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

February 18th — Mark Spitznagel, founder and CIO of Universa Investments (the firm behind the "Black Swan Fund"), said the long-term uptrend of U.S. stocks is far from over, at least for now. Over the next year, markets will stay in the "Goldilocks range": inflation and interest rates declining, the economy slowing but not sharply, and market sentiment turning euphoric — pushing stocks higher and ending in a blow-off top. However, Spitznagel added that the "largest bubble in human history" has entered its final stage. Euphoria could lift the S&P 500 to 8,000 points or even higher — followed by a sharp reversal.

Feb 18: DeFi lending protocol Moonwell incurred a roughly $1.78 million default due to an oracle misconfiguration. On Feb 15, Moonwell activated Chainlink’s OEV aggregator contract for cbETH price oracles via governance proposal MIP-X43. A critical configuration error temporarily valued cbETH at just $1. On-chain bots and liquidators acted swiftly, repaying only $1 of debt to seize cbETH collateral worth thousands of dollars. The mistake triggered the liquidation of 1,096.317 cbETH, wiping out most or all collateral for many borrowers and leaving the protocol with heavy losses. The Moonwell team immediately reduced cbETH’s borrowing and supply caps to 0.01 to contain further damage. A spokesperson declined to disclose details about the error’s source or underlying vulnerability.

February 18th – Renowned analyst Willy Woo has bad news for diehard Bitcoin bulls: the crypto’s bear market is still unfolding, and it breaks down into three distinct stages. **Stage 1: Initiation** Bitcoin’s liquidity collapsed in Q3 2025, sparking price declines. As a relatively small asset, Bitcoin is hyper-sensitive to liquidity shifts—so it often leads global macro bear markets by months. When smart money exits, Bitcoin reacts fast. During this phase, diehard bulls will claim it’s just a bull market pullback, but they can’t point to solid fund inflows—only hype. **Stage 2: Global Stocks Turn Bearish** This $100 trillion asset class is a supertanker—slow to shift. It’s the Bitcoin bear market’s midphase, when all risk assets slide. Make no mistake: we’re in a bear market. **Stage 3: The Dawn** Liquidity improves, capital outflows peak and stabilize, and investors trickle back. The final price dump usually hits here—right around the outflow peak. **Current Update**

On February 18, monitoring by HyperInsight (via its Telegram channel at https://t.me/HyperInsight) shows that "Brother Whale" Huang Licheng slightly expanded his long positions and opened a new long position in VVV. His current positions are as follows: - Ethereum (ETH): $13 million long position, entry price $2,004.87 - Bitcoin (BTC): $1.7 million long position, entry price $68,625 - HYPE: $1.3 million long position, entry price $31 - VVV: $40,000 long position, entry price $4 Previously reported, Brother Whale’s recent capital injection came from the PleasrDAO treasury—funds he deposited into the DAO 5 years ago. This may signal his available liquidity is running low.

Temporal, an open-source software and cloud services developer, announced on February 18 that it has closed a $300 million Series D funding round. The round was led by a16z, with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sapphire Ventures, and existing investor Sequoia Capital. The company now holds a post-money valuation of $5 billion. Founded in 2019, Temporal specializes in open-source tools and cloud services that enable durable code execution—allowing applications to recover from failures without engineers having to build custom recovery logic. Amid explosive growth in AI agents in early 2026, infrastructure-layer companies are highly sought after in capital markets.

On February 18, Farside data shows U.S. Ethereum spot ETFs recorded $48.6 million in net inflows yesterday. BNY Mellon’s ETHA led with $22.9 million in net inflows, while Grayscale’s ETH saw $11.3 million in net inflows.