Research Expert

A crucial amendment that was expected to delay passage of the CLARITY Act, also known as the crypto market structure bill, could be scrapped ahead of a vital committee vote this week, potentially simplifying the bill’s path forward.
Senate Crypto Bill Clears Key Hurdle
According to a report by Politico, Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas has agreed not to offer a proposed amendment targeting credit card swipe fees during the Senate Agriculture Committee’s markup of the crypto legislation, scheduled for Thursday, January 29. 
Three people familiar with the private discussions said the decision was made over the weekend and could help secure broader backing for the bill from the cryptocurrency industry.
Marshall had filed the amendment just last week, seeking to force payment networks to compete on credit card swipe fees. The proposal closely mirrors the long‑running Credit Card Competition Act, which Marshall has championed for years alongside Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois. 
However, in private conversations on Saturday, Marshall reportedly agreed not to bring the amendment forward during the markup, according to those with knowledge of the matter.
Marshall’s swipe‑fee amendment, which is also supported by Durbin and Senator Peter Welch of Vermont, was widely seen as a potential obstacle. Some Republicans who are inclined to support the crypto bill oppose the credit card provision, which would place major financial institutions in direct conflict with large retailers.
Durbin is not currently expected to introduce the amendment himself during the markup, according to a person familiar with the situation, although a final decision has not been confirmed.
Amendments Still Loom
The issue has reportedly drawn attention from the White House as well. Several people with insight into internal deliberations said administration officials became involved out of concern that the swipe‑fee amendment could derail the legislation. 
One person described the amendment as something that would have “jeopardized” the bill’s passage, at a time when the White House is pushing for the measure to advance out of committee.
While the Marshall amendment may be off the table, other changes could still emerge. Journalist Eleanor Terrett noted on X (previously Twitter) that several amendments remain under consideration. 
These include proposed ethics rules for US officials, a requirement that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) maintain at least four sitting commissioners following consultation with the minority party, anti‑fraud measures targeting crypto ATMs, and limits on participation by foreign adversaries in crypto markets.
Despite two additional weeks of bipartisan negotiations—negotiations that already delayed an earlier planned markup from January 15—the bill remains sharply divided along party lines. So far, only Republican members of the Senate Agriculture Committee have publicly expressed support for the legislation.
Nonetheless, the committee’s latest draft, posted on Wednesday, January 21, has received a positive response from the broader crypto industry. Industry participants have praised the text for providing explicit protections for noncustodial software developers and blockchain infrastructure providers. 
The bill is seen as narrowly targeting intermediaries, rather than protocols or end users, a distinction many in the sector consider essential for maintaining innovation.
The draft also excludes provisions that would regulate stablecoin yields, a decision viewed as particularly significant following Coinbase’s recent withdrawal of support for the Senate Banking Committee’s version of the legislation. 
#TokenizedSilverSurge #TSLALinkedPerpsOnBinance #FedWatch

Chainlink Labs has joined the Global Alliance for KRW Stablecoin to expand the adoption of stablecoins backed by the Korean won.Chainlink will enable the Alliance to establish global standards and deploy digital assets for institutional use cases.
Chainlink Labs has joined a South Korean industry organization dedicated to promoting the adoption of stablecoins backed by the Korean won. Known as the Global Alliance for KRW Stablecoin (GAKS), the organization was launched last year and pushes for the real-world adoption of KRW stablecoins, including working with regulators to lobby for friendly regulations.
Chainlink Labs is now the newest member of the Alliance, which includes other heavyweights like blockchain security leaders CertiK and Chainalysis. It was founded by WeMade, a Korean game developer whose platforms boast over 600 million users across gaming, blockchain protocols and payments systems.
Chainlink Labs has joined the Global Alliance for KRW Stablecoins (GAKS) led by WEMADE, a 600M+ user platform.https://t.co/PdTxmFvSbjThe alliance is advancing stablecoin standards in Korea by leveraging Chainlink’s data, interoperability, compliance, & privacy standards. pic.twitter.com/QPTuTH4mEo— Chainlink (@chainlink) January 27, 2026
WeMade Vice President, Kim Seok-hwan, commented:
Chainlink’s participation marks a significant milestone for GAKS in securing global-level technical excellence and trust. Through close collaboration with Chainlink, we will continue to build a sound KRW stablecoin ecosystem.
Stablecoins have become a vital part of Korea’s vibrant digital asset ecosystem. As reported by CNF, Avalanche partnered with Woori Bank last year to pilot the KRW1 stablecoin, Korea’s first won-backed token. Unlike in many other countries, commercial banks have taken an interest in stablecoins in Korea and continue to be highly involved, as detailed by CNF.
🔸Chainlink to Power Korea’s Stablecoin Rise
According to WeMade, GAKS will rely on Chainlink’s infrastructure to establish global standards for Korean won-backed stablecoins. The Alliance has been promoting these stablecoins as global tokens and not just local solutions as it seeks to offer competition for USD-backed rivals, which have dominated by up to 99%.
Chainlink’s oracle network will also be used to ensure that KRW stablecoins maintain data integrity and market stability.
“Through the strategic alliance with WEMADE, Chainlink is providing industry expertise and key opportunities for GAKS members to leverage the Chainlink platform as they continue to develop stablecoin and tokenized asset initiatives in the Korean and APAC region,” commented Johann Eid, the chief business officer at Chainlink Labs.
GAKS believes that Chainlink will accelerate global trust in KRW stablecoins. The oracle network is now the world’s largest and has been integrated into every other network as a bridge between onchain records and real-world data.
As reported by CNF, Chainlink announced partnerships with 3 services across 8 different blockchains this week, including BitMEX and QuickSwap. It has now enabled over $27 trillion in total transaction value and transmitted 19 billion messages, and targets bringing over $867 trillion worth of global finance onchain, as CNF detailed.
LINK trades at $11.95, gaining 1% in the past day, despite the trading volume dropping by 36% to settle at $306 million.
$LINK

