Anthropic says its Claude AI will remain ad-free, positioning itself against OpenAIs plans to explore ads on ChatGPT.

The post Anthropic rules out ads for Claude as Super Bowl spot targets ChatGPT ad plans appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Growing Wall Street trust may signal a turning point for crypto equities and a market recovery ahead.

The post Matt Hougan: Crypto winter may be ending, institutional flows are stabilizing Bitcoin, and the Clarity Act could spark a bull market | The Wolf Of All Streets appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Shifts in market dynamics suggest gold's resurgence may impact Bitcoin's long-term viability as an asset.

The post Cosmo Jiang: Long-term crypto investment requires patience, gold’s pullback signals new dynamics, and Hyperliquid transforms trading with 24/7 access | Unchained appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

CME Group CEO says the exchange is exploring tokenized cash and a potential proprietary coin as it reviews new forms of collateral.

The post CME Group explores launching its own coin as exchange deepens tokenization push appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin slid to $72K, extending its selloff and dragging crypto stocks, miners, and treasury firms lower amid broader market weakness.

The post Bitcoin slides to $72K, extending selloff and dragging crypto stocks lower appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Alleged Bitcoin Ransom Deepens Mystery in Nancy Guthrie Disappearance

The disappearance of 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie, mother of Today show co-host Savannah Guthrie, has taken a dramatic turn after what appears to be a bitcoin ransom demand surfaced amid a widespread and intensifying investigation into her possible kidnapping.

Late Tuesday, entertainment news site TMZ reported it had received an alleged ransom note demanding a specific, substantial payment in Bitcoin — reportedly in the millions — in exchange for Guthrie’s safe return. 

The note included a deadline for payment and a threat of harm if the demand was not met, and was sent with a Bitcoin wallet address that TMZ verified as a real on-chain account. 

The alleged ransom note also referenced specific details about Nancy Guthrie’s clothing and damage to her Tucson-area home.

Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos confirmed law enforcement is aware of reports about possible ransom notes circulating in the investigation, but emphasized that the authenticity of these notes has not been verified. 

Authorities stressed that they are taking all tips and leads seriously and are coordinating with the FBI on the case.

The Nancy Guthrie kidnapping investigation

Nancy Guthrie was reported missing on February 1, after failing to show up at church in her Catalina Foothills neighborhood. 

Authorities believe she was taken from her home sometime late Saturday night or early Sunday morning. Evidence collected at the scene has raised serious concerns: signs of forced entry, a blood trail outside the home, and personal effects left behind suggest foul play rather than a voluntary disappearance.

Sheriff Nanos, while declining to disclose the number of possible suspects or further details about the investigation, has said that the absence of life-sustaining medication and Guthrie’s limited mobility make her safe return a priority.

 The FBI is assisting local authorities, and investigators are interviewing friends, neighbors, and family members as part of a broad search effort.

Guthrie’s daughter, Savannah, has taken an immediate leave from Today show duties and canceled scheduled appearances, including travel for the 2026 Winter Olympics broadcast, to focus on her family’s search. 

Despite the viral nature of the ransom demand, law enforcement sources have been cautious: no official confirmation has been made that the ransom note came from the actual kidnappers. 

Some investigators and analysts have noted that opportunistic hoaxes can occur in high-profile cases, and that media outlets receiving such notes should treat them skeptically until corroborated by police.

This post Alleged Bitcoin Ransom Deepens Mystery in Nancy Guthrie Disappearance first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Strategy ($MSTR) Shares Sink Over 20% in 5 Days as Bitcoin Crashes to $72,000

Shares of Strategy ($MSTR) plunged again today as Bitcoin’s sell‑off deepened, reinforcing the tight correlation between the world’s largest corporate Bitcoin holder and the digital asset’s price action.

Bitcoin cratered toward $72,000, extending losses to levels not seen since late 2024, while MSTR shares tumbled roughly 9% on the session, dipping to intraday lows near $121.19.

At current levels the stock is down roughly 15% year‑to‑date and a staggering 72% from its November 2024 peak.

The drop in Bitcoin — now hovering near $72,000, far below the multi‑year highs seen in 2025 — has rippled across the broader crypto complex. 

With sentiment souring and tactical traders eyeing technical support levels near the mid‑$60,000 range, risk assets have taken on a pronounced downbeat tone. 

Commentary from market strategists has ranged from cautionary to outright bearish, with calls for deeper retracements if demand fails to stabilize.

Analyst slashes $MSTR price target by 60%

In a notable update this week, Canaccord Genuity analyst Joseph Vafi, long viewed as one of MSTR’s most vocal supporters, dramatically slashed his price target from $474 to $185 — a 61% reduction — while maintaining a Buy rating on the stock. 

According to Vafi’s revised outlook, the new target still implies “significant upside” from current levels if volatility subsides and Bitcoin finds a tradable bottom.

Vafi’s retained bullish stance — despite the sharp target cut — highlights a nuanced view among some Wall Street strategists: even amid brutal downside, the stock’s deep discount to theoretical Bitcoin net‑asset value could eventually reprice upward.

Strategy continues bitcoin purchasing 

Earlier this week, Strategy said it purchased 855 bitcoin for about $75.3 million, paying an average price of $87,974 per BTC, according to a Monday filing. 

The acquisition came just days before bitcoin fell below $75,000 over the weekend on some rapid selling, briefly pushing Strategy’s treasury close to $1 billion in unrealized losses. Now, the price of bitcoin is below those levels at $72,000.

The company now holds 713,502 BTC, acquired for roughly $54.26 billion at an average cost of $76,052 per coin. 

Last week’s purchase was fully funded through the sale of common stock, following Strategy’s ongoing capital-raising approach to finance bitcoin buys. The purchase of 855 bitcoin was significantly smaller compared to prior company purchases.

All eyes remain on MSTR’s upcoming fourth‑quarter 2025 earnings release, scheduled for later this week, a report that could provide more color on its capital‑raising cadence, BTC purchase strategy, and the evolving balance between leverage and asset coverage. 

At the time of writing, bitcoin’s price dropped to lows near $72,000 today, its lowest level in over a year. The bitcoin price has now retraced more than 40% from its all‑time highs reached in late 2025. 

This post Strategy ($MSTR) Shares Sink Over 20% in 5 Days as Bitcoin Crashes to $72,000 first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bhutan Continues Consistent BTC Selling as Bitcoin Price Tanks to $72,000

Bhutan has transferred $22.4 million worth of Bitcoin from its wallets over the past week, continuing a pattern of periodic BTC sales observed over the past several years. 

According to blockchain analytics firm Arkham, one of the transfers, executed five days ago, was sent directly to addresses labeled as belonging to market maker QCP Capital.

Data from Arkham indicates that Bhutan is selling Bitcoin in increments of roughly $50 million, with a particularly heavy selling period recorded in mid-to-late September 2025. Bhutan has been mining Bitcoin since 2019, producing over $765 million in BTC profits while incurring estimated energy costs of around $120 million.

Bhutan mined the majority of its Bitcoin before the 2024 halving, tapering production afterward as mining costs roughly doubled. The country’s peak mining year was 2023, when it produced around 8,200 BTC, bringing total holdings at the time to over 13,000 BTC. 

Annual production estimates include approximately 2,500 BTC in 2021, 1,800 BTC in 2022, 8,200 BTC in 2023, and 3,000 BTC in 2024, Arkham said. 

Bitcoin is cratering to one-year lows

All this is happening as Bitcoin has fallen roughly 40% from its October peak, reigniting concerns about a repeat of its historical four-year cycle downturns.

K33 Research Head Vetle Lunde acknowledged unsettling similarities to past deep sell-offs, such as those in 2018 and 2022 in a recent investor note, but stresses that the current market environment differs structurally. 

Increased institutional adoption, inflows into regulated products, and an easing rate backdrop provide stronger tailwinds than in prior cycles, while the market has not experienced the forced deleveraging events that exacerbated the 2022 credit unwind.

Lunde noted that cycle psychology can be self-reinforcing, with long-term holders trimming positions and hesitant new capital contributing to selling pressure, creating patterns reminiscent of past downturns. 

Yet, certain indicators hint at a potential market bottom: February 2 saw high spot trading volume above $8 billion, and derivatives markets experienced extreme negative open interest and funding rates, conditions that historically precede reversals.

Despite these signals, Lunde said that evidence remains inconclusive, as similar extremes have occurred during false starts. Critical support is identified around $74,000, with further downside possible toward $69,000 or the 200-week moving average near $58,000 if broken.

At the time of writing, bitcoin is trading near $72,000. 

This post Bhutan Continues Consistent BTC Selling as Bitcoin Price Tanks to $72,000 first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Rutherford Chang Retrospective: Hundreds and Thousands at UCCA Beijing

When people describe Rutherford Chang’s work, you hear words like: obsessive, conceptual, minimalist. These descriptions aren’t wrong, they point to something real in his practice. But they also miss what makes his approach distinctive. Chang worked with objects that industrial culture designed to be identical: records pressed in millions of copies, portraits drawn according to strict house style, coins minted for perfect interchange. His interest lay in the precise moment when the promise of sameness begins to fail, when time and human handling leave marks that transform supposedly identical objects into singular things.

The retrospective Rutherford Chang: Hundreds and Thousands opened January 17, 2026 at UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, one of China’s leading institutions for contemporary art. This exhibition is significant for several reasons. It represents Chang’s first institutional retrospective and his most comprehensive solo presentation to date. It is also a posthumous one. Chang died in 2025 at the age of 45, leaving behind a body of work built almost entirely around the practice of collecting and arranging mass-produced objects until their individual histories became visible and legible.

Beijing provides a fitting location for this retrospective, though not for the obvious reasons alone. Yes, Chang moved frequently between New York and China throughout his career, and yes, he showed work in Beijing early on. But the city itself offers something more specific: a context shaped by rapid cycles of construction and replacement, by the constant acceleration of change and circulation. In such an environment, Chang’s patient attention to what gets left behind, to the residues and traces that accumulate on objects even as they move through systems designed to keep them uniform, takes on particular resonance. The exhibition is co-curated by Philip Tinari, director of UCCA, and Aki Sasamoto, a fellow artist – both longtime friends of Chang who understand his working methods from the inside. Their collaboration keeps the exhibition close to the work as practice, with process and method in the foreground.

To understand Chang’s approach, we need to look carefully at the exhibition’s title. Hundreds and Thousands sounds like simple measurement, like a gesture toward quantification. Chang typically worked at scale. He collected not dozens but hundreds or thousands of examples. But what the title really describes is a method and a particular way of working that emerges when you engage with mass-produced objects at sufficient volume. Chang discovered that quantity, at a certain point, stops behaving in predictable ways. At a certain scale, repetition starts to reveal detail. Put hundreds of nearly identical objects next to each other and you start to see time. You start to see touch. You see accidents. You see storage. You see neglect. You also see care. The marks of individual handling become visible. What you’re looking at, ultimately, is a record of lived life pressed into objects that industrial culture designed to keep stable and interchangeable.

We Buy White Albums

One of Chang’s best-known projects demonstrates this method with particular clarity. We Buy White Albums operates from a constraint simple enough to state in a single sentence, though its implications unfold over years: Chang established a record store that stocked only first pressings of the Beatles’ The Beatles (1968), commonly known as “The White Album”. The store had one rule that inverted normal commercial logic: It sold nothing, it only bought.

This premise is deliberately narrow, and it remains narrow throughout the project’s duration, which turns out to be part of what allows it to scale so effectively over time. During exhibitions where Chang was present, the work functioned in real time: people could show up with their own copy of the White Album and sell it to the archive while the exhibition was on view. The act of buying became a moment of direct exchange between the work and its audience, and the archive grew through these individual transactions instead of curatorial selection or market acquisition. Each copy arrived already marked by years of handling. These marks, the accumulated evidence of circulation, carried the work forward.

