What has been happening this week in the world of blockchain and cryptocurrencies? Current events and background reports in our weekly review.
Selected articles of the week:
The CLARITY Act, which the US House of Representatives passed with a broad majority in July 2025, was intended to establish regulatory clarity for the crypto market. However, the bill has stalled in the Senate over a fundamental conflict: should stablecoin issuers be allowed to pay yields to their customers, or should this business remain reserved for banks? To resolve the dispute, the White House invited both sides to negotiations. Three meetings within 17 days failed to produce an agreement. At the third meeting this week, Patrick Witt, Executive Director of the President’s Council for Digital Assets, presented his own draft bill. The outcome clearly favors the banks: passive yields on idle stablecoin balances would be prohibited. The underlying concern is capital flight – traditional savings accounts offer 0.1 to 0.5 percent interest, while stablecoin platforms pay 3 to 5 percent. Rather than improving their offerings, banks are choosing the political route. The deadline for an agreement is late February.
Passive stablecoin yields are off the table: the crypto industry loses the yield war against the banking lobby in the CLARITY Act.
Abu Dhabi deepens crypto engagement
Mubadala Investment Company, one of Abu Dhabi’s largest sovereign wealth funds, increased its position in the BlackRock IBIT Bitcoin ETF by 46 percent in the fourth quarter of 2025. Notably, Mubadala bought into a period of declining prices, as Bitcoin lost around 23 percent over the same period. Together with its sister entity Al Warda Investments, a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Council, the combined position exceeded the 1 billion dollar mark for the first time. The fact that two state-backed entities are accumulating so aggressively is part of a broader trend: according to Q4 filings, the number of institutional Bitcoin ETF holders rose by 27 percent to 1,694, while banks increased their holdings by 104 percent. Abu Dhabi is strategically positioning itself as a crypto hub – the UAE exempted virtual assets from value-added tax and granted trading licenses to firms such as asset manager BlackRock.
Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala sovereign wealth fund increased its Bitcoin ETF holdings. Together with Al Warda, Abu Dhabi holds over $1 billion.
Goldman Sachs CEO holds Bitcoin
David Solomon, CEO of US investment bank Goldman Sachs, publicly admitted for the first time at the World Liberty Forum in Mar-a-Lago that he owns Bitcoin. The long-time crypto skeptic described his position as very small. Yet as recently as July 2024, he called Bitcoin a purely speculative investment – in January 2025, he clarified that Goldman Sachs could neither own nor trade Bitcoin. The shift is now unmistakable: by the end of 2025, Goldman Sachs held approximately 2.36 billion dollars in crypto ETFs, including positions in XRP and Solana ETFs for the first time. Solomon is driving the transformation through dedicated teams for tokenization and stablecoin technology. His personal purchase fits into a broader Wall Street movement – JPMorgan CEO Dimon, who called Bitcoin a “fraud” in 2017, announced Bitcoin trading for clients in May 2025.
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon owns Bitcoin. At the World Liberty Forum, he confirms the investment bank’s pivot toward crypto assets.
Around-the-clock crypto trading at the CME
CME Group, the world’s largest derivatives exchange operator, will open its crypto futures trading around the clock starting late May. For the first time, institutional investors will be able to trade Bitcoin and Ethereum derivatives seven days a week on the regulated CME Globex platform. Futures on Cardano, Chainlink, and Stellar are also part of the offering. The move closes a structural gap: while digital assets already trade around the clock on spot exchanges, regulated derivatives markets have so far operated on traditional trading hours. For the CME, this is the latest step in a gradual approach to the crypto market that began with Bitcoin futures in 2017. Demand is clearly present – in 2025, crypto derivatives on the CME reached a notional volume of 3 trillion dollars, and daily trading volume rose 46 percent year-over-year in 2026. The leap to 24/7 trading marks a departure from the structure of traditional asset classes.
CME Group launches 24/7 trading for crypto futures and options. Notional volume reached around $3 trillion in 2025.
Ethereum treasury company under pressure
In addition: Venture capital firm Founders Fund, owned by billionaire Peter Thiel, has divested its entire stake in Ethereum treasury firm ETHZilla. By the end of 2025, the fund held zero shares, after entering in August 2025 with approximately 11.6 million shares valued at an estimated 40 million dollars. The timing is telling: the ETHZ stock fell from a high of 107 dollars to around 3.20 dollars – a loss of 97 percent. ETHZilla, originally a biotech company called 180 Life Sciences, had reinvented itself as an Ethereum treasury following the MicroStrategy model and raised over 580 million dollars. But the strategy did not work out: ETH lost around 28 percent in the fourth quarter of 2025, forcing ETHZilla to liquidate holdings worth 114.5 million dollars. The company has since pivoted to RWA tokenization. Thiel’s swift exit highlights the fragility of the treasury model.
Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund sold its entire ETHZilla stake after just four months and a peak price decline of 97 percent.
