Hong Kong SFC: Virtual asset development roadmap to be announced this month
According to the website of Hong Kong Radio, Leaf Chi-hang, Executive Director of the Intermediaries Division of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), expects that the virtual asset development roadmap will be announced within this month. The roadmap will not only outline the development principles, but also mention the areas that the SFC hopes to research with the market in the short term, as well as the areas that platform participants hope to optimize. Moreover, the focus of the virtual asset roadmap is not on the content itself, but on the SFC's courage to show the principles to the market and the attitude it provides for the market to consider.
Market news: LIBRA team is negotiating with the Nigerian government to launch a Meme coin
According to an unverified report cited by Beincrypto, the LIBRA team has also negotiated with Nigerian officials to issue another unstable meme coin. So far, there is no evidence that Nigerian President Bola Tinubu has a direct connection with LIBRA, but it is reported that his team is in close negotiations. LIBRA market maker CEO Hayden Davis claimed that he has received numerous invitations to assist in carrying out more "rug pull" scams. The controversial meme coin LIBRA backed by Argentine President Javier Milei has become the focus of large-scale fraud allegations. After the market value plummeted, President Milei denied any connection with LIBRA and faced investigation and impeachment threats. Even more shocking is that the LIBRA team plans to team up with the Nigerian government to launch a new meme coin. The key figure connecting LIBRA and Nigerian officials is Hayden Davis, CEO of Kelsier Ventures. As an American citizen, he may give the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Justice jurisdiction to investigate the LIBRA incident. Previously, Davis casually admitted to multiple major financial crimes in a lengthy interview, saying these crimes brought him new opportunities. Community sleuths speculate that Davis is the mastermind behind the meme coin MELANIA and related scams, and he confirmed these allegations in the interview. In other words, MELANIA may have given Davis influence to contact Nigerian officials even before LIBRA. The report could not confirm whether the Nigerian president was involved in this plan. However, Davis said "the project is progressing smoothly" and several members of his team are actively involved. Nigeria's recent enthusiasm for the cryptocurrency field lends credibility to these claims.
US exchange MEMX applies to SEC to approve its listing of 21Shares XRP ETF
According to Cointelegraph, the US exchange MEMX has applied to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to request approval to list the 21Shares XRP ETF as a "commodity-based trust", with the relevant documents submitted to the regulator. This marks another effort by a US exchange to list an ETF containing spot XRP. This application also highlights the SEC's changing stance on cryptocurrencies.
According to Cryptoslate, version 1.15.2 of the Ethereum protocol's key client Geth has been released to fix an error in the previous version that affected mainnet block creation. According to Go Ethereum, this emergency update resolves a regression issue in the beacon consensus engine that caused validators to miss block proposals and potentially incur economic penalties. A regression issue in earlier versions affected the consensus engine's handling of mainnet block construction, as it did not account for the case where MergeNetsplitBlock was not defined in the chain configuration. This change was introduced in a recent update to the beacon consensus engine, causing the mainnet to not be recognized as running under the PoS mechanism, disrupting block creation and network performance. Developers explained that the regression issue originated from the removal of a test method called TestingTTDBlock. This method was initially added during internal testing to simulate Merge blocks. After removing this method, the system no longer bypassed the dependency on total difficulty, whereas the previous mechanism allowed the engine to ignore the normal fork order and inadvertently enable the Merge before the London fork. Users running version 1.15.1 are advised to immediately upgrade to 1.15.2 to avoid missing block proposals and incurring economic penalties. Geth v1.15.2 now provides a configuration that can correctly identify the mainnet as being in the post-merge state and restore the necessary network discovery protocols, thereby restoring the expected operational parameters.
