Crypto News Report January 21, 2026

Global Market Updates

The cryptocurrency market started the year 2026 in an uncertain way. It was not clear what was going to happen. The total value of the cryptocurrency market was $3.1 trillion to $3.3 trillion in the middle of January. At one point the value of the cryptocurrency market got close to $3.32 trillion.. Then something big happened on January 19 and 20. The cryptocurrency market saw a drop in value. The value of the cryptocurrency market went down by than $120 billion in just one day.

The Bitcoin price went up to $97,000 at the beginning of the month.. Then it went back down to, around $90,000. The Ethereum price was pretty steady staying between $3,100 and $3,300. The cryptocurrency market is still pretty unpredictable the Bitcoin and Ethereum prices. The market had a setback but people were still buying and selling a lot. Every day the total value of trades was often than $100 billion. This shows that people were still much involved, in the market they were not leaving. The trading activity was strong because people were still participating, not because they were getting out of the market.

People who invest in things changed their minds fast during this time. They were feeling good about it at the end of 2025 but then they started to get scared because they were not sure what was going to happen with the economy and the rules. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index went down to a point where it said people were extremely scared around January 20 which meant that traders were being very careful.. Some people who study Bitcoin think that Bitcoin is affected by big things that happen in the world like trade policy and what people think will happen with interest rates because Bitcoin is becoming a part of the regular financial system not because it is weak. Bitcoin is still connected to these events and that is why it is changing so much like Bitcoin prices going up and down when people talk about trade policy and interest rates and that is what happens when you have something, like Bitcoin that is a part of the traditional financial markets.

Institutional activity is still very important for the market. The Bitcoin ETFs in the U.S. Had a lot of money coming in during the middle of January. They got about $1.7 billion in three days. This was mostly because of BlackRocks IBIT fund. This money coming in helped make the market a little less volatile. It also showed that big investors like institutions are still interested in Bitcoin for a time. The funding rates were good but not too high. This means that people are being careful and do not have much debt when buying Bitcoin. Institutional activity and institutional investors like these are key, to the market. Bitcoin and the U.S. Spot Bitcoin ETFs are still getting a lot of attention from them.

Bitcoin was still the big player and its price went up and down between $90,000 and $96,000 for a while. People who had a lot of Bitcoin kept buying more when the price went down. For example MicroStrategy bought over $2 billion worth of Bitcoin in the middle of January. This means they now have than 700,000 Bitcoin.

The basics of Bitcoin like how secure the network’s how many people are using it were still good. This was true when a lot of people had to sell their Bitcoin quickly in January, which caused some problems in the markets where people trade Bitcoin bets. Bitcoin is still doing well. People are still interested in it like when they buy Bitcoin exchange-traded funds. Bitcoin is also still very secure which is important, for people who use it.

Ethereum did well. It went up a bit over the week and stayed above three thousand dollars. The people in charge of Ethereum made some changes to the network. They did something called the BPO fork. This was the part of the Fusaka upgrade series. It made the network work better.

Ethereums Layer-2 ecosystem is getting better too. It can handle a lot things now. Ethereum is still the best at turning world things into tokens. It has billions of dollars in tokens from the US Treasury and other big institutions. The government is getting clearer about what Ethereum’s. This is helping institutions to get more involved, with Ethereum.

Other big altcoins did not do well. Solana went down to around $125 to $130 because the whole market was weak and people were still worried about the network.. People were still working on making Solana better. BNB and XRP and other big coins just stayed the same while smaller coins and funny coins like Dogecoin did not do well because people were not investing much. Coins that are stable like USDT stayed the same with around $120 to $130 billion being used, which shows they are important, for the market.

In the year 2026 the people who make blockchain technology worked on making it better. They wanted to make sure that blockchain technology can handle a lot of users and that it is safe to use. The people who work on Ethereum made a plan to make it even better in the future. They are working on something called Danksharding. Some other blockchain networks, called Layer-2 networks got money from investors even though some people took their money out.

The Bitcoin Lightning Network started to be used often for payments. Some new projects tried to fix problems that might happen in the future like when computers get so good that they can break the security of blockchain technology.

The companies that handle payments and the government also started to use blockchain technology. They did some tests to see if they can use a kind of money called stablecoins to make payments, between different countries and even for government business. Blockchain development and blockchain technology are still being improved by the people who work on blockchain development and blockchain technology.

The main thing people talked about was regulation. In the United States people tried to make rules for assets clearer.. It took a long time to make progress because of politics. Of stopping the whole industry the focus was on stopping fraud and scams.

In Europe they started to implement MiCA which meant companies had to get licenses or leave the market. They also made rules, for reporting taxes.

Other places did things differently. Some made it harder to do things with assets while others tried to get more people to work with crypto. Regulation of assets was still a big deal. People were waiting to see what would happen with regulation of assets next.

Decentralized finance had a time. It tried to get better. It did for a little while. At the start of January the total value locked went up a bit.. Then a lot of chains and protocols started to struggle again. This showed that there is not a lot of money moving around. Some things like liquid staking and real-world asset platforms were pretty popular.. Some smaller systems basically fell apart. The market for NFTs was really quiet. Not a lot of people were. Selling and not a lot of new money was coming in. People were more interested in tokens that can actually be used for something and in gaming, on the blockchain. Decentralized finance is still having a time.

Big companies and organizations are still getting more into cryptocurrency even when the market is not doing well. Companies that manage money, banks and payment companies are starting to offer services that have to do with cryptocurrency like keeping it safe and using blockchain to settle payments. Even governments and the people in charge of money are looking into using kinds of payments and digital money that can be programmed which means they are starting to like the idea of using blockchain technology. This is happening even though some people are not as excited about cryptocurrency as they used to be. Cryptocurrency and blockchain are still becoming more popular, with companies and organizations.

Security incidents are still a problem. We did not see many big hacks this year as we did in 2025. Some famous cases showed that Security incidents are a risk because of old smart contracts and people trying to trick others. This means that people need to learn more about Security incidents and how to protect themselves. We also need to check everything and make sure that the people, in charge of our money are doing a good job. The police and other authorities are doing more to stop Security incidents and make sure everyone is following the rules. This shows that the system is getting better. It is still being watched very closely.

Overall, the crypto market in January 2026 appeared to be in a consolidation phase. Short-term volatility, driven by macroeconomic uncertainty and regulatory debates, contrasted with longer-term structural positives such as institutional inflows, technological upgrades, and clearer legal frameworks. Many analysts view this period not as the end of the cycle, but as a testing ground that may ultimately strengthen crypto’s role within global finance.https://meeqam.com