To understand why this project works as it does, we need to look more carefully at the White Album itself as an object. Richard Hamilton designed the cover as an almost completely blank white surface. Minimalism at its most reductive form. And yet early pressings carry a stamped serial number, a small detail that complicates the apparent simplicity. This serial number performs a curious double function: it frames each copy as one among many (your copy is number 0234561 out of millions), while simultaneously gesturing toward something like limited edition status through the very act of numbering. Here we find the contradiction built directly into the object itself: mass-produced minimalism making a paradoxical claim to uniqueness. The serial number tells you this is just one copy out of millions, while the blank white cover invites you to make it yours.

Chang understood what this contradiction sets in motion once these objects enter circulation and begin moving through time. The clean white surface that Hamilton designed with such care doesn’t stay clean for long. Everyday life rewrites it. Water damage spreads across the cardboard in irregular patterns. Corners get torn or bent through careless handling or too-tight shelving. Owners write their names on the cover, add notes about when and where they bought the album, sometimes include dedications or detailed lists of favorite tracks. Price stickers from second-hand shops accumulate in layers, creating unintended collages of commercial history. In some cases, mold sets in during storage in damp basements or attics, creating organic patterns that can look almost intentional, or lets say, almost artistic. Through all of this, the album stops being a uniform industrial product and becomes something singular, that’s marked by its particular history.

The decision to collect these albums in any condition and not searching only for pristine, museum-quality copies, represents a choice with significant consequences for how the work means. It means treating damage and wear as information and not as degradation to be corrected or restored. This shift in how we value objects is crucial to understanding the project. A pristine copy might tell you something about careful preservation, about someone who valued the object enough to keep it protected from the world. But a tattered copy, covered in stains and marks, tells a different and probably richer story. In Chang’s hands, these marks remain visible and begin to matter in new ways. He returns again and again, across different projects, to this precise point where objects designed for perfect interchange start to fray at the edges, where they begin to carry their own record of circulation that makes them individually readable.

The work doesn’t stop with physical collection, however. Chang took the project a step further by recording multiple copies of the album and layering them into a single audio piece. One hundred versions of the White Album play simultaneously, drifting gradually out of sync as small differences in quality and accumulated wear compound into a shifting chorus of sound. The result doesn’t register as a remix or a mashup in any conventional sense. It feels closer to the archive itself made audible, a way of hearing how uniformity fails when you stack enough iterations on top of each other. What comes to the surface is not purity or fidelity to an original, but time itself, materialized in the form of friction and noise. The piece functions as what we might call material memory, with surprisingly little interest in fan culture, or the mythology that typically surrounds The Beatles.

The Class of 2008

Chang applied this same basic methodological approach to a very different kind of mass-produced object: printed news media. The Class of 2008 presents itself as a straightforward catalogue. It’s an alphabetical listing of every hedcut portrait published in The Wall Street Journal during the year 2008. Before we can understand what Chang does with this material, though, we need to understand what hedcuts are and why they matter. Hedcuts are the distinctive stippled, engraving-style portraits that the Journal uses for certain figures in its reporting. The technique is borrowed deliberately from nineteenth-century engraving, and it carries with it specific associations: authority, permanence, trustworthiness, the visual register of something meant to hold up under scrutiny and stand the test of time.

The structure of the catalogue is deceptively simple: alphabetical order, with repetition kept visible in the record. If someone appeared multiple times in 2008, this is clearly indicated in the book, and those appearances are explicitly not reduced to a single representative entry. This decision about how to organize the material matters, because it allows patterns of repetition and recurrence to emerge through the reader’s encounter with the work. And the timing of the project sharpens its implications considerably. 2008 was, of course as we all know, the year when financial authority came under extraordinary strain, when economic structures that had seemed most stable revealed themselves to be fragile or even illusory. And yet throughout this period, the visual language of legitimacy in the Journal continued without interruption, day after day rendering certain faces in this particular register of authority and trust.

Chang’s catalogue simply records this continuity without adding editorial commentary or explicit critique. The alphabetical organization flattens any narrative arc that the year’s events might suggest. There’s no chronological story being told about crisis and response, no hierarchy of importance imposed through the order of presentation. Instead, repetition itself does the interpretive work. As you page through the book, you notice who appears once and who appears again and again and again. You start to see patterns in who gets rendered in this authoritative visual register and who remains outside it. The hedcut becomes not just a neutral technique of illustration but a question about legitimacy and representation: who gets marked as worth this particular kind of attention, who gets enrolled in this visual vocabulary of permanence and authority, and who remains invisible to this institutional gaze?

Game Boy Tetris

If Chang’s collecting projects make time visible through the gradual accumulation of marks on physical objects, Game Boy Tetris approaches the question of time and repetition through a different medium: labor itself, as the repetitive effort of trying and failing and trying again. The work documents Chang’s repeated attempts to achieve the highest possible score in the original Game Boy version of Tetris, filming the process over an extended period until the accumulation of attempts becomes the substance and meaning of the work. At one point during this extended engagement, he surpassed Steve Wozniak’s score on the leaderboard. A detail he noted with evident satisfaction –– a reminder of how seriously he took questions of record-keeping and documented proof of achievement.

The same simple rule-based system holds your attention through long stretches of concentration punctuated by failure and the decision to restart. The desire for completion, for reaching some definitive endpoint, keeps pulling you back into the loop even as the reasons for continuing become harder to articulate. Progress remains measurable throughout — you can track improvement across attempts, watch skills developing and patterns emerging — even as the larger meaning or purpose of this progress starts to slip away, even as the question of why this particular score matters becomes increasingly difficult to answer with any conviction.

Chang wasn’t observing obsessive cultures or completionist practices from a safe critical distance, making work about collecting or repetition without genuinely participating in those structures himself. Instead, he built systems and constraints that could absorb years of his own attention and effort while still continuing to demand more. Over time, through this sustained and genuine engagement with repetitive structures, Chang himself starts to resemble the thing he’s ostensibly studying. He becomes, in a real sense, a kind of repetitive system himself as lived practice.

CENTS

Chang’s final major project takes his long-standing interest in units, standards, and systems of record-keeping and extends it into what has become an ongoing and in some ways autonomous condition. He completed the physical collection and documentation of ten thousand copper cents in 2023, at a moment when the one-cent coin was still in regular circulation throughout the United States. In 2024 the digital records of these ten thousand individual coins were inscribed onto Bitcoin, allowing the work to continue circulating and accumulating meaning beyond Chang’s direct control or intervention. Then, in a development that gives the entire project an another historical dimension, the U.S. Mint stopped producing the circulating one-cent coin on November 12, 2025. What this means is that in hindsight, with the perspective that historical distance provides, the penny itself has begun to read as a historical object, something that belongs to a particular moment of currency and exchange that is now passing into the past.

The project starts, like most of Chang’s work, from a condition that many people vaguely know about but rarely think through with any care or precision. Chang limited his collection specifically to cents minted before 1982, the year when the U.S. Mint changed the composition of the penny to reduce costs. Before 1982, pennies were made primarily of copper; after that date, they became copper-plated zinc. This seemingly minor detail has real consequences: pennies from the earlier period can, under certain market conditions, exceed their face value when considered purely as raw material. The copper content might be worth more than one cent. This creates an odd situation where the State continues to define each coin as being worth exactly one cent (and makes melting them for their metal content illegal), while the material reality of the object suggests a different value entirely. Chang doesn’t treat this as a paradox to resolve or a problem to solve. He treats it as a given, as one of the structural conditions that makes the work possible and interesting.

The process he developed is methodical and systematic. He removed ten thousand copper cents from circulation, pulling them out of the flow of exchange and use, and documented each one individually through detailed photography (obverse and reverse, better known as heads and tails). The coins were then smelted together into a single copper block weighing sixty-eight pounds. At this moment, individual units disappear entirely into undifferentiated mass. The penny’s ordinary role in exchange, its function as a discrete unit of value that can circulate and combine with other units, comes to a definitive end. But the block itself continues to exist in multiple forms. It was rendered as a detailed 3D digital model and inscribed as a single massive inscription filling the entirety of Bitcoin block #839969. This digital version was then sold at Christie’s in 2024, entering yet another system of value and circulation, moving from material object to digital record to collectible artwork in the contemporary art market.

The documentation, meanwhile, moves in the opposite direction from this consolidation. While the physical coins condense into a single unified object and lose their existence as separable, countable units, each individual cent remains readable as a distinct record. The photographic images stay separate and individuated, each one assigned to a fixed and permanent position in the set through inscription onto individual satoshis. What disappears completely at the level of material form — you can no longer hold these particular ten thousand pennies in your hand, can no longer sort through them or arrange them or put them back into circulation — remains perfectly intact at the level of the record. You can still look at the photograph of each specific coin, still examine the particular wear patterns and surface marks and small imperfections that distinguished it from the nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine others.

This structure allows CENTS to hold in tension several different and potentially conflicting ideas about where value is located and how it gets established and maintained. There’s value as defined by governmental authority: the State declares that this coin is worth one cent, and that declaration carries legal force. There’s value registered in material composition: the copper content might actually be worth more than one cent when calculated according to commodity prices. And there’s value produced through preservation and documentation: the decision to photograph each coin individually, to maintain the archive’s legibility over time, to treat these mass-produced objects as worthy of sustained attention. These different registers of value remain distinct within the work, not collapsing into a single unified meaning or resolving into some synthesis.

When we place CENTS alongside We Buy White Albums and think about them as part of a consistent practice, the underlying logic becomes clear. Objects that were designed and manufactured for perfect interchange, for being functionally identical and mutually substitutable, become readable as singular and individual once their circulation is interrupted and held still, once their particular histories are made visible through careful documentation and systematic archiving.

It’s worth noting here — because it matters for understanding how the work continues to function after Chang’s death — that CENTS was initiated through collaboration with Sovrn Art, an independent, artist-first platform that provided the initial framework and support for the project’s development. After the full inscription of the work onto Bitcoin was completed, a council formed independently of Chang himself, without his organization or oversight. This council is made up of collectors who chose, for their own reasons, to take responsibility for the work’s continuation and interpretation. The council members come from different generations and different professional fields, bringing various forms of expertise and perspective to their engagement with the archive. Their work has focused consistently on keeping the distinctions within the archive visible and legible — through close reading of the documentation, through careful cataloguing of variations and patterns, through writing that approaches the material from multiple angles and asks different kinds of questions. Their involvement has centered particularly on the problem of how to keep this archive readable and meaningful over time, how to maintain the precision and care of the record as it continues to circulate through systems and contexts that Chang himself could not have anticipated.

Archive as Practice

It is easy to call Rutherford obsessive. The sustained attention over years, the commitment to completeness and thoroughness, the willingness to spend enormous amounts of time and effort on projects built around deliberately narrow constraints. The word isn’t inaccurate. And yet it still manages to miss something important about the dimension of what Chang was actually doing with his time and attention. He treated mass culture and industrial production with a kind of patience that’s rare in contemporary art. He made rarity and singularity visible inside precisely those things we’ve learned to overlook or dismiss as generic and interchangeable. He listened carefully to what we might call the noise inside familiar symbols and objects — the small variations and accumulated marks that circulation and handling inscribe on surfaces that were designed specifically to resist such marking and remain stable over time.

This attention to what accumulates in the gaps and margins of systems designed for uniformity helps explain why Hundreds and Thousands works so effectively as a title for this retrospective. On one level, it simply names the scale at which Chang characteristically worked: collecting not dozens but hundreds, not hundreds but thousands of examples. But it also names something more fundamental. A discipline, a particular kind of methodical practice that requires looking long enough and carefully enough that difference begins to appear within what first presents itself as sameness. The practice keeps returning, with remarkable consistency across different projects and materials, to what circulation leaves behind: the marks and traces that accumulate even on objects designed to remain stable and unchanged.

