Bitcoin Magazine (News Bot)

by Bitcoin Magazine (News Bot) Feb 4, 2026 · Edited

Strategy ($MSTR) Shares Sink Over 20% in 5 Days as Bitcoin Crashes to $72,000

Bitcoin Magazine Strategy ($MSTR) Shares Sink Over 20% in 5 Days as Bitcoin Crashes to $72,000 Shares of Strategy ($MSTR) plunged again today as Bitcoin’s sell‑off deepened, reinforcing the tight correlation between the world’s largest corporate Bitcoin holder and the digital asset’s price action. Bitcoin cratered toward $72,000, extending losses to levels not seen since late 2024, while MSTR shares tumbled roughly 9% on the session, dipping to intraday lows near $121.19. At current levels the stock is down roughly 15% year‑to‑date and a staggering 72% from its November 2024 peak. The drop in Bitcoin — now hovering near $72,000, far below the multi‑year highs seen in 2025 — has rippled across the broader crypto complex. With sentiment souring and tactical traders eyeing technical support levels near the mid‑$60,000 range, risk assets have taken on a pronounced downbeat tone. Commentary from market strategists has ranged from cautionary to outright bearish, with calls for deeper retracements if demand fails to stabilize. Analyst slashes $MSTR price target by 60% In a notable update this week, Canaccord Genuity analyst Joseph Vafi, long viewed as one of MSTR’s most vocal supporters, dramatically slashed his price target from $474 to $185 — a 61% reduction — while maintaining a Buy rating on the stock. According to Vafi’s revised outlook, the new target still implies “significant upside” from current levels if volatility subsides and Bitcoin finds a tradable bottom. Vafi’s retained bullish stance — despite the sharp target cut — highlights a nuanced view among some Wall Street strategists: even amid brutal downside, the stock’s deep discount to theoretical Bitcoin net‑asset value could eventually reprice upward. Strategy continues bitcoin purchasing Earlier this week, Strategy said it purchased 855 bitcoin for about $75.3 million, paying an average price of $87,974 per BTC, according to a Monday filing. The acquisition came just days before bitcoin fell below $75,000 over the weekend on some rapid selling, briefly pushing Strategy’s treasury close to $1 billion in unrealized losses. Now, the price of bitcoin is below those levels at $72,000. The company now holds 713,502 BTC, acquired for roughly $54.26 billion at an average cost of $76,052 per coin. Last week’s purchase was fully funded through the sale of common stock, following Strategy’s ongoing capital-raising approach to finance bitcoin buys. The purchase of 855 bitcoin was significantly smaller compared to prior company purchases. All eyes remain on MSTR’s upcoming fourth‑quarter 2025 earnings release, scheduled for later this week, a report that could provide more color on its capital‑raising cadence, BTC purchase strategy, and the evolving balance between leverage and asset coverage. At the time of writing, bitcoin’s price dropped to lows near $72,000 today, its lowest level in over a year. The bitcoin price has now retraced more than 40% from its all‑time highs reached in late 2025. This post Strategy ($MSTR) Shares Sink Over 20% in 5 Days as Bitcoin Crashes to $72,000 first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

