ETF Reversal, Miners Go AI, Rules Tighten

Welcome to our Crypto news in 10, a daily podcast bringing you the latest news about crypto in under 10 minutes.

It’s Sunday, January 25th, and here’s what moved crypto this weekend...

We’re watching a sharp reversal in ETF flows that cooled January’s relief rally, a bitcoin miner turning into an AI infrastructure heavyweight with a Google-backed deal, and a major DeFi protocol wrapping a three-month token buyback experiment. We’ll also hit a research proposal that plugs Europe’s eIDAS trust system straight into public blockchains — and close with the global rules kicking in this month that force banks and exchanges to lift the hood on their crypto exposure.

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Story one — ETFs.

After starting the year with a quick burst of inflows, U.S. spot Bitcoin and Ether funds just gave nearly all of it back. Midweek data — per Cointelegraph and CoinShares — showed spot Bitcoin ETFs bleeding roughly one billion dollars over a few sessions. Ether funds flipped negative too, erasing the early January progress... and signaling a cautious reset after that brief push toward 95,000.

Some altcoin ETPs bucked the trend, but the takeaway is simple: momentum cooled fast, and many investors trimmed risk into the weekend. As CoinShares’ James Butterfill noted, Bitcoin bore most of the outflows — even as shorts also saw money leave — a mixed signal that fits a market still undecided. If you track flows as a leading indicator, this week’s datapoint leans defensive.

Story two — a miner that’s not just mining.

TeraWulf — best known for low-carbon bitcoin mining — announced a 25-year high-performance computing joint venture with Fluidstack to build a 168 megawatt data center in Abernathy, Texas... and Google is backing about 1.3 billion dollars of Fluidstack’s lease obligations to help finance it. The joint venture represents roughly 9.5 billion dollars in contracted revenue, with TeraWulf holding 51 percent and first delivery slated for the second half of 2026.

The company says this pushes its contracted HPC platform past 510 megawatts — effectively recasting it as an AI compute landlord just as demand to train frontier-scale models keeps exploding. For miners wrestling with hash price cyclicality, this is the clearest version yet of the AI pivot... with real dollars, real megawatts, and a blue-chip counterparty behind the leases.

Story three — DeFi tokenomics in motion.

dYdX is entering the final week of a three-month experiment that diverts net protocol fees into open-market DYDX buybacks — running from November 1 through January 31. Estimates peg the trial at roughly five to ten million dollars in purchases, funded from revenue while validator and staker rewards were temporarily backstopped by the community treasury.

It builds on last year’s decision to start buybacks with 25 percent of protocol fees... and a November governance vote that charts a path to raise that allocation to 75 percent. The near-term test ends this Friday. The bigger question is longer term: does dYdX keep an aggressive buyback cadence to tighten float and bolster staking security — or revert to a more balanced split across staking rewards, liquidity support, and treasury?

Traders noticed. The token popped when these steps were first revealed, and the market will watch how governance codifies the next phase.

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Story four — trust... but verify, on chain.

A new academic paper proposes extending the EU’s eIDAS trust framework — think qualified electronic seals from recognized Trust Service Providers — directly into public blockchains. The architecture cryptographically binds smart contracts to qualified seals, anchoring identity from the EU’s Trusted Lists all the way down to an on-chain address.

It also maps a cryptographic suite that fits both eIDAS rules and Ethereum’s post-Fusaka execution realities — P-256 ECDSA and CAdES. Then it sketches two validation models: an off-chain flow for agent-to-agent payments, and a fully on-chain workflow that enables Know-Your-Contract, counterparty, and business checks... without adding new middlemen.

If EU digital wallets roll out as planned, this could automate compliance between legal entities on public chains — paving the way for institutional DeFi and real-world assets with machine-verifiable proofs. It’s research for now, but the direction is clear: regulatory trust stacks and open blockchains are being wired together.

Story five — the rules of the road just tightened.

Two big frameworks written in prior years effectively turn on in 2026. First, the Basel Committee’s crypto disclosure regime — banks must start publishing standardized tables and templates detailing crypto exposures, capital, and liquidity treatment. It’s designed to reduce information asymmetry and bolster market discipline, and it lands alongside targeted tweaks that tighten the criteria for which stablecoins can qualify for more favorable treatment.

Second, enforcement of the OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework is rolling out country by country. In the U.K., exchanges now have to collect and share detailed user transaction data with HMRC — with cross-border data sharing ramping up next. For institutions and retail alike, 2026 is the year the transparency switch flips... from bank balance sheets to exchange transaction logs.

Quick recap... ETF flows whipsawed negative this week, muting January’s rally. TeraWulf’s Google-backed, 168 megawatt joint venture shows miners morphing into AI landlords. dYdX’s buyback trial ends Friday, with governance poised to decide how aggressive is “just right.” Researchers are wiring EU eIDAS trust into public chains for machine-verifiable compliance... and new 2026 rules — from Basel disclosures to the U.K.’s CARF enforcement — are pulling crypto further into the bright light of standardized transparency.

Stay nimble, stay informed... and I’ll see you tomorrow.

Thanks for listening and see you tommorow!