially ended the record shutdown.

Funding for government agencies has been extended until January 30, 2026.

The shutdown lasted 43 days — the longest shutdown in the country's history.

⌨️ For the third time, Hyperliquid finds itself at the center of a loud incident — the exchange suspended deposits and withdrawals after a large-scale manipulation of the POPCAT token.

An unknown trader withdrew $3 million from OKX, transferred it to Hyperliquid, and began actively opening long positions on POPCAT, driving up the price. To create the illusion of high demand, he placed a huge "wall" of buy orders at $0.21 totaling about $30 million — but later suddenly removed it.

The price crashed, positions were liquidated, the trader lost his collateral, and the HLP liquidity system lost nearly $5 million.

😂 Mega-investor Robert Kiyosaki stated that he owes the bank $1.2 billion, but it doesn't bother him.

“If I go bankrupt, that's not my problem — it's the bank's problem”.

💰 Activity on the Solana network has dropped to a yearly low — the number of active wallets has decreased to 3.3 million, nearly three times less than the January peak.

The decline in interest in shitcoins has led to reduced user activity, although Solana still maintains strong positions in DeFi with a total liquidity of about $10 billion.

Experts note that dependence on a single trend makes the ecosystem vulnerable to changes in market sentiment.