January 21: U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on Tuesday that he expects the U.S. GDP growth rate to exceed 5% in the first quarter of 2026, but he also pointed out that the current U.S. interest rates are too high, dampening stronger economic growth.Lutnick said at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland: "Our interest rates should be lower so that the economy can truly prosper. I believe that GDP will grow by over 5% this quarter, which is very significant for the $30 trillion U.S. economy. If the rates were lower, the growth rate could even reach 6%. What is currently holding us back is our own policy." It is worth noting that Lutnick's growth rate prediction is his personal view, higher than the expectation of U.S. Treasury Secretary Benson, who said in Davos that the actual U.S. GDP growth rate in 2026 may be between 4% and 5%. (FXStreet)

January 21st, according to on-chain data, the suspected GameStop-related wallet address transferred 2,396 BTC to the Coinbase Prime hot wallet 16 hours ago, accounting for approximately 50% of its total Bitcoin holdings.Records show that GameStop purchased 4,710 BTC through Coinbase Prime in May 2025 as part of the company's treasury reserve, with a total investment of approximately $500 million. The average purchase price per coin ranged from $106,000 to $109,000. Currently, the unrealized loss corresponding to this portion of Bitcoin is approximately $70 million.

January 21, according to CoinDesk, after the acquisition negotiations of the crypto company Zerohash fell through, Mastercard is now considering an investment in Zerohash.BlockBeats previously reported that on October 30, 2025, Mastercard was in talks to acquire crypto infrastructure startup Zerohash for $15 billion to $20 billion. If the deal goes through, it will be one of its largest moves in the stablecoin field.Zerohash, founded in 2017 and headquartered in Chicago, has business operations covering stablecoins and crypto trading infrastructure, providing technical services, including asset tokenization APIs, to institutional clients.In September of this year, Zerohash announced a $1 billion valuation after completing a $104 million Series D funding round, led by Interactive Brokers, with participation from Morgan Stanley, SoFi, Apollo, among others.

January 21st, Mike Selig, the newly appointed Chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) by President Trump, stated that he will spearhead a plan to establish rules aimed at "future-proofing" the crypto industry, formalizing a regulatory framework through the official legislative process for crypto assets and other financial innovation areas to prevent easy overturning in the future.In a piece written on Tuesday on the social platform X and in The Washington Post, Selig mentioned that the CFTC will move away from "enforcement-first" approach to regulation and tailor formal rules for emerging markets such as digital assets to ensure the global competitiveness of the U.S. financial markets. He noted that the digital asset economy has evolved from a "novelty" to a market worth about $3 trillion.Although specific regulatory details have not been disclosed yet, Selig stated that more policy adjustments will be announced in the coming days and an Innovation Advisory Committee will be established to provide guidance for financial innovations including crypto assets, prediction markets, and perpetual contracts.Selig also emphasized that regulatory policies formed through the formal rulemaking process will be more stable than informal guidance and less likely to be overturned by future administrations. On the same day, the CFTC also announced the hiring of crypto lawyer Michael Passalacqua to assist in related work.Analysts believe that this statement continues the overall regulatory stance of the Trump administration favoring crypto innovation, and the CFTC may become one of the most crucial regulatory agencies for the U.S. crypto market in the future.

January 21st, the future of Lens Protocol will no longer be led by its original team. The SocialFi project announced on Tuesday that Mask Network will "host and lead" the next stage of Lens's development.Lens Protocol was launched in early 2022 by Aave founder Stani Kulechov, originally positioned as "building Twitter on Ethereum." Kulechov stated on X platform on Tuesday: "We have built Lens Protocol and its underlying on-chain infrastructure, including advanced decentralized content data storage governed by smart contracts. Our goal is to create a neutral social infrastructure for developers to build consumer-grade applications that can reach mainstream users."About a year after Lens went live on Polygon, the official revealed that it had supported over 110,000 social accounts and spawned hundreds of applications. On the same day, Mask Network also outlined its plans for Lens's future on X, stating: "The next stage is not more protocols but to build truly usable products, along with the culture we shape together and a truly thriving community."Mask Network is also known for supporting the decentralized social ecosystem Mastodon. As early as 2022, Mask Network acquired the second-largest Mastodon server as part of its strategy to expand the SocialFi ecosystem.

January 18, according to Onchain Lens monitoring, the "previously sold 255 BTC" whale went 5 times short on DASH and 10 times long on DOGE,The whale still holds long positions in BTC, ETH, and SOL, currently worth $457 million, with a floating loss of $3.3 million.

January 18th, Binance Alpha will list Acurast (ACU) on January 20th.Qualified users can visit the Alpha event page after Alpha trading opens to claim the airdrop using Alpha Points. Specific details will be announced separately.

