edge

According to Lookonchain monitoring, a certain whale (0x28eF) has staked 60,073 ETH, worth 117 million dollars.

The Bank of England has announced the launch of the "Synchronisation Lab" program, which will collaborate with 18 companies to test how to achieve the settlement of tokenized assets in pounds through distributed ledger technology.This six-month pilot will begin in the spring of 2026, with participants including market infrastructure providers, banks, and Web3 companies (such as Chainlink and UAC Labs). The pilot aims to validate the design choices of the central bank regarding synchronous settlement, assess the interoperability between central bank money and tokenized assets, and provide references for the modernization of the UK's Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system.

Circle Ventures announced a strategic investment in the decentralized trading platform edgeX, with specific amounts and valuation details not disclosed. Circle also plans to introduce its stablecoin USDC and cross-chain transfer protocol (CCTP) to edgeX's blockchain, EDGE Chain.It is reported that the two companies began discussions at the end of 2025 and ultimately completed the investment transaction last month, with Circle Ventures being the sole investor in this round of financing.

Goldman Sachs issued a warning that as concerns about artificial intelligence potentially disrupting traditional business models continue to rise, hedge funds are shorting U.S. stocks with unprecedented intensity. Data shows that last week, the nominal short-selling volume of individual stocks reached a record high since 2016.Goldman Sachs' prime brokerage team noted in a client report that during the period from January 30 to February 5, hedge fund short-selling volume significantly exceeded buying volume at a ratio of approximately 2:1. Overall, hedge funds have net sold U.S. stocks for the fourth consecutive week, with the selling pace reaching its highest level since early April of last year.Market volatility is closely related to advancements in AI technology. Reports indicate that after Anthropic launched new tools to automate tasks across multiple industries, a concentrated sell-off occurred in the market. Last week, a total of 164 stocks in sectors such as software, financial services, and asset management saw approximately $611 billion in market value evaporate.Despite a rebound in U.S. stocks last Friday, the Nasdaq 100 index still recorded its worst week of the year, reflecting that market sentiment remains fragile.

Bithumb exchange announced today that it acknowledged an error in the distribution of activity rewards, which led to some users receiving an abnormal amount of Bitcoin. These users subsequently sold off their holdings, causing a sharp fluctuation in Bitcoin prices in a short period. The exchange's internal control system quickly identified and restricted the trading of the relevant accounts, and the market price returned to normal levels within 5 minutes. Bithumb emphasized that this incident is unrelated to external hacking attacks, and customer asset security has not been affected, with trading and deposit/withdrawal functions operating normally. The exchange has committed to handling subsequent matters transparently to ensure that customer rights are not compromised.

DeFi Dev Corp Chief Investment Officer and Chief Operating Officer Parker White stated on social media, "Yesterday, BlackRock's IBIT trading volume reached $10.7 billion, nearly double the previous highest daily volume, with an options premium of about $900 million, both setting historical records. BTC and SOL fell in tandem, and with lower CeFi liquidations, there are suspicions that this volatility stems from large IBIT holders, possibly one or more non-crypto hedge funds based in Hong Kong.Data shows that some funds have extremely high positions in IBIT, even as single-asset funds, aimed at isolating margin risk. Silver plummeted today, and yen arbitrage trades accelerated liquidation, intensifying market pressure and further affecting fund leverage positions. These funds may be attempting to turn the tide through high-leverage options trading, but losses continue to expand, and ultimately, the decline in Bitcoin may completely crush their positions. Due to the lag in 13F report disclosures, relevant position information is expected to be available by mid-May, but the scale of the event is enormous and difficult to hide in the long term."

Billiton Diamond and Ctrl Alt are tokenizing certified diamonds on the XRP Ledger with a total value of over $280 million, using Ripple's custody technology.

Former Coinbase CTO and angel investor Balaji Srinivasan stated today that the signs of a fiat currency crisis are already emerging, and physical gold is susceptible to government seizure (as seen with Roosevelt's order in 1933), while digital gold like Bitcoin has greater resistance to seizure due to its invisibility and programmability.In the article, Balaji noted that the gold reserves of BRICS countries have surged since the 2008 financial crisis, indicating a shift in the East towards tangible assets, but the internet will replace the dollar-dominated Keynesianism with digital assets.Balaji concluded that for people in sovereign debt crisis countries like North America and Western Europe, gold may not necessarily be the best safe-haven asset, and Bitcoin is a hedge worth considering.

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.

ZachXBT stated that Ledger has been breached multiple times, resulting in the leakage of customer privacy data and triggering targeted thefts, causing "millions of dollars" in losses; it also pointed out issues with existing products (such as battery failures in the Ledger Nano X), questioning Ledger's plan to go public in the U.S. to "maximize extraction" after announcing a fee for clear signing.

