Linera Launches Babbage Testnet

On January 21, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman Michael Selig announced the appointment of senior crypto attorney Michael Passalacqua as a Senior Advisor at the CFTC, bringing his deep expertise in cryptocurrency and blockchain litigation to the role. Previously, Passalacqua helped draft a letter that prompted the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to issue a no-action letter, allowing state-chartered trust companies to act as cryptocurrency custodians. As the CFTC’s role in cryptocurrency regulation grows increasingly critical, the appointment of a new advisor with crypto-focused experience underscores the commission’s efforts to make its regulatory approach “future-facing.”

As of January 21, EmberCN monitoring data shows that Trend Research (a Dapix affiliate) transferred 70 million USDT to Binance in the past 24 hours. It then purchased 24,555 ETH (valued at $75.54 million) and withdrew the tokens to an on-chain address, using a dip-buying strategy to lower its average entry price. In total, Trend Research holds 651,300 ETH, worth approximately $1.92 billion. The firm’s average cost basis is around $3,180 per ETH, with an unrealized loss of roughly $163 million.

On January 21, Grayscale officially filed an S-1 form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to convert its Grayscale Near Trust into the Grayscale Near Trust ETF.

Jan 21 — Multi-chain DeFi execution engine Makina has released its latest update on yesterday’s hack. The breach only impacted users who provided liquidity to the Curve DUSD/USDC pool; holders of DUSD, Pendle, and Gearbox positions were unaffected. Makina has identified clues about the hacker’s identity and is actively engaging with them. Prior to the attack, Makina took a snapshot of the Curve DUSD/USDC pool. For users still providing liquidity to this pool: please withdraw your funds **only as DUSD** until further notice. The team is implementing additional measures, including disabling recovery mode and re-enabling the redemption function. Yesterday’s attack occurred on the Ethereum network, resulting in a loss of $5,107,871 USDC. The vulnerability allowed the attacker to manipulate the pool’s price, inflate liquidity providers’ asset values, and execute an arbitrage attack.

On January 21, American Equity Life Insurance Company announced a partnership with BlackRock to offer Bitcoin investment opportunities via fixed index annuities. Its Balanced Risk 12% Index Fund—part of the fixed index annuity investment portfolio—combines traditional U.S. stocks with Bitcoin exposure, primarily through investments in BlackRock’s iShares Core S&P 500 Index ETF and iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF. Institutional investor interest in spot Bitcoin ETFs continues to rise steadily.

On January 21, Noble—the Cosmos ecosystem’s stablecoin protocol—announced the launch of an EVM-based Layer 1 blockchain, Noble EVM. The new chain is set to go live on March 18 and is specifically built for stablecoin applications. Noble isn’t the only Cosmos project to pivot in recent months. For example, Sei plans to fully transition to supporting only an EVM chain in its upcoming upgrade, ditching CosmWasm and Cosmos-native assets.