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According to Forbes, venture capitalist Alex Lazarow wrote that in the past two years, Stripe, Mastercard, and Circle have acquired American stablecoin infrastructure company Bridge, British BVNK, and Singapore cross-border payment platform Tazapay, respectively, with a total transaction value exceeding $3 billion. These three companies were established between 2020 and 2022, raising a total of approximately $200 million, indicating that stablecoin payment infrastructure is becoming a field where traditional payment giants and cryptocurrency companies are competing to establish a presence.Among them, Stripe announced in 2024 that it would acquire Bridge for slightly over $1 billion; the total value of Mastercard's acquisition of BVNK could reach up to $1.8 billion, including $1.5 billion in base consideration and $300 million in contingent consideration; Circle agreed to acquire Tazapay for $400 million in stock, with the transaction expected to be completed in 2027. The growth in stablecoin adoption, the gradual clarification of regulatory frameworks, and the rising demand for real-time cross-border payments are the main factors driving mergers and acquisitions.Data shows that in 2025, the adjusted transaction volume of stablecoins is expected to grow by 91% year-on-year, reaching $10.9 trillion, close to Visa's $14.2 trillion; the scale of real-world payments is expected to more than double, reaching approximately $390 billion. These transactions reflect that acquirers value not only stablecoin technology but also verified business scale, payment networks, and compliance qualifications.As stablecoin payment infrastructure matures, applications such as dollar accounts, stablecoin payment cards, and cross-border remittances are also emerging, and in the future, more local infrastructure companies similar to Bridge and BVNK may be acquired in various regions around the world.

"On-Chain Detective" ZachXBT stated that he once disguised himself as a client to infiltrate a criminal gang suspected of laundering money for the North Korean-backed hacker organization Lazarus Group, and assisted in freezing funds related to the 2025 Bybit attack incident.ZachXBT indicated that after Bybit was attacked for $1.5 billion in February 2025, he discovered over 15 accounts seeking help with transactions related to the stolen funds in public Telegram and Discord groups. He then contacted a Telegram user using the alias "Jimmy Green" and built trust through multiple transactions.According to his disclosure, on March 6, 2025, he transferred $3.497 million USDC to an Ethereum address for exchanging USDC with TRON chain USDT. The Gas funds for that address trace back to the Bybit attack funds and have been publicly marked as a Bybit attack blacklist address.ZachXBT stated that in subsequent communications, the other party revealed that their team had participated in handling the stolen funds from Bybit and disclosed in advance that the funds would be transferred on chains such as Solana. By matching transaction times, amounts, and on-chain data, he discovered a wallet cluster involving over $12 million of Bybit attack funds, with funding paths including BTC→ETH→SOL→TRON and others, among which approximately 442,000 USDT had been frozen by Tether. The gang also attempted to launder money through Uniswap liquidity pools and low liquidity tokens.In addition, the other party revealed that they had helped other clients handle approximately $3 million in scam proceeds, and ZachXBT tracked the related funds flowing to sanctioned Huione Guarantee-related wallets.ZachXBT disclosed that during this investigation, he initially invested $3.497 million and bore about 5% loss risk for each transaction. The intelligence obtained was promptly provided to relevant investigative agencies and law enforcement. Since 2022, he has assisted in freezing over $75 million related to North Korea-related incidents.

According to Cointelegraph, Trump is expected to appoint former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton as the AI Czar.At the same time, veteran trader Peter Brandt predicts that if Bitcoin holds key low points, this cycle's peak could reach $600,000.

According to Shield's monitoring, NEAR Intents attackers have transferred the stolen funds to Kucoin and bridged them to BTC. The attacker's address has interacted with an address marked as North Korea's LazarusGroup (0x098B7...E2f96).

According to on-chain detective Specter, by tracking on-chain fund flows, the North Korean hacker organization Lazarus Group may be the behind-the-scenes attacker of the Bitget theft incident. This incident is linked to the AFX attack that occurred in July this year, which resulted in losses of approximately 24 million dollars and was attributed to TraderTraitor associated with Lazarus Group.The stolen XRP from Bitget, after cross-chain transfer, can be directly linked to the stolen funds in the AFX attack.

A source familiar with the relevant discussions stated on Tuesday that U.S. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin may take on the role of President Trump's "Artificial Intelligence (AI) Czar." Meanwhile, lawmakers in Washington are increasingly concerned about the risks posed by AI technology. Trump has previously downplayed concerns about AI and believes there is no need for additional regulatory measures.The U.S. Treasury Department did not immediately comment on Mnuchin's potential new role. Another source indicated that no decisions have been made yet. Trump stated last Saturday that he plans to appoint a new "AI Czar" and form an "AI Task Force," but did not disclose details.

On-chain detective ZachXBT posted that the wallet address associated with 7zarc has received 4,870 ETH (approximately 15 million USD), with the funds originating from addresses related to the Raidparty project's approximately 70 million USD "exit scam." Subsequently, this portion of ETH was transferred to recharge addresses of several centralized exchanges.ZachXBT pointed out that 7zarc disappeared from public view in 2022 and only became active again in September 2026. Based on this, he publicly questioned the need for an explanation regarding the flow of the related funds.

According to monitoring by Lookonchain, the hacker organization Lazarus Group sold 911 ETH (2.28 million USD) at an average price of 2499 USD in the past 2 hours.

According to Lookonchain monitoring, the Lazarus Group hackers transferred 244.148 Bitcoins, worth 19.42 million dollars.

According to on-chain analyst Ai Yi's monitoring, the hacker group Lazarus Group transferred 262.2 BTC to a new address 2 hours ago, worth $16.64 million, possibly planning to launder it.Currently, the organization still holds assets worth over $73.06 million on-chain, mainly including BTC, USDT, and ETH.

