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📊 Funds continue leaving Aave, with some flowing into Spark.

Aave's TVL has now dropped to $16.432B, down $9.94B.

Meanwhile, Spark's TVL has risen to $4.552B, up $825M.

Binance has launched prediction markets through its Binance Wallet.

Users will need to create a separate account for predictions, which is not linked to their spot trading accounts. Binance noted that the outcome—either "yes" or "no"—will be presented in a range from $0.01 to $0.99. The launch was facilitated through the Predict.fun protocol on the BNB Smart Chain network. According to DefiLlama, the platform's TVL is $18.8 million.

Binance also reported on the first 90 days of operations for its TradFi derivatives. The daily trading volume for gold peaked at $7.6 billion, while silver reached $6.4 billion. Gold turnover on the crypto exchange significantly surpassed the figures from the Multi Commodity Exchange of India (MCX), the Dubai Gold and Commodities Exchange (DGCX), and the Tokyo Commodity Exchange (TOCOM). Meanwhile, oil contracts accounted for only 1% of the volume of the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) and ICE.

Iran intends to charge $1 in BTC for each barrel of oil passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

This was announced by the spokesperson of the Iranian Oil Exporters' Union, Hamid Hosseini. He also justified additional ship inspections with concerns over weapons transport during the two-week ceasefire. Meanwhile, empty tankers can pass without hindrance. Hosseini emphasized that payment in BTC cannot be confiscated due to sanctions and is difficult to trace. Previously, Iran discussed collecting passage fees in yuan and stablecoins.

The world's second-largest shipping company, Maersk, is considering the terms of the agreement. Meanwhile, Trump suggested creating a joint venture to collect fees for passage through the strait. According to Bitcointreasuries, the United States leads in the number of BTC held among countries—328,400 BTC ($23.7 billion), which is 1.6% of the coin's supply.

South Korea Tightens Cryptocurrency Regulations

The ruling Democratic Party is preparing a draft law that classifies stablecoins as currency payment instruments. They intend to prohibit issuers from paying interest to stablecoin holders. However, the draft exempts certain stablecoin payments for goods and services from currency transaction reporting requirements. Meanwhile, RWA issuers will be required to place underlying assets in managed trusts.

The Korean Financial Services Commission (FSC) is tightening rules on fund withdrawals from exchanges. The regulator aims to close loopholes used by fraudsters for quick fund transfers. Cryptocurrency exchanges are now required to consider trading frequency, transaction history, and deposit and withdrawal amounts to enable withdrawals without delay.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury has published its rules under the GENIUS Act.

Issuers of payment stablecoins will be treated as financial institutions under the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA). The regulator will require them to establish and maintain an anti-money laundering (AML) and countering the financing of terrorism (CFT) program. Issuers will also need to ensure compliance with sanctions. Additionally, they will be obligated to provide the capability to block, freeze, and reject certain stablecoin transactions.

CEO of the analytical company Nominis, Snir Levy, stated that these rules turn issuers into tools of banking control. The innovation could lead to an increase in wallet freezes, transaction blocks, and asset seizures on a large scale. GENIUS will come into effect on January 18, 2027, or 120 days after regulators publish the final rules for the law's implementation.

Visa is launching a platform that allows purchases using autonomous AI

Intelligent Commerce Connect supports payments with Visa cards and other payment systems. It is also compatible with major AI agent protocols. The platform is capable of working with tokenization, controlling expenses, and ensuring authentication. The system is currently in a pilot phase involving selected partners, with a wider rollout planned for the end of 2026.

Fintech company Nevermined has integrated with Visa's new system through Coinbase's x402 protocol. This allows AI agents to purchase digital goods and services. This week, Coinbase replaced fixed prices in the protocol with flexible ones, depending on the computational resources used by AI. Over the past month, x402 processed transactions totaling $24 million.

UBS, together with other Swiss financial institutions, is launching a sandbox to test stablecoins in Swiss francs.

The project will allow for the testing of token usage in various scenarios and the accumulation of experience in digital payment methods. The project is set to launch this year using the infrastructure of Swiss Stablecoin AG. It involves the three largest banking groups in the country—UBS, Raiffeisen, and Zürcher Kantonalbank. Additionally, the project is open to other financial institutions. According to DefiLlama, the capitalization of stablecoins in Swiss francs is $42.3 million.

According to Chainalysis' baseline scenario, by 2035 the adjusted volume of stablecoins will reach $719 trillion. Moreover, the volume could increase to $1.5 quadrillion. This is 52 times greater than the current $28 trillion. For this to happen, stablecoins must become the main payment infrastructure, and the younger generation must inherit $100 trillion in assets from older generations.

Morgan Stanley launched its own BTC-ETF under the ticker MSBT.

On the first day, the fund recorded an inflow of $30.6 million. On the same day, BlackRock's BTC-ETF (IBIT) received $40.4 million. For comparison, in January 2024, IBIT's debut was 3.7 times stronger, at $111.7 million. Now, 15,000 financial advisors from the investment bank will be promoting MSBT instead of IBIT. Additionally, MSBT's fee (0.14%) is lower than BlackRock's (0.25%) and Grayscale's (0.15%). Morgan Stanley recommends allocating 2-4% of a portfolio to cryptocurrency. Their fund has already accumulated 650.8 BTC ($46.9 million). Altogether, through BTC-ETFs, 6.4% of the coin's supply ($93.2 billion) is owned.

However, the main threat to BTC remains the 6.5 million BTC ($472.5 billion) vulnerable to quantum attacks. StarkWare proposed increasing the computational power for large BTC transactions. This would make them quantum-resistant without the need for a soft fork. However, transactions would cost from $75 to $150, serving as a temporary solution until a general fork.