profession

According to Cointelegraph, CoinShares analyzed quarterly 13F filings and found that professional investors reduced their Bitcoin ETF exposure from 313,000 BTC to 261,000 BTC in the first quarter, a decrease of 52,000 BTC, or 17%. The total value of these holdings fell by 35% to $17.8 billion, while the share of U.S. Bitcoin ETF assets held by 13F filers dropped from 24.7% to 20.8%.The sell-off was mainly concentrated among hedge funds and brokerages, which accounted for about 96% of the total reduction. Hedge funds reduced their holdings by 31,400 BTC (a decrease of 39%), while brokerages cut their holdings by 18,800 BTC (a decrease of 53%). In contrast, the largest category of professional investors—investment advisors (holding 150,300 BTC)—only reduced their holdings by 5.9%. Banks, on the other hand, more than doubled their Bitcoin ETF holdings, increasing by 7,800 BTC during the quarter.CoinShares digital asset analyst Matt Kimmell stated, "This dataset is consistent with the historical performance of the Bitcoin market during downturns, with leverage and strategic positions being cleared."

According to the Securities Times, Xiaohongshu has launched a special governance action for certified professional accounts in the financial sector starting from June 3. Based on relevant laws and regulations as well as platform rules, financial certifications are only issued to institutions holding compliant licenses. The nicknames of certified professional accounts on the platform must strictly match the actual business scope of the certified entity and must not obtain certification marks through false or misleading information. In the past week, Xiaohongshu has dealt with over 1,500 non-compliant financial professional accounts and will continue to comprehensively strengthen the public verification and validation mechanism, conducting regular inspections and handling of existing accounts.Staff introduced that since May, the Xiaohongshu platform has dealt with a total of 31,000 accounts involved in financial sector violations and marketing accounts without financial-related qualifications, including 539 notes and 146 comments related to illegal inducement of cross-border investment issues; 141 related notes regarding the low-priced resale of foreign investment bank research reports, and freezing of 132 related products. In addition, the platform has also handled over 130 pieces of suspected illegal information related to gold financial marketing promotion and domestic promotion of overseas platforms.

Michael Selig, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), stated that the regulatory agency is communicating with all major professional sports leagues in the United States to strengthen the regulatory framework for sports-related prediction markets and to prevent insider trading and market manipulation risks.Michael Selig revealed at the FINRA annual meeting in Washington that the CFTC had previously signed a memorandum of understanding for information sharing with Major League Baseball, marking its first formal data collaboration mechanism with a professional sports league.

Ant Group announced that its professional lobster product DTClaw has begun internal testing. Unlike the "ordinary shrimp" currently on the market that can only perform skills such as document organization, meeting minutes, and data collection, DTClaw is positioned as a "professional shrimp" that provides 24/7 online exclusive AI intelligent body services for professionals such as financial experts, marketing experts, and data experts.DTClaw supports hundreds of professional skills, covering high-value scenarios such as wealth management, investment, data analysis, research and development, and testing, and deeply integrates with enterprise office, finance, sales, and marketing systems to achieve workflow automation. Users can deploy it with one click, eliminating the need to start from scratch, which can save 50% of token consumption.

According to Fortune, the crypto venture capital firm Paradigm is developing a prediction market trading terminal aimed at professional traders and market makers, led by partner Arjun Balaji. This project was initiated at the end of 2025.Paradigm is also evaluating whether to establish an internal prediction market making business and is collaborating with researchers to explore the feasibility of creating a prediction market index, which would bundle multiple prediction markets into a tradable product, similar to the S&P 500 index. Paradigm has begun aggregating prediction market data into a public data panel.In addition, Paradigm is a significant supporter of the prediction market Kalshi, having participated in its 2025 Series C funding round and leading a financing round in December that valued Kalshi at $11 billion.

According to the People's Daily, the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the General Office of the State Council recently issued the "Regulations on the Integrity of Leaders of State-owned Enterprises."Article 7 explicitly prohibits leaders of state-owned enterprises from using their power or position to seek personal gain, specifically including: accepting gifts, cash, and virtual currencies from related enterprises; buying and selling real estate and vehicles at unfair prices as a disguised form of receiving property; entrusting others to invest in securities and futures without contributing capital but still benefiting; engaging in power-for-money transactions through anonymous shareholding or holding shares on behalf of others; obtaining large returns through financial activities such as private lending; using insider information or trade secrets for personal gain; embezzling or illegally occupying and misappropriating company property; and pocketing discounts, intermediary fees, and reward returns. Violators will be dealt with according to regulations, discipline, and law.