Stellar launches SCF Growth Hack Cohort 1 to help Stellar mainnet teams run go-to-market and user acquisition for real-world adoption.Cohort includes stablecoin payments, cross-chain, and Soroban ZK-ready projects as the network deploys Protocol 25 X-Ray upgrade.

Stellar has launched the Stellar Community Fund Growth Hack Cohort 1, a program aimed at helping companies already deployed on the mainnet strengthen go-to-market execution and reach product-market fit. The initiative centers on user acquisition campaigns and is positioned as a support track for teams building consumer and business-facing applications that use stablecoins and blockchain-based payments.
Stellar said the Growth Hack cohort will work with participating projects on campaign design and distribution, with a focus on real-world adoption. The cohort includes products targeting cross-border commerce, merchant payments, and tools intended to make stablecoin use simpler for end users and small businesses.
Stellar Community Fund Growth Hack Cohort 1 is live 👩‍💻This Growth Hack is designed to support Stellar Mainnet-launched companies on GTM and finding product-market fit through user acquisition campaigns.Check out the projects in Cohort 1 👇— Stellar (@StellarOrg) January 26, 2026
Several cohort members are oriented toward payments in emerging markets and travel use cases. Payabroad enables street vendors and local stores to accept payments from travelers using stablecoin wallets. The CashAbroadApp will be centered around stablecoin remittance to importers, alongside programmable treasury solutions. 
Stellar Targets Payments, Interoperability and Onchain Access
Other members of the inaugural cohort are focusing on infrastructure and asset management. Allbridge deals with privacy solutions and cross-chain interoperability, such as between EVM and non-EVM networks. ROZOai is described as constructing intent-based interoperability that has the potential to bridge liquidity between EVM networks and Solana, with the ability to support payments to users and the least blockchain-familiar merchants.
The cohort also includes projects tied to savings and investing experiences. Defindex, working with BeansApp and Blend Capital, is providing tools for digital asset management on Stellar, designed for inflation-affected economies. 
Normalfi offers everyday investors simpler access to crypto investing and index products through Stellar’s infrastructure. Seevcash provides low-cost cross-border payments for the African diaspora, including USD accounts backed by stablecoins and transfer tools designed to reduce fees.
Alongside the cohort announcement, Stellar, as we reported, has deployed the X-Ray protocol upgrade, Protocol 25, on its mainnet. The network is expected to add new cryptographic building blocks intended to support zero-knowledge applications on Soroban smart contracts, expanding the set of privacy and verification features available to developers.
Other blockchain ecosystems have also reported new programs aimed at supporting developers and early-stage teams. The Cardano Foundation has partnered with Draper Dragon to launch an $80 million fund to scale Cardano adoption over the next six years. The fund is set to focus on direct startup investments, marketing, liquidity provision, and education support tied to Cardano-based development.
Ripple has also announced a new academic-linked builder program. The company launched the University Digital Asset Xcelerator, or UDAX, created with UC Berkeley to support early-stage teams building on the XRP Ledger. Ripple said the accelerator extends its University Blockchain Research Initiative, which connects academic research with practical blockchain development efforts.
Despite the cohort developments, the XLM price has failed to recover.
#TokenizedSilverSurge #FedWatch $XLM

Retail traders aren’t just bouncing between memecoins and AI tokens anymore. They’re stepping outside the crypto casino entirely and drifting back toward something ancient, heavy, and famously analog: precious metals.
Over the past few weeks, online chatter has shifted noticeably away from Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the usual speculative darlings and toward silver — with gold riding shotgun. Social sentiment data shows that on many days, precious metals are now generating more hype than crypto itself. That’s a meaningful shift in a market where attention is often the most valuable currency of all.
This isn’t just a trend. It’s a reversion to a narrative that predates crypto by thousands of years: when people start worrying about the value of money, they reach for assets that feel “real.”

