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Odaily Planet Daily reports that AI quantitative trading company Inference Research has announced the completion of a $20 million seed round of funding, led by Avenir Group under Li Lin. This funding will be used to expand the company's proprietary infrastructure to integrate traditional finance and digital assets, while also accelerating talent recruitment. It is reported that the company is forming a team composed of quantitative analysts, engineers, and researchers. (PRNewswire)

February 12 News, as the digital asset ecosystem continues to extend into real-world assets, the tokenized commodities sector is experiencing rapid growth in 2026. The latest data shows that the total market capitalization in this field has surpassed $6 billion, setting a new record, with gold-backed tokens becoming the main driving force behind the growth. An increasing amount of capital is being allocated to precious metals through blockchain formats, providing the market with new risk hedging options.
Currently, Tether's issued XAUT and Paxos's PAXG dominate most of the tokenized gold market share. XAUT's market cap has risen to approximately $3.6 billion, with a growth of over 50% in the past 30 days and nearly 200% over six months; PAXG's market cap is about $2.3 billion, with a growth of over 60% in the past three months and over 140% in six months. Together, they almost dominate the entire tokenized commodities track. In comparison, smaller products like PGOLD and XAUM are expanding but still significantly behind in scale.

Foresight News reports that USD.AI has launched the Level Up mechanism, where participants can gain rights by locking Pendle YT. The CHIP token ICO will be open from February 22 to 27, with an FDV of $300 million. Users can choose different strategies to lock tokens, enjoying refunds and discounted valuations, and can also obtain monetization opportunities through airdrops.

SOLOWIN HOLDINGS and Streeterville Capital have reached a $100 million financing agreement, planning to support stablecoin and asset tokenization businesses through the issuance of prepaid shares. The first transaction of approximately $5.415 million has been completed, and the company will also launch a $100 million Bitcoin quantitative fund with Antalpha.

February 12 News, Ripple is accelerating its expansion in Europe. Following the receipt of two regulatory licenses in early 2026, Ripple has also partnered with European asset management giant Aviva Investors, allowing their traditional funds to be custodyed on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) in a tokenized form. This move is seen as an important step for Ripple to connect traditional finance with decentralized finance.
In recent months, most Layer 1 payment networks have been establishing collaborations around stablecoins and DeFi applications to expand capital inflows and use cases. Ripple’s approach is clearer: first obtain a compliant identity, then introduce traditional financial assets onto the chain, fundamentally reshaping the application structure of XRPL. Previously, Ripple obtained regulatory licenses in the UK and Luxembourg, enabling its blockchain infrastructure to legally integrate into the European payment system and providing institutional support for the on-chain ecosystem of XRP.

On February 12, the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) announced at the Hong Kong Consensus Conference that the non-custodial wallet TopNod will officially join the Stellar network. This marks an important step for SDF in accelerating its expansion into the Asian market. In the region, Stellar faces fierce competition in cross-border payments and asset tokenization from public blockchains such as Solana, TON, and XRP.
TopNod uses sharded keys and Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) technology to achieve a secure architecture without the need for mnemonics, focusing on tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) and stablecoin applications, rather than short-term speculative tokens. Although the project’s visibility outside the Web3 community remains limited, its product positioning aligns closely with Stellar’s current institutional strategy.

On February 12, news reports indicated that XRP experienced a large on-chain movement within a short period, attracting significant market attention. Over the past two days, approximately 229 million XRP tokens have been transferred between multiple unknown addresses. On February 10, Whale Alert detected 125 million XRP (about $177 million) transferred from one unknown wallet to another; the next day, another 104.8 million XRP (about $147 million) was transferred, involving a major address ranked within the top 60. Such a scale of transfer typically suggests institutional or whale position adjustments rather than retail investor activity.
These funds have not yet flowed into any known platforms, so it is currently unclear whether they pose selling pressure. Some analysts believe this could be related to cold storage rotation or over-the-counter (OTC) trading operations, with the ultimate destination remaining a key variable.

On February 12, news reports indicate that Japanese tech investment giant SoftBank Group announced its latest financial results, with its Vision Fund achieving a profit of approximately $2.4 billion in the quarter ending December. Although some investment projects are still in the red, core assets like OpenAI have seen rapid valuation increases, effectively offsetting downward pressure and becoming the main source of profit for this quarter.
In recent years, SoftBank has continued to increase its focus on the artificial intelligence sector, with the Vision Fund concentrating its capital on AI companies regarded as "next-generation industry leaders," aiming to establish a long-term advantage in the global AI industry chain. Among these, investments in OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, are considered one of the most strategically significant moves. Market estimates suggest that SoftBank's related investments in OpenAI amount to nearly $40 billion, and the company's current valuation has risen rapidly, significantly improving the asset performance of the Vision Fund.

