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South Korean blockchain research and education firm Undefined Labs has announced a collaboration with the Ethereum Foundation Enterprise Team. The partnership aims to jointly conduct Ethereum technology education and institutional cooperation programs for the South Korean financial sector. The two organizations plan to roll out seminars and training programs in stages for major domestic financial institutions, including banks and securities firms. These sessions will cover Ethereum's technical architecture and its use cases within global financial infrastructure. A joint seminar for South Korean financial institutions is expected to be held in mid-April.

According to media reports, CME Group has announced it will expand its cryptocurrency derivatives offerings with the launch of futures products for Cardano (ADA), Chainlink (LINK), and Stellar (XLM) on Feb. 9.

Binance announced it will convert its FOGO pre-market perpetual futures into standard perpetual futures at 2:00 p.m. UTC on Jan. 15.

Austan Goolsbee, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, said he expects an interest rate cut within the year but needs to review more data to confirm the move.

BNB Chain announced it has completed its 34th quarterly token burn for the first quarter of the year, destroying 1.37 million BNB worth approximately $1.277 billion.

JustLend DAO announced that it has bought back 525 million JST, equivalent to $21 million.

Robinhood announced the listing of spot LIT.

SVM Layer 1 chain Fogo is launching its public mainnet, The Block reported. Fogo stated that the network features a block generation time of 40 milliseconds and boasts speeds up to 18 times faster than Solana (SOL) or Sui (SUI). Additionally, holders of Fogo Flames points will be able to convert them into FOGO tokens.

Cryptocurrency financial services firm Galaxy Digital has issued a $75 million tokenized collateralized loan obligation (CLO) on the Avalanche blockchain, The Block reported. A CLO is a type of asset-backed security issued by financial institutions and backed by a pool of corporate loans. Galaxy Digital plans to use the proceeds to provide loans to the crypto lending platform Arch, with the potential to increase the loan facility to a maximum of $200 million. Digital securities and crypto trading platform INX managed the asset tokenization, while crypto bank Anchorage Digital is serving as the asset custodian.

The price of Strategy's preferred stock (STRC) fell below its $100 benchmark in after-hours trading following its monthly dividend payment, Coindesk reported. The outlet noted that historically, STRC's price has tended to drop by as much as 2% immediately after its ex-dividend date before recovering to the benchmark level. Strategy is estimated to have purchased an additional 2,280 BTC between Jan. 12 and Jan. 14 using proceeds from the STRC issuance.

According to multiple media outlets, Bitmine (BMNR), a publicly traded company known for its strategic accumulation of ETH, has announced a $200 million equity investment in Beast Industries, the corporate holding company of world-famous YouTuber MrBeast.

Bitcoin's rally this year is being driven by spot demand, which is a healthier market indicator than futures-led growth because it reflects genuine rather than speculative interest, according to an analysis by CoinDesk. The media outlet reported, citing data from Checkonchain, that demand shifted from futures to spot during the recent price increase from $90,000 to $97,000. This trend is further supported by data from CoinGlass showing that Bitcoin futures open interest has remained largely unchanged. However, the analysis also identified the negative perpetual futures funding rate as a key variable. If spot prices continue to rise while the funding rate remains negative, the risk of a short squeeze could increase. A short squeeze occurs when rising prices force the cascading liquidation of short positions, which in turn adds to the upward price momentum.

SG-Forge, the cryptocurrency subsidiary of French financial giant Societe Generale, has completed a settlement for a tokenized bond using both cash and a stablecoin, CoinDesk reported. The transaction utilized EURCV, a euro-denominated stablecoin issued by SG-Forge, and was conducted in collaboration with the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT). SG-Forge stated that the deal demonstrates the feasibility of core functions such as issuance, delivery versus payment (DvP), interest payments, and redemption.

Swiss crypto bank Sygnum predicts that Bitcoin could surge to as high as $400,000 if the United States establishes clear cryptocurrency regulations, Cointelegraph reported. In a report, the bank stated that growing anticipation around U.S. legislation, such as the CLARITY Act and a proposed Bitcoin Act for national-level purchases, increases the likelihood that other countries will add BTC to their reserve assets. Sygnum identified pragmatic nations or those facing currency crises, including Japan, Germany, Brazil, and Poland, as potential adopters. The bank analyzed that such a multi-country adoption could drive the price of BTC to between $350,000 and $400,000. Sygnum also projected that up to 10% of new bonds issued by major institutions this year will be in a tokenized format.

