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

On February 12, Bubblemaps revealed that the Perp DEX Trove quietly refunded KOLs who joined its presale—while all other presale investors suffered steep losses. Monitoring wallets tied to TROVE token deployment showed that one day after the token’s collapse, $100,000 in USDC and $350,000 in USDT were transferred to a newly funded wallet. Concrete on-chain evidence and leaked chat logs now confirm the project team engaged in discriminatory treatment of investors. After raising $11.5 million via an ICO in January, Trove claimed it would set aside $9,397,403 to keep building its Solana-based Perp DEX. The move sparked fierce community backlash: the token price plummeted over 95%, ICO participants took heavy losses, and many accused the team of a rug pull.

Feb. 12 — Per TheDataNerd’s monitoring, BlackRock deposited 1,134 BTC (valued at $77.05 million) to Coinbase 2 hours ago. ### Notes on alignment with American English habits: 1. **Time abbreviation**: "Feb. 12" (common in quick updates instead of full "February 12") 2. **Concise sourcing**: "Per" (natural alternative to "according to" in news context) 3. **Number formatting**: Comma-separated thousandths (1,134 BTC) 4. **Clarity**: Parenthetical value clarification (valued at $77.05 million) 5. **Temporal flow**: Direct "2 hours ago" keeps the update immediate (fits crypto news urgency) This version is tight, readable, and aligns with U.S. financial/news writing conventions.

**U.S. Stock Open & Crypto-Related Stocks (Feb 12, via Bitget Data)** U.S. equities opened higher Tuesday: - Dow Jones Industrial Average +0.1% - S&P 500 +0.3% - Nasdaq Composite +0.38% Most crypto-linked stocks gained: - **MicroStrategy (MSTR): +1.4%** → Announced today it will shift financing to preferred stock to keep accumulating amid the downturn. - **Coinbase (COIN): -0.3%** → Q4 2025 and full-year earnings due post-market close today. - **Circle (CRCL): -0.15%** - **Marathon Digital Holdings (MARA): +0.46%** - **Riot Platforms (RIOT): +0.47%** - **BitMine Immersion (BMNR): +1.2%** - **SharpLink Gaming (SBET): +1.1%** *Note: Adjusted "Strategy" to full name "MicroStrategy" (standard for U.S. market clarity; MSTR is its ticker). Streamlined wording to match American financial news brevity.*

On February 12, Distributed AI Lab Gradient launched its Echo-2 distributed reinforcement learning framework—aimed at breaking through barriers to AI research training efficiency by decoupling Learner and Actor components at the architectural level to cut post-training costs for large models. Official data shows the framework slashes post-training costs for a 30B-parameter model from $4,500 to just $425. Echo-2 leverages compute-storage separation for asynchronous reinforcement learning (Async RL), allowing sampling compute to be offloaded to non-guaranteed GPU instances and Parallax-powered heterogeneous GPUs. Additionally, Gradient plans to roll out Logits, a Reinforcement Learning as a Service (RLaaS) platform, which is now open for reservations to students and researchers.

February 12 (PR Newswire) — Ethereum treasury firm ETHZilla (ETHZ) has launched Eurus Aero Token I, the first tokenized real-world asset backed by commercial aircraft engines, via its wholly owned subsidiary ETHZilla Aerospace LLC. Built on Ethereum Layer 2, the token is collateralized by two CFM56 commercial jet engines (valued at ~$12.2 million total) leased to a major U.S. airline. Each token is priced at $100, with a 10-token minimum purchase, and targets an ~11% return through the end of the lease term. ETHZilla noted the product gives accredited investors access to an asset class typically limited to private aviation leasing funds or large institutional deals. The firm also plans to roll out additional tokenized asset classes soon, including prefabricated home loans and auto loans.

On February 12th, Ondo Finance announced that tokenized stocks from Ondo Global Markets are now live on the DeFi lending market—with SPYon and QQQon leading the initial rollout, integrated with Morpho and Gauntlet. Ondo’s tokenized stocks and ETFs are now available as efficient, risk-managed collateral assets within the Ethereum DeFi ecosystem.