virtua

The Governor of the People's Bank of China, Pan Gongsheng, stated at the press conference on the economic theme of the Fourth Session of the 14th National People's Congress that, overall, in the past year, financial risks in key areas of our country have been resolved in an orderly manner, the financial system and financial market have operated smoothly, and risks in key areas have continued to converge. The People's Bank of China, together with relevant departments, has maintained a high-pressure crackdown on illegal financial activities such as illegal fundraising, speculative trading of virtual currencies, and underground banks.In the next step, the People's Bank of China will orderly resolve risks in key areas to prevent financial risks and maintain financial stability, continue to carry out a high-pressure crackdown on illegal financial activities in collaboration with industry regulators and law enforcement departments such as the police, closely monitor and assess the impact of external shocks, and utilize macro-prudential and financial stability policy tools to timely weaken or block risk contagion.

The Pakistani Parliament has officially passed the "Virtual Assets Bill 2026," establishing the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA), which is responsible for licensing and regulating virtual asset service providers within the country.The bill aims to protect investors, combat money laundering and terrorist financing, and promote fintech innovation, aligning Pakistan's regulatory standards with international norms. PVARA was previously a temporary body established by a presidential decree in July 2025, and this legislation marks its formal legalization.

Aurelion (NASDAQ: AURE) announced the arrival of the company's first AI virtual employee, Duncan.Aure, and opened access to its AI Agent Skills. This AI Agent has established a dedicated website and is live on social platforms such as X and Telegram, supporting automated trading and strategy execution for XAU₮ through preset Skills modules.Aurelion stated that Duncan is an important exploration for the company in the direction of digital gold infrastructure. In the future, the company will continue to strengthen the strategic positioning of XAU₮ assets while expanding the execution capabilities of the AI Agent in digital gold trading and asset management scenarios, and exploring innovative scenarios such as XAU₮ Shop, allowing digital gold to have more practical applications.

Jupiter announced the launch of the Jupiter Card, a fully integrated on-chain card within Jupiter Mobile, allowing users to spend using their wallet balance: it can be used for purchases anywhere Visa cards are accepted; the Jupiter Card is a Visa Infinite and Platinum virtual card; card transaction fees range from 1-1.8%; funded by USDC.

According to Hong Kong media Hong Kong 01, the Hong Kong police have cracked a money laundering case involving the use of puppet accounts and virtual currency exchange shops. It is reported that two mainland Chinese individuals opened puppet accounts in Hong Kong, using 43 local bank accounts to receive 34 sums of money from different fraud cases, and purchased cryptocurrency at virtual asset exchange shops, laundering approximately HKD 17.3 million in criminal proceeds.Analysis of the fund flow shows that the criminal group conducted cryptocurrency transactions through local bank accounts, laundering as much as HKD 230 million. The Hong Kong police charged the two individuals with 3 and 10 counts of money laundering respectively. After reviewing the case, the court approved heavier sentences of 28 months and 43 months in prison for the two.

The Financial Services Commission of South Korea (FSC) held the first meeting of the "Virtual Assets Committee" for 2026 today. During the meeting, representatives from relevant ministries, agencies, and the private sector discussed the mid-term review of the excessive payment incident involving virtual assets (February 6) and the direction for institutional improvements, as well as the main content of the government's review plan tentatively named the "Basic Law on Digital Assets" (Phase II of the "Virtual Assets Act").Based on today's discussions, the Financial Services Commission plans to continue advancing improvements in DAXA's internal control standards and self-regulation, and to consult with both the ruling and opposition parties on legislative matters.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a post on social media outlining the Ethereum execution layer roadmap, focusing on two major changes: the state tree and the virtual machine.Regarding the state tree, Vitalik supports upgrading the current hexadecimal Merkle Patricia tree to a binary tree based on a more efficient hash function through EIP-7864. This change can shorten the Merkle branch by four times, reducing the bandwidth cost for client data verification; at the same time, the hash function can be replaced with the Blake3 or Poseidon series, significantly improving proof efficiency.The binary tree design will also group storage slots into "pages," lowering the access cost for adjacent storage, allowing many DeFi applications to save over 10,000 Gas per transaction. Additionally, the binary tree structure is simpler and can reserve metadata bits for future state expiration features.On the virtual machine front, Vitalik proposed that the long-term direction is to replace the EVM, potentially adopting the RISC-V architecture. The new VM needs to meet four goals: higher raw execution efficiency, making most precompiles unnecessary; proof efficiency superior to the EVM; support for client-side generation of ZK proofs; and maximum simplification of code implementation.He pointed out that if Ethereum only stays at the "EVM + GPU" level, it may be "sufficient," but a better VM can make the protocol stronger. The deployment roadmap is divided into three steps: the new VM will first be used to replace precompiles; then users will be allowed to deploy contracts based on the new VM; finally, the EVM will be retired, transitioning to smart contracts written with the new VM, achieving full backward compatibility.

