Morning News | Grayscale will distribute ETH staking rewards to ETHE holders; Strategy increased its holdings by 1,287 bitcoins last week
Overview of Important Market Events on January 5整理：ChainCatcher
Important News:
- Yili Hua: Aster has stopped losses, looking forward to a new star in exchanges at the level of Binance team
- Vitalik: Ethereum is solving the blockchain trilemma with actual code
- Venezuelan opposition leader: BTC will become a key component of its national reserves
- Last year's crypto VC investment transactions plummeted by 60%, expected to recover moderately this year
- Data: 262,400 HYPE associated with Tornado Cash has been unlocked and is starting to be sold
- Grayscale will distribute ETH staking rewards to ETHE holders, with $0.083178 per share
- Strategy spent $116 million last week to increase its holdings by 1,287 bitcoins
What important events happened in the past 24 hours?
Grayscale will distribute ETH staking rewards to ETHE holders, with $0.083178 per share
According to ChainCatcher, Grayscale Investments announced today that its Grayscale Ethereum Staking ETF (code: ETHE) has allocated the earnings obtained through staking to existing shareholders for the period from October 6, 2025, to December 31, 2025. This milestone event marks the first distribution of staking rewards to holders of a spot crypto asset trading product in the U.S.
According to the distribution plan, ETHE holders will receive $0.083178 for each share they hold, reflecting the earnings obtained and sold by the fund during the corresponding period. The distribution will take place on January 6, 2026 (the payment date), with the recipients being investors holding ETHE shares as of January 5, 2026 (the record date).
Strategy spent $116 million last week to increase its holdings by 1,287 bitcoins
According to ChainCatcher, Strategy announced that it spent $116 million last week to acquire 1,287 bitcoins, increasing its bitcoin reserves to 673,783 coins.
Additionally, Strategy increased its dollar reserves by $62 million to $2.25 billion.
According to ChainCatcher, on the first trading day of 2026, the RMB to USD spot exchange rate continued to appreciate. Today, the RMB to USD spot exchange rate peaked at 6.977 during the day, refreshing the high since mid-May 2023. At 16:30, the closing price of the RMB to USD spot exchange rate was reported at 6.9806, an increase of 84 basis points from the previous trading day, marking a new high since May 17, 2023.
Wen Bin, chief economist at China Minsheng Bank, expects that in January, supported by seasonal foreign exchange settlement demand, the RMB may still have room for appreciation. However, the RMB to USD central parity rate has deviated towards depreciation from the closing price of the spot exchange rate, which may indicate a certain pro-cyclical behavior in the foreign exchange market recently.
Overall, under the regulatory authorities' policy tone of maintaining the RMB exchange rate basically stable at a reasonable equilibrium level and preventing excessive fluctuations, although the RMB exchange rate may still operate on the strong side in January, it is expected not to appreciate significantly, with most of the time fluctuating in the range of 6.9-7, Wen Bin pointed out.
Venezuelan opposition leader: BTC will become a key component of its national reserves
According to ChainCatcher, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado stated that BTC will become a key component of its national reserves.
Market news: Polymarket will launch a real estate prediction market, allowing users to bet on housing price trends
According to ChainCatcher, market news indicates that Polymarket will launch a real estate prediction market, allowing users to bet on housing price trends.
Data: 262,400 HYPE associated with Tornado Cash has been unlocked and is starting to be sold
According to ChainCatcher, monitoring by MLM shows that in the wallet address cluster associated with Tornado Cash, the first batch of 262,400 HYPE (approximately $6.9 million) has been unlocked (unstaked) and has begun to be sold.
Previously, on January 2, after being dormant for over 12 months, the entity unstaked 631,889 HYPE (approximately $20.3 million) through three different wallets within three days. All HYPE held by this entity was purchased within three weeks after the TGE ended, and the funds came from Tornado Cash. Its total holdings exceed 4.36 million HYPE, and the amount unstaked this time accounts for about 14% to 15% of its total holdings.