The chart from Santiment visualizes this rotation in real time. Social media mentions of crypto, gold, and silver are plotted against Bitcoin’s price, and the pattern is almost painfully on-the-nose. As Bitcoin peaks and begins to slide, gold-related chatter surges — a classic “risk-off” reflex. When Bitcoin traders attempt to buy the dip, crypto mentions briefly spike again, only to fade as the price fails to recover. That’s when silver takes over the spotlight, with social volume exploding just as silver prices push into new highs. The image effectively maps retail psychology: attention migrates from speculative assets to perceived safety, then back to higher-volatility plays, all driven less by fundamentals and more by momentum, price action, and crowd behavior.
The Eternal Fear: Currency Debasement
Gold and silver don’t rally in a vacuum. They tend to move when confidence in fiat currencies starts to wobble.
For years, the dominant retail narrative was that Bitcoin was the debasement hedge — digital gold for a world drowning in money printing, government debt, and financial repression. That story hasn’t disappeared, but it’s been diluted by a thousand side quests: NFTs, memecoins, yield farming, AI tokens, and speculative mania that made crypto feel less like a macro hedge and more like a hyperactive tech stock sector with memes.
Precious metals, by contrast, are boring in the most reassuring way possible. No founders, no tokenomics, no Discord servers, no rug pulls. Just scarcity, physicality, and a track record that stretches back through empires, currency collapses, and financial crises.
When inflation fears resurface, interest rate policy looks unstable, or geopolitical risk creeps back into headlines, retail traders often rediscover the “hard money” trade — and silver tends to be the gateway drug. It’s cheaper per ounce than gold, feels more accessible, and carries a kind of populist appeal as “the people’s metal.”
Why Silver, Not Just Gold?
Gold is the institutional hedge. Central banks buy it. Sovereign wealth funds hoard it. It sits quietly in vaults as a symbol of monetary credibility.
Silver is the retail trader’s metal. It has a speculative edge, bigger percentage swings, and a strong narrative tied to industrial demand — solar panels, electronics, batteries, and the broader electrification of the global economy. That gives it a dual identity: part inflation hedge, part green-tech commodity.
For traders raised on crypto volatility, silver feels familiar. It moves. It spikes. It crashes. It trends on social media. And when it breaks out, it pulls in the same kind of momentum crowd that used to chase altcoin pumps.
The Attention Economy at Work
This rotation isn’t necessarily about deep conviction. It’s about where the action is.
Retail traders, by nature, follow momentum — not just in price, but in narrative. When Bitcoin goes quiet or grinds sideways, attention drifts. When silver starts ripping and headlines start flying about shortages, industrial demand, or “the next big macro trade,” the crowd pivots.
What’s different this time is that the pivot is crossing asset classes. This isn’t just crypto money rotating into another token sector. It’s speculative energy flowing into commodities, equities, and traditional macro trades — the same playgrounds that used to feel “too slow” for the TikTok generation of traders.
That alone says something about the current market mood: people are starting to think less about 100x moonshots and more about protecting purchasing power.
The Dangerous Part: Hype as a Contrarian Signal
There’s an uncomfortable truth about retail attention — it usually arrives late.
When social chatter explodes around an asset, it often means the easy gains have already been made. Hype tends to peak near local tops, not at the quiet accumulation phase. That’s as true for silver as it is for dog-themed cryptocurrencies.
The sudden surge in precious metals discourse could be a sign of genuine macro anxiety — or it could be another short-term speculative wave chasing the last candle of a rally. The line between “hedging against systemic risk” and “FOMO with a different aesthetic” is thinner than most traders like to admit.
Crypto vs. Metals: Same Fear, Different Skin
At a deeper level, this isn’t a battle between Bitcoin and silver. It’s the same trade expressed in different languages.
Both camps are responding to the same underlying concern: the long-term credibility of fiat money in a world of ballooning government debt, persistent inflation pressure, and financial systems that feel increasingly engineered rather than organic.
Crypto wraps that fear in software, decentralization, and ideology. Precious metals wrap it in weight, history, and physical scarcity. Retail traders are simply oscillating between two versions of the same instinct — to step outside the system, even temporarily.
The Bigger Signal
If this rotation sticks, it may hint at something broader than a short-term trade. It suggests retail investors are starting to think in macro terms again — not just narratives, memes, and momentum, but inflation, central banks, and currency stability.
That’s a more serious mindset. And ironically, it’s the same mindset that originally fueled Bitcoin’s rise in the first place.
The difference now? Crypto isn’t the only “escape hatch” in town anymore. When the fear trade heats up, the crowd is remembering that before there were blockchains and wallets, there were coins you could actually hold in your hand.
#FedWatch #VIRBNB

