Insight: Fed's New Chair, Josh Wash, May Not Be the Hawkish Figure Market Expects

On February 12th, Ondo Finance announced that tokenized stocks from Ondo Global Markets are now live on the DeFi lending market—with SPYon and QQQon leading the initial rollout, integrated with Morpho and Gauntlet. Ondo’s tokenized stocks and ETFs are now available as efficient, risk-managed collateral assets within the Ethereum DeFi ecosystem.

Feb. 12: Citing market sources, an internal Russian memo notes there are efforts to lobby former President Trump to rejoin the dollar system, and the U.S. and Russia may have a joint plan in energy, mining and fossil fuel sectors.

On February 12, the White House launched a last-minute push to avert a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown, submitting legislative text to Democrats ahead of the funding deadline. Democrats are expected to reject the proposal, labeling the prior offer “neither complete nor adequate.” Senate Democrats note negotiations have reached a stalemate, insisting they will not back any new stopgap funding measure unless an agreement is struck on a 10-point plan to reform U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Senator Jacky Rosen criticized the White House’s response for lacking specifics and accused Republicans of leaning on short-term extensions to dodge broader immigration reform. (Source: Golden Finance)

On February 12, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published an article outlining his views on incentive mechanisms for cryptocurrency projects. He argues incentive frameworks should draw a clear line between two key scenarios: 1) Compensating for temporary costs in a project’s early, immature stages (beneficial); 2) Attracting users who won’t engage with the project once it matures (harmful). Vitalik notes many decentralized finance (DeFi) liquidity rewards are reasonable, as they offset risks new projects face—including hacks or team fraud. However, paying users to tweet for attention is a flawed approach: such incentives may push users to prioritize maximum gains over content quality. He emphasizes ideal incentive mechanisms should precisely compensate for temporary protocol shortcomings that will fade as the protocol matures, while avoiding users with no long-term retention potential. Successful applications, he stresses, should focus first on building utility r

As of February 12, Cathie Wood—nicknamed the “Wood Mom”—and her firm Ark Invest had boosted holdings of bullish stocks for nine straight days, with a total additional investment of $11.6 million.

February 12 — OKX Ventures has announced a strategic investment in STBL, a next-generation stablecoin and yield infrastructure provider. STBL also revealed partnerships with two key players: private market investment firm Hamilton Lane (HLNE) and digital securities issuance/tokenization platform Securitize. The firm will launch its first ecosystem-specific stablecoin, ESS, on X Layer. Built on a dual-token architecture, ESS separates liquidity provisioning from yield generation and is fully backed by real-world assets.