Chang’s work can be read, in many ways, as a sustained practice of custody and care. He kept objects, pulled them out of circulation or gathered them from its margins. He indexed and organized them into systems that made their individual histories newly visible and legible. And then, crucially, he returned them to circulation in altered form: as archives open to examination, as exhibitions that invited direct encounter, as permanent records inscribed on Bitcoin. Through this process, he built situations and structures in which circulation itself becomes visible as a process. In which value turns concrete and measurable. The archive is consistently where this transformation takes place in his work — the site and the method through which individual objects become readable as parts of larger systems and patterns.

The retrospective gathers Chang’s method into a single frame and brings together projects from different moments in his career to demonstrate the underlying consistency of his approach across various materials and contexts. What remains is the structure he built, the archives he assembled with such care, the questions he persistently refused to resolve or close down prematurely. The promise of sameness keeps failing. Difference keeps appearing in the gaps and variations. The marks stay visible for anyone willing to look closely enough, and patiently enough, to actually see them.

This is a guest post by Steven Reiss. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

This post Rutherford Chang Retrospective: Hundreds and Thousands at UCCA Beijing first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Steven Reiss.

Bitcoin Magazine

U.S. Treasury: U.S. Government Cannot Deploy Taxpayer Funds to ‘Bail Out’ Bitcoin

As Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent testified before the House Financial Services Committee Wednesday morning, Rep. Brad Sherman pressed Bessent over whether the U.S. government could ever step in to “bail out” bitcoin. 

Bessent was presenting over the Financial Stability Oversight Council’s annual report on emerging economic risks and much of the comments and questions from the Council reference the Trump administration growing scrutiny over its economic agenda. 

During a tense exchange, Sherman referenced the 2008 financial crisis and argued that bailouts have historically protected powerful institutions when markets collapse. 

He asked whether Treasury or federal financial regulators could take similar action for bitcoin, including directing banks to buy BTC or changing banking rules to encourage crypto holdings.

Bessent rejected the premise outright. “I am Secretary of the Treasury. I do not have the authority to do that,” he said, adding that neither the Treasury nor his role as chair of the Economic Stability Oversight Council provides power to order banks to invest in BTC or to allocate public funds into crypto assets.

Sherman attempted to clarify whether taxpayer money under Treasury management could ever be deployed into BTC, but Bessent emphasized that the government’s current BTC exposure comes only through law enforcement seizures, not investment decisions.

“We are retaining seized bitcoin,” Bessent said. “That is an asset of the U.S.,” he later said. 

Bessent then elaborated on that point, noting that retained bitcoin from past seizures has appreciated significantly over time. 

He cited an example in which roughly $500 million in retained BTC later grew into more than $15 billion in value, underscoring bitcoin’s potential upside even as policymakers remain skeptical of direct government involvement.

The exchange ended when the chair cut Sherman off after his allotted time expired.

Bessent: U.S. will stop selling bitcoin

Earlier this year, Bessent said the U.S. government’s stance is to stop selling seized BTC and instead add it to the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. 

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he framed the move as part of a broader push to bring digital-asset innovation back to the U.S. 

The comments came amid questions over BTC seizures tied to cases involving Tornado Cash and Samourai Wallet developers. 

While declining to discuss active litigation, Bessent stressed that seized BTC will be retained by the federal government once legal damages are resolved.

Any selling of BTC would contradict Executive Order 14233, which requires forfeited bitcoin to be held in the U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve rather than liquidated.

This post U.S. Treasury: U.S. Government Cannot Deploy Taxpayer Funds to ‘Bail Out’ Bitcoin first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Julio Moreno, head of research at CryptoQuant, recently declared that Bitcoin is in a bear market that could extend through the third quarter of 2026.

He's not alone. Matt Hougan at Bitwise and a growing chorus of institutional voices are using the “bear” label more freely than at any point since early 2023.

Yet the same analysts often hedge with structure: many institutions are holding or adding exposure even as they acknowledge the regime shift.

This creates a definitional problem. If a bear market no longer means capitulation and exodus, what does it mean?

And if the famous four-year cycle is dead, as VanEck, K33 Research, and 21Shares have each argued in recent reports, how long does a bear market last when the old calendar no longer applies?

Related Reading

Bitcoin institutions finally admit this is a bear market – so why do 70% say the price is still undervalued?

Coinbase’s newest survey shows the new institutional contradiction: bearish talk, long Bitcoin books.

Feb 1, 2026 · Andjela Radmilac

What configures a bear market

The traditional finance definition for a bear market offers a starting point.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission defines a bear market as a broad index falling 20% or more over at least two months. Bitcoin cleared that threshold months ago.

From its early October 2025 peak above $126,000, BTC has declined by roughly 41% to approximately $74,000 as of Feb. 3. By the headline standard, the case is closed.

However, Coinbase Institutional research explicitly calls the 20% threshold “somewhat arbitrary” and less applicable to crypto, where 20% swings can happen without a true regime change.

In practice, analysts rely on a three-part dashboard: price trend, positioning and derivatives, and demand and liquidity.

Price trend is the most visible. CryptoQuant leans heavily on the 365-day moving average as a boundary marker.

Bitcoin currently trades below that level, which sits around $101,448. CryptoQuant's Bull Score Index, a composite measure of on-chain health, registered 20 out of 100, described as extreme bear territory.

Coinbase has used the 200-day moving average in past cycle analyses to qualify bear regimes, and Bitcoin remains below that threshold as well.

Positioning and derivatives offer a second signal. Glassnode's recent Week On-Chain reports document rotation toward downside protection, bearish skew in options markets, and conditions that increase downside sensitivity, including dealer gamma below zero.

When traders pay premiums to hedge against further declines rather than to capture upside, the market is behaving defensively.

Demand and liquidity provide the structural context. CoinShares estimates that large holders have sold approximately $29 billion in Bitcoin since October. Digital asset exchange-traded products saw approximately $440 million in year-to-date outflows.

Related Reading

Shortest bear market ever? Key metrics imply Bitcoin price could surge past $125,000 before April

Coinbase analysis highlights robust ETF activity and leveraged market reset as drivers for a promising Q1 crypto resurgence.

Jan 9, 2026 · Oluwapelumi Adejumo

CryptoQuant and MarketWatch characterize the current regime as weak demand combined with contracting stablecoin liquidity, classic ingredients of a bear market.

The latest Coinbase Institutional and Glassnode global investor survey, conducted from Dec. 10, 2025, to Jan. 12, 2026, found that 26% of institutions now describe the market as being in the bear phase. The results are up from just 2% in the prior survey.

Yet the same survey revealed that 62% of institutions held or increased net long exposure since October, and 70% view Bitcoin as undervalued.

This disconnect is the defining feature of the 2026 bear market. It's not about capitulation—it's about regime recognition while maintaining structural exposure.

The label “bear market” is becoming less about who is fleeing and more about who is still buying, even as sentiment remains terrible.

When does this bear market end?

Defining the end of a bear market requires clarity about what “end” means.

The most rigorous approach treats it as a regime shift rather than a feeling. Analysts identify three practical triggers: trend reclamation, demand inflection, and risk appetite normalization.

Trend reclaim occurs when Bitcoin regains and holds above long-term moving averages, such as the 200-day or 365-day, for multiple weeks.

Demand inflection means exchange-traded fund and exchange-traded product flows shift from subdued or negative to sustained inflows, and large-holder distribution slows.

Risk appetite normalization means options skew returns to balanced levels, with less demand for downside protection and leverage building sustainably.

The forward-looking scenarios cluster into three time horizons, each supported by specific analyst commentary.

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The first scenario is a classic crypto winter that extends through mid or late 2026.

Julio Moreno has identified $70,000 over three to six months and $56,000 in the second half of 2026 as a deeper potential path. This scenario assumes demand stays weak, flows remain negative, and Bitcoin fails repeated attempts to reclaim its moving averages. Bear-market rallies happen but fail to hold.

The second scenario is a shorter, shallower bear market lasting three to six months, characterized by choppy, range-bound price action, followed by improving conditions in the second half of 2026.

CoinShares explicitly expects a choppy three-to-six-month period, with medium-term constructive conditions as whale selling exhausts by mid-2026.

In this framing, the bear market is more about time than depth: a regime in which upside is capped until demand reverses, but the floor holds.

The third scenario treats the bear market as a liquidity-wave event rather than a calendar-based cycle.

The bear ends when demand and liquidity re-accelerate, regardless of what the halving clock says. This maps directly onto CryptoQuant's demand-led framing and avoids determinism stemming from halving. It acknowledges that the old playbook may no longer apply.

Is this bear market smaller than past cycles?

The current drawdown of roughly 40% is already small compared to the stereotypical over 70% crypto winters of prior cycles.

However, multiple analysts' downside scenarios cluster around $55,000 to $60,000, implying a total drawdown closer to the mid-50% range if realized.

That would still be smaller than historic extremes but meaningful enough to qualify as a bear market by any standard.

The market is also increasingly bifurcated. Bitcoin holds structural leadership, whereas much of the rest of the crypto market performs far worse.

The Coinbase and Glassnode report emphasize this via dominance metrics and defensive positioning behavior. The 2026 market is K-shaped, and the “bear market” may affect asset classes unevenly.

The four-year cycle is over, but what replaces it?

VanEck argued in 2025 that the four-year cycle had broken and that the old playbook was less reliable.

K33 Research published a report titled “4-year cycle is dead, long live the king,” which lays out why the regime changed.

21Shares describes the cycle as evolving, potentially extending to five years, as liquidity waves lengthen and institutional participation deepens.

What replaces the four-year clock is a liquidity-and-flows clock. This includes real yields, global liquidity impulses, flows of exchange-traded funds and exchange-traded products, stablecoin liquidity, and hedging demand.

CoinShares explicitly frames Bitcoin's recent dislocation in terms of relationships with precious metals and macro liquidity. Coinbase and Glassnode emphasize a defensive derivatives posture as a real-time regime indicator.

The implication for bear market duration is that bear markets may become more frequent but less severe. Instead of existential winters, the market may experience more frequent regime drawdowns if institutional flows provide a floor.

Rallies can still fail until demand and liquidity turn, but the underlying structure may prevent the kind of multi-year capitulation that has defined past cycles.

This creates a paradox. The bear market may last longer in calendar time but inflict less damage in percentage terms. Or it may end sooner if demand inflects before the old cycle logic would predict.

Either way, the clock that governed Bitcoin for a decade no longer governs it.

The checklist matters more than the calendar

In 2026, calling a bear market isn't one metric, but a checklist.

Trend breaks, hedging demand, and a demand-liquidity rollover all point in the same direction. Bitcoin is in a bear regime by most frameworks that matter.

When it ends depends less on the halving calendar and more on the timing of the demand cycle. CoinShares expects three to six months of chop. CryptoQuant sees potential for deeper lows in the second half of the year.

Both could be right at different moments if the regime oscillates rather than resolves cleanly.

The four-year cycle is dead, but the question of when this bear ends is not unanswerable. It ends when Bitcoin reclaims its long-term moving averages, when institutional flows turn positive, and when options markets stop pricing for protection.

Until then, the market is in a regime where upside is capped, and patience is required. Even if institutions keep buying while calling it a bear.

The post Bitcoin bear market ends when 3 signals flip, and one is already starting to twitch appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The White House's end-of-February deadline for banks and crypto firms to resolve the “stablecoin yield” debate exposes a structural fault line that was never going to stay buried.