January 18th, according to Coinglass data, Coinbase's Bitcoin Premium Index has been in a negative premium for 3 consecutive days, currently at -0.0397%. Over the past 30 days, it has been in a negative premium for 28 days.BlockBeats Note: The Coinbase Bitcoin Premium Index is used to measure the difference between the Bitcoin price on Coinbase (a leading U.S. exchange) and the global market average price. This index is an important indicator for observing U.S. market capital inflows, institutional investment sentiment, and market mood changes.A positive premium indicates that the Coinbase price is higher than the global average, usually implying: strong buying pressure in the U.S. market, institutional or compliant funds actively entering the market, ample dollar liquidity, and a generally optimistic investment sentiment. A negative premium indicates that the Coinbase price is lower than the global average, typically reflecting: increased selling pressure in the U.S. market, decreased investor risk appetite, a rise in market risk aversion or capital outflows.

January 18, according to the Financial Times, Sequoia Capital plans to make a significant investment in the artificial intelligence startup Anthropic. Anthropic is seeking a financing at a valuation of $35 billion, aiming to raise a total of $25 billion or more. Microsoft and Nvidia have committed to invest a total of up to $15 billion in the company.

January 18th, according to Cointelegraph, Web3 security platform Immunefi CEO Mitchell Amador stated that nearly 80% of crypto projects that have experienced a major hack have never fully recovered. Most protocols are fundamentally unaware of the level of risk they face from hacking and are not prepared operationally for a major security event.Mitchell Amador said that the first few hours after a vulnerability occurs are usually the most destructive. Without a pre-established incident response plan, teams hesitate, argue about the next steps, and underestimate the potential depth of the vulnerability's impact. This period is often a critical moment when additional losses occur.Out of concern for reputational damage, project teams often hesitate to pause smart contracts and completely cut off communication with users. Maintaining silence often exacerbates panic rather than containing the problem. Nearly 80% of projects that have been hacked have never fully recovered, primarily because of the breakdown in operations and trust systems during the response process.

January 18, Strategy founder Michael Saylor announced that the "BTC Rating" metric has been added to the Strategy website. The "BTC Rating" for MSTR is 0.9.Strategy's Bitcoin Product Strategy Lead, Chaitanya Jain, explained that the calculation formula for MSTR's "BTC Rating" metric is: (Bitcoin Reserves - Debt - Preferred Stock + USD Reserves) / Market Cap, representing the ratio of Bitcoin net reserves to the company's market capitalization, essentially the inverse of the Price-to-Book ratio.

January 18th, the CAT Terminal community announced a strategic partnership with the PinPet platform, jointly launching the CAT Node NFT Universe Node Platform, aiming to build a high-quality, sustainable Web3 encrypted community ecosystem.PinPet is a next-generation leverage trading DEX based on Solana, equipped with the world's first Fusion Engine, integrating AMM spot trading, automatic liquidity pool, and multiple risk control mechanisms in an atomic way to achieve coin issuance, spot trading, and long/short leverage in one go. The platform supports zero-threshold coin issuance and instant 3x–10x leverage trading, providing users with bi-directional transaction capabilities to enhance capital efficiency and trading flexibility.CAT Terminal was fairly launched on the PumpFun platform, integrating Web3 and AI power models, jointly driven by decentralized communities from regions such as Dubai, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. The current community user base has exceeded 17,000 and has received strategic investments from multiple crypto institutions, committed to growing into a "super meme" ecosystem with long-term viability that transcends bull and bear markets.It is reported that the CAT Node platform launched in this cooperation has officially gone live and simultaneously initiated ecosystem node recruitment, including 200 Honor Nodes and 2000 Cornerstone Nodes. CAT Node will further build Solana's first AI NFT Universe Node Platform, driving community co-construction, ecosystem incentives, and value accumulation through a node mechanism.

January 18th, CryptoQuant analyst Darkfost stated, "Bitcoin's next major challenge is to reclaim the cost basis of early long-term holders (held for 6 to 12 months), currently around $101,000. The cost basis of long-term holders for 12 to 18 months is around $81,700, which forms a key support level. If Bitcoin were to fall back to this range, these holders are likely to hold onto their average entry price. Investors who bought near the January 2025 high are still holding their positions."On the upside, there is resistance around $114,650, corresponding to the cost basis of short-term holders (held for 3-6 months). This group significantly accumulated near the highs, and if the price returns to this range, some investors may choose to sell near the breakeven point."

January 18th, according to Etherscan data, the daily transaction count on the Ethereum network hit a record high on January 16th, reaching 2.88 million transactions.

