Morning News | The New York Stock Exchange will launch a 24/7 trading platform; GENIUS tokens will be created before April 12; Spot gold and silver hit historical highs
January 19 Market Important Events Overview整理：ChainCatcher
Important News:
- Peter Schiff: If Bitcoin fails to keep up with gold's gains, it will weaken its status as digital gold and eventually crash
- Caixin: Digital RMB smart contract development supports fully Turing-complete languages like Ethereum's Solidity
- Spot gold and silver hit historical highs, gold's increase expands to 2%
- YZi Labs launches year-round EASY Residency Q3 startup incubation program
- Market news: The New York Stock Exchange will launch 24/7 trading services
- Genius releases official airdrop and points white paper, GENIUS token will be created before April 12
- Crypto card payment scale reaches $18 billion, with Visa accounting for over 90% of transaction volume
What important events happened in the past 24 hours?
Louisiana State Employees Fund discloses holding 17,900 shares of Strategy stock
According to ChainCatcher, the Louisiana State Employees Fund, with a size of approximately $15.6 billion, disclosed that it currently holds 17,900 shares of Bitcoin fund company Strategy (stock code MSTR), valued at about $3.2 million based on the disclosed price.
Market news: The New York Stock Exchange will launch 24/7 trading services
ChainCatcher reports that the New York Stock Exchange plans to launch a platform for 24/7 trading of U.S. listed stocks and ETFs.
IMF raises global economic growth forecast to 3.3%, AI investment offsets Trump tariffs impact
ChainCatcher reports that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) today released a report raising its 2026 global economic growth forecast from 3.1% last October to 3.3%.
IMF Chief Economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas pointed out that despite facing U.S.-led trade protection policies and high uncertainty, the global economy still shows significant resilience, mainly due to a surge in investment in AI in North America and Asia.
ChainCatcher reports that Magic Eden announced that starting February 1, it will directly invest 15% of its revenue into the ME token ecosystem. This portion of revenue will be evenly distributed, with 50% used for buying back ME tokens in the open market and 50% distributed to ME stakers in USDC based on staking weight.
The existing "market transaction fee only" ME buyback mechanism will be upgraded to a revenue distribution system covering the entire ecosystem, with staking weight depending on the amount staked and the duration of staking. USDC rewards can be claimed monthly, with the first claim (corresponding to February activities) opening in March, and rewards must be claimed within 90 days.
YZi Labs launches year-round EASY Residency Q3 startup incubation program
ChainCatcher reports that YZi Labs announced the upgrade of EASY Residency to a year-round rolling incubation program, establishing long-term centers in New York and the San Francisco Bay Area.
This program offers entrepreneurs in the Web3, AI, and biotechnology sectors up to $500,000 in investment, workspace, living subsidies, and partner resource packages. Three global Demo Days will be held in 2026, with the first taking place in April during TOKEN2049 in Dubai. YZi Labs manages over $10 billion in assets and has incubated 65 portfolio companies.
South Korea cracks a cryptocurrency money laundering case worth approximately $101.7 million
ChainCatcher reports that according to The Block, South Korean customs recently successfully dismantled an international illegal currency exchange network suspected of laundering approximately $101.7 million (1.489 trillion won) through cryptocurrency transactions. According to Yonhap News Agency, the Korea Customs Service has handed over three suspects to prosecutors, accusing them of violating the Foreign Exchange Transaction Act.
The money laundering network operated from September 2021 to June 2025, transferring funds disguised as legitimate expenses such as cosmetic surgery or tuition fees. The suspects purchased multi-national crypto assets and transferred them to Korean wallets, exchanged them for local currency, and dispersed them to multiple Korean bank accounts to evade regulation.
Peter Schiff: If Bitcoin fails to keep up with gold's gains, it will weaken its status as digital gold and eventually crash
ChainCatcher reports that gold advocate and economist Peter Schiff stated on the X platform that everyone expects Bitcoin to follow gold and soar to new highs. However, the market has given speculators too much time to buy in. The more likely scenario is that Bitcoin fails to keep up with gold's gains, which will weaken its status as "digital gold" and ultimately lead to a crash.
Genius releases official airdrop and points white paper, GENIUS token will be created before April 12
ChainCatcher reports that Genius, a Perp DEX trading terminal supported by YZi Labs, has released its official airdrop and points white paper. The first season will end on April 12, 2026, and the GENIUS token will be created before that date. The number of airdrop allocations will be increased by 50%, and the value corresponding to each point will also increase by 50%.
