Story Delays $IP Token Supply Unlock as Usage Lags and Dump Fears Grow
Story Protocol has pushed the first major release of its $IP team, investor and early‑contributor tokens from February 2026 to August 2026, extending the lock‑up by six months. The move comes as the token trades around $1.45‑$1.50, down roughly 32% in the past 30 days, and on‑chain activity remains minimal, with daily revenue under $100. Story emphasizes that the total 1 billion token supply and allocation ratios stay unchanged, and a new smart‑contract mechanism will enforce the revised schedule. The delay aims to smooth liquidity introduction, reduce emission pressure, and buy time to grow network usage amid weak market sentiment.
BitRiver CEO Arrested for Alleged Tax Concealment: Reports
Russian Bitcoin mining firm BitRiver’s founder and CEO Igor Runets was detained on Friday and charged with three counts of tax evasion for allegedly concealing assets. A Moscow court placed him under house arrest, with a brief window to appeal...
Crypto Selloff Is Likely Due to US Liquidity Drought: Analyst
Crypto markets shed roughly $250 billion in market capitalization over the weekend, a decline analyst Raoul Pal attributes to a US liquidity crunch rather than sector‑specific weakness. He points to the parallel slide in SaaS stocks, noting both asset classes depend on...
Crushed by Crypto Losses? Unleash No-Code Crypto Backtesting on Cointester.io
Cointester.io launched a no‑code crypto backtesting platform that lets retail traders design, test, and refine strategies without programming. Within its first week the service attracted over 100 active subscribers, more than 8,000 backtests and hundreds of unique strategies. The tool...
Crypto Protocol CrossCurve Under Attack, $3M Reportedly Exploited
CrossCurve, a cross‑chain bridge protocol, confirmed a security breach that resulted in roughly $3 million being stolen across several blockchain networks. The exploit targeted a smart‑contract vulnerability that allowed attackers to spoof cross‑chain messages and unlock tokens without proper validation. CrossCurve...
Grayscale Investments Examines Role of Smart Contract Platforms in Web3 Ecosystem
Grayscale Investments released an update highlighting smart‑contract platforms as the backbone of the Web3 ecosystem, now representing roughly 70% of crypto market capitalization outside Bitcoin, or about $650 billion. The firm notes that these networks have delivered 30%‑40% annualized returns over...
FLock.io, Blockchain for Good Alliance to Partner on Decentralized AI, Blockchain, and Public Benefit
FLock.io has been named the Strategic AI Partner of the Blockchain for Good Alliance (BGA), a Bybit‑backed nonprofit that promotes blockchain‑driven social impact. The partnership will focus on decentralized, privacy‑preserving AI solutions and explore joint initiatives such as the AI‑and‑Blockchain...
Hong Kong Is Positioning Itself as Crypto’s Global Connector, Says Lawmaker Johnny Ng
Hong Kong legislator Johnny Ng is positioning the city as a global crypto connector, leveraging its common‑law system, open capital flows, and dense financial services ecosystem. Over the past two years he has driven stablecoin legislation and crypto‑exchange licensing, framing...
Richecoin Announces Dual Exchange Listings on BitMart and AscendEX as Riche Chain Expands Global Market Access
Richecoin’s native RIC token is set to list on BitMart and AscendEX, expanding its global market reach. The Riche Chain blockchain operates a QBFT‑based Layer‑1 with three‑second block times, a 25 million gas limit, and full EVM compatibility. Its consensus delivers...
Anthony | Architecting High-Performance Blockchain Infrastructure
Anthony, a core Solana developer, helped build the high‑performance blockchain infrastructure that underpins modern Web3 platforms. He championed protocol‑level optimizations, fault‑tolerant architecture, and low‑latency smart‑contract execution, setting standards for scalable decentralized systems. As CTO, he now aligns protocol design, infrastructure,...
How Instant Gratification Is Sucking the Air Out of the Bitcoin Market
Bitcoin slipped more than 10% in the past month while gold rallied over 12% and the S&P 500 edged higher, highlighting a divergence not tied to fundamentals. NYDIG’s research chief Greg Cipolaro attributes the drop to "speculative cannibalization," where short‑term, instant‑gratification...
NDSS 2025 – Alba: The Dawn Of Scalable Bridges For Blockchains
Researchers at TU Wien and Princeton introduced Alba, a Pay2Chain bridge that leverages off‑chain payment channels to trigger conditional payments on target blockchains. Unlike traditional light‑client or zk‑based bridges, Alba avoids costly on‑chain inclusion proofs, cutting communication overhead and on‑chain...
