Binance Alpha launches the second round of Irys airdrop, requiring users to reach 245 Alpha points.

QCP Capital has released a new report, noting that the decline in Japanese government bond yields has eased market concerns over the unwinding of yen carry trades and capital repatriation, driving Bitcoin to rebound to around $64,000. While Middle East geopolitical risks, a stronger U.S. dollar, and the Federal Reserve’s hawkish stance continue to weigh on risk assets, Bitcoin has demonstrated some resilience in the $60,000 range. The report adds that future trends will hinge primarily on the global liquidity environment, U.S. inflation data, and the outcome of the Bank of Japan’s month-end meeting.

According to market data from BIT (bit.com), U.S. crypto-related concept stocks advanced in pre-market trading. Circle jumped nearly 8% after the firm secured approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to set up its national digital currency bank. Strategy rose nearly 5%, Coinbase gained over 4%, and Robinhood climbed more than 3%.

Cathie Wood’s investment firm Ark Invest added to its holdings in Circle Internet Group on Thursday while offloading part of its Robinhood stake. Latest trading disclosures show Ark purchased a total of 217,896 Circle shares via its three ETFs—ARKK, ARKW, and ARKF—valued at roughly $13.7 million based on Thursday’s closing price of $63.01 per share. Separately, Ark sold 85,319 Robinhood shares worth $9.8 million.

According to CoinDesk, Tokyo-listed firm Metaplanet is forming a joint research team with Japanese yen stablecoin issuer JPYC and regulated security token platform Progmat to explore Bitcoin-backed digital credit products. The initiative will tokenize BTC collateral for use in debt instruments that accrue interest daily and can be traded and settled 24/7. Siiibo Securities, which Metaplanet acquired this year and plans to rebrand as Metaplanet Securities, will also participate in the research, handling product design and sales. Currently, Metaplanet holds around 43,000 BTC, which it intends to use as credit enhancement, a store of value, and compliant collateral assets to address the high financing costs and cumbersome processes faced by medium-sized and growing Japanese enterprises in the traditional bond market.

London-based AI writing startup Marker, co-founded by a former DeepMind creative lead, has exited stealth mode and announced a $13 million seed funding round. The round was led by Index Ventures, with participation from Local Globe. Angel investors include Writely co-founder Steve Newman, Slack co-founder Cal Henderson, and Hugging Face’s Thomas Wolf.

Ledger researchers have discovered that a laser attack can reset the passcodes on all Tangem hardware wallet cards. The attack requires physical access to the device, roughly $250,000 worth of laboratory equipment, and existing cards already in circulation cannot be patched.