Crypto

If Bitcoin posts a loss at the end of this month, it will also mark Bitcoin’s first time ending both January and February in the red. Bitcoin may be headed for its worst first quarter in eight years, with data showing Bitcoin is already down 22.3% since the start of the year. The asset began the year trading around $87,700 and has declined by around $20,000 to current lows of around $68,000, putting it on track for its worst first quarter since the 2018 bear market — which fell almost 50%, according to CoinGlass.  Bitcoin (BTC) has declined in seven of the past thirteen Q1s, with the most recent being 2025 when it lost 11.8%, 2020 when it shed 10.8%, and the largest ever, 2018, when it dumped 49.7% in just three months.  Read more

Russia’s deputy finance minister says around 50 billion rubles worth of crypto changes hands daily, calling for crypto market regulation.  Russia’s finance ministry and central bank are reportedly calling on the government to speed up the rollout of crypto market regulations amid a boom in digital asset adoption, claiming that citizens are spending almost 50 billion Russian rubles ($648 million) on crypto daily.  According to a report from Russian news outlet RBC on Thursday, Russia’s deputy finance minister, Ivan Chebeskov, emphasized the importance of regulating the market, noting that most crypto spending occurs through unregulated channels.   “We have always said that millions of citizens are involved in this activity, these are trillions of rubles from the point of view of citizens in use, in savings,” he said as part of a panel discussion on digital assets at the Alfa Talk conference, adding:  Read more

A Miami federal judge has entered a default judgment against Ben Armstrong, who failed to respond to Kevin O’Leary’s complaint accusing him of defamation. Businessman and TV personality Kevin O’Leary has won a multi-million-dollar defamation lawsuit against crypto influencer Ben Armstrong, also known as “Bitboy.” Miami federal judge Beth Bloom on Friday ordered Armstrong to pay almost $2.83 million in damages to O’Leary over a series of social media posts accusing the Shark Tank star of being a murderer. O’Leary and his wife, Linda, were in a boating accident in 2019 that resulted in two deaths when their boat struck another. Armstrong accused O’Leary of murder in multiple X posts in March 2025, claiming that he paid millions to cover up the incident. Read more

The founder said he is turning OpenClaw into a foundation, calling OpenAI the fastest way to bring open agents to everyone.

The move would bring AI chatbots under UK online safety laws, enabling rapid age limits and feature curbs to protect children.

Aave Labs CEO Stani Kulechov said onchain lending could help accelerate the development of solar, energy storage and robotics by putting money behind “future-proof” assets. Stani Kulechov, the founder of the decentralized lending platform Aave, says DeFi could benefit from $50 trillion worth of “abundance assets,” such as solar energy, through tokenization by 2050, opening a new class of onchain collateral. Data from RWA.xyz shows that nearly $25 billion worth of real-world assets have been tokenized onchain, but they are mostly in the form of US Treasury bonds, stocks, commodities, private credit and real estate. In a post to X on Sunday, Kulechov said he expects these scarce assets to continue growing but that the “biggest impact from tokenization can be achieved by tokenizing abundance assets.” Read more

Bitcoin's futures basis has widened amid retail dip buying surges, but one expert warns the setup may end in an "over-leveraged shakeout."

The world’s largest digital asset treasury plans to convert $6 billion in bond debt to equity, claiming that it could survive an 88% Bitcoin crash. Strategy founder Michael Saylor has revealed the firm plans to convert its $6 billion in bond debt into equity, a move that reduces debt on the balance sheet. “Strategy can withstand a drawdown in BTC price to $8,000 and still have sufficient assets to fully cover our debt,” stated the firm on X on Sunday, prompting Saylor’s response.  The Bitcoin (BTC) treasury company currently holds $49 billion in Bitcoin reserves with a stash of 714,644 BTC.  Read more

Studios are escalating pressure on AI developers, as new tools aim to document whether generative models are trained on copyrighted material.

