Morning paper | Mask Network announced taking over from Lens Protocol; Pump.fun set up the Investment Sector Pump Fund; Strategy spent $2.33 billion in increased bitcoin

Mask Network announced taking over the down-to-centre social protocol Lens Protocol

ChainCatcher, go to the center of social protocolsMask NetworkandLens ProtocolIt was announced that Mask Network became Lens Protocol's new manager, and that the future Lens Protocol would focus no longer on protocol experiments but on consumer-oriented user experience, product design and global distribution。

“Mask's mission is to make decentralised social functions accessible, intuitive and responsive to the needs of everyday users, which coincides with Lens' next stage of development, according to Suji Yan, founder of Mask。

“With Mask leading this important phase, our role has shifted from day-to-day product development to counselling. In this role, we remain committed to the mission of making open, scalable, user-owned social networks the core pillar of the future Internet. We are committed to the long-term success of Lens, its developers, their communities, and the Suji and Mask teams.” Lens, an official blog, writes。

According to RootData, Lens Protocol accumulated more than $46 million in fund-raising, with investors such as Tent, Robot Ventures, Varant Fund and others, with media reports last June that a new round of financing was planned at $500 million. Mask Network had previously accumulated over $57 million in financing, and its token currency, MASK, was currently $6 million in FDV。

PayPal introduced a free self-service tax reporting service, which is required to declare the proceeds of digital asset disposal to IRS from 2025

ChainCatcher News, PayPal announced that, in collaboration with the embedded tax technology platform april, the United States PayPal user can use april's self-service tax reporting service to file the 2025 federal and state taxes free of charge。

Also, PayPal official network information indicates that users are required to tax the encrypted currency on their platforms and that, starting with the 2025 tax year, the United States National Revenue Service requires United States digital asset brokers, such as PayPal, to declare the proceeds of a digital asset disposal on 1099-DA forms, and that PayPal will send to users a tax 1099-DA form by 15 February if the user has disposed of PayPal's wallet during the applicable tax year, such as the sale or exchange of encrypted currency。

DATA: PFF ETF HOLDING $380 MILLION IN MSTR PRIORITY SHARES UNDER THE BELED FLAG

ChainCatcher reports that, as of January 16, iShares Prefered and Income Security ETF (PFF) owned Strategy (MSTR) Stretch (STRC) as its fourth-largest holder with $210 million, equivalent to 1.47 per cent weight。

The ETF also holds other MSTR products of permanent priority, including a $97.5 million Strife (STRF) with a weight of 0.69 per cent, a $90.0 million GMT unit with a weight of 0.64 per cent and a $73 million Stride (STRD) with a weight of 0.51 per cent。

Strategy spent $2.33 billion plus 22,305 bitcoins

ChainCatcher reports that, according to official sources, Strategy purchased 22,305 bitcoins at an approximate price of US$ 21.33 billion at an average exchange price of US$ 95,284 per item。

As at 19 January 2026, Strategy held a total of 709,715 bitcoins, with cumulative investment of approximately $53,922 million, with an average holding price of approximately $75,979 per item。

币50 USDT received 5 cents of 币alpha

The head of the Korean illegal encryption exchange was sentenced to five years' imprisonment for money laundering

ChainCatcher, according to DLNews, the Korean District Court in Daejeu sentenced the head of an illegal encrypted currency exchange, 41 years old, to five years' imprisonment, using USDT to launder $1 million for an overseas voice fraud ring. A 35-year-old employee of the Exchange was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison at the same time。

Through Telegram, the criminal group contacted, disguised as law enforcement officers and family members seducing the victim to transfer funds, then quickly converted the funds into USDT, a process that lasted less than an hour, preventing banks from freezing accounts in a timely manner. Judge Li Yongchul called this a "bad crime" and noted that the accused had not taken any measures to make up for the victims' losses. Korean legislator Kim Sung-joon called for greater regulation of the currency stabilization to deal with new forms of foreign currency crime。

Bloomberg: The Trump family has about one fifth of $6.8 billion in wealth allocated to encrypted assets

ChainCatcher reports that, for the first time in the past year, encrypted assets have added approximately $1.4 billion to the Trump family, representing nearly one fifth of its total assets。

As Trump began his second presidential term, his personal and family asset structure was clearly different from that of his first term. It was reported that, in addition to traditional real estate and branding authorization operations, Trump had added social media companies, its co-creation of encryption platforms and digital asset layouts such as the memes named by their names. This marks the emergence of encryption and digital operations as an important source of wealth for the Trump family, as well as the deepening of its overall asset connection to the encryption industry。

99.89 per cent of the governance proposal was supported by a vote that would initiate deflation mechanisms that would significantly reduce the supply of tokens

ChainCatcher newsGovernance proposal for ProjectiveIIP-617BY AN OVERWHELMING VOTE, 99.89 PER CENT OF COMMUNITY MEMBERS VOTED FOR THE OFFICIAL LAUNCH OF THE NEXT PHASE OF THE DEVELOPMENT PLAN FOR INJ TOKENS。

THE PROPOSAL IS NOW IN EFFECT AND WILL SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCE THE TOTAL SUPPLY OF INJ TOKENS, MAKING INJ ONE OF THE MOST DEFLATIONARY ASSETS IN THE ENCRYPTED MARKET。

Pump.fun announced the establishment of the Investment Sector Pump Fund

Hong Kong Securities and Futures Professionals Association: Hong Kong has completed its initial virtual asset management infrastructure, and the next focus should be on commercialization applications

ChainCatcher News, the Hong Kong government plans to publish the 2026/2027 Fiscal Budget Bill on 25 February, which focuses on virtual assets and investor guarantees. The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Professionals Association has indicated that Hong Kong has completed its initial regulatory infrastructure in the area of virtual assets and that the next focus should be on commercialization applications。

