Today's top news highlights:

Regulatory news

SEC Chairman: Providing a clear regulatory framework for digital assets is one of the SEC's priorities this year.

In a post on the X platform, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Paul Atkins outlined the SEC's three priorities for 2026 during his testimony before Congress: focusing on fraud investigation and investor protection, reforming disclosure rules, and providing a clear regulatory framework for digital assets.

Atkins stated that the SEC will protect investor rights through targeted enforcement and cross-border enforcement task forces, while emphasizing the need to modernize, rationalize, and streamline the reporting system to make it meaningful and easy for investors to understand. Regarding digital assets, Atkins acknowledged that establishing a clear regulatory framework for crypto assets has been "long overdue," and stated that as Congress moves forward with relevant legislation, the SEC will collaborate with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission through "Project Crypto" to clarify regulatory obligations for investors and innovators.

UK digital bonds will be issued through HSBC's blockchain platform, Orion.

According to Bloomberg, the UK Treasury has selected HSBC Holdings' blockchain platform, Orion, for a pilot issuance of digital gilt-edged bonds in the country. In a statement on Thursday, HSBC said that issuing bonds based on blockchain technology could speed up settlements, thereby improving the structure of the UK debt capital markets. The UK government plans to issue DIGIT digital gilt-edged bonds in a regulated testing environment managed by the Financial Conduct Authority, and issued a tender for this in October last year.

Thailand has approved amendments to the Derivatives Act, allowing digital assets to be used as collateral for derivatives.

According to Decrypt, the Thai cabinet has approved amendments to the Derivatives Act, allowing digital assets to be used as underlying assets for regulated derivatives, further solidifying their status as investment assets within Thailand's formal capital market framework.

Pornanong Budsaratragoon, Secretary General of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Thailand, stated that this move will promote more inclusive market growth, drive portfolio diversification and risk management optimization, and expand investment opportunities for a wider range of investors. The agency will begin drafting supporting rules, revising the scope of derivatives trading licenses, clarifying regulatory requirements for exchanges and clearinghouses, and coordinating with the Thailand Futures Exchange to develop contract standards adapted to the risk characteristics of digital assets.

Project Updates

YZi Labs launches EASY Residency S3 interviews, focusing on eight cutting-edge Web3 tracks.

YZi Labs announced on its official blog that interviews for EASY Residency S3 have officially begun, focusing on eight cutting-edge areas within the Web3 space. These areas include: next-generation oracles, on-chain forex and stablecoins, proprietary AMM models, traditional risk-based crypto insurance, sovereign privacy infrastructure, everyday DeFi applications, prediction market perpetual contracts, and alternative RWAs. YZi Labs stated that it has already contacted some outstanding teams in these areas but is still seeking more builders.

Citibank enables the entire process of tokenizing bank drafts on-chain using Solana.

According to an official announcement from Solana, Citibank has tokenized a bill of exchange and completed its entire lifecycle (from issuance to settlement) on Solana.

Trump family crypto project WLFI plans to launch the forex platform World Swap

According to CoinDesk, Zak Folkman, co-founder of World Liberty Financial, a crypto project linked to the Trump family, revealed at the Consensus Hong Kong conference that the project plans to launch a forex platform called World Swap as part of its USD1 stablecoin ecosystem. Folkman stated that World Swap aims to simplify cross-border transfers, challenging the high fees of 2% to 10% per transaction charged by traditional remittance services, allowing users to send and receive digital dollars in a manner similar to mainstream payment applications.

Folkman stated that further details will be announced later this month at an event at Mar-a-Lago. In January, AMG Software Solutions, the Puerto Rican company that owns the intellectual property rights to World Swap, was found to have registered trademarks related to World Swap.

Binance: The Alpha airdrop can be claimed at 21:00 today, with a minimum requirement of 240 points.

Binance announced on its X platform that users are invited to claim the Binance Alpha airdrop today at 21:00 (UTC+8). Users holding at least 240 Binance Alpha Credits are eligible to claim the token airdrop. Claims are on a first-come, first-served basis until the airdrop pool is depleted or the event ends. Further details will be announced later. The specific token to be airdropped will be announced shortly.

