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According to Caixin, the second batch of Hong Kong compliant stablecoin licenses is currently under application. Reliable sources reveal that Futu Securities and OSL Group are both contenders for the second batch of licenses.However, in November last year, the People's Bank of China and 13 other ministries reiterated their stance on cracking down on virtual currency trading in China and classified stablecoins as virtual currencies, which means that trading stablecoins will not be possible in mainland China.

According to a Caixin article titled "Financial Innovation or Insider Trading: The Rise and Controversy of Polymarket," it points out that when insider information can be openly monetized, the boundaries of prediction markets have become blurred. Is this "gambling" disguised in financial clothing, or even suspected insider trading? However, regardless of the legal debate over whether it is gambling, the fact that Polymarket uses USDC stablecoin for settlement and delivery poses a significant legal risk for participants within China.Previously, U.S. Senators Merkley and Klobuchar proposed the "End Prediction Market Corruption Act," which prohibits the President, Vice President, and members of Congress from trading on prediction markets, and requires the prediction market trading activities of their spouses and dependent children to be included in annual financial disclosures.

According to Caixin, with the official implementation of new regulations on loan assistance and the slowdown in consumer credit demand, multiple consumer loan assistance platforms showed a consistent trend in the fourth quarter of 2025: revenue and loan issuance scale declined year-on-year, and net profit fell sharply.As the loan assistance business enters a contraction phase, various platforms are seeking "overseas expansion" and investing in the "crypto space" as a second growth curve. It is reported that platforms such as Lexin and Yirendai have already laid out overseas businesses, with Southeast Asia and Latin America becoming the main battlegrounds. Weixin Jinke has been continuously investing in the blockchain industry over the past two years.

Ant Group has completed the acquisition of Hong Kong stablecoin concept stock Yau Choy Securities, obtaining a 50.55% stake for HKD 2.814 billion. The board of Yau Choy Securities has been completely restructured, with Zheng Yanlan, the current head of the overseas business preparation team of Ant Group's Ant Wealth division, Huang Hao, the current senior vice president of Ant Group, and Liu Zheng, the current chief financial officer of Ant Group, appointed as executive directors.

According to Caixin, after 10 banks including the six major state-owned banks, 12 commercial banks may connect to the central bank's digital renminbi system. It is reported that seven national joint-stock banks, including Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, Guangfa Bank, Huaxia Bank, Minsheng Bank, CITIC Bank, Everbright Bank, and Zhejiang Commercial Bank, as well as five local city commercial banks, including Jiangsu Bank, Beijing Bank, Ningbo Bank, Nanjing Bank, and Suzhou Bank, are expected to join.As of now, there are 10 banks operating the digital renminbi, including Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Bank of Communications, Postal Savings Bank of China, China Merchants Bank, Industrial Bank, as well as WeBank and MYbank.

According to Jinshi News, Yaocai Securities Finance (01428.HK) announced that the tender offer initiated by Ant Group has been approved by the relevant Chinese authorities and is expected to be completed on March 30. The company's stock will resume trading on March 17.

There are rumors that Chinese regulators are reviewing Jane Street's trading behavior in the Chinese ETF market. However, a person close to Jane Street stated, "We are unaware of these rumors and have no reason to believe they are true; these rumors should not be associated with Jane Street."This week, Jane Street and its co-founders, along with two employees, were accused of insider trading, fraud, and market manipulation, actions that have been linked to the accelerated collapse of the 2022 TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin and its sister token Luna, resulting in a loss of $40 billion in value.Founded in 1999, Jane Street is one of the largest proprietary quantitative trading firms in the world, with net trading revenues exceeding $20 billion in 2024 and net profits nearing $13 billion. Unlike hedge funds, Jane Street does not accept external client funds, resulting in significantly lower disclosure obligations compared to traditional asset management firms, a structure that has kept it shrouded in mystery for a long time.