January 18th, according to HyperInsight monitoring, the 「BTC OG Insider Whale」 long position total value is about $910 million, has already paid over $7.5 million in funding fees, and the unrealized gain has narrowed to $44.9 million, previously once peaking above $60 million. As of the time of publication, the position's unrealized gains are as follows:· $741 million ETH long position: $35.14 million unrealized gain;· $95.12 million BTC long position: $3.61 million unrealized gain;· $72.73 million SOL long position: $6.14 million unrealized gain.

January 18th, according to Hyperinsight monitoring, "Brother Ma" Huang Licheng's address increased his ZEC long position by about $246,000 in the past 3 hours. This replenishment lowered his average holding cost from $415 to $411.29, with a current unrealized loss of $48,100. At the same time, Huang Licheng has partially taken profit on his HYPE and ETH long positions, realizing a small profit.Currently, he still holds long positions in ETH, ZEC, and HYPE perpetual contracts, with a total position value of nearly $45 million. His ETH long position is worth $34.87 million, with an unrealized profit of $862,000; his HYPE long position is worth $8.43 million, with an unrealized profit of $130,000. His total accumulated unrealized profit in the past week has exceeded $2.538 million.

January 18th, BitMine Chairman and Fundstrat co-founder Tom Lee said in an interview with CNBC, "From the overall market perspective, I think the first five trading days of January's rise is good news. This is a very good sign for the whole year, and it gives us greater upside potential for the S&P 500 to reach 7700 points.""The volatility in the financial sector, overall market, and crypto market in the past few days partially reflects the impact of policy factors. Washington is trying to limit credit card rates, and if this policy is implemented, I think it will have an impact on the financial industry as it will weaken the ability of financial institutions to provide credit to a diverse set of consumers.""At the same time, the progress of the 'Clarity Act' is very bullish news for the crypto industry. The crypto market suffered a heavy blow in October last year, so we believe that as time goes on and we gradually move away from the impact point, the market will experience a significant recovery.""Therefore, we are bullish on Bitcoin. We believe that Bitcoin is likely to hit a new all-time high this year; at the same time, our attitude towards Ethereum may be more positive, and we expect Ethereum to outperform Bitcoin."

January 18th, Solana Mobile project leader Emmett posted on the X platform, stating, "In addition to existing anti-bot measures, the team is actively identifying some additional Seeker clusters. These accounts will be removed from the initial SKR airdrop distribution and returned to a future airdrop pool. We do not intend to publicly disclose the specific detection methods, but please rest assured that we have been paying attention and have been monitoring for some time.""We hope SKR will be launched fairly and ultimately end up in the hands of users and developers who truly drive the platform forward. This is advantageous for the vast majority of buyers who purchase Seeker for actual use."

January 18th, Ethereum founder Vitalik posted, stating, "An important aspect of 'trustlessness,' 'escape-hatch-freeness,' and 'sovereignty,' which has long been underestimated, is the simplicity of the protocol. Even if a protocol is super decentralized, with hundreds of thousands of nodes, and has 49% Byzantine fault tolerance, where nodes use quantum-secure peerda and stark to fully validate everything, but if the protocol is a clumsy mess composed of hundreds of thousands of lines of code and five forms of cryptic doctorate-level cryptography, ultimately the protocol will fail to pass all three tests: not fully trustless, not fully sovereign, and not very secure."One concern I have about Ethereum protocol development is that we may be too eager to add new features to meet specific needs, even if these features make the protocol bloated, or introduce entirely new interactive components or complex cryptographic technologies as key dependencies. This may bring short-term feature upgrades, but it will severely compromise the protocol's long-term sovereignty. The core issue is that if we measure protocol changes based on "how much change to the existing protocol," then to maintain backward compatibility, adding functions will far outnumber removing functions, and the protocol will inevitably become bloated over time. To address this issue, Ethereum's development process needs a clear "simplify" / "garbage collection" mechanism.We hope that client developers will no longer have to deal with all old versions of the Ethereum protocol. This can be left to older version clients running in Docker containers to handle. In the long run, I hope that Ethereum's pace of change will slow down. I think, for various reasons, this is ultimately inevitable. The initial fifteen years should be seen as a growth stage, where we explored many ideas and observed which ones were effective, which were useful, and which were not. We should strive to prevent those useless parts from becoming a permanent drag on the Ethereum protocol."

January 18th, according to the Validator Queue tracking website validatorqueue data, the current queue waiting to join the Ethereum PoS network ETH has risen to 2,596,246, worth approximately $8.61 billion, with an expected activation delay of about 45 days and 2 hours. The main reason is that BitMine recently staked a large amount of ETH it holds.Meanwhile, the Ethereum PoS network's unstaking queue has been cleared, and there are currently no users opting to redeem ETH from staking.