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Japanese AI VTuber Shizuku received investment from a16z

Famous American venture capital firm a16z announced on February 10th its investment in Japanese AI VTuber technology company Shizuku AI, with this funding round raising $15 million, bringing the company's valuation to $75 million, which is about 4% of the market value of Japanese VTuber listed company Anycolor at $1.7 billion.

In addition to a16z, Japanese e-commerce giant DeNA and OpenAI board member, Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo also participated in the investment in a personal capacity.

Shizuku AI's main product is AI VTuber Shizuku, a type of virtual YouTuber that uses generative AI technology and can only respond or interact through AI-generated content, which is very different from traditional VTubers that are performed by humans and are more aligned with public perception.

Deliberately evading regulation resulted in heavy penalties, the Department of Justice lowered the fine due to financial constraints.

Paxful Holdings Inc., once a globally renowned peer-to-peer (P2P) Bitcoin ($BTC) trading platform, has recently been formally sentenced to a $4 million fine by a U.S. federal court for its involvement in facilitating money laundering, promoting illegal prostitution, and violating the Bank Secrecy Act, among other felonies. According to court documents revealed by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the appropriate penalty amount originally calculated by prosecutors should have reached $112.5 million.

However, after an independent financial analysis, the regulatory agency determined that the company's current financial situation could not bear a compensation exceeding $4 million. Therefore, the court ultimately approved this significantly reduced penalty scheme. In addition to the $4 million criminal fine, Paxful also agreed to pay a civil penalty of $3.5 million to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Compared to the heavy penalties imposed on other cryptocurrency platforms, such as the $100 million fine paid by BitMEX in January 2025 or the up to $297 million fine against KuCoin, the amount paid by Paxful is relatively small. However, the charges they face are extremely serious, including intentionally transferring criminal proceeds to illegal platforms.

SingularityNET: AI strategic thinking capabilities will surpass humans within two years

The decentralized AI project SingularityNET CEO Ben Goertzel predicted during the CoinDesk Consensus Hong Kong conference that AI's capabilities in high-level market thinking and strategic planning will surpass humans within 2 years.

Goertzel observed that while AI systems like Quantium are currently able to accurately predict short-term fluctuations in Bitcoin, humans still possess a unique advantage in long-term and imaginative strategic thinking, being able to traverse the unknown through imagination, but this advantage may only last a few years.

The Manhattan District Attorney's Office announced on Tuesday that former SafeMoon CEO, 29-year-old Braden John Karony, was sentenced to 100 months (approximately 8 years and 4 months) in prison for defrauding investors and living extravagantly for personal gain.

The prosecutor noted that while Braden John Karony publicly claimed to lead investors to 'safely fly to the moon (SafeMoon)', he privately viewed investors as ATMs. According to the investigation, he stole over 9 million dollars in digital assets from the company to purchase a property in Utah worth 2.2 million dollars, an Audi R8 supercar, a Tesla, and an expensive custom Ford F-550 pickup.

Revenue falling short of expectations triggered stock price volatility, with cryptocurrency trading significantly slowing down.

Famous online brokerage Robinhood recently announced its Q4 2025 financial report, showing that although overall revenue reached a historic high, it failed to meet Wall Street analysts' expectations. According to the report, Robinhood's net income for the quarter was $1.28 billion, which, while growing 27% compared to the same period in 2024, was still below analysts' forecasts of $1.34 billion to $1.35 billion. This result led to Robinhood's stock price (NASDAQ: HOOD) dropping nearly 8.8% in after-hours trading. As of early February 2026, the company's stock price has fallen over 42% from the peak of $148.67 set on October 3, 2025.

A Chinese AI company launched Moya, claiming it to be the first fully bionic human.

Chinese robotics company DroidUp released a new product, "Moya," at the end of January this year. It claims to be the world's first fully bionic robot, boasting realistic movements and appearance.

Although many companies are currently working on mass production of AI robots that can perform household chores such as folding clothes and washing dishes, the actions of some high-end models are so realistic that developers have to disclose their internal structure during demonstrations to prove that they are not impersonated by real people.

While most robots still retain a distinctly mechanical appearance, Zhuoyide aims to make its new products as close to human in appearance and feel as possible, and even endow them with the function of simulating body temperature.

Prediction market platform Polymarket has announced a partnership with crypto data company Kaito AI to launch an attention-based prediction market that transforms discussion volume and public sentiment on social media into tradable assets. This new mechanism combines AI data analysis with market pricing mechanisms, enabling users to bet on future changes in attention regarding individuals, brands, or trends, incorporating public attention into the financial market.