The Caixin article "Strict Management of Overseas RWA" reveals that the earliest RWA case trial in China came from Ant Group, which has helped companies like GCL-Poly Energy and Longxin Technology complete RWA financing ranging from tens of millions to billions of RMB. Ant Group uses the income rights of assets under these companies as underlying assets, splitting them into standardized digital tokens through blockchain technology, helping enterprises issue digital tokens for financing. These RWA projects follow the "domestic assets - Hong Kong confirmation - global circulation" model, and according to Hong Kong regulatory requirements, they are not open to retail investors, only limited to institutional or professional investors, and there is no secondary market trading.Regarding what types of domestic Chinese assets are suitable for overseas RWA, policy insiders indicate that, in principle, any assets that meet regulatory requirements can be considered, but they must not fall under the categories listed in China's domestic regulatory negative list. Individuals in the cryptocurrency field point out that high-quality domestic companies that are eligible for overseas IPOs will not choose RWA, as opting for RWA will inevitably fail to meet the listing conditions in Hong Kong. For domestic assets to be used in overseas RWA, it is essential to first confirm the safety of assets, funds, and information, ensuring compliance with cross-border investment, foreign exchange management, data security, and other relevant requirements, and finally obtain registration from the securities regulatory authority, with the registration process further considered on a case-by-case basis.

According to Caixin, as the rotating chair of the BRICS countries, the Reserve Bank of India has officially proposed to promote the establishment of a "BRICS Digital Currency Connectivity" system, aimed at utilizing blockchain technology to create a cross-border settlement network that bypasses the dollar and directly connects the payment systems of BRICS nations.This proposal is not simply about creating a brand new "BRICS currency," but rather a more pragmatic and operational "connectivity platform" or "settlement bridge," likely to be built on a permissioned blockchain (consortium chain). Central banks of each country will act as jointly maintained verification nodes, recording cross-border transactions on a distributed ledger, balancing sovereign control with the transparency and efficiency characteristics of blockchain.

According to Caixin, on February 2, 2026, after a meeting of the Financial Affairs Committee, the President of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, Eddie Yue, stated that a total of 36 institutions have submitted applications for stablecoin licenses, including banks, technology companies, brokerages, asset management companies, investment firms, e-commerce, payment institutions, and startup/web3 companies. Among them, Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong) is highly anticipated as it is one of the three major note-issuing banks in Hong Kong.Additionally, two sources indicated that JD Technology (Hong Kong), which was previously reported to have withdrawn from the competition for the first batch of stablecoin licenses, has not actually withdrawn its application for a stablecoin license. JD Technology (Hong Kong) is also one of the three main experimental entities in the stablecoin testing sandbox.

According to Caixin, from January 29 to 30, within less than 24 hours, the usually safe Tokyo, Japan, and Hong Kong, China, experienced consecutive robberies targeting large amounts of cash in yen, with the amounts involved reaching 420 million yen (approximately 19 million RMB) and 51 million yen (approximately 2.29 million RMB), respectively.About 6 hours after the incidents, the police arrested 3 suspects at Hong Kong International Airport on charges of "robbery" as they were attempting to leave the country. Additionally, 2 staff members at a virtual currency exchange store in Tsim Sha Tsui were arrested, including a 28-year-old local man and a 29-year-old man from mainland China, who are suspected of assisting the robbers in handling part of the stolen money.Preliminary intelligence analysis indicates that the relevant Japanese companies may have been profiting by carrying yen cash to Hong Kong to exchange for Hong Kong dollars, and then purchasing duty-free goods in Hong Kong to take advantage of the tax price differences between the two regions.