According to the Hong Kong Economic Times, the Accounting and Financial Reporting Council (AFRC) submitted a proposed budget for the next fiscal year to the Hong Kong Legislative Council, suggesting a salary increase of 3.5% to support regulatory work in key and emerging areas such as artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual assets, and recommending the addition of 15 positions. It is reported that the AFRC previously released a report stating that companies involved in virtual asset trading belong to emerging industry projects and will be one of the targets for inspection. In addition, auditors currently face challenges including verifying the ownership and existence of virtual assets, the complexity of valuations, increased fraud risks, and the lack of unified accounting standards for virtual assets.

The Hong Kong virtual currency trading platform AAX ceased operations in mid-November 2022 under the pretext of system maintenance and updates, leaving over 300 customers unable to retrieve nearly 100 million Hong Kong dollars in assets. After an investigation, Hong Kong law enforcement discovered that the platform's shutdown was allegedly caused by false information and illegal means, with the person in charge fleeing Hong Kong with a virtual currency wallet and private keys, and later being arrested upon returning.Hong Kong police stated that after a thorough investigation, 191 victims reported losses totaling approximately 81 million Hong Kong dollars, while the AAX person in charge withdrew virtual currency worth about 633 million Hong Kong dollars after the platform ceased operations. He has currently been charged with 3 counts of theft and 1 count of fraud.

According to the Shanghai Securities Journal, Wang Bin, the head of the Third Criminal Division of the Supreme People's Court, stated at a press conference on "The People's Court's Work on Punishing Telecom and Network Fraud and Property Crimes According to Law" that the next step will focus on cracking down on key figures and core members of criminal groups, "financial backers" of telecom fraud, "snakeheads" organizing illegal immigration, and organizations providing armed protection for cross-border fraud crimes, as well as violent crimes such as intentional homicide, intentional injury, and kidnapping committed during telecom fraud, and related crimes such as "money laundering" using virtual currencies and underground banks.Wang Bin also stated that the people's courts will legally strengthen the application of property penalties against telecom fraud criminals, preventing them from benefiting economically. They will guide those involved in "two-card" assistance and concealment of criminals to voluntarily compensate victims, consider the return of stolen goods and compensation as mitigating factors in sentencing for confession and remorse, and impose strict penalties according to law on criminals who have the ability but refuse to return stolen goods or compensate victims.

The founder of 360 Group, Zhou Hongyi, stated in an interview with the Global Times that the United States, under the banner of "protecting the rights of victims," has directly transformed the virtual currency assets involved in the case into strategic financial reserves under its control, completing a magnificent and legitimate transfer from the end of the criminal chain to national assets.This unilateral harvesting behavior by the U.S. not only undermines the law enforcement activities of other countries, leading to secondary losses for victims, but also disrupts the global flow of virtual currency assets, destabilizing the financial stability of emerging market countries. The ultimate goal is to consolidate the dominance of the U.S. dollar in the digital financial sector.