Bitcoin Treasury Companies Are Millions in the Red but the Strategy Doesn’t Change Even at $78k
Corporate Bitcoin treasuries are testing the resilience of balance‑sheet strategies as Bitcoin hovers around $78,500. Early adopters like MicroStrategy, Tesla and Coinbase entered at lower prices, showing paper gains of $100 million to $500 million, while late entrants such as Metaplanet and...
The 2026 Shift: Why Smart Users Are Choosing Direct Crypto Swaps Over Big Exchanges
In 2026 crypto users are gravitating toward direct swap services as centralized exchanges become bogged down by KYC and onboarding friction. Fujn Swap, a non‑custodial bridge, lets traders move assets like TRX, SOL, and XMR to Bitcoin without accounts or...
Nomura Scales Back Crypto Exposure Following Losses at European Division
Nomura Holdings announced it will reduce its cryptocurrency exposure and tighten risk controls after its European subsidiary, Laser Digital, posted losses in Q3 2025. CFO Hiroyuki Moriuchi said the pullback aims to curb short‑term profit volatility while reaffirming the bank’s...
Tether Reports $10B+ Profits in Past Year, $6.3B in “Excess” Reserves, $141B Exposure in US Treasury Holdings
Tether disclosed its 2025 financial results, posting more than $10 billion in net profit and building $6.3 billion of excess reserves. The stablecoin’s supply surged to $186 billion, driven by a $50 billion issuance year, while its U.S. Treasury exposure climbed to $141 billion, the...
Mr. Phil | Building the Next Generation of Web3 Infrastructure Through Systems Thinking
Mr. Phil, a veteran Web3 entrepreneur, now serves as CEO of Universe Pro, steering the firm toward next‑generation blockchain infrastructure built on systems thinking. His cross‑regional experience in Europe and Asia informs a strategy that prioritizes transparency, operational resilience, and...
UAE Firm Bought 49% of Trump-Linked Crypto Startup for $500M: WSJ
A UAE‑backed vehicle, Aryam Investment 1, agreed to purchase a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial for $500 million, with $187 million paid upfront to Trump‑family entities. The deal, signed by Eric Trump, links Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan to the crypto startup...
Sam Bankman-Fried Turns up Trump Support Following Ellison’s Release
Disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman‑Fried intensified his public support for former President Donald Trump on X, praising Trump’s stance on crypto and recent foreign‑policy actions. The comments came days after former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison was released from prison following a...
Bitcoin Drops to $78,000 as MicroStrategy-Fueled Rally Runs Out of Buyers, Traders Say
Bitcoin fell below $80,000 on Feb 1, 2026, reaching $78,000 – its first sub‑$80k level since April 2025 – after a 10% intraday drop to $75,710. The plunge erased about $111 billion in market capitalization and triggered $1.6 billion of leveraged liquidations. Analysts point...
Global Trustnet Strengthens Client Intake and Review Framework to Support Secure Platform Operations
Global Trustnet announced enhancements to its client intake and internal case review frameworks, emphasizing security, verification discipline, and structured governance. The new standardized onboarding workflow aims to improve data accuracy, traceability, and consistency as digital‑asset trading volumes rise. Parallel upgrades...
Blockchain Penetration Testing: Definition, Process, and Tools
Blockchain penetration testing simulates real‑world attacks on decentralized ledgers to expose flaws in smart contracts, consensus mechanisms, nodes, and wallets before they can be exploited. Recent incidents such as the $2.17 billion crypto thefts in 2025 and the 17‑hour Solana outage...
Bitcoin Hashrate Drops 12% in Worst Drawdown Since China Mining Ban: CryptoQuant
A severe winter storm across key U.S. mining regions forced several large Bitcoin miners to curtail operations, driving the network hashrate down 12% since November 11. The hashpower now sits near 970 exahashes per second, the lowest level since September...
BitMine Immersion Faces $6B Paper Loss as Ether Sell-Off Deepens
BitMine Immersion Technologies, a public crypto‑treasury firm tied to Tom Lee, now holds over 4.24 million ETH valued at roughly $9.6 billion. The surge in Ether’s price drop to about $2,300 has pushed its unrealized loss to more than $6 billion, down from...
Retail Traders Are Running for the Exit Amid Bitcoin's Selloff, While 'Mega-Whales' Are Quietly Buying the Dip
Glassnode on‑chain data shows that mega‑whales holding 10,000 BTC or more are quietly buying Bitcoin as the price fell below $80,000, while all smaller cohorts, especially retail wallets under 10 BTC, have been net sellers for over a month. The Accumulation Trend...
