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

Ahead of the Federal Reserve’s September 15-16 policy meeting, the Trump administration is ramping up public pressure on the Fed to avoid raising interest rates and even push for further cuts. Trump, U.S. Vice President Vance, Treasury Secretary Bessent, and White House Senior Economic Advisor Navarro have all recently publicly called for keeping rates steady or lowering them. Markets currently assign a roughly 60% probability that the Fed will raise rates by 25 basis points in September, driven primarily by U.S. August nonfarm payrolls adding 162,000 jobs and the unemployment rate holding at 4.1%. Fed Chair Walsh has repeatedly emphasized inflation risks, noting earlier that 54% of components in the PCE price index rose more than 3% over the past 12 months, arguing the Fed should focus on curbing inflation. Trump’s latest remarks go further, suggesting that if the Fed does not cut rates, the U.S. could take measures such as halting trade with countries that run a trade surplus with the U.S. With the November midterm elections approaching, high prices and elevated interest rates are putting growing political pressure on the Trump administration. Markets will now closely watch U.S. CPI data to be released this week, which could be a key factor in the Fed’s decision to raise rates or hold them steady in September.

An analysis of Bitcoin’s historical performance from 2010 to 2026 shows that the vast majority of its annual gains are concentrated in a tiny number of trading days, leading multiple industry experts to argue that long-term holding may be more advantageous than frequent attempts at timing trades. Data indicates that in 11 of the past 18 years, removing the 10 best-performing trading days of the year would turn a profitable year into a losing one. For instance, Bitcoin rose 94% in 2019, but would have fallen 40% for the year if its 10 best trading days were excluded; as of 2026 so far, Bitcoin is down roughly 9%, a drop that would widen to around 36% if its 5 best days were removed. Andre Dragosch, Head of European Research at Bitwise, noted that Bitcoin spends most of its time in sideways consolidation, with its major gains typically concentrated in a small number of explosive trading days, making it extremely difficult to time these moments precisely. “Holding period matters more than timing,” he said. Adam Haeems, Head of Asset Management at Tesseract Group, pointed out that on Feb. 5, 2026, Bitcoin fell roughly 14% in a single day, only to rise around 12% the next day. This demonstrates that attempting to capture excess returns by avoiding dips may carry the risk of missing out on rapid rebounds. With growing allocations to Bitcoin via spot ETFs, institutional funds, and corporate balance sheets, the cryptocurrency’s daily volatility is declining overall, but its market returns still exhibit the trait of concentrated, periodic bursts of gains.

Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) announced in a post that he attended the third official meeting of Kyrgyzstan’s National Crypto Commission today, chaired by Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov. The meeting discussed topics including crypto regulatory frameworks, compliance, anti-money laundering (AML), anti-fraud, stablecoins, and asset tokenization—with a specific pilot project also covered in the tokenization sector. CZ noted that Kyrgyzstan’s crypto industry has made "real progress". Just about a year ago, a crypto regulatory framework was still just a concept in the country; now, Kyrgyzstan has established such a framework, opened local banking channels to serve crypto trading platforms, and its stablecoin KGST is already in market circulation.

Beating AI News Flash: Meta has officially launched Muse Spark 1.3 Max, the highest inference intensity variant of Muse Spark 1.3. When Muse Spark 1.3 was first released, the Max version was still undergoing additional security testing and only available as a preview to a small number of partners. Now that security testing is complete, it can be directly used in Muse Code and Meta Model API. Meta’s Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang stated that Max is significantly more capable than the High and XHigh variants in programming and agent tasks. In Artificial Analysis’ Coding Agent Index, Muse Code paired with Muse Spark 1.3 Max scored 68 points, placing it in the first tier.

According to multiple people familiar with the matter, XDOF, a startup focused on collecting real-world remote operation data to train general-purpose robots, is in late-stage negotiations for a Series B round less than three months after emerging from stealth mode. The company is valued at approximately $1.2 billion, with 8VC leading the financing round. XDOF was co-founded in 2024 by University of California, Berkeley researchers Philipp Wu (CEO) and Fred Shentu (CTO). The startup previously closed a $70 million Series A round, with investors including Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Lux, and Spark Capital. XDOF had not planned to raise additional capital so quickly after its Series A, but sources said the company’s rapid business growth—with annualized revenue approaching $50 million—attracted multiple venture capital firms to proactively reach out and push for a new funding round. TechCrunch has not obtained the specific amount of funding in this round, nor can it confirm whether the aforementioned $1.2 billion valuation includes new financing. Sources noted that the deal terms have not been finalized and could still change.

According to HTX market data, BNB has surged sharply today, breaking through the $770 mark with a 24-hour increase of over 8%, driving a broad rally in its ecosystem meme coins. Among them: MARSCOIN is trading at $0.24, up 40.7% in 24 hours; 1000CAT is at $0.00264, up 36.36% in 24 hours; TUT is at $0.002843, up 24.67% in 24 hours; Binance Life is at $0.5653, up 17.48% in 24 hours; BROCCOLI714 is at $0.021, up 16.45% in 24 hours.