Zero-Knowledge (ZK) verification computing platform Brevis announced it will build an Intelligent Privacy Pool on BNB Chain. The project is a collaboration with BNB Chain and 0xBow, the development team behind the blockchain privacy tool Privacy Pools. The new pool will build on 0xBow's existing features by adding a ZK-based user eligibility verification system. This will allow users to prove their regulatory compliance without exposing personal data, either through their on-chain history or by linking off-chain Know Your Customer (KYC) information via zkTLS technology. The pool is scheduled to launch in the first quarter.

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who is also a co-founder of Worldcoin (WLD), will attend an upcoming shareholder meeting for Bitmine (BMNR), a publicly traded company known for its strategy of accumulating ETH, DL News reported. The agenda for the meeting includes a proposal to increase the number of authorized new shares from 500 million to a maximum of 50 billion.

OKX announced it will list the LIT/USDT spot trading pair at 3:30 p.m. UTC on Jan. 15.

On-chain indicators suggest that BTC may have bottomed out, with a bull market potentially on the horizon, according to several analysts cited by Cointelegraph. Crypto trader Jelle noted that on the three-day chart, the BTC Relative Strength Index (RSI) has surpassed 50 for the first time since early October of last year, while the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) is showing a buy signal. Jelle believes this combination indicates that BTC has reached its bottom. Additionally, analyst Isiah suggested that if BTC were to break through its 50-week Simple Moving Average (SMA) of $101,000, it would be an unusual event, assuming the market is currently in a downtrend. Meanwhile, trader Daan Crypto Trades observed that the bull market support band, which consists of two moving averages, is currently acting as resistance. The trader stated that BTC is likely to retest this band soon and that a breakout above its upper boundary will determine the market's direction for the next several months.

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan has warned that allowing interest payments on stablecoins could lead to an outflow of approximately $6 trillion from the banking system into the stablecoin market. This figure represents about 30-35% of total deposits in U.S. commercial banks. Moynihan explained that stablecoins are structurally similar to money market mutual funds, with reserves invested in short-term financial instruments like U.S. Treasurys rather than being used for bank loans. He noted that this structure keeps funds outside the traditional banking system, which would shrink the deposit base banks rely on for lending to households and businesses. The issue of permitting interest on stablecoins is currently a major point of contention between the banking and crypto industries amid discussions over the U.S. crypto market structure bill (CLARITY).

Bybit announced it will list LIT for spot trading at 2:30 p.m. UTC today.

The BSC Foundation has resumed purchasing ecosystem tokens for the first time in four days, according to on-chain analyst ai_9684xtpa. The foundation is buying two tokens: 币安人生 and 我踏马来了.

According to CoinNess market monitoring, BTC has risen above $97,000. BTC is trading at $97,009.98 on the Binance USDT market.

The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) has announced the launch of its digital payment platform, LSEG DiSH. The open platform supports real-time, programmable payments through an independent network that operates both on-chain and off-chain. Supported assets for payment include various foreign currencies and digital assets.

Declining volatility in U.S. Treasurys, which has reached its lowest level in nearly four years, is strengthening expectations that BTC could surpass the $100,000 mark, Coindesk reported. According to the outlet's analysis, stable Treasury prices facilitate credit creation, which tends to encourage investors to increase their exposure to risk assets like cryptocurrencies. The MOVE Index, a measure of expected Treasury volatility over the next four weeks, has fallen to 58, its lowest point since October 2021. BTC has historically maintained a positive correlation with the Nasdaq 100 index and a negative correlation with the MOVE Index. With U.S. Treasurys now at their most stable in years, the analysis suggests BTC could break $100,000 for the first time since mid-November.

A growing number of DeFi protocols are suspending their Discord channels due to the platform's rampant phishing schemes, Cointelegraph reported. DeFi lending protocol MORPHO recently switched its official Discord channel to read-only mode, citing the platform's role as a hotbed for phishing. Similarly, DeFi data platform DefiLlama is also minimizing its channel activity in a move away from Discord. While the platform remains a popular communication tool for cryptocurrency users, its failure to address persistent security issues is reportedly causing a rift with the crypto community.