Weekly Crypto Market News: DeFi Infrastructure, Regulation & Capital Flows
January 19 – 25, 2026
Headline: 22 projects raised $458M total.
Pomelo, Zebedee, and River all raised to expand payment rails, card issuance, or stablecoin based settlement across regions and apps.
Superstate, Cork Protocol, and RedStone (via acquisitions) point to continued buildout of onchain equities, RWA risk markets, and institutional data layers.
BitGo’s IPO, Chainlink acquiring Atlas, and Neynar acquiring Farcaster reflect consolidation around custody, order flow, and protocol level distribution.
HyENA opened public access to its perps DEX, reduced trading fees by roughly 50 percent, and introduced boosted collateral APR.
RAILGUN enabled private borrowing, lending, and swaps through existing DeFi frontends using zk addresses.
Reya launched Phase 1 spot trading inside its Spot Margin Account, enabling spot perp strategies without deploying additional capital.
Nansen opened its trading terminal to all users, enabling cross chain trading across Solana and Base.
Glider launched gas free one click trading for any token with an early user points program.
Privacy Cash launched private swap functionality for supported Solana tokens.
Ondo launched tokenized stocks and ETFs on Solana, bringing over 200 traditional assets on chain.
Euler went live on Hyperliquid via HypurrFi, enabling lending and borrowing through earn vaults.
Maple launched on Base with syrupUSDC and USDT markets, with additional integrations planned.
Trove announced plans to rebuild its perps DEX natively on Solana following the unwind of its prior infrastructure path.
GMX announced plans to deploy on MegaETH to leverage higher throughput and faster block times.
SUMR launched via a fair launch on Aerodrome with rewards claimable through Merkl and governance tied to veAERO voting.
TROVE completed its ICO and scheduled its token generation event for January 20 at 5pm UTC.
Equity tokenization is shifting from isolated pilots to regulated market infrastructure, as issuers, exchanges, and service providers converge on production-ready models. Recent developments across data infrastructure, issuance, trading venues, and capital formation point to a coordinated build-out rather than speculative experimentation.
The first layer of this transition is data. Chainlink has launched 24/5 onchain data streams covering tokenized U.S. equities and ETFs, providing real-time pricing and corporate action data to blockchains. This move addresses a foundational requirement for equity tokenization: reliable, institution-grade market data that mirrors traditional market hours and conventions.
By extending data availability beyond crypto-native assets, Chainlink is positioning public blockchains to support regulated securities workflows rather than synthetic replicas. This development signals that tokenized equities are being designed to integrate with existing market structure, not bypass it.
Issuers Begin Testing the Regulatory Perimeter
On the issuer side, F/m Investments has applied to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for approval to tokenize shares of a Treasury bill ETF on a permissioned blockchain. Importantly, the request does not seek a new asset class or exemption, but rather confirmation that tokenized shares can operate under the same legal and economic framework as traditional ETF shares.
If approved, this would establish a precedent for tokenized ETFs that settle onchain while remaining fully embedded within U.S. securities law. The effort reflects a growing preference among asset managers to pursue tokenization inside existing regulatory boundaries rather than through parallel structures.
Trading Venues Prepare for Continuous Settlement
At the exchange level, the New York Stock Exchange is developing a tokenized securities platform designed to support 24/7 trading and settlement. While details remain limited, the initiative underscores a structural recognition that blockchain-based settlement can extend market hours and reduce operational friction without altering underlying asset rights.
The NYSE’s involvement marks a shift in tone from defensive experimentation to strategic adoption. Rather than viewing tokenization as a competitive threat, incumbent venues are positioning it as an infrastructure upgrade to existing equity markets.
Capital Formation Moves Onchain
The most concrete signal of maturation comes from Superstate, which raised $82.5 million in Series B funding to expand its onchain equity issuance infrastructure. Having already surpassed $1.2 billion in assets under management through tokenized Treasury products, Superstate is now scaling into primary equity issuance for SEC-registered companies on Ethereum and Solana.
Through its Opening Bell platform and Direct Issuance Programs, Superstate enables companies to issue tokenized shares directly to investors without underwriters, with stablecoin settlement and real-time shareholder registry updates. The firm operates as an SEC-registered transfer agent, anchoring tokenized equities within existing compliance and governance frameworks rather than redefining them.
The Bigger Picture
Taken together, these developments suggest that equity tokenization is no longer framed as a crypto-native innovation seeking legitimacy, but as a capital markets efficiency play led by regulated institutions. Data providers, asset managers, exchanges, and issuance platforms are aligning around a common objective: modernizing settlement, distribution, and recordkeeping while preserving legal continuity.
The implication is not that equities are being “replaced” by tokens, but that blockchain rails are increasingly being adopted as back-end infrastructure for familiar financial products. The pace of progress remains deliberate, but the direction is increasingly clear.
The Government of Bermuda announced a partnership with Coinbase and Circle to explore what it describes as a “fully onchain” national economy, positioning digital assets as everyday financial infrastructure rather than a niche financial overlay. The initiative reflects Bermuda’s long-standing approach of pairing early regulatory clarity with practical adoption, leveraging blockchain rails to address the high costs and constraints of traditional payment systems faced by small, internationally connected economies.
At the center of the initiative is the use of USDC for day-to-day payments across government agencies and local businesses. The program aims to pilot stablecoin-based payments within the public sector, expand merchant acceptance, and enable faster, lower-cost dollar-denominated transactions that bypass legacy correspondent banking frictions. Early pilots, including prior USDC distributions tied to local merchant onboarding, suggest a focus on real usage rather than symbolic adoption.
Bermuda’s approach is underpinned by its Digital Asset Business Act, introduced in 2018, which provided one of the earliest comprehensive regulatory frameworks for digital assets. Coinbase and Circle were among the first firms licensed under this regime, and the current partnership builds on that foundation by extending onchain tooling to banks, insurers, and other financial institutions, including tokenization and digital finance integrations. Participation remains non-mandatory, reinforcing that the initiative is aspirational and market-driven rather than coercive.
Bermuda’s initiative illustrates a broader shift in how jurisdictions are approaching crypto adoption: not as speculative infrastructure, but to modernize payments, reduce costs, and keep economic value circulating locally. Rather than creating parallel crypto markets, the focus is on embedding stablecoins and tokenization into existing economic activity, offering a template for how regulated, small economies may pragmatically adopt onchain rails without reframing themselves as crypto hubs.
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