On February 12, news broke that WLFI, a cryptocurrency project associated with the Trump family, announced the launch of a foreign exchange platform called World Swap. The announcement was made by co-founder Zack Folkman at the Consensus conference held in Hong Kong, China, quickly attracting market attention.
The launch of World Swap signifies that WLFI is officially entering the digital foreign exchange and cross-border payment sectors. The platform will build multiple application scenarios around its core stablecoin USD1, aiming to create an integrated financial system covering payments, lending, exchange, and other functions. According to Zack Folkman, WLFI plans to hold an event later this month at Mar-a-Lago in the United States, where more product roadmaps and partnership updates will be announced.

Bitfury founder Val Vavilov stated that the cryptocurrency crash is a good opportunity for re-investment and believes that Bitcoin still has growth potential. He mentioned that the company has expanded from crypto mining to artificial intelligence infrastructure but did not disclose specific investment amounts or quantities.

Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) is planning to expand its perpetual preferred stock issuance to alleviate market pressure caused by excessive volatility in common shares. The company's CEO Phong Le recently stated that preferred stock may become its core financing tool in the future, helping the company reduce reliance on dilution of common shares while continuously allocating Bitcoin.
Since the beginning of this year, MSTR's stock price has fallen approximately 17%, while Bitcoin's price has dropped over 22% during the same period. In an interview with Bloomberg, Le pointed out that the sharp stock price fluctuations are highly correlated with the company's "Digital Asset Reserve Plan" and Bitcoin prices. When Bitcoin rises, the stock price often quickly increases; conversely, it tends to decline under pressure. To meet the needs of investors interested in digital assets but unwilling to bear extreme volatility, Strategy has launched a perpetual preferred stock called "Stretch."

Despite the ongoing weakness in the cryptocurrency market, ETF deployments around digital assets have not slowed down. Several asset management firms are still submitting new product applications to regulators, demonstrating that institutional long-term demand for digital asset funds remains confident.
This month, Bitwise Asset Management submitted an ETF application related to Uniswap, and ProShares also plans to launch leveraged Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs. Meanwhile, 21Shares re-submitted fund proposals based on Ondo and Sei, indicating that related projects are steadily progressing. Industry insiders believe these moves reflect issuers positioning themselves early during the market downturn, aiming to gain a first-mover advantage when sentiment recovers.

PANews February 12 News, according to Arkham monitoring, Alameda Research's bankruptcy administrator recently distributed over $15 million worth of SOL to creditors in the latest monthly allocation. A total of $15.6 million worth of SOL was transferred to 25 independent addresses, as part of a continuous distribution plan that has been ongoing for 21 months. Alameda's on-chain wallet currently still holds $314.95 million worth of SOL.

BlockBeats News, February 12 — According to Cointelegraph, Glassnode analysts stated that Bitcoin whales increased their holdings during the pullback, with the 30-day average outflow ratio reaching 3.2%, similar to the pattern observed before the bull market in the first half of 2022.

ChainCatcher News reports that according to Jinshi, Monex's Head of Macro Research Nick Rees stated in a report that the U.S. employment data for January was strong, eliminating market expectations of a rate cut by the Federal Reserve in March. However, Monex still expects the Federal Reserve to resume rate cuts in June. Rees pointed out that the market is digesting this robust employment data, and as a result, expectations for rate cuts have naturally decreased.

On February 12, the Sui Foundation announced that the synthetic USD suiUSDe supported by the Ethereum ecosystem has officially launched on the Sui mainnet. This is the network's first native synthetic USD asset, marking a significant step forward for Sui in decentralized financial infrastructure and providing new tools for on-chain leverage trading, lending, and liquidity strategies.
suiUSDe (also known as eSui Dollar) has been integrated into the Sui core financial system and is the first synthetic USD to receive support from DeepBook Margin. DeepBook Margin is Sui's on-chain leverage and liquidity platform, offering unified clearing, risk control, and settlement modules. With this system, developers can quickly deploy financial products based on suiUSDe without building complex risk frameworks themselves.

February 12 News, decentralized derivatives platform Lighter announced the launch of its first batch of on-chain perpetual contracts linked to major Korean stocks, covering Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, Hyundai Motor, and the Korea Composite Stock Price Index. Traders can use up to 10x leverage for long and short positions without brokers, custodial accounts, or trading hours restrictions. All contracts are settled in cryptocurrencies.
This launch is seen as an important step in integrating traditional finance with on-chain derivatives. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Hyundai Motor hold key positions in the semiconductor, artificial intelligence, and automotive supply chains, and their stock performance is closely related to the global tech and manufacturing industry outlook. Lighter "tokenizes" these blue-chip stocks, allowing users to participate directly in the price fluctuations of the traditional stock market just like trading crypto perpetual contracts.

ChainCatcher reports that, according to Jinshi, the US Dollar Index (DXY) rose 10 points in the short term, currently at 96.97.

ChainCatcher reports that, according to Jinshi, the USD/JPY short-term rises by 40 points, currently at 153.39.

Bitmine Chairman Tom Lee predicts that Ethereum will experience a V-shaped rebound in the near future, currently approaching the bottom. Despite the price decline, ETH staking demand remains strong, with validator onboarding wait times reaching an all-time high, and the staking ratio reaching 30.3%.