Stalled in the Senate
What's being bought and sold*
TOP TRENDING ASSETS
*Trading activity in the past 24 hours on the Uphold platform, as of 8 a.m. 16th January 2026.
The combined total of buy and sell percentages can exceed 100% due to customers who engage in both buying and selling the same asset within the 24-hour time frame.
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What’s up
ICP Spurt Unimpeded
Internet Computer, a network which touts itself as a place where crypto, cloud computing, AI tools and decentralized governance all converge, continued to quietly dominate the week. Heading into early Friday morning, the network’s native ICP token was $4.41 after a 2.6% gain over the past 24 hours. ICP has surged 41% since last Friday when it was roughly $3.17, CoinGecko said.
ICP’s green glow stands out today as Bitcoin and a bevy of other big coins fell into the red relative to yesterday morning. But it also stands to reason that AI-related ICP would keep momentum going considering the confidence jolt that the AI sector just received after Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. reported blowout earnings.
Meanwhile, ICP is seemingly enjoying a unique boost all its own via the “Mission 70” tokenomics white paper released earlier this week, spelling out proposed supply-side adjustments and demand/burn acceleration initiatives designed to dramatically reduce ICP inflation.
Lower supply narratives can equal an “instant bid” as traders, even before full implementation details are formally adopted, tend to warmly embrace emission-cut frameworks (Trading View).
What's down
Sentiment Slides As Landmark Crypto Bill Skids Out
Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Solana and most other major coins dipped 1%-2% over the past 24 hours. On Thursday, long-awaited crypto market structure legislation seemed to get sidetracked by irreconcilable sausage-making differences, although a bipartisan cadre of Senators have vowed to revive the effort.
As divisions over a Senate version of the bill deepened, the market-sentiment-tracking Crypto Fear & Greed index slid by 12 points on Friday, going all the way down to a “neutral” score of 49/100, according to Cointelegraph. Consider how it was only yesterday the index produced a score of 61/100, representing the highest greed level recorded since it hit 64 on Oct. 10, which was the same memorably turbulent day that the crypto market saw $19B in liquidations.
What's next
Turning To Crypto In A Crisis
It was entirely possible to nab a +2,000% return on the price of Bitcoin over the past six months — provided you did a swap using the Iranian rial.
Civil unrest coupled with rising geopolitical tensions and the rial’s collapse (down 90% since 2018) have forced locals and state-linked actors into the arms of digital assets, according to a new report from Chainalysis.
Iran’s crypto ecosystem reached nearly $8 billion in 2025, per Chainalysis. That total — at least a quarter of it sits in wallets associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — represents 2% of the country’s entire annual GDP. No other country on earth can boast a faster take-up rate, Chainalysis said. Self-custody is not surprisingly a dominant trend amongst a population embroiled in massive societal protests.
On-chain data shows a sharp rise in BTC withdrawals to personal wallets, particularly in the days leading up to Iran’s nationwide internet blackout.
In the wake of the early January U.S. raid on Caracas, Venezuelans are also turning to crypto. No hard numbers were easily obtained at this time. But Venezuela, despite its relatively small formal economy, ranks among the world’s “highest-adoption countries,” DL News confirms.
“Iran is not the only country in crisis that is turning to crypto,” DL News said. “Venezuelans have also been making use of digital assets after the country was pushed into further economic uncertainty.”
