Today's news tips:
1. New York Times: The US SEC has reduced its enforcement efforts in the field of cryptocurrency
2. US lawmakers form House and Senate working groups to draft cryptocurrency and stablecoin bills
3. Acting Chairman of the U.S. CFTC: The CFTC no longer implements law enforcement supervision
4. Berachain plans to announce token economics tomorrow, launch mainnet and conduct token TGE on February 6
5. Jupiter will launch the JUP repurchase mechanism this week
6. Justin Sun: Li Lin concealed due diligence materials when selling Huobi, and there was a $30 million hole inside
7. Li Lin responded: There is no so-called "capital hole" and both parties have misunderstandings on the calculation method of financial data at the time of delivery
8. Semler Scientific, a US-listed company, spent $88.5 million to increase its holdings of 871 BTC
9. NYSE has submitted a 19b-4 filing application for Grayscale LTC ETF to the US SEC
Regulatory/Macro
Coinbase urges U.S. regulators to make it clear that banks can serve crypto businesses
Coinbase today sent a letter to the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Federal Reserve (Fed), and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), asking regulators to confirm whether banks can freely provide services to cryptocurrency companies and clarify the current status of banking services in the crypto industry.
In the letter, Coinbase asked the OCC to withdraw an interpretive letter that was considered to "effectively set a new application process for banking activities" and restrict banks from entering the crypto asset market. Coinbase also asked the Federal Reserve and the FDIC to confirm whether state-chartered banks are allowed to provide crypto custody and execution services and outsource them to third-party service providers.
According to Bloomberg, Coinbase said that existing federal law already authorizes banks to provide crypto services and work with third-party service providers, such as Coinbase. However, regulators still need to confirm this. To this end, Coinbase also invited three law firms to support this claim. Coinbase Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad said: "Regulators need to make it clear that banks can work with third parties to provide customers with crypto trading and exchange services."
The issue of U.S. banks servicing the crypto industry has been controversial. While banks like BNY Mellon have begun offering crypto custody services, there have also been reports that the FDIC has approached several U.S. banks to suspend crypto-related activities. In June 2024, Coinbase filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the FDIC, accusing the agencies of "jointly attempting to exclude crypto asset companies from basic banking services." In the ongoing legal battle, Coinbase Legal Director Paul Grewal reiterated the accusation in January 2025, arguing that the FDIC deliberately concealed crypto-related "suspension letters" in the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
New York Times: US SEC scales back its enforcement efforts in the cryptocurrency sector
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is shrinking a special team of more than 50 lawyers and staff that was once responsible for cryptocurrency enforcement actions, according to five people familiar with the matter. The move is one of the first concrete steps taken by President Trump and his administration to reduce regulation of cryptocurrencies and other digital assets. One of Trump's first executive orders aims to promote the development of cryptocurrencies and "eliminate excessive regulation of digital assets."
Some lawyers on the cryptocurrency group are being assigned to other parts of the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to people familiar with the matter. A senior lawyer on the group was transferred out of the enforcement division, a move that some people familiar with the move called an unfair demotion.
Current SEC Acting Chairman Mark T. Uyeda made a series of appointments while reshuffling other top positions at the SEC. The commission hired more than 1,000 lawyers. One of the first things Uyeda did after taking office was to form a group to review the SEC's approach to digital assets. The working group is led by SEC Commissioner and outspoken cryptocurrency supporter Hester Peirce.
US lawmakers form House and Senate working groups to draft cryptocurrency and stablecoin bills
U.S. lawmakers are forming a working group, including members of key committees in the House and Senate, to develop a regulatory framework for digital assets and stablecoins. At a press conference on Tuesday, David Sacks, the White House's chief of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency affairs, announced the formation of the bicameral working group together with Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman, House Financial Services Committee Chairman French Hill, and House Agriculture Committee Chairman GT Thompson.
The Senate is already moving forward with stablecoin regulation. Senator Bill Hagerty introduced a bill on Tuesday that would create a regulatory framework, including parameters for whether issuers are regulated by the federal government or state governments. Hill said future stablecoin bills will be "very similar" to the Senate's proposal. Hill said at a press conference on Tuesday that future bills regulating the overall market structure of cryptocurrencies will be similar to the Financial Innovation and Technology Act for the 21st Century (FIT21), and emphasized its bipartisan support.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) newly formed cryptocurrency working group will have a host of priorities as the agency takes a different direction than in past years. The task force, led by Republican Commissioner Hester Peirce, will work to distinguish which “crypto assets” are securities, potentially change how companies are registered, and provide clarity when approving or disapproving exchange-traded products.