Solana DeFi Platform Step Finance Hit by $27 Million Treasury Hack as Token Price Craters
Step Finance, a Solana‑based DeFi portfolio tracker, disclosed a treasury breach that saw 261,854 SOL—about $27 million—unstaked and transferred. The hack triggered an over‑80% plunge in its governance token STEP within 24 hours. The platform has engaged cybersecurity firms but has not...
How Decentralized AI Training Will Create a New Asset Class for Digital Intelligence
Decentralized AI training networks are linking heterogeneous GPUs worldwide to train frontier‑scale models, while issuing tokens that grant contributors ownership stakes. Prime Intellect has already delivered 10‑billion‑parameter and 32‑billion‑parameter models using this approach, and protocols like Gensyn and Pluralis prove...
Bitcoin Falls Out of Global Top 10 Assets by Market Capitalization, Below Elon Musk's Tesla
Bitcoin’s market capitalization slipped to roughly $1.57 trillion, pushing it to the 13th‑largest asset worldwide, behind Saudi Aramco and Tesla. The cryptocurrency’s price dropped more than 11 % in a week, falling from about $90,000 to $78,500. The sell‑off was amplified by a...
Bitcoin Miners Are Making Millions by Shutting Down because of a Massive US Winter Storm
US winter storm forced Bitcoin miners, especially Foundry USA, to curtail operations, dropping network hashrate by roughly 40% (about 455 EH/s) between Jan 23‑25. The shutdown slowed block times to around 12 minutes, highlighting Bitcoin’s difficulty adjustment lag. Miners profit from curtailment,...
The Market for Tokenized Equities Has Exploded by Almost 3,000% in a Single Year
Tokenized equities surged almost 3,000% in 2025, pushing the market close to the $1 billion milestone. The jump to $963 million was driven by new SEC guidance on broker‑dealer custody and a DTCC no‑action letter that legitimized token‑based settlement. Ondo Global Markets...
Crypto Hardware Wallet Maker Ledger Strengthens Wallet Security with New BIP32 Derivation Rules
Ledger announced new BIP32 derivation rules that require hardened prefixes for its Bitcoin, Dogecoin and Bitcoin Cash applications. The change isolates each app’s key subtree, preventing cross‑application key exposure even if a single app is compromised. Enforcement begins on February 26...
VC Roundup: Crypto Funding Rebounds as Institutions Test Onchain Finance
Venture capital and institutional investors poured $1.4 billion into digital‑asset companies in early 2026, highlighted by Visa‑linked stablecoin issuer Rain’s $250 million raise at a $1.9 billion valuation and BitGo’s $200 million‑plus NYSE IPO. On‑chain finance startups such as Bitway, Everything, Veera and Prometheum...
NDSS 2025 – PropertyGPT
PropertyGPT leverages large language models to automatically generate formal verification properties for smart contracts, using a retrieval‑augmented pipeline that pulls similar human‑written properties from a vector database. The system iteratively refines generated properties with compilation and static‑analysis feedback to ensure...
XRP Slides 7% as Rapid Selling Breaks Major $1.79 Support
XRP dropped roughly 6.7% on Jan 31, sliding from $1.88 to near $1.75 after a Bitcoin‑driven crypto sell‑off triggered massive long liquidations. More than $70 million of XRP futures long positions were wiped out as price broke the key $1.79 support on...
Bitcoin 'Fear' Sentiment Hits a 2026 High as Price Downtrends Toward $80,000
Bitcoin slipped to $84,200, its lowest level since November 21, pushing the Santiment fear index to a 2026 peak. The surge in negative social‑media commentary marks a shift from cautious optimism to outright fear, a pattern often seen near market capitulation....
OrynteX Advances Multi-Asset Trading Platform With Ongoing System Enhancements
OrynteX announced a series of incremental enhancements to its multi‑asset trading platform, targeting improved reliability, execution consistency, and a unified user experience across stocks and cryptocurrencies. The updates are delivered through structured, governance‑driven processes that prioritize system stability over rapid...
NYSE's 24/7 Plan Could Fix Key Problem for Stock Tokens, Ondo's De Bode Says
Ondo Finance’s Ondo Global Markets platform has amassed over $500 million in total value locked and $7 billion in trading volume since its September 2025 launch, making it the largest tokenized‑stock provider. The broader market of tokenized equities is approaching $1 billion and grew...
