Today's news tips:
Circle minted $250 million in new USDC on Solana this morning
Matrixport: ETH market share has dropped to 10%, ETH price may continue to be under pressure
DeepSeek is recognized by the top-level domain ai.com
Regulatory/Macro
X user @guigumen recounted his experience of almost being scammed by telecommunications on social media, and thanked OKX Wallet for protecting the security of his wallet and avoiding a loss of about 200,000 yuan. The user said that the scammers disguised themselves as "game mod recruitment" and used multiple trust-building methods to gradually lure victims into being deceived, including sending fake white papers, creating high-imitation Discord communities, and video conferencing to increase trust. In the end, the scammers tried to commit fraud by requiring the download of fake game links and wallet registration usernames. At the critical moment, the user received a fraud risk warning because he used the OKX Wallet mobile app and successfully avoided financial losses. After reviewing the situation, he pointed out that this was a carefully planned team fraud that targeted the user characteristics and interest areas that the other party had been paying attention to for a long time.
Japan's Financial Services Agency plans to classify crypto assets as financial products
According to Nikkei, the Financial Services Agency of Japan is studying positioning crypto assets (virtual currencies) as financial products on par with securities to strengthen investor protection and require relevant companies to provide more detailed information disclosure. At the same time, the move is also aimed at promoting the lifting of the ban on cryptocurrency-based exchange-traded open-end index funds (ETFs), thereby promoting the application and development of crypto assets. Currently, the Financial Services Agency has held a private research meeting with experts to assess whether the existing regulation of crypto assets is sufficient. Based on the research results, the Financial Services Agency plans to announce the direction of system reform by June this year to lay the foundation for subsequent policy adjustments.
According to South Korean media reports, South Korean financial authorities plan to introduce a self-regulatory system for virtual asset disclosure within 2025 to fill the current market supervision gap. The move is aimed at protecting investors and providing support for the development of the industry. Currently, South Korea has implemented the Virtual Asset User Protection Act in July last year, which mainly focuses on investor protection content such as prohibiting unfair trading practices. However, the second phase of the bill involving the disclosure and issuance of virtual assets is still under discussion. In order to reduce the regulatory gap, the financial authorities plan to take the lead in introducing a self-regulatory disclosure system, allowing companies to make disclosures independently, and at the same time formulate guidelines related to advertising and marketing practices.
AI/Metaverse
Avichal, partner of Electric Capital, said on social media that the "golden age" of software engineers in San Francisco has ended. From 2000 to 2020, software engineers were the representatives of high-paying professions, but with more than 100,000 layoffs in the technology industry in 2024, the globalization of remote work, and the rapid development of AI technology, the wealth path of this profession has changed fundamentally. He compared the rise of ChatGPT to the "2008 moment" in the field of software engineering, which changed the market landscape. However, Avichal pointed out that it is not all bad news. The future will be an era of small and efficient teams, and AI-driven efficiency improvements will give birth to more billion-dollar companies built by teams of 10. AI-first companies will dominate the market, and designers, product managers, and domain experts will have unprecedented influence, driving the rise of a new generation of entrepreneurs. He predicts that as the cost of software production further decreases, the enterprise software industry will undergo profound changes, and the era of "easy money" for ordinary software engineers has ended, and the new San Francisco "gold rush" has quietly begun.
DeepSeek is recognized by the top-level domain ai.com
Now, if you type ai.com in your browser, you will be redirected directly to DeepSeek's official website. It is understood that the positioning of the ai.com domain name is regarded as a symbol of cutting-edge AI. Previously, this domain name has long been positioned as ChatGPT and Musk's xAI official website.
France announces investment of over 100 billion euros in artificial intelligence
On the eve of the AI Action Summit on February 9, local time, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that 109 billion euros will be invested in the field of AI in the next few years. Macron expressed the hope that France can seize the opportunities brought by this new era and said that 100,000 young people will be trained in this project. He stressed that Europe should avoid regulation first and innovation later when facing the challenges of AI, otherwise it will be off the track of innovation and fall behind in the competition in this field. The AI Action Summit is scheduled to be held in Paris, France from February 9 to 12.
