CLARITY Act, Powell Investigation, & Digg Launch

View from the Arch #117

January 16, 2026

We’re excited to announce the closing of a $75M tokenized CLO with Galaxy Digital (GLXY) on the Avalanche blockchain to continue to finance our crypto-backed loans!

$50M was purchased by institutions credit protocol, Grove, a part of the Sky ecosystem - you can read more here!

This Week in Crypto

January started sleepy but is definitely starting to wake up -

  • Bitcoin spent the first two weeks of 2026 consolidating into the world’s most boring range of $85K-$93K. 

  • But then on Wednesday, BTC blasted past $97K, triggering roughly $700M in short liquidations - courtesy of the softer-than-feared CPI print on Monday.

The altcoin story is slightly spicier - 

  • XRP and Solana both ripped double-digit gains, with XRP trading around $2.40 and Solana breaking past $145. 

  • The regulatory tailwind here is very real - a draft of the CLARITY Act basically grants XRP, SOL, DOGE, and more the same non-ancillary asset status as BTC and ETH if they had an ETF listed by January 1 of this year. 

  • Institutional options activity that used to be Bitcoin-only is now spreading to XRP, SOL, and ETH. Covered call strategies are capping upside but creating accumulation pressure that’s keeping prices stable and vol lower. 

On the regulation front, Washington is in full-throttle execution mode -

  • The GENIUS Act stablecoin framework hits its July 2026 implementation deadline, and regulators are scrambling to finalize licensing, custody, and capital requirements.

  • And the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act is getting Senate committee markup in January, per White House crypto czar David Sacks. 

This Week in TradFi

What a week for Wall Street…

  • Let’s start with the absolute nuclear bomb that dropped Sunday night. The Department of Justice opened a criminal investigation into Fed Chair Jerome Powell.

    • The ostensible reason is because of Powell’s testimony to Congress about cost overruns on the Fed’s $2.5B headquarters renovation (original estimate of $1.9B). 

    • However, Powell believes the actual reason (provided in a video statement) is retaliation for not cutting rates fast enough. 

    • Markets briefly wobbled as a result, with gold spiking past $4,600/oz as investors ran for safety, then stabilized.

  • Markets hit fresh all-time highs early in the week before pulling back midweek on the Powell chaos and Trump’s latest policy proposal - a proposed 10% cap on credit card interest rates for a year. 

    • Bank stocks were especially volatile, with JPMorgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and others all down 5-7% for the week despite posting solid earnings. 

  • Bank earnings season was otherwise a mixed bag. 

    • JPMorgan beat on revenue but missed on earnings, and Goldman crushed on equities trading but overall revenue declined. 

  • The AI trade came roaring back midweek after Taiwan Semiconductor dropped a banger of an earnings report.

  • And finally economic data came in better than expected - CPI was softer than feared at 2.7% YoY, PPI was up just 0.2%, and retail sales are expected to show consumers still spending. 

This Week in Tech

The reboot of the early internet online community Digg, at one point a rival to Reddit, moved forward this week.

  • The company is now back under its original founder, Kevin Rose, and Reddit cofounder, Alexis Ohanian. 

  • The beta launch - open to the public - went live on Wednesday. 

  • Digg was originally a Web 2.0-era news aggregation site, and was at one point valued at $175M. 

    • It was ultimately outpaced by Reddit and was split up in 2012. 

  • Rose and Ohanian decided to acquire the company last March for an undisclosed amount. 

As usual, below are some fundraising announcements, M&A, and tech personnel changes that caught our eye:

  • Customer service AI startup Parloa has raised a $350M Series D, led by General Catalyst. 

  • AI video generation startup Higgsfield has sold another $80M of stock, bringing its Series A to $130M at a $1.3B valuation.

  • OpenAI has invested $250M in Sam Altman’s brain computer interface startup Merge Labs. 

Arch is building a next-gen wealth management platform for individuals holding Alternative Assets. Our flagship product is the crypto-backed loan, which allows you to securely and affordably borrow against your crypto.

Disclaimer: None of the above is financial advice, seriously.