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

Jan 24: Per Coinglass data, the entire crypto network saw $149 million in liquidations over the past hour—$2.74 million from long positions and $146 million from short positions. Over the past 24 hours, 105,156 traders worldwide were liquidated, with total liquidations hitting $303 million. The largest single liquidation was a $30.38 million ETH-USD position on the Hyperliquid platform.

On January 24, data from Bitget shows U.S.-listed crypto mining stocks are rallying. IREN and Applied Digital are up over 8%, while Terawulf and Bitfarms have gained more than 3%.

**DAVOS, Jan. 24 — Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) told CNBC in a Davos interview that three months after receiving a pardon from former President Trump, he’s felt freer — a shift he attributes primarily to a psychological weight being lifted. “I was technically free before, but carrying the label of a serious criminal,” he said. “Now I’m truly free.” CZ described his prison experience as “extremely bad,” aligning with movie depictions — including a strict body search on his first day of incarceration. His first cellmate was a double murderer who’d served roughly 12 years and had 18 more left on his sentence. He noted he never expected to go to prison: Prior to his case, no one in U.S. history had been imprisoned for a single violation of the Bank Secrecy Act; most similar past cases ended in Deferred Prosecution Agreements (DPAs) or home confinement. He’d initially expected at most 6–12 months of home confinement, calling the actual prison sentence a surprise. The pard

Bitcoin topped $90,000 on January 24, per HTX market data, with a 1.4% 24-hour gain.

On January 24, Eric Trump—Donald Trump’s second son—took to social media to note that USD1’s market capitalization has surpassed that of PayPal’s stablecoin PYUSD. This marks a significant milestone for USD1: it isn’t just about cryptocurrency; it’s about shaping the future of global money.

On January 24, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) was asked in a CNBC interview at Davos: “If you could start over, what would you do differently?” His response: “I’d block U.S. users from day one. That’s the key—regulation is the core issue. Back when we launched the platform, we had U.S. users; at the time, I was in Shanghai, and we were just a small tech startup. Some six years later, we learned this put us in violation of the Bank Secrecy Act. If I’d known that then, if I could do it all over, I’d definitely block U.S. users from day one—way less hassle.”