Today's News Highlights:
Market News: The LIBRA team is in talks with the Nigerian government to launch a Meme coin
Matrixport: XRP rebound signals emerge, but SEC regulatory uncertainty remains
KernelDAO will conduct $KERNEL token TGE in February
Hyper Foundation: HyperEVM mainnet has officially launched
Meteora co-founder Ben resigns, has hired a law firm to produce a LIBRA investigation report
Argentinian President: Did not promote LIBRA, just shared information about LIBRA
Regulation/Macro
According to SolanaFloor, on February 17, 2025, DefiTuna's founder Moty publicly announced via X platform that DefiTuna has refunded $30,000 to investor Kelsier, who invested in the project on January 16, 2025, and severed all ties with him. This decision was made after Kelsier was exposed for allegedly participating in market manipulation, particularly in connection with LIBRA, MELANIA, and the meme coin launchpad platform M3M3. Moty disclosed a series of alleged orchestrated token manipulation activities that led to massive fund withdrawals by community members. Moty wrote, "After discovering Kelsier's activities, we have refunded Kelsier and cut all ties." Following this announcement, Moty elaborated on his concerns in a series of posts, claiming that Kelsier was involved in a carefully orchestrated plan to extract large amounts of funds from the meme coin launchpad platform M3M3. The Meteora leadership, including Ben, facilitated a large group of influencers who profited significantly at the expense of the community. Despite direct contact with Meteora's core contributors, they showed little sense of accountability. Meteora co-founder Ben stated he would resign after being questioned but only issued a vague public response. Moty stated, "I have personally done everything I can, risking myself and everything we have built at DefiTuna, to try to get key figures to speak out, start identifying these bad actors, and remove them." SolanaFloor reached out to Moty for detailed information about DefiTuna's interactions with Kelsier and to gain insight into how the M3M3 platform, supported by Meteora, operates. Moty detailed the interactions between DefiTuna and Kelsier, revealing that Kelsier contacted them through Lebanese employee Thomas, requesting assistance in providing liquidity for M3M3. Initially, M3M3 was promoted as an independent platform, but it was later revealed that Ben had become its owner. Kelsier's involvement required projects launched on M3M3 to allocate a certain percentage of their token supply to them. DefiTuna co-founder Vlad passively participated, believing the collaboration was legitimate. Moty revealed that Kelsier personally requested they provide liquidity for M3M3, while Meteora co-founder Ben prohibited any trading outside of Meteora. When DefiTuna proposed a neutral liquidity allocation strategy, they were ignored. Moty stated that over $200 million was stolen across multiple projects, including AIAI, MATES, ENRON, Melania, and Libra. Screenshots show that Hayden shared the minting addresses of these tokens with a group of influencers before the official launchpad, allowing them to purchase in advance and profit significantly. When asked about the total profits Kelsier made from M3M3, Moty replied, "If you count AIAI, MATES, ENRON, and a bunch of other projects… including Melania and LIBRA… it’s over $200 million. There are many other projects as well."
According to Cryptoslate, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has launched a public consultation on guidelines for assessing the knowledge and competence of professionals providing crypto asset services under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA). The consultation, published on February 17, aims to standardize the qualifications and experience required for individuals providing advice or information to clients regarding digital assets. The draft guidelines set clear professional qualifications, work experience, and continuing education standards for employees hired by crypto asset service providers (CASP). According to the proposal, individuals providing crypto asset investment advice must meet stricter competency requirements than those providing basic information services. ESMA outlined that advisors must have a higher education degree or equivalent, undergo at least 160 hours of professional training, and possess at least one year of relevant experience. In contrast, individuals providing general information on crypto assets need at least 80 hours of professional qualification training and six months of supervised experience. All professionals must pass an assessment exam and complete ongoing training—information providers at least 10 hours per year, and advisors at least 20 hours per year—to ensure their knowledge remains up to date. The guidelines also emphasize the importance of understanding the unique risks associated with crypto assets, including market volatility, cybersecurity threats, blockchain governance, and liquidity risks related to major asset holders. Additionally, ESMA proposed that firms conduct annual internal reviews to assess whether employees comply with these standards. Market participants, including CASP, investors, financial institutions, and industry associations, are invited to provide feedback on the proposed standards. ESMA will accept comments until April 22, 2025, and expects to publish final guidelines in the third quarter of that year.