ChatGPT website traffic hits a new high, ranking sixth in the world
According to Similarweb data, in the ranking of the most visited websites in the world in January 2025, ChatGPT (chatgpt.com) climbed to sixth place for the first time, with a traffic share of 2.33%, a monthly increase of 5.91%. Google ranked first with a traffic share of 29.21%, and YouTube ranked second. Sam Altman retweeted this and said: "There is still a long way to go to catch up with Google."
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said in a blog that AGI (artificial general intelligence) is gradually emerging, and its impact may surpass all previous technological changes. He made three key observations about the economics of AI: 1. The intelligence of AI models is logarithmically related to computing resources - the investment in training computing, data and reasoning computing can be increased infinitely and obtain continuous and predictable benefits. 2. The cost of using AI decreases by about 10 times every year - for example, the cost of a word of GPT-4 in early 2023 is about 150 times lower than the cost of GPT-4o in mid-2024, far exceeding the growth rate of Moore's Law. 3. Linearly growing intelligence brings super-exponential socioeconomic value - this prompts continuous investment and will not stop in the short term. Altman predicts that AI agents (such as software engineering assistants) will become "virtual colleagues" and widely penetrate various industries. He believes that the economic impact of AI may be similar to that of transistors, changing the world in a subtle but extremely far-reaching way. At the same time, the popularity of AI may lead to a sharp drop in the cost of some commodities, while the price of scarce resources such as land will rise. He emphasized that policies and social consensus are crucial to the future of AGI. In order to ensure that the benefits of AGI are widely distributed, new economic models may be needed, such as providing a "computing budget" to everyone in the world. He believes that by 2035, everyone should be able to mobilize intellectual resources equivalent to the global wisdom in 2025, which will greatly unleash human creativity.
Project News
SlowMist founder Cos (Yu Xian) tweeted that the $CAR tokens suspected to be announced by the President of the Central African Republic have many opaque information: 1. The official website car.meme is inaccessible, and the domain name was registered on Namecheap 4 days ago, which is a short time. 2. The creator's funding source is Binance, and nearly 80% of $CAR is distributed in 6 addresses related to the creator, but the lock-up details have not been verified. 3. The $CAR official website links cited by some trading platforms contain malware, such as the GMGN-marked official website, which may cause the user's device to be infected with a virus. In an environment lacking transparency, there may be fraud or risky behavior, and users need to be vigilant and avoid blindly chasing the rise (FOMO).
Mempool.space data shows that the current transaction fee (gas fee) of the Bitcoin network has dropped to 1 satoshi/byte, about $0.14. Etherscan data shows that the median price of Ethereum gas fee is currently about 0.9 gwei, about $0.05.
Jupiter co-founder meow said on the X platform that the $CAR token team has verified its deployment through on-chain transactions and re-locked the contract to ensure irrevocability. The team redeployed the original revocable contract and tracked the key transaction records from minting to lock-up, while destroying 0.06942 SOL to verify address ownership. In addition, the tokens have been locked as planned, including national development, charity, public offering allocation and team shares, of which the national development funds have now been changed to irrevocable. All lock-ups can be publicly queried through Streamflow. Although the ownership of the $CAR token deployment address has been verified through on-chain transactions and the revocable contract has been amended, no off-chain confirmation has been obtained, that is, it is impossible to prove that the token has a formal connection with the government of the Central African Republic.
Bithumb will launch COOKIE Korean Won trading pairs
South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb announced that it will launch Cookie Dao (COOKIE) at 16:00 (KST) on February 10 and support Korean won (KRW) transactions.
Ethernity Chain is renamed Epic Chain and launches 1:1 token swap
According to the official announcement, Ethernity Chain (ERN) was officially renamed Epic Chain (EPIC) and launched a 1:1 token swap. This upgrade has passed the DAO community vote and received 97.1% support, marking the project's entry into a new stage of the Layer 2 blockchain ecosystem, focusing on integrating real-world assets (RWAs) with the entertainment field to promote the long-term development of the ecosystem. The EPIC token will inherit all the functions of ERN and expand to the Layer 2 ecosystem, including staking, trading, governance, etc. In addition, an enhanced staking reward mechanism will be launched in the future, allowing users to obtain token rewards from other projects issued on the Epic Chain.
