PA Daily News | Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei assassinated; Bitcoin spot ETFs see net inflows of $787 million this week.

Today's top news highlights:

1. Macroeconomic Outlook for Next Week: US-Israel alliance ignites the "Middle East powder keg," non-farm payroll and unemployment data are coming.

2. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei assassinated

3. Trump says he will continue the strikes for a week or even longer.

4. Binance issued a company-wide safety notice, requiring employees in the UAE to immediately avoid outdoor activities.

5.X Platform Paid Cooperation Policy Update: Cryptocurrencies, investment services, etc., are no longer eligible for promotion.

6. Bitcoin spot ETFs saw net inflows of $787 million this week, with BlackRock's IBIT leading the way with $503 million in net inflows.

Macro & Regulatory

Macroeconomic Outlook for Next Week: US-Israel alliance ignites the Middle East powder keg; non-farm payroll and unemployment data are coming.

Global markets navigated a volatile week marked by fluctuating policy uncertainty and risk aversion, fueled by repeated adjustments to Trump's tariff policies and escalating geopolitical tensions between the US and Iran. Aside from geopolitical events, the key macroeconomic events for next week are as follows:

• At 22:45 on Monday, the final reading of the US S&P Global Manufacturing PMI for February will be released.
• At 23:00 on Monday, the US February ISM Manufacturing PMI will be released.
• At 21:15 on Wednesday, the US February ADP employment figures will be released.
• The Federal Reserve will release its Beige Book on economic conditions at 03:00 on Thursday.
• Thursday at 8:30 PM, US Challenger job cuts for February;
• At 21:30 on Thursday, the US initial jobless claims for the week ending February 28 and the US import price index month-on-month rate for January will be released.
• At 21:30 on Friday, the US February unemployment rate, US February seasonally adjusted non-farm payrolls, and US January retail sales month-on-month will be released.

Technology and AI stocks, which have long been the growth engine of the US stock market, have recently experienced a significant stagnation. Latest data shows that the Nasdaq Composite Index has failed to reach a new record high for four consecutive months, and both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq indices just experienced their worst month since March of last year.

This sign indicates that investors have deep doubts about the ability of AI technology to translate into real profits, and Wall Street is trying to navigate a turbulent storm led by tech stocks.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei assassinated

According to CCTV News, on March 1st local time, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei was assassinated. Ali Khamenei was born in Mashhad, Iran in 1939. He served as President of Iran from 1981 to 1989 and as Supreme Leader from 1989 onwards. Khamenei was targeted in an assassination attempt in June 1981, resulting in the paralysis of his right arm.

Trump says he will continue the strikes for a week or even longer.

According to a report by CCTV News cited by CLS, US President Trump stated that the continuous strikes against Iran will continue for a week or even longer. Furthermore, the White House announced the suspension of all travel and photography activities, meaning that President Trump will not have any face-to-face interaction with reporters that day.

Iran's cryptocurrency "shadow economy" has reached $7.78 billion, with citizens turning to Bitcoin as a safe haven.

According to Coindesk, blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis says Iran’s cryptocurrency ecosystem will reach $7.78 billion in 2025, growing faster than the previous year.

Iran legalized cryptocurrency mining in 2019, allowing licensed operators to use subsidized electricity and sell the mined Bitcoin to the central bank. Recent estimates suggest that Iran accounts for between 2% and 5% of global Bitcoin mining hashrate.

As the country's main military force, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has been deepening its influence in the cryptocurrency space. Chainalysis estimates that in the fourth quarter of 2025, addresses associated with the IRGC accounted for more than 50% of total cryptocurrency inflows into Iran, receiving over $3 billion last year.

Another analysis by Elliptic found that the Central Bank of Iran had accumulated at least $507 million in USDT by 2025, which could have helped stabilize the rial exchange rate and boost trade. However, this effort has largely failed, with data showing the rial has depreciated by more than 96% against the dollar. Meanwhile, ordinary Iranians have begun turning to Bitcoin. During the recent protests and internet outages, the amount of Bitcoin withdrawn from local exchanges to personal wallets surged.

Sources say pressure from Saudi Arabia and Israel prompted Trump to order an attack on Iran.