Binance will list Espresso (ESP) and add a seed tag to it.

According to the official announcement, Binance will list Espresso (ESP) on February 12, 2026 at 21:00 (UTC+8) and open the following spot trading pairs: ESP/USDT, ESP/USDC, and ESP/TRY. ESP deposits will open one hour later, and withdrawals are expected to open on February 13, 2026 at 21:00 (UTC+8).

*Please note that ESP will be listed and traded during the Binance Alpha event (time to be announced later); however, once spot trading begins, Binance Alpha will no longer display the asset. Users with ESP in their Binance Alpha accounts can continue to sell the token using Alpha Instant for up to one hour after spot trading opens, and orders and trading volume following spot trading will not be counted towards Binance Alpha Points.

Binance will remove several spot trading pairs, including AT/BNB and AVAX/BNB.

According to a Binance announcement, based on recent review results, Binance will remove and cease trading the following spot trading pairs at 16:00 (UTC+8) on February 13, 2026: AT/BNB, AVAX/BNB, BANANA/BTC, COTI/BTC, FF/BNB, HIVE/BTC, IO/BNB, LRC/BTC, MANA/BTC, SAGA/BNB, W/FDUSD, XPL/BNB, and ZK/BTC.

Coinbase launches AZTEC perpetual contract trading

Coinbase International and Coinbase Advanced have launched full trading mode for the AZTEC-PERP perpetual contract market, supporting order types such as limit, market, stop, and stop-limit.

Upbit and Bithumb will delist the FLOW token.

South Korean cryptocurrency exchanges Upbit and Bithumb have both announced that they will end trading support for the FLOW token on March 16, 2026.

Opinions & Analysis

Musk: xAI was restructured a few days ago to improve execution efficiency.

Musk posted on the X platform: "To improve efficiency, xAI underwent a restructuring a few days ago. As a company grows, especially a rapidly growing one like xAI, its organizational structure must evolve like any living organism. Unfortunately, this has led to some farewells. We wish them all the best in their future endeavors. The company is actively hiring. If anyone is interested in the idea of building large-scale autonomous vehicles on the moon, feel free to join xAI."

Changpeng Zhao: An English and Chinese AMA will be held at Binance Square at 23:00 today.

Binance founder Changpeng Zhao announced that he will be hosting a live AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Binance Square in both Chinese and English at 23:00 Beijing time today, where you can ask him any questions.

Strategy's perpetual preferred stock (STRC) has returned to its $100 par value, potentially opening up room for a new round of Bitcoin accumulation.

According to CoinDesk, Strategy's perpetual preferred stock, STRC, climbed back above $100 par value during Wednesday's US trading session, the first time since mid-January. This price level is a key threshold for the company to initiate a market-price offering to further increase its Bitcoin holdings.

STRC touched $100 on January 16, when Bitcoin was around $97,000. When Bitcoin fell to $60,000 on February 5, STRC briefly dipped to $93, but recently recovered to par value with the market rebound. This product uses a monthly dividend reset mechanism, currently offering an annualized dividend yield of 11.25%, designed to smooth volatility and incentivize trading prices to converge towards par value.

Caixin: The disposal of assets in Qian Zhimin's money laundering case involving 60,000 bitcoins has reached a stalemate; a hearing will be held on February 16.

According to Caixin, the asset disposal in the Qian Zhimin money laundering case, in which 8,300 Chinese victims have filed for compensation of 60,000 bitcoins, has reached a stalemate. Multiple law firms are representing the victims, each acting independently. British judges believe that this has resulted in issues such as repeated submissions, repeated arguments, and a prolonged process, while legal fees have also skyrocketed, ultimately requiring the Chinese victims to pay.

It is reported that on the eve of the Lunar New Year and the first day of the Lunar New Year (February 16th and 17th, 2026), the UK High Court will hold a hearing on the asset disposal procedures for the highly publicized money laundering case involving over 30 billion yuan and nearly 130,000 Chinese victims. This case involves 60,000 Bitcoins. Furthermore, the price of Bitcoin has fluctuated significantly; the market value of the 60,000 Bitcoins has shrunk from a peak of approximately 54 billion yuan on October 6th, 2025, to approximately 31 billion yuan in early February 2026.

