Solana staking protocol Fragmetric completes $7 million seed round

On January 16, Garrett Jin, the operator behind the "BTC OG Insider Whale" account, posted noting that for businesses, purchasing ETH at $3,000 and staking it at a fixed 3% annual percentage yield (APY) would generate a 9% annualized USD staking return if the token climbs to $9,000. Even if ETH prices decline (a scenario he deems unlikely), long-term staking returns can offset losses in fiat terms, he added. For institutions and businesses like BitMine, ETH acts as a balance sheet optimizer across market cycles. Its high growth potential and technological attributes make its valuation a race against time—similar to today’s high-P/E AI stocks.

Dreamcash, a mobile trading platform, announced on January 16 a partnership with Tether and Selini Capital to launch a series of RWA-based HIP-3 perpetual contract markets on Hyperliquid, with USDT0 as collateral.

On January 16, Binance’s futures platform is set to launch USDT-margined SPORTFUN and AIA perpetual contracts.

On January 16, 0xSakura Sakura (@0xsakura666) — founder of the Life K Line project — announced that two features, merit donations and daily horoscopes, have been deployed. Merit donations accept only BNB and whitelisted tokens; Grok analysis has identified 6 whitelisted tokens. 50% of donated BNB will go to Giggle Academy, while the remaining 50% will fund buybacks and burns of whitelisted tokens. All whitelisted tokens received as donations will be 100% burned. The Life K Line team stated they will not profit from this initiative. Per GMGN data (via https://t.me/gmgnaibot?start=i_m4TE56o8), Life K Line currently has a market cap of $8.6 million, a 24-hour trading volume of $12 million, and a 24-hour price change of +16.3%. BlockBeats notes that meme coins often lack practical use cases and carry significant price volatility; investors should exercise caution.

Per a Fortune report dated January 16th, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said in an interview that the crypto exchange is aiming to transition to an “everything exchange”—with plans to roll out stock trading to all customers in the coming weeks. Right now, the service is only accessible to a small number of users. Armstrong noted that while stock trading is currently offered via traditional methods, the end goal is tokenized stock ownership—meaning stocks would be issued natively on the blockchain. He predicts this shift will start within the next two years, by which point all companies will recognize blockchain as a superior technology for managing shares. Armstrong also expressed hope that Coinbase will one day become the first company to pay shareholder dividends in Bitcoin.

On January 16, Vanguard’s U.S. Mid-Cap Stock Index Fund (Institutional Shares: VMCIX) disclosed its initial purchase of Strategy stock—2.91 million shares valued at approximately $505 million.