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Over the years, Ethereum staking has become one of the most vital and successful aspects of the broader ETH ecosystem, with big companies steadily jumping into the field. The majority of these companies, especially Bitmine Immersion, are revolutionizing ETH staking, turning it into a massive financial sector and edge.

Bitmine Monetized Ethereum Staking At Scale

After the entry of institutional investors, Ethereum staking has been transformed into a significant business opportunity from a technical requirement. At the forefront of this evolution is Bitmine Immersion Technologies Inc. (BMNR), a leading digital asset platform dedicated to improving the ETH ecosystem.

With its remarkable involvement in ETH staking, Bitmine Immersion is proving just how large this opportunity can be. The digital asset platform has successfully transformed Ethereum staking into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise by growing its validator operations and staking infrastructure.

As outlined by Milk Road on the social media platform X, the company intends to increase its present investment of 1.83 million ETH, valued at approximately $6 billion at current rates, to 4.2 million ETH. Bitmine’s plan and robust participation in ETH staking are a clear sign of the growing institutional appetite for on-chain yield.

This expansion demonstrates how staking is now about creating profitable, long-lasting businesses around ETH’s proof-of-stake economy rather than just protecting the network. Over the past month, Bitmine has been responsible for almost half of all new ETH entering the staking queue. 

Milk Road stated that staking at this scale removes Ethereum from the liquid supply and locks it away in long-term infrastructure rather than short-term trading. When a single player expresses a willingness to commit billions of dollars’ worth of ETH to staking, it points to an increased confidence in ETH’s future economics.

According to the expert, structural pressure is created by a reduced liquid supply and ongoing network demand over time. Given the sustained growth in institutional staking, Milk Road is confident that ETH’s price will move higher in the foreseeable future.

ETH Powering Crypto Native Financial Rails

With crypto native financial rails expanding, Ethereum is increasingly being positioned as the core infrastructure for major financial firms. JP Morgan asset management firm has confirmed this narrative with its latest fund launched on the ETH network.

Milk Road has reported that JP Morgan has introduced a tokenized money market fund on ETH, which is now live and already holds over $100 million in US treasuries. The rails are native to cryptocurrency, and the product appears to be traditional finance.

In reality, there is no separation, and there is only a financial product operating on the trains that make the most sense. Interestingly, this is how institutions move into new systems. “Incrementally, and only after the rules are clear enough to deploy real capital. Once they are live, they don’t leave,” Milk Road stated.

An inactive Ethereum whale has just re-entered the trading scene, withdrawing over $15 million worth of ETH in just a single day. Considering Ethereum’s slow price growth over the past few months and the whale’s sudden appearance despite being dormant for months, there could be a possibility of insider trading.

Dormant Ethereum Whale Moves $15 Million ETH

A sudden $15.14 million Ethereum transaction has caught the crypto market’s attention, with the move either driven by insider knowledge or simple strategic positioning. According to data from blockchain analytics platform, Onchain Lens, the transfer shifted approximately 5,099 ETH from a dormant wallet address on Kraken into active circulation on Thursday, January 22. 

Based on on-chain records, the whale, identified by the address ‘0x761F2F,’ has remained inactive in the market for more than three months. The last few times the whale was actively moving in the market were when it executed a series of stablecoin and HYPE transactions. The anonymous whale had initiated multiple million-dollar trades in UETH, USDT, and USDC. Meanwhile, the HYPE transactions were primarily token burns. 

After withdrawing 5,099 ETH from Kraken, Arkham Intelligence reported that the whale had transferred the ETH to Lido Finance, converting it into 5,100 STETH. While there is currently no evidence of insider trading, the timing of the transaction raises questions, especially given Ethereum’s muted price action over the past few months and the mounting selling pressure from large scale holders. 

Typically, insider trading in crypto occurs when individuals with non-public information make large transactions ahead of major market events that could influence market price. Currently, there has been no spike in Ethereum’s price, nor any major news that could suddenly affect its movements. In fact, ETH continues to trade lower, down by roughly 1.7% over the past 24 hours. Its daily trading volume is also down by 34.89%, signaling reduced confidence among traders and investors. 

Whales Go Long On Ethereum

While dormant large-scale players are suddenly re-entering the market, some active whales remain bullish on Ethereum’s long-term prospects despite its ongoing downtrend. According to well-known market analyst Max Crypto, an anonymous whale has just opened a $202 million long position in ETH with 15x leverage. 

The scale of the trade is extraordinary considering Ethereum’s recent volatility. It shows strong confidence in the cryptocurrency’s future price action and its potential to overcome its ongoing downtrend. Notably, the position has a liquidation price of $2,495, meaning that if ETH falls to that level, the trade could be forcibly closed by the crypto exchange, resulting in substantial losses for the whale. 

Market participants are closely watching the whales’ positioning, with some calling it a brave but chaotic bet. Others have even speculated that the position may have been taken based on insider information, fueling discussions about potential market moves and a possible bullish turnaround for ETH.

Crypto pundit X Finance Bull has explained how Donald Trump’s push to sign the crypto bill into law will boost demand for XRP. This follows White House Crypto Czar David Sack’s prediction about how banks will come into crypto once the CLARITY Act passes.