According to a report by the Washington Post cited by Jinshi, four sources familiar with the matter revealed that US President Trump launched a large-scale airstrike against Iran on Saturday, driven by weeks of lobbying from two unusual Middle Eastern allies—Israel and Saudi Arabia. The sources indicated that although Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman publicly supported a diplomatic solution to the Iranian issue, he had repeatedly called Trump privately over the past month, urging the US to launch the airstrike.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continued to lobby the United States to strike Iran, considering it Israel's "mortal enemy." Under pressure from various quarters, Trump ordered a large-scale airstrike against the Iranian leadership and military. Although US intelligence assessments concluded that Iranian forces were unlikely to pose a direct threat to the US mainland within the next decade, the attack still occurred.

Trump: Resolving the Iran issue through diplomatic means remains feasible, and is "much easier now."

According to Jinshi News, US President Trump stated that he believes the US-Israel attack on Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei was effective and could create opportunities for diplomatic solutions. "Obviously, it's much easier now than it was a day ago," Trump said when asked about the possibility of resolving the crisis diplomatically, "because they were badly beaten." Trump expressed confidence in the current progress.

Project Updates

Aave Founder: Aave Will Win's proposal has passed Temp Check.

Aave founder Stani Kulechov announced that the Aave Will Win proposal, Temp Check, has been approved. This proposal will drive Aave Labs towards a fully token-centric model, allocating 100% of product revenue to AAVE tokens. The next step will be to optimize the structure based on community feedback and enter the ARFC phase.

Previously, it was reported that AaveLabs proposed transferring 100% of its protocol revenue to the DAO in exchange for operating funds .

Strategy raised its March dividend yield on STRC by 25 basis points to 11.50%.

Strategy stated on the X platform that it will raise the dividend yield of its STRC, which expires in March 2026, by 25 basis points to 11.50%.

Musk: X Platform Adds Timeline Theme Selection Feature

Musk stated that users can now select topics of interest for their timelines. If they tire of politically charged content, they can choose other topics. Users can access this by clicking the "For You" page.

Binance issued a company-wide safety notice, requiring employees in the UAE to immediately avoid outdoor activities.

According to market sources, due to the sudden escalation of geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, Binance has issued an internal safety notice requiring all employees in the UAE to immediately refrain from outdoor activities and remain in safe indoor areas.

Iran recently launched ballistic missiles at Israeli/US targets, some of which flew over or aimed at the UAE. Although most were intercepted by air defense systems, the UAE government issued an emergency security alert to residents nationwide early this morning.

X Platform's Paid Partnership Policy Update: Cryptocurrencies, Investment Services, etc., are no longer eligible for promotion.

Platform X's updated paid partnership policy lists financial products, services, or opportunities (including loans, investment services, cryptocurrencies, buy-now-pay-later services, and other finance-related content) as prohibited categories for paid promotion. Furthermore, the policy requires all paid partnership content to clearly indicate its commercial nature in the post, such as "advertisement" or "promotional content," and to ensure compliance with all applicable laws and regulations. Users who violate this policy may face penalties such as post deletion or account suspension.

Analysis & Opinions

Data shows that holding Bitcoin for at least three years is necessary to avoid losses.

An analysis by Bitwise reviewed Bitcoin's price history from July 17, 2010 to February 11, 2026, concluding that holding Bitcoin for at least three years reduces the probability of loss to just 0.70%. Holding for more than three years further decreases the risk of loss: 0.2% for five years and 0% for ten years. Traders holding for less than three years face a higher risk of loss; for example, day traders have a 47.1% probability of losing money.

Despite Bitcoin's decline of approximately 50% from its October 2025 high, currently trading at around $65,000, it remains well above its 3- to 5-year realized price of $34,780. This means that investors who bought and held during that period still hold approximately 90% of their investment. Meanwhile, most traders who bought in the past two years are currently at a loss. Those holding for 6 to 12 months have a cost basis of approximately $101,250, representing a paper loss of about 35%; those holding for 1 to 2 years have a cost basis of approximately $78,150, representing a paper loss of about 15%.

Ethereum founders published an article introducing the EIP-8141 proposal, marking a significant advancement in account abstraction technology.

According to a post on the social media platform X by Ethereum co-founder vitalik.eth, the history of Account Abstraction (EIP-86) since its initial proposal in early 2016 has been reviewed, and the newly released EIP-8141 proposal has been introduced. This proposal is a comprehensive one aimed at addressing all the legacy issues that Account Abstraction intended to solve. It introduces the concept of "frame transactions," where a transaction can contain multiple call frames that can read each other's call data and have the ability to authorize senders and authorize gas payers. For example, a typical multi-signature account transaction can consist of a verification frame and an execution frame; if the account does not yet exist, a deployment frame can be added pre-added.