The Birth of Attention Prediction Markets: Turning Social Volume into Trading Targets

Polymarket indicates that it will collaborate with Kaito AI to launch a series of 'Attention Markets,' allowing users to engage in predictive trading regarding the social attention and public opinion trends related to specific individuals, companies, or issues. Unlike traditional prediction markets that focus on election outcomes or whether policies pass, the targets of attention markets are 'volume' and 'sentiment.'

With the implementation of the EU's crypto-asset regulations (MiCA) and the increasing market demand, the attitudes of traditional financial giants in the Nordics are undergoing significant changes. Denmark's largest bank, Danske Bank, announced yesterday (2/11) that it is formally opening trading services for exchange-traded products (ETPs) for Bitcoin ($BTC) and Ethereum ($ETH) to its retail customers.

This decision symbolizes the bank's end to an 8-year strict policy on cryptocurrencies, allowing customers to directly invest in cryptocurrency derivative financial products provided by well-known issuers such as BlackRock and WisdomTree through its eBanking and mobile banking platforms.

From providing suggestions to executing independently, autonomous agents acquire on-chain identities.

The Coinbase Developer Platform officially launched a new infrastructure called Agentic Wallets yesterday (2/11), which is the first wallet tool specifically designed for autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) agents. The core purpose of this technology is to grant AI agents independent economic entity status, allowing them to have on-chain identities and manage funds autonomously.

Image source: X/@CoinbaseDev The Coinbase Developer Platform launched the first wallet tool specifically designed for autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) agents: Agentic Wallets.

Congressman questions Justin Sun and the Binance lawsuit, Chairman promises private briefing

During the hearing of the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday (2/11) U.S. time, Democratic Congressman Stephen Lynch pressured SEC Chairman Paul Atkins regarding the SEC's decision to suspend the case of Tron founder Justin Sun and to withdraw the lawsuit against Binance, questioning whether these decisions were influenced by connections between Trump and the cryptocurrency industry.

Atkins responded that the SEC still maintains robust enforcement efforts, but also stated that he cannot publicly discuss individual pending cases, and promised the lawmakers that he is willing to consider providing private confidential briefings on related issues within the scope permitted by regulations.

The founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), who was sentenced to 25 years in prison, has recently filed a motion for reconsideration in court, arguing that there were procedural flaws in the trial process and that key witnesses failed to appear. He is requesting the original verdict to be overturned and a retrial. However, outsiders believe that this legal maneuver has a very high threshold and limited chances of success.

SBF is fighting for a retrial, filing a 'motion for new trial' in court.

After two years in prison, SBF has once again entrusted his mother, Barbara Fried, to submit a 'pro se motion for a new trial' to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, requesting a retrial for the FTX fraud case. This motion is separate from the formal appeal he filed last November and represents another legal avenue.

The Bank of England launches the Synchronisation Lab, partnering with Web3 giants to drive asset modernization

The Bank of England (BoE) officially announced on February 10 that it has selected the leading decentralized oracle network Chainlink to participate in its 'Synchronisation Lab' program. The core objective of this experimental project is to explore how central bank money can interact efficiently with blockchain assets. As financial technology evolves, the Bank of England is committed to modernizing its Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) infrastructure, and the new generation core ledger system known as 'RT2' will become the hub of the future UK financial system. Through this collaboration, Chainlink will work with 17 other selected firms to jointly test how to achieve synchronized and atomic settlement mechanisms between distributed ledger technology (DLT) and traditional financial systems.

On-chain data reveals shocking truth: the million-dollar prize winner is accused of being a 'serial harvester'.

Blockchain data analytics company Bubblemaps recently released a shocking investigation report, accusing X platform's 1,000,000 prize winner @beaverd of being a long-time perpetrator of 'Rug Pull' in the cryptocurrency market.

Source: X/@bubblemaps Bubblemaps accuses X platform's 1,000,000 prize winner @beaverd of being a long-time perpetrator of 'Rug Pull' in the cryptocurrency market.

According to Bubblemaps' tracking research, the creator was found to have illegally profited over 600,000 from multiple meme coin projects just hours after winning the long-form competition held on the X platform. Investigations revealed that a cryptocurrency wallet closely associated with @beaverd had launched a meme coin named $SIAS on the Pump.fun platform. After its release, the token's market value rapidly soared to about 6,000,000, but it subsequently crashed to nearly zero within just a few minutes.