This isn't a speed bump on the road to crypto-friendly regulation. Instead, it's a core collision that happens when digital dollars scale large enough to threaten the business model of deposit-taking itself.

According to multiple reports, the White House convened banks and crypto representatives with an explicit mandate: find common ground on whether platforms can offer rewards on stablecoin holdings, or risk broader market structure legislation collapsing in 2026.

Reuters confirmed the summit's focus on “interest and other rewards,” framing it as an attempt to unstick a bill already delayed by this exact clash.

The stakes are binary.

If Coinbase, banks, and other stakeholders reach consensus this month, the CLARITY Act advances. However, almost certainly in a form that neither side currently recognizes.

If they don't, the broader digital asset market structure package dies for the year, and crypto's regulatory momentum fractures into agency-by-agency enforcement rather than comprehensive legislation.

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What's actually being fought over

The technical dispute centers on whether exchanges, wallets, or other intermediaries can pass Treasury yields to users as “rewards” on stablecoin holdings.

Stablecoin issuers earn yield on reserves, such as primarily short-dated Treasuries and overnight instruments. Yet, under the framework Congress designed, issuers themselves cannot pay interest directly to holders.

That prohibition was intentional: lawmakers wanted to distinguish payment stablecoins from deposit accounts.

Banks argue that allowing exchanges or affiliates to offer yield-like rewards circumvents that intent.

The American Bankers Association and Bank Policy Institute have urged senators to “close the loophole,” arguing that any third party paying rewards tied to stablecoin balances effectively converts a payment instrument into a savings product.

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Coinbase and crypto trade groups counter that Congress deliberately preserved the ability for third parties to offer lawful rewards.

The Blockchain Association's letters argue that GENIUS, the stablecoin framework, prohibited issuer interest but left room for platforms to design incentive structures tied to usage, transactions, or other engagement.

This isn't semantic hairsplitting. It's a distributional fight over who gets to route Treasury yields to consumers digitally, and whether doing so outside the banking system constitutes unfair competition or legitimate product innovation.

Why the fight matters now

Stablecoins crossed a threshold where hypothetical risk became quantifiable exposure.

Total stablecoin market capitalization sits around $305 billion as of early February 2026. That's large enough for banks to model deposit flight scenarios and large enough for regulators to worry about financial stability.

Standard Chartered estimated roughly $500 billion in US bank deposit outflows by the end of 2028, tied to stablecoin adoption, explicitly noting that the trajectory depends on whether third parties can offer interest.

The Bank Policy Institute cited a Treasury-attributed estimate of up to $6.6 trillion in deposit outflows under certain assumptions. This is a high-end stress scenario designed for persuasion but reflective of the scale banks now see as plausible.

The global context tightens the clock.

Hong Kong's regulator expects to issue its first stablecoin issuer licenses in March 2026.

The Bank for International Settlements documented three broad global approaches to stablecoin-related yields: complete bans, retail bans with institutional carve-outs, and no explicit prohibition.

The UK is designing a regime in which systemic payment stablecoin issuers hold a portion of their backing assets unremunerated with the central bank, specifically to prevent stablecoins from becoming savings products.

A deal happens, CLARITY advances

If consensus emerges by the end of February, the bill that moves forward will not resemble the clean House-passed version.

A crucial technical detail clarifies what “different format” likely means: the House Digital Asset Market Clarity Act's Section 404 addresses exchange registration with the CFTC, not stablecoin rewards.

The controversial “yield Section 404” language exists in Senate Banking drafts, not the House chassis.

So “different format” almost certainly means a Senate Banking overlay that bolts a stablecoin inducements title onto the House market-structure framework.

Three drafting pathways map to what stakeholders are already signaling.

The most likely compromise is an “activity-based rewards” safe harbor. Senate-side language being discussed publicly centers on banning yield paid solely for holding a payment stablecoin while allowing rewards tied to activity: payments, transactions, loyalty programs, and settlement.

The bill would define “solely for holding” tightly, prohibiting time-based APY marketing while permitting behavioral incentives.

If this version passes, stablecoin rewards become a regulated marketing and product-structure engineering exercise. Expectations are that platforms will shift from “park USDC, earn 4%” to “transact or route payments, earn rebates.”

A second pathway involves a “reserve-at-community-banks” quid pro quo. Reports suggest compromise discussions include requiring stablecoin reserves to be held with community banks.

This is political and industrial policy: turn stablecoins into a new distribution channel for bank balance sheets rather than a substitute for them.

A third option splits retail and institutional treatment. A bill could prohibit retail “yield-like” rewards while allowing institutions to receive fee rebates or settlement incentives, subject to disclosure and capital rules.

This tilts stablecoin growth away from consumer savings substitution and toward B2B settlement, collateral, and treasury operations, which is precisely where banks also want to compete.

Standard Chartered's $500 billion deposit outflow scenario assumes meaningful rewards remain available.

If the deal sharply constrains retail rewards, adoption tilts away from “savings substitute” and toward “payments rail,” lowering outflow risk relative to the high-end bank memos.

No deal, CLARITY dead for 2026

If no consensus emerges by the deadline, two things happen simultaneously.

The first is that legislative momentum stalls. Reuters framed the White House summit as an attempt to unstick a bill already delayed by the bank-crypto clash. Commentary points to the midterm timing and the lack of bipartisan runway as structural risks to passage if this drags on.

Even if everyone stays “pro crypto,” the calendar can kill the package. However, regulatory momentum fragments instead of vanishing.

Even if CLARITY slips, stablecoin rules still move via existing law and implementation. GENIUS implementation questions are part of why “loophole” fights matter. The US ends up with a stablecoin regime but no unified market-structure perimeter.

That means enforcement and agency interpretation fill the gap.

“No CLARITY” doesn't mean “no regulation.” It means more path dependence: case-by-case constraints, uneven state and federal overlays, and product design shaped by enforcement risk rather than statutory clarity.

Stablecoins move faster than the broader token market because they touch banks, deposits, and payments, areas where regulators already have tools.

Tribalism survives even if CLARITY passes

The stablecoin yield fight exposed that “crypto” is not a single lobby but competing profit centers with different optimal rules.

The coalition is business models versus business models, and not “crypto versus banks.” The fault lines now run through the industry itself.

Brogan Law reported that Tether's US operation told Senate Banking members it supports the draft approach restricting yield and distanced itself from Coinbase's decision to take the fight public.

The logic is clear: Coinbase and USDC distribution economics make rewards central to growth, while Tether's dominant offshore footprint makes it less dependent on US retail reward mechanics.

The split matters because it sets expectations for future legislative fights.

Once “stablecoin yield” becomes the gating factor for market structure, it becomes a reusable veto point. Next time Congress tries to legislate DeFi, custody, or taxation, expect firms to defect early if the draft threatens their profit-and-loss statements.

This has permanent effects even if a deal is struck.

Banks now have a template: pair financial stability memos with community-bank “local lending” narratives and force a hard yes-or-no on economic incentives.

Additionally, global competitive framing hardens, as other jurisdictions actively license and structure regimes. Meanwhile, the US indecision becomes part of the story firms tell boards about where to base product lines.

The question that remains open

The stablecoin yield war is a structurally inevitable collision that occurs when payment instruments scale large enough to function as deposit substitutes, routing the risk-free rate to consumers.

Regulators worldwide agree on a principle: payment stablecoins should not resemble savings products. The US tried to thread that needle by banning issuer interest while leaving third-party rewards ambiguous.

That ambiguity is now the battleground. Whether it results in an activity-based compromise, a reserve-placement deal, or a retail-versus-institutional split, the outcome determines not just CLARITY's fate but also the blueprint for every future crypto bill.

The fight clarifies what “crypto-friendly regulation” actually means: not frictionless adoption, but negotiated settlements where someone's business model loses.

The deadline is February 28. What happens next determines whether the US enacts comprehensive digital asset legislation in 2026 or watches stablecoin rules advance while market structure fragments into agency enforcement and jurisdictional patchwork.

The post White House sets February deadline to settle $6.6 trillion fight between Coinbase and banks appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Hyperliquid has broken ranks with the broader digital asset market, posting a massive double-digit rally while Bitcoin and other major altcoins like XRP suffer from the bear market.

According to CryptoSlate's data, Hyperliquid's HYPE is one of the crypto market's top performers over the past two weeks, jumping roughly 71% to a high of $35, its highest price since last December.

This price performance reflects crypto traders’ positive sentiment about the protocol's potential to expand product offerings.

Notably, the price action stands in sharp contrast to the ugly tape elsewhere. Over the past weeks, a sharp risk-off wave has hit corners of the market, and the damage hasn’t been isolated to digital assets.

The same macro tremors that knocked crypto lower also jolted precious metals and other risk trades, wiping around $6 trillion over the first few weeks of 2026.

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And yet in the middle of that giant market-wide red screen, HYPE is acting like a different animal, with US investors driving its uptrend.

The simplest explanation that capital is just rotating into a strong chart misses what makes this move structurally interesting.

Essentially, HYPE is increasingly trading less like a generic altcoin and more like an exchange-linked asset whose demand can rise because markets get messy. In a risk-off regime, most tokens are punished for being “risk.”

However, venues that monetize volatility can see fundamentals improve when everyone else’s fundamentals degrade.

Hyperliquid's volatility revenue

Hyperliquid’s core product is perpetual futures. When volatility spikes, perpetual volume typically rises as traders hedge, speculate, rotate across assets, and are liquidated more frequently.

That activity throws off fees, and Hyperliquid’s design links those fees back to token demand in a direct, mechanical loop.

On DefiLlama, Hyperliquid Perps shows a 30-day perp volume of $216.286 billion and a 24-hour perp volume of $11.778 billion.

This activity is accompanied by 30-day revenue of $68.42 million and annualized revenue of $834.7 million. At the same time, open interest on the platform currently exceeds $6 billion.

These numbers matter because of the “what happens next” step. DefiLlama’s methodology notes that 99% of fees go to an Assistance Fund for buying HYPE tokens, excluding builder fees.

In other words, more trading activity can translate into more buy pressure for the token, which is built into the plumbing rather than dependent on sentiment.

That is the core reason HYPE can appear to be the “sole winner” during broad drawdowns. If fear increases turnover, the protocol’s cashflow loop can strengthen even while the rest of the market deleverages.

For context, data from ASXN show that the daily HYPE buyback rate climbed to nearly $4 million earlier this month, the highest level since last November. When expanded to the past month, the rate exceeded $55 million.

Two takeaways fall out of that set of numbers.

First, buyback intensity has accelerated recently. The 30-day figure implies an average of approximately $1.86 million per day, whereas the 7-day figure implies $2.85 million per day, consistent with a market that has become more active and more volatile.

Second, the buybacks have been executed at progressively higher average prices over shorter windows ($25.81 over 30 days versus $31.36 over the past 24 hours), which fits the broader point that HYPE demand is tightening as activity rises.

Hyperliquid is widening the volatility surface area

Hyperliquid’s significant price gains also have strong product catalysts that are easy to overlook if you only track price.

The protocol is effectively widening the “volatility surface area” it can capture by moving beyond standard crypto assets into Real World Assets (RWAs) and permissionless markets, a strategy unlocked by its recent HIP-3 upgrade.

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HIP-3 made Hyperliquid more permissionless on listings, allowing the protocol to support builder-deployed perpetual markets. These deployers must maintain 500,000 staked HYPE and are subject to slashing via a validator vote in the event of malicious operation.

That stake requirement serves as a direct token sink and imposes a “cost of entry” for builders seeking to rapidly list markets.

This infrastructure enabled the platform's rapid expansion into commodities. Milk Road, a crypto commentary platform, noted that this trend deserves way more attention than it is getting.

