The popular AI framework Virtuals Protocol will host an in-person meet-up in Hong Kong on Friday, January 17.

Token issuance and governance platform Umia completes a $6.11 million funding round. Umia co-founder and CEO Francesco Mosterts stated that the seven-day auction valued the project at a fully diluted valuation (FDV) of $18 million, with 17.3 million tokens sold, accounting for 34.6% of the total supply. All tokens sold in the auction are liquid at issuance, with no lock-up periods. According to CoinGecko data, UMIA is currently trading at around $0.68, translating to a fully diluted valuation of roughly $34 million. Mosterts added that approximately 45% of the funding came from institutional investors. The ten participating funds include Galaxy Ventures, Digital Currency Group, Draper Associates, RenGen, Alpha EV, Maven 11, and Eon Capital. Nearly 700 individual bidders also took part in the auction. Umia noted that the funds participated on the same terms as other bidders, with no discounts granted. Mosterts emphasized that no investors received board seats, observer roles, or advisory positions.

U.S. President Trump posted on social media that the reason for surging gasoline prices is no longer the Strait of Hormuz, as record levels of oil production are being achieved almost every day now. Instead, he cited the issue of "refineries": Russia’s refineries are being bombed by Ukraine, while U.S. refineries located in blue states such as California are being shut down by "Dumocrats".

According to HTX market data, Bitcoin briefly dipped below $85,000 and is currently trading at $85,126.

According to market data, the yield on the US 30-year Treasury bond has risen to 5.69%, hitting a new high since 2002.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has proposed its first formal cryptocurrency market rules, introducing new CTX and CAM regulations to abandon its "enforcement-only" regulatory approach.

Douyin user Mr. Li Yi posted a video on the social media platform, claiming that on June 10 this year, he downloaded a "fake wallet" from Huawei’s official app store, leading to exposure of his mnemonic phrase and theft of 177,473 USDT. According to his account, the hacker converted the permissions of his wallet address to a multi-signature address, then carried out a second fraud by claiming he could "pay to unlock" the funds. After the victim transferred the money, all USDT in the address was siphoned off by the hacker. Since his video exposed the app’s violations, the app’s downloads on the official store plummeted. The hacker repeatedly organized online trolls to report his video, forcing it to be taken down, and privately attempted to negotiate a "conditional video deletion" agreement. The victim said that after a private investigation, he learned the fraudulent app had set up 5 servers in Hong Kong, paid to be listed on Huawei’s official app store and boosted its ranking, leading many victims to download it as the top search result. Due to relevant bans in mainland China, legitimate wallet apps cannot be properly listed on app stores, so any app that "cannot be officially listed but is indeed present in the store" is likely a counterfeit fraudulent app.