story

Co-founder of Story Protocol, SY Lee, responded to the project's postponement of the first large-scale IP token unlock to August 2026, stating that the blockchain network still needs "more time" to build real use cases. This postponement lasts for 6 months, during which the team and investors' tokens will remain locked to reduce short-term circulation pressure.SY Lee mentioned that the current on-chain revenue being close to zero does not accurately reflect Story's business status, as its business model does not rely on gas fees, but instead provides licensing services for human-generated data to AI training in an off-chain manner.He pointed out that the project is shifting from tokenized media content to "non-scrapable" human contribution data and enterprise-level licensing collaborations. While this adjustment reduces short-term visible on-chain revenue, it helps to release long-term commitments and alleviate token supply pressure.

Cryptocurrency KOL and former FTX community partner Benson Sun posted that Bitcoin experienced an extreme drop this morning. Calculating with a 200-day lookback period, BTC's decline reached -5.65 standard deviations (σ). The Six Sigma standard in manufacturing allows for only 3.4 defects per million occurrences, which defines "almost impossible" in human industrial civilization. Yesterday's BTC volatility was just 0.35 standard deviations away from this "industrial-grade impossibility."A -5.65σ occurrence has a theoretical probability of about one in ten million under normal distribution. Despite the fat tail effect in financial markets, this level of volatility has only occurred 4 times since BTC began trading in July 2010, accounting for about 0.07% of all trading days. Even during the deep bear phases of 2018 and 2022, such a rapid decline had not occurred within a rolling 200-day period. This poses a severe challenge to quantitative strategies.Currently, most quantitative models are built on data after 2015, and historical samples exceeding 5.65σ, apart from the anomalous "312" flash crash in 2020, occurred before 2015, leaving almost no reference precedent.CoinKarma's quantitative strategy has shown a paper loss in this round of market conditions, but due to maintaining low leverage (about 1.4 times) over the long term, it remains manageable, with a maximum drawdown of about 30%. While extreme market conditions are an expensive "tuition," contracts and on-chain data will become important nutrients for future risk control models.

The founder of the DeFi platform Aave, Stani Kulechov, purchased a five-story Victorian-style mansion in Notting Hill, London for £22 million (approximately $30 million), making it one of the highest-priced transactions in the London high-end residential market in nearly a year.According to reports, the transaction was completed last November, with the sale price being about £2 million lower than the agency's previous asking price. The mansion offers a panoramic view of Notting Hill. Kulechov's representatives did not comment on this.Reports indicate that amid the UK Labour government's increase in stamp duty and the removal of tax incentives for ultra-high-net-worth foreign residents, the London luxury property market continues to face pressure, with the transaction volume of properties over £5 million dropping by about 40% year-on-year as of December 2025. In this environment, the transaction is seen as one of the few bright spots in a sluggish market.

According to The Kobeissi Letter, the unrealized losses of the Ethereum treasury company BitMine have reached $6.6 billion. If these unrealized losses are realized, it will become the fifth largest proprietary trading loss in the history of global financial markets.In 2021, Archegos Capital Management incurred losses of approximately $10 billion, which was about 66% of the company's size, making it the largest loss in history.

According to market data, the IP briefly reached 1.6 USDT, currently reported at 1.585 USDT, with a 24H increase of 10%.Previously, Story officials announced: The initial unlocking of all locked IP tokens and subsequent releases based on the vesting period will be uniformly delayed by 6 months. This adjustment applies to all investors, team members, and internal personnel. Therefore, before August 13, 2026, there will be no new liquidity entering the market from locked tokens.

According to SoSoValue data, during this week's trading days (Eastern Time January 26 to January 30), Bitcoin spot ETFs experienced a net outflow of $1.49 billion.The Bitcoin spot ETF with the highest net outflow this week was BlackRock's ETF IBIT, with a weekly net outflow of $947 million, bringing IBIT's historical total net inflow to $61.96 billion. Following that was Fidelity's ETF FBTC, with a weekly net outflow of $192 million, currently having a historical total net inflow of $11.27 billion.The Bitcoin spot ETF with the highest net inflow this week was WisdomTree Bitcoin Trust BTCW, with a weekly net inflow of $2.7856 million, currently having a historical total net inflow of $5.3 million.As of the time of publication, the total net asset value of Bitcoin spot ETFs is $106.96 billion, with an ETF net asset ratio (market cap as a percentage of total Bitcoin market cap) of 6.38%, and the historical cumulative net inflow has reached $55.01 billion.