According to Zhitong Finance, sources said that OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever is raising over $1 billion for his AI startup Safe Superintelligence, valuing it at over $30 billion, making it one of the most valuable private tech companies globally. The sources said that the San Francisco-based venture capital firm Greenoaks Capital Partners is leading this funding round, planning to invest $500 million. Greenoaks has previously invested in AI companies ScaleAI and Databricks. The sources said that the prominent San Francisco-based venture capital firm Greenoaks Capital Partners is leading the investment in Safe Superintelligence, planning to invest up to $500 million. It is worth noting that Greenoaks is also a prominent investor in outstanding AI companies such as Scale AI and Databricks Inc., which undoubtedly adds more expectations for the future development of Safe Superintelligence. It is reported that this round of financing will significantly increase the valuation of Sutskever's company, from the previous $5 billion to a substantial increase. However, it is worth noting that the financing negotiations are still in full swing, and the relevant details may still be subject to changes.
Argentine President: Did not promote LIBRA, just shared LIBRA information
Argentine President Milei said in a TV program, "I acted in good faith, but ended up being attacked. The country did not lose, at most 4-5 Argentines lost. The vast majority of investors were Chinese and Americans. I shared this information, just like I've shared hundreds of other things. My tweet was sent out 3 minutes after the coin was created, because I'm passionate about these things and understood it. These are volatility traders who know what they're doing. The claim that 44,000 people were affected is false, at most 5,000. The likelihood of Argentines being involved is very small. These are people who are very professional in this financial instrument. Those who participated were very aware of the risks they were taking - they are volatility traders. This is a private matter between individuals, and they participated voluntarily. I did not promote LIBRA, I just shared LIBRA information. I did this because I am a firm technological optimist. Any initiative that can improve financing for tech entrepreneurs attracts me. I didn't make a mistake, because I acted in good faith. But when I saw the consequences, I realized I still have a lot to learn. I need to understand that even after becoming president, I still need to act the way I used to. Unfortunately, this situation made me realize that I need to raise my screening standards and not be so easily accessible."
According to FFNews, Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong), Animoca Brands and HKT have reached an agreement to establish a joint venture (JV) and plan to apply to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) for a license to issue a Hong Kong dollar-backed stablecoin. Standard Chartered Bank has rich experience in global stablecoin issuance and will provide the joint venture with bank-level infrastructure and strict governance. Animoca Brands will leverage its expertise and network in the Web3 field to drive the development of the project. HKT will utilize its mobile wallet expertise to promote innovative stablecoin applications and facilitate domestic and cross-border payments.
According to Cointelegraph, GetTrumpMemes announced that it will airdrop TRUMP tokens to users who purchased Trump-related merchandise before February 15.
Linea completes Sybil attack appeal review, removes 3,500 misidentified addresses
Linea officially announced that it has completed the review of the Sybil attack appeals in its ecosystem and updated the Sybil list based on the review results. This review confirmed 3,500 misidentified addresses and has removed them from the list. Users can check their account status through poh.linea.build.
Binance will list GPS and SHELL perpetual contracts
Binance will launch the following two perpetual contracts with a maximum leverage of 25x: February 18, 2025 01:00 (UTC+8): GPSUSDT perpetual contract February 18, 2025 01:15 (UTC+8): SHELLUSDT perpetual contract
Michael Saylor releases "21 Bitcoin Rules", emphasizing Bitcoin's unique value
MichaelSaylor, the founder of Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), tweeted a summary of the "21 Rules of Bitcoin". These rules emphasize the uniqueness and future importance of Bitcoin, including: those who understand Bitcoin will buy Bitcoin, while those who don't will criticize it; learning about Bitcoin is endless, and Bitcoin is driven by chaos; Bitcoin is the only "casino game" where we can all win; Bitcoin is the only thing you can truly own. Additionally, he mentioned that the funds used to purchase Bitcoin should be the part you "cannot afford to lose", and Bitcoin is open to everyone, but requires the ability to think and understand. He called for respecting Bitcoin and spreading it with love.
According to CoinDesk, the Abu Dhabi branch of global investment management firm Brevan Howard Digital has deployed $20 million in assets on the Kinto platform to participate in its on-chain financial ecosystem. Kinto is an Ethereum-based decentralized finance (DeFi) platform that provides customized blockchain and smart contract wallets, enabling financial institutions to deploy capital while meeting strict compliance requirements. Kinto is the only L2 platform that has built-in KYC and AML functionality at the blockchain layer, and also offers default wallet insurance and comprehensive security features. Kinto's mining program rewards participants for depositing assets, with rewards to be gradually distributed over the next 10 years. Brevan Howard Digital has become one of the first traditional financial institutions to utilize digital assets to participate in this program.