The firm attributed HYPE's rally to this integration of RWAs, noting that Hyperliquid has captured 2% of the world's primary silver market despite listing the metal roughly 30 days ago.

Milk Road described this volume as “INSANE,” emphasizing that silver trading volume indicates that the HYPE token can thrive rather than merely survive the market downturn.

Data from Flowscan show that cumulative open interest across HIP-3 DEXs has exceeded $28 billion.

New competitor against Polymarket?

Meanwhile, the newest narrative tailwind is HIP-4, which introduces outcome-style, event-based markets.

Hyperliquid stated that HIP-4 will introduce fully collateralized contracts that settle within fixed ranges. These are positioned as prediction-market-like instruments and limited-risk, options-style structures designed to avoid margin calls and liquidation cascades.

According to the firm:

“Outcomes bring non-linearity, dated contracts, and an alternative form of derivative trading that does not involve leverage or liquidations. The outcome primitive expands the expressivity of HyperCore, while composing with other primitives such as portfolio margin and the HyperEVM.”

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Data from Santiment indicates that the crowd appears to be hyped about Hyperliquid rolling out HIP-4. The firm noted that recent price action suggests that community expectations regarding new derivatives and prediction markets could attract additional volume.

Notably, discussions of HIP-4 have also included comparisons with existing prediction platforms.

DeFi analyst Ignas said Hyperliquid's HIP-4 is notable because if outcomes compose with perps, a trader can long ETH and buy an ‘ETH below $2,000' outcome as a hedge, causing their margin to drop because the positions offset each other.

According to him, competitors such as Polymarket and Kalshi cannot do this.

Additionally, he noted that Hyperliquid's permissionless deployment could confer advantages, as the platform allows anyone to create markets, whereas upcoming rivals such as Polymarket do not support this feature.

HYPE faces an impending headwind

Despite the bullish structural arguments, HYPE faces a significant test this week.

Data from Tokenomist indicates that the next Hyperliquid unlock is scheduled for Feb. 6 and will release 9.92 million HYPE to core contributors, which is approximately $335 million at recent prices.

This is where the “mechanical bid” narrative meets real market structure. If Hyperliquid Perps generates roughly $68.42 million in 30-day revenue, the unlock’s notional value is approximately 4.9 times the monthly run rate.

That doesn’t mean the buyback loop cannot handle it. It means the path matters. If unlocked holders sell aggressively and quickly, the market can gap down even with steady buybacks, especially if broader risk appetite remains weak.

However, if selling is staggered or volatility keeps volumes elevated, buybacks can act as a stabilizer, turning “unlock fear” into a buy-the-dip setup for traders.

But if the broader market volatility collapses as the macroeconomic backdrop calms and traders step away, the buyback yield declines, and HYPE starts trading more like a standard risk asset again.

The post Hyperliquid flips the bear market script with a 71% surge while trillions vanish from global risk trades appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Ethereum was cheaper than expected in 2020, and rollup decentralization was slower than promised in 2021. Those two realities are forced the ecosystem to rewrite what “a layer-2” is for.

Vitalik Buterin's recent post on Ethereum Research bluntly frames the shift: the original vision of layer-2 (L2) blockchains as “branded shards” of Ethereum is no longer viable, and the ecosystem requires a new path.

However, this isn't abandonment. Instead, it is a re-tiering of expectations and a sharper definition of what different types of rollups are actually building.

The question now is the new job description, since the premise underlying the rollup-centric roadmap has weakened.

Stage 2 is scarce

L2BEAT provides the clearest framework for understanding rollup decentralization through its Stages system.

Stage 0 denotes that training wheels remain in place, with meaningful trust assumptions persisting.

Stage 1 represents partial decentralization with stronger escape hatches and proof guarantees, but still meaningful upgrade or governance trust.

Stage 2 is the “no training wheels” milestone, in which critical safety properties are enforced by code rather than by discretionary actors.

The current distribution of value secured across the L2 ecosystem indicates this. According to L2BEAT's rollup scaling summary, approximately 91.5% of the listed value sits in Stage 1 rollups, 8.5% in Stage 0, and roughly 0.01% in Stage 2.

The top three rollups by value account for roughly 71% of the total, indicating that “Stage 2 progress” largely depends on the decisions of the largest few projects, rather than on what smaller experimental chains attempt.

The core blocker is whether the proof systems can be overridden and whether upgrades face strong delays and constraints.

Upgrade discretion remains common among the largest rollups, and moving beyond it has proven slower and more difficult than anticipated by the 2020-2021 optimism.

Some projects have explicitly stated that they may not wish to proceed beyond Stage 1, citing not only technical constraints related to zkEVM safety but also regulatory requirements that require absolute control.

That's a legitimate product decision for certain customer bases, but it clarifies that those chains are not “scaling Ethereum” in the sense the rollup-centric roadmap originally meant.

Why the constraints changed

The Oct. 2, 2020, post “A rollup-centric Ethereum roadmap” on the Fellowship of Ethereum Magicians laid out the original thesis.

Gas prices were climbing, some applications were being forced to shut down, and the conclusion was that the ecosystem would be “all-in on rollups” for the near and medium term.

Base-layer scaling should prioritize data capacity for rollups, and users would increasingly live on L2.

Two hard facts have shifted since then. First, L1 is substantially cheaper at present. Etherscan shows a seven-day average transaction fee of around $0.35 and gas snapshots in the fractions of a gwei.

On Jan. 16, Ethereum recorded an all-time high of 2,885,524 transactions in a single day. The narrative is “busier and cheaper,” exactly the opposite of the 2020 crisis that motivated the rollup-centric roadmap.

Second, L1 execution capacity is rising. Ethereum's block gas limit was raised to approximately 60 million after broad validator signaling in late 2025, up from the long-standing 30 million limit.

At roughly 12-second blocks, 60 million gas translates to approximately 5 million gas per second.

Aspirational community discussions have mentioned targets as high as 180 million gas, which would represent a threefold increase, though that remains directional rather than committed.

The clean interpretation: the 2020 premise that “L1 can't scale for most users” is weaker in today's fee regime. This creates room for L2s to be a spectrum of security and sovereignty trade-offs rather than all being near-identical “shards” competing solely on price.

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L2s as a spectrum, not clones

Buterin's proposed reframing treats L2s as occupying a full spectrum.

On one end are chains backed by the full faith and credit of Ethereum, with unique properties, not just EVM clones but also privacy-focused systems, non-EVM execution environments, or ultra-low-latency sequencers.

At the other end are options with varying levels of Ethereum connectivity that users and applications can choose based on their specific needs.

The new minimum bar is straightforward: if you handle ETH or Ethereum-issued assets, reach at least Stage 1.

Otherwise, you're a separate L1 with a bridge, and should call yourself that. The differentiation bar is harder: be the best at something other than “cheap EVM.”

Examples Buterin cites include privacy, efficiency specialized to a particular application, truly extreme scaling beyond even an expanded L1, fundamentally different designs for non-financial applications such as social or identity systems, ultra-low-latency sequencing, or features such as built-in oracles or decentralized dispute resolution that aren't computationally verifiable.

The mechanism that might facilitate this is still under investigation. A “native rollup precompile” would enable Ethereum to verify a standard zkEVM proof within the protocol.

For rollups that are “EVM plus extras,” this means the canonical EVM verification occurs trustlessly at the protocol level, and the rollup only needs to prove its custom extensions separately.

This could enable stronger interoperability and pave the way for synchronous composability, in which contracts across different rollups can interact within the same transaction. Yet, it remains a research trajectory, not a deployed feature.

The Jan. 16 post “Combining preconfirmations with based rollups for synchronous composability” and the Feb. 2 post “Synchronous composability between rollups via realtime proving” lay out the design space but don't represent shipped protocol changes.

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Three buckets emerging

If this reframing takes hold, expect rollups to split into clearer categories.

The first bucket is Stage 2-chasing settlement rollups that maximize Ethereum security inheritance.

These projects aim to achieve code-enforced guarantees with minimal discretionary governance, treating “scaling Ethereum” as their core mandate.

The second bucket is regulated or controlled execution environments.

These optimize for compliance, permissioning, or specific institutional requirements. They may never progress beyond Stage 1 by design, and they should market that control honestly as a feature rather than pretending to offer full decentralization.

The third bucket is specialized chains optimized for latency, privacy, app-specific execution, or non-financial use cases.

Privacy rollups using zkProofs to hide transaction details, ultra-low-latency sequencers for trading applications, or social and identity systems with fundamentally different state models all fall within this category.

These don't need to be EVM-compatible or even financial to justify their existence, they need to provide value that their users can't get elsewhere.

Projects such as Arbitrum One, Optimism, Base, zkSync Era, and Starknet will each need to decide which category they're pursuing. The ecosystem is large enough to support all three, but the assumption that every L2 performs the same function is fading.

What changes for users and builders

For users, the burden shifts to understanding guarantees. Escape hatches, upgrade delays, proof systems, and censorship resistance become product differentiators rather than assumed properties.

Wallets and interfaces will need to label trust assumptions more explicitly, and the L2BEAT Stages framework aims to make these assumptions legible.

For builders, “cheap EVM” is commoditized. Differentiation moves to privacy and custom virtual machines, ultra-low-latency sequencing, app-specific throughput optimizations, non-financial applications in social, identity, or AI contexts, or compliance and permissioning as an explicit product, without claiming it's “Ethereum scaling.”

For the broader market narrative, expect a louder debate about whether L2s “inherit Ethereum security” in practice rather than as an aspiration.

The critique is already a talking point among rival L1 proponents, and the ecosystem's acknowledgment that many large rollups remain at Stage 1 with discretionary governance gives that critique greater traction.

Is an L2 revolution about to start?

Ethereum is unlikely to see an L2 revolution. Instead, it will witness a re-tiering.

The rollup-centric roadmap assumed that L2s would be near-identical “branded shards” competing primarily on cost, while L1 would remain expensive and capacity-constrained.

That assumption no longer holds. L1 is cheaper and expanding, whereas L2s are diverging faster than they are converging in their security models and use cases, despite Stage 2 decentralization.

The new path acknowledges that reality. L2s that custody ETH or Ethereum-issued assets should meet a minimum security bar, Stage 1 at least. And beyond that, they should compete on specialization and explicit guarantees rather than pretending to be interchangeable.

Native verification primitives and research on synchronous composability signal where Ethereum aims to make that easier, but these are trajectories, not deployed features.

The job description changed.

The minimum bar is to offer credible security when handling Ethereum assets. The differentiation bar is being the best at something, and being honest about the trust model.

The rollup-centric roadmap got upgraded to accommodate the reality that L1 is scaling and L2s are more diverse than the original vision anticipated.

The post Ethereum fees are plummeting so fast that Vitalik Buterin says most Layer 2 chains now lack purpose appeared first on CryptoSlate.

While price action has always been volatile and, arguably, exciting, the Bitcoin network itself is built to feel boring. Ten minutes per block, tick tock, rinse and repeat, a metronome you can set your watch to.

Then every so often, it gets very human again.

Early this morning, block production slowed enough that the average block time briefly spiked to 19.33 minutes. On the surface, it appears to be a technical issue. Below, it reads like a real-time pulse check of an industry that operates on thin margins, loud fans, cheap power, and a lot of stress.

When miners shut down their machines, the network does not immediately adjust. Bitcoin’s difficulty only updates every 2,016 blocks, so if the hashrate drops quickly, blocks come in slower until the next retarget. That gap between reality and the protocol’s response is where you get the weird mornings, the longer waits, the uneasy posts in mining chats, the quiet “something’s off” feeling.

Right now, “off” looks a lot like miners backing away.

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The network is telling you miners are stepping back

Over the last stretch of difficulty adjustments, more of them have been negative, and that matters because difficulty is Bitcoin’s way of matching the workload to the number of machines competing to solve blocks.

