Gate.io Launches INIT Perpetual Contract Pre-trading

January 19, according to the Xiamen Procuratorate’s official WeChat account, a salesperson at a Fujian-based company—who ran up massive debts from cryptocurrency investments—began embezzling company funds in spring 2024. The employee secretly replaced the company’s official payment QR code with their personal WeChat QR code and directed customers to transfer educational subscription fees directly to their personal bank account instead of the company’s. Between spring 2024 and spring 2025, the individual embezzled more than 1.53 million yuan (≈$210,000) in company funds. All the stolen money was invested in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in an attempt to profit from speculation—but the employee lost every penny. The Tong’an District Procuratorate charged the person with embezzlement, and the court sentenced them to two years and three months in prison and ordered payment of a fine.

On January 19, Nikita Bier—X Product Lead and Solana Ecosystem Advisor—addressed user concerns that X’s in-house creator incentive program had harmed reply quality on popular tweets, and that bot/spam issues were being blamed on the InfoFi platform. Bier stated, “That’s not true. Replies are no longer included in creator revenue calculations—only Home Timeline view counts count.”

Binance Wallet announced on January 19 that its SentientAGI (SENT) Phase 4 Pre-TGE Prime Sale will take place on January 19, 2026, from 12:00 to 14:00 UTC. To participate, users must hold at least 225 Alpha Points—participation will consume 15 Alpha Points.

**Jan 19 – The Seoul Customs Office under South Korea’s Customs Service has referred a large-scale illegal foreign exchange case involving virtual assets to prosecutors.** An investigation found the criminal group engaged in illegal forex transactions through domestic and foreign virtual asset accounts over the past four years, totaling approximately 140 billion South Korean won ($95 million). The group collected fees for the activity and allegedly violated the Foreign Exchange Transactions Act. The Customs Office noted the group gathered customer funds via methods like WeChat Pay and Alipay, purchased virtual assets in multiple overseas countries, transferred them to wallets in South Korea, then converted them to Korean won for cash withdrawal. Three people are involved in the case, including a 30-something Chinese man. The group assisted with forex for various purposes—trade payments, duty-free purchases, tuition fees, and funds of unknown origin—provided customers paid a fe

On January 19, per monitoring from HyperInsight (via https://t.me/HyperInsight), the whale address 0xd475…—dubbed the "ZEC Largest Short" holder—partially closed out a segment of its MON short position. The whale reduced its MON short by 23,058,800 tokens, valued at roughly $623,300. Following this move, the whale’s remaining MON short position remains worth approximately $1.8853 million, with a floating profit of about $685,500 (a 109.09% return). Its liquidation price for the MON position is $0.475. This address gained recognition for establishing a massive ZEC short: it began shorting ZEC at $184, once facing a floating loss of $21 million before successfully turning that loss into a profit. Currently, the whale still holds large short positions on both ETH and MON.

**Bitcoin Hashrate Drops Below 1,000 EH/s for First Time Since Mid-September: Analysts Link Slump to AI Demand Growth** As of Jan. 19, Bitcoin’s network hashrate has fallen below 1,000 exahashes per second (EH/s) for the first time since mid-September, with analysts connecting the decline to sustained market interest in artificial intelligence (AI), Cointelegraph reported. Data from Hashrate Index shows the cryptocurrency’s 7-day moving average hashrate currently sits at 993 EH/s, having dipped below the 1,000 EH/s mark last Saturday. The metric is now down nearly 15% from its 7-day average peak of 1,157 EH/s recorded on Oct. 19. In a Monday post on X, Leon Lyu—CEO and founder of mining firm StandardHash—attributed the hashrate drop to Bitcoin miners reallocating computing power to AI services in pursuit of higher profit margins.