📢 Bitwise Makes Major Move Into Staking

• Bitwise Asset Management has acquired Chorus One.
• Adds $2.2B in staked assets to Bitwise’s platform.
• Boosts support to 30+ proof-of-stake networks.

📢 China’s gold reserves reached a record $369.6 billion in January, marking the 15th straight month of purchases by the People’s Bank of China.

📢 Polymarket is pricing just a 33% probability that Trump brings up crypto or Bitcoin in tonight’s State of the Union speech.

📢 According to Santiment, Bitcoin’s correlation with stocks has dropped to its lowest level since the 2022 FTX collapse, with BTC down 43% over six months while gold climbed 51% and the S&P 500 rose 7%.

📢 NEAR Adds Privacy to Cross-Chain DeFi

• NEAR Protocol has introduced Confidential Intents, a new privacy layer.
• Lets users carry out cross-chain DeFi transactions without exposing key details.
• Aims to make onchain activity more secure while keeping it seamless.

📢 Bitcoin adoption has expanded from just 2 nation-states to 23. In 2025 alone, five more countries came on board Brazil, the Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Saudi Arabia, and Taiwan.

📢 Analyst James Seyffart says hedge funds and financial advisors were the biggest sellers in Q4, reducing ETF holdings equal to about 25,000 $BTC.

📢 Strategy has turned into the most shorted stock globally as sentiment shifts, following roughly $9.5B in paper losses tied to its Bitcoin exposure.

📢 According to River, the world’s largest investment advisors oversee $146T in assets and the top 29 all share one link: exposure to Bitcoin.

📢 Banco Braza Launches Real-Backed Stablecoin on Polygon

• Banco Braza has launched the Brazilian Real stablecoin $BBRL.
• The token is live on Polygon.
• Marks another step in bringing fiat-backed assets onchain in Latin America.

📢 In 2025, real-world asset growth on Ethereum outpaced the combined total of the next five blockchains.

📢 Stablecoin payment volume surged to $400B in 2025, doubling year over year, as Stripe described the trend as a “stablecoin summer” in its annual report.

📢 Korea Moves to Rein In Crypto Promotions🇰🇷

• South Korea’s ruling party has proposed a bill targeting crypto influencers.
• Would require disclosure of personal token holdings.
• Paid promotions would also need to be clearly stated.

📢 LookOnChain reports that FG Nexus has sold another 7,550 ETH (around $14M), after earlier dumping 21,025 ETH at an average price of $2,649.
The firm initially acquired 50,770 ETH at an average of $3,860 between August and September 2025. It still holds 30,094 $ETH and is currently facing an estimated unrealized loss of about $82.8M.

📢 Smarter Web Company has secured a $30M credit facility from Coinbase to increase its Bitcoin holdings.

📢 According to Arkham data, Vitalik Buterin has now sold 97% of his planned 16,384 $ETH, after offloading another 4,458 ETH worth $8.92M. He has just 504 ETH around $1.04M left to complete the sale.

📢 Tether Invests in Whop to Power Stablecoin Creator Payouts

• Tether has taken a strategic stake in Whop.
• Whop will integrate Tether’s Wallet Development Kit.
• Creators will be able to receive payouts in $USDT and $USAT.

📢 Tokenized U.S. Treasuries have crossed $10 billion in total value locked, underscoring the fast expansion of onchain financial infrastructure.

📢 Ethereum open interest has jumped by $929 million, up 9.4% in just the past few hours, according to a CryptoQuant analyst.

📢 The Ethereum Foundation has published its “Strawmap” roadmap, detailing plans to speed up L1 finality, scale to 10,000 TPS using zkEVMs, improve L2 performance, strengthen post-quantum security, and introduce built-in L1 privacy features.