On January 28, 2026 in New York, QXMP Labs said it activated its real‑world asset liquidity architecture and registered approximately USD $1.1 trillion of certified in‑ground assets on its Layer‑1 blockchain, QELT. The firm outlined a design that routes 30% of tokenisation proceeds through QELT and cited an indicative base valuation near USD $43.6 billion.

Fidelity Investments said on Wednesday it will introduce its first U.S. dollar stablecoin, the Fidelity Digital Dollar (FIDD), issued by Fidelity Digital Assets, National Association. The token will support 1:1 USD redemptions via Fidelity platforms and is slated for retail and institutional access in the coming weeks, with transfers available to any Ethereum mainnet address.

On 28 January 2026, a detailed overview distinguished tokenized bank deposits, tokenized money market funds, stablecoins, and central bank digital currencies as separate forms of digital money. Although these instruments frequently rely on similar blockchain or distributed ledger technology, they differ in issuer, legal framework, and primary use cases across payments, investment, and public monetary infrastructure. Understanding these distinctions is presented as essential for managing risk, designing regulation, and supporting the long-term development of digital finance.

The EU's DAC8, built on the OECD's CARF, requires crypto exchanges and custodians to start gathering user activity data in 2026, while decentralized finance remains out of scope. Taxbit's Colby Mangels, a former OECD adviser, said the intermediary-first approach is intentional and could change as AML standards evolve; a June 2025 FATF report shows regulators still struggle to assign DeFi accountability.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said he made $70,000 on Polymarket in the past year using an "anti-insanity" strategy that bets against highly unlikely events. In a Chiang Mai interview he warned that, despite Ethereum’s scaling progress and rising prediction market volumes, crypto apps risk drifting into pure speculation while critical oracle vulnerabilities still threaten market integrity.

A PayPal and National Cryptocurrency Association survey of more than 600 payment‑strategy leaders reports that about 40% of US merchants accept crypto, nearly 90% have fielded customer requests, and 84% expect it to be mainstream within five years. PayPal says it launched a crypto checkout tool in July supporting over 100 coins, while merchants already accepting crypto see an average 26% of sales via these payments.

On January 27, 2026, Ethereum contributors outlined the ERC-8004 standard, which is intended to bring structured AI agent-to-agent communication and settlement to the mainnet and L2 networks. The proposal focuses on agent discovery and portable reputation so that AI services can interact across organizations without additional screening, while developers can choose among several trust models to manage value at risk. Supporters expect wider AI agent usage to contribute to high on-chain activity and potentially strengthen the market for reputational tools such as ENS names.

Ethereum is preparing to deploy ERC-8004 on mainnet, a MetaMask-developed standard for trustless discovery and verification of AI agents. A possible Thursday rollout was indicated, and an update on January 27, 2026 said the launch would happen on mainnet "soon." The standard enables portable reputation and cross-organization agent interactions.