For scenarios involving gas payments using non-ETH tokens like RAI, this can be achieved through a master payment contract. The transaction frame sequence includes steps such as verification, payer verification, sending RAI to the payer, execution, and the payer refunding unused RAI and exchanging it for ETH. The entire process requires no intermediaries. Regarding privacy protocols, the master payment contract can check for valid ZK-SNARKs before paying gas, or a 2D nonce mechanism can be used to allow a single account to receive transactions from multiple users in parallel, completely eliminating the "public broadcaster" that causes poor user experiences in protocols like Railgun and PP. Regarding security, at the chain level, only transactions containing verification frames that return ACCEPT and mark the gas payment are valid. Initially, the mempool layer will use very conservative rules, with an optional more aggressive mempool; the former will gradually expand over time. Furthermore, this proposal is highly complementary to the FOCIL mechanism, ensuring that complex operations can be directly treated as first-level transactions with a fast inclusion guarantee. Vitalik stated that after more than a decade of research, these technologies are expected to be implemented within a year through a Hegota hard fork.

Sam Altman responds to the US War Department's choice of OpenAI over Anthropic: Disagreements may stem from demands for operational control.

In an AMA on the X platform, OpenAI founder Sam Altman responded to the recent collaboration with the U.S. Department of War. He disclosed that Anthropic and the U.S. Department of War were once "very close to reaching an agreement," and both sides had a strong desire to cooperate for most of the negotiations. However, the highly tense negotiation environment could quickly deteriorate, which may be one of the important reasons why the deal ultimately failed to materialize. In terms of security philosophy, OpenAI adopts a "layered approach," which includes building a security technology stack, deploying Frontier Deployment Engineers (FDEs), involving security researchers in the project, delivering through cloud deployment, and cooperating directly with the U.S. Department of War. Compared to setting specific prohibitions in the contract, Anthropic seems to focus more on explicit restrictions at the contractual level, while OpenAI tends to rely more on the applicable legal framework and use technical security protection measures as the core guarantee. However, other companies may have different positions on this. Anthropic may hope to gain more operational control in the collaboration, which may also be one of the reasons for the divergence in their approaches.

Important data

Bitcoin spot ETFs saw net inflows of $787 million this week, with BlackRock's IBIT leading the way with $503 million.

Ethereum spot ETFs saw net inflows of $80.46 million this week, with Grayscale's ETHE leading the way with $40.4688 million in net inflows.

Six Polymarket accounts are suspected of insider trading, betting $1 million on a US strike against Iran.

According to Jinshi News, analytics firm BubblemapsSA reported that six accounts on the prediction platform Polymarket made approximately $1 million by betting on a US strike against Iran before February 28. These accounts were all newly opened in February, and they only placed bets on the timing of a potential US strike. Some of these accounts were bought just hours before the first reports of the explosion in Tehran, with some shares even purchased for about ten cents each.

This betting pattern has raised suspicions of insider trading. Blockchain analysts point out that similar patterns have appeared in other suspected insider trading cases in prediction markets, such as when an insider made huge profits in January when he bet on Venezuelan President Maduro's downfall.

Aave's governance controversy continues for three months, with TVL dropping from $36 billion to $26.5 billion.

According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin, the governance dispute between Aave's development team and community has lasted for three months, from the beginning of December to now. During this period, Aave's TVL has dropped from $36 billion to $26.5 billion (Defillama data). This is due to both the value reduction caused by the decline in the prices of major deposit/collateral assets such as WBTC and ETH, and the fact that whales have switched their holdings to other lending platforms due to the governance dispute.

The biggest whale to reposition was Justin Sun. During this period, he withdrew $910 million of stablecoins from Aave and deposited them into Sky and its subsidiary DAO Spark. Since the beginning of December, his deposits in Sky and Spark have increased from $570 million to $1.48 billion.

According to Jinshi News, US President Trump stated that he believes the US-Israel attack on Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei was effective and could create opportunities for diplomatic solutions. "Obviously, it's much easier now than it was a day ago," Trump said when asked about the possibility of resolving the crisis diplomatically, "because they were badly beaten." Trump expressed confidence in the current progress.

Previously, it was reported that AaveLabs proposed transferring 100% of its protocol revenue to the DAO in exchange for operating funds .