PA Daily News | CCTV to broadcast Yao Qian's case in its anti-corruption special tonight; Central Bank of Pakistan to explore using USD1 for cross-border payments in cooperation with WLFI.

Today's top news highlights:

US senators have submitted more than 130 amendments ahead of hearings on the crypto market structure bill.

CCTV will broadcast the Yao Qian case tonight as part of its anti-corruption documentary series, "Technology Empowering Anti-Corruption."

The Central Bank of Pakistan will partner with WLFI, the Trump family's crypto project, to explore cross-border payments using USD1.

Visa partners with BVNK to launch stablecoin payment service

Upbit will list its USDE token on the Korean Won, BTC, and USDT markets.

Binance Alpha launched Sight at 4 PM today, with an airdrop threshold of 245 points.

Bitcoin spot ETFs saw a total net inflow of $754 million yesterday.

CoinGecko: Nearly 11.6 million tokens failed by 2025, accounting for 86.3% of all failures over the past five years.

Regulatory news

CCTV will broadcast the fourth episode of its anti-corruption documentary series, "Technology Empowering Anti-Corruption," tonight, including the case of Yao Qian.

According to CCTV News, CCTV-1 will broadcast the fourth episode of the TV documentary "Never Stop, Never Back Down" on January 14 at 8 pm, titled "Technology Empowers Anti-Corruption." The episode tells the story of how discipline inspection and supervision organs have enriched their effective methods for preventing and combating new types of corruption and hidden corruption, empowering the fight against corruption with information technology, and making full use of technological means to accurately discover clues to misconduct and corruption, quickly and effectively break through cases, and strive to improve the level of intelligent and technology-based anti-corruption.

In the preview article, Yao Qian stated in the aforementioned documentary: "You knew it was a clandestine act, so how could you do it? It's just that you thought it would be difficult to find evidence before." Zou Rong, a staff member of the Discipline Inspection and Supervision Group of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the National Supervisory Commission stationed at the China Securities Regulatory Commission, said: "When virtual currency becomes a real asset, it becomes very easy to expose itself."

US senators have submitted more than 130 amendments ahead of hearings on the crypto market structure bill.

Documents obtained by CoinDesk show that U.S. senators have submitted over 130 amendments ahead of Thursday's hearing on the Crypto Markets Structure Act. These provisions are wide-ranging, including a complete ban on stablecoin yields, a prohibition on public officials profiting from crypto gains, and revisions to the definition of digital asset mixers. The senators who submitted the amendments are from both parties: Democrats include Ruben Gallego, Angela Alsobrooks, and Elizabeth Warren, while Republicans include Thom Tillis, Cynthia Lummis, and Tim Scott. Some amendments have bipartisan support; for example, of the three amendments jointly submitted by Tillis and Alsobrooks, two address the stablecoin yield provisions in the bill. One proposes removing the word "solely" to tighten restrictions, while another aims to increase reporting and risk guidance requirements related to yields.

The Senate Banking Committee will hold a hearing on Thursday to debate the amendments and vote on whether to adopt them, ultimately deciding whether to advance the bill. A similar hearing on the Senate Agriculture Committee has been postponed until late January.

The Central Bank of Pakistan will partner with WLFI, the Trump family's crypto project, to explore cross-border payments using USD1.

According to Reuters, sources revealed on Wednesday that Pakistan has reached an agreement with World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency company affiliated with the Trump family, to explore the use of its USD-denominated stablecoin, USD1, for cross-border payments. Under the agreement, World Liberty will collaborate with the Central Bank of Pakistan to integrate its USD1 stablecoin into a regulated digital payment infrastructure, allowing it to operate alongside Pakistan's domestic digital currency infrastructure. The news is expected to be officially announced during World Liberty CEO Zach Witkoff's visit to Islamabad.

Project Updates

Visa partners with BVNK to launch stablecoin payment service

Visa announced a partnership with stablecoin payment infrastructure company BVNK to integrate stablecoin functionality into its Visa Direct real-time payments network. This partnership will allow businesses in select markets to pre-fund payments with stablecoins and directly distribute funds to recipients' digital wallets. BVNK will provide the underlying infrastructure to process and settle these stablecoin transactions; the company currently processes over $30 billion in stablecoin payments annually. Visa invested in BVNK through its venture capital arm in May 2025, and Citigroup subsequently made a strategic investment.

Animoca Brands has completed its acquisition of digital collectibles and gaming company SOMO.

According to its official blog, Animoca Brands has completed its acquisition of SOMO, a digital collectibles and gaming company. SOMO owns products such as SOMO Codex, SOMO Duel, and its flagship game SOMO Battleground. Its ecosystem is dedicated to transforming digital collectibles into playable, streamable, and tradable assets across games.

Franklin Templeton adjusts its two money market funds to accommodate stablecoins and on-chain finance.