According to ZDNET, the Korean National Tax Service plans to select a private custody company in the first half of the year to manage seized virtual assets.Previously, the National Tax Service leaked mnemonic phrases when announcing the results of on-site searches of delinquents, leading to the theft of seized virtual assets twice. As a result, it was decided to shift from self-custody to entrusting professional custody companies. The National Tax Service will select custody companies based on criteria such as security requirements, company size, and whether they are insured according to the "Virtual Asset User Protection Act."The relevant work will be handled by the "Virtual Asset Management System Upgrade Task Force," which was established on the 11th of this month. This task force also plans to improve the comprehensive workflow manual for the entire process of seizure, custody, and sale, and to expand professional training. The National Tax Service is also preparing to establish a new "Digital Asset Management Division," which will be responsible for the seizure, custody, sale, and taxation of virtual assets. The head of the task force stated that this is a method mainly adopted by developed countries and will be implemented in the first half of the year after consulting with experts.

According to CoinDesk, Binance's U.S. subsidiary Binance.US has appointed seasoned compliance professional Stephen Gregory as CEO, effective March 9, succeeding Norman Reed, who will remain as an advisor. Gregory has held leadership positions at Currency, Gemini, and CEX.io.Under Gregory's leadership, Binance.US plans to expand its Earn suite, staking services, and products such as DeFi and tokenized asset entry points to attract both crypto-native users and traditional investors.

A bill has been proposed in New York State, USA, aiming to prohibit AI from answering questions in professional fields such as medicine, law, dentistry, nursing, psychology, and engineering.According to relevant interpretations, this action is essentially not about protecting the public, but rather "an industry that charges $500/hour is using politicians to protect its knowledge monopoly." Lawyers do not want users to know that AI can draft contracts in 30 seconds, doctors do not want users to know that AI can interpret blood reports better than residents, and engineers do not want users to know that AI can review your design sketches overnight. The intention behind New York State's proposed ban on AI answering professional questions is not to protect users, but to protect their businesses.

OpenAI announced the release of GPT-5.4 in ChatGPT (in the form of GPT-5.4 Thinking), API, and Codex, marking its most powerful and efficient state-of-the-art model for professional work to date. It also released GPT-5.4 Pro for ChatGPT and API users, designed specifically for those who seek extreme performance on complex tasks.GPT-5.4 integrates OpenAI's recent advancements in reasoning, programming, and agent-based workflows into a single state-of-the-art model, incorporating the industry-leading programming capabilities of GPT-5.3-Codex while improving the model's performance in tools, software environments, and professional tasks involving spreadsheets, presentations, and documents.

According to a report by Hong Kong media Orange News, the President of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Professionals Association, Chen Zhi-hua, disclosed that the Hong Kong virtual asset industry is facing a sudden "compliance storm." Practitioners in related businesses have reported encountering bewildering regulatory requirements during the application process for virtual asset-related business qualifications. The existing written policy requires an additional 5 hours of Continuing Professional Training (CPT).However, the latest requirements were not issued through formal written documents or public guidelines, but were communicated "quietly" to license upgrade applicants in the form of verbal notifications or individual emails, stating that all responsible officers (RO) for relevant license upgrades, including those who have already obtained upgrade qualifications, must pass a virtual asset regulation exam conducted by a designated single institution. This nearly "invisible" directive undermines the transparency and fairness that regulatory agencies should uphold.Chen Zhi-hua suggested maintaining the original requirement of an additional 5 hours of Continuing Professional Training (CPT) and urged regulatory agencies to immediately suspend the enforcement of exam requirements through invisible policies.

Zhao Changpeng posted on platform X in response to targeted FUD in the community, stating: "Last year, Western competitors bought media to blacken me quite a bit. This year, a major Chinese competitor is spending money to do (black) advertising against us. Other competitors in the Asia-Pacific region are competitive, but they are all relatively professional. The community is divided; how can the price of the coin rise? Focus on building."

The prediction market professional trading terminal Kairos announced the completion of a $2.5 million financing round, led by a16z crypto, with follow-on investments from Geneva Trading, the University of Illinois, and angel investors.Kairos was co-founded by Jay Malavia (CEO) and Zayd Alzein (CTO), both of whom previously worked at the traditional financial company Cboe Global Markets. They founded the project after noticing the fragmented information and disjointed experience in the prediction market industry. Their platform aims to integrate the market data and trading of leading prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket, providing a fast, customizable dashboard that synchronously displays relevant news and trading data. The company plans to launch a private beta version in the coming weeks, and currently, the team consists of only the two co-founders, with plans to start hiring after the financing.

