Huang Renxun has left Beijing, and NVIDIA has not disclosed whether Huang Renxun met with the DeepSeek founder.

On February 24, IoTeX announced it would offer a 10% white-hat bounty (roughly $440,000) to the attacker of its ioTube cross-chain bridge—with the condition that ~$4.4 million in stolen assets be returned within 48 hours—and pledged not to pursue legal action. The hack occurred on February 21, stemming from a leaked validator private key on ioTube’s Ethereum side, which granted unauthorized access to the bridge contract. IoTeX emphasized the issue was a cross-chain bridge operational security flaw, not impacting its Layer 1 mainnet or smart contracts themselves. IoTeX co-founder and CEO Raullen Chai said the team sent a non-liability statement to the attacker via on-chain messages, adding they’d traced related fund flows—including ~66.6 BTC (worth ~$4.3 million) across multiple Bitcoin addresses. Recharge addresses for affected exchanges have also been flagged and frozen. Security firm PeckShield estimated the incident involved over $8 million in assets, with some converted to

On February 24th, Taylor Lindman—former Deputy General Counsel of Chainlink Labs—officially joined the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as Chief Legal Advisor to the Crypto Asset Working Group. He succeeds Michael Selig, who was previously promoted to Chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Lindman spent over five years at Chainlink, overseeing legal matters related to the project’s oracle networks and smart contract data infrastructure. The SEC’s Crypto Asset Working Group, established last year, is currently led by Commissioner Hester Peirce and focuses on regulatory framework discussions for areas including tokenization and decentralized finance (DeFi). During former SEC Chairman Gary Gensler’s tenure, the agency took enforcement actions against multiple crypto firms over registration compliance issues.

February 24: After the U.S. Supreme Court rejected former President Trump’s prior emergency tariff measures, Trump announced the reinstatement of up to 15% temporary tariffs under other trade laws—ramping up trade uncertainty and pressuring risk appetite in the crypto market. Data from crypto options platform Deribit shows a sharp jump in open interest for Bitcoin put options with strike prices of $58k, $60k, and $62k—signaling traders are hedging against potential downside by buying puts. Put options are commonly used to protect against price declines. Market analysts say the tariff policy, paired with macro uncertainty, could keep pressuring risk assets—including crypto.

On February 24, Canadian venture capital firm Framework Ventures struck a deal to acquire a roughly 10% stake (valued at ~$45 million) in publicly traded mortgage lender Better.com. The move aligns with Better.com’s plan to enter asset tokenization, with intentions to launch tokenized products backed by $5 billion in mortgages and other loan assets. Sources indicate the retail-focused token could be named “Home Token.” Better.com noted initial tokens will be restricted to accredited investors, with plans to expand access to a broader user base over time. Founder and CEO Vishal Garg stated tokenization cuts intermediary steps, lowering financing costs and enabling lower-interest mortgage products for consumers. The company is collaborating with DeFi ecosystem Sky, which uses real-world assets (RWA) to back stablecoins—its current ecosystem capital totals ~$18 billion. Framework Ventures is also a key supporter of Sky. Better.com had targeted a 2021 IPO with a $7.7 billion valuation,

On February 24, the Ethereum Foundation launched a dedicated DeFi unit within its App Relations team to support next-generation protocol development, explicitly declaring "Believe in Defipunk." In this appointment, former DELV CEO and MakerDAO Governance Architect Charles St. Louis was tapped as DeFi Protocol Specialist, while Gearbox Protocol co-founder Ivan (ivangbi) will serve as DeFi Coordinator. The team will fall under the Ecosystem Acceleration system led by Jason Chaskin. The Foundation emphasized the DeFi it aims to advance must feature permissionless, censorship-resistant, privacy-first, self-custodial, and open-source traits—rather than merely being an incremental improvement on Traditional Finance (TradFi). Charles St. Louis noted on social media that Defipunk refers to "a financial form that cannot exist without Ethereum." Per the announcement, the new team will not only support existing DeFi projects but also focus on cutting-edge areas, including user-owned AI,

On February 24, crypto investor Anthony Pompliano’s publicly traded Bitcoin treasury firm ProCap Financial is repurchasing its BRR stock to narrow a steep discount to its Net Asset Value (NAV). ProCap recently bought back 148,241 BRR shares, valued at roughly $359,000. Its current NAV stands at ~$305 million, while market cap is under $202 million—putting its mNAV (market cap-to-NAV ratio) below 1. Pompliano noted the firm “paid ~$0.65 for every $1 of stock value” last week and will keep actively repurchasing as long as shares trade well below NAV. ProCap holds 5,007 BTC, worth ~$325 million at current prices, per data. The firm has been repurchasing shares since December 2025, having bought back ~2% of its outstanding shares to date. Pompliano previously invested $1 million of his own money into BRR shares and said he’ll only earn equity incentives once the stock hits $15. In secondary trading, BRR closed at $2.42 on Monday—down ~76% over the past six months and 85% from its