According to Cryptopolitan, Franklin Templeton has adjusted two of its institutional money market funds—Western Asset Institutional Treasury Obligations Fund (LUIXX) and Western Asset Institutional Treasury Reserves Fund (DIGXX)—to integrate stablecoins and on-chain financial infrastructure.

After adjustments, the LUIXX fund holds only U.S. Treasury bonds with maturities of less than 93 days to comply with the quality requirements for stablecoin reserve assets under the GENIUS Act of 2025, making it one of the first money market products specifically designed for stablecoin reserve compliance. The DIGXX fund, on the other hand, has added a "Digital Institutional Share Class," which records and transfers shares based on a blockchain network, enabling near-instantaneous 24/7 settlement, while the fund's underlying asset portfolio still adheres to U.S. money market fund rules.

FTX has set the next distribution date for March 31 and revised its proposed dispute claims reserve reduction plan.

According to an official FTX announcement, the next asset distribution registration date is set for February 14, 2026, with the distribution expected to commence on March 31, 2026, targeting accredited creditor and equity holders. FTX has also filed an amended notice with the court, proposing to reduce its disputed debt reserves by $2.2 billion. If approved by the court, this cash will be released and distributed to accredited creditors in the next distribution. The announcement again reminds users to be wary of phishing emails impersonating FTX and fraudulent websites masquerading as customer portals.

Binance Wallet integrates with Aster to support in-wallet perpetual contract trading.

Binance Wallet has announced a partnership with decentralized exchange Aster, launching a new feature on its web version that allows BNB Smart Chain users to trade perpetual contracts directly within their wallets. Users can now trade diversified crypto and US stock contracts using assets such as BNB, USDT, BTC, and ETH without going through a centralized exchange, maintaining full control over their assets.

Upbit will list its USDE token on the Korean Won, BTC, and USDT markets.

According to an official announcement, South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Upbit will list the USDE token on the Korean Won, BTC, and USDT markets.

Backpack enters the prediction market with its "Unified Prediction Portfolio".

Backpack founder Armani Ferrante announced on the X platform the launch of its first product in the prediction market space: Unified Prediction Portfolio, with an invitation-only private beta test already underway. This product unifies the allocation of user funds across multiple products, including spot trading, spot leverage, lending, perpetual contracts, prediction markets, cryptocurrencies, and fiat currencies, through cross-margin and cross-collateral mechanisms.

Ferrante stated that the system is not a simple wrapper around existing prediction market platforms, but rather a native integrated system from Backpack, where all assets are tokenized and subject to unified risk assessment. Users can complete quotes, trades, and hedge risks promptly through perpetual contracts within the same margin account. The product supports full-chain network connectivity, fiat currency channels, and various advanced order types. The platform plans to gradually expand its testing scope, increase the number of markets, and develop new mechanisms, with the ultimate goal of leveraging its global compliance footprint to expand its services from the current 48% global coverage to a global scale.

The OpenSea Foundation is preparing for TGE and will consider historical trading volume and Treasures data.

OpenSea Chief Marketing Officer Adam Hollander posted on the X platform that the OpenSea team is currently refining its mobile and hyper-liquidity applications, recommending that users connect and link their wallets to OpenSea. This will allow users to experience the mobile operating system and manage all their portfolios. Preparations for the OpenSea Foundation's TGE are underway, with the foundation carefully considering historical trading volume and Treasures data within the rewards program. This rewards program will continue until TGE, with 50% of the fees from each wave going into the rewards pool.

Strive shareholders approved the merger with Semler Scientific, which will increase the total BTC holdings to approximately 12,798.

Binance Alpha will list Sight at 4 PM today, with an airdrop threshold of 245 points.

According to the official announcement, Binance Alpha will list Empire of Sight (Sight), and Alpha trading will begin on January 14, 2026 at 16:00 (UTC+8). After trading begins, users holding at least 245 Binance Alpha Points can claim an airdrop of 800 Sight tokens. This is on a first-come, first-served basis. If the event continues, the point threshold will automatically decrease by 5 points every five minutes. Please note that claiming the airdrop will consume 15 Binance Alpha Points. Users must confirm their claim on the Alpha event page within 24 hours; otherwise, they will be considered to have forfeited their airdrop.

Analysis & Opinions

Report: Malicious Chrome extension masquerades as a trading tool to steal users' MEXC API keys

JPMorgan CFO: Yield-generating stablecoins may create a "dangerous parallel banking system"

JPMorgan Chase Chief Financial Officer Jeremy Barnum warned during the fourth-quarter earnings call that yield-generating stablecoins could create a “parallel banking system” lacking the regulatory safeguards of traditional banks, which he described as “dangerous and undesirable.” Barnum stated that JPMorgan supports the GENIUS Act’s initial intention to provide safeguards for stablecoin issuance, but opposes alternative systems that possess banking characteristics (such as interest-bearing deposit functions) but are not subject to corresponding prudential regulation. He said that while banks welcome competition and innovation, they strongly oppose the formation of a parallel banking system outside of existing regulatory protections.

