Rain, the leading stablecoin payments infrastructure provider in the U.S. and a prominent member of the Visa network, has closed a $250 million Series C funding round. This capital injection, led by investment firm Iconiq, raises the company’s valuation to $1.95 billion.
Author: ethan
ethan
Ethan focuses on altcoins and emerging blockchain ecosystems, covering new projects, sector expansion, and shifting narratives across the crypto landscape. His work looks at how ecosystems grow and interact, beyond short-term price movements.He regularly contributes context on Layer 1 developments and Web3 or DeFi trends connected to broader ecosystem growth.
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The governments of Colombia and France have announced new measures to intensify oversight of the digital asset sector. Colombia’s National Directorate of Taxes and Customs (DIAN) is leading this offensive through Resolution 000240. Authorities seek to map asset ownership to eliminate financial anonymity pockets effectively. Therefore, exchanges and digital service platforms must report detailed balances of their users.
Polygon Labs unveiled the Open Money Stack, a modular payments framework aimed at enabling 24/7, cross‑border stablecoin and tokenized‑deposit transfers. The company pitched the stack as an attempt to bridge fiat and on‑chain settlement while keeping transaction fees to fractions of a penny and settlement times near two seconds.
Bitget’s TradFi platform recorded more than $2 billion in daily trading volume within three days of its public debut on January 5, driven primarily by a spike in gold trading, according to the company. The fast start reflected strong retail and crypto-native demand for direct access to traditional assets on a single exchange.
Solana’s on-chain stablecoin supply surged to an all-time high of $15 billion, effectively tripling from roughly $7 billion in 2024 and representing a roughly 200% year‑over‑year increase. The jump coincides with a renewed memecoin wave on Solana that has injected heavy retail liquidity and trading activity into the network.
Traders shifted capital toward Monero (XMR) following a governance collapse at Zcash that culminated with the Electric Coin Company’s mass resignation in early January 2026. Market indicators and contemporaneous reporting show net outflows from ZEC and inflows into XMR during late 2025 and the opening days of 2026.
The Bybit wealth management division has shown exceptional resilience by closing the year 2025 with returns exceeding 20%. According to the annual Private Wealth Management (PWM) report, its top-performing fund reached an APR of 20.3% driven by USDT-based strategies.
BitMine Immersion Technologies, recognized as the largest known corporate ETH holder worldwide, has started 2026 with a highly aggressive accumulation strategy. The company executed a 105 million dollar purchase in ETH, according to data revealed by the Arkham platform. With this acquisition, the firm now custodians a total of 4.07 million tokens in its corporate treasury. This figure represents approximately 3.36% of the total circulating supply of the Ethereum network currently.
The development team behind the privacy-focused cryptocurrency Zcash has staged a historic break with the Bootstrap board this week. Josh Swihart, CEO of Electric Coin Company (ECC), announced that the entire staff left the organization this Wednesday. According to the executive, this decision responds to a lack of alignment with the fundamental goals of the project. The team plans to found a new company to continue the protocol’s development independently.
On January 7, Lloyds Bank, Archax and the Canton Network executed the United Kingdom’s first gilt purchase settled with tokenised bank deposits, marking a live demonstration of distributed ledger technology inside regulated finance. The trade converted on‑balance‑sheet sterling deposit tokens into a tokenised UK government bond, showing immediate interoperability between blockchain settlement and conventional banking accounts.