Story Protocol and OpenLedger announced a partnership to launch a new standard that enables AI systems to legally use creative works and automatically pay royalties to copyright holders.According to the agreement, intellectual property registered on Story Protocol can be licensed for AI training and AI-generated content. OpenLedger, as an AI-native blockchain, will execute these licenses within AI systems and handle payments. Both parties are building a shared on-chain standard to record ownership of works, usage methods, and payment recipients.This initiative comes against the backdrop of a continuous increase in AI-related lawsuits, with many cases in 2025 revolving around intellectual property. Data from the World Intellectual Property Organization indicates that the global IP market is valued at over $80 trillion. A representative from OpenLedger stated that the system will shift AI from a model of training first and litigating later to one that only uses content that can be proven to be authorized for use.

Story Protocol has postponed the unlocking of early investor and team tokens originally scheduled for February 2026 by 6 months to August of this year, in order to reduce short-term selling pressure and market volatility.This plan has been agreed upon by major investment firms such as a16z and Polychain Capital. The board stated that this move aims to avoid anticipated sell-offs before the unlocking and will use the next 6 months to promote revenue growth, validate PMF, and collaborate with a large AI company. After the adjustment, investors will unlock 25% of their tokens 18 months after the TGE, with the remaining portion released monthly in a linear fashion before the 42nd month.

Recently, the total Bitcoin network hash rate plummeted from 1.16 ZH/s to 690 EH/s, marking the largest drop in history. It has since rebounded and is currently reported at 859.17 EH/s.Some analyses indicate that this rapid decline in hash rate was influenced by a winter storm in the United States. The storm, named "Fernan," triggered extreme low temperatures, snowfall, and freezing across much of the country, leading to over 1 million residents losing power, and grid operators subsequently issued energy-saving alerts. Many mining pools in the U.S. were affected, either shutting down voluntarily or involuntarily, resulting in a continued decrease in hash rate.

According to SoSoValue data, this week the Bitcoin spot ETF experienced a net outflow of $1.33 billion.The Bitcoin spot ETF with the highest net outflow this week was the BlackRock ETF IBIT, with a weekly net outflow of $537 million, and the historical total net inflow for IBIT currently stands at $62.9 billion. Following that is the Fidelity ETF FBTC, with a weekly net outflow of $451 million, and the historical total net inflow for FBTC currently stands at $11.46 billion. As of the time of writing, the total net asset value of Bitcoin spot ETFs is $115.88 billion, with an ETF net asset ratio (market capitalization as a percentage of total Bitcoin market capitalization) of 6.48%, and the historical cumulative net inflow has reached $56.49 billion.

On this day 17 years ago, on January 17, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto released the first version of the Bitcoin client v0.1, namely: Bitcoin v0.1 Alpha, which allowed anyone to start their own node from any computer.It is reported that the source code of Bitcoin 0.1.0 also included an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client, aimed at creating a simpler way to guide message transmission. Additionally, it contained a framework for creating virtual poker games, which was added to the Bitcoin version on April 16, 2008, and was completely removed after the Bitcoin 0.8.2 version.

According to DefiLlama data, Aave's share in the DeFi lending market has surpassed 51.3%, marking the first time since 2020 that a single protocol's usage rate has exceeded 50%.The top 10 lending protocols by TVL ranking are as follows: Aave currently has a DeFi lending TVL of approximately $3.583 billion, accounting for about 51.3% market share; Morpho currently has a DeFi lending TVL of approximately $686.1 million, accounting for about 9.8% market share; JustLend currently has a DeFi lending TVL of approximately $401.5 million, accounting for about 5.8% market share; SparkLend currently has a DeFi lending TVL of approximately $381.1 million, accounting for about 5.5% market share; Maple currently has a DeFi lending TVL of approximately $272.4 million, accounting for about 3.9% market share; Kamino Lend currently has a DeFi lending TVL of approximately $240.2 million, accounting for about 3.4% market share; Compound Finance currently has a DeFi lending TVL of approximately $205.1 million, accounting for about 2.9% market share; Venus currently has a DeFi lending TVL of approximately $179.9 million, accounting for about 2.6% market share; Fluid Lending currently has a DeFi lending TVL of approximately $154.5 million, accounting for about 2.2% market share; Jupiter Lend currently has a DeFi lending TVL of approximately $113.1 million, accounting for about 1.6% market share.

According to a recent report by the Financial Times, the three major private tech giants in the U.S., SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic, are preparing for an IPO in 2026, with expected fundraising amounts reaching hundreds of billions of dollars. OpenAI's valuation could reach $750 billion, SpaceX's secondary market valuation has already reached $800 billion, and Anthropic is also seeking funding with a valuation exceeding $300 billion.If all three go public, it will surpass the total scale of U.S. stock IPOs for the entire year of 2025, and investment banks and venture capitalists may see unprecedented returns.