South Korean Customs officials reported an 18% rise in drug smuggling in 2023, with 769 kilograms of narcotics seized, largely attributed to the use of cryptocurrencies and encrypted messaging apps like Telegram. The surge in smuggling attempts, particularly driven by high domestic drug prices and non-face-to-face transactions, highlights the urgent need for more effective regulatory and enforcement measures.scalating challenges for law enforcement.

The 11 enforcement actions in 2024 resulted in an average fine of $426 million, far exceeding the average fines in previous years. The average fine increased from $3.39 million (2018) to $426 million (2024).

Apple’s unveiling of the new iPhone16 models was disrupted by deepfakes of CEO Tim Cook promoting a cryptocurrency scam. Alarmingly, YouTube's search algorithm prioritised this fraudulent stream, highlighting concerns about the platform's user protection.

Drug smuggling in South Korea is rising, with authorities pointing to the role of cryptocurrency and Telegram in facilitating non-face-to-face transactions.

Telegram mini-app Catizen is rocking the telegram world with 34 million users and topping the revenue charts just six months since its launch.

It seems that every time the market goes bad, some projects or institutions will be "attacked". Unexpectedly, this time it is the turn of "Ethereum", which has always ranked second in market value.

Elon Musk said the United States is rapidly going bankrupt and interest payments on the national debt just exceeded the defense budget.

"Mothernet," directed by Ho Wi Ding, is a drama about a boy using AI to reconnect with his comatose mother, set in a near-future Indonesia. Starring Dian Sastrowardoyo and Ringgo Agus Rahman, it combines Indonesian and Singaporean production efforts and is set for a 2025 release.

iPhone 16 has been released. Compare the purchasing power of iPhone and BTC over the years and review the explosive performance of Bitcoin since its birth.

BTC, Viewpoint: BTC has surpassed the US stock market since the decoupling of the US dollar and gold in terms of trading time. Golden Finance, You can say that Bitcoin is older than the stock market in the era of full fiat currency

According to Blockworks, modular blockchain Eclipse has raised $50 million in a Series A funding round led by Placeholder and Hack VC, bringing its total funding to $65 million. Other investors such as Polychain Capital, Delphi Digital, Maven 11, DBA, and Fenbushi Capital also participated in the round. Blockchain modularity refers to the different design layers of a blockchain stack, including execution, settlement, consensus, and data availability. Unlike blockchains like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, which carry out these activities with the same set of nodes, modular blockchains divide these functionalities into separate specialized layers. Neel Somani, the founder of Eclipse, believes that there are no layer-2s on Ethereum today built for scale. He said that Eclipse aims to be the most performant layer-2 by incorporating low-hanging fruit at the execution layer to provide a superior user experience on Ethereum. Eclipse is built using the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) for execution, Celestia for data availability, and Ethereum for settlement and consensus. Although the Dencun upgrade is approaching, which will make data posting more affordable through the introduction of EIP 4844, Somani notes that Eclipse will continue to use Celestia for data availability for the time being. Somani also highlights the advantages of publishing all transactions onto a data availability layer, even for zk rollups, as it ensures transparency and allows anyone to quickly verify if a zk proof system has been tampered with or compromised. Eclipse plans to launch its mainnet in Q2 of 2024 and has already released a devnet and testnet version of its protocol. Several dapps, including NFT marketplace Rarible, oracle infrastructure Pyth Network, and lending protocol Solend, are testing its infrastructure. After the mainnet launch, Eclipse plans to sponsor hackathons, accelerators, and organize community events for its users.

1. Bitwise Spot Bitcoin ETF holds more than 15,300 BTC, and increased its holdings by 267 BTC yesterday; 2. BlackRock IBIT and Fidelity FBTC ranked among the top ten ETF fund inflows in January; 3. President of ETFStore: There are still three of the five major ETF issuers not involved in Bitcoin spot ETFs, and State Street has made a "major strategic misjudgment"; 4. Shardeum will be airdropped in three phases. In the first phase, more than 3.66 million SHM will be distributed to early contributors; 5. The British entity of Fetch.ai was repurchased by a consortium formed by the founders, and the business will be moved to Dubai; 6. The seed round price of Celestia (TIA) was only US$0.0094, and the first investor George was a college student at the time; 7. Liquidity pledge agreement Stride completed US$4 million in strategic financing, led by DBA; 8. 4 addresses associated with The Sandbox deposited 92.94 million SAND into Binance; 9. CME Bitcoin contract open interest is $4.49 billion; 10. USDC circulation increased by US$800 million in the past week.

Stride Association announced the completion of US$4 million in strategic financing to promote the development of the Cosmos ecological liquidity staking protocol Stride in the modular ecosystem. This round of financing was led by DBA, 1confirmation, Road Capital, Modular Capital, Chorus One and the main builders of the modular ecosystem Neel Somani (Eclipse), Yishay Harel (Dymension), Jon Kol and NoSleepJon (Hyperlane), Cem Özer (Sovereign Labs) ), Mike Neuder (Ethereum Foundation) and others participated in the investment. Yesterday, Stride announced the launch of a new LST asset, stTIA, on the X platform. 5 million STRD (5% of the maximum supply) will be airdropped to early holders of stTIA. These STRDs will be allocated daily in proportion to holdings, for a total of 150 days. 3 million STRD will be allocated in the first 60 days, 50,000 STRD per day; 2 million STRD will be allocated in the next 90 days, 22,200 STRD per day. Additionally, since stTIA’s launch, inflows have exceeded $10 million, with total TVL exceeding $100 million, a record high.

According to Decrypt, crypto infrastructure firm Ceden and the studio behind the NFT collection Kanpai Pandas have acquired Raini Studios, forming a new joint venture called RJV International DBA Raini Studios. The team's token, RST, is a consolidation of its previous RAINI and PHOTON tokens and will now live on the Avalanche subnet Beam, a gaming network. The three teams have already begun work on a new game that uses one of the largest combat game IPs in the world, with more details to be revealed soon. Raini Lead Designer Marty Burgess is now part of the new, larger studio, and the entire Raini team will stay on post-acquisition. Raini Studios is primarily known for its digital trading card game Raini: The Lords of Light, which offers a free-to-play Hearthstone-like gaming experience with crypto memes and optional NFT cards. Ceden CEO Alex Moody will oversee the new studio post-acquisition, while Michael Haller, a game industry veteran and Ceden co-founder, will serve as the new studio's head of gaming and lead development on the unannounced combat game with the Raini team. Raini's crypto ecosystem has historically been multi-chain, offering both Avalanche and BNB Chain compatibility. Now, the team appears to be moving further into the Avalanche ecosystem with its RST token on an Avalanche subnet and RST liquidity pools established on both Avalanche and Ethereum DeFi platforms. Cross-chain compatibility is also in the works via a LayerZero integration, which allows traders to turn their existing Raini tokens into RST if desired. A cross-chain integration for Lords of Light card packs is also in the works, with the goal of allowing players to hold their NFTs on whichever chain they prefer.