Hashrate Index’s latest weekly roundup noted the most recent difficulty adjustment on Jan. 22 came in at a -3.28% cut, bringing difficulty to about 141.67T, and it flagged an early estimate for another large negative adjustment in the next cycle, around the Feb. 8 window, with early-epoch projections bouncing near the mid-teens percentage range, while cautioning those estimates can change as the epoch develops.

Other trackers are landing in the same neighborhood. On mempool, the estimated next adjustment is a decline near 15%, and the site’s dashboard has average block time running around the 11 to 12 minute range in the current stretch.

That is slower than the ten-minute target, and it matches the story the charts are trying to tell, miners pulled back, the network is slogging along, the protocol is waiting for the next recalibration.

CoinWarz puts the next difficulty estimate at 121.78T, down about 14.04%, with the average block time around 11.63 minutes, and the retarget date pointing to Feb. 8.

The next adjustment is, therefore, set to be the sharpest drawdown since the post-China-ban era. A block-time spike is a symptom. A run of negative difficulty adjustments is a diagnosis.

Why a 14 to 18% difficulty cut would be a big deal

A double-digit difficulty cut is the protocol admitting the mining economy has changed fast enough that the previous setting no longer fits. For people outside mining, it's background noise. For miners, it is the difference between a fleet that limps along and a fleet that has to shut the lights off.

If the next adjustment lands around 14 to 18%, it would be large enough to put a marker down, especially coming after multiple negative adjustments in recent months. It would also be a reminder that Bitcoin’s difficulty algorithm is a shock absorber, not a crystal ball.

A move that size has happened before, and bigger ones have too.

The largest single downward difficulty adjustment on record came in early July 2021, when difficulty fell about 28% after China’s mining crackdown forced a massive chunk of the global hashrate offline.

So a 14 to 18% cut has precedent, and the network has seen much worse, the context is different though, the China era was a sudden geopolitical shock, today’s pressure looks like a slower squeeze, price, power, and profitability grinding against each other.

Related Reading

Bitcoin difficulty just retreated, but a more critical “survival metric” signals the mining sector is bleeding out

Data centers are outbidding crypto operators for electricity, turning the "cheap power" moat into a desperate liability for anyone without long-term contracts.

Jan 17, 2026 · Andjela Radmilac

The impact for traders is the margin call

Mining is a business where the product is math and the input is electricity, which means the industry lives and dies by spreads.

When Bitcoin’s price falls, miners earn fewer dollars for the same amount of Bitcoin. When power costs rise, or when a region tightens supply during weather events, their input costs climb. When both happen together, older machines and higher-cost sites get pushed out first.

That is why the story keeps snapping back to “who can stay online.”

Hashrate Index’s roundup pegged USD hashprice around $39.22 per PH per day in its snapshot, which is one of the clearest shorthand metrics for miner revenue, and it noted that the forward market was pricing an average hashprice around $39.50 over the next six months.

However, the sharp price drop over the last week has since brought the 6-month forward market pricing down to $32.25.

That little detail is easy to skim past, and it might be the most useful forecasting anchor in the whole dataset. The fact that it repriced lower so quickly suggests the market is settling into a tighter, weaker profitability band rather than betting on a fast recovery.

If you talk to miners when hashprice compresses, the language gets less theoretical. It turns into power contracts, curtailment programs, lenders, machine loans, and the constant question of whether to keep plugging in gear that earns pennies over power, or to shut down and wait for difficulty to come to you.

That is what negative adjustments do, they act like relief.

When difficulty drops, every miner who stays online earns a bit more Bitcoin per unit of hashrate, all else equal. Some of the machines that were pushed out can come back. Some operators get to breathe again.

It is one of Bitcoin’s strange balancing acts, the protocol is indifferent, but the outcome is deeply personal for the people running warehouses of hardware.

What happens next, three paths to watch

The cleanest narrative from here is a difficulty relief bounce.

Difficulty cut

If the network cuts difficulty by something like 14 to 18%, block times should drift back closer to ten minutes, and profitability for online miners improves immediately.

That tends to slow the bleeding, and it can even bring some hashrate back, especially if the underlying issue was marginal economics rather than an external shock. The mempool dashboard on mempool gives a real-time view of whether block times are mean-reverting.

Difficulty cut and price decline

A tougher path is a prolonged squeeze.

Difficulty can fall, and miners can still struggle if Bitcoin’s price keeps sliding, or if energy costs stay elevated, or if credit conditions tighten further for mining firms that rely on financing.

In that world, you can see a loop, hashrate declines, difficulty adjusts down, revenue relief arrives, price pressure returns, and weaker operators get tapped out anyway.

Difficulty cut, price decline, and miner pivot

A third path is quieter, and it is about structural change.

Mining has been drifting toward flexible, power-aware operations for years, the miners that can curtail during peak prices and ramp up when the grid is cheap tend to survive longer.

The industry is leaning harder into that model, along with a shift toward AI. As certain regions face recurring curtailment and more power is diverted to AI, the hashrate line may stay lower for longer, and difficulty adapts to a new equilibrium.

Beyond the immediate operational changes, the shift signals how miners are being forced to adapt to tighter margins, evolving regulatory pressures, and increasing competition for energy resources.

As the industry matures, these adjustments could reshape the balance of power among mining firms, accelerate consolidation, and influence Bitcoin’s long-term network security and decentralization.

Related Reading

Bitcoin mining revenue hits historic low as infrastructure is sold to AI giants permanently altering the network's security

Rising energy expenses and declining prices drive Bitcoin miners towards sustainable AI opportunities.

Feb 3, 2026 · Oluwapelumi Adejumo

What this means for everyone else

For ordinary Bitcoin users, a slower block cadence mostly shows up as waiting, and sometimes as higher fees when demand stacks up. It is not usually catastrophic. It is more like traffic.

For miners, it is the entire business.

For the broader market, it is one of the few times you can see the invisible infrastructure wobble in public, the base layer showing its seams. Bitcoin’s security model is tied to miner revenue in dollar terms, and when that revenue compresses, the conversation about network health gets louder.

The thing is, Bitcoin is designed to keep going through this. Difficulty adjusts. Blocks keep arriving. The metronome finds the beat again.

The interesting part is the story inside that adjustment, the people on the other end of the machines, the operators doing the math at 3 a.m., deciding what stays on and what goes dark, and the network quietly recording those choices in the only language it knows, time between blocks.

If the next retarget lands anywhere near the mid-teens, it will read as a clear signal that miners are stepping back in a meaningful way, and it will also be a reminder that the protocol is still doing what it has always done, absorbing the shock, resetting the difficulty, and letting the system move forward, one block at a time.

The post Bitcoin mining profit crisis hits as difficulty to drop by 14% this weekend while block time spikes to 20 minutes appeared first on CryptoSlate.

CME Group is looking at launching its own coin on a decentralized network, while moving crypto products to 24/7 trading as volumes jump 92%.

Ethereum crypto game Axie Infinity is introducing a new token that will be airdropped to stakers and those who play its upcoming land game.

Bitcoin developer Luke Dashjr urged Blockstream CEO Adam Back to step down following a new release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent got into a yelling match with another congressman over the Trump family’s crypto company, during testimony on Capitol Hill.

Vitalik Buterin moves $29M in ETH to fund Ethereum Foundation as crypto markets tumble and he calls for major network changes.

Global wealth management firm Stifel has issued a truly ugly forecast for Bitcoin (BTC)..

Crypto news digest: Ripple joins White House crypto summit; Elon Musk reaffirms Dogecoin's “to the Moon” mission; more Cardano ETF products are coming.

The Bitcoin plunge has triggered nearly $680 million in long-position liquidations in just 24 hours.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has shut the door on a potential "Bitcoin bailout," confirming to Congress that the U.S. will not use tax dollars to prop up the cryptocurrency market.

Vanguard Group, the $12 trillion indexing powerhouse, has increased its stake in Strive ($ASST) to 27.63 million shares.

TLDR:

• TRM Labs secured $70 million in Series C funding led by Blockchain Capital and Goldman Sachs investors. 
• The blockchain analytics firm now serves 40% private sector clients as tokenization adoption accelerates rapidly. 
• FBI and IRS rely on TRM Labs technology to investigate thousands of cryptocurrency-related criminal cases annually. 
• Company reports 500% increase in AI-enabled crypto scams, positioning itself for continued market expansion.
  

TRM Labs secured $70 million in Series C funding, reaching a $1 billion valuation. The blockchain analytics firm attracted investment from Blockchain Capital, Goldman Sachs, Bessemer, Brevan Howard, Thoma Bravo, and Citi Ventures.

The San Francisco-based company now joins the ranks of crypto unicorns. Its growth reflects increasing demand for blockchain intelligence across government and private sectors.

Law Enforcement Partnership Drives Market Position

TRM Labs carved its niche by supporting global law enforcement agencies in cryptocurrency investigations. The company emerged in 2018 when founders Esteban Castaño and Rahul Raina recognized the need for blockchain intelligence.

Their strategy focused on tracking multiple cryptocurrencies beyond Bitcoin, differentiating them from competitor Chainalysis.

Castaño explained their early thinking: “Then we asked ourselves, ‘What’s the second order consequence? The world would need intelligence to make sense of that data to ultimately manage risk.'”

Jarod Koopman, soon-to-be chief of criminal investigation at the IRS, confirmed the agency’s decade-long reliance on blockchain analytics.

“Without third-party tools, it would be infinitely more time-consuming and inefficient,” Koopman told Fortune. The IRS began using TRM Labs shortly after launch to diversify its analytical tools.

Koopman noted the strategy prevented putting “all of our eggs in one basket,” especially as criminals expanded beyond Bitcoin.

The FBI’s New York field office processes thousands of crypto cases annually, up from just a handful in 2015. Assistant Director James Barnacle highlighted TRM’s role following the October 7 Hamas attacks in Israel.

“The partnership between the FBI and the private sector is critical for us to be successful,” Barnacle stated. He emphasized that there’s nothing the FBI can accomplish entirely on its own in crypto investigations.

The company employs former government investigators, including Chris Janczewski, who led operations against child exploitation sites. This expertise strengthened TRM’s credibility with law enforcement agencies worldwide.

However, close ties with governmental agencies created friction within the crypto community. Many industry participants objected to TRM’s involvement in Hamas wallet tracking reports.

Castaño defended the company’s mission, arguing that “bringing security to digital assets is very much aligned with the crypto industry.”

Private Sector Expansion Signals Future Growth

TRM Labs reports that 40% of its customer base now operates in the private sector. This segment continues expanding as financial institutions explore tokenized assets.

The company’s revenue grew approximately 50% annually over the past four years. Blockchain Capital’s Spencer Bogart described TRM as “one of those things that becomes absolutely table stakes for anybody that’s going to be touching something in the space.”

The firm’s analytics tools serve compliance professionals and financial organizations entering blockchain technology. Wall Street’s embrace of tokenization creates new opportunities for TRM’s intelligence platform.

Ari Redbord, global head of policy, highlighted emerging threats: “We’ve seen a 500% increase in AI-enabled use in scams and fraud. This is a civilization-level threat, and we’re building the company for that moment.”

TRM published reports documenting widespread use of Tether stablecoin on Tron blockchain by cybercriminals. The company later partnered with Tether and Tron to combat illicit activity.

Critics questioned the decision, but Redbord maintained the partnership serves the core mission. “You don’t stop bad actors working only with the most regulatory-compliant places where there’s no illicit activity,” he explained.

Artificial intelligence presents both challenges and opportunities for blockchain analytics. Castaño emphasized the technology’s necessity in modern investigations.