by Bitcoin Magazine (News Bot) Feb 4, 2026 · Edited

Rutherford Chang Retrospective: Hundreds and Thousands at UCCA Beijing

Bitcoin Magazine Rutherford Chang Retrospective: Hundreds and Thousands at UCCA Beijing When people describe Rutherford Chang’s work, you hear words like: obsessive, conceptual, minimalist. These descriptions aren’t wrong, they point to something real in his practice. But they also miss what makes his approach distinctive. Chang worked with objects that industrial culture designed to be identical: records pressed in millions of copies, portraits drawn according to strict house style, coins minted for perfect interchange. His interest lay in the precise moment when the promise of sameness begins to fail, when time and human handling leave marks that transform supposedly identical objects into singular things. The retrospective Rutherford Chang: Hundreds and Thousands opened January 17, 2026 at UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, one of China’s leading institutions for contemporary art. This exhibition is significant for several reasons. It represents Chang’s first institutional retrospective and his most comprehensive solo presentation to date. It is also a posthumous one. Chang died in 2025 at the age of 45, leaving behind a body of work built almost entirely around the practice of collecting and arranging mass-produced objects until their individual histories became visible and legible. Beijing provides a fitting location for this retrospective, though not for the obvious reasons alone. Yes, Chang moved frequently between New York and China throughout his career, and yes, he showed work in Beijing early on. But the city itself offers something more specific: a context shaped by rapid cycles of construction and replacement, by the constant acceleration of change and circulation. In such an environment, Chang’s patient attention to what gets left behind, to the residues and traces that accumulate on objects even as they move through systems designed to keep them uniform, takes on particular resonance. The exhibition is co-curated by Philip Tinari, director of UCCA, and Aki Sasamoto, a fellow artist – both longtime friends of Chang who understand his working methods from the inside. Their collaboration keeps the exhibition close to the work as practice, with process and method in the foreground. To understand Chang’s approach, we need to look carefully at the exhibition’s title. Hundreds and Thousands sounds like simple measurement, like a gesture toward quantification. Chang typically worked at scale. He collected not dozens but hundreds or thousands of examples. But what the title really describes is a method and a particular way of working that emerges when you engage with mass-produced objects at sufficient volume. Chang discovered that quantity, at a certain point, stops behaving in predictable ways. At a certain scale, repetition starts to reveal detail. Put hundreds of nearly identical objects next to each other and you start to see time. You start to see touch. You see accidents. You see storage. You see neglect. You also see care. The marks of individual handling become visible. What you’re looking at, ultimately, is a record of lived life pressed into objects that industrial culture designed to keep stable and interchangeable. We Buy White Albums One of Chang’s best-known projects demonstrates this method with particular clarity. We Buy White Albums operates from a constraint simple enough to state in a single sentence, though its implications unfold over years: Chang established a record store that stocked only first pressings of the Beatles’ The Beatles (1968), commonly known as “The White Album”. The store had one rule that inverted normal commercial logic: It sold nothing, it only bought. This premise is deliberately narrow, and it remains narrow throughout the project’s duration, which turns out to be part of what allows it to scale so effectively over time. During exhibitions where Chang was present, the work functioned in real time: people could show up with their own copy of the White Album and sell it to the archive while the exhibition was on view. The act of buying became a moment of direct exchange between the work and its audience, and the archive grew through these individual transactions instead of curatorial selection or market acquisition. Each copy arrived already marked by years of handling. These marks, the accumulated evidence of circulation, carried the work forward. To understand why this project works as it does, we need to look more carefully at the White Album itself as an object. Richard Hamilton designed the cover as an almost completely blank white surface. Minimalism at its most reductive form. And yet early pressings carry a stamped serial number, a small detail that complicates the apparent simplicity. This serial number performs a curious double function: it frames each copy as one among many (your copy is number 0234561 out of millions), while simultaneously gesturing toward something like limited edition status through the very act of numbering. Here we find the contradiction built directly into the object itself: mass-produced minimalism making a paradoxical claim to uniqueness. The serial number tells you this is just one copy out of millions, while the blank white cover invites you to make it yours. Chang understood what this contradiction sets in motion once these objects enter circulation and begin moving through time. The clean white surface that Hamilton designed with such care doesn’t stay clean for long. Everyday life rewrites it. Water damage spreads across the cardboard in irregular patterns. Corners get torn or bent through careless handling or too-tight shelving. Owners write their names on the cover, add notes about when and where they bought the album, sometimes include dedications or detailed lists of favorite tracks. Price stickers from second-hand shops accumulate in layers, creating unintended collages of commercial history. In some cases, mold sets in during storage in damp basements or attics, creating organic patterns that can look almost intentional, or lets say, almost artistic. Through all of this, the album stops being a uniform industrial product and becomes something singular, that’s marked by its particular history. The decision to collect these albums in any condition and not searching only for pristine, museum-quality copies, represents a choice with significant consequences for how the work means. It means treating damage and wear as information and not as degradation to be corrected or restored. This shift in how we value objects is crucial to understanding the project. A pristine copy might tell you something about careful preservation, about someone who valued the object enough to keep it protected from the world. But a tattered copy, covered in stains and marks, tells a different and probably richer story. In Chang’s hands, these marks remain visible and begin to matter in new ways. He returns again and again, across different projects, to this precise point where objects designed for perfect interchange start to fray at the edges, where they begin to carry their own record of circulation that makes them individually readable. The work doesn’t stop with physical collection, however. Chang took the project a step further by recording multiple copies of the album and layering them into a single audio piece. One hundred versions of the White Album play simultaneously, drifting gradually out of sync as small differences in quality and accumulated wear compound into a shifting chorus of sound. The result doesn’t register as a remix or a mashup in any conventional sense. It feels closer to the archive itself made audible, a way of hearing how uniformity fails when you stack enough iterations on top of each other. What comes to the surface is not purity or fidelity to an original, but time itself, materialized in the form of friction and noise. The piece functions as what we might call material memory, with surprisingly little interest in fan culture, or the mythology that typically surrounds The Beatles. The Class of 2008 Chang applied this same basic methodological approach to a very different kind of mass-produced object: printed news media. The Class of 2008 presents itself as a straightforward catalogue. It’s an alphabetical listing of every hedcut portrait published in The Wall Street Journal during the year 2008. Before we can understand what Chang does with this material, though, we need to understand what hedcuts are and why they matter. Hedcuts are the distinctive stippled, engraving-style portraits that the Journal uses for certain figures in its reporting. The technique is borrowed deliberately from nineteenth-century engraving, and it carries with it specific associations: authority, permanence, trustworthiness, the visual register of something meant to hold up under scrutiny and stand the test of time. The structure of the catalogue is deceptively simple: alphabetical order, with repetition kept visible in the record. If someone appeared multiple times in 2008, this is clearly indicated in the book, and those appearances are explicitly not reduced to a single representative entry. This decision about how to organize the material matters, because it allows patterns of repetition and recurrence to emerge through the reader’s encounter with the work. And the timing of the project sharpens its implications considerably. 2008 was, of course as we all know, the year when financial authority came under extraordinary strain, when economic structures that had seemed most stable revealed themselves to be fragile or even illusory. And yet throughout this period, the visual language of legitimacy in the Journal continued without interruption, day after day rendering certain faces in this particular register of authority and trust. Chang’s catalogue simply records this continuity without adding editorial commentary or explicit critique. The alphabetical organization flattens any narrative arc that the year’s events might suggest. There’s no chronological story being told about crisis and response, no hierarchy of importance imposed through the order of presentation. Instead, repetition itself does the interpretive work. As you page through the book, you notice who appears once and who appears again and again and again. You start to see patterns in who gets rendered in this authoritative visual register and who remains outside it. The hedcut becomes not just a neutral technique of illustration but a question about legitimacy and representation: who gets marked as worth this particular kind of attention, who gets enrolled in this visual vocabulary of permanence and authority, and who remains invisible to this institutional gaze? Game Boy Tetris If Chang’s collecting projects make time visible through the gradual accumulation of marks on physical objects, Game Boy Tetris approaches the question of time and repetition through a different medium: labor itself, as the repetitive effort of trying and failing and trying again. The work documents Chang’s repeated attempts to achieve the highest possible score in the original Game Boy version of Tetris, filming the process over an extended period until the accumulation of attempts becomes the substance and meaning of the work. At one point during this extended engagement, he surpassed Steve Wozniak’s score on the leaderboard. A detail he noted with evident satisfaction –– a reminder of how seriously he took questions of record-keeping and documented proof of achievement. The same simple rule-based system holds your attention through long stretches of concentration punctuated by failure and the decision to restart. The desire for completion, for reaching some definitive endpoint, keeps pulling you back into the loop even as the reasons for continuing become harder to articulate. Progress remains measurable throughout — you can track improvement across attempts, watch skills developing and patterns emerging — even as the larger meaning or purpose of this progress starts to slip away, even as the question of why this particular score matters becomes increasingly difficult to answer with any conviction. Chang wasn’t observing obsessive cultures or completionist practices from a safe critical distance, making work about collecting or repetition without genuinely participating in those structures himself. Instead, he built systems and constraints that could absorb years of his own attention and effort while still continuing to demand more. Over time, through this sustained and genuine engagement with repetitive structures, Chang himself starts to resemble the thing he’s ostensibly studying. He becomes, in a real sense, a kind of repetitive system himself as lived practice. CENTS Chang’s final major project takes his long-standing interest in units, standards, and systems of record-keeping and extends it into what has become an ongoing and in some ways autonomous condition. He completed the physical collection and documentation of ten thousand copper cents in 2023, at a moment when the one-cent coin was still in regular circulation throughout the United States. In 2024 the digital records of these ten thousand individual coins were inscribed onto Bitcoin, allowing the work to continue circulating and accumulating meaning beyond Chang’s direct control or intervention. Then, in a development that gives the entire project an another historical dimension, the U.S. Mint stopped producing the circulating one-cent coin on November 12, 2025. What this means is that in hindsight, with the perspective that historical distance provides, the penny itself has begun to read as a historical object, something that belongs to a particular moment of currency and exchange that is now passing into the past. The project starts, like most of Chang’s work, from a condition that many people vaguely know about but rarely think through with any care or precision. Chang limited his collection specifically to cents minted before 1982, the year when the U.S. Mint changed the composition of the penny to reduce costs. Before 1982, pennies were made primarily of copper; after that date, they became copper-plated zinc. This seemingly minor detail has real consequences: pennies from the earlier period can, under certain market conditions, exceed their face value when considered purely as raw material. The copper content might be worth more than one cent. This creates an odd situation where the State continues to define each coin as being worth exactly one cent (and makes melting them for their metal content illegal), while the material reality of the object suggests a different value entirely. Chang doesn’t treat this as a paradox to resolve or a problem to solve. He treats it as a given, as one of the structural conditions that makes the work possible and interesting. The process he developed is methodical and systematic. He removed ten thousand copper cents from circulation, pulling them out of the flow of exchange and use, and documented each one individually through detailed photography (obverse and reverse, better known as heads and tails). The coins were then smelted together into a single copper block weighing sixty-eight pounds. At this moment, individual units disappear entirely into undifferentiated mass. The penny’s ordinary role in exchange, its function as a discrete unit of value that can circulate and combine with other units, comes to a definitive end. But the block itself continues to exist in multiple forms. It was rendered as a detailed 3D digital model and inscribed as a single massive inscription filling the entirety of Bitcoin block #839969. This digital version was then sold at Christie’s in 2024, entering yet another system of value and circulation, moving from material object to digital record to collectible artwork in the contemporary art market. The documentation, meanwhile, moves in the opposite direction from this consolidation. While the physical coins condense into a single unified object and lose their existence as separable, countable units, each individual cent remains readable as a distinct record. The photographic images stay separate and individuated, each one assigned to a fixed and permanent position in the set through inscription onto individual satoshis. What disappears completely at the level of material form — you can no longer hold these particular ten thousand pennies in your hand, can no longer sort through them or arrange them or put them back into circulation — remains perfectly intact at the level of the record. You can still look at the photograph of each specific coin, still examine the particular wear patterns and surface marks and small imperfections that distinguished it from the nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine others. This structure allows CENTS to hold in tension several different and potentially conflicting ideas about where value is located and how it gets established and maintained. There’s value as defined by governmental authority: the State declares that this coin is worth one cent, and that declaration carries legal force. There’s value registered in material composition: the copper content might actually be worth more than one cent when calculated according to commodity prices. And there’s value produced through preservation and documentation: the decision to photograph each coin individually, to maintain the archive’s legibility over time, to treat these mass-produced objects as worthy of sustained attention. These different registers of value remain distinct within the work, not collapsing into a single unified meaning or resolving into some synthesis. When we place CENTS alongside We Buy White Albums and think about them as part of a consistent practice, the underlying logic becomes clear. Objects that were designed and manufactured for perfect interchange, for being functionally identical and mutually substitutable, become readable as singular and individual once their circulation is interrupted and held still, once their particular histories are made visible through careful documentation and systematic archiving. It’s worth noting here — because it matters for understanding how the work continues to function after Chang’s death — that CENTS was initiated through collaboration with Sovrn Art, an independent, artist-first platform that provided the initial framework and support for the project’s development. After the full inscription of the work onto Bitcoin was completed, a council formed independently of Chang himself, without his organization or oversight. This council is made up of collectors who chose, for their own reasons, to take responsibility for the work’s continuation and interpretation. The council members come from different generations and different professional fields, bringing various forms of expertise and perspective to their engagement with the archive. Their work has focused consistently on keeping the distinctions within the archive visible and legible — through close reading of the documentation, through careful cataloguing of variations and patterns, through writing that approaches the material from multiple angles and asks different kinds of questions. Their involvement has centered particularly on the problem of how to keep this archive readable and meaningful over time, how to maintain the precision and care of the record as it continues to circulate through systems and contexts that Chang himself could not have anticipated. Archive as Practice It is easy to call Rutherford obsessive. The sustained attention over years, the commitment to completeness and thoroughness, the willingness to spend enormous amounts of time and effort on projects built around deliberately narrow constraints. The word isn’t inaccurate. And yet it still manages to miss something important about the dimension of what Chang was actually doing with his time and attention. He treated mass culture and industrial production with a kind of patience that’s rare in contemporary art. He made rarity and singularity visible inside precisely those things we’ve learned to overlook or dismiss as generic and interchangeable. He listened carefully to what we might call the noise inside familiar symbols and objects — the small variations and accumulated marks that circulation and handling inscribe on surfaces that were designed specifically to resist such marking and remain stable over time. This attention to what accumulates in the gaps and margins of systems designed for uniformity helps explain why Hundreds and Thousands works so effectively as a title for this retrospective. On one level, it simply names the scale at which Chang characteristically worked: collecting not dozens but hundreds, not hundreds but thousands of examples. But it also names something more fundamental. A discipline, a particular kind of methodical practice that requires looking long enough and carefully enough that difference begins to appear within what first presents itself as sameness. The practice keeps returning, with remarkable consistency across different projects and materials, to what circulation leaves behind: the marks and traces that accumulate even on objects designed to remain stable and unchanged. Chang’s work can be read, in many ways, as a sustained practice of custody and care. He kept objects, pulled them out of circulation or gathered them from its margins. He indexed and organized them into systems that made their individual histories newly visible and legible. And then, crucially, he returned them to circulation in altered form: as archives open to examination, as exhibitions that invited direct encounter, as permanent records inscribed on Bitcoin. Through this process, he built situations and structures in which circulation itself becomes visible as a process. In which value turns concrete and measurable. The archive is consistently where this transformation takes place in his work — the site and the method through which individual objects become readable as parts of larger systems and patterns. The retrospective gathers Chang’s method into a single frame and brings together projects from different moments in his career to demonstrate the underlying consistency of his approach across various materials and contexts. What remains is the structure he built, the archives he assembled with such care, the questions he persistently refused to resolve or close down prematurely. The promise of sameness keeps failing. Difference keeps appearing in the gaps and variations. The marks stay visible for anyone willing to look closely enough, and patiently enough, to actually see them. This is a guest post by Steven Reiss. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine. This post Rutherford Chang Retrospective: Hundreds and Thousands at UCCA Beijing first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Steven Reiss.

