Bank of America backs 1%–4% Bitcoin allocations as Ethereum and Stellar deploy upgrades

Beincrypto reports the first full week of January 2026 brings several market-moving crypto events: Bank of America authorizes 1% to 4% portfolio allocations to cryptocurrency, Ethereum and Stellar are rolling out major upgrades, and token unlocks and protocol milestones may increase short-term volatility.

Bank of America’s policy takes effect on January 5, 2026, allowing advisers at Merrill, the Private Bank, and Merrill Edge to recommend regulated Bitcoin ETFs such as BITB, FBTC, Grayscale Mini Trust, and IBIT. The outlet notes Bitcoin is down 30% from its all-time high of $126,199 but up over 5% since the start of the year, institutional ownership has risen from 20% to 28%, and the market has lost $600 billion in Bitcoin market cap since October.

Ethereum will increase blob capacity per block on January 7, 2026, with BPO-1 already live at 15 blobs per block and BPO-2 due in January to further expand Layer 2 capacity, benefiting rollups like Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base. Stellar’s Protocol 25 (X-Ray) advances privacy with a testnet vote on January 7 and a mainnet vote on January 22, adding BN254, Poseidon hash functions, and on-chain zk-SNARK verification for Soroban while aiming to preserve transparency and compliance.

Key Topics

Crypto, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Stellar, Hype