Peirce outlined her to-do list in a statement on Tuesday, including a link to the cryptocurrency task force, while noting that the list is not exhaustive. Peirce said one of the priorities is to classify certain tokens as “not securities.” “The task force is also considering the possibility of recommending to the Commission that it take action to provide temporary prospective and retroactive exemptions for certain token issuances, provided that the issuing entity or other entity willing to assume liability provides certain specific information, keeps that information current, and agrees not to challenge the Commission’s jurisdiction in cases involving fraudulent purchases and sales of assets,” Peirce said. “We will work with other parts of the federal government, state securities regulators, and our international counterparts, and invite builders, enthusiasts, and skeptics to engage with us to determine what the final rule should be and what interim measures can be taken to promote innovation in the meantime,” Peirce said.
At a joint Washington press conference with key congressional committee leaders on Tuesday, President Donald Trump’s newly appointed “cryptocurrency czar” David Sacks outlined the new administration’s broad pro-crypto agenda. When asked about the role of cryptocurrencies in the recently proposed U.S. sovereign wealth fund, Sacks revealed that evaluating potential Bitcoin reserves is a top priority for a task force within the administration.
"We are still waiting for some cabinet secretaries on the working group to be confirmed, but once they are confirmed, one of our first tasks will be to assess the feasibility of Bitcoin reserves," Sacks said in response to reporters' questions. He added that sovereign wealth funds are a different concept and Trump's nominee for Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick will be in charge of the matter.
Acting Chairman of the U.S. CFTC: The CFTC no longer implements law enforcement supervision
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has reorganized its enforcement division to “refocus” on combating fraud and “stop regulating through enforcement,” acting CFTC Chairwoman Caroline Pham said on Tuesday.
Previously, under the leadership of former CFTC Chairman Rostin Behnam, the CFTC's Enforcement Division had several working groups, including one focused on insider trading, one focused on cybersecurity and emerging technologies, and one aimed at combating environmental fraud. The reorganization reduces the number of working groups to two. The newly established "Complex Fraud Working Group" is responsible for handling enforcement of complex fraud and manipulation in all asset classes, from preliminary investigations to litigation. Deputy Director of Enforcement Paul Hayeck will serve as the acting head of the Complex Fraud Working Group. The "Retail Fraud and General Enforcement Working Group" will be responsible for handling retail fraud and general enforcement matters, and will be led by Charles Marvine, who also serves as Deputy Director of Enforcement.
“This streamlined structure will stop regulating through enforcement and increase efficiency,” Pham said in a press statement. “These much-needed reforms will maximize the CFTC’s resources to take more action against fraudsters and other bad actors, rather than punishing law-abiding citizens.” According to the CFTC’s announcement, the new structure will “more efficiently utilize CFTC resources to prevent fraudulent, manipulative, and abusive conduct and ensure market integrity,” while also “providing enhanced governance and oversight of enforcement matters to prevent over-enforcement and enhance consistency, fairness, and due process.”
Ohio Senator Introduces Bill to Create Bitcoin Reserve and Accept It as Payment
According to Bitcoin Magazine, U.S. Ohio Senator Sandra O'Brien has introduced a bill that would establish a Bitcoin reserve and require state entities to accept Bitcoin as a form of payment.
Project News
NYSE has submitted a 19b-4 filing application for Grayscale LTC ETF to the US SEC
Litecoin official said on the X platform that NYSE has now submitted a 19b-4 filing application for Grayscale LTC ETF to the US SEC, seeking to convert its Litecoin (LTC) Trust into a spot ETF.
It is reported that a 19b-4 application refers to a rule change proposal submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), usually submitted by an exchange (such as NYSE or Nasdaq) in order to list new financial products (such as ETFs).
Berachain plans to announce token economics tomorrow, launch mainnet and token TGE on February 6
Berachain Foundation officially announced that the Berachain token TGE will be carried out simultaneously with the mainnet launch, and the token economics and Checker (or airdrop checker) will be launched tomorrow. Earlier today , the Berachain Foundation announced that the Berachain mainnet will be launched on February 6, 2025.
The XRP Ledger spontaneously recovered this morning after a block production outage of about an hour, a rare outage for the network. Network activity froze at Ledger height 93927173, prompting validators to immediately launch an investigation. The XRP Ledger subsequently resumed normal operations with no reported asset or transaction losses.
David Schwartz, CTO of XRPL, said on the X platform: "It looks like the consensus mechanism is still running, but the verification results are not published, resulting in the separation of the network. As far as I know, few UNL (Unique Node List) operators have made any changes, so the network may have recovered spontaneously." The UNL mentioned by Schwartz is a core component of the XRPL consensus mechanism. It serves as a directory of trusted validators to ensure the integrity of the network and the finality of transactions.