by Bitcoin Magazine (News Bot) Feb 4, 2026 · Edited

U.S. Treasury: US Government Cannot Deploy Taxpayer Funds to ‘Bail Out’ Bitcoin

Bitcoin Magazine U.S. Treasury: US Government Cannot Deploy Taxpayer Funds to ‘Bail Out’ Bitcoin As Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent testified before the House Financial Services Committee Wednesday morning, Rep. Brad Sherman pressed Bessent over whether the U.S. government could ever step in to “bail out” bitcoin. Bessent was presenting over the Financial Stability Oversight Council’s annual report on emerging economic risks and much of the comments and questions from the Council reference the Trump administration growing scrutiny over its economic agenda. During a tense exchange, Sherman referenced the 2008 financial crisis and argued that bailouts have historically protected powerful institutions when markets collapse. He asked whether Treasury or federal financial regulators could take similar action for bitcoin, including directing banks to buy BTC or changing banking rules to encourage crypto holdings. Bessent rejected the premise outright. “I am Secretary of the Treasury. I do not have the authority to do that,” he said, adding that neither the Treasury nor his role as chair of the Economic Stability Oversight Council provides power to order banks to invest in BTC or to allocate public funds into crypto assets. JUST IN: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent defends the US having a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve: "That is an asset of the US government. The asset seizure, that $1 billion of bitcoin was seized, $500 million was retained. And that $500 million has become over $15 billion." pic.twitter.com/cHegIcv0pb — Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) February 4, 2026 Sherman attempted to clarify whether taxpayer money under Treasury management could ever be deployed into BTC, but Bessent emphasized that the government’s current BTC exposure comes only through law enforcement seizures, not investment decisions. “We are retaining seized bitcoin,” Bessent said. “That is an asset of the U.S.,” he later said. Bessent then elaborated on that point, noting that retained bitcoin from past seizures has appreciated significantly over time. He cited an example in which roughly $500 million in retained BTC later grew into more than $15 billion in value, underscoring bitcoin’s potential upside even as policymakers remain skeptical of direct government involvement. The exchange ended when the chair cut Sherman off after his allotted time expired. Bessent: U.S. will stop selling bitcoin Earlier this year, Bessent said the U.S. government’s stance is to stop selling seized BTC and instead add it to the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he framed the move as part of a broader push to bring digital-asset innovation back to the U.S. The comments came amid questions over BTC seizures tied to cases involving Tornado Cash and Samourai Wallet developers. While declining to discuss active litigation, Bessent stressed that seized BTC will be retained by the federal government once legal damages are resolved. Any selling of BTC would contradict Executive Order 14233, which requires forfeited bitcoin to be held in the U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve rather than liquidated. This post U.S. Treasury: US Government Cannot Deploy Taxpayer Funds to ‘Bail Out’ Bitcoin first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

by Bitcoin Magazine (News Bot) Feb 4, 2026 · Edited

UBS to Build Digital-Asset Infrastructure, Eyes Bitcoin Services for Individuals

Bitcoin Magazine UBS to Build Digital-Asset Infrastructure, Eyes Bitcoin Services for Individuals UBS Group AG is exploring ways to offer bitcoin and crypto access to individual clients, CEO Sergio Ermotti said during the bank’s earnings call on Wednesday. Ermotti said the Zurich-based lender is building the core infrastructure needed for digital-asset services while evaluating targeted products, ranging from crypto access for wealthy clients to tokenized deposit solutions for corporate customers. “We are building out the core infrastructure and exploring targeted offerings from crypto access for individual clients to tokenized deposit solutions for corporates,” Ermotti said. The UBS chief stressed the bank does not plan to be a first mover in blockchain-based technology. Instead, UBS is pursuing what Ermotti described as a “fast follower” strategy in tokenized assets, with expansion expected to unfold over the next three to five years alongside its traditional banking business. It was reported last month that UBS is in the process of selecting partners for a crypto offering aimed at some of its high-net-worth clients, marking a shift for a bank that has historically taken a cautious stance on virtual tokens. Like many global lenders, UBS has so far focused its digital-asset work on blockchain infrastructure for tokenized funds and payments. Banks have generally moved slowly into areas like crypto trading, in part due to stricter capital requirements under the Basel III framework. Other European banks like UBS exploring bitcoin Other banks are also starting to embrace bitcoin and crypto offerings. DZ Bank recently secured MiCAR approval and will roll out its “meinKrypto” platform across cooperative banks, allowing customers to trade and custody Bitcoin and other digital assets directly within existing banking apps, while also joining a consortium developing a regulated euro stablecoin. Also, the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe plans to launch Bitcoin and crypto trading for private customers by the summer of 2026, with technical support from DekaBank, marking a reversal from its earlier skepticism toward digital assets and crypto. Also earlier this week, ING Deutschland, one of Germany’s largest retail banks, said they will began offering retail clients access to cryptocurrency-linked exchange-traded notes (ETNs) and products, allowing customers to gain exposure to bitcoin and other crypto directly through their existing securities accounts. According to information published on ING’s website, the products are physically backed exchange-traded instruments issued by established asset managers including the likes of 21Shares, Bitwise, and VanEck. This post UBS to Build Digital-Asset Infrastructure, Eyes Bitcoin Services for Individuals first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

by Bitcoin Magazine (News Bot) Feb 3, 2026 · Edited

Bitcoin Price Plunges 40% From All-Time Highs to One-Year Lows

Bitcoin Magazine Bitcoin Price Plunges 40% From All-Time Highs to One-Year Lows Bitcoin’s price dropped below $75,000 today, its lowest level in nearly a year, as global crypto markets endured a sustained wave of selling triggered by broader financial stresses and shifting investor appetite. The bitcoin price has now retraced more than 40% from its all‑time highs reached in late 2025. According to Bitcoin Magazine Pro data, the one-year low for the bitcoin price is $74,747. Bitcoin is dancing near that number. Recent trading data showed Bitcoin price slipping through key technical support levels, driving forced liquidations across derivatives markets and intensifying downside price pressure. Over roughly the past 24 hours, around $2.56 billion in Bitcoin positions were liquidated, according to market data. This follows weeks of risk‑off sentiment across global asset classes. The downturn in cryptocurrencies has coincided with stress in other markets like precious metals, tech sell-offs, and losses in equities. Institutional players report losses as policy signals remain dubious The market slide has had tangible impacts on key industry participants. Galaxy Digital, a major crypto investment firm led by Michael Novogratz, reported a $482 million loss for the fourth quarter of 2025, earlier today. The firm attributed this to the decline in digital asset prices and a sharp drop in trading volumes, which fell more than 40% from the prior quarter. Galaxy’s stock traded lower following the earnings release, reflecting investor concern about the broader bitcoin price and crypto downturn. Also, Bitcoin price currently trades below $76,000, which is roughly the average price at which Strategy acquired a portion of its BTC holdings and well below the cost of many of its accumulated coins. Since Strategy owns hundreds of thousands of bitcoins at higher average purchase prices, the current market value is less than what was paid for much of its inventory, leaving a significant portion of its holdings “underwater.” Market participants have also pointed to U.S. monetary policy developments as a significant driver of the sell‑off. The recent nomination of Kevin Warsh as chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve by President Donald Trump has prompted forecasts of tighter monetary conditions. A strengthening U.S. dollar in response to monetary policy shifts has also weighed on Bitcoin. A firmer dollar typically makes non‑yielding assets like Bitcoin less attractive, reducing inflows from investors seeking currency‑neutral hedges. Analysts noted that the dollar’s recent performance provided technical headwinds that amplified the crypto market’s decline. The Trump administration has continued to engage with industry leaders on digital asset policy, including efforts to advance regulatory clarity through legislation such as the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. This dialogue has really slowed down over the last couple of months, it has not yet translated into stabilizing price action amid current conditions. Bitcoin price in genuine ‘crypto winter’ Despite this, Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan said in a recent memo that the crypto market has been in a genuine “crypto winter” since early 2025, rather than experiencing a short-lived correction. Hougan highlighted that bearish sentiment remains strong, as evidenced by the Crypto Fear and Greed Index, which shows near all-time fear levels despite positive developments like the appointment of a bitcoin-friendly Fed chair. Hougan noted that institutional flows helped mask the severity of the downturn. U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs and digital asset treasury vehicles purchased over 744,000 BTC during this period—roughly $75 billion in demand — cushioning bitcoin price’s drawdown, which he estimated could have reached nearly 60% without this support. He compared the current environment to previous downturns in 2018 and 2022, where markets remained depressed despite incremental positive news. Looking ahead, Hougan suggested that crypto winters often end not with exuberance but with exhaustion. In his words, “It’s always darkest before the dawn.” Bitcoin price is currently at $74,800, with a 24-hour trading volume of 55 B. BTC is -5% in the last 24 hours. It is currently -5% from its 7-day all-time high of $78,994. This post Bitcoin Price Plunges 40% From All-Time Highs to One-Year Lows first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

by Bitcoin Magazine (News Bot) Feb 3, 2026 · Edited

Strategy ($MSTR) Plummets 8% As Bitcoin Hits One‑Year Lows

Bitcoin Magazine Strategy ($MSTR) Plummets 8% As Bitcoin Hits One‑Year Lows Shares of Strategy plunged today, dipping more than 8% in trading as Bitcoin traded at new one-year lows and crypto risk assets came under renewed pressure. The decline pushed MSTR’s share price to levels not seen since late 2024, deepening a multi‑month downtrend that has left the stock among the worst performers on the Nasdaq this year. Bitcoin’s slump — dipping below key technical thresholds over the weekend and early week — has reverberated through markets, hitting crypto‑linked equities especially hard. Shares of major crypto platforms, like Robinhood and Circle also lost ground, highlighting the increasing correlation between Bitcoin prices and related stocks. With over 713,000 Bitcoins on its balance sheet, purchased at an average cost near $76,000 per coin, Strategy is grappling with unrealized losses after Bitcoin’s recent slide below that level. Despite price dips, Chairman Michael Saylor has made it clear that Strategy won’t be selling its Bitcoin — and in fact is doubling down on purchases even as the market dips, signaling his intent to keep accumulating more. In his messaging, he’s basically said he’s comfortable with holding and adding even on weakness, not cashing out when prices fall. Strategy bought more bitcoin last week Earlier this week, Strategy said it purchased 855 bitcoin for about $75.3 million, paying an average price of $87,974 per BTC, according to a Monday filing. The acquisition came just days before bitcoin fell below $75,000 over the weekend on some rapid selling, briefly pushing Strategy’s treasury close to $1 billion in unrealized losses. Now, the price of bitcoin is below those levels near $74,000. The company now holds 713,502 BTC, acquired for roughly $54.26 billion at an average cost of $76,052 per coin. Last week’s purchase was fully funded through the sale of common stock, following Strategy’s ongoing capital-raising approach to finance bitcoin buys. The purchase of 855 bitcoin was significantly smaller compared to prior company purchases. At the time of writing, bitcoin’s price dropped below $74,000 today, its lowest level in a year. The bitcoin price has now retraced more than 40% from its all‑time highs reached in late 2025. Prior to today, the one-year low for the bitcoin price was $74,747. Strategy shares started the day at $139.66, but are currently trading at $128.87. The shares 52-week high was around $450 per share. This post Strategy ($MSTR) Plummets 8% As Bitcoin Hits One‑Year Lows first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

