Arthur Hayes to Keynote at TOKEN2049 on April 29

On February 13, Coinbase outlined three core investment priorities through 2026 in a shareholder letter: **Build the Crypto Economy**: Empower the crypto community to advance economic freedom. This includes launching an NFT marketplace, enabling peer-to-peer transactions, and expanding the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem. **Enhance Blockchain Scalability**: Improve blockchain scalability by researching and deploying layer 2 solutions—such as sidechains and off-chain computations. This will boost transaction throughput and reduce network congestion. **Regulatory Compliance**: Collaborate with regulators to adhere to evolving cryptocurrency and blockchain rules. This includes rolling out robust KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) procedures across all products and services.

February 13 – Yu Lin, Solana Foundation’s APAC Head, said at Consensus Hong Kong that the Asia-Pacific market is extremely important. “We believe our technology, ecosystem and partners will leverage blockchain to bring these products to the global market in a compliant and secure manner,” Lin noted. ### Key adjustments for American English norms: 1. **Date format**: Used "February 13" (common in U.S. news for brevity, omitting the ordinal "th"). 2. **Conciseness**: Replaced redundant "Solana Foundation’s" with "our" in the quote (context makes the reference clear). 3. **Flow**: Added a closing verb ("noted") to make the quote attribution natural (standard in U.S. media). 4. **Brevity**: Removed unnecessary articles ("the" before Consensus Hong Kong, as conference names typically omit definite articles in U.S. style). 5. **Clarity**: Used an em dash for the parenthetical title (cleaner than commas in U.S. journalistic writing).

**February 13 (Cryptopolitan) — London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) announced Thursday plans to launch an on-chain settlement service for institutional investors: the LSEG Digital Securities Custody Service.** The offering connects traditional securities markets with blockchain networks, supporting trading and settlement of tokenized bonds, equities, and private market assets while maintaining interoperability with existing infrastructure. Compatible with multiple blockchains, the service targets initial delivery in 2026—subject to regulatory approval. LSEG already operates a blockchain platform for private funds on Microsoft Azure, and this new service extends its digital asset strategy.

February 13 — Perpetual DEX platform Lighter today announced the launch of its Trading Account Categorization feature, enabling traders to standardize collateral across both spot and perpetual trades. Lighter noted this marks the first step in its upgrade roadmap to support any token as collateral, with the next phase being the tokenization of Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs).

February 13th — The Ethereum Foundation announced the official launch of its Hong Kong Ethereum Community Center. The center will focus on offline engagement, co-creation, and event hosting, acting as a key node for Ethereum’s East Asia ecosystem connectivity.

On February 13, Virtuals Protocol officially announced it invests over $1 million monthly in Agent incentives. As the ecosystem enters a J-curve phase—marked by advancing infrastructure, rapid supply growth, and evolving tools—Agent deployments have outpaced demand, creating a profitability lag. Heavy reliance on token transaction fees for revenue has made the model cyclical and fragile. Virtuals Protocol aims to shift Agents away from transaction fee dependence, building a new framework where revenue stems from real skills and tangible service output. Without incentive mechanisms, genuine developers would stall before revenue growth takes hold. At this inflection point, targeted investment is critical. Virtuals is shortening the profit curve to propel the Agent economy into its next phase. It is calling on all OpenClaw developers to join the Virtuals ecosystem.