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

Blockstream released a statement regarding the recent Bitcoin theft on its Liquid Network, stating it will not pay a ransom to recover stolen funds and rejects framing the unauthorized asset transfer as a "white hat disclosure". The company said it has engaged in good-faith communications with relevant parties to retrieve users' stolen funds, but will not accept the ransom demands put forward, nor set a precedent requiring open-source software developers to pay large ransoms. Blockstream added it remains willing to resolve the issue through responsible means; if the stolen Bitcoin cannot be returned, it will collaborate with law enforcement, exchanges, service providers and blockchain forensics experts to track and recover the assets while investigating those responsible. The company emphasized that Bitcoin transactions are publicly traceable, so relevant fund flows and on-chain evidence will not disappear. It stated: "We will not pay a ransom to return stolen assets, nor will we abandon our users." Prior to this, Blockstream had issued a security alert on the incident, warning that fraudsters impersonating Liquid and Blockstream are exploiting the situation to trick users into transferring funds or providing mnemonic phrases, and stressing that the official team will never ask users to send funds to so-called "recovery addresses".

Beating AI News Flash: DeepSeek is conducting a gray-scale test of its voice conversation feature. Test participants will notice a small speaker button in the upper right corner of the app. Additionally, a "Reading Voice Timbre" option will appear in DeepSeek's settings page, allowing users to select from four distinct voice timbres.

According to monitoring by Onchain Lens, whale Loracle partially closed its HYPE short positions and sold spot holdings, realizing an approximate loss of $3.92 million. It currently holds 191,940 HYPE short positions valued at around $15.33 million, with an additional unrealized loss of $4.97 million. Data shows Loracle has accumulated a loss of roughly $16.41 million over the past 30 days, and a total historical loss of about $28.58 million. Its wallet address is 0x8def9f50456c6c4e37fa5d3d57f108ed23992dae.

Binance’s Bitcoin reserves have climbed to 693,000 coins, hitting a two-year high, an increase of roughly 77,000 since the end of April, and accounting for about 30% of total Bitcoin reserves across major trading platforms. As reserves surge, Bitcoin is facing strong supply pressure near the $83,000 to $85,000 range. Rising BTC balances on trading platforms mean more Bitcoin is available for immediate trading or sale in the market, though this does not equate to an imminent sell-off of these holdings. The market is also closely monitoring downside support levels. If BTC fails to hold the $75,000 level, selling pressure risks could escalate further; if it breaks through $85,000 with significant volume, it would signal that market demand is capable of absorbing the new liquidity on trading platforms.

Beating AI News – Two people familiar with the matter told the outlet that AI startup Anthropic is in talks with NVIDIA (NVDA.O) to bring the chipmaker on board as an anchor investor for its initial public offering (IPO). Anthropic’s IPO is expected to be the largest in history, with plans to raise up to $100 billion, which could value the company at roughly $2 trillion. One source added NVIDIA is considering investing up to $100 billion in the offering. They cautioned the plans are still under discussion and subject to change. The report noted that securing a deep-pocketed anchor like NVIDIA will boost investor confidence in the listing, which is emerging as a major test of public markets’ acceptance of the massive valuations and capital needs of leading-edge AI labs.

According to monitoring by EmberCN, the fee wallet of the Pump.fun team transferred 77,706 SOL to Kraken approximately four hours ago, valued at roughly $7.88 million based on the price at that time.