How Donald Trump’s Crypto Push Will Boost XRP’s Demand

In an X post, X Finance Bull shared a video in which Donald Trump’s crypto adviser, David Sacks, stated that banks will begin to adopt crypto once the crypto bill passes. The pundit noted that this means banks are already positioned, while Ripple has the stack and XRP has the liquidity, and the rails are in place. As such, he believes that the token will be the go-to crypto once these banks enter the crypto industry. 

X Finance Bull further mentioned that institutions that have been waiting over the past few years will return and announce their buys and use of XRP once Donald Trump signs the CLARITY Act into law. The pundit added that this moment resets who is early and that he never needed hype to hold the altcoin. “Research and study were always enough,” he said. 

X Finance Bull also questioned why market participants were panic-selling if banks are going all in once Donald Trump signs the crypto bill into law. The pundit’s statements come just as Ripple partnered with DXC to integrate the token and RLUSD into DXC’s Hogan core banking platform. 

The banking platform powers more than 300 million deposit accounts and over $5 trillion in deposits globally. As such, this is a major step in XRP’s adoption, as the partnership will integrate Ripple’s payment technology into large-scale banking environments.

Trump’s Tariff Move Will Also Boost The Altcoin

In another X post, X Finance Bull claimed that Donald Trump’s move with tariffs will also boost XRP’s demand.  He shared a video of how the U.S. president said that $18 trillion is flowing into the U.S. economy thanks to these tariffs. The pundit asserted that such money flows put pressure on banks, payroll systems, FX rails, and settlement speed. 

X Finance Bull further noted that this creates nonstop cross-border payments and liquidity needs, and this is where Ripple and XRP come in. He explained that while old rails leak money, Ripple and the altcoin were built to stop that. The pundit also alluded to Ripple executives meeting with Donald Trump and to the token being mentioned as part of the digital asset stockpile. He added that the CLARITY Act is next and that when rules lock in, the U.S. capital will need U.S. rails. 

At the time of writing, the XRP price is trading at around $1.92, down almost 2% in the last 24 hours, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson said he will fly to Japan this week for a multi-city community tour focused on Midnight, the privacy-focused network being developed in Cardano’s orbit, while hinting that new “commercially critical integrations” and major launch partners are nearing the finish line.

In a Jan. 22 video recorded from Colorado, Hoskinson framed the trip as both a reconnection with what he called Cardano’s “most critical component” and a staging ground for the next execution phase he wants the ecosystem to pursue: making leading applications meaningfully more competitive by combining Cardano and Midnight capabilities.

Midnight, Privacy, And A Cardano DeFi Push

Hoskinson said the tour will span Sapporo, Osaka, Fukuoka, Naha, and Tokyo, covering “the entire Japanese archipelago” over roughly two weeks. He described the agenda as part Midnight introduction, part Cardano status update, and part technical pitch for what builders can do when the two stacks interoperate.

“As many of you know, Japan is why Cardano exists. There would be no Cardano if there was no Charles and there would be no Cardano if there was no Japan,” Hoskinson said. “I went to Japan in 2015 and with our partners from Emurgo amongst others we were able to go about all of Japan and convinced them that Cardano needs to exist. So they put up the money we built it and the Japanese community still is the largest and strongest Cardano community in the entire world with more than half the supply there.”

That legacy, in Hoskinson’s telling, makes Japan a natural first stop for positioning Midnight not as a side project but as a strategic lever for Cardano adoption.

Hoskinson said that “about [the] middle part of this year” he intends to “aggressively push for the top 15 Cardano dapps to go through a overhaul and get some additional resources.” His stated goal is not incremental polish, but step-function improvements in usage and distribution.

“In my view the best place to take it is to focus on the DeFi ecosystem and the Cardano dapp ecosystem and ask the question how do we make those Cardano dapps more competitive? How do we 10x their TVL and their transactions?” he said. “Get them listed on major exchanges and get them where they need to go.”

The connective tissue, he argued, is Midnight’s privacy mandate, paired with new infrastructure components he referenced, including “new bridges,” “new stablecoins,” and “new oracles.” The pitch is that dapps cannot win on throughput and fees alone; they need new product surfaces that attract users and transactions from other ecosystems.

“My view is Midnight is going to be an indispensable component in that because it’s not good enough just to make them better, faster, and cheaper,” Hoskinson said. “The dapps have to offer new things and being able to combine Cardano technology and Midnight technology together. What that means is that we can actually offer privacy to the masses to Solana, to Ethereum, to Bitcoin and other places.”

Hoskinson also linked the push to Cardano’s broader engineering roadmap, citing Hydra progress while using a roads-and-traffic analogy to argue that application demand, not base-layer capability, needs to be the next constraint to break.

Japan Tour https://t.co/MTq8Trp0UP

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) January 22, 2026

After Tokyo, Hoskinson said he will head to Hong Kong for Consensus, where he plans to keynote and “have some cool announcements for Midnight along with some big big partners” tied to the network’s mainnet launch. He stressed he would not disclose counterparties until agreements are finalized, saying he expects people to be “very happy” with upcoming “commercially critical integrations.”

At press time, ADA traded at $0.3595.