The Institutional Phase of Tokenization: Why Environmental Credits Will Become the Largest Digital Asset Class of the Next Decade
Environmental credits are poised to become the largest tokenized asset class as institutions confront fragmented registries, costly MRV processes, and regulatory demand for transparent carbon data. Tokenization can streamline issuance, tracking, and retirement, turning manual spreadsheets into auditable digital tokens....
RoyalWelt Expands Regional Trading Capabilities to Support Broader Market Participation
RoyalWelt announced a multi‑region expansion of its equity and digital‑asset trading platform, emphasizing operational consistency, infrastructure scalability, and disciplined governance. The rollout introduces unified account views, standardized execution logic, and continuous performance monitoring to support users across diverse markets and...
How to Exchange XMR Without KYC: The Complete Guide to Private Monero Swaps in 2025
Monero’s privacy features have pushed users toward no‑KYC swap services as centralized exchanges increasingly delist or restrict the coin. Platforms such as GhostSwap allow instant BTC‑to‑XMR, ETH‑to‑XMR, and XMR‑to‑USDT trades without identity verification, using non‑custodial mechanisms. The guide highlights fee...
US Treasury Sanctions Iran-Linked Crypto Exchanges for First Time
The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has sanctioned two UK‑registered cryptocurrency exchanges, Zedcex Exchange Ltd. and Zedxion Exchange Ltd., marking the first time a digital‑asset platform has been targeted under the Iran sanctions regime. The designations cite...
Sustainable Economic Ecosystem by an EDM Artist: The Rise of SONS and So-Li
The Share‑On Network System (SONS) and Social Libertarianism (So‑Li) introduced by EDM artist SHARON. propose a sustainable economic and governance layer for the MCAI framework. SONS replaces zero‑sum, speculative capital flows with transparent, shared‑ownership allocation, while So‑Li embeds accountability as...
Bitcoin, Ether Fall as Shutdown Clock Hits and Markets Brace for a Messy Monday
Bitcoin hovered around $83,559 on Friday, gaining 1% but still down 6.8% for the week, while ether slipped to $2,686, off 1.9% daily and 9% weekly. Prices remained under pressure as the United States entered a partial shutdown after missing...
Coinbase Insider Trading Lawsuit Against Armstrong, Directors Moves Forward
A Delaware Chancery Court judge refused to dismiss a shareholder lawsuit accusing Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and board member Marc Andreessen of insider trading surrounding the company's 2021 direct listing. The complaint alleges insiders sold roughly $2.9 billion of stock, including...
Why Coin Nerds Inc Is Becoming a Trusted Name in Digital Asset Trading
Coin Nerds Inc is positioning itself as a trusted digital‑asset trading platform by combining physical storefronts with a robust online service. The company emphasizes education, transparent operations, and blockchain‑aligned security to attract both novice and seasoned traders. By simplifying access...
ElmonX Launches “Vitruvian Man” — Leonardo Da Vinci’s Iconic Study of Human Proportion Reimagined as a Digital Collectible
ElmonX announced the launch of a digital collectible version of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man on 3 February 2026, in partnership with Bridgeman Images. The limited‑edition NFT includes Artist Proofs that grant owners a handmade 70 g physical print, a gold‑foil Certificate of Authenticity,...
Polymarket, Kalshi Contract Limits Demonstrated in Latest U.S. Government Shutdown Fight
The U.S. government is set to enter a partial shutdown at midnight Saturday after the Senate approved a funding package that still requires House approval. Prediction‑market platforms Polymarket and Kalshi have launched contracts betting on the shutdown, each defining the...
Infinex Token Launches at $300 Million Valuation
Infinex, the DeFi super‑app led by Synthetix founder Kain Warwick, launched its INX token with a $330 million fully‑diluted valuation, pricing initially at $0.033 before slipping to $0.021 as early investors took profits. The platform’s ICO closed on Jan. 10, raising $7.2 million...
Polkadot Treasury Posts First OpenGov Profit as DOT Price Lags
Polkadot’s treasury posted its first net profit under the OpenGov model in Q4 2025, recording a gain of 1.6 million DOT despite a flat‑lined token price. Treasury outlays fell to $7.4 million, the lowest since the governance shift, with $2.5 million allocated to...
SpaceX-Tesla Merger Talks Puts Nearly 20,000 Bitcoin in Focus
Elon Musk’s exploratory merger talks involving SpaceX, Tesla, and possibly xAI have drawn attention to the combined bitcoin holdings of the two companies, which total nearly 20,000 BTC worth roughly $1.7 billion. Tesla reported a $239 million after‑tax loss on its digital...