According to the Hong Kong Radio website, the Executive Director of the Intermediaries Division of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, Yip Chi-hang, expects to announce the virtual asset development roadmap within this month. The roadmap will not only outline development principles but also mention the areas the Commission hopes to research in the short term and the aspects that platform participants wish to optimize. Furthermore, the focus of the virtual asset roadmap is not on the content itself but on the Commission's willingness to demonstrate principles to the market and the stance for market consideration.
Market News: The LIBRA team is in talks with the Nigerian government to launch a Meme coin
According to unverified reports from Beincrypto, the LIBRA team is also in negotiations with Nigerian officials to issue another unstable meme coin. So far, there is no evidence indicating a direct connection between Nigerian President Bola Tinubu and LIBRA, but it has been reported that his team is in close negotiations. Hayden Davis, CEO of LIBRA's market maker, claims he has received numerous offers to assist in more "rug pull" scams. The controversial meme coin LIBRA, endorsed by Argentinian President Javier Milei, has become the center of large-scale fraud allegations. Following a market cap crash, President Milei denied any connection to LIBRA and faces investigation and impeachment threats. More shockingly, the LIBRA team plans to collaborate with the Nigerian government to launch a new meme coin. The key figure connecting LIBRA and Nigerian officials is Hayden Davis, CEO of Kelsier Ventures. As a U.S. citizen, this may grant the FBI and the Department of Justice jurisdiction to investigate the LIBRA case. Previously, Davis casually admitted to several significant financial crimes in a lengthy interview, stating that these crimes opened new opportunities for him. Community detectives speculate that Davis is the mastermind behind the meme coin MELANIA and related scams, which he confirmed in the interview. In other words, MELANIA may have allowed Davis to gain influence with Nigerian officials before LIBRA. Reports could not confirm whether the Nigerian president was involved in this plan. However, Davis stated, "The project is progressing well," and several members of his team are actively involved. Nigeria has recently shown enthusiasm for the cryptocurrency space, adding credibility to these claims.
According to Cryptoslate, as of December 31, 2024, institutional investors hold 25.4% of the assets under management (AUM) of spot Bitcoin ETFs, totaling $26.8 billion. Vetle Lunde, head of research at K33, stated that the proportion of Bitcoin ETF AUM held by institutional investors increased by 113% from the third to the fourth quarter of 2024. Additionally, due to a 69% surge in total managed assets at the end of the fourth quarter to $78.8 billion, the proportion of managed assets held by institutional investors also grew by 4.1% quarter-over-quarter. According to Lunde, the number of investors accessing Bitcoin through ETFs reached 1,576 last quarter, a quarterly increase of 37.4% and an annual increase of 68.2%. Lunde's data also shows that institutional interest in BlackRock's IBIT has increased more than fourfold in 2024. At the end of the fourth quarter last year, institutional holdings of IBIT shares were reported at $16 billion, while the amount held through shares at the end of the first quarter was less than $4 billion, with most of the growth occurring between the third and fourth quarters. According to Bold Report, BlackRock's spot Bitcoin ETF has managed assets of $56.4 billion, while the total managed assets of all other spot Bitcoin ETFs traded in the U.S. amount to $56.9 billion.
U.S. Exchange MEMX applies to SEC for approval to list 21Shares XRP ETF
According to Cointelegraph, the U.S. exchange MEMX has applied to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for approval to list the 21Shares XRP ETF as a "commodity trust," with relevant documents submitted to the regulatory body. This move marks another effort by U.S. exchanges to list ETFs that include spot XRP. This application also highlights the SEC's shift in stance regarding cryptocurrencies.