Vitalik: The prerequisites for realizing the original Web3 vision are all in place; it's time to start building a decentralized world.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin posted on social media that he envisioned building a decentralized, permissionless application network based on the technology stack back in 2014. Now, all the conditions for realizing the original Web3 vision are in place and will continue to improve, and it is time to build a decentralized world.

He mentioned that the decentralized messaging protocol Waku already supports applications like Railway and Status, and IPFS, as a decentralized file retrieval method, boasts strong performance, but its storage issues need improvement. He cited Fileverse, a decentralized alternative to Google Docs/Sheets, as an example, highlighting its significantly improved usability. It utilizes Ethereum and the Gnosis chain for account management, uses decentralized messaging and storage for document processing, and has passed "off-site testing" through open source. He criticized the various drawbacks of "bloated enterprise products" and cited case studies to demonstrate the risks. He noted that decentralized applications like Fileverse are now quite usable, and he frequently uses them for writing and collaborating on documents, a stark contrast to the difficulty of using decentralized applications in 2014. He called on builders to jointly embrace the decentralized revival.

Important data

Bitcoin spot ETFs saw a total net inflow of $754 million yesterday, with none of the twelve ETFs experiencing net outflows.

Ethereum spot ETFs saw a total net inflow of $130 million yesterday, with none of the nine ETFs experiencing net outflows.

In 2025, stablecoin payments on the Revolut platform increased by 156% year-on-year, reaching $10.5 billion.

In the past six months, corporate crypto treasuries have net increased their holdings by approximately 260,000 BTC, which is three times the Bitcoin mining output during the same period.

According to Cointelegraph, corporate digital asset treasuries (DATs) have net purchased approximately 260,000 bitcoins over the past six months, worth about $25 billion, equivalent to an increase of 43,000 bitcoins per month. During the same period, Bitcoin miners produced only about 82,000 bitcoins, meaning corporate purchases were more than three times the production, highlighting the continued trend of increasing bitcoin holdings on corporate balance sheets. Currently, public and private corporate treasuries collectively hold approximately 1.2 million bitcoins, with Strategy holding 687,410 (60%), worth about $65.5 billion. The second largest corporate holder is MARA Holdings, holding 53,250 bitcoins, worth about $5 billion.

A whale deposited 1.07 million USDC into HyperLiquid and established a long position in Bitcoin worth $31.61 million.

According to Onchain Lens monitoring, a whale deposited 1.07 million USDC into HyperLiquid and opened a long Bitcoin position with 40x leverage, currently valued at approximately $31.61 million. This whale also holds a long ZERO position with 5x leverage, showing a floating profit of approximately $125,000. Data shows that this address has accumulated losses of $21.4 million in previous transactions.

A whale withdrew 12,000 ETH from Binance, worth $39.98 million.

According to OnchainLens monitoring, a whale withdrew 12,000 ETH from Binance, worth $39.98 million. Currently, this whale holds a total of 80,980 ETH, with a total value of $269.46 million.

CoinGecko: Nearly 11.6 million tokens failed by 2025, accounting for 86.3% of all failures over the past five years.

According to CoinGecko statistics, as of December 31, 2025, 53.2% of the crypto tokens recorded on the GeckoTerminal platform had failed. The vast majority of these failures occurred in 2025, with approximately 11.6 million tokens failing throughout the year, accounting for 86.3% of the total failures over the past five years (2021-2025).

The report attributes the sharp decline in project survival rates in 2025 to systemic market turmoil, particularly the "liquidation waterfall" event on October 10th. Despite this market volatility, the total number of crypto tokens surged from 428,000 in 2021 to nearly 20.2 million in 2025, primarily due to the ease of issuing tokens through platform launches, leading to an influx of low-quality meme tokens and projects. Furthermore, platforms like pump.fun, launched in 2024, further lowered the barriers to entry for token issuance.

The "Strategy counterparty" has established short positions totaling approximately $47.05 million.

Hyperbot data monitoring shows that after closing its long positions and profiting $14.5 million, "Strategy's counterparty" has now turned bearish. It currently holds short positions in BTC, ETH, and SOL with 20x leverage, totaling $47.05 million. Its contract account has a total profit/loss of approximately $13.39 million in the past day and approximately $24.9 million in the past week.

The top-ranked address on the "Binance Life" leaderboard has unrealized profits exceeding $2.63 million, representing a return of over 154,341.1%.

According to on-chain analyst @ai_9684xtpa, Binance Life has risen 60% in the past 24 hours, with the top on-chain trader's unrealized profit exceeding $2.63 million, representing a return of over 154,341.1%.

His average cost is as low as $0.0001574. He bought the token as early as six minutes after it was listed. He has not deposited any tokens since Binance announced the listing of the spot token. He currently holds 18.5 million tokens (accounting for 1.85%).