“If you’re operating in a world where there’s trillions of transactions, how in the world do you find the needle in the haystack without using AI?” he questioned. With 350 employees, TRM continues building capabilities to address emerging threats in digital finance.

The post TRM Labs Reaches $1 Billion Valuation With $70 Million Series C Funding Round appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• CME Group is exploring the creation of its own cryptocurrency, according to CEO Terry Duffy.
• The company is considering launching a proprietary coin that could operate on a decentralized network.
• CME Group is working on a tokenized cash solution with Google, set to release later this year.
• The potential CME Coin could be used by industry participants, though its specific role remains unclear.
• CME Group plans to expand its crypto futures offerings, including 24/7 trading and new contracts for Cardano, Chainlink, and Stellar.

CME Group, a leading player in global derivatives, is exploring the potential launch of its own cryptocurrency. CEO Terry Duffy confirmed the company is considering the creation of a proprietary token. During the company’s latest earnings call, he revealed that CME Group is evaluating initiatives involving its own coin, which could be launched on a decentralized network.

CME Group’s Exploration of a Proprietary Coin

CME Group’s CEO Terry Duffy disclosed during the recent earnings call that the company is reviewing various tokenization options. He noted that CME Group could potentially introduce a token of its own. This would allow it to create a proprietary coin that could run on decentralized networks. Duffy’s comments suggest that the derivatives exchange is carefully analyzing the role of tokens in its operations, including how they could be used as collateral for margin requirements.

The idea of creating its own coin comes as CME Group has expanded its involvement in the cryptocurrency market. The company is already involved in the launch of tokenized cash, a project in partnership with Google. This solution, set for release later this year, will involve a depository bank to facilitate transactions. However, Duffy’s remarks about the CME Coin suggest that the company could venture further into decentralized finance with its own digital asset.

CME Group’s tokenized cash solution, being developed alongside Google, represents a step forward in digital financial services. However, the CME Coin, which Duffy referred to, could mark a larger leap into the decentralized world. Duffy indicated that the CME Coin would serve as a potential tool for industry participants to use, though he stopped short of defining its exact function. Whether the coin would be a stablecoin, settlement token, or a different type of asset remains unclear, as CME Group has not offered further clarification.

CME Group’s exploration of tokenized assets comes as the company continues to expand its crypto futures offerings. The company has seen significant growth in cryptocurrency trading, with average daily volumes hitting $12 billion last year. As part of its strategy, CME Group is set to launch 24/7 trading for crypto futures in the second quarter. It is also adding new cryptocurrency futures contracts for assets like Cardano, Chainlink, and Stellar.

Wall Street’s Growing Interest in Tokenization

CME Group’s potential move to create a proprietary cryptocurrency would place it among the growing number of Wall Street giants exploring tokenized assets. JPMorgan recently introduced JPM Coin, a token used for tokenized deposits on Coinbase’s layer-2 blockchain Base. This move, like CME Group’s exploration of its own coin, is reshaping how traditional financial institutions interact with digital currencies.

Despite the growing interest in tokenization, CME Group has not yet provided details on the timeline or specific goals for its coin. The company’s focus on exploring a proprietary digital asset demonstrates its increasing commitment to cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.

The post CME Group Eyes Proprietary Digital Token Amid Growing Crypto Interest appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Fidelity Digital Assets has officially launched the FIDD stablecoin with an initial supply of over 59 million dollars.
• The FIDD stablecoin is now live on the Ethereum blockchain and is available for on-chain payments and institutional settlements.
• Fidelity confirmed that FIDD is fully backed by US dollars held in accredited banks and complies with the GENIUS Act.
• Mike O’Reilly stated that Fidelity is committed to stablecoin development and has researched the digital asset space for years.
• The FIDD token will be available through Fidelity Digital Assets, Fidelity Crypto, and other institutional platforms.

Fidelity Digital Assets has officially launched its native stablecoin FIDD on the Ethereum blockchain, following a recent announcement. The asset began with an initial issuance of over $59 million and is now live for transactions. The token is fully backed by US dollars held in accredited financial institutions.

FIDD Stablecoin Launches with Initial Supply and Ethereum Integration

Fidelity introduced the FIDD stablecoin as part of its broader expansion into the blockchain and digital payments market. The company minted the token on Ethereum, aligning with the industry’s move toward on-chain settlement. The initial supply exceeds $59 million but remains largely limited in wallet distribution.

Mike O’Reilly, President of Fidelity Digital Assets, emphasized the company’s dedication to digital innovation. “We have spent years researching and advocating for the benefits of stablecoins,” he said. The token aims to serve as both a payment method and a settlement tool for institutional clients.

The FIDD stablecoin complies with the regulatory framework set by the GENIUS Act, allowing for secure and compliant issuance. It is backed by US dollar reserves stored in regulated banks. The GENIUS Act also permits backing by US Treasury bills, enhancing issuer control over earnings.

Utility, Custody, and Institutional Access

Fidelity has confirmed that FIDD will be available across its platforms, including Fidelity Crypto and Fidelity Crypto for Wealth Managers. Purchase and redemption will be handled internally, while external trading will occur through major cryptocurrency exchanges. The asset is fully transferable within Ethereum-based wallets.

The company will also offer custodian services for holding FIDD and managing associated reserves. This includes both direct and institutional client servicing. As Fidelity already operates digital asset custody, it expands its offerings by adding a compliant stablecoin.

FIDD is designed for on-chain payments and institutional use cases, especially for settlement across digital asset platforms. Its compatibility with Ethereum ensures wide infrastructure support. Despite the launch, liquidity and adoption are expected to build gradually.

Stablecoin Ecosystem Sees New Entrants with FIDD in Focus

The FIDD stablecoin enters a market dominated by USDT and USDC, both of which have seen growth over the past year. New regulations like the GENIUS Act have encouraged more issuers to develop compliant tokens. FIDD is Fidelity’s answer to the emerging demand for tokenized dollars with regulatory clarity.

Fidelity joins the list of fintechs and banks offering branded stablecoins, focusing on secure reserves and usage controls. However, like many new stablecoins, FIDD must still prove its real-world utility and demand. Several newly launched stablecoins have remained underutilized due to limited liquidity or application.

The Fidelity Digital Interest Token, launched in September 2025, demonstrates the firm’s ongoing blockchain efforts. That token reached over $264 million in total value before dropping due to redemptions. Its current assets under management stand at approximately $161 million.

The post Fidelity launches FIDD stablecoin with over $59M supply on Ethereum appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• UBS Group AG reported a sharp rise in net profit driven by strong client activity and cost efficiency.
• The bank maintained capital ratios well above regulatory requirements and reiterated confidence in its 2026 financial targets.
• UBS confirmed continued progress in integrating acquired Swiss accounts and winding down non-core assets.
• Despite the earnings beat, UBS shares declined nearly 5 percent after the results were announced.
• The decline followed cautious comments from UBS management regarding its timeline for crypto and tokenized asset offerings.
• CEO Sergio Ermotti stated that UBS will follow a fast follower approach instead of leading in digital asset innovation.

UBS Group AG delivered strong quarterly earnings, reporting higher net profit and capital returns, yet its shares dropped nearly 5% following the results, as investors recalibrated expectations for growth in digital assets. Despite positive performance metrics, the bank’s cautious approach to crypto and tokenized assets drew focus, overshadowing its earnings beat. Management confirmed a slow rollout of blockchain initiatives, which may have cooled sentiment among forward-looking investors.

UBS Group AG Reports Higher Profit and Strong Capital Ratios

UBS Group AG posted a surge in net profit, supported by firm client activity and solid capital positions. The bank reported higher returns on CET1 capital, reinforcing its message of stable and resilient balance sheet management. Profitability gains reflected progress in cost control and integration of acquired assets, especially in Swiss-booked businesses.

Trading activity remained robust, and client asset inflows continued across major segments during the quarter. UBS maintained capital ratios well above regulatory requirements, reinforcing its conservative financial approach. Management reiterated that 2026 targets remain on track, including plans for higher returns and improved efficiency.

The bank emphasized continued execution on its strategic roadmap, supported by disciplined risk management and sustained client engagement. UBS also confirmed further wind-down of non-core assets and steady progress on system integration. These operational improvements contributed to stronger fundamentals across the board.

Crypto Strategy Comments Drive Market Reaction

During the earnings call, CEO Sergio Ermotti addressed growing interest in crypto and tokenized asset offerings. He stated, “We are building core infrastructure but will not lead the market on this front.” The bank confirmed it would pursue a fast follower approach rather than immediate deployment of blockchain-based products.

UBS aims to offer crypto access to individual clients and tokenized deposit options to corporate customers. However, it set expectations that these developments will unfold over three to five years. Investors responded by reassessing near-term growth potential from digital assets.

The measured tone contrasted with some market hopes for faster adoption and monetization of crypto services. UBS positioned digital initiatives as long-term complements to its traditional offerings, not near-term revenue drivers. This divergence may have triggered a repricing of expectations around technology-led growth.

Strong Execution Overshadowed by Delayed Crypto Monetization

Despite delivering on financial targets, the stock declined after the report, reflecting market’s focus on future-facing initiatives. UBS delivered what it promised in capital returns, profits, and cost cuts, but offered no immediate digital catalyst. The gap between execution and investor enthusiasm over crypto timing became the central theme.

The selloff suggests the market sought faster signals on UBS’s role in tokenized finance. Although fundamentals remain firm, expectations around digital expansion weighed on investor sentiment. UBS’s conservative stance may align with its culture, but not with all shareholders’ timelines.

UBS emphasized long-term goals, targeting improved capital efficiency by 2028. Shareholder returns remain a core focus, with dividends and buybacks continuing. However, no accelerated plans were revealed for blockchain offerings.

The post UBS Reports Strong Profit Yet Stock Falls Over Cautious Crypto Plans appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• AMD stock declined more than 16 percent after the company released its Q4 earnings report.
• The company reported earnings per share of $1.53 on revenue of $10.3 billion which beat analyst expectations.
• Despite strong results in data center and PC segments investors expected higher performance and guidance.
• AMD projected Q1 revenue between $9.5 billion and $10.1 billion which exceeded Street estimates but fell short of hopes.
• The gaming segment missed expectations with revenue of $843 million against a forecast of $855 million.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) saw its stock drop more than 16% on Wednesday, even after it surpassed Q4 expectations, raised guidance, and reported growth in its key businesses, as investors reacted to what some considered modest projections compared to high anticipation.

Q4 Results Top Forecasts But Disappoint Market Hopes

AMD posted Q4 earnings per share of $1.53 on $10.3 billion revenue, exceeding estimates of $1.32 and $9.6 billion, respectively. The company’s revenue rose from $7.7 billion in the same period last year, showing strong year-over-year growth. However, investors appeared to want even higher beats given the stock’s sharp rally over the past year.

The stock had climbed over 112% in the last 12 months, outpacing Nvidia’s 54% growth during that same period. Expectations were high as many expected AMD to capture more market share from Nvidia in AI and data center segments. While AMD delivered strong numbers, market response indicated it fell short of loftier hopes.

In the data center segment, AMD reported $5.4 billion in revenue, above expectations of $4.97 billion. The PC client unit generated $3.1 billion versus projections of $2.9 billion, also beating estimates. Its gaming division reported $843 million, just under the $855 million analysts expected.

AMD Stock Drops as Guidance Fails to Satisfy Lofty Expectations

Despite raising its Q1 forecast, AMD stock declined sharply following the earnings release. The company said Q1 revenue would range between $9.5 billion and $10.1 billion. While this guidance beat the consensus estimate of $9.4 billion, investors had hoped for numbers exceeding $10 billion.

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., AMD

Some forecasts predicted results above the top end of AMD’s own range, intensifying pressure on the stock. “We believe we are well-positioned for growth in 2026,” said CEO Lisa Su. Even with a strong outlook, the bar appeared too high for Wall Street enthusiasm to hold.