AI
xAI launches an intelligent search engine named Deepsearch based on Grok-3
According to Jin10, xAI has launched an intelligent search engine named Deepsearch based on Grok-3.
Elon Musk's xAI releases Grok 3 chatbot, outperforming GPT-4o in mathematical reasoning
According to Caixin, Musk's AI company xAI has released the Grok 3 chatbot. According to xAI engineers, the training involved in Grok 3 is ten times that of Grok 2. Musk stated that Grok-3 has achieved better results than DeepSeek-v3, GPT-4o, and Gemini-2 pro in multiple benchmark tests regarding capabilities such as mathematical reasoning, scientific logical reasoning, and code writing.
Musk confirms xAI is set to open an AI game studio
According to Jin10, on February 17, overseas blogger Dima Zeniuk posted a photo of Elon Musk with several people on the X platform, stating that xAI is about to open an AI game studio. Musk himself later confirmed the news, emphasizing that "this must be done well" and reiterating, "Make gaming great again!"
According to Zhitong Finance, sources revealed that OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever is raising over $1 billion for his AI startup Safe Superintelligence, pushing its valuation above $30 billion, thus making it one of the most valuable private tech companies globally. Sources indicate that the San Francisco-based venture capital firm Greenoaks Capital Partners is leading this round of financing, planning to invest $500 million. Greenoaks has previously invested in AI companies ScaleAI and Databricks. The aforementioned sources noted that the prominent venture capital firm Greenoaks Capital Partners is leading the investment in Safe Superintelligence, with a planned investment of up to $500 million. Notably, Greenoaks is also a significant investor in outstanding AI companies Scale AI and Databricks Inc., which undoubtedly adds more anticipation for the future development of Safe Superintelligence. It is reported that this financing will significantly boost Sutskever's company's valuation, achieving a substantial increase from the previous $5 billion. However, it is worth noting that financing negotiations are still ongoing, and relevant details may change.
Project Updates
Ethereum core developer Justin.eth Drake shared the progress of the first community call for Beam Chain on Twitter, announcing February 28 as the date for the second call, which will focus on technical progress. Due to trademark issues with the name "Beam," the project will be renamed. The meeting summarized the addition of 8 new teams, support from 6 mainnet consensus layer teams, and the introduction of 2 new coordinators joining the Ethereum Foundation. Currently, Beam Chain has a total of 14 consensus layer teams covering all continents except Antarctica, using various programming languages including Zig, C, C++, and C#, and several self-funded teams have emerged. Justin believes that Beam Chain provides an excellent entry point for developers to deeply understand the underlying technology of Ethereum L1. Additionally, the meeting discussed the key role of ZKVM (Zero-Knowledge Virtual Machine) technology in Beam Chain and announced a series of research and development plans, including ZK acceleration and multi-language support. Previously, Ethereum Foundation researchers proposed the consensus layer upgrade proposal "Beam Chain," which has been referred to by the community as "Ethereum 3.0."
KernelDAO will conduct $KERNEL token TGE in February
The re-staking platform KernelDAO officially announced that the $KERNEL token generation event (TGE) is scheduled for February 2025, with the specific date yet to be announced. It is reported that 55% will be allocated to community rewards and airdrops (20% for airdrops, 35% for future community rewards), 5% allocated to ecosystems and partners, 20% for private sales, and 20% for the team and advisors (with a 6-month lock-up period for team and private sale tokens, unlocking over 24 months). Additionally, 20% of KERNEL tokens will be distributed through three rounds of airdrops. Previously, Kernel, a re-staking infrastructure in the BNB Chain ecosystem, completed $10 million in financing, with investors including Binance Labs.