Binance CEO: The "October 11th crash" affected all exchanges; Binance was not the root cause.

At the Consensus Hong Kong conference, Binance co-CEO Richard Teng stated that the cryptocurrency market liquidation on October 11th last year was not initiated by Binance. However, following China's implementation of rare earth metal controls and the US announcement of a new round of tariffs, large-scale liquidations occurred across all exchanges—centralized and decentralized. Approximately 75% of the liquidations occurred around 9 PM Eastern Time, along with two unrelated, isolated events: a stablecoin de-pegging and "some delays in asset transfers." The US stock market lost $1.5 trillion in market capitalization that day, with $150 billion in liquidations occurring in the US stock market alone. The cryptocurrency market was much smaller, around $19 billion, and the liquidations occurred across all exchanges.

He also responded that Binance provided support to some affected users that day, while other exchanges did not take similar action. Teng cited data showing that Binance's trading volume reached $34 trillion last year, serving 300 million users, and the platform did not experience large-scale withdrawals. On a macro level, Teng believes that interest rate policy uncertainty and geopolitical tensions continue to affect crypto asset prices, but institutions and companies are still continuously entering the market. "Retail demand has weakened compared to last year, but institutional deployment remains strong; smart money is entering the market," he emphasized, stressing the need to pay attention to the industry's structural evolution and fundamental development over the past four to six years.

Important data

Bitcoin spot ETFs saw a total net outflow of $276 million yesterday, with Fidelity FBTC experiencing the largest net outflow at $92.5958 million.

Ethereum spot ETFs saw a total net outflow of $129 million yesterday, with Fidelity's FETH ETF experiencing the largest net outflow at $67.0874 million.

Ethereum Holdings Report: Over 60% of total supply is held in ETH2 deposit contracts; Rain Lohmus is the largest individual holder.

According to Arkham's 2026 Ethereum holdings analysis report, the address holding the most ETH is currently the Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract, which has deposited over 76.3 million ETH (worth approximately $240 billion), accounting for over 60% of the total ETH supply. Exchange Binance ranks second with 4.1 million ETH (approximately $13 billion) (representing client holdings), ETF issuer BlackRock holds 3.4 million ETH (approximately $11 billion), and Ethereum treasury company Bitmine has confirmed on-chain holdings of 2.9 million ETH (approximately $9 billion), with its total holdings reportedly exceeding 4.1 million ETH.

Among individual holders, Rain Lohmus, an Ethereum presale investor, tops the list with 250,000 ETH (approximately $786 million), but the private key to his wallet has been lost. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin holds 240,000 ETH (approximately $754 million), making him the second-largest individual holder of ETH and the largest individual holder with currently accessible addresses.

The U.S. government holds approximately 60,000 ETH, primarily from asset seizures in the Brian Krewson, Potapenko/Turogin, and Bitfinex hacks. The report indicates that exchange addresses constitute the majority of the top 20 ETH holders.

Binance SAFU Fund purchased another 4,545 BTC, bringing the total $1 billion investment to its maximum.

At 13:57 Beijing time today, 4,545 BTC (worth approximately $305 million) were transferred from Binance to the Binance SAFU Fund. The Binance SAFU Fund address now holds 15,000 BTC, worth $1.005 billion.

Alameda's bankruptcy administration distributed over $15 million in SOL (Social Security) to creditors.

In its latest monthly distribution, the Alameda Research insolvency administrator distributed over $15 million worth of SOL to creditors. A total of $15.6 million in SOL was transferred to 25 separate addresses as part of a 21-month ongoing distribution program. Alameda's on-chain wallet currently holds $314.95 million worth of SOL.

A new wallet received 2,100 XAUTs from Bitfinex, worth $10.58 million.

According to Onchain Lens monitoring, a newly created wallet "0xcF7" received 2,100 XAUTs (worth $10.58 million) from Bitfinex.

Bitwise CEO: One of our clients bought $11 million worth of Bitcoin for the first time during the market correction.

Binance Alpha will list oooo (OOOO) on December 30th.

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