U.S. CFTC Acting Chairman: Enforcement Division Restructured, Refocused on Combating Fraud

February 14th — Former Binance Listing Manager Chase shared in an interview: - The Binance listing team has more than a dozen members, with only four handling external project communications. - In his two and a half years at the exchange, he’s reviewed over 1,000 crypto projects. - In 2025, the team helped list roughly 100 tokens (including Alpha) on Binance. - Just 5-10% of projects move forward to listing after initial talks with founders. On Bitcoin’s outlook: - Chase predicts it will hit a new all-time high in 2026. - In one 2025 week, Bitcoin’s daily candlestick chart saw seven straight days of identical-magnitude, same-volume gains — followed by a sudden drop. - He interprets this pattern as evidence of powerful “whales” controlling the market: a group signaling they dictate Bitcoin’s price, hoping informed players will join. - Market makers ignore fundamentals, focusing only on perceived liquidity, he noted. - Two scenarios explain the 2025 pattern: either s

On February 14, data from LookIntoBitcoin indicates the "BTC OG Insider Whale" just withdrew 53.12 million USDT from Binance—allegedly offloading 5,000 previously deposited BTC.

On February 14, Bitcoin traded in a narrow range, according to data from Coinglass. Current funding rates across major centralized (CEX) and decentralized (DEX) exchanges indicate the market has turned bearish again, with specific rates detailed in the attached chart. ### BlockBeats Note A funding rate is a fee set by crypto exchanges to keep a perpetual contract’s price aligned with its underlying asset. It operates as a fund transfer between long and short traders—exchanges do not collect this fee. The rate adjusts traders’ holding costs or profits to ensure contract prices track the underlying asset’s value. A 0.01% rate serves as the baseline: - Rates above 0.01% signal a broadly bullish market; - Rates below 0.005% signal a broadly bearish market.

February 14: Per HyperInsight monitoring, the "Long-Term BTC Short" whale (address 0x5d2f4) has canceled its $55,125 "buy the dip" limit order for BTC on Hyperliquid. The whale still intends to buy 50 BTC if BTC drops to $53,525 and 100 BTC if it falls to $50,525. Notably, this whale previously opened a 20x leveraged short position of 499.91 BTC at $111,499.3. It has now fully closed the position, realizing a total profit of $61.41 million throughout the entire cycle.

On February 14, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin took to Twitter (X) to voice concerns about the current state of prediction markets. “Lately, I’ve been worried about where prediction markets stand today,” he wrote. “While trading volumes are high enough for meaningful bets—with some even making this a full-time gig, and the space supplementing news to an extent—the overreliance on short-term crypto prices, sports/entertainment, and other dopamine-fueled activities lacks long-term value. This often pushes platforms to chase low-quality traffic, leading to commercial corruption.” To escape this dilemma, the space could pivot to a new use case: generalized hedging. By framing prediction markets as risk management tools, users could hedge against future uncertainties—like swings in corporate or personal spending—boosting long-term utility. Unlike the current model that relies on “dumb money” investors, this approach is more sustainable and can draw in high-quality capital. Loo