Hyper Foundation: HyperEVM mainnet has officially launched
The Hyper Foundation stated on the X platform that HyperEVM has officially launched. This is an important step towards achieving universal programmability in Hyperliquid's high-performance financial system, accommodating all financial visions. The initial mainnet release of HyperEVM includes: 1. HyperEVM blocks built as part of L1 execution, inheriting all security from HyperBFT consensus; 2. Instant transfers between native spot HYPE and HyperEVM HYPE; a reminder that HYPE is the native gas token on HyperEVM; 3. The specification WHYPE system contract deployed at 0x555…5 for DeFi applications. In future network upgrades, universal ERC20 native transfers and precompiles will be enabled. Although these features have been implemented on the testnet, the mainnet release is being phased to minimize the impact on existing users on L1. HyperEVM can combine with L1 state while not affecting the low-latency trading experience of existing users.
Jupiter co-founder meow stated on the X platform: "As a co-founder of Meteora, I want to reiterate my confidence that neither Jupiter nor anyone at Meteora will engage in any insider trading or financial misconduct, nor will they obtain any tokens improperly. Secondly, we are hiring an independent third party (law firm Fenwick & West) to conduct an investigation and publish a report, which they will release independently. Thirdly, I support Ben and his statement. He said there was no financial misconduct in dealing with partners, and I believe him. For over a year, Meteora has operated as an independent entity of Jupiter, and Ben has been running it without my significant involvement. While I have full confidence in Ben's character, as the project leader, Ben's judgment and attention to core aspects of the project have been inadequate in recent months, which is unacceptable. Therefore, Ben has chosen to resign and will seek new leadership for Meteora. Ben has always been helpful in the ecosystem, and I hope everyone maintains a friendly attitude during his clarification of the facts."
According to Cryptoslate, version 1.15.2 of the Ethereum protocol's key client Geth has been released to fix a bug in the previous version that affected mainnet block creation. According to Go Ethereum, this emergency update addresses a regression issue in the beacon consensus engine that caused validators to miss block opportunities and potentially incur economic losses. A regression issue in earlier versions affected the consensus engine's handling of mainnet block construction, as it did not account for the undefined MergeNetsplitBlock in the chain configuration. This change was introduced in a recent update to the beacon consensus engine, which led to the mainnet not being recognized as operating under the PoS mechanism, thereby disrupting block creation and expected network performance. Developers detailed that the regression issue originated from the removal of a test method called TestingTTDBlock, which was initially added during internal testing to simulate Merge blocks. After this method was removed, the system no longer bypassed the dependency on total difficulty, whereas the previous mechanism allowed the engine to ignore the normal fork order and inadvertently enabled Merge before the London fork. Users running version 1.15.1 are advised to upgrade to version 1.15.2 immediately to avoid missing block creation opportunities and incurring economic penalties. Geth v1.15.2 now provides a configuration that correctly identifies the mainnet as being in a post-merge state and restores the necessary network discovery protocol, thereby reinstating the expected operational parameters.
GetTrumpMemes will airdrop TRUMP tokens to users who purchase Trump products before February 15
According to Cointelegraph, GetTrumpMemes has announced that it will airdrop TRUMP tokens to users who purchase Trump-related merchandise before February 15.
Opinions
Matrixport: XRP rebound signals emerge, but SEC regulatory uncertainty remains
Matrixport analysis indicates that XRP's recent movement against USDT has shifted from a long-term sideways trend to a rapid increase, increasing the complexity of market chart analysis. In trading strategies, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) is a commonly used indicator. Historical data shows that when the RSI approaches 40%, the probability of an XRP rebound is higher, while an RSI near 70% may indicate overbought conditions. Currently, XRP's RSI is around 40%, and technical indicators suggest it still has upward potential. Especially after the new U.S. government takes office, the SEC may reconsider its lawsuit against Ripple Labs, bringing some uncertainty to the market. Analysts believe that XRP's recent rebound may have further upward space.