The FBI has arrested former Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding in Mexico City. The U.S. accuses him of orchestrating a transnational drug trafficking organization and extensively using cryptocurrencies and stablecoins for drug-related transactions and money laundering.FBI Director Kash Patel stated that Wedding will be extradited to the United States, facing multiple charges including cocaine trafficking and murder. Wedding has been on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list since 2025, with a reward of up to $15 million. U.S. prosecutors claim that this criminal network, in collaboration with the Sinaloa drug cartel in Mexico, transported hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia through Mexico and California to the United States and Canada.The U.S. Treasury previously noted that the organization moved funds through multiple blockchains, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tron, Solana, and BNB Chain, involving stablecoin payments and exhibiting multi-chain money laundering characteristics. In 2024, the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions on Wedding, his associates, and shell companies, freezing multiple sets of cryptocurrency addresses. Prosecutors also accused him of having directed the murder of informants and orchestrated several violent retaliation actions related to drug trafficking.

According to Caixin, a person familiar with the technology of digital renminbi revealed that the digital renminbi's smart contracts are based on an account system, and they are essentially "condition-triggered automatic execution code," similar to smart contracts on public chains, with the difference being whether they possess complete Turing completeness.The smart contracts of the digital renminbi, based on the account system, are considered restricted Turing complete. Their programming is strictly limited to the template scripts permitted 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 renminbi smart contracts supports multiple programming languages, including Ethereum's Solidity and other fully Turing complete languages, so technically there is no issue. However, the core challenge lies in how to design a standard access and auditing mechanism that can be accepted by the financial system.

Caixin reported in "After Many Twists and Turns, Southeast Asian Gambling Kingpin She Lunkai is Extradited Back to China | Past Events · Future Events" that the only partner of She Lunkai's blockchain project "Asia-Pacific New City" is the Singapore blockchain company BCB Innovation Ltd. The Fincy payment software based on BCB's blockchain is also promoted within Asia-Pacific New City, aiming to create a Southeast Asian version of WeChat. Fincy and BCB share the same parent company and similar shareholders, providing fiat and cryptocurrency exchange transactions, as well as online gaming.Industry insiders point out that by offering exchanges between fiat and cryptocurrency and online games, it effectively introduces many unrelated participants, breaking down large sums of money into smaller amounts, which ultimately converge into a gambling platform disguised as a game, significantly weakening the regulation of the flow of funds.

According to the official page, Binance Alpha has launched CharacterX (CAI).

Binance Alpha will launch CharacterX (CAI), and Alpha trading will start on January 12, 2026, at 16:00 (UTC+8).Users holding at least 252 Binance Alpha points can claim the token airdrop. Claim 40 CAI tokens airdrop on the Alpha event page, first come, first served. If the event has not ended, the score threshold will automatically decrease by 5 points every five minutes.Please note that claiming the airdrop will consume 15 Binance Alpha points. Users must confirm their claim on the Alpha event page within 24 hours, otherwise, it will be considered a forfeiture of the airdrop.

According to official news, the MEXC Meme+ trading zone will launch CAI on January 12, 2026, at 18:00 (UTC+8), and the withdrawal service will be available on January 13, 2026, at 18:00 (UTC+8).

According to official news, Binance Alpha will launch CharacterX (CAI) on January 12. Once trading opens, eligible users can claim airdrops using Binance Alpha Points on the Alpha event page.

According to Caixin, starting from January 1, the balance of digital RMB wallets will begin to accrue interest. It is reported that its smart contracts are different from the "on-chain" smart contracts known for being built on blockchain due to Ethereum. Senior digital RMB experts point out that digital RMB is not built on blockchain, but rather based on a newly designed account system, where the central bank and commercial banks jointly maintain "the same ledger." By loading "smart contracts that do not affect the monetary function," digital RMB achieves programmability, supporting features such as targeted payments and automatic execution.In addition, Caixin also disclosed that only real-name authenticated digital RMB wallets can accrue interest, meaning that Type I, II, and III wallets can earn interest, while Type IV non-real-name wallets do not earn interest (as the ownership of Type IV wallets cannot be confirmed). After January 1, mobile banking apps from participating operating banks, as well as payment platforms like WeChat and Alipay, will gradually gain the authority to open digital RMB wallets.