Rumors say a 10-year-old child bought the AI.com domain in 1993, and foreign media have verified the doubts.

One of the hottest topics in the tech circle these days is the sale of the domain AI.com for a staggering $70 million in 2025. Recently, a piece of news circulated on social media, reported by Malaysian media (SAYS), that the seller of the domain, Arsyan Ismail, claimed he stole his mother's credit card to buy the domain for $100 when he was 10 years old in 1993.

Source: SAYS Malaysia media (SAYS) reported that the seller of the domain AI.com, Arsyan Ismail, claimed that he stole his mother's credit card to purchase the domain for $100 when he was 10 years old in 1993.

Partnering with Coinbase's derivatives exchange, micro contracts lower the investment threshold.

Global renowned electronic broker Interactive Brokers (IBKR) announced on February 10, 2026, that it is officially expanding its cryptocurrency futures product line through collaboration with the derivatives department of digital asset exchange Coinbase Derivatives. This partnership introduces Nano-sized micro contracts designed for Bitcoin ($BTC) and Ethereum ($ETH), aiming to provide traders seeking exposure to crypto derivatives with more flexible options without the need to bear the high capital pressure of full-size contracts.

Famous American host's mother kidnapped, kidnappers demand $6 million in Bitcoin

Famous American news program (Today) host Savannah Guthrie's family has recently encountered a significant change. According to reports, her 84-year-old mother Nancy Guthrie was kidnapped on February 1, 2026, at her home in the suburbs of Tucson, Arizona.

Source: People Famous American news program (Today) host Savannah Guthrie

Although law enforcement has not officially confirmed the authenticity of the related ransom demands, several media outlets including (TMZ), (CBS), and (TUCSON) have received two ransom notices, and the media generally believes these demands to be highly credible. The kidnappers demanded a ransom of $6 million in Bitcoin ($BTC) and set a specific deadline, with one notice even carrying a threat of 'otherwise, the consequences are yours to bear.'

Fake million-dollar bet exposed by on-chain detectives

During the Super Bowl in 2026, the well-known influencer Logan Paul once again became the center of attention in the cryptocurrency community, but this time not for his high-stakes gambling, but for a carefully orchestrated yet flawed promotional stunt. According to (Protos), Polymarket uploaded a video featuring Logan Paul using Polymarket, in which he seemingly predicts a bet of $1 million on the New England Patriots to win their record-breaking seventh Super Bowl championship. The official Polymarket account even added the text 'Logan Paul checking Polymarket at the event' to amplify the hype.

In response to market concerns raised by the previous short-selling report, research organization Capitalwatch issued a correction and apology statement on February 8, announcing the retraction of certain specific allegations against AppLovin's major shareholder Hao Tang, and stated that the relevant content did not meet publication standards in the independent verification process.

Further Reading
Is advertising money laundering? Short-selling institutions name AppLovin or colluding with Prince Group, calling for regulatory investigation

The report issued by the organization on January 20 claimed that the shareholder structure, advertising revenue flow, and product usage of the US-listed advertising data analysis company AppLovin (NASDAQ: APP) are highly correlated with the Cambodian Prince Group, which is more likely to be a money laundering outlet for the group, calling on US regulatory agencies to initiate an investigation.

In the latest episode of the OpenAI Podcast, Asad Awan, OpenAI's Head of Advertising and Business Operations, explained for the first time why ChatGPT is introducing ads, what form the ads will take, which users will see them, and how OpenAI will adhere to a clear set of principles and mechanisms to maintain the line of 'no monitoring, no interference with responses, and preserving trust,' avoiding a repeat of the familiar privacy controversies and trust erosion.

Only free and Go plan users will see ads, which will not appear for Plus, Pro, and Enterprise users.

Awan stated that ChatGPT ads will only appear for free users and Go plan users, and will not be displayed for Plus, Pro, and Enterprise versions.

Netizens continuously express backlash, and Discord responds to the age verification controversy.

The well-known messaging software Discord issued a statement today (2/11) in Taiwan time, directly addressing the controversy over its age verification policy, attempting to alleviate users' concerns.

Discord emphasizes that the vast majority of users can continue to use the platform without facial scans or uploading government identification. The system will use existing account behavior patterns and signals to establish an 'age prediction' model to determine with high confidence whether a user is an adult.

This means that most adult users do not need to undergo explicit age verification to use the corresponding features. Only in cases where the system cannot determine the user's age will users be required to complete additional verification procedures through third-party partners.