Cos, the founder of Slow Mist, posted on the X platform that the address doodo…kqg7 "tested" the following three CAs immediately after Argentine President Milei's tweet. Ordinary people might think there's nothing suspicious about this, but interestingly, these three CAs actually come from the same person (the relationship cannot be directly seen on-chain; we obtained this through various data cross-references). So I say the owner of this address should know what happened; perhaps they were just fulfilling their routine testing at Jupiter. ARG CA: ZRfYvM1aNWyqAbhaN1jGmgwBgbed6ah6Xo2qFZNGaPQLIBRA CA: ApxSjBnuVF18mrWFm3PveMZseCJoLETmVN8wvfU9hTwb (yes, it is not the real $LIBRA) SPL Token CA: Bo9jh3wsmcC2AjakLWzNmKJ3SgtZmXEcSaW7L2FAvUsU (yes, it is the real $LIBRA) Cos stated that he published the above post because Jupiter's tweet mentioned: "If there is evidence that Jupiter employees leaked information or engaged in other predatory behavior, please contact us directly. If we find that any team members have used non-public information for trading, we will take swift and decisive action."
Argentine President: Did not promote LIBRA, just shared LIBRA information
Argentine President Milei stated on a television program, "I acted in good faith and ended up being hit. The country did not incur losses; at most, Argentines lost four or five. The vast majority of investors are Chinese and Americans. I shared this information just like I have shared hundreds of other things. My tweet was sent three minutes after the currency was created because I am passionate about these matters and have learned about it. These people are volatility traders who know what they are doing. Saying that 44,000 people were affected is false; at most, only 5,000 people were. The likelihood of Argentines being involved is very small. These are all very professional people in this financial tool. Those involved are very clear about the risks they are taking—they are volatility traders. This is a private matter between individuals, and they are participating voluntarily. I did not promote LIBRA; I just shared LIBRA information. I did this because I am a firm technological optimist. Any initiative that improves financing for tech entrepreneurs attracts me. I did not make a mistake because I acted in good faith. But when I saw the consequences, I realized I still have a lot to learn. I need to understand that after becoming president, I must still act as I did before. Unfortunately, this situation made me realize that I need to raise my standards and not be so easily accessible."
Important Data
Suspected Galaxy Digital address incurs a loss of $8.493 million on PNUT, ai16z, and arc
According to @ai_9684xtpa's monitoring, a suspected address belonging to Galaxy Digital has spent $16.41 million over the past three months to build positions in three Memecoins: $PNUT, $ai16z, and $arc. However, the cumulative unrealized loss on these three tokens has reached $8.493 million, and it is currently unclear whether it participated in market-making activities. $PNUT: Holds 21.46 million tokens, with a cost basis of $0.3743, currently incurring an unrealized loss of $4.935 million. $ai16z: Holds 7.53 million tokens, with a cost basis of $0.7446, currently incurring an unrealized loss of $3.133 million.
According to data disclosed by crypto lawyer wassielawyer, a total of 74,698 traders suffered losses in LIBRA token trading, with total losses amounting to approximately $286 million. Specific data shows that there are 25 traders who lost over $1 million; 2,409 traders lost between $10,000 and $50,000; and 71,369 users lost between $0 and $10,000. Additionally, the average loss per trader is about $3,833.
2018 ETH OG whale deposits 5,000 ETH on Binance, worth $13.65 million
According to on-chain analyst @ai_9684xtpa's monitoring, a 2018 ETH OG whale deposited 5,000 ETH on Binance 20 minutes ago, worth $13.65 million. This portion of ETH can be traced back to 2018: the address continuously accumulated Ethereum during the 2018-2020 bear market, with an average cost as low as $194, and if sold, the return rate would exceed 1300%.
According to Onchain Lens monitoring, six hours ago, the Trump family's crypto project World Liberty Finance (WLFI) newly created a multi-signature wallet that withdrew 10 million USDC from Binance and purchased 200 million WLFI.
According to Lookonchain monitoring, Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy converted the $5 million USDC compensation received from the LIBRA team into 27,688 SOL and deposited 29,657 SOL (approximately $5.29 million) into Kraken.
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