by Bitcoin Magazine (News Bot) Feb 3, 2026 · Edited

Bitcoin-Treasury The Smarter Web Company Listed on London Stock Exchange

Bitcoin Magazine Bitcoin-Treasury The Smarter Web Company Listed on London Stock Exchange The Smarter Web Company began trading on the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange today, marking a major milestone for the UK-based firm as it continues to position itself as Britain’s largest publicly listed bitcoin holder. The company’s shares debuted under the ticker SWC at 43p. The uplisting follows the company’s initial public offering on the Aquis Exchange in April 2025, where it went on to become the UK’s best-performing equity that year. Founded in 2009 by chief executive Andrew Webley, The Smarter Web Company began as a web design agency focused on building bespoke, mobile-friendly websites for small and medium-sized businesses. In 2025, the firm pivoted toward a bitcoin treasury strategy, deploying capital into bitcoin as what it describes as “digital capital” on its balance sheet. Today, The Smarter Web Company holds 2,674 bitcoin, making it the largest UK public company by bitcoin holdings and the 29th largest globally among public firms. According to The Smarter Web Company, roughly £221 million of investor capital has been used to acquire bitcoin at an average price of just over $111,000 per coin. Bitcoin was trading near $77,000 on Tuesday, down significantly from its peak above $120,000 last year. Speaking at the London Stock Exchange opening ceremony, Webley said the Main Market listing represents the next stage in building a long-term British public company aligned with Bitcoin. “Moving to the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange marks the next significant milestone in that journey,” Webley said. “I am committed to building a British success story that contributes to the UK economy and demonstrates how bitcoin can be used as digital capital.” Webley also reiterated his ambition for the company to enter the FTSE 250, potentially as early as the third quarterly rebalance of 2026, with longer-term aspirations to eventually reach the FTSE 100. The United Kingdom’s version of Strategy The Smarter Web Company’s strategy has drawn comparisons to U.S.-based firm Strategy, which pioneered the corporate bitcoin treasury model. While a growing number of companies have since adopted similar approaches, Webley has argued that volatility is an inherent feature of the strategy rather than a flaw. Despite its recent decline from a peak market capitalization of over £1 billion, Webley recently said the company plans to continue accumulating bitcoin regardless of price. The firm spent about £220 million accumulating their bitcoin, while its shares have plunged about 95%. Webley argues the strategy is long-term, noting the company has increased its bitcoin holdings per share despite the downturn and plans to seek more institutional funding with a move to the London Stock Exchange’s main market. This post Bitcoin-Treasury The Smarter Web Company Listed on London Stock Exchange first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

by Bitcoin Magazine (News Bot) Feb 3, 2026 · Edited

Tether Launches Open-Source Bitcoin Mining Operating System

Bitcoin Magazine Tether Launches Open-Source Bitcoin Mining Operating System Tether has open-sourced a new operating system for bitcoin mining, unveiling MiningOS (MOS) as part of a broader push to reduce the industry’s reliance on proprietary, vendor-controlled software. The stablecoin issuer announced Monday that MOS, a modular and scalable operating system designed to manage, monitor, and automate bitcoin mining operations, is now available as open-source software under the Apache 2.0 license. The system was officially unveiled at the 2026 Plan ₿ Forum in San Salvador. According to Tether, MOS is built to coordinate the complex mix of hardware, power systems, containers, and physical infrastructure that underpin modern bitcoin mining. Rather than relying on fragmented software stacks, the operating system treats every component of a mining site as a controllable “worker” within a single operational layer, providing operators with unified visibility across hashrate, energy usage, device health, and site-level infrastructure. The company said MOS uses a self-hosted, peer-to-peer architecture based on Holepunch protocols, allowing miners to manage operations without relying on centralized services or third-party platforms. The system is designed to scale from small home installations running on lightweight hardware to industrial-grade deployments managing hundreds of thousands of machines across multiple locations. “Mining OS is built to make Bitcoin mining infrastructure more open, modular, and accessible,” said Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino. “Whether it’s a small operator running a handful of machines or a full-scale industrial site, the same operating system can scale without reliance on centralized, third-party software.” Tether’s Mining SDK announcement Alongside MOS, Tether also announced the Mining SDK, the framework on which the operating system is built. The Mining SDK is expected to be finalized and released in collaboration with the open-source community in the coming months. The toolkit is designed to allow developers to build mining software and internal tools without recreating device integrations or operational primitives from scratch, offering ready-made workers, APIs, and UI components. Tether said the goal of open-sourcing its mining stack is to lower barriers to entry for new miners and remove the “black box” nature of many existing mining setups, where hardware and monitoring tools are tightly coupled to proprietary platforms. The release places Tether alongside other crypto firms pushing open-source mining infrastructure, including Jack Dorsey’s Block, which has previously backed efforts to decentralize mining tooling and hardware access. MOS marks another step in Tether’s expansion beyond its core stablecoin business. The company has increasingly positioned itself across mining, payments, and infrastructure, reporting more than $10 billion in net profit in 2025, driven largely by interest income on its reserves. This post Tether Launches Open-Source Bitcoin Mining Operating System first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

by Bitcoin Magazine (News Bot) Feb 3, 2026 · Edited

ING Deutschland Opens Retail Access to Bitcoin Exchange-Traded Products

Bitcoin Magazine ING Deutschland Opens Retail Access to Bitcoin Exchange-Traded Products ING Deutschland, one of Germany’s largest retail banks, has begun offering retail clients access to cryptocurrency-linked exchange-traded notes (ETNs) and products, allowing customers to gain exposure to bitcoin and other crypto directly through their existing securities accounts. According to information published on ING’s website, the products are physically backed exchange-traded instruments issued by established asset managers including 21Shares, Bitwise, and VanEck. The instruments track the performance of individual cryptocurrencies and trade on regulated exchanges via ING’s Direct Depot platform, which is typically used for stocks, ETFs, and mutual funds. The bank said the bitcoin offering is intended to lower barriers to entry for crypto investing by integrating digital asset exposure into familiar banking infrastructure. Clients do not need to set up third-party crypto exchanges, manage private keys, or operate self-custody wallets, as custody and execution are handled within the securities account framework. “This creates another particularly low-threshold access to crypto investments via exchange-traded products,” said Martijn Rozemuller, CEO of VanEck Europe, in a translated press release. “Many investors want a solution that fits into existing depot structures and at the same time convinces them with transparent costs. That’s exactly what this partnership stands for.” ING noted that the bitcoin and crypto ETNs receive the same tax treatment in Germany as directly held cryptocurrencies. Under current German tax rules, capital gains on crypto assets may be exempt if the position is held for more than one year, potentially making the products attractive to long-term investors. Despite the expanded access, the bank emphasized that the products carry substantial risks. ING warned of “extreme” price volatility, the possibility of total loss in the event of issuer insolvency, liquidity risks, market manipulation, and ongoing regulatory uncertainty surrounding digital assets. In educational materials published alongside the launch, ING took a notably cautious stance on the asset class itself. “Cryptocurrencies are speculative products that have no intrinsic value,” the bank stated, adding that crypto prices are “strongly dependent on psychological effects,” which also influence exchange-traded crypto products. German banks are embracing bitcoin Germany’s major banking groups are moving to bring crypto trading into the regulated retail banking system. DZ Bank has secured MiCAR approval and will roll out its “meinKrypto” platform across cooperative banks, allowing customers to trade and custody Bitcoin and other digital assets directly within existing banking apps, while also joining a consortium developing a regulated euro stablecoin. In parallel, the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe plans to launch Bitcoin and crypto trading for private customers by summer 2026, with technical support from DekaBank, marking a reversal from its earlier skepticism toward digital assets. This post ING Deutschland Opens Retail Access to Bitcoin Exchange-Traded Products first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

by Bitcoin Magazine (News Bot) Feb 2, 2026 · Edited

U.S. Government Takes Control of $400M in Bitcoin, Assets Tied to Helix Mixer

Bitcoin Magazine U.S. Government Takes Control of $400M in Bitcoin, Assets Tied to Helix Mixer The U.S. government has taken full legal ownership of more than $400 million in seized cryptocurrency, cash, and real estate tied to Helix, once one of the most widely used bitcoin mixing services on the darknet. A federal judge in Washington, D.C., entered a final order of forfeiture on Jan. 21, transferring the assets to the government following the conviction of Helix operator Larry Dean Harmon. The forfeiture includes thousands of bitcoin, hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, and an Ohio mansion purchased during the peak of Helix’s operation. Helix functioned as a cryptocurrency mixer, pooling and rerouting bitcoin transactions to obscure their origins and destinations. Prosecutors say the service was built to serve darknet drug markets and was directly integrated into their withdrawal systems through an application programming interface. Court records show Helix processed roughly 354,468 bitcoin between 2014 and 2017, worth about $300 million at the time. Investigators traced tens of millions of dollars from major darknet marketplaces through the service. Harmon took a cut of each transaction as operating fees. Harmon pleaded guilty in August 2021 to conspiracy to commit money laundering. After years of delays, he was sentenced in November 2024 to three years in prison, followed by supervised release. He was also ordered to forfeit seized assets and pay a forfeiture money judgment. Authorities say Helix worked alongside Grams, a darknet search engine Harmon also operated, which helped users locate illicit marketplaces. Together, the services formed part of the financial infrastructure underpinning darknet drug trade during that period. Cash, an Ohio mansion, and millions of dollars in bitcoin Among the forfeited assets is a 4,099-square-foot home in Akron, Ohio, purchased by Harmon and his wife in 2016 for $680,000. Automated estimates place its current value between $780,000 and $950,000, according to reporting from Realtor.com. The property sits on a 1.21-acre lot and includes multiple fireplaces, a backyard fire pit, and a whirlpool tub. Federal officials say the home will be sold at auction by the Internal Revenue Service. In addition to the real estate, prosecutors reportedly seized more than $325,000 in cash and approximately 4,500 bitcoin, according to Realtor.com, now valued at roughly $355 million at current prices. “This case shows that the darknet is not a safe haven for criminal activity,” U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said in a statement, adding that law enforcement will continue to pursue cyber-enabled financial crimes. Harmon was reportedly released from prison in December 2025 through an early release program after completing drug rehabilitation. He has said he plans to restart a legitimate bitcoin education business and is seeking new housing following the forfeiture. This post U.S. Government Takes Control of $400M in Bitcoin, Assets Tied to Helix Mixer first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

