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**January 25 – Spot gold climbed another 1.01% intraday Wednesday, trading at $4,986.13 per ounce as of press time and inching toward the historic $5,000-per-ounce threshold, per Bitget market data.** Gold has overtaken U.S. Treasuries to become the world’s largest single reserve asset held by central banks — the first such historic reversal since 1996. Latest figures from the World Gold Council show the total value of non-U.S. central bank gold reserves has approached or topped $4 trillion, slightly exceeding the ~$3.9 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds held by global central banks. In 2025, gold prices skyrocketed nearly 65% and set new all-time highs more than 50 times. On January 1, 2025, the metal traded at $2,624.27 per ounce, with an annual average of $4,318.53. Since the start of 2026, it has gained roughly 15% in just 25 trading days. Emerging market central banks have been the most active gold buyers, using the metal to hedge against geopolitical risks, U.S. dollar c

On Jan 25, the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) announced that no political or personal financial ties would influence its review of the bank charter application for WLFI, the Trump family’s crypto project. Anti-crypto Senator Elizabeth Warren had called for halting WLFI’s national trust bank charter application unless the Trump family divested its stake in the firm—a request the OCC rejected. The OCC’s Inspector General Jonathan Gould responded to Warren’s letter, stating, “The OCC intends to fulfill its review responsibilities, rather than accede to your demands.” Crypto firms have long struggled to secure U.S. national trust bank charters, but a breakthrough came last December: the OCC conditionally approved Ripple, Circle, Paxos, BitGo, and Fidelity Digital Assets for transition to federally chartered national trust banks.

On January 25, Token Terminal released data showing stablecoin issuers generated roughly $5 billion in revenue in 2025 by deploying stablecoins on the Ethereum blockchain. Stablecoin supply on Ethereum rose by around $50 billion throughout 2025, topping $180 billion by the fourth quarter (Q4). Issuers’ revenue also climbed, hitting roughly $1.4 billion in Q4 alone. A portion of that revenue comes from returns on the reserve assets backing stablecoin supplies. Ethereum remains the primary issuance platform for most major stablecoin issuers.

Jan. 25: Per OnchainLens monitoring, a wallet linked to the Pendle team has deposited 1.8 million PENDLE (valued at $3.61 million) into Bybit, following a 3+ year hold. The wallet received the tokens from Pendle’s vesting wallet.

**Bitfinex Report: Ethereum Hits All-Time High Daily Transaction Volume Amid Low Gas Fees** Per Bitfinex’s latest January 25 report, Ethereum’s daily transaction volume topped 2.88 million last Friday—marking an all-time high. Notably, this milestone came amid unusually low average gas fees. Ethereum’s network performance this cycle differs from prior periods: increased usage, lower average gas fees, and sustained growth in staking participation. The network’s long-term technical roadmap—especially its focus on Layer 2 scaling—is starting to pay off. Ethereum is evolving beyond a mere transaction execution layer to a neutral settlement and coordination layer, with most execution activity shifting to Layer 2 networks. This shift signals a key transition: Ethereum is moving from a single network constrained by on-chain execution to a modular system of specialized layers. Ethereum staking has also hit a new record: over 36 million ETH (nearly 30% of its circulating supply) is

On January 25, a16z Crypto published a lengthy article titled *What to Do When Prediction Markets Fail*. It noted the biggest challenge in prediction markets isn’t pricing future outcomes—but verifying what actually happened. A key bottleneck to scaling these markets is “how contracts settle.” Earlier this year, former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was detained by U.S. forces. Meanwhile, Polymarket denied Venezuela had been invaded, ruling the “U.S. invasion of Venezuela” market “false”—sparking widespread controversy. Polymarket later clarified: “The market referenced U.S. military action aimed at establishing control; Maduro’s detention and evacuation do not qualify as an invasion.” a16z Crypto criticized the prediction market’s tricky dilemma: contract execution should follow either official information (Maduro’s “win” in the scenario) or consensus from credible reports (the opposition’s “win”). In this political episode, Polymarket’s dispute resolution mechanism acted a