Spanish AI company unveils Quasar 438B, matching Qwen 2 7B in low-inference benchmarks to become Europe’s top AI model.

Bitcoin treasury company Capital B (ALCPB) announced it has secured a €7.6 million (approx. $8.8 million) investment from Blockstream CEO Adam Back. The firm issued 13,181,030 shares at €0.58 apiece, with each share carrying four 5-year warrants. The proceeds are earmarked to purchase up to 376 BTC. Capital B currently holds 3,145 BTC, with a total acquisition cost of €284.2 million, translating to an average cost of €90,352 per BTC. Upon completing this acquisition, its holdings will rise to 3,521 BTC, valued at roughly $269.5 million, making it the second-largest Bitcoin treasury among European public companies, trailing only Bitcoin Group SE which holds 3,605 BTC. The transaction is part of a broader €21 million investment plan, in which TOBAM also participated. If all warrants are exercised, the company will issue an additional ~144.9 million shares, raising €135.8 million, bringing total potential financing to €156.8 million; a current shareholder with a 1% stake would see their equity diluted to 0.65% at that stage.

Wintermute said in a statement that over the past two weeks, the crypto market has rebounded, ETF fund flows have turned positive, and stablecoin issuance has stabilized. However, to kick off a full new market cycle, the sector still needs new capital entry points. Historically, venture capital (VC) and ICOs in 2017-2018, stablecoins in 2020-2021, and ETFs plus digital asset treasury firms in 2024-2025 all accelerated bull runs. Real-World Assets (RWA) could emerge as the next major liquidity channel. Data shows stablecoins saw a net issuance of over $120 billion in a single year; ETFs recorded cumulative net inflows of $63 billion, while digital asset treasury firms added over $115 billion to their holdings. By comparison, RWA attracted roughly $16 billion in capital over the past 12 months, just about one-tenth of the peak size of the ETF and treasury firms’ previous cycle. Yet on-chain tokenized asset value has tripled in a year, exceeding $30 billion, and continued expanding even during periods of stablecoin supply contraction. Wintermute noted that RWA funds initially purchased traditional assets such as Apple stocks and U.S. Treasury funds, not crypto assets directly. But once these funds enter on-chain systems, the friction to shift to Bitcoin (BTC), altcoins, and DeFi will drop significantly. As regulatory frameworks gradually clarify, and tokenized Treasuries and funds are accepted as collateral by exchanges and DeFi protocols, RWA could drive a slower-paced, longer-lasting market cycle.

According to Lookonchain's monitoring, trader 0x9a49 has sold all 7,201 ETH it purchased a week ago, valued at approximately $17.2 million, locking in a profit of $780,000.

CrowdStrike and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the takedown of the Sality peer-to-peer (P2P) botnet, isolating more than 15,000 infected devices globally. The botnet has been spreading since 2003, and over the past eight years has primarily deployed a clipboard hijacking tool called EggJagger to steal funds from Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) transfers. EggJagger monitors the crypto wallet addresses copied by victims and replaces them with addresses controlled by attackers, diverting transferred funds to the threat actors. CrowdStrike estimates that the tool alone has stolen at least $150,000 worth of crypto assets; as most of the funds have not been moved, the associated holdings rose to approximately $1.35 million in January 2025. The U.S. DOJ, FBI, and Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS) have seized relevant domains in the U.S., while police in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania shut down the botnet’s European infrastructure. Infected devices have now been redirected to traffic receiving servers controlled by CrowdStrike, but the original malware on the devices remains active until manually removed.

Beating AI News Brief: Moonshot AI announced that to meet users’ demand for integrating Kimi API into Codex and Claude Code, Kimi API now supports both OpenAI’s Responses API format and Anthropic’s Messages API format. Users of Codex or Claude Code can directly connect to models including kimi-k3, kimi-k2.7-code-highspeed, kimi-k2.7-code, and kimi-k2.6 via custom model providers, with no need for format conversion or local proxies. (Jinshi)

According to Forbes, Bitcoin has fallen nearly 10% since surging past $81,000 last month, dropping to around $76,000. Amid growing concerns over U.S. debt, fiscal deficits, and global financial market turmoil, the crypto market has seen heightened volatility, with investors now closely monitoring whether U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent will intervene in the bond market again. Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research, said markets are worried that "bond vigilantes" are pushing yields higher to express dissatisfaction with massive government deficits, rising debt, and rapidly increasing interest costs. He forecast that if the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield reaches 5%, there will be strong demand for the bond market, potentially including action from Bessent. If necessary, Bessent may raise funds by issuing additional short-term Treasuries and use the proceeds to repurchase long-term bonds to avoid a panic sell-off in the bond market. Last month, Bessent unexpectedly pledged to support the bond market to lower government borrowing costs, a move that subsequently drove a notable rise in Bitcoin’s price. However, global bond yields have climbed again this week, with the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield hitting 4.814% at one point, its highest level since November 2023. Meanwhile, amid fears of a potential further escalation of U.S.-Iran tensions, international oil prices have returned to near $90 per barrel, pushing up financing costs for the U.S. and other major economies and intensifying market focus on Bessent’s next moves.