U.S. Vice President Vance's residence attacked, one person arrested by police
According to ChainCatcher, citing Fox News, on January 5 local time, U.S. Vice President Vance's residence in Cincinnati, Ohio, was attacked, and police arrested one suspect.
According to reports, eyewitnesses at the scene noted that the windows of Vance's residence were broken. It is believed that Vance and his family were not at home at the time of the incident.
According to ChainCatcher, Slow Fog Technology's Chief Information Security Officer @im23pds warned that a new type of "2FA security verification" phishing scam has recently appeared on the MetaMask wallet.
Scammers impersonate the MetaMask security alert page to induce users to complete a so-called two-factor authentication process, which is actually aimed at stealing mnemonic phrases. The process typically includes a forged security alert page, a fake 2FA verification interface, and a countdown prompt, ultimately guiding users to input their wallet mnemonic phrases.
Kazuo Ueda: If economic and price trends align with our predictions, the Bank of Japan expects to continue raising interest rates
According to ChainCatcher, Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda stated that if economic and price trends align with their predictions, the Bank of Japan expects to continue raising interest rates. (Jin Shi)
Walmart now supports enabling Bitcoin payments at checkout through OnePay Cash
According to ChainCatcher, as reported by Coinbureau, Walmart now supports enabling Bitcoin payments at checkout through OnePay Cash.
Last year's crypto VC investment transactions plummeted by 60%, expected to recover moderately this year
According to ChainCatcher, in 2025, the total amount of crypto venture capital reached $18.9 billion, an increase from $13.8 billion in 2024, but the number of transactions plummeted by 60% to about 1,200, with funds highly concentrated in later-stage projects. Digital Asset Trust (DAT) raised about $29 billion, attracting a large amount of institutional funds. Early-stage financing has significantly slowed down, mainly due to reduced available VC funds, institutional investors' preference for AI projects, and regulatory clarity driving mature companies to expand rapidly.
Multiple investors expect early-stage financing to recover moderately in 2026, but the threshold remains high, with investors focusing more on fundamentals rather than narratives. Clarity in U.S. regulation is seen as a key catalyst. Investment hotspots are concentrated in stablecoins and payments, institutional-grade infrastructure, prediction markets, RWA tokenization, and DeFi. There are divergences in the intersection of crypto and AI, with some believing that speculation is ahead of actual applications.
Token sales reappeared in 2025 but did not replace traditional VC, with expectations of forming a hybrid financing model. Overall, market discipline will continue, and capital allocation will be more rational.
According to ChainCatcher, Liquid Capital founder Yili Hua posted on the X platform that the Aster project has stopped losses, and the project team has been unable to contact the founder. JackYi expressed hope for new Binance team-level projects to emerge in the exchange track and promised to strongly support investments.
Currently, his allocation plan includes choosing BTC and BCH for the POW track, ETH for the public chain, WLFI for stablecoins, and BNB for exchanges, while looking forward to the emergence of new industry stars.
Vitalik: Ethereum is solving the blockchain trilemma with actual code
According to ChainCatcher, Vitalik Buterin stated that Ethereum is close to solving the long-standing problem of the "blockchain trilemma" at the operational level. He pointed out that two key upgrades, PeerDAS and ZK-EVM, are making Ethereum a "new and more powerful decentralized network."
Vitalik noted that PeerDAS went live on the mainnet in 2025, while ZK-EVM is still in the security enhancement phase but has reached production-level performance, with small-scale usage expected to begin in the network in 2026. Vitalik further planned that in the coming years, Ethereum will gradually achieve a balance between decentralization, security, and high throughput by increasing the gas limit, adjusting state structures, and introducing more ZK-EVM-based verification methods. He emphasized that this is not a theoretical concept but a long-term engineering achievement based on operational code.
Vitalik also recalled that Ethereum has invested nearly 10 years in solving data availability and scalability issues, and this vision is now gradually being realized.
CZ: Real opportunities often lie in time investment, not in fantasies of overnight wealth
According to ChainCatcher, CZ posted on the X platform that many people often ask him where he thinks the next big opportunity lies, and his answer is always "observe where I spend my time."