Mode-based Ionic platform hacked, losing about $8.8 million
According to the official announcement of Ionic, the Ionic platform based on Mode was hacked. The hacker used unofficial fake LBTC (Lombard BTC) as collateral for lending on the Ionic platform. The team is investigating. According to the monitoring of the security company QuillAudits, the estimated loss of this attack is about 8.8 million US dollars.
On-chain detective ZachXBT said: Ionic's predecessor was the Midas protocol. Midas suffered two hacker attacks in 2023, but the Ionic project used the old audit report of Midas in 2022 when it was launched. In this regard, ZachXBT sent a private message to the team to question the security of Ionic's contract. The team said that their code base was based on the Compound fork, and the vulnerabilities in Midas were caused by known vulnerabilities in the Compound code. These problems have been fixed by implementing whitelists and reentrancy attack circuit breakers in the new pool, emphasizing that Ionic is very safe.
Jupiter to launch JUP buyback mechanism this week
Jupiter founder meow announced the initial repurchase plan on the X platform at the end of last month, which is to transfer JUP to the repurchase wallet every week, make a fixed investment in JUP, and lock it in the litterbox for at least 3 years. More details will be shared when the repurchase plan starts in the week starting February 3 (this week).
Previously, the network stated that half (or 50%) of the protocol fees will be used for long-term holding buybacks, and the remaining 50% will be invested in the project's growth, future strategy, and overall operational stability.
The Celestia (TIA) community has launched a new proposal to reduce TIA's inflation rate by 33%. In response to the proposal, Celestia founder Mustafa Al-Bassam said in a post: "I support this proposal. When we first decided on the inflation rate, we referred to Solana's inflation plan to keep it relatively simple because we didn't want to follow the Cosmos standard inflation plan (i.e. a permanent 10% inflation rate). The recent community consensus is that this number is still too high, and now Solana is also proposing to reduce the inflation rate, so it's time for Celestia to adjust. I think a 33% reduction is the right balance, which can effectively adjust the inflation curve without overly endangering the security of the crypto economy."
Tether Data, the AI division of Tether, will launch an open source AI SDK platform
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said in a post on X that Tether Data is developing applications such as AI translation, AI voice assistant, and AI Bitcoin wallet assistant. Tether is about to launch its own AI SDK platform, which is open source and built on Bare (Holepunch's JavaScript runtime) and can run on any hardware, from embedded devices, any mobile phone (whether budget or high-performance), any laptop, powerful server to server cluster. Tether Data's applications will focus on running locally on any device, ensuring complete privacy and self-custody (including data and funds).
Stripe completes $1.1 billion acquisition of Bridge and is preparing to promote stablecoins
Payment company Stripe officially completed its acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure company Bridge on Tuesday, spending $1.1 billion. This is Stripe's largest acquisition to date, marking its major layout in the stablecoin field.
Bridge's team of about 60 people has joined Stripe's headquarters in San Francisco. Bridge focuses on helping companies accept stablecoin payments while reducing the complexity of direct exposure to digital assets. Its clients include Coinbase and SpaceX. Stripe supported Bitcoin payments in 2014, but terminated related services in 2018. The acquisition of Bridge enables it to optimize cross-border payment solutions and expand stablecoin payment infrastructure.
Financing
Taproot Wizards is raising $30 million in a new round of financing, led by Standard Crypto
Bitcoin Ordinals project Taproot Wizards is raising $30 million in its first post-seed round. This round of financing is led by Standard Crypto, an early supporter of Taproot Wizards, and participated by Cyberfund, Collider Ventures and other institutions. The project will use the new funds to promote the development of the OP_CAT ecosystem to enhance Bitcoin's smart contract capabilities.
It is reported that Taproot Wizards was founded in 2023. In February 2023, the minting of Taproot Wizard #0001 produced a 4MB block, which was the largest block and transaction in Bitcoin at that time. The team also launched the Ordinals series Quantum Cats, which is currently the highest market value among Bitcoin NFT projects.
Previously in November 2023, Taproot Wizards completed US$7.5 million in financing .
Olas, an autonomous AI agent platform in the crypto space, has raised $13.8 million to support the launch of its “agent app store” called Pearl. This round of financing was led by 1kx, with participation from Tioga Capital, Sigil Fund, Zee Prime Capital, Borderless, Keyrock and other companies. The Olas team said the funds will be used to support its agent app store, which aims to democratize access to user-owned AI agents.
Along with the announcement of the funding, Olas also launched the Olas Accelerator program, which offers $1 million in grants and OLAS token rewards to developers who build agents on the platform. Olas' technology stack includes the Olas Stack and the Olas Protocol, which incentivize the creation and co-ownership of AI agents. The team said it has facilitated more than 3.5 million transactions from agents across nine blockchains.