Ethereum potrebbe riaggiustarsi a 15.000 dollari nel 2026 mentre la finanza tradizionale accelera verso la tokenizzazione, le stablecoin e i Layer 2 personalizzati costruiti su Ethereum, secondo Vivek Raman, amministratore delegato e co-fondatore di Etherealize.
In un articolo ospite del 5 gennaio, Raman ha definito il 2026 come il punto in cui ETH passerà da un decennio di costruzione di credibilità a un'era di attuazione commerciale, sostenendo che "dal 2026 in poi – Ethereum diventerà il miglior posto per fare affari", poiché posture regolatorie, precedenti istituzionali e maturità dell'infrastruttura si coniugano.

Il prezzo di Solana sta mostrando segnali precoci di inversione di tendenza dopo aver rotto una tendenza ribassista di diversi mesi, con gli analisti che osservano con attenzione una forte crescita sul blockchain e la possibilità di riprendere il livello di resistenza a 160 dollari.
Il prezzo di Solana sta mostrando i primi segni di miglioramento strutturale dopo essersi liberato da una tendenza ribassista di diversi mesi, con il prezzo ora in fase di scambio nella fascia dei 134-135 dollari. Il movimento ha attirato nuovamente l'attenzione degli operatori poiché sia la struttura tecnica che l'attività sul blockchain iniziano a allinearsi in modo più costruttivo.
Questo cambiamento di momentum arriva in un contesto in cui i mercati cripto più ampi rimangono in un range, spostando l'attenzione sui singoli asset che mostrano forza relativa. Per Solana, la combinazione di rotture di trendline, indicatori di momentum in miglioramento e volumi sul blockchain in crescita sta delineando un quadro più ottimista nel breve termine.

PEPE guida il buzz del weekend con guadagni di prezzo e slancio al dettaglio su importanti piattaforme social.
BTC ed ETH rimangono al centro dell'attenzione mentre l'attività istituzionale, i flussi ETF e i livelli tecnici chiave guidano la discussione.
Mentre i mercati delle criptovalute si muovono attraverso il weekend, Pepe (PEPE), Bitcoin (BTC) ed Ethereum (ETH) stanno registrando la maggior parte dell'attività su X, Telegram e Reddit.

L'aumento dell'attenzione su PEPE è stato il risultato della sua straordinaria corsa, registrando un aumento del 19,72% nelle ultime 24 ore e un guadagno del 51,2% negli ultimi sette giorni. Questo trend rialzista, combinato con una forte volatilità, un aumento del volume degli scambi e confronti con le passate corse dei memecoin che coinvolgono DOGE, SHIB, BONK e FLOKI, ha reso PEPE una delle criptovalute più trendy.

Lo sciopero degli Stati Uniti in Venezuela rappresenta il più grande evento di apertura del nuovo anno finora. In diversi sviluppi che si sono verificati a seguito di questo incidente, il rappresentante Ritchie Torres sta apparentemente muovendosi per introdurre un disegno di legge che mira a combattere il trading insider nei mercati delle previsioni mentre i trader stanno realizzando profitti elevati sulla cattura prevista del presidente Nicolás Maduro.
La spinta per l'integrità nei mercati delle previsioni
Il 3 gennaio, il presidente statunitense Donald ha annunciato una missione militare di successo in Venezuela che ha portato alla cattura del presidente Maduro e di sua moglie, Cilia Flores. L'amministrazione guidata dai repubblicani a Washington accusa Maduro e sua moglie di gestire un'“organizzazione narco-terrorista”, e entrambe le parti sono state accusate di affrontare accuse di traffico di droga a New York.

Algorand lancerà Rocca Wallet e AlgoKit 4.0 come parte della sua roadmap per il 2026.
Espansione negli Stati Uniti e aggiornamenti del consiglio confermati mentre la rete punta verso l'adozione nel mondo reale.
La Fondazione Algorand ha pubblicato traguardi chiave per il 2026, costruendo sui progressi tecnici che la rete Algorand ha raggiunto nel 2025. La Fondazione ha confermato una prossima espansione negli Stati Uniti, un nuovo annuncio del consiglio e il lancio di diversi prodotti importanti, come Rocca Wallet e AlgoKit 4.0. Gli aggiornamenti mirano a migliorare gli strumenti per gli sviluppatori, la decentralizzazione della rete e l'adozione nel mondo reale.