MarketWhisper

Venice Token (VVV) has recently surged by over 100%, becoming a strong asset in the market, mainly because Venice has become a provider of the OpenClaw recommendation model and has actively tightened token supply. This partnership has increased Venice's visibility and boosted demand for VVV. In the long term, the fundamentals supporting VVV come from reduced supply and ongoing DeFi integrations, but the sustainability of the market trend still requires monitoring of the partnership results and changes in the market environment.

Ripple acquires Hidden Road (now Ripple Prime) and officially registers with the National Securities Clearing Corporation (NSCC), gaining regulatory status for post-trade operations in traditional finance. This marks Ripple as the first crypto company to have a global multi-asset prime broker. The plan is to migrate post-trade activities to the XRP Ledger (XRPL) in the future, but it is currently unclear whether XRPL will be actively used, and the actual impact remains to be seen.

The "Aave Will Win" proposal in the Aave protocol was narrowly approved in the off-chain vote, but the results were questioned, with concerns that some votes are linked to Aave Labs. Observer Marc Zeller accused the voting involving approximately 233,000 tokens of having a conflict of interest. Aave Labs emphasized its technical contributions and directed 100% of its revenue into the DAO. This governance crisis highlights concerns about centralization of power, especially in the context of BGDLabs about to terminate its partnership, which could impact Aave's technological development.

OpenZeppelin conducted an audit of EVMbench and found that the training data was contaminated, and at least four high-risk vulnerabilities are invalid forgeries. This affects the AI model's security assessment capabilities. If the AI has previously "seen" vulnerability reports, it will not accurately reflect its ability to discover new vulnerabilities. This highlights issues with the credibility of benchmark test data and methodologies.

Bitcoin did not experience a significant decline amid geopolitical shocks, reflecting changes in market structure and reduced retail participation, which has led to a narrowing of its volatility range. In contrast, perpetual contracts on platforms like Hyperliquid show emerging trends, serving as a clear window for investors to express market sentiment and indicating the ongoing diversification of the crypto market.

Cybersecurity company Moonlock Lab released a report revealing that hackers are using the "ClickFix" method to impersonate venture capital firms on LinkedIn to deceive crypto users and ultimately steal their assets. The attack involves establishing trust, fake video links, and clipboard hijacking, causing victims to unknowingly execute malicious commands. This technique allows attackers to bypass traditional security defenses and poses a threat to multiple industries. Affected users should immediately remove the problematic extensions and update their passwords.

According to Dune Analytics data, the transaction volume of cryptocurrency cards issued by Visa in 2025 has grown significantly, reaching $91.3 million, with Visa holding a 72% market share. Visa has partnered with six blockchain projects, continuously strengthening the infrastructure for stablecoins, highlighting the potential for everyday use of cryptocurrencies.

VanEck CEO Jan Van Eck stated on CNBC that Bitcoin's market trend aligns with the historical four-year cycle, and the current bottoming phase signals potential for future growth. He predicts 2026 will become a pivotal year for enterprise blockchain competition, where companies will need to choose between building on existing public chains, customized chains, or developing proprietary chains, which will influence the future financial landscape.

Since September 2025, Ethereum has declined for six consecutive months, with a 90% drop to around $2,000, yet its usage has reached new highs, mainly benefiting from asset tokenization and stablecoin applications. Recently, net redemptions of ETFs and stagnant stablecoin supply have made price rebounds weak. If it continues to decline by March 2026, it will be on par with the 2018 crypto winter. Three conditions need to mature simultaneously to change this situation.

Riot Platforms announced that its full-year revenue for 2025 reached $647.4 million, a 71.8% increase year-over-year, setting a new record high. Bitcoin mining and artificial intelligence transformation are the main growth drivers. The company plans to reallocate nearly 2 gigawatts of power resources to AI data centers and has partnered with AMD. Despite rising Bitcoin mining costs, revenue remains high due to market prices, demonstrating a transformation potential of up to $21 billion.

The US prediction market Polymarket has seen the emergence of 6 new accounts, accurately betting on the Iran conflict event and making approximately $1 million in profit. Donald Trump Jr. served as an advisor and invested in the platform, sparking controversy over conflicts of interest. Analysis pointed out abnormal trading activity and called for legislation to ban betting on wars. Its legal status is unclear, and insider trading is difficult to regulate.

Ethereum recently rebounded to $2,037, mainly influenced by BitMine increasing its holdings by 50,928 ETH. BitMine now holds 4,473,587 ETH, aiming to control 5% of the supply, and claims that its staking strategy will generate stable returns. Technical analysis shows that if ETH breaks through $2,150, it may accelerate upward to $2,800; conversely, if it fails to hold above $2,000, it could drop to $1,800.

Core Scientific announced its Q4 2025 financial report, with total revenue decreasing to $79.8 million, primarily due to a roughly 47% decline in Bitcoin mining income. Despite the overall revenue reduction, hosting service revenue grew by over 268%, indicating that its data center transformation strategy is paying off. Adjusted EBITDA was negative $42.7 million. The company's working capital stands at $533.4 million. After shareholders rejected the merger with CoreWeave, Core Scientific will continue to operate as an independent company to advance its long-term strategy.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran announced the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, leading to a halt in oil tanker traffic and a surge in shipping costs, causing a significant impact on the global energy markets. Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea have sufficient reserves to face oil shortages, but the gap in liquefied natural gas is more severe, potentially threatening energy security. If the blockade continues, oil prices are expected to rise significantly.

Unity CEO announces that an upgraded version of Unity AI will be launched at GDC 2026, focusing on generating casual games using natural language, reducing development barriers. The system integrates multiple AI models to help developers create more efficiently. The industry has concerns about the impact of AI tools, believing that human creativity is still essential in the creative process.

In the past week, approximately 472 million XRP tokens flowed into exchanges, breaking the net outflow trend seen for several months and reflecting a defensive stance among holders amid geopolitical uncertainties. Although large inflows are generally seen as a warning sign of selling, they could also be a hedge. On the technical side, $1.30 is a key support level; if broken, the price could accelerate downward to $1.12. The resistance levels above are $1.50 and $1.61.

The "21st Century Housing Roadmap Act" proposed by the U.S. Senate includes a provision that bans the Federal Reserve from issuing Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC), with the ban remaining in effect until 2030. The bill aims to reduce housing costs and support the development of private stablecoins. The White House has expressed support for the bill, emphasizing that preventing CBDC development is a current policy priority. Bipartisan lawmakers have reached a consensus on this issue, making it a cooperative clause that can transcend party divisions.

The deadline for the White House's stablecoin legislation CLARITY has passed, but progress has stalled due to the crypto and banking industries failing to reach a consensus on stablecoin yields. The banking sector is concerned about outflows of customer funds and strongly opposes stablecoin reward arrangements. If legislation cannot be enacted in the future, it could trigger market uncertainty and impact the inflow of crypto funds.

Japan's largest cashless payment service provider PayPay plans to go public on NASDAQ, issuing 55 million ADRs, with a price range of $17 to $20, raising up to $1.1 billion, and a valuation exceeding $10 billion. The IPO was delayed due to global market turbulence triggered by the Middle East situation, which has a profound impact on investor acceptance and the future listing of fintech companies.