According to a message released by Faustin-Archange Touadéra, President of the Central African Republic, on the X platform, he announced the launch of the Meme coin CAR, calling it an "experiment aimed at uniting the people, supporting national development and putting the Central African Republic on the world stage." He emphasized that as the second president in the world to use Bitcoin as legal tender, he has always recognized the global potential of cryptocurrencies. In addition, he said that he was working with the X platform to restore @CARMeme_News (the account has been frozen) and confirmed that the supply of CAR tokens has been securely locked through @streamflow_fi and executed according to the distribution plan and release schedule. On-chain data shows that CAR briefly broke through $0.48 and is now at $0.28, with a total market value of approximately $280 million. It is not clear whether Touadéra's account has been hacked.
Viewpoint
Matrixport: ETH market share has dropped to 10%, ETH price may continue to be under pressure
Matrixport released a report today saying that since late January, the cumulative inflow of funds into Ethereum spot ETFs has reached US$500 million, but the price of ETH has not rebounded significantly, indicating that the market selling pressure is still strong. Despite this, the interest of long-term value investors seems to have picked up, and some institutions, including members of the "World Financial Freedom" organization, have also begun to pay attention to ETH. Looking ahead, the Ethereum network upgrade in March is seen as a potential catalyst, but the market reaction is relatively cold and has failed to reproduce the enthusiastic atmosphere of previous upgrades. The market generally believes that this upgrade is unlikely to trigger a big market. In the absence of clear positive factors, the price of ETH may continue to be under pressure. At present, the market share of Ethereum has dropped to 10%.
Important data
Nansen: Top 5 wallets sold $3.3 million of BERA in 24 hours
According to Nansen monitoring, the top 5 wallets sold a total of $3.3 million worth of BERA tokens in the past 24 hours. Among them, the Top 100 LINK.E Leaderboard wallet sold the most, reaching $1.2 million, followed by the "Kingcooom" wallet selling $812,000; the "Yomomani" wallet selling $733,000; cryptocleopatra.eth selling $371,000; and the High Balance wallet selling $193,000.
According to SoSoValue data, from February 3 to February 7, the Ethereum spot ETF had a net inflow of US$420 million per week, and all nine ETFs had no net outflow. Among them, BlackRock ETHA had a net inflow of US$287 million, with a total net inflow of US$4.42 billion; Fidelity FETH had a net inflow of US$97.28 million, with a total net inflow of US$1.51 billion. As of press time, the total net asset value of the Ethereum spot ETF is US$9.88 billion, the ETF net asset ratio (total market value of Ethereum) is 3.17%, and the cumulative net inflow is US$3.179 billion.
Chainalysis: More than 810,000 wallets lost more than $2 billion due to Trump's price crash
According to the New York Times, on January 17, 2025, the Trump family announced the issuance of the $Trump token, which immediately triggered violent market fluctuations. An early trader (wallet address 6QSc2Cx) spent $1,096,109 to purchase 5,971,750 $Trumps at a price of $0.18 per unit within less than two minutes of the announcement. After the price soared to $75, the highest profit in two days was $109 million. However, investors who entered the market late suffered heavy losses. According to Chainalysis analysis, as of this week, more than 810,000 wallets have lost more than $2 billion due to the plunge in the price of $Trump. The current price of the token is only $17, a drop of more than 75% from its peak. Despite the violent market fluctuations, the Trump family and its partners have earned nearly $100 million in transaction fees from the token transaction, but most of it has not yet been cashed.
Circle minted $250 million in new USDC on Solana this morning
According to Onchain Lens, Circle minted $250 million USDC on the Solana blockchain early this morning. Since 2025, Circle has minted a total of $7 billion USDC on Solana.
4,664 Bitcoins Transferred from Unknown Wallet to Kraken Exchange, Worth Nearly $450 Million
According to Whale Alert monitoring, at 7:32 Beijing time, 2,500 bitcoins (about 240 million US dollars) were transferred from an unknown wallet to the Kraken exchange. 2,164 bitcoins (about 208 million US dollars) were transferred from an unknown wallet to the Kraken exchange.