DePIN project Beamable completes $13.5 million Series A financing, led by Bitkraft Ventures
Decentralized gaming infrastructure platform Beamable has completed a $13.5 million Series A financing round led by Bitkraft Ventures, with participation from Arca, Advancit Capital, 2Punks, P2 Ventures, Solana Foundation, Scytale Digital, defy.vc, GrandBanks Capital and Permit Ventures.
The new round of funding is intended to accelerate the development and expansion of the Beamable Network, a decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) that aims to change the way gaming backend infrastructure is built and operated.
Viewpoint
Sun Yuchen said in a post on X: “People familiar with the situation know that Li Lin concealed the due diligence materials at the time (when selling Huobi), and there was a $30 million hole inside. In the end, I discovered his manipulation. After it was exposed, he cheated and refused to give me a penny. I lent it to the company to fill it.
In response to Sun Yuchen's questioning, Huobi founder Li Lin said that during the HTX delivery process in October 2022, the two parties had major differences in the calculation method of user assets, and had communicated with Sun Yuchen many times. Sun Yuchen also made it clear that he hoped to further check the accounts and clarify the facts. Therefore, this is not the so-called "concealment of transfer" or "fund hole", but because the delivery has been completed for two years, the core personnel and financial data have changed greatly, resulting in the two parties' misunderstanding of the calculation method of financial data at the time of delivery. The "US$30 million fund hole" mentioned by Sun Yuchen is essentially a position-breaking caused by extreme market conditions when the trading platform operates margin trading (leverage) business. At the time of delivery, this part of the financial processing has been done with the company's income, and the assets delivered to the seller completely cover the user's assets, and there is no so-called "fund hole". We fully support fair rulings through the Hong Kong courts or third-party arbitration institutions, and safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of all parties through legal means, rather than unilaterally using social media for unilateral trials.
Anthony Scaramucci, founder of Skybridge Capital, said that Trump's capriciousness will bring short-term turbulence to the crypto market. Although Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are long-term winners, they must withstand Trump's all-round attacks. However, Anthony Scaramucci said that Skybridge Capital will go all out in cryptocurrencies. His company holds digital assets worth $1.4 billion, accounting for 57% of all assets managed by the company. In addition, more than 60% of his personal wealth is in Bitcoin.
Anthony Scaramucci added that it would be a very powerful move if it were to gain full institutional adoption, allowing banks to custody cryptocurrencies, hold them on their own balance sheets, and use their capital to become major investors in cryptocurrencies.
Important data
Semler Scientific, a US-listed company, spent $88.5 million to increase its holdings of 871 BTC
Semler Scientific, a US-listed company, announced today that it has spent $88.5 million to increase its holdings of 871 BTC. Since July 1, 2024, Semler Scientific's BTC yield has been 152%, and it currently holds 3,192 BTC.
Earlier news , Semler Scientific completed the pricing of $85 million convertible senior bonds with an annual interest rate of 4.25%, which will mature in 2030, and the initial conversion price is $76.44 per share, a 25% premium over the closing price on January 23. Part of the proceeds ($6.6 million) will be used for capped option transactions, and the remaining funds will be used for corporate purposes, including Bitcoin investment.
According to Onchain Lens, Tether minted 1 billion USDT on the Tron network in the past 6 hours. Since 2025, Tether has minted a total of 2 billion USDT on the Tron network. Circle minted 250 million USDC on Solana. Since 2025, Circle has minted a total of 65 USDC on Solana.
According to Messari data, Solana's on-chain GDP (total application revenue) increased by 213% month-on-month to $840 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. Among them, Pump Fun's revenue in the quarter was $235 million, a month-on-month increase of 242%; Photon's revenue in the quarter was $140 million, a month-on-month increase of 278%; Raydium's revenue in the quarter was $74 million, a month-on-month increase of 268%; BullX's revenue in the quarter was $73 million, a month-on-month increase of 260%; Trojan's revenue in the quarter was $63 million, a month-on-month increase of 187%.
According to on-chain analyst @ai_9684xtpa, a certain ETH whale is reducing its holdings of 4,117 ETH (US$11.37 million) bought in 2021, with an estimated profit of US$2.45 million. Previously, the whale did not sell these ETH when the price rose to US$4,800 in the last bull market.
He bought 7,693 ETH at an average price of $2,167 during the period from February to September 2021. In the past 13 hours, he exchanged 2,117 of them for WBTC and deposited another 2,000 into Binance.
He currently still holds 30,797 ETH, most of which are staked in EigenLayer and ether.fi.
According to Onchain Lens, a trader turned $1,854 into $2.28 million in SSE tokens. The trader bought 108,614,413 SSE at 9.35 SOL ($1,854) on Pump.Fun. The trader has not sold any tokens yet and currently has a floating profit of $2.28 million.