From now until April 12, 10 million GP will be distributed weekly. GP is retroactively allocated and distributed only based on spot trading volume. The value of GP earned through trading volume remains unchanged.
ChainCatcher reports that according to Caixin, a technical insider familiar with digital RMB revealed that the smart contracts based on the account system of digital RMB, like those on public chains, are essentially "condition-triggered automatic execution codes," with the difference being whether they possess full Turing completeness.
Smart contracts based on the account system of digital RMB are considered restricted Turing complete, with programming strictly limited to the templates approved by the central bank, supporting only preset, simple condition-triggered functions. This design is primarily for security and risk control considerations.
The development of digital RMB smart contracts supports various programming languages, including Ethereum's Solidity and other fully Turing-complete languages, so technically there is no issue. However, the core challenge is how to design a standard access and auditing mechanism that can be accepted by the financial system.
ChainCatcher reports that according to CertiK Alert monitoring, the hacker who stole $282 million from a whale has bridged part of the funds (approximately $63 million) to an address starting with 0xF73, followed by further money laundering operations.
Previously, on-chain detective ZachXBT posted on social media that a whale victim lost over $282 million worth of Litecoin (LTC) and Bitcoin (BTC) due to a social engineering scam involving a hardware wallet.
ChainCatcher reports that according to an Artemis research report, cryptocurrency cards have become a key channel for stablecoin usage, with an annualized transaction volume reaching $18 billion, nearing the $19 billion scale of peer-to-peer stablecoin on-chain transfers.
Currently, Visa dominates this market, accounting for over 90% of transaction volume. Despite rapid growth, Artemis believes that direct cryptocurrency payments will still struggle to completely replace traditional card networks in the short term.
Changes in Fed Chair candidates: Hassett may withdraw, Waller becomes the biggest favorite
ChainCatcher reports that Kevin Hassett, the White House economic advisor and director of the National Economic Council, recently publicly stated that Trump is more likely to want him to continue in his current position, and this statement has been interpreted by the market as his basic withdrawal from the race for the next Fed chair.
After Trump publicly released the above signal, the prediction market quickly adjusted expectations. Data from Kalshi and Polymarket shows that former Fed governor Kevin Waller's probability of becoming the next Fed chair has surged to about 60%, clearly leading; Hassett's winning probability has dropped to about 15%-16%, while current governor Christopher Waller is around 13%-14%. Previously, Waller and Hassett were evenly matched.
Analysts point out that Waller has become the "clear frontrunner" for the first time, but Trump's style on personnel issues has always been variable, and the final result remains uncertain. Other major candidates include Waller and BlackRock executive Rick Reed.
At the same time, the judicial investigation surrounding the Fed headquarters renovation project adds uncertainty to the chair selection and reignites market concerns about the Fed's independence. Treasury Secretary Yellen downplayed the related impact, stating that the market performance is generally stable and that the Senate is expected to accept Trump's final nominee.
Current Fed Chair Powell's term will end on May 15. Trump has stated that he will announce his successor within this month but has not provided a specific timeline.
Ethereum's daily trading volume surges to an all-time high, while Gas fees drop to a new low
ChainCatcher reports that according to TheBlock, data shows that Ethereum trading activity has significantly surged since mid-December, with the seven-day moving average trading volume approaching 2.5 million transactions, reaching an all-time high, nearly double that of the same period last year.
Meanwhile, the average gas fee has dropped to a significantly low level, currently around $0.15, the lowest level in the network's modern history. Etherscan's gas data indicates that transaction fees are expected to be even lower, with average gas fees for swap transactions on Sunday around $0.04.
Spot gold and silver hit historical highs, gold's increase expands to 2%
ChainCatcher reports that according to Jin10 data, spot gold and silver surged at the beginning of trading, with silver hitting a historical high of $93.69/ounce, up over 4% for the day. Gold's increase expanded to 2%, reported at $4,690/ounce, also reaching a new high.
Vitalik: We need more and better DAOs, not just treasuries controlled by token voting
ChainCatcher reports that Vitalik Buterin stated that the current practice of DAOs in the crypto industry has deviated from the original vision, and it is necessary to rethink and build "different and better DAO designs." Vitalik pointed out that Ethereum's original concept was deeply inspired by decentralized autonomous organizations, but today DAOs are often simplified to "treasuries controlled by token voting," which, while operational in form, are inefficient, easily manipulated, and fail to truly alleviate the issues arising from human political games.