by Bitcoin Magazine (News Bot) Feb 2, 2026 · Edited

Bitcoin Bear Control Solidifies: $84K Support Broken, Price Eyes $68K–$60K Zone

Bitcoin Magazine Bitcoin Bear Control Solidifies: $84K Support Broken, Price Eyes $68K–$60K Zone Bitcoin Price Weekly Outlook Last week, we were expecting the critical $84,000 support level to break, and to the bulls’ dismay, it did. Bitcoin had a small bounce after the prior week’s close, then proceeded to dump down through the $84,000 support level all the way down to $75,600 on Saturday, before moving up a little to close the week out at $76,919. Bitcoin dropped 13% last week, so we may see a bounce early this week back to $80,000 or so, but continuation downwards should be expected before too long. Key Support and Resistance Levels Now The bulls are reeling this week after losing that key $84,000 support level. We are seeing a little bit of a bounce early on here, but the bulls will be hard-pressed to regain much ground. $79,000 should serve as resistance early on here, with $81,000 sitting as the next resistance above. Now that $84,000 has broken as support, it should be strong resistance on the way back up. $87,600 at the POC on the volume profile should be a brick wall of resistance if the bitcoin price can manage to wick above $84,000. The bears are now sitting comfortably in control. The price bounced from $75,600, so we will look to this level initially as support, but don’t expect it to hold up if under pressure. Below $75,000, we will look at $72,000 all the way down to $68,000 as a support zone. A solid bounce from this level is warranted with all the volume that built up there in the 2024 consolidation period. Losing $67,000 below this support opens up the door to $58,000 at the 0.618 Fibonacci retracement. $42,000 sits as support below here, but don’t expect to see it anytime soon. Outlook For This Week Zooming into the daily chart, we see that the RSI has hit oversold levels over the last few days. The bulls should try to muster a small push back up soon. Bitcoin price will likely look to continue the push down to at least $72,000 here before mustering a bounce. When and if the bounce comes, it should try to tag the $79,000 resistance at least, and possibly even $81,000, but don’t expect more than that. Market mood: Extremely Bearish – The bears finally busted down the door at the $84,000 support level. They will look to carry this momentum forward as the bewildered bulls seek out where to make their stand. The next few weeks At this point, even the most stubborn of bulls must concede that we are indeed in a long-term bear market. Losing the 100-week SMA, which had been support for several weeks, was a big sign of strength for the bears. Expect the bitcoin price to remain below $87,600 until a long term bottom is in place here. There is a high volume node from $68,000 down to $60,000, so expect the price to take its time moving around this area if $68,000 is lost as support. Terminology Guide: Bitcoin Price Weekly Outlook Bulls/Bullish: Buyers or investors expecting the price to go higher. Bears/Bearish: Sellers or investors expecting the price to go lower. Support or support level: A level at which the price should hold for the asset, at least initially. The more touches on support, the weaker it gets and the more likely it is to fail to hold the price. Resistance or resistance level: Opposite of support. The level that is likely to reject the price, at least initially. The more touches at resistance, the weaker it gets and the more likely it is to fail to hold back the price. SMA: Simple Moving Average. Average price based on closing prices over the specified period. In the case of RSI, it is the average strength index value over the specified period. Oscillators: Technical indicators that vary over time, but typically remain within a band between set levels. Thus, they oscillate between a low level (typically representing oversold conditions) and a high level (typically representing overbought conditions). E.G., Relative Strength Index (RSI) and Moving Average Convergence-Divergence (MACD). RSI Oscillator: The Relative Strength Index is a momentum oscillator that moves between 0 and 100. It measures the speed of the price and changes in the speed of the price movements. When RSI is over 70, it is considered to be overbought. When RSI is below 30, it is considered to be oversold. Volume Profile: An indicator that displays the total volume of buys and sells at specific price levels. The point of control (or POC) is a horizontal line on this indicator that shows us the price level at which the highest volume of transactions occurred. High Volume Node: An area in the price where a large amount of buying and selling occurred. These are price areas that have had a high volume of transactions and we would expect them to act as support when price is above and resistance when price is below. Fibonacci Retracements and Extensions: Ratios based on what is known as the golden ratio, a universal ratio pertaining to growth and decay cycles in nature. The golden ratio is based on the constants Phi (1.618) and phi (0.618). This post Bitcoin Bear Control Solidifies: $84K Support Broken, Price Eyes $68K–$60K Zone first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Ethan Greene - Feral Analysis and Juan Galt.

by Bitcoin Magazine (News Bot) Feb 2, 2026 · Edited

U.S. Manufacturing Data Turns Positive as Bitcoin Searches for a Bottom

Bitcoin Magazine U.S. Manufacturing Data Turns Positive as Bitcoin Searches for a Bottom Earlier today, as bitcoin recovered from a rocky weekend, the U.S. manufacturing sector delivered a starkly bullish surprise to markets, with the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) jumping to 52.6 in January, nearly 4 points above the 48.5 consensus estimate and marking its return to expansion territory for the first time in over a year. A PMI above 50 signals net expansion in factory activity — a concrete metric of business confidence and forward‑looking demand — and this marked the highest reading since mid‑2022. This means businesses are seeing some post-holiday demand. The breadth of the rebound was notable: new orders surged to 57.1, production climbed, and backlog orders flipped positive. That’s the kind of internals economists watch for signs that companies are ordering inputs and boosting output. While employment remains below 50, suggesting hiring hasn’t fully caught up, the overall shift from contraction to expansion is the story. What does this mean for bitcoin? For Bitcoin markets, the implications go beyond a single data point. Macro traders and crypto analysts often view the PMI as a leading indicator of broader economic momentum and risk appetite. When manufacturing activity expands, it indicates improving corporate earnings prospects, stronger demand, and — critically — greater investor confidence in risk assets. PMI data often leads corporate earnings and asset performance, and risk assets like Bitcoin have historically trended upward in sustained expansion environments. Crypto communities typically jump on the PMI print as a sign the economy may be shifting from cautious to opportunistic. A reading above 50 after a long contraction hints at stronger growth, prompting some investors to ease hedges and move into riskier assets like Bitcoin. While one number doesn’t guarantee a turnaround, this surprise could boost Bitcoin’s momentum if traders see the expansion as lasting. This data comes in as bitcoin attempts to stabilize after one of its most punishing weeks in years, following a sharp sell-off that dragged prices below $80,000 for the first time since April 2025. BTC briefly fell near $75,000 over the weekend amid cascading liquidations, before rebounding to around $78,400 early Monday, up about 1% on the day but still down roughly 12% over the past week. The decline has wiped more than $200 billion from bitcoin’s market capitalization and capped a broader drawdown of roughly $800 billion since the asset peaked above $126,000 in October. Bitcoin’s drop coincided with a global risk-off move. U.S. equities slid on weak tech earnings, losses spread across Europe and Asia, and even traditional safe havens sold off. Gold and silver posted historic declines, reflecting a stronger U.S. dollar and shifting expectations for monetary policy following Kevin Warsh’s nomination as the next Federal Reserve chair. Bitcoin Magazine analysts said the daily chart shows the RSI sitting in oversold territory after several days of selling. Bulls may attempt a modest rebound, but bitcoin could still slide toward $72,000 before finding support. If a bounce does materialize, prices are likely to test resistance near $79,000 and potentially $81,000, with limited upside beyond that. This post U.S. Manufacturing Data Turns Positive as Bitcoin Searches for a Bottom first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

by Bitcoin Magazine (News Bot) Feb 2, 2026 · Edited

Argentine Crypto Fugitive With $56 Million in Bitcoin Arrested in Venezuela

Bitcoin Magazine Argentine Crypto Fugitive With $56 Million in Bitcoin Arrested in Venezuela Venezuelan authorities have arrested Rosa María González, a key figure in the collapse of Argentine crypto firm Generación Zoe, nearly four years after the scandal left tens of thousands of investors defrauded. González, 30, was taken into custody in San Cristóbal, Táchira state, following an Interpol operation. González is accused of fleeing Argentina with 611 Bitcoin, worth roughly $56 million today. She had spent years evading authorities, reportedly moving between apartments in Buenos Aires with private security before crossing into Venezuela, according to local reports. Her arrest comes almost exactly one year after Leonardo Cositorto, the founder of Generación Zoe, was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Generación Zoe promised investors unusually high returns, claiming to use proprietary trading algorithms with so-called “quantum security.” In reality, investigators say the company operated a classic Ponzi scheme, paying older investors with funds from new participants. González reportedly introduced Cositorto to the trading algorithms that became the centerpiece of the fraud. In promotional videos, she claimed the algorithms could generate monthly returns of up to 70%. Consistent crypto crime After the firm collapsed in the middle of 2022, González reportedly remained active in the crypto world trying to work up some new schemes. Sources say she attempted to launch a new scheme targeting Argentine investors, promising 5% monthly returns on stakes of $1,000 or more, using crypto transactions through companies supposedly based in the United Kingdom. She allegedly funded former associates in Venezuela to recruit investors and manage the new project. Early reports suggest the plan defrauded at least a dozen individuals, totaling roughly $300,000. Extraditing González to Argentina is expected to be difficult. Argentina severed diplomatic ties with Venezuela in 2024, and no embassy currently operates in Caracas. Brazil, which had been managing diplomatic affairs, recently withdrew, leaving no country in charge of Argentine interests. Interpol officials told local media that sending federal police into Venezuela is not safe, complicating any repatriation. Cositorto has called on González to cooperate, expressing hope that her testimony could help recover some of the defrauded funds. Sources close to the case say González may have been pressured or manipulated into some of the fraudulent activities, though investigators remain focused on her direct role in orchestrating scams. DLNews reporting provided background information for this article. This post Argentine Crypto Fugitive With $56 Million in Bitcoin Arrested in Venezuela first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