According to the Financial Times, hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger is planning to go public in the United States, with a valuation potentially exceeding $4 billion.The company has partnered with Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, and Barclays to advance this deal, which could be completed as early as this year. Previously, Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier stated last year that the company was considering a listing in the United States and mentioned that the company's annual revenue had reached over $100 million.

According to monitoring by Lookonchain, the whale degen-retard.sol withdrew 99,153 SOL (worth about 19 million USD at the time) from Binance approximately 2 years ago at a price of about 192 USD and staked it.Today, he has unstaked the remaining 98,328 SOL (now worth 12.34 million USD) and sold it using a DCA strategy (dollar-cost averaging). After staking SOL for nearly 2 years, he not only did not make a profit but instead incurred a loss of over 6.6 million USD.

Mike Novogratz's cryptocurrency group Galaxy plans to launch a $100 million hedge fund in the first quarter of this year. The fund has secured $100 million in investments from family offices, high-net-worth individuals, and large institutions, aiming to profit from the price fluctuations of digital assets.The fund will invest up to 30% of its assets in crypto tokens, with the remainder allocated to financial services stocks influenced by digital asset technology and regulation. Galaxy has stated it will provide seed investment for the fund. Currently, Galaxy manages $17 billion in digital assets. The hedge fund head, Joe Armao, mentioned that the fund could profit from identifying disruptors in the financial services sector as well as from both strong and weak companies. The current price of Bitcoin is approximately $90,000.

According to monitoring by lookonchain, the whale address Ci8jH5 withdrew 20,000 SOL (approximately 4.1 million USD at the time) from Kraken 5 months ago and staked it, earning a total of 466 SOL (approximately 62,400 USD) in staking rewards during that period. However, due to the decline in SOL prices, the current value of the 20,466 SOL it holds is only about 2.83 million USD, resulting in an overall loss of approximately 1.27 million USD.1 hour ago, the whale has redeposited all 20,466 SOL (approximately 2.83 million USD) back into Kraken.

According to Onchain Lens monitoring, despite the continuous decline in LIT prices, a certain whale (0x226...1AeF) still deposited 10 million USDC into Lighter for hedging operations.The whale opened a LIT short position with 5x leverage, while spending 2.2 million dollars to buy 1.059 million LIT at an average price of 2.08 dollars in the spot market. Currently, the address still holds 2.788 million USDC and may continue to buy.

According to Jinshi reports, CICC predicts that U.S. inflation will see a compensatory rise in the CPI data for December 2025, January 2026, and April 2026.If recent U.S. inflation remains strong, it may lead the Federal Reserve to slow down the pace of interest rate cuts, resulting in a marginal tightening of global liquidity and an increase in uncertainty for major domestic and foreign assets. CICC recommends increasing allocation to commodities to hedge against risks, and to increase allocation to stocks, gold, and U.S. Treasuries when asset prices pull back.

According to CoinDesk, Hsiao-Wei Wang, co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, stated in an interview with CoinDesk that Ethereum is steadily moving towards making zero-knowledge cryptography a core component of the network in the future. Hsiao-Wei Wang described zero-knowledge as part of Ethereum's mid-term roadmap and noted that several breakthroughs have been achieved in the past year or two.While the current upgrade focus remains on improving Layer 2 network execution and Blob space, zero-knowledge as a protocol-level feature has become increasingly feasible. Ethereum researchers have released a native zkEVM plan that allows the network to use zero-knowledge proofs to validate transactions by default. This technology can significantly reduce the workload required to secure Ethereum, achieving scalability without sacrificing decentralization or reliability. Hsiao-Wei Wang emphasized that even as the network continues to evolve, resilience, security, censorship resistance, and neutrality remain core to Ethereum.

Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko stated that he will shift his focus from primary development to exploring cutting-edge application scenarios of Ethereum in the coming months.Ensuring a smooth transition for AllCoreDevs and his responsibilities at the Ethereum Foundation is his current top short-term goal. He will continue to stay at the Ethereum Foundation and serve as a protocol advisor, working with the foundation and cluster leadership to ensure the establishment of a reasonable organizational structure to support participation from various ecosystems. Tim Beiko emphasized that the Ethereum protocol is nearing its final stage, but we have only just begun to touch the potential of a permissionless, scalable, economically secure, and low-cost verifiable world computer.

Glassnode posted on platform X that options market data shows that as Bitcoin retests the $90,000 level, market sentiment has turned cautious. Implied volatility increased during the price movement towards $94,000 and then decreased as the price stagnated, indicating that volatility sellers intervened after the momentum weakened.Additionally, the volatility risk premium remains positive, benefiting volatility sellers. The options flow over the past 24 hours shows that trades buying put options accounted for nearly 30%, reflecting an increased demand for downside protection and risk hedging ahead of key U.S. macro data releases, rather than an expectation of a trend breakout.