Cryptocurrency exchange Bybit has filed a civil lawsuit against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, its intelligence agency Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB), and the state-sanctioned hacking organization Lazarus Group, involving a $1.5 billion hacking incident.A U.S. federal court has issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting the transfer or dissipation of identified assets related to the case during the litigation period.

According to Lookonchain monitoring, the Lazarus Group hackers transferred 121.5 BTC ($7.74 million) one hour ago.

According to Bitcoin.com, U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis is pushing for the CLARITY Act to complete Senate voting before Congress goes into recess. Article 303 of the bill grants the Treasury Department the authority to impose targeted sanctions on digital assets in foreign jurisdictions, while Article 305 allows exchanges to freeze suspicious transactions for up to 180 days.On-chain data shows that North Korea's Lazarus Group stole approximately $643 million in the first half of 2026, accounting for two-thirds of the total amount stolen in cryptocurrency globally during the same period ($972 million), which includes a $285 million attack on Drift Protocol in April and a $292 million attack on the KelpDAO cross-chain bridge. The organization has accumulated a total theft of $6.75 billion since 2019.Currently, Galaxy Research has lowered the probability of the CLARITY Act passing in 2026 to 30%. The bill still requires 60 votes to advance, meaning at least 7 Democratic senators need to cross party lines to support it.

According to Cryptopolitan, cybersecurity analysts have discovered a new type of fileless remote access trojan (RAT) named RemotePE. It is believed that the cybercrime organization Lazarus Group, associated with North Korea, is using this trojan to attack banks and cryptocurrency companies. The trojan operates entirely in memory, making it difficult for traditional antivirus and forensic tools to detect. Attackers impersonate trading company employees via Telegram, using forged Calendly and Picktime links for social engineering attacks. The malware is loaded in a three-stage chain through DPAPILoader, RemotePELoader, and RemotePE, with the entire process avoiding contact with the file system, utilizing process hollowing, anti-analysis checks, and encrypted C2 communication to evade detection.This malware was first discovered in September 2025. In the first four months of 2026, the Lazarus organization has stolen approximately $577 million in cryptocurrency assets, accounting for 76% of the total global cryptocurrency theft. Since 2017, the organization has accumulated a total theft amount of $6 billion.

According to research by OpenSourceMalware, the North Korean hacker group Lazarus has adopted new techniques in malicious activities targeting developers, such as "infectious interviews" and "TaskJacker," hiding the second-stage loader in the pre-commit scripts of Git Hooks. "Infectious interviews" is a series of attack activities where the organization lures developers into cloning malicious code repositories by faking recruitment processes in the cryptocurrency/DeFi field, ultimately stealing crypto assets and credentials.Researchers recommend that developers who are asked to clone code repositories as part of the interview process should be wary of such risks and preferably run in an isolated environment to avoid mounting personal browser configurations, SSH keys, and cryptocurrency wallets.

a16z Crypto Managing Partner Chris Dixon announced on the X platform that Eddy Lazzarin has been promoted to General Partner at a16z Crypto.Lazzarin joined a16z Crypto in 2019 as a data scientist and investment partner, and from 2023, he has served as Chief Technology Officer, leading the engineering, data science, research, and security teams, driving the development of the open-source zero-knowledge virtual machine Jolt. Lazzarin has developed a clear theoretical framework in token design and classification, helping to establish standards for understanding token operations, value accumulation, governance, and incentive mechanisms.As the new General Partner, he will focus on portfolio and token strategies, as well as identifying, evaluating, and supporting emerging crypto networks and companies, including the investment work for a16z Crypto's recently announced fifth crypto fund.

According to CoinDesk, monitoring by CertiK reveals that the Lazarus Group is conducting an attack operation named Mach-O Man targeting executives in the fintech and cryptocurrency industries. This operation utilizes ClickFix social engineering techniques, sending fake online meeting invitations to lure victims into pasting repair commands on their Mac terminals, thereby gaining access to company and financial systems.CertiK researcher Natalie Newson stated that the Lazarus Group has stolen over $500 million through attacks on Drift and KelpDAO in the past two weeks. Mach-O Man is a modular macOS malware toolkit developed by the Chollima division of the Lazarus Group, capable of automatically deleting itself after use to evade detection.Additionally, attackers have implemented this attack by hijacking DeFi project domain names and replacing them with fake Cloudflare messages.

Binance Alpha will remove the following tokens from the recommended list on January 29, 2026, at 14:00: WIZARD, SHOGGOTH, G, FWOG, UFD, BRIC, UPTOP, PORT3, XNAP, MORE, BOMB, BOOST. Users can still sell these tokens on Binance Alpha.

According to Cryptopolitan, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson expressed skepticism in an interview about the U.S. "Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (CLARITY Act)" passing in the first quarter of 2026, and called for David Sacks, the Trump administration's head of cryptocurrency affairs, to resign. Hoskinson pointed out that since Sacks took office at the end of 2024, cryptocurrency prices have fallen, regulatory clarity has been lacking, and the industry has failed to establish a solid foundation for development.He believes that if the bill does not pass this quarter, Sacks should resign, stating that he has "let the entire industry down." Hoskinson also mentioned that if the Democrats regain control of the House in the midterm elections in November, the bill will be even less likely to pass. He criticized the current U.S. cryptocurrency policy for favoring large financial institutions over retail investors, centralizing the industry around Wall Street firms like BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley.Additionally, Hoskinson reiterated that Trump-related cryptocurrency projects have caused market confusion, emphasizing that cryptocurrencies should remain global and neutral, rather than being nationalized or politicized. He advocates for the U.S. to establish enduring and non-restrictive cryptocurrency regulations, even if it takes longer.