Stablecoin Public Blockchain Stable Announces Launch of Public Testnet

February 7 — Matthew Sigel, VanEck’s Director of Digital Assets Research, noted that unlike past steep Bitcoin price drops with clear triggers, this latest sell-off lacks a single catalyst. That has made it harder to call a market bottom—but could also set the stage for a clearer recovery. Factors driving Bitcoin’s drop to $60k on Thursday include: leverage unwinding, miners forced to offload, fading AI hype, rising quantum computing concerns, and the psychological weight of Bitcoin’s unofficial four-year cycle. **Massive Deleveraging** Futures open interest hit a $90 billion peak in early October but has since plunged from ~$61 billion a week ago to ~$49 billion—meaning the market has unwound over 45% of its peak leverage. **Fading AI Hype** Investors now question whether firms like OpenAI and cloud providers can turn massive infrastructure spending into profits. With ROI on hundreds of billions in infrastructure uncertain and commercialization paths murky, this skepticis

On February 7, crypto analytics firm Glassnode noted in a social media report that on-chain investor behavior around Halloween 2023 pointed to a potential shift into a bear market. Over the subsequent ~100 days, Bitcoin’s price dropped roughly 45%—falling from $110k to $60k. Long-term holder (LTH) profit-taking data shows that since November 1, LTHs have realized an additional ~318,000 BTC in profits. This unusually large sell-off amid bearish conditions has continued to pressure prices downward. However, since early December, LTH holdings have begun to rise, signaling a slowdown in their selling activity. The market unrealized loss ratio has hit ~24% at the $60k price level—well above the bull-to-bear transition threshold. This indicates the market has entered a deep bear market but not yet reached the extreme panic sell-off stage (over 50%), meaning it’s currently in a bubble deflation phase. Additionally, since hitting its October 2023 high, Bitcoin’s price has consistently

On Feb 7, the Financial Times reported that Crypto.com co-founder and CEO Kris Marszalek purchased the ai.com domain name last spring through broker Larry Fischer. The transaction price exceeded twice the $30 million paid for voice.com, setting a new record. Since April, Marszalek has assembled a team to develop an autonomous AI agent designed to handle practical tasks like stock trading and schedule management via a private, user-friendly architecture. The initiative aims to build a decentralized network that advances general artificial intelligence development. Previously, Marszalek spent $12 million to acquire the crypto.com domain name. The deal closed around July 2018 and was later made public.

**February 7: Bithumb, South Korea’s second-largest crypto exchange, mistakenly airdropped 620,000 Bitcoins (BTC) to 695 customers yesterday due to an employee error—equivalent to 2.95% of Bitcoin’s total circulating supply. While the platform has since recovered nearly all the mistakenly sent funds (only 0.3% remains unretrieved), the massive unintended airdrop has spurred debate in the crypto community about “ghost balances” on centralized exchanges (CEXs).** **Bithumb has not directly disclosed detailed BTC reserve holdings or complete Proof of Reserve (PoR) on-chain evidence. However, a prior report from South Korean outlet MK.co.kr stated that as of Q3 2023, Bithumb held just 42,619 BTC in storage. Even if reserves have grown since then, they are still far short of the 620,000 BTC mistakenly credited.** **This incident is an internal ledger error, not a real on-chain airdrop from the exchange’s hot wallet. The extra BTC in users’ accounts constitutes a “ghost balance”—meanin

**February 7th** LookOnChain monitoring found that the 0xcA0-prefixed address tied to the "BTC OG Insider Whale" (agent Garrett Jin) shared the same Binance deposit address as Trend Research, which operates under Eary Huah. On-chain data details the following moves: - One day prior, the Trend Research address transferred 7.989 million USDT to the 0xcdF-prefixed address, then sent the funds to Binance’s 0x28C-prefixed hot wallet. - Two hours earlier, the "BTC OG Insider Whale" sent 10,000 ETH to the identical 0xcdF-prefixed address, before shifting the assets to the same 0x28C-prefixed Binance hot wallet. LookOnChain did not offer further interpretation. However, Binance deposit addresses are typically user-specific—especially hot deposit addresses used for large sums. While "coincidence" or "address reuse" (via a common funding source or OTC channel) is possible, the odds of two independent whales/institutions using the exact same deposit address are extremely low under nor

On February 7, Chris Dixon—partner at a16z and head of a16z Crypto—posted a social media article titled *The Long Game of Cryptocurrency*. He pushed back against two prevalent claims: that crypto’s non-financial use cases are dead, and that the “read-write-own” model has failed. Both, he argued, misinterpret crypto’s core thesis and misjudge its developmental stage. Dixon noted blockchain’s core innovation is a new primitive: the ability to coordinate labor and capital at internet scale, embed ownership directly into systems, and increasingly orchestrate AI agents. “We’re in blockchain’s financial era,” he said—but this was never meant to be the only phase, nor was finance a side note. Finance is the natural proving ground for the primitive’s value, serving as the foundation for all other applications. At a16z, the firm takes a long-term view: its fund structure is built for a 10+ year horizon, as building new industries requires time and careful sequencing. Infrastructu