by Bitcoin Magazine (News Bot) Feb 2, 2026 · Edited

The Core Issue: Letter From The Editor

Bitcoin Magazine The Core Issue: Letter From The Editor Bitcoin is a distributed system. That means there is no center. To make a pun, no “core.” Bitcoin exists because of everyone participating in some way; buying and hodling, sending and receiving, running a node, mining, building some service or protocol on top of it. It exists as the culmination of everyone adding their contributing piece of the whole. But underneath all of those contributions and pieces, Bitcoin is ultimately a network run by software. Without that software, no one can buy and hodl, no one can send and receive, or run a node, or mine, or contribute any piece to form any whole. Without software, there is no Bitcoin. Software doesn’t write itself. People have to write that software. Many people have filled that role over the years. The first was Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator. After him came people like Martti Malmi, Hal Finney, and many others in the years after. All of them are why Bitcoin is still here functioning today. Because software development is such a highly specialized field, much of the work of Bitcoin developers goes unnoticed, unappreciated, and in many cases not even understood by a large swath of the people around the world who own and use bitcoin. This issue aims to bring a greater depth of understanding of the work done on Bitcoin Core, the predominant software implementation of the Bitcoin protocol. The articles inside go through past work done to improve Bitcoin Core, as well as the Bitcoin protocol in general, work coming to fruition in the near future, and some of the general thinking behind how developers approach different problems. Many of the articles are written by developers contributing to Bitcoin Core themselves. It has been my absolute pleasure to work on taking this issue from an idea to the physical copy you hold in your hand right now, and help these developers to explain their work to you themselves. Hopefully you walk away with a greater understanding of what it has taken to keep Bitcoin functioning all of these years, and what it will take for many years to come. -Shinobi Don’t miss your chance to own The Core Issue — featuring articles written by many Core Developers explaining the projects they work on themselves! This piece is the Letter from the Editor featured in the latest Print edition of Bitcoin Magazine, The Core Issue. We’re sharing it here as an early look at the ideas explored throughout the full issue. This post The Core Issue: Letter From The Editor first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Shinobi.

by Bitcoin Magazine (News Bot) Feb 2, 2026 · Edited

Bitcoin Is Coming Off a Brutal Week. Here’s What’s Happening

Bitcoin Magazine Bitcoin Is Coming Off a Brutal Week. Here’s What’s Happening Bitcoin is stabilizing slightly today after one of its most punishing weeks in years, but the damage across crypto markets has already been done. The bitcoin price fell below $80,000 over the weekend for the first time since April 2025, briefly plunging to lows near $75,000 amid cascading liquidations and a broader sell-off across global risk assets. As of early Monday, BTC was trading around $78,400, up about 1% on the day, according to Bitcoin Magazine data, after shedding roughly 12% over the past seven days. That decline has erased more than $200 billion from bitcoin’s market capitalization, capping a brutal stretch that saw the asset lose roughly $800 billion in value since peaking above $126,000 in October. Market participants point to a convergence of macroeconomic stress, geopolitical risk and structural fragility in crypto markets as the primary drivers of the sell-off. Bitcoin’s drop coincided with a sharp “risk-off” move across global markets. U.S. equities slid late last week, led by steep losses in technology stocks after Microsoft’s earnings disappointed investors. That weakness spilled into European and Asian markets on Monday, while traditional safe havens also came under pressure. Gold and silver both suffered historic losses, with silver posting its worst single-day decline since 1980. Analysts say the simultaneous sell-off in crypto and precious metals reflects a surging U.S. dollar and shifting expectations around U.S. monetary policy following the nomination of Kevin Warsh to succeed Jerome Powell as Federal Reserve chair. Thin liquidity over the weekend exacerbated price swings, triggering a wave of forced liquidations across derivatives markets. According to Coinglass, more than $2 billion worth of BTC long and short positions have been liquidated since Thursday, including $2.56 billion across all cryptocurrencies on Saturday alone — one of the largest single-day liquidation events on record. Liquidations occur when leveraged traders are automatically forced out of positions as prices fall, creating a feedback loop of selling pressure that can accelerate declines. Institutional investors have also been pulling back. Digital asset investment products recorded a second consecutive week of outflows totaling $1.7 billion, according to CoinShares, wiping out all year-to-date inflows and pushing 2026 flows into negative territory. Bitcoin and Ethereum products led the withdrawals, while short BTC products and tokenized precious metals saw inflows, suggesting rising demand for downside protection. Bitcoin whale activity Earlier today, Binance confirmed it purchased 1,315 bitcoin, worth roughly $100 million, as part of a plan to convert its $1 billion Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) reserve from stablecoins into BTC over the next 30 days. Binance cofounder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao said he had lost confidence in a 2026 BTC “super cycle,” citing intense FUD, market turbulence, and accusations that Binance-related events contributed to a historic liquidation cascade. Members of the crypto community accused CZ of selling BTC over the weekend and accused him of being responsible for the massive October 10, 2025 crypto crash that led to large crypto liquidations. Corporate bitcoin holders have also come under scrutiny. Bitcoin’s brief dip below Strategy’s average purchase price put the company’s massive treasury holdings under pressure, though analysts say there is no risk of forced selling because the BTC is not pledged as collateral. Bitcoin’s drop below Strategy’s $76,052 cost basis somewhat erased the psychological floor beneath Michael Saylor’s leveraged accumulation strategy, exposing growing strain as the firm’s stock trades far below its peak and its equity premium vanishes. While there’s no immediate financial distress and no forced selling risk, tightening capital markets and fading investor appetite are shrinking Strategy’s ability to fund further Bitcoin purchases through share issuance. At the time of writing, BTC is rebounding to around $78,380, up 1% over the past 24 hours, trading just below its seven-day high as market capitalization climbs to roughly $1.57 trillion. This post Bitcoin Is Coming Off a Brutal Week. Here’s What’s Happening first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

by Bitcoin Magazine (News Bot) Feb 2, 2026 · Edited

Strategy ($MSTR) Bought 855 Bitcoin Ahead of Weekend Market Crash, Holdings Hover Near Breakeven

Bitcoin Magazine Strategy ($MSTR) Bought 855 Bitcoin Ahead of Weekend Market Crash, Holdings Hover Near Breakeven Strategy (MSTR) added 855 bitcoin to its balance sheet for approximately $75.3 million last week, paying an average price of $87,974 per BTC, according to a filing published Monday. The purchase came just days before bitcoin’s sharp sell-off, which briefly pushed prices below $75,000 over the weekend. Despite the timing, the acquisition represents a relatively small addition for the company, which has routinely purchased hundreds of millions — or even billions — of dollars’ worth of bitcoin in recent weeks. Led by Executive Chairman Michael Saylor, Strategy now holds a total of 713,502 BTC, acquired for roughly $54.26 billion at an average price of $76,052 per coin. With bitcoin trading just above $77,000 at the time of writing, the firm’s treasury is marginally above breakeven after more than five years of accumulation. Last week’s purchase was fully funded through the sale of common stock, consistent with Strategy’s ongoing capital-raising strategy to finance bitcoin acquisitions. Bitcoin and Strategy’s stock drop Bitcoin’s weekend drop briefly placed Strategy’s treasury underwater, according to Bitcoin Magazine Pro data. Bitcoin fell to a low of roughly $74,500 during early Asian trading on Feb. 1 and into Feb. 2, pushing the company’s unrealized losses close to $1 billion at the session low before narrowing significantly as prices rebounded. Losses were estimated at around $150 million as BTC recovered to the mid-$75,000 range. Strategy remains the world’s largest corporate bitcoin holder and has shown no signs of slowing its accumulation. Saylor has hinted at further purchases in 2026, following the firm’s largest buy of the year on Jan. 20, when it acquired more than 22,000 BTC. To support continued buying, Strategy recently increased the dividend on its Series A Perpetual Stretch Preferred Stock to 11.25%. Proceeds from preferred share sales have financed more than 27,000 BTC in recent acquisitions. Strategy shares fell over 7% in premarket trading Monday to $138.49, marking a new multi-year low as bitcoin’s volatility weighed on sentiment across crypto-exposed equities. Bitcoin is trading at $77,822, with 24-hour volume totaling $86 billion. The asset is down about 1% on the day, sitting roughly 1% below its seven-day high of $78,611 and around 4% above its seven-day low of $74,592. BTC’s circulating supply stands at 19,982,656 coins, with a fixed maximum supply of 21 million. The total Bitcoin market capitalization is approximately $1.56 trillion, reflecting a 1% decline over the past 24 hours. This post Strategy ($MSTR) Bought 855 Bitcoin Ahead of Weekend Market Crash, Holdings Hover Near Breakeven first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

by Bitcoin Magazine (News Bot) Jan 31, 2026 · Edited

El Salvador’s Bitcoin Beach Hosts Global Summit: Strategies for Sustainable Bitcoin Circular Economies Emerge

