economy

According to Sing Tao Daily, the Hong Kong Chief Executive's Policy Unit held a digital finance seminar on February 8, 2026. Participants included a research team from the Financial Research Institute of the People's Bank of China, the chairman of the board of Yuan Coin Technology, members of the Web 3.0 Development Task Force, and experts such as former Monetary Authority Chief Executive Norman Chan.The meeting discussed how Hong Kong can contribute to the country's goal of becoming a "financial powerhouse" through the high-quality development of digital finance. The focus was on three main aspects: the application scenarios of digital finance, balancing regulation with innovative development, and connecting with the mainland's digital financial infrastructure to achieve coordinated development.The head of the Chief Executive's Policy Unit, Huang Yuanshan, stated that Hong Kong should seize the wave of digitalization and promote high-quality financial development to support the goal of becoming a financial powerhouse. Hong Kong has advantages in technological infrastructure, an active market, and a favorable policy environment. The application of digital finance should shift from financial innovation to serving the real economy, such as promoting the tokenization of assets to extend to real-world assets like precious metals and renewable energy, addressing issues like poor liquidity and cumbersome transactions associated with traditional assets.

Animoca Brands and Ethoswarm (under CryptoSlam) announced a strategic partnership to jointly launch a new service, Animoca Minds, aimed at promoting the development of the Agent Economy.According to the introduction, Animoca Minds is built on the Ethoswarm protocol, with the goal of eliminating the hardware and technical barriers for AI applications, reducing complexity, and enabling non-technical users to deploy and operate sovereign and sustainably functioning AI agents. Users can "wake up" personalized, cloud-resident AI agents through Animoca Minds and interact with them using natural language, supporting communication methods such as email and Telegram.The platform offers a variety of preset agent roles to choose from, including market researchers for real-time industry trend analysis and crypto scouts for discovering emerging Web3 applications, helping users understand and explore the practical application scenarios of agent AI. Blockchain technology is utilized to support functions such as identity, economic incentives, and traceability, while related on-chain operations have been abstracted and simplified to enhance the overall user experience.

BNB Chain announced on platform X that the "AI Agent Economy" has launched on BNB Chain, and the ERC-8004 infrastructure has been deployed on the BSC mainnet and testnet.This standard aims to establish a trust layer for AI agents by introducing two core components: identity registration and reputation registration, providing verifiable on-chain identity and reputation systems for autonomously operating AI agents.

According to Jinshi News, Richmond Fed President Barkin stated that the Federal Reserve's rate-cutting measures help ensure the health of the labor market while working to complete the "last mile" of bringing inflation back to the 2% target. He noted that the unemployment rate remains at historically low levels, and inflation is currently about 1 percentage point above the target, but is expected to decline in the coming months. Barkin anticipates that the economy will remain resilient in 2026, with businesses confident in sustained demand.

According to Jinshi reports, Federal Reserve's Bostic stated that the strong economic conditions will effectively curb the spread of deflation.

According to Jinshi, Federal Reserve's Bostic stated that the outlook for 2026 is that the economy will continue to remain strong.

According to Jinshi, Fed's Musalem expects the economy to continue growing at a rate above trend level, driven by credit conditions and fiscal policy.

According to Jinshi, U.S. President Trump reiterated his criticism of Federal Reserve Chairman Powell and called for the Fed to cut interest rates to stimulate economic growth.

zCloak AI recently released its white paper and officially launched, building a new generation of trust infrastructure for the AI-native economy, directly addressing the trust gap in identity, claims, privacy, and discovery in the AI era. Its core ATP protocol reshapes trusted interactions with "four pillars": clarifying responsible parties through AI-ID and human-readable AI-Name; achieving verifiable claims with digital signatures and third-party notarization; completing compliance verification without disclosing privacy using zero-knowledge proofs and identity-based encryption; and putting transactions, contracts, and reputation records on-chain to form a traceable, tamper-proof audit trail.At the same time, the ATP Data Plane built on ICP provides a machine-native, structured data foundation that supports efficient semantic search and collaboration for AI Agents, bridging the "discovery gap." Surrounding Keychain, AgentPages, and MCP Server, zCloak AI makes complex cryptography invisible, promoting the automated closed loop of AI Agents from discovery, negotiation to transaction, accelerating the realization of a trusted AI economy.