According to CoinDesk, Hong Kong Legislative Council member Wu Jiezhuang stated in an interview with CoinDesk that Hong Kong is positioning itself as a global hub for the cryptocurrency market.Wu emphasized that Hong Kong should not compete with other jurisdictions but should act as a bridge. He pointed out, "Cryptocurrency and Web3 are highly connected to the traditional financial system." With the Greater Bay Area initiative, Hong Kong can connect the scale of mainland cities, the depth of manufacturing, and technological talent, while providing regulatory clarity and financial credibility. Wu also mentioned that this year Hong Kong will introduce regulations for custody and over-the-counter trading, and may allow professional investors to engage in higher volume trading.Wu also stated that the field of artificial intelligence will also integrate with cryptocurrency, and Hong Kong occupies a unique position in this regard, being able to handle both Western and Chinese datasets, thus becoming a platform for global AI company collaboration. He believes Hong Kong's advantage lies in maintaining openness, being regulated, and interconnected, occupying a central position in this still-developing system.

The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Professionals Association stated that the Hong Kong government plans to announce the 2026/2027 fiscal budget, focusing on areas such as virtual assets and investor protection. Hong Kong has completed the initial regulatory infrastructure in the field of virtual assets, and the next focus should shift to the commercialization of applications. By enhancing liquidity in the RWA secondary market, accelerating product approvals, introducing international liquidity, and strengthening practitioner training, Hong Kong can upgrade from a clearly regulated market to a globally recognized virtual asset center with ample liquidity and widespread applications, aligning with the national "14th Five-Year Plan" for financial openness and digital economy strategy.

The Hong Kong government plans to announce the 2026/2027 Fiscal Budget on February 25, focusing on areas such as virtual assets and investor protection. The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Professionals Association stated that Hong Kong has completed the initial regulatory infrastructure in the virtual asset sector, and the next focus should shift to the commercialization of applications.By enhancing liquidity in the RWA secondary market, accelerating product approvals, introducing international liquidity, and strengthening practitioner training, Hong Kong can upgrade from a clearly regulated market to a globally recognized virtual asset center with abundant liquidity and widespread applications, aligning with the national "14th Five-Year Plan" for financial openness and digital economy strategy.

The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Professionals Association submitted a position paper on the implementation of the Crypto Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) and CRS revisions in Hong Kong, supporting mandatory registration for RCASP and RFI to align with OECD standards and maintain Hong Kong's status as a financial center. The association recommends providing a simplified or lightweight registration and reporting mechanism for "zero reporting" entities to reduce compliance costs, while also supporting an administrative penalty mechanism to replace criminal liability.In addition, the association supports the "dual reporting" default option for CARF and CRS to reduce system complexity and the risk of underreporting, and calls for the provision of an API reporting interface to meet the automated compliance needs of large crypto institutions.

The Senate Banking Committee has canceled the scheduled hearing on Thursday for the CLARITY Act (the Crypto Market Structure Act) revisions. According to crypto journalist Eleanor Terrett, dissatisfaction among industry players erupted this Wednesday, with Coinbase leading the way in announcing its withdrawal of support for the bill. They complained that lawmakers made excessive concessions to banks and traditional financial institutions after proposing amendments to a lengthy 278-page bill, particularly regarding stablecoin yields and tokenization.Critics argue that the CLARITY Act itself is already biased in favor of traditional institutions. Meanwhile, some Democrats insist on establishing ethical standards for senior government officials, including the president, to prohibit them from profiting from cryptocurrency projects. Democrats have previously been at an impasse with the White House on this issue.Currently, Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott stated in a statement announcing the postponement of the meeting that "everyone is still working sincerely at the negotiating table," but did not reveal when the committee would reschedule the review. The Senate will be in recess next week for Martin Luther King Jr. Day and will reconvene the following week. During that time, the Senate Agriculture Committee is expected to hold a review, which had also been postponed from this Thursday.

The One Liquidity Protocol (Chinese name: 源动交易所) developed by a senior trading system team has officially debuted. The project is positioned as a limit order decentralized exchange built on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) ecosystem, aiming to fill the critical infrastructure gap in the professional trading field on BSC.Unlike the common pool-based token swap model, 源动交易所 adopts an order book limit trading + off-chain matching and on-chain settlement approach, allowing prices to be determined by real buy and sell orders, while adhering to non-custodial assets and writing rules into smart contracts to enhance trading transparency and security.The project introduces a dual-token model, node mechanism, and DAO governance system to serve the long-term development of the Binance Chain ecosystem. The team stated that 源动交易所 is not a short-term project, but aims to gradually grow into an important component of the trading infrastructure within the BSC ecosystem.