The head of the Civil Division II of the Supreme People's Court, Wang Chuang, stated during a press conference on "The Situation of People's Courts in Civil and Commercial Trials Supporting High-Quality Economic and Social Development" in response to a question, "In the future, we will focus on advancing the formulation of judicial interpretations for civil compensation related to insider trading and market manipulation in the securities market, conduct in-depth research on judicial responses to new financial cases such as private equity funds and virtual currencies, and improve the financial judicial protection system."

According to a report by Hong Kong media Orange News, the President of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Professionals Association, Chen Zhi-hua, disclosed that the Hong Kong virtual asset industry is facing a sudden "compliance storm." Practitioners in related businesses have reported encountering bewildering regulatory requirements during the application process for virtual asset-related business qualifications. The existing written policy requires an additional 5 hours of Continuing Professional Training (CPT).However, the latest requirements were not issued through formal written documents or public guidelines, but were communicated "quietly" to license upgrade applicants in the form of verbal notifications or individual emails, stating that all responsible officers (RO) for relevant license upgrades, including those who have already obtained upgrade qualifications, must pass a virtual asset regulation exam conducted by a designated single institution. This nearly "invisible" directive undermines the transparency and fairness that regulatory agencies should uphold.Chen Zhi-hua suggested maintaining the original requirement of an additional 5 hours of Continuing Professional Training (CPT) and urged regulatory agencies to immediately suspend the enforcement of exam requirements through invisible policies.

Animoca Brands announced that it has obtained a Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) license issued by the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, authorizing Animoca Brands to operate in the Emirate of Dubai (excluding the Dubai International Financial Centre) and to provide virtual asset (VA) brokerage trading services, VA management, and investment services to global institutional and qualified investors.

According to the updated information from the official website of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, Victory Digital Technology Limited's digital asset trading platform VDX has obtained a license to operate a virtual asset trading platform. The institution is authorized to conduct regulated activities under Type 1 (Securities Trading) and Type 7 (Providing Automated Trading Services). At the same time, its subsidiary VDX Custody Limited has also been licensed under the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing Ordinance to provide digital asset custody services. As of now, the number of licensed virtual asset trading platforms in Hong Kong has increased to 12.

According to the Hong Kong Economic Journal, the newly appointed president of the Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants, Lo Chok-kin, stated that guidelines are being developed to help the accounting and business sectors understand how to handle virtual assets in accounting. The first part of the guidelines, which involves virtual currencies and stablecoins, has been issued, while the second part, which has not yet been announced, relates to the auditing requirements for stablecoins set by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. The Institute is currently in discussions with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority on this matter, and it is expected to be released within six months. The third part of the virtual asset accounting guidelines aims to be launched by the end of the year at the earliest, but it will still require communication and consensus with regulatory bodies and the industry before it can be released.

According to Ember Monitoring, half an hour ago, two addresses from the Virtuals Protocol project transferred 13.05 million VIRTUAL (worth approximately 7.51 million) to Binance.

According to Arkham data, at 18:12, 13.0524 million VIRTUAL (worth approximately 7.5075 million USD) was transferred from an anonymous address (starting with 0x95e6...) to Binance.

According to Arkham data, at 18:05, 131 million VIRTUAL (worth approximately $7.512 million) was transferred from Virtuals Protocol to an anonymous address (starting with 0x95e6...). Subsequently, that address transferred part of the VIRTUAL to another anonymous address.

According to the Huaxia Times, the People's Court of Jing'an District in Shanghai recently heard a dispute case regarding virtual currency investment. Investor Ms. Wu invested 1.05 million yuan to purchase USDT under the inducement of a live-streaming host, but later was unable to withdraw her funds due to the trading platform being inaccessible.Both the first and second instance of the court dismissed Ms. Wu's claims, determining that virtual currency does not have the same legal status as legal tender, and that related trading activities are considered illegal financial activities, violating public order and good morals, thus constituting invalid civil actions, with losses to be borne by the investor herself. This case echoes the notice issued on February 6 by the People's Bank of China and eight other departments regarding "further prevention and handling of risks related to virtual currencies," reaffirming China's prohibitive policy stance on virtual currencies.