Grayscale joins Bitwise in filing to launch a standalone Aave product in the US, betting that Wall Street has retained its appetite for altcoins. Crypto asset manager Grayscale filed for regulatory approval to convert its trust tracking the token of the decentralized lending protocol Aave into an exchange-traded fund. The company filed a Form S-1 registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, saying it intends to convert the trust and rename it the Grayscale Aave Trust ETF. Grayscale added that it plans to list the fund on NYSE Arca, one of the most popular exchanges for trading ETFs, under the ticker “GAVE.” It will charge a 2.5% fee, and Coinbase will serve as both its custodian and prime broker. Read more

The $940 billion asset manager will collaborate on DeFi lending infrastructure and could acquire up to 90 million MORPHO tokens.  Traditional finance giant Apollo Global Management Inc. has signed a partnership agreement with decentralized lending platform Morpho to take a significant stake in the project and help support its blockchain lending infrastructure.  The move was announced on Friday by the Morpho Association, the nonprofit organization behind the decentralized finance (DeFi) platform.  The partnership, or “cooperation agreement,” will see Apollo or its affiliates buy up to 90 million Morpho (MORPHO) governance tokens over the next four years, representing 9% of the total 1 billion-token supply of MORPHO.  Read more

Blockstream's Adam Back said BIP-110 could be used to freeze user funds, but the proposal’s creator argues there are safeguards in place to prevent it. Blockstream CEO Adam Back has opposed a proposal aimed at reducing Ordinals-like “spam” on Bitcoin, warning that the fix could do more harm than good to the network’s credibility. Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP-110) was proposed by pseudonymous Bitcoin developer Dathon Ohm in December. Nearly 7.5% of Bitcoin nodes — all of which are Bitcoin Knots clients — have signaled readiness for BIP-110, according to data. The proposal seeks to temporarily shrink how much data can be stored in Bitcoin transactions to reduce the amount of images, videos, audios and other “data abuse” flooding the network. Read more

As Epstein-linked revelations emerged, new data show crypto payments to suspected trafficking services surged 85% globally in 2025.

Transparency, which is a hallmark feature of most cryptocurrencies, is likely one of the biggest hurdles to mass adoption, the Binance founder said. The lack of privacy for onchain transactions is one of the biggest hurdles to the mass adoption of cryptocurrencies for payments and a medium of exchange, according to Changpeng Zhao, co-founder of the Binance cryptocurrency exchange. The executive commonly known as “CZ” said the lack of privacy prevents businesses and institutions from paying expenses in crypto. He gave this example:  In a previous conversation with investor and host of the All-In Podcast Chamath Palihapitiya, CZ also cited physical security concerns as a reason why onchain transparency is a risk to users. The comments follow a revival of privacy and the cypherpunk ethos in crypto. Read more

The asset manager overseeing more than $900 billion assets may buy up to 90 million MORPHO tokens as part of a partnership to support DeFi credit market, it said.

Peter Steinberger's open-source AI agent OpenClaw hit 180,000 GitHub stars and spawned MoltBook chaos. Now Meta and OpenAI want to buy it, but he's determined to keep it free.

PGI's CEO spent millions on luxury cars, homes, hotels, designer clothing, jewelry, and watches using investor funds.

Cboe wants to bring back all-or-nothing options, a contract that pays a fixed amount if a condition is met and pays zero if it isn't. While that might sound like a small product refresh, the timing makes it hard to ignore. Prediction markets have trained a new retail reflex: turn a belief into a number […] The post Wall Street is desperate to copy crypto’s prediction markets as Cboe files for “Yes/No” options appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Several leaders in Hong Kong announced efforts to advance the region's regulatory environment.

The purchase will mark week 12 of consecutive buys by Strategy, which continues accumulating BTC despite a sharp decline in the company's stock price. Michael Saylor, the co-founder of Bitcoin (BTC) treasury company Strategy, signaled that the company is acquiring more BTC amid the ongoing market dip, marking week 12 of a consecutive buying streak. Saylor posted the Strategy BTC accumulation chart via the X social media platform on Sunday. The chart has become synonymous with BTC purchases made by the company, which is touting its upcoming 99th BTC transaction. Strategy’s most recent BTC purchase occurred on Feb.9, when the company bought 1,142 BTC for more than $90 million, bringing its total holdings to 714,644 BTC, valued at about $49.3 billion using market prices at the time of publication. Read more