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

On February 16th, OpenAI founder Sam Altman announced via a post that Peter Steinberger—founder of OpenClaw (formerly Clawdbot)—will join OpenAI to lead development of the next generation of personal intelligence systems. “He’s a genius with incredible ideas about how future intelligent systems can collaborate and deliver practical services to users,” Altman wrote. “We anticipate this will quickly become core to our product roadmap.” OpenClaw will remain an open-source project under the OpenAI umbrella, and OpenAI will continue supporting it. “The future will be a highly multi-agent era, and backing open source is a critical part of our path toward that vision,” the post added.

February 15th – GMGN market data (via https://gmgn.ai/sol/token/i_m4TE56o8_NV2RYH954cTJ3ckFUpvfqaQXU4ARqqDH3562nFSpump) shows Solana ecosystem meme coin Punch surged over 4x in a single day. It currently holds a market cap of $14.75 million, with 24-hour trading volume exceeding $16.1 million. Data further indicates the token’s top holder invested nearly $1,000 when the price was around $18,180, and now has an unrealized gain of $455,000 – a return of over 46x. Public info notes Punch is inspired by a viral monkey from Japan’s Ichikawa City Zoo. Moonshot has already listed the token tonight. BlockBeats reminds users that meme coin trading is extremely volatile, heavily reliant on market sentiment and hype, and lacks tangible value or use cases. Investors should be mindful of the associated risks.

On February 15, CryptoQuant analyst Darkfost noted that based on Bitcoin’s 4-year Simple Moving Average (SMA) indicator, BTC has re-entered the green zone—signaling undervaluation—and is approaching its 4-year moving average, currently around $57,500. Historically, this level typically marks the final stage of each bear market, with BTC prices tending to trade around it for several months.

February 15 — The Block’s Director of Projects Frank Chaparro reported that Wells Fargo posted a job opening for a Digital Asset Services Lead four days ago. Key responsibilities for the role include developing a three-to-five-year strategy covering tokenized deposits, on-chain collateral, intraday liquidity, and 24/7 programmable payments — with full integration into wire transfers, ACH, RTP, FedNow, and SWIFT. Separately, J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley have recently hired senior leaders in the cryptocurrency space.

As of February 15, per Onchain Lens monitoring data, a whale has transferred 1,536 ETH—held for nearly four years—to Kraken, netting an estimated $1.95 million in profit.

**February 15th, in his "Fed Watcher" column, Nick Timiraos noted that key U.S. economic indicators are aligning positively: inflation is easing, the labor market remains strong, and growth is steady. This isn’t a final call, but it’s the closest the U.S. economy has ever come to a soft landing—restraining inflation without triggering a recession. Four years ago, most economists dismissed this as impossible; today, the scenario of inflation falling back to the Fed’s 2% target without a recession is plausible again.** **Yet while the economy doesn’t need an oxygen mask, it’s still too soon to unbuckle the seatbelt. The Fed’s preferred inflation gauge—year-over-year core PCE—is currently near 3%. Many forecasters expect inflation to make little headway this year as tariff-related price hikes spread to more sectors. Meanwhile, the labor market may not be as strong as last week’s report suggested. Payden&Rygel Chief Economist Jeffrey Cleveland notes objectively that the labor market has