Bitcoin Magazine El Salvador’s Bitcoin Beach Hosts Global Summit: Strategies for Sustainable Bitcoin Circular Economies Emerge The Bitcoin Circular Economy Summit just took place in El Salvador’s Bitcoin Beach, and what an event it was. The invite-only summit saw two days of presentations from communities from across the world, from Indonesia to Peru, from Africa to Bolivia. The summit saw an alleged 29 different countries represented among the small crowd of perhaps 60 attendees and speakers. The event was put together by the Bitcoin Beach team, lead by Mike Peterson and Roman Martinez, the BCES took place in El Zonte’s community center, a new location built up to support El Zonte’s growing population and economy. The topics covered ranged from overviews of various Bitcoin Circular Economies (BCEs), to discussions about strategy, tooling, financial sustainability, economic theory, and even education for leaders to become more effective communicators and fundraisers. Attendees told stories of incredible success with brick and mortar adoption in countries with failing currencies, of eye-watering transformation, growth, and gratitude from remote communities apparently forgotten by civilization, of hope and good-hearted behaviour demonstrated by the long reach of Bitcoin donors and Bitcoin activists, looking to deliver sound money to the furthest reaches of the world. The Bitcoin Beach White Paper Since 2019, El Zonte’s Bitcoin Beach has become a world-renowned brand, the biggest success story in the Bitcoin circular economy world. Its novel story has been told many times, but some key takeaways were discussed in depth at the summit, providing an overview of what is documented in detail in the Bitcoin Beach White Paper. Concentrate Adoption in one Location BCE leaders advised against taking a shotgun approach to Bitcoin adoption, especially when it comes to brick-and-mortar-like stores, and deep impact social work. Choose a town, street, or specific community and work hard to get mass adoption in a limited location first. This arguably benefits from multiple network effects seen in branding. Instead of random locations across a country accepting Bitcoin, a single location can attract tourists in higher numbers, resulting in more bitcoin payments being made to merchants, which they need to see to remain motivated. This contrasts a classic scenario of less organized attempts at getting brick and mortar adoption, where the shop clerk downloads the Bitcoin app but only sees bitcoin spenders show up once or twice a month. Volume strengthens the connection between Bitcoin and that local community, resulting in more sustainable interest and adoption. Concentrating the Bitcoin brand in one town or street in a city leverages commonly seen marketing strategies, where multiple stores of the same type cluster together, to benefit from each other’s broad advertising efforts. Build a High-Trust Team “Don’t be hasty in who you bring along,” said Mike Peterson on stage when discussing the Bitcoin Beach White Paper. People will want to join, but it is important not to rush into relationships with people you don’t know well. It is better to build a small team of high-trust, well-known individuals than grow too fast and take unnecessary risks. Bitcoin not crypto The topic of crypto also came up, as donations are often offered to social impact communities of this sort in a wide range of cryptocurrencies; however, speakers and panelists all agreed that keeping Bitcoin as the main brand and flag was crucial. One of the reasons is the wide proliferation of crypto-related scams across the world, including in low-income, low-education communities. Bitcoin, unlike most other crypto brands, is very well known and has a strong reputation, with BCEs throughout the world working to educate on the same themes and network, it is a lot easier to bypass concerns from local community leaders and educate the public about the most secure and successful crypto currency available. Communicate in Bitcoin, not Dollars Many of the BCEs represented had Bitcoin donors, some of them anonymous, with simple but powerful demands from the recipients. Bitcoin Beach’s founding donor, who still communicates with Peterson, originally demanded that the bitcoin be used to buy things, not sold for dollars and then used. Bitcoin adoption as a medium of exchange was a prerequisite for the donations and the relationship to continue. Donors of this kind, who are likely OG Bitcoin maximalists, also insist that leaders talk about value in SATS, not in dollars, challenging a manner of speech that has become normalized in the industry, something like “I’ll send you 20 dollars worth of Bitcoin”. Peterson insisted that donors hate this and want Bitcoin to be discussed in SATS (Satoshis, the smallest denomination of bitcoin) or in BTC terms, a condition clearly aimed at making bitcoin a common unit of account. Sustainability Sustainability was also an important topic across the Summit. In the context of Bitcoin circular economies, it means being able to survive and continue to grow as a local bitcoin hub, when donations dry out. The question of how to achieve sustainability touches a variety of important topics, including what might eventually become an economic theory of microeconomies powered by Bitcoin. The Bitcoin Beach team highlighted the importance of tourism as a source of external capital into the local economy, but recognized that not all BCEs are conducive to tourism. Some are in very remote areas, others are in hostile and dangerous political environments. Attendees generally recognized that some BCEs might always depend on donations, depending on the situation, but also discussed ways in which some BCEs can form economic relationships with each other. Motiv in Peru, for example, serves two communities in particular who have developed an economic relationship, one produces artisan crafts, sewn by Indigenous women from a small town in the mountains of Peru, and the other is a tourist hub in Lima that buys the goods from them in bitcoin and resells them to Bitcoin tourists. Peterson highlighted the importance of understanding what makes your community special and working with locals to develop their local talent. Another aspect of sustainability is the focus of agency instead of assistance, in the non-profit version of BCEs. Rather than just buy things and gift them to impoverished communities, education and economic empowerment are encouraged, highlighting the “teach a man to fish” as superior and more likely to survive. Bitcoin economic theory would suggest that teaching long lasting life-skills to developing communities is preferable to just giving them free stuff forever, since the faucet of bitcoin donations is fundamentally finite. While in the fiat model, more dollars will always be created — and the quicker they get spent, the better — eventually finding their way through the web of NGOs, to the hands of charity recipients. The never-ending printing machine creates a permanent underclass of economic dependence through foreign aid, defeating the sense of urgency that motivates the pursuit of sustainability. Finally, sustainability at a personal level for BCE leaders was also discussed, as burnout, divorce, and self-sacrifice for a social cause is a familiar story. Martinez and Peterson spoke from personal experience, highlighting the importance of staying healthy as a Bitcoin leader in these communities, and not biting more than you can chew, so to speak, else you might “become a single point of failure”. Instead, they suggested leaders educate and train others to continue this important work. Fund Raising When it comes to fundraising, a variety of organizations are actively contributing to the non-profit side of Bitcoin, some of them for-profit entities with non-profit arms, others fueled by Bitcoin donors of all sizes, from around the world. Paystand Paystand, an American B2B payments company that uses Bitcoin in a variety of ways to provide its business solution to major corporations, also has a non-profit arm under the same brand, actively supporting BCEs across the world. They offer grants from 10k to 50k USD, depending on the project, can donate almost anywhere, even through the Human Rights Foundation, and are happy to offer mentorship to aspiring applicants. Applications to the Paystand non-profit can be made at their dot org site. Something that Paystand representatives insisted on communicating is that the organization does not expect any kind of advertising in return; their business operations do not depend on it at all, instead considering their work to support BCEs as part of their mission as Bitcoiners. Fedi The Fedi for-profit technology company also provides grants to BCEs throughout the world, though largely focused on Africa until recently, they are now actively expanding into Latin America and have established deep roots in Indonesia. They also offer grants on a case-by-case basis, asking applicants what specific problem they are looking to solve, and providing support, but opting to empower leaders, rather than get deeply involved in specific communities. The Fedi app has now reached an impressive level of maturity, supporting collusion-resistant multi-signature mints, ecash denominated not just in Bitcoin but also local fiat for shorter-term payment requirements, social network-like capabilities for local communities to communicate and organize, payment rails to internet service providers in various countries, and much more. The Federation of Bitcoin Circular Economies The FBCE, a growing association of Bitcoin circular economies, co-founded by Bitcoin Beach, El Zonte, Bitcoin Ekasi, South Africa, and Toronto’s Scott Wolfe, also offers grants, having completed two massive rounds since 2024. The FBCE gives grants to initiatives that demonstrate enough proof of work, usually starting with small donations and growing from there, for a time, depending on the project. Other Fundraising Platforms Other fund raising platforms were mentioned by multiple attendees, as reliable ways to raise funds for BCE initiatives, among them were Angor.io and Geyser.fund which enable users to raise funds over time from many donors, kind of like a go-fund-me for Bitcoin. Bittasker.com also had a strong presence at the event as a sponsor, with a new platform for funding tasks and employing locals to get work done in BCEs, further advancing the medium exchange cause of Bitcoin. Donors could fund specific tasks, repairs, or infrastructure upgrades, like construction work via Bittasker in collaboration with BCE leaders on the ground. The Technology Stack As digital money, Bitcoin requires a certain amount of infrastructure while also empowering BCEs with significant technological capabilities. To unlock Bitcoin circular economies, a variety of tools have been custom-built for this kind of adoption by various organizations and were regularly mentioned and used by the attendees. Blink Blink wallet, which rose to fame with El Zonte’s Bitcoin Beach, emerged as the most popular wallet among BCEs at the summit. Its Lightning native integration, on-chain capabilities, easy-to-use mobile app design, and stable SATS features appear to deliver the best experience so far for these kind of low-tech environments. Fedi Wallet Fedi also had a very strong presence, supporting a large set of BCEs in Africa and Indonesia, with its broad set of tools, including local fiat-denominated ecash, lightning to ecash integration, and social network-like experiences, which are designed specifically to serve and empower Bitcoin circular economies of all kinds. Bittasker Bittasker, a sponsor of the event, showed off its beautiful interface, boasted about its integration with Nostr as well as smart contract capabilities via Rootstock, which provides a trustless, smart escrow system for funding micro tasks in Bitcoin. Bittasker includes a job board and uses the Boltz back end for trust-less bridging between the various Bitcoin layers. K1 BTMs K1, a Bitcoin ATM company, also sponsored the event and showed off their coins for sats BTM, which has become a staple of Bitcoin hubs, turning coins into SATS. The machines are lightning native, and have various upgrades and versions with more advanced capabilities, showing up at schools, retirement homes, and BCEs across the globe. Tiankii Tiankii, another sponsor of the summit, showed off its bolt cards, which serve as bitcoin debit cards of sorts, for payments on terminals like the Bitcoinize machine. These cards are particularly useful in areas with low internet, where users might not have a mobile phone handy, nor data, accessing the Bitcoin network through the merchant’s terminal, delivering the ultimate payment experience in today’s digital world, offline tap to pay. Bitbooks Anyone raising funds and trying to run a tight ship needs clear accounting, and one of the sponsors, BitBooks.com, focuses on just that. Their Bitcoin native accounting platform offers instant reconciliation across payments, dual currency view, automatic exchange rate calculations, and even a new experimental algorithm that can help users decide whether to pay in fiat or in bitcoin depending on price volatility and the user’s specific needs. AmityAge AmityAge is a Bitcoin financial services company with a strong educational offering. Dusan Matuska, its co-founder and CEO, delivered a memorable, interactive workshop on how to get past common objections in Bitcoin adoption, how to better understand and listen to the challenges faced by new users, and how to think about the process of evangelizing Bitcoin. Their platform hosts a variety of educational tools, financial and educational, available to the Bitcoin curious. Concluding Thoughts Having attended Bitcoin conferences and events for over a decade, I was left both breathless and deeply satisfied with what I saw at the Bitcoin Circular Economy Summit. Unlike large industry conferences, which focus on how to gain traction in traditional markets, serve major corporations, and, in general, solve the problems of fiat at the top of the global markets, this summit looked in the opposite direction. The BCEs represented, the individuals I met, and the stories I heard reminded me that Bitcoin is not a tool for its own sake, it is not a high-tech, science fiction endeavour, nor is it fundamentally about number-go-up. Bitcoin is a means to an end, and BCEs have that end goal, that objective very clear in their minds, to reach those whom society at large has failed, to onboard onto global finance those who live beyond Banks’ profit margin, to deliver sound money to good people in hostile environments, because they also deserve hope and are hungry for growth. Bitcoin is a means to an end, not an end in itself. This post El Salvador’s Bitcoin Beach Hosts Global Summit: Strategies for Sustainable Bitcoin Circular Economies Emerge first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt.