Vitalik emphasized that DAOs remain an indispensable infrastructure, with application scenarios including: improving oracle design, achieving on-chain dispute arbitration, maintaining various critical lists, quickly launching short-term collaborative projects, and supporting long-term project maintenance after the original team exits. He believes that the current problem lies not in the motivations of participants, but in the governance and system design itself still being insufficient.
In terms of governance frameworks, Vitalik introduced the analytical perspective of "concavity and convexity issues," suggesting that different types of problems require different governance structures: scenarios leaning towards consensus and robustness should emphasize broad participation and anti-manipulation capabilities; while scenarios requiring decisive decision-making should allow for leadership while being checked by decentralized mechanisms.
Vitalik further pointed out that for DAOs to truly function, they must address two major challenges: privacy and decision fatigue, and can leverage privacy technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs (ZK) and multi-party computation, as well as AI and consensus-based communication tools to alleviate governance burdens. He emphasized that AI should not replace human judgment but should serve as a tool to amplify and assist human intentions.
Finally, Vitalik stated that future DAO designs need to treat governance mechanisms, privacy technologies, and communication layers as core components rather than auxiliary modules, to ensure that the decentralization and robustness of Ethereum's underlying infrastructure are continued in its upper-layer applications.
Meme Popularity Rankings
According to the meme token tracking and analysis platform GMGN, as of January 20, 09:00,
The top five popular ETH tokens in the past 24 hours are: SHIB, LINK, PEPE, UNI, ONDO
The top five popular Solana tokens in the past 24 hours are: TRUMP, PENGU, Fartcoin, ME, PUMP
The top five popular Base tokens in the past 24 hours are: PEPE, BASED, BSC, SKYA, B3
What are some interesting articles worth reading in the past 24 hours?
The "All-In Podcast" is one of the world's most popular tech and business podcasts, co-hosted by four top venture capitalists and friends. The four hosts are: Jason Calacanis (early investor in Uber and Robinhood, podcast host, responsible for controlling the scene), Chamath Palihapitiya (billionaire, founder of Social Capital, known as the "SPAC King," sharp viewpoints), David Friedberg (founder of The Production Board, with a strong scientific background, known as the "Science Sultan"), and David Sacks (the first "AI and cryptocurrency czar" in the U.S., close friend of Musk, co-founder of Craft Ventures, former PayPal executive, recently deeply involved in U.S. political activities).
In this episode, the four discuss deep predictions about the political, business, and tech trends of 2026, covering topics such as California's wealth tax, Trump economics, the impact of AI on employment, geopolitics, and specific investment advice.
Nikita Bier's biography: Why he took on InfoFi, perhaps you can find the answer here
Nikita Bier's entrepreneurial trajectory resembles a precise experiment targeting human weaknesses: from policy simulation tools on the Berkeley campus to two viral applications that hooked teenagers, and now leading product iterations on X (formerly Twitter).
He always finds leverage in the subtle psychological gaps of users' "why they click, why they stay," driving large-scale behavioral changes. At 31, he has turned small team ideas into high-value exits twice, and now he brings this approach to Musk's platform, attempting to reshape the future of a social giant. But behind the glamorous success are countless failures and a confrontation with the "shameful truth."
Coinbase: The evolution from a fringe project to global financial infrastructure
This article provides a detailed study and analysis of Coinbase Global, Inc. (NASDAQ: COIN), covering comprehensive data, legal documents, internal communications, and market analysis up to early 2026. It explores how Coinbase evolved from a fringe project in Y Combinator in 2012 to a giant controlling the flow of global crypto assets.
The article delves into the counterintuitive decisions behind its rise—seeking compliance amidst chaos; reveals the internal turmoil behind the cultural purge and racial discrimination allegations in 2020; details its thunderous tactics in reshaping the regulatory environment through "money politics" in the 2024 U.S. elections; and predicts future risks as it builds Web3 super applications and monopolizes the ETF custody market through the Base chain.
Why did the crypto market crash today?
The threats of Trump tariffs and changes in Fed chair candidates are the triggers, but from both a technical perspective and leverage and cost structure, the market needs a deep correction to clean up positions.
Risk warning
Risk warning