According to Jinshi reports, Federal Reserve Governor Bowman stated that the economy is expected to grow "robustly," inflation will decline, and the labor market will also stabilize.

Base co-founder Jesse Pollak stated that Base is adjusting the positioning of the Base App to be "trading-first" in order to drive the demand and distribution of on-chain assets, covering a wider range of asset types.He pointed out that the goal of the Base App is to become the preferred application for users participating in the on-chain economy, whether for trading, using assets, or engaging in other on-chain activities, all of which can be done within the app.

According to Jinshi, Federal Reserve official Kashkari stated that the current economic situation is confusing, and the job market is showing signs of weakness.

According to Jinshi, U.S. President Trump stated that the Federal Reserve Chairman has stifled every economic rebound.

According to Jinshi News, New York Fed President Williams expects the U.S. economy to remain healthy in 2026 and suggests there is no reason for interest rate cuts in the short term. He stated that the current monetary policy is in good shape, which helps support labor market stability and drives inflation back to the 2% target. Williams anticipates this year's GDP growth rate to be between 2.5% and 2.75%, the unemployment rate to stabilize, and inflation pressures to peak in the first half of this year between 2.75% and 3%, averaging 2.5% for the year.

According to Jinshi reports, Federal Reserve's Bostic stated that inflation remains one of the main challenges facing the economy.

The founder of Gate, Dr. Han, proposed in the 2025 year-end open letter that "a Gate App connects the complete digital economic life" as the core goal for the platform's next phase towards Web3. He pointed out that the industry's focus is shifting from short-term price fluctuations to the robustness of platforms, asset transparency, and long-term ecological capabilities. With significant improvements in blockchain performance, cross-chain capabilities, and user experience, Web3 is gradually integrating into real scenarios such as investment, wealth management, payment, and asset management, rather than being just a tool for a few technical users.This judgment is also based on Gate's actual achievements over the past year. Data shows that Gate's spot trading volume and liquidity rank second globally, while contract trading volume and overall strength remain in the top three worldwide; in terms of asset security, as of the latest reserve report, Gate's reserve ratio exceeds the industry average and is one of the platforms with the most publicly disclosed reserve coin types in the industry. Gate continues to bridge on-chain and off-chain infrastructure, advancing the high-performance Layer 2 network Gate Layer, on-chain applications, and wealth management system construction, while simultaneously expanding its global compliance layout and brand influence. To achieve this goal, Gate will increase talent investment in 2026, establish leading incentive and bonus mechanisms for core and key positions, and recruit top talent globally, working together to integrate Web3 into daily life in a more "seamless yet real" manner through more robust products and infrastructure construction.

The AISIM Foundation announced a collaboration with the World Friendship Foundation (WFF) aimed at the official launch in 2026. This partnership will further strengthen the implementation of the AISIM project as the core of the next-generation model of "life infrastructure × Web5" within the WFCA ecosystem, which is based on the concept of "World Friendship." By integrating decentralized networks with real-life infrastructure, it will promote the expansion of the WFCA stablecoin economic circle.As an "AI + Communication" project that connects Web5 through communication eSIM, AISIM is continuously expanding its community with a focus on Southeast Asia and Africa. Starting from "communication that is used every day," AISIM is building a user path that allows anyone to naturally participate in Web5, aiming to expand the real usage scale of AISIM's communication services and AI Agent services.AISIM stated that it will continue to promote the social implementation and application expansion of the WFCA ecosystem based on real assets and daily usage paths.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong stated in an interview at the Goldman Sachs Builders and Innovators Summit, "Past regulatory uncertainty has hindered innovation and mainstream adoption in the industry, while a clear and reasonable regulatory framework is key to the healthy development of the crypto economy.Coinbase is always committed to working with regulators rather than against them, with the aim of establishing a 'clear rulebook' that protects consumers while encouraging innovation. Crypto is not just a speculative tool; it will reshape the global financial system and promote greater economic freedom."