Kalshi and Polymarket Compete Through “Free Food” Promotion

On February 4th, The Block reported that Ark Invest increased its holdings of crypto-related stocks—including Bitmine, Bullish, and Circle—yesterday, even amid the ongoing cryptocurrency market downturn. Per trading disclosure documents, Ark purchased $3.25 million worth of shares in Bitmine (the Ethereum treasury firm) via its ETF on Tuesday. It also bought $3.46 million in Bullish (the crypto exchange platform) and $2.4 million in Circle (the stablecoin issuer). Additionally, Ark slightly upped its stakes in Block Inc. and Coinbase, spending $1.77 million and $630,600, respectively. These moves follow Ark’s crypto-related stock buys on Monday. Right now, several crypto-linked stocks are trading at significant discounts amid the broader market slump.

**Michael Burry Warns Bitcoin’s 40% Plunge Risks Catastrophic Spillover, Calls It Purely Speculative** On February 4, renowned American "Big Short" investor Michael Burry warned Bitcoin’s 40% drop could inflict lasting damage on companies that heavily accumulated the asset over the past year. He argued Bitcoin has proven to be a purely speculative asset—failing to function as a hedge like precious metals. Burry noted Monday that a further 10% Bitcoin decline would leave the most aggressive crypto treasury firms (like Strategy) with billions in losses and effectively locked out of capital markets. He flagged the drop could trigger "catastrophic consequences," spreading to broader markets and sparking a "collateral death spiral" in tokenized metal futures. As the warning hit, Bitcoin extended its slide Tuesday, briefly falling below $73,000—erasing all gains since Donald Trump’s 2024 reelection in November. Since hitting its all-time high in early October, the digital currency h

Feb 4 – Per monitoring data from HyperInsight (Telegram: https://t.me/HyperInsight), a whale address beginning with 0x7c9 opened a gold long position at an average price of $4,839 amid yesterday’s steady gold price gains. With spot gold climbing to $5,050 per ounce today, the address now holds ~$3.1 million in position value, has $150,000 in unrealized profits (+49%), a liquidation price of $3,140, and ranks as the second-largest PAXG long whale on Hyperliquid.

Base has released a post-incident report on its Jan 31 network issue, the team announced Feb 4. On Jan 31, Base experienced transaction loss and inclusion delays. The root cause: a transaction propagation configuration change that caused block assemblers to repeatedly fetch unexecutable transactions—driven by a rapid spike in base fees. The issue is now mitigated: the team rolled back the problematic change, and network stability has been restored. To prevent recurrence, the team is implementing steps including: - Optimizing the transaction pipeline - Cutting unnecessary P2P overhead - Adjusting the mempool queue (expected ~1 month to complete) Additionally, Base is enhancing its alerting systems and change monitoring mechanisms.

Feb. 4 – Tom Lee, Chairman of BitMine, took to X (formerly Twitter) to address the unrealized losses on its ETH holdings, which have reached up to $6.6 billion. He noted some market participants have misinterpreted the operational logic behind Ethereum’s treasury. BitMine’s core objective is to track ETH’s price and aim for outperformance across a complete market cycle—so it’s normal for ETH’s price to decline in tandem with a downturn in the crypto market. The current unrealized losses on its ETH holdings are not a systemic flaw but a deliberate part of the product’s design, Lee emphasized. He added BitMine has no outstanding liabilities. Given Ethereum’s robust fundamentals, the recent market pullback is “highly attractive,” and Ethereum is expected to remain a key piece of infrastructure for the future financial system over the long term.

**Feb. 4 Update:** Solana co-founder Toly has updated his X profile avatar, adding laser eyes and backpack details to his original Moonbird derivative avatar—a move the community is interpreting as hinting at an upcoming Backpack TGE. This follows a Jan. 27 shift where Toly swapped his profile picture to a derivative of the Moonbird NFT series, with Moonbird launching its TGE the very next day (Jan. 28).