The drop in AMD stock followed sharp market reactions to other tech earnings, including Microsoft and Meta. Traders responded differently to those reports, cheering Meta but raising concerns over Microsoft’s increased spending. The contrast in reactions highlights how sensitive markets are to future investment narratives.

AMD Unveils New AI Chips and Server Products

At CES 2026, AMD introduced the Helios rack-scale server system, targeting large-scale AI workloads. The Helios system contains 72 GPUs and aims to rival Nvidia’s NVL72 rack, which features similar specs. AMD called it the “world’s best AI rack,” directly challenging Nvidia’s position in the AI infrastructure market.

AMD also showcased its MI500 GPU series, claiming up to 1,000x performance over its previous MI300X chips. This suggests aggressive efforts to capture AI market share from competitors, particularly Nvidia. Su projected the AI data center market to be worth $1 trillion by 2030.

At the event, AMD also announced its new AI PC chips and discussed future plans for the humanoid robotics space. These product announcements align with AMD’s broader strategy to diversify its portfolio. However, growing competition from Amazon, Google, and Microsoft’s custom chips could present challenges.

The post AMD stock falls over 16 percent despite beating Q4 earnings estimates appeared first on Blockonomi.

Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the founder of Binance, has publicly identified and dismantled a coordinated misinformation campaign against him and the exchange.

CZ exposed a long-running fake account that apparently used AI-generated images to pose as a loyal supporter before posting critical “feedback.”

The Unraveling of a Fake Supporter

The incident began when CZ noticed a post from an account named “Wei 威 BNB” claiming to close a Binance account due to alleged manipulation. The account had 863,000 followers and used imagery from a BNB Chain event, making it appear legitimate.

However, the former Binance CEO said that concerns about the account’s veracity emerged after some close inspection. For starters, the account, which had blocked him, had posted several images purportedly featuring Zhao posing with the user, all of which appeared altered.

One photo showed Zhao wearing a shirt in a color he said he does not own, while another mixed low-resolution images of him and Binance executive Yi He with a sharper image of the account holder. CZ claimed the original photo featured Aster CEO Leonard.

He also claimed the account history suggested it either changed hands or was compromised years ago. The account’s history shows it originally belonged to a woman and posted exclusively female photos until July 2015, when it abruptly switched to crypto-only content without removing earlier material.

“Either a hacked takeover or bought,” CZ wrote.

He criticized the campaign as “lazy” and suggested it was likely orchestrated by a “self-perceived” competitor more focused on Binance than its own business.

Influencer ShirleyXBT also noted the account’s profile picture was an artificial copy of her own photo.

Community Backing and a Pattern of Scrutiny

The exposure drew some support from the crypto community, with World of Dypians CEO Teki thanking CZ for the clarification and admitting the initial post had briefly seemed believable.

Commentator Vegas offered a broader analysis, suggesting attackers fall into three categories: opportunists farming engagement, genuinely frustrated traders, and organized FUD campaigns. They also claimed to have been offered payment to spread negative sentiment about Binance, implying possible coordination by large market players or direct competitors.

This latest revelation has come amid sustained scrutiny of CZ and Binance. On January 28, the crypto entrepreneur faced backlash for allegedly promoting harmful market behavior after he advocated a buy-and-hold investment strategy, forcing him to clarify that his advice was personal and did not apply to every token.

Furthermore, on January 30, Binance announced it would convert the $1 billion in its SAFU insurance fund from stablecoins back into Bitcoin, a move some commentators viewed as a bullish signal but which also kept focus on the exchange’s financial strategies.

Despite the criticism, Binance’s market position is still quite strong, with data shared by CryptoQuant at the beginning of the year showing the exchange captured 41% of spot trading volume and 42% of Bitcoin perpetual futures volume among top-tier platforms in 2025.

The post CZ Flags AI-Generated Fake Account Behind Binance FUD appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The broader digital asset market is in a bearish state, but some experts are leveraging the dip to expand their crypto exposure. Cathie Wood’s investment management company, Ark Invest, is one of them, having scooped up thousands of shares linked to crypto firms over the last few trading days.

According to the latest trade filing from Ark Invest, the firm spent over $19 million to purchase additional crypto-related stocks through its exchange-traded funds (ETFs) on February 3. The acquired shares are tied to multiple companies, including the stablecoin issuer Circle, crypto exchanges Coinbase and Bullish, and Ethereum treasury firm Bitmine.

Ark Invest Buys Crypto Stocks

On Tuesday, Ark Invest bought 145,488 Bitmine shares for $3.25 million and 125,218 Bullish shares for $3.46 million. In addition, the company purchased 42,878 Circle shares for $2.4 million and 3,510 Coinbase shares for $630,606. Notably, Ark Invest also tapped into the Bitcoin-focused tech entity Block Inc. and financial services firm Robinhood, buying shares totaling 31,202 and 89,677 for $1.77 million and $7.8 million, respectively.

The Tuesday purchases followed a heavier round of acquisitions on Monday. Ark Invest had scooped up crypto-related shares worth more than $71 million.

Similarly, the Monday buys included shares of Coinbase, Circle, Bitmine, Robinhood, Bullish, and Block Inc. The firm made these purchases through several ETFs, including ARK Blockchain & Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF) and ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK).

Market Crashes as BTC Declines

Ever since bitcoin (BTC) began its descent late last year, crypto stocks have followed suit. Data from Trading View shows that the stocks of most crypto-related companies are down by double digits over the last three months. Their decline has intensified as BTC remains below $90,000 and faces the risk of plummeting under $60,000. At the time of writing, the leading digital asset was changing hands at $76,000, down 17% monthly and 14% weekly.

While BTC and the broader market continue to decline, Ark Invest has been on a buying spree. The asset manager has spent millions of dollars on crypto-related stocks in December and January. From the look of things, the company is likely to continue buying crypto stocks for as long as the bearish season lasts.

The post Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest Loads Up on Crypto Stocks Amid Market Slump appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The meme coin sector has been deeply impacted by the latest crypto collapse, with its market capitalization plummeting below $40 billion.

We consulted four of the most popular AI-powered chatbots about whether the crisis will continue and specifically asked whether Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB) could crash to $0 sometime this year.

The Chances are Small

According to ChatGPT, there is a theoretical possibility, although it is extremely doubtful, for the biggest meme coins (in terms of market cap) to nosedive to zero.

It reminded that the tokens trade actively on major exchanges and have millions of holders, and that is unlikely to change in 2026. At the same time, given current market conditions, ChatGPT suggested that a deeper crash could occur in the following months.

“DOGE and SHIB are among the most widely held cryptocurrencies in the world. Millions of wallets hold these assets, many with no intention of selling at extremely low prices. This creates a distributed supply base, reducing the odds of a total demand vacuum. Even during prolonged bear markets, a subset of holders continues to transact, stake (where applicable), or speculate,” it stated.

Grok – the chatbot integrated within X – claimed a collapse to $0 can’t be ruled out in extreme scenarios. However, it predicted that DOGE and SHIB can stabilize later in 2026 if Bitcoin (BTC) rebounds and hype returns.

“DOGE might hover around $0.10–$0.15, and SHIB could aim to “delete a zero” (reach $0.00001+) with burns and upgrades,” it forecasted.

Not a Chance at All

The post Meme Coin Bloodbath: Can DOGE and SHIB Crash to $0 in 2026? 4 AIs Make Predictions appeared first on CryptoPotato.

A trove of 149 million stolen credentials, including login details for 420,000 Binance accounts, was discovered circulating among cybercriminals this week.

The findings highlight a shift in crypto theft toward long-term malware infections that steal data directly from users’ devices, often long before any funds are moved.

The Scale of the Threat

According to an alert posted on February 4 by security firm Web3 Antivirus, the dataset was compiled from information-stealing malware installed on victim devices. Beyond exchange logins, the stolen data included passwords, private keys, API keys, and browser session tokens for email, social, and financial platforms.

The firm noted that these “infostealers” capture data that can later be used for account takeovers and fund theft, emphasizing that prevention requires early detection at the device level since by the time suspicious activity appears on-chain, it is often too late.

Furthermore, in a separate series of posts, Web3 Antivirus detailed how malicious AI skills on platforms like ClawHub are being used to steal crypto data. Per the security firm, these fraudulent skills, posing as wallet tools or trading bots, install information-stealing malware that can remain dormant until a victim’s crypto balance grows or specific actions are taken. This vulnerability represents a supply-chain risk that moves upstream “from wallets to the tools people trust to manage them.”

A Persistent Challenge for Users and Platforms

The gravity of losses resulting from crypto theft cannot be understated. A recent report from PeckShield noted that scams and hacks drained over $4.04 billion in 2025, with scams alone jumping 64% year-over-year. The firm observed a move toward targeting centralized exchanges and large organizations, which accounted for 75% of stolen funds in 2025.

Meanwhile, Web3 Antivirus put the volume of 2025’s illicit crypto activity at approximately $158 billion, up from $64 billion in 2024. While the on-chain security provider partly attributed the increase to better tracking and more state-linked activity, the figures show that even small success rates for thieves can result in large losses at scale.

The recent data thefts highlighted a gap between user and platform protection, with the company stating,

“Scams don’t succeed because users ignore advice; they succeed because risk is only surfaced after execution is already possible.”

The firm argued that platforms, which can see transaction approvals and behavioral patterns before users do, sit at “the last real control point” for preventing theft.

One of the more common attack vectors is wallet drainers, which Web3 Antivirus stated had gotten worse, with 15,530 suspicious approvals across 11,908 wallets leading to $4.25 million in losses in January. These drainers usually enter through malicious transaction approvals, making pre-signature detection extremely important.

The post Attention Binance Users: Massive Malware Dataset Exposes 420,000 Accounts appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The cryptocurrency market seems to can’t catch a break lately, and numerous digital assets continue to chart painful losses.

Solana (SOL) is among the poorest performers, with its price plunging by 25% in the past week alone. According to some market observers, the bears might be just stepping in.

Major Collapse on the Horizon?

Just hours ago, SOL tumbled to approximately $95, its lowest level since February 2024. As of this writing, it trades at around $96, which is a staggering decline from the all-time high of almost $300 registered nearly a year ago.

Many industry participants are now concerned that the asset may experience a further decrease in the short term. Ali Martinez, for instance, predicted that SOL could nosedive to $74.11 and even $50.18.

The analyst, going on X as curb.sol, outlined $100 as an “extremely important level” for the token. In their view, holding that zone could result in a new bull run to a fresh all-time high, whereas the opposite scenario might lead to a crash to roughly $50 sometime this year.

For their part, Alex RT₿ assumed the price may retreat to $70-$80 if SOL breaks below the $90 support level.

Any Chance for the Bulls’ Return?

It is important to note that some analysts believe the current rates could present great buying opportunities. The one using the X handle, Lucky, told their almost two million followers that “if the market behaves well, this could be a smart entry.”

“Opportunities like this don’t show up often,” they added.

Mookie also recently chipped in, vowing to go all-in should SOL drop below $100.

if $SOL drops below $100 i’m going all in

Solana at $100 is def free pic.twitter.com/ORftQMa2dv

— Mookie (@MookieNFT) January 31, 2026

Meanwhile, some key indicators suggest it might be time for a rebound. SOL’s Relative Strength Index (RSI) fell well below 30, meaning the price has declined too much in a short period of time. Ratios under that level signal that SOL is oversold and due for a potential rally, whereas anything above 70 is seen as bearish territory.

Furthermore, exchange outflows have significantly surpassed inflows in the past several weeks. This suggests that investors have shifted from centralized platforms to self-custody, thereby reducing immediate selling pressure.

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