TO UPGRADE HONG KONG FROM A WELL-REGULATED MARKET TO A FULLY MOBILE AND UNIVERSALLY ACCESSIBLE GLOBAL VIRTUAL ASSET CENTRE BY FACILITATING RWA SECONDARY MARKET LIQUIDITY, FASTER PRODUCT APPROVAL, INTRODUCTION OF INTERNATIONAL LIQUIDITY AND ENHANCED TRAINING OF PRACTITIONERS, AND TO A FINANCIAL OPENNESS AND DIGITAL ECONOMY STRATEGY PLANNED BY THE NATIONAL “FIFTY FIVE”。

Wintermute: A few large currencies absorb the vast majority of the additional capital

ChainCatcher, in the 2026 Vision report published by Wintermute, noted that the expected increase in 2025 had not occurred and that the traditional four-year cycle was becoming obsolete. A few large companies absorbed the vast majority of the new capital and the entire market was struggling。

Expanding market participation in 2026 depends on whether one of the following three scenarios can significantly increase liquidity beyond a few large capitalization assets。

1. ETF AND DAT EXPAND THEIR INVESTMENT RANGE, E.G. SOL AND XRP ETF。

2. While a strong increase in bitcoin or the fare may have wealth effects, it remains uncertain how much money will eventually flow back to digital assets。

3. The attention of bulk investors may shift from equities (artificial intelligence, rare earth, quantum technology) to encrypted currencies, leading to new inflows and stable currency issuance. (most unlikely)

The Republic of Korea proposes to remove the “one exchange-to-one bank” restriction and promote the legalization of transactions between encrypted derivatives and corporate accounts

ChainCatcher reports that the Korean financial authorities are moving ahead with the reform of the digital asset control system, with plans to remove the “one exchange - one bank” binding restrictions and allow the issuance of encrypted derivatives to participate in transactions with corporate accounts in order to break the current market monopoly structure and promote liquidity。

Regulatory authorities consider that this restriction, while not legally enforceable, limits exchange competition and user choice because of the persistence of anti-money-laundering requirements. Follow-up policy will be incorporated into the second phase of legislation of the Organic Law on Digital Assets, and a consensus has been reached between the two parties in Congress on the direction of partial deregulation。

CZ: NEW YORK INSTITUTE ' S LAUNCH OF A MONETIZATION PLATFORM FOR ENCRYPTED MONEY AND ENCRYPTED TRANSACTIONS

ChainCatcher, CZ, in response to the New York Stock Exchange announcement of the launch of a monetization platform, says, "This is good news for both encrypted and encrypted money trading platforms."

Previously, it was reported that the New York Stock Exchange, under the umbrella of the Intercontinental Exchange Group, announced today that it was developing a platform for currencyized securities trading and chain settlement and would seek regulatory approval to do so. The new digital platform at the New York office will support the monetization experience, including 7x24 hours of 24-hour round-the-clock operations, immediate settlement, billing in dollar amounts and transfer of funds based on stable currency。

a16z Cripto calls for DeFi to move from "code is law" to "normative is law" to respond to a loophole crisis

ChainCatcher newsa16z Cripto Senior Security Researcher Daejun Park sent a message calling for the DeFi agreement to move from “code or law” to “norm or law” to a more principled security approach. This is done by automatically reversing transactions that violate pre-defined rules through the security of the hard code of standardized norms and constant checks. Park noted that almost all known loopholes trigger such inspections and are expected to deter hacker attacks during implementation。

According to Slowmist, last year hackers stole over $649 million through code loopholes. Even the old deal that ran since 2021, Balancer lost $128 million in November of last year because of code leaks. The developers are concerned that hackers are increasingly using AI to find loopholes。

The Immunefi security supervisor noted that constant checks would increase gas costs and could be lost to users rather than a panacea. The co-founder of Asymetric Research stated that many loopholes made it difficult to develop constant rules that would detect attacks without misreporting。

One network engineer was accused of stealing money from gambling websites, and the police filed a separate seizure of 183 bitcoin

ChainCatcher reports that Shenzhen IT man Li Dong (alias) is being watched by police in both provinces. He found a lot of bitcoin in his virtual currency wallet. The public security organs of the cities of Zhang Zhangbang and Henan Zhanggok in Hunan investigated the case against Li Dong, on charges of “opening casinos”. The Zhang family police seized more than 100 bitcoins from Li Dong ' s account, which was converted to more than 40 million yuan; Henan police seized 80 bitcoins, with a market value of over $40 million。

Later, Li Dong was not found to be “opening a casino”, and he was prosecuted by the Henan Changguk City Public Prosecutor's Office for alleged theft and violation of citizen's personal information. In January 2026, the case was heard in public sittings at the Change City Court. Following the adjournment, the Tribunal indicated that it would hold another session. After 80, Li Dong is a cyber-information security engineer and university studies specialize in information security. He then worked on cybersecurity technology in a number of well-known Internet enterprises and later settled in Shenzhen, where he had recently set up an Internet company。

According to his family, probably since 2016, Li Dong has been selling shares and coins and owning some bitcoin. However, the police investigation later concluded that his Bitcoin origin was “a different route”. In September 2024, Li Dong was summoned by the Changbong City Public Security Bureau in Hunan on suspicion of “opening a casino”. In May of that year, the Zhang Family Police opened a case on the basis of an “anonymous report” to investigate online gambling, and Li Dong was a suspect. Zhang's police have seized 103 bitcoin in Li Dong's digital wallet and have converted more than 49.6 million yuan. Soon, Li Dong was released on bail. On the other hand, on the decision to detain and on bail pending trial, Li Tung was accused of having changed from “opening casinos” to “illegal access to computer information system data”。