by Bitcoin Magazine (News Bot) Jan 31, 2026 · Edited

Bitcoin Price Crashes to $75,000 Range As Broader Crypto Market Sells-Off

Bitcoin Magazine Bitcoin Price Crashes to $75,000 Range As Broader Crypto Market Sells-Off Bitcoin price plunged to nearly $75,000 today during a continuous and sharp, high-volume sell-off that erased more than 10% from recent highs and pushed the asset below $80,000 for the first time since April 2025. Data shows BTC fell from a 24-hour high of $84,356 to a low of $75,644 in a matter of hours, as sellers overwhelmed bid support across major exchanges. The move marked one of the steepest single-day declines of the year and triggered widespread liquidations in derivatives markets. The sell-off accelerated after bitcoin price failed to hold support near $82,500. Once that level broke, price moved quickly through thin liquidity zones, with little evidence of sustained dip-buying until the mid-$70,000 range. Traders described the move as a deleveraging event rather than a gradual risk-off rotation. On the daily chart, the bitcoin price broke below a rising trendline that had held since late December. Price also slipped decisively under the 50-day exponential moving average near $90,000, flipping that level into overhead resistance, according to Bitcoin Magazine Pro Data. Volume expanded during the breakdown, signaling forced exits and margin liquidations rather than low-conviction selling. JUST IN: Bitcoin falls to $78,988 HODL! pic.twitter.com/dbr8mRPJJg — Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) January 31, 2026 Bitcoin price analysis as the U.S. government enters partial shutdown Despite the sharp decline, on-chain data suggests renewed interest from new buyers. Network data shows a surge in new bitcoin addresses over the past 24 hours, reaching the highest daily increase in nearly two months. Bitcoin’s drop also outpaced most recent declines in traditional markets, but it still held up better than gold during the same window. While BTC fell roughly 6% to 8% during the sell-off, gold posted a steeper drawdown, reinforcing bitcoin’s relative strength during the volatility. Until the bitcoin price reclaims the $82,000 to $84,000 range, traders say downside risk remains elevated. The next key support zone sits in the low-to-mid $70,000s, with longer-term focus shifting toward whether the market can stabilize. The U.S. government entered a partial shutdown after Congress failed to pass a full-year spending package by the Friday midnight deadline, leaving several major departments temporarily unfunded. The Senate approved a funding deal to keep most agencies running through September and a two-week stopgap for Homeland Security, but the measure awaits House approval, which cannot occur until lawmakers return from recess Monday. The impasse is driven by Democratic demands for changes to immigration enforcement practices following the fatal shooting of two U.S. citizens in Minnesota, with divisions persisting within the House GOP. At the time of writing, the bitcoin price is trading at $77,825, down 7% over the past 24 hours, as daily trading volume reached $75 billion. The asset is now 8% below its seven-day high of $84,368 and sits just 1% above its seven-day low of $77,534. This post Bitcoin Price Crashes to $75,000 Range As Broader Crypto Market Sells-Off first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

by Bitcoin Magazine (News Bot) Jan 30, 2026 · Edited

Tennessee Lawmakers To Weigh Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Bill

Bitcoin Magazine Tennessee Lawmakers To Weigh Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Bill Tennessee lawmakers are considering legislation that would allow the state to hold bitcoin as part of its public financial reserves. If passed, the measure would place Tennessee among a small group of U.S. states that have moved to formalize bitcoin holdings through statute. House Bill 1695, known as the Tennessee Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Act, was filed earlier this month by Rep. Jody Barrett (R–Dickson). The bill is scheduled for consideration during the current session of the 114th Tennessee General Assembly. It would grant the State Treasurer authority to invest a limited share of select state funds in bitcoin. The bill’s findings cite inflation as a central concern. Lawmakers state in the bill that rising prices erode the real purchasing power of assets held in the general fund, the revenue fluctuation reserve, and other state pools. Bitcoin is described in the legislation as a decentralized digital commodity with a fixed supply and global liquidity. The bill argues that a fiduciary investor may use such an asset to improve long-term, inflation-adjusted returns. “This is about responsible stewardship of public finances,” Barrett said in a statement. He compared bitcoin to gold and framed it as a hedge against inflation. Tennessee follows a growing wave of U.S. states exploring Bitcoin-focused policy, with lawmakers in South Dakota and Kansas introducing bills that would allow public funds to be allocated to bitcoin or placed into a strategic Bitcoin and digital assets reserve. At the same time, states like Rhode Island and Florida have revived or reintroduced legislation aimed at studying Bitcoin, easing its use, or potentially adding it to state balance sheets under defined oversight frameworks. 10% of Tennessee’s general fund into bitcoin Under the proposal, the Treasurer could allocate funds from the general fund, the revenue fluctuation reserve, or other state funds approved by lawmakers. Bitcoin exposure would be capped at 10% of each eligible fund at the time of purchase. Annual purchases would be limited to 5% per fiscal year until the cap is reached. The bill allows passive price gains to push holdings above the cap without forcing sales. The legislation restricts investments to bitcoin only. It bars allocations to other cryptocurrencies or digital assets. Bitcoin could be held directly by the state, through a qualified custodian, or via an exchange-traded product tied solely to bitcoin. All forms of exposure would count toward the same cap. The bill sets detailed custody standards. A “secure custody solution” must store private keys in encrypted hardware kept offline in at least two locations. Access would require encrypted channels and multi-party authorization. Audit logs would be mandatory. Custody systems would face annual third-party code reviews and penetration tests. Providers would need disaster recovery plans. Consistent transparency checks Transparency is a core feature of the proposal. Every two years, the Treasurer would need to publish a public report. The report would list the amount of bitcoin held, its dollar value at purchase and at the end of the period, and a summary of transactions. It would also include a cryptographic proof that allows third parties to verify on-chain balances. Security assessment summaries would be available upon request. The bill also allows the Treasurer to create a program to accept bitcoin for taxes, fees, or other state obligations. Participation would be voluntary. Any bitcoin received would be transferred to the general fund and recorded at market value. Agencies would be reimbursed in dollars. Supporters say the structure reflects Tennessee’s broader approach to asset management. The state oversees more than $132 billion in assets, including one of the top-rated public pension systems in the country. “Even strong balance sheets face risks that traditional assets do not hedge,” said David Birnbaum, president of the Tennessee Bitcoin Alliance. He said bitcoin offers diversification due to its low correlation with other asset classes. The bill directs the Treasurer to publish a bitcoin investment policy by January 1, 2027. A full performance and risk review would be due by October 1, 2032. Lawmakers would then decide whether to continue, revise, or repeal the program. If approved, the act would take effect on July 1, 2026. This post Tennessee Lawmakers To Weigh Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Bill first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

by Bitcoin Magazine (News Bot) Jan 30, 2026 · Edited

Plan B Network Launches CypherTank, a Bitcoin Pitch Series Showcasing Builders and Ideas

Bitcoin Magazine Plan B Network Launches CypherTank, a Bitcoin Pitch Series Showcasing Builders and Ideas The Plan ₿ Network just announced the global premiere of CypherTank, a Bitcoin-focused pitch series designed to highlight innovative builders, explore bold ideas, and bring the global Bitcoin community directly into the conversation. The series blends live pitching, founder storytelling, and community-driven discussion, all framed around Bitcoin culture and values. Each episode gives viewers an inside look at how entrepreneurs think, build, and pitch in the Bitcoin ecosystem, offering both entertainment and insight for enthusiasts, investors, and fellow builders alike. Episode 1 is scheduled to debut on January 31, 2026, during Plan ₿ Forum El Salvador, with a live main-stage screening presented by Joe Nakamoto. The premiere will also be released simultaneously online, making it accessible to the global Bitcoin community in real time, the company shared with Bitcoin Magazine. This launch marks the first public chapter in a series designed to unfold episodically, giving viewers the chance to engage with the content as it develops. Following the premiere, additional episodes will be released on a rolling schedule through February, leading up to a season finale. Winners of the CypherTank series will be formally recognized during Plan ₿’s anniversary celebrations in Lugano on March 3, offering a high-profile platform to celebrate and amplify the most promising ideas. A series designed to ‘foster discussion’ around Bitcoin CypherTank’s rollout is intentionally structured to foster discussion and debate among the Bitcoin community. Viewers are encouraged to analyze pitches, discuss founders, highlight key insights, and share their favorite moments across social media, creating a dynamic conversation that extends beyond the screen. The series will be widely accessible across multiple platforms, including CypherTank.org, YouTube, Rumble, X, Instagram, TikTok, and Nostr. CypherTank is a Bitcoin-focused pitch series that showcases builders, projects, and the stories behind them. Created to entertain, educate, and spark meaningful discussion, the series offers a rare inside look at how Bitcoin entrepreneurs think, build, and pitch, highlighting innovation within the ecosystem. This post Plan B Network Launches CypherTank, a Bitcoin Pitch Series Showcasing Builders and Ideas first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.