CZ denies Binance sale rumors, but may introduce a small amount of equity investment
Binance founder CZ (CZ) tweeted that the rumors about Binance (CEX) being sold are "nonsense". He clearly stated that as a shareholder, Binance is not for sale, and said that top investors have always been interested in Binance and may allow a small percentage of equity investment (a single-digit percentage) in the future.
Regarding the rumor that Binance is about to be sold, Binance co-founder He Yi responded on social media that the recent crisis management rumors may be an attempt by competitors to divert attention from Binance through mass article purchases. She emphasized that since Bitcoin's price broke new highs, Binance has continued to attract the attention of institutional investors, with inquiries about investment and cooperation every month. She also stated that Binance is not ruling out the introduction of strategic partners, and is willing to open up to mergers and acquisitions, but welcomes inquiries if other trading platforms have sale plans.
Binance will list BNX/USDC, TRUMP/FDUSD and other spot trading pairs
Binance will list BNX/USDC, CAKE/USDC, HEI/USDC, TRUMP/FDUSD and TST/FDUSD spot trading pairs on February 18, 2025 16:00 (UTC+8), and will also open trading bot services for the above trading pairs simultaneously.
CoinShares: Digital asset investment products saw net outflows of $415 million last week
According to the latest weekly data from CoinShares, digital asset investment products experienced significant outflows of $415 million, the first time after 19 consecutive weeks of record inflows. The main reason for the outflows was the hawkish comments from Fed Chair Powell and higher-than-expected US CPI data, which led to increased rate hike expectations. Bitcoin was the most affected, with outflows of $430 million. Most of the outflows came from the US, reaching $464 million, while other markets were relatively unaffected. Germany, Switzerland and Canada recorded inflows of $21 million, $12.5 million and $10.2 million respectively. Solana saw the largest inflows at $8.9 million, followed by XRP ($8.5 million) and Sui ($6 million). In addition, blockchain equities attracted $20.8 million in inflows, bringing the year-to-date total to $220 million.
According to Cryptoslate, as of December 31, 2024, institutional investors held 25.4% of the assets under management (AUM) of physical Bitcoin ETFs, totaling $26.8 billion. Vetle Lunde, research chief at K33 Research, said the proportion of institutional investors' holdings in Bitcoin ETFs grew 113% between the third and fourth quarters of 2024. In addition, due to a 69% surge in total AUM to $78.8 billion at the end of the fourth quarter, the proportion of institutional investors' holdings also grew 4.1% quarter-over-quarter. Lunde said the number of investors accessing Bitcoin through ETFs reached 1,576 in the last quarter, a 37.4% quarterly increase and a 68.2% annual increase. Lunde's data also shows that institutional interest in BlackRock's IBIT grew more than 4-fold in 2024. At the end of the fourth quarter last year, institutions held $16 billion in IBIT shares, compared to less than $4 billion at the end of the first quarter, with most of the growth occurring between the third and fourth quarters. According to data from Bold Report, BlackRock's physical Bitcoin ETF has $56.4 billion in AUM, while the total AUM of all other physical Bitcoin ETFs traded in the US is $56.9 billion.
Trump family crypto project WLFI withdraws 10 million USDC from Binance and buys 200 million WLFI
According to Onchain Lens monitoring, 6 hours ago, the newly created multi-signature wallet of the Trump family crypto project World Liberty Finance (WLFI) has withdrawn 10 million USDC from Binance and purchased 200 million WLFI.
According to Lookonchain monitoring, Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy will convert the $5 million USDC compensation from the LIBRA team into 27,688 SOL, and deposit 29,657 SOL (about $5.29 million) into Kraken.
Argentina's main stock index falls over 5.7% due to Milei crypto scandal
According to Reuters, Argentina's main stock index fell more than 5.7% yesterday due to the impact of the crypto scandal related to presidential candidate Milei.