CZ pointed out that this logic is not complicated, but market participants often choose to ignore it, instead chasing so-called "10x overnight" opportunities, which have a very high failure rate. His statement aims to emphasize that long-term investment and sustained attention often reflect true potential opportunities more than short-term speculation.
Raydium: USD1 trading volume on Solana exceeded $260 million in the past 24 hours
According to ChainCatcher, Raydium posted on the X platform that in the past 24 hours, the USD 1 trading volume on Solana exceeded $260 million.
Opinion: The general rebound of meme coins may represent a resurgence of market risk appetite
According to ChainCatcher, as reported by Cointelegraph, entering 2026, funds have flowed back into the meme coin sector, driving the market capitalization of related tokens to rise by over 23% in the past week. CoinMarketCap data shows that the total market capitalization of meme coins has rebounded from about $38 billion on December 29 to over $47.7 billion. During the same period, Dogecoin and Shiba Inu rose by over 20% and 19.9%, respectively, while Pepe surged over 65%, with trading volume also increasing from about $2.17 billion to $8.7 billion, an increase of about 300%.
Analysts believe that meme coins are often seen as high-risk assets, and their early strength often reflects a warming of market risk appetite. Santiment pointed out that this round of rebound occurred after retail sentiment was at its most pessimistic stage, aligning with the historical characteristics of the market's "reverse operation." Some traders further believe that if meme coins continue to be strong, funds may gradually spill over into other altcoin sectors, with the Solana ecosystem likely to be a major beneficiary.
Meme Popularity Rankings
According to the meme token tracking and analysis platform GMGN, as of January 6, 09:00,
The top five popular tokens on ETH in the past 24 hours are: SHIB, LINK, PEPE, UNI, ONDO
The top five popular tokens on Solana in the past 24 hours are: TRUMP, PENGU, Fartcoin, FO, ME
The top five popular tokens on Base in the past 24 hours are: PEPE, BASED, NATO, SKYA, B3
What are some interesting articles worth reading in the past 24 hours?
They missed $2 million because Maduro was not supposed to be at home for the New Year
At 2 a.m. local time on Saturday in Venezuela, while President Nicolás Maduro was still immersed in the dreams of the New Year holiday, a U.S. special forces raid ended the battle within an hour and sent Maduro onto a transport plane to the United States.
This shocking "lightning war" seemed to come without warning, but on the leading prediction market platform Polymarket, it appeared to have already become a cash-out tool for several insiders before the action.
The year 2025 for cryptocurrencies has passed. This year, in addition to a series of favorable policies, the development of on-chain ecosystems has been even more rapid.
From the meme coin issuance wave sparked by Pump.fun to the on-chain Perp DEX trend led by Hyperliquid, and the stablecoin and PayFi financial wave driven by the listing of Circle (CRCL), many public chains' on-chain ecosystems have entered a period of explosive growth. Among them, Solana, with its ecological vitality, underlying infrastructure construction, and "application-first" internet-style capital network positioning, has surpassed Ethereum to become the "new king of on-chain networks" for the year.
Why have meme coins become the darlings of the crypto market again?
The recovery of the crypto market in 2026 is accompanied by a striking phenomenon: meme coins, once seen as pure speculative noise, are becoming leading indicators of a broader "risk appetite return" sentiment. Tokens like PEPE, DOGE, and BONK not only outperformed the market but also released signals of retail fund flows and institutional position changes ahead of time. This article will analyze how meme coins act as a "barometer" of speculative cycles, utilizing their unique interactions with social media sentiment, liquidity structures, and macro narratives to depict the rhythm of risk appetite rotation.
The reshuffling of the top ten global assets in 2025: Why has Bitcoin lost its luster?
The year 2025 was a year of severe differentiation in the global asset market.
Geopolitical conflicts, recurring inflation, the explosion of AI technology, and large-scale central bank purchases have driven traditional hard assets to make a strong comeback, while cryptocurrencies have been under pressure in the tug-of-war between institutional expectations and macro realities.
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