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

Feb. 19 — Per an official announcement, Binance Wallet revealed the reward pool for this round of its Alpha Blind Box airdrop includes tokens from two projects: Janction (JCT) and Impossible Cloud Network (ICNT). Users with a minimum of 242 Binance Alpha Points are eligible to claim their airdrop via the Alpha event page. Upon successful redemption, participants will receive either 20,600 JCT or 95 ICNT, with rewards distributed on a first-come, first-served (FCFS) basis. If rewards remain unclaimed, the points threshold will drop by 5 points automatically every 5 minutes. Claiming the airdrop consumes 15 Binance Alpha Points. Users must confirm their claim via the Alpha event page within 24 hours; failure to do so will result in automatic forfeiture of eligibility.

Feb 19 — The U.S. has deployed its largest air force presence in the Middle East since the 2003 Iraq invasion, The Times of Israel reported. The eight-plus-year Iraq War kicked off with the “Shock and Awe” bombing campaign. Now, the U.S. is building up military forces in the region as President Trump weighs strikes on Iran. The deployment includes dozens of aircraft (F-16s, F-22s, F-35s) and multiple aircraft carriers. This buildup enables the U.S. to carry out a longer-lasting campaign than last June’s strike on Iranian nuclear facilities — which involved B-2 bombers during the Iran-U.S. conflict.

U.S. initial jobless claims for the week ending Feb. 14 will be released tonight (Feb. 19) at 21:30. Prior reading: 227K; Expected: 225K.

February 19th, according to official sources, the on-chain validators for Hyperliquid will vote around 16:00 UTC+8 on February 23rd on whether to delist OM. MANTRA (OM) is planning a token swap, incremental adjustments, and a rebrand to MANTRA (MANTRA). If validators vote to delist the asset, related perpetual contracts will be settled using the 1-hour Time-Weighted Average Price (TWAP) prior to delisting, and all unfilled orders will be canceled. Please close your positions before this time to avoid automatic settlement. Once settlement is complete, no new orders will be accepted.

On February 19, on-chain analyst Ai Yi (@ai_9684xtpa) reported that four addresses linked to the UXLINK attacker purchased 5,493.26 ETH (valued at roughly $10.87 million) one hour earlier, at an average price of $1,979.27 per ETH. The hacker still holds 21.42 million DAI and may continue to buy more ETH.

Feb. 19 — Crypto lending firm Ledn Inc. has sold a $188 million Bitcoin-backed security token, marking the first such transaction in the asset-backed debt market, according to Bloomberg. Sources familiar with the deal said the transaction involved two bonds: one portion carrying an investment-grade rating priced at 335 basis points